JESUS

A.J.E.Welch

Matthew 1: 19; Mark 13: 33 - 37; Luke 24: 50-53; John 20: 16-17

I am impressed with these four gospel records and how they bear upon us, relating as they do to Jesus in the days of His flesh, and engaging us constantly with Him. This was referred to today - the four writers and their writings about Jesus. All were attracted to Jesus as He was here in the days of His flesh, as one in whom glory, whatever the facet of glory might be, was seen at every point. What records of men could compare with these four gospel writings, referring to the same Person and bringing into focus the glories that were His in particular connections, to afford us rich instruction? I say rich instruction because the gospels are superlative in what they present. The assembly is rightly a realm of appreciation of superlative things, not just of the dead objects of the creation, but of superlative things in a glorious Man, and superlative things in what He effected for men and in men. Let us lift our gaze, dear brethren, to the levels of engagement in revealed truth which properly belong to us in the assembly! Let us see the divine ideals! The title Son, as we have often said, is itself to present to us the divine ideal. All is there in Jesus. But I am thinking of the divine ideals of action, and conduct, and labour, and suffering which we see in Jesus. Can we reach into these things, dear brethren, not just as regarding them (as any true heart must) worshipfully, but as being fully receptive of all that God would secure in us and among us from every presentation of Jesus?

Occupation with Christ - restful, sustained occupation with His Person - is something of which I am assured He would give us to know much more. Yea, I would bring this round to our own side of the matter to say that we, on our part, need to set our selves so in relation to Christ that opportunity is given for Him to affect us in what is brought out in Himself. That would involve Himself as He is, and its relation to Himself as He was in that fragrant, fruitful pathway full of details of glory, full of the details of moral excellence in manhood. The detail which expresses perfection in man, in every relationship in which man stands, is to govern us in every relationship in which we stand. Formation in the mind of God therefore becomes not just a subject of inquiry or conversation, but something which is distinctively brought out in every one of us, and in local assemblies, where all the variety which these gospel records embody is to find its result in the persons who are there. What variety there is in these gospels, variety of presentation, yet absolute consistency of presentation, no one incident being at variance with another, and no one gospel writer being at variance with another. All present, from their own different viewpoints and by the same Spirit, the same Person, and yet in the endless variety in glory, the endless variety in moral excellence in expression that we have in Jesus. What a study for hearts that love Him, hearts that will love Him more as the study itself proceeds! "Thou art worthy" (Rev 5: 9) is the exclamation that we read this morning in regard to the Lamb standing, as slain. Let us see that side of worthiness in the Person of Christ, brought out in all the moral qualities, gloriously balanced, and shining out in that Person as He was down here.

So in Matthew, the Spirit comments upon a "righteous man", not referring to Jesus but to Joseph. It says in a very interesting way, "Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man". Righteousness in Joseph is leading to a certain course of action, which the situation requires to safeguard what God is doing with His own ends in mind. The point I have in mind, and it is a very simple and basic point, is not just the subject of righteousness but the need of a man who is righteous and whose course in these chapters only serves to verify that he is righteous; he is a man who feels things but is righteous in feeling them. What a basis that is for God to go forward! It protects the bringing in of that which is most glorious, in kingship, in Christ.

The contrast in Luke is something for us to study, where the point is not so much a righteous man as spiritual womanhood, delightful in its utterances and in the way it comports itself; the feature of hiding is there, priestly concern as to what is taking place, things not being disclosed to the common gaze but held in hands and in hearts that know how to hold precious things. Here, it is a righteous man and attention is called to the absolute legitimacy of all that God is doing; it is absolutely right at every point, and it can be proved that it is right. That is the point I would like to make. Being of God, it must be just and righteous. God is doing things, and whatever attack may come, the proof can be adduced that what is happening is right. We can well understand that it is in this same gospel, which we often speak of as to the assembly gospel, where the Lord addresses Himself in a way so comforting to two or three, visualizing two or three, as He says, "gathered together unto my name", Matt 18: 20. He is carrying forward there what is right It is right in God's sight that that situation should be contemplated . It is right in God 's sight that that situation should be divinely supported. What a comfort that is, dear brethren, in our twos and threes! What God is doing is right. It is not brought forward in the words of the Lord by presentation of a particular necessity. He is setting it out from His own side as something which, from His side, is absolutely right, that two or three should be gathered together unto His name, and He says ."there am I in the midst of them". The Lord takes up kingdom teaching in chapters 5, 6 and 7. He goes forward to prophetic teaching, much of it unique to this gospel, in chapters 24 and 25. But the teaching is right at every point, whatever men may say. In 2 Timothy 2: 22 we are exhorted to pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace. These thoughts have their own voice to us, and I would just ask myself and my brethren here whether the Lord has this element by which He can protect His greatest thoughts in the places from which we come - "a righteous man". It is a wonderful thing to be able to speak now of a man who is right. He has received the glad tidings and submitted to the Lord. He is not a righteous man unless he has done that. He has received the Spirit as an obedient believer. He is moving in the Spirit's power and support as a righteous man. Joseph, of course, was not in the time of the Spirit in this chapter, but we are and the point is now that we walk in righteousness. This is the great subject of chapter 8 of Romans. You dear young people, read that chapter 8 of Romans, and on the way to it read the seven chapters that precede it. Read them all, and re-read them all, and find what it is to walk in righteousness in the power of the Spirit - it is the great basis for your deliverance, the great basis above all for God to reach His end in each of us severally. Then we can assemble, as persons who prove themselves. "Let a man prove himself, and thus eat of the bread, and drink of the cup", 1 Cor 11: 28. Do we find ourselves, in that proving process, to be righteous men? What a wonderful thing it is just to lay everything bare in the presence of God in that proving process and find, thank God, that through the efficacy of the work of Christ, I can take my place before God as a righteous man! It is the great subject of Matthew's gospel, that God has a basis in righteousness for everything He does.

In Mark, the servant's gospel, it is a question of the work we have to do. Are we ready, dear brethren, to work? This point has come back to me several times in the course of the last two or three weeks. Are we ready to work, ready to labour, ready for toil? Are we ready to lay down our lives for the brethren? All these thoughts are in Scripture; is it our intent to express them? Time is passing; the end is near, and the Lord is very soon coming. If you had, and knew you had, another week to spend, how would you spend it? It may be that you and I have not another week to spend, but if so be that in the divine ordering you have another week to spend, how would you spend it in the interests of Christ ? Suppose it were the last week left to you, how would you spend it? Toil? Labour? The Lord says in another setting, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light", Matt 11: 30. That would mean that all that is engaged in is in the sweetness of communing with Himself. So that although the burdens in some sense physically be real, the burdensomeness of spirit is lifted by your relations with Christ. You see that in these men that have gone before us, how they laboured; there was restful contentedness in their labour. Need we be frenziedly active, dear brethren? No, but dependently active. The word here is of one who gave "to his bondmen the authority, and to each one his work". I bring this passage into view just to highlight what is in this gospel in devoted labour and service. The word 'straightway' is characteristic of this gospel of Mark; this involves that we are not delaying things but doing things - doing things because the course of this wonderful dispensation requires persons who bring out into action what is divinely determined upon. God is able to work without us. Often He does, but He loves to use those whom He has under His hand in rightly regulated service. It has been a very deep challenge in recent time that we are not just taking on service in any loose or promiscuous way, but that the Lord has His hand in what we do. The challenge of that is very real, but I believe the Lord would raise it Wherever I go, near or far; whenever I go, near or far; whatever I may seek to do, near or far, is the Lord in it? "To each one his work". Each one of what? - bondmen, committed persons, not persons who are proceeding merely in a certain outward course, but committed persons.

Oh for committal, full committal, sustained committal, steady committal in local assemblies to the interests of Christ so glorious, involving readiness to do things! Dear brethren, how much there is to be done! What feeding is to be done; what building up is to be done; what shepherding is to be done. What a need there is of shepherds and teachers in view of the saints being built up, rightly held, rightly kept and rightly nourished, to find their full part in these interests so precious to Christ and to us. Still it is under the Lord. It is under an absent' Lord according to the way the Lord presents the matter. "It is' as a man gone out of the country, having left his house and given to his bondmen the authority, and to each one his work, and commanded the doorkeeper that he should watch". That is to say, the Lord has left certain things in our hands. This comes back to what we spoke of as the responsible side of things, and the deposit entrusted (2 Tim 1: 14). So our part here in the assembly is a matter of a responsible place under the Lord, and how we fill out that place in an active, positive sense. I am not to be a passive person, far less according to what is said later here, a sleeping person. Will the Lord coming suddenly find us sleeping? Are we alert, expectant, watching for Him? Is that watchfulness extending into the care of His interests? Are we alert to the character of the moment, dear brethren, and the subtleties of the enemy's thrusts? Is there watchfulness amongst us? Am I a watchful person, or shall I through lack of that sensitiveness that the Spirit would promote be caught unawares by the character of whatever wicked thrust the enemy might bring next? The Lord in this sense is absent. Yet what resource there is as under Him to pursue what is needful to be done in His absence, in the expectancy of His coming. Therefore let us look in this gospel for the way that Jesus served, the manner of His service, the way He depended as here in manhood upon divine supply and resource. It is a most interesting study through this gospel, helping us to come into service in the widest sense. I am not speaking of giving addresses, nor necessarily of preaching the word, but of being a person in divinely regulated activity in the course of interests here which are so precious in the sight of heaven . None of us is to be outside of that, and each of us is to be in it in full relation to Christ who assigns to each one his work. I have to ask myself first, 'Am I a bondman? Do I expect to mix my will with His? Do I expect to get advantage to myself while seeking advantage to Him? Is there any mixture of my motives? In one sense there is great richness in moving among the brethren, but am I thinking of myself or am I thinking of Him? Is all in simple dependence, and acceptance of what the Lord would assign to us in view of His interests being prospered? Oh for that prosperity! It is to be seen in our localities that the work of the Lord is proceeding, that the brethren are taking on from the Lord Jesus what relates to Himself - the features in all their variety which mark Him, and marked Him in the time of His flesh.

The ending of Luke follows a remarkable sequence of events in which the Lord was making things clear. This priestly writer would cause things to be clear and certain to us. It says at the beginning, "That thou mightest know the certainty of those things in which thou hast been instructed," Luke 1: 4. That word "instructed" is to be noted, for how much instruction there is available to us! What instruction there is in the assembly! What instruction there is in what the Lord has entrusted to us, in the Scriptures and then in that which the Spirit has given based upon the Scriptures. Are we ready to learn? I remember one time when beloved Mr Taylor sen came to England and, at almost every point he went, he spoke of our being slow learners. Have we learned the lesson? Has our pace of learning become quickened, dear brethren? Teaching is such a vital thing, that we take it on. Divine teaching is that which God has set out often in an extended way for us, so that we may be brought into the gain of instruction that governs us in what we do and what we say. Teaching is a remarkable thing because it equips persons to do things in a way which marks off the quality of the teaching they receive. Are we ready to be taught? Do we think we know what to say and what to do? Or are we sensitive to the skill of the teacher, under the Spirit's touch, to impart instruction to us so that what is imparted becomes characteristic of us? Luke comments in a most affecting way on the manner in detail in which the Lord Jesus did everything; Luke tells us of the way He stood up in the synagogue and unrolled the book, and rolled it up again and gave it back to the attendant (chapter 4). That is the mark of the anointing, that every detail fits the case, fits the glory of what God is proceeding with. What teaching there has been, and what teaching, thank God, there is still to instruct us - to instruct us about what? - Jesus.

Repentance, a very special subject in Luke's gospel, is the way in which we come into things, become established in things, and enter into the richest of privilege. Repenting sinners are persons who characteristically are repentant. The Lord brings out the force of repentance so distinctly in this gospel. Some of us who are very responsible persons, especially, but all of us, have things to repent of. The repentance in Luke's gospel is resultful - repentance. It has a divine answer in blessing. We tend to be marked by shallowness, by what is superficial; but, as we get to the bottom of things in repentance, what happens? God delights to come in and to bless us. What a God He is, as He brings in the blessing! In the chapter read, things for some are a little cloudy. Why did those two go off to Emmaus? No reason is given. Why do we do things? Why do we do things, practically, in our homes and families and business affairs? Maybe there is something which just reflects our own will or our own scheming. We do not know what these two that went to Emmaus had in mind in going there, but they were going away from the centre at which God was bringing out His best. The Lord in grace brings them back. How does He bring them back? Does He take them by the hand and lead them back? No, He disappears from them, having brought certain matters to bear upon them relating to Himself, and they find that there is only one thing that they can do, and that is to go back and find those from whom their departure had parted them. They find that in that company the Lord comes in in the most clarifying and assuring way, imparting to them some realisation of what He has in view, that in which He would set them forward into His own interests with their outlook clear. So He leads them, as it says, "as far as Bethany". It is the glory of the Lord's personal leadership into what we may speak of as the most glorious dispensation of all. It is to bring out the way that divine operations, divine movement, are marked by this feature of what is superlative. He led them as far as Bethany. He could not lead them farther, for He was to be carried up into heaven. It was not the time yet for the disciples to go. It is very nearly time, dear brethren, for us who love Him to go. How close it is! But at this time, of which Luke writes, He leads them as far as Bethany. That is a divinely selected place, a secluded place, a place which was a retreat that the Lord Jesus Himself had known and enjoyed in His own experience and links with the Father. He is intimating that that is to go on. However long the testimony remains here, that is to go on. We are to know something about Bethany. It says, "Having lifted up his hands, he blessed them". I pause on these touches of blessing, dear brethren, because Christianity is a system of blessing, a system of supply, a system of support, a system of holy sympathy in the infirmities of the time and the pressures that come upon us. He blessed them. I covet that we may go from this day with· a sense of blessing from God something coming in from His side under the hand of Christ. It is not only that we have spoken of things together, but that we have a sense of something flowing in in divine supply for the developing of what is after Christ in the saints. For blessing means that. It is not merely circumstantial benefits, but blessing from God known in the soul to be what it is, tasted in our experience as being from God in the directness of His own giving. "And it came to pass as he was blessing them, he was separated from them and was carried up into heaven". It does not say how He was carried, but He was carried up. He belongs there; as of necessity He must go there. That is the place from which He conducts, and that through the Spirit, the glorious operations which I trust in His grace we are having part in even as we are together in this city today. "And they, having done him homage, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God". Notice that word "continually". This is no spasmodic matter, no sudden experience to come to an end as suddenly as it began. They were continually in the temple. They are learning now a new order of things. Soon they would move in another sense when the Spirit came, but for this provisional moment, not for long, they are found in the temple continually praising and blessing God. What is our continual occupation, in that sense? Are we buoyant persons, responsive persons, persons composing doxologies, however simply? I come back to that. How much there is to praise God for, not in human sentiment but in the reality of receiving blessing, knowing the One whose blessing it is and delighting to answer to Him in praise. Let the spirit of praise mark us more, dear brethren, as we taste the fulness of divine supply, that which comes down to us in such wealth from God.

Now in John, it is the height of things. It is again teaching that is in view. Mary says to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni, which means Teacher". We know from what preceded (I do not say it to reflect upon this beloved soul) that Mary had a good deal to learn. How many of us have almost everything to learn about the divine glory and what enters according to that glory, into the time in which we now are! Do we go to Christ to learn? "Rabboni", she says. Whatever may yet be unclear to her, she knows from whom she will get the clarity. She knows from whom the word, the manifestation, will come that will fill the gap in her knowledge. Are we ready, dear brethren, for spiritual enlargement? How much there is we need to learn! Are we ready to learn? Do we know how to learn, to go to Jesus, to find what a teacher He is? The gospels present some sitting at His feet , listening to His word - but it is not His word alone, it is Himself. It is the sweetness of being in His presence, the sweetness of apprehending Him as He is, in His own Person. What do we know of that? The Spirit delights to enlarge that to us. There is the distinctiveness of what, if He will, is before ourselves very soon, in what He says, "I am coming to you" , John 14: 18. Is there a moment, an experience like that? How are we affected by it? How much can we retain of impression, powerful impression as the Lord comes in? Are we really developing spiritually, developing in capacity to take on heavenly thoughts and heavenly things from the One who above all is able to set them forth to us? Do we sufficiently know the One who above all is able to sustain heavenly things in us, that is the Spirit? It is not merely the knowledge of things in words and teaching - that has had its place in what we have been saying - but the reality of wealthy, productive, spiritual impression coming right into us. It is to grip our hearts as to Christ, to affect our inwards as to the glory of this Person, risen from the dead, and saying "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God". It is the highest point that is in view here. The Lord speaks of ascending - "I ascend". He goes back in His own personal right to the Father, securing all His thoughts; He goes back in view of this wonderful time of the Spirit yielding what it is divinely designed to yield in the choicest fruits in persons, lovers of Jesus, for the delight of His own heart. Are we yet intelligent in all that this dispensation means? Are these things being brought out amongst us? Is there a tangible expression of that which the gospels present as to Jesus, of that which delights the heart of God and enters into His service responsively to Himself?

May he enlarge us in these things, for His Name's sake.

 

TORONTO

8 April 1972