OUR ANSWER TO DIVINE SPEAKING
John A.Brown
Psalm 27: 7,8; Song of Songs 2: 8-17; Genesis 35: 14; Revelation 22: 26,17,20
In the reading, we enquired about how God continues to speak to us. His speaking is always in love, and always in a way which would touch our consciences. What I would like to speak about now is the need for an answer to God's speaking. How do we respond to what God says to us? I would have to acknowledge that I have heard God's word often but I have not answered to it. It may be in personal circumstances, or in a meeting; I have had to acknowledge that something has been said which has affected me. Then perhaps a week later I have had to think back and ask, What result was there in me from what God said to me then? I have often had to acknowledge - not much. God in His faithfulness to us is speaking all the time. He is speaking of Jesus, and the Lord Jesus too is speaking to His people all the time. The test for me, and I acknowledge how much I need it, is that there might be a response to divine speaking in my own experience and in my life.
Now, some who are younger might wonder about what we had in the reading. We were speaking about the voice of God. Peter could write of "such a voice", 2 Pet 1: 17. We spoke about the temple and how it operates as we enquire into the Scriptures. But sometimes God may speak very gently and individually to us. That is why I have read this Psalm. Verse 8 is very interesting. It may not be that we suddenly hear a loud voice, although some have had that experience. Most often we might hear the soft, gentle voice, as it came in 1 Kings 19. So the psalmist says to God "My heart said for thee, Seek ye my face". That is your conscience is being acted upon, and you know in your heart that God is saying something to you, you know there is an appeal. It can just be something in your own experience, in the quietness of your own heart. Your heart says to you on God's behalf "Seek ye my face". It can be as simple as that. It would be the voice of Jesus - "Seek ye my face". Now there is an immediate answer "Thy face, O Jehovah, will I seek". That is what I want to speak about, that answer. In verse 7 the psalmist says, "Hear, Jehovah", it is an appeal to God to hear him "with my voice do I call; be gracious unto me, and answer me". The psalmist is calling on God to answer him.
Dear young brother, dear young sister, God will never refuse to answer a call made to Him in genuineness of exercise. He will never ever refuse such a call - "be gracious unto me, and answer me". There will always be an answer to a call made like that to the Father or to the Lord Jesus. But in the next verse God's own call comes to the psalmist in the quietness of his own heart - "Seek ye my face", and there is an immediate answer in the psalmist, "Thy face, O Jehovah, will I seek". That is what I would desire for myself and for every one of us, that there might be this kind of answer to what God has done, and to what He is saying to us. As we saw in the reading, He is speaking all the time, His speaking continues. I trust that something of what was said earlier would have this character, a gentle voice in love addressed to the conscience - "Seek ye my face". It may be that these four words would act on someone's conscience here this afternoon, someone perhaps who is not as close to God, is not as close to their Saviour, as they once were . Oh that you might just hear these words - "Seek ye my face", and that may there be this answer “Thy face, O Jehovah, will I seek".
I want to speak of the verse read in the Song of Songs as indicating an individual's experience. Often we apply this passage to the assembly, and that is a very blessed way of taking up this scripture. But I would like to apply it to myself, and for you to apply it to yourself. You are the speaker, "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he cometh". Have you heard the voice of Jesus in the gospel? I trust that there is no one here that has not answered to the voice of Jesus in the gospel, as He would call "Come unto Me". That would be "The voice of my beloved!". I would desire for myself to hear the voice of the One who has given Himself for me. It is He who is speaking here and later on it says "My beloved spake and said unto me". The Lord Jesus in type is speaking to the one He loves, and He is looking for an answer. I trust that there is no-one here who has not answered in love to the appeal of grace in the gospel. You have done that; I trust you have. If you have not, then do it now, answer to the appeal that the Lord Jesus would make to you in love. I trust, dear young person, that you have answered to this appeal of grace, to the presentation of the Lord Jesus in the gospel. Thank God if you have. Then you may have heard the voice of the Lord Jesus saying to you, "This do, in remembrance of Me". I trust that you have answered that appeal too, that call of the Beloved. Speaking can be general, but it also comes to us as individuals, and if you have not answered to that call yet, the Lord Jesus would speak to your heart not, "This do, in remembrance of Me". What a wonderful thing it is to answer to that call to devotion and committal to Christ in a world which has cast Him out.
Now you may have done that, and yet not be fully in the enjoyment of your links with the Lord Jesus, the One who loves you. Taking this scripture as applying to us individually, that is the position of the speaker here. "Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, Skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart". it maybe that you love Him, and recognise His voice, but you may have got away a little. He would come and appeal to you in this way. There are things here that are between the speaker and her Beloved; the wall, the window, the lattice. Something has come to spoil the nearness, for she is not with Him. But in love He comes to her, and He appeals, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away". The Lord Jesus would appeal thus to you today, if you are not in the closeness of communion that He would have you in. Answer in your heart's affections to this call - "My beloved spake and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For behold, the winter is past". It is not necessary to dwell in winter conditions where the Lord Jesus is not. "The rain is over, it is gone". We can be where it is winter; it is not that we do not know the voice of the Beloved, for she recognises it, but it may be that we are not enjoying the closeness to Jesus where we should be, and that He would have us experience. What an appeal it is! This is Jesus' own voice - "The rain is over, it is gone: The flowers appear on the earth; The time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land". What a wonderful place it is to get into. It is really what we were speaking of together earlier; the things which Peter knew when he spoke about the holy mountain and the most excellent glory. What a wonderful place it is. We can get into it at any time. We know something about it especially when we come together, but we can get into it at any time. The Lord would appeal to us now, and my desire for myself is that there might be an answer to what He is saying in love. Divine speaking is always in love, and if listened to always touches the conscience.
Well, the speaker here was in a dangerous place, she was in the cleft of the rock, the covert of the precipice. He wanted her to come away from that - "Let me see thy countenance", He says, "let me hear thy voice". I thought that that might link with what we read in Psalm 27, "Hear, Jehovah; with my voice do I call; by gracious unto me, and answer me". The Lord Jesus loves to hear your voice. Have you prayed to Him when you have been in a place which could be dangerous? Have you asked Him for help in answering to His call in affection? I trust that there is no one here who has not addressed their voice to the Beloved, to the One who wants to hear you - "Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; For sweet is thy voice". The Lord Jesus loves those who would call on Him; He is always there to answer. Other things come in, not necessarily wicked things or evil things, just little things, these little foxes that spoil the vineyards. Well, you know, and I know, what these little foxes are. It may be that you allow something to come in to disturb your communion with the One who loves you. You may not quite be able to find time to get to a meeting or follow up an impression. You will know what these little foxes are in your experience. Well, the Lord here wants them taken away because they spoil the vineyards, they spoil what is for His heart's pleasure; in effect they spoil the answer to His love from those who love Him.
The sad thing here is that she did not for the moment answer to this call. He turns and goes away. She begins to speak again "My beloved is mine, and I am his". There is no doubting her love for her Beloved, and that may be so with you or me, there is no doubting our love, we love the One who has died for us. But then He moves off and she appeals to Him to turn and come back "Turn, my beloved: be thou like a gazelle, or a young hart, Upon the mountains of Bether". But she does not move. She is still "On my bed, in the nights". She does not move with Him, as He wanted her to move when He said "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away". For the moment she does not answer. O, dear brethren, let there be an answer from each one of us, in affection, to this appeal. It is the appeal of love to each one of us in our lives and in our experiences - "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For behold, the winter is past". Let there be a definite answer to the appeal of love which is always directed towards us. I feel for myself the need of a definite answer.
That is why I read in Genesis 35. How gracious and patient God was in His dealings with Jacob. He spoke to him again and again. Jacob came to Luz and built an altar because God had appeared to him there when he fled from the face of his brother. Now God appeared to him again . What a gracious and patient God we have. If you have not listened to the voice of God in the past, God would give you another opportunity today; He would appeal to you again. It may be that you have often listened to the divine appeal and said, Not yet. It may be that in relation to the appeal of the gospel you have said, Well, I will leave it for now. You may often have heard the appeal, This do in remembrance of Me, and you have left it. Well, God in His grace and love would have you hear the appeal again. God appears to Jacob again, and He says almost exactly the same thing to him as He had said before at Bethel "Thy name is Jacob, thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name". If you look back at chapter 32 you will see that what God said to him had been almost exactly the same - "Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel" (v 28). What a tremendous voice that had been to Jacob, but for the moment he had not answered to it. He had gone off, there was the diversion to Shechem, and we know what happened there; the disgrace of chapter 34. But God in His love for Jacob brings him through this exercise again, and now He appeals again in almost exactly the same terms as He had done before. And this time there is an answer from Jacob. This time it says, "And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had talked with him". That is what my exercise is, dear brethren, that there might be in our own experience a definiteness of answer to the speaking of divine Persons to us. Oh that we could look back and say, 'God spoke to me then and there was an answer'. Jacob set up a pillar in the place where God had talked with him. It says in the previous verse "And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him" (v 13). So Jacob marked that place by setting up this pillar, and more than that, there was what was for the pleasure of God; he poured a drink offering on it, and he anointed it with oil, he poured oil on it. Think of the satisfaction that God had in the way Jacob answered this time. There had not been a full answer to His previous speaking to him, but this time there was an answer. So it says, "they journeyed from Bethel"; in verse 29 it is now Israel that journeys, and in verse 27 he comes to Isaac to Mamre, to the place of the purpose of God. That is the end of divine speaking, dear brethren, that we might move forward, that we might make progress into God's purpose for us.
May we all be exercised to move in the way that Jacob did. He is an example of some one who often failed. He had wandered, but now he came back to his father to Mamre, to Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron where Abraham had sojourned. This was his destination, and God brought Jacob back into His purpose for him. Jacob would be able to look back on Bethel and remember the pillar there, and the drink offering and oil poured on it. It was something definite arrived at in his experience, an answer to divine speaking. Jacob is a good example for us all. He had been the object of the patience and grace of God, and here he comes to something which is substantial and permanent, something which must have given God great pleasure as Jacob poured out the drink offering and the oil on this pillar at Bethel.
Well, we have the end of all of this in Revelation 22. We were reading locally in Acts 2, and we had an impression of the way in which the Holy Spirit came in at Pentecost. There was something very special, of course, about Pentecost; it was the inauguration of things, and there was a tremendous initial power and freshness about God's work then. The exercise in reading the book of Acts was to see how, despite the weakness and failure that has come in publicly, what was set on by God initially goes through in power, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
So here we have the final answer to all of God's speaking, to all His dealings throughout this whole dispensation. The whole period from Pentecost right through to the end has run its course, and now the Lord Jesus says, "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the assemblies. That means that divine speaking is known in the assemblies. This speaking of the Lord Jesus is continuing, and will continue, but not for very long now, because the end will be very soon. But meantime the Lord Jesus is testifying these things in the assemblies. "I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star'. He would appeal to us, dear brethren, in relation to His soon coming. And there is an answer it is the final answer to divine speaking, and it 'is a full answer, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come". I would love to be in consonance with this answer. The Spirit and the bride are together in saying this. "And let him that hears say, Come". Have you ever been on your knees or in a meeting and just felt how much you wanted the Lord Jesus to come? What will it be to be with Him for ever.
How our hearts long for that! All these other things, these little foxes, sometimes divert our attention from the imminence of the coming of the Saviour, but here there is this answer, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come". I believe, dear brethren, that that is the answer to the testimony, to the divine speaking in the assemblies. The Lord Jesus in grace and patience continues to testify in the assemblies, and now there is this wonderful collective answer from hearts which love Him, "Come". The divine answer comes back, "He that testifies these things says, Yea, I come quickly. Amen; come, Lord Jesus". That is the final answer. And soon we shall hear these words said, soon we shall hear the Lord Jesus saying, "Yea, I come quickly", that assembling shout. He is coming! May we be maintained in freshness of affection for Him, and in life and in power in our answer to the appeal of divine speaking, for His Name's sake.
DUNDEE
7 December 1996