THE RESULT OF THE WORD
D.J.Hutson
James 1: 21(middle)-25; John 14: 23-24; Matthew 7: 24-27
I have a burden as to what the result of these gatherings together which we have is going to be. We thank God for the occasions of our gathering, for the mercy which enables us to gather, for the experience of eternal life as we converse together in relation to the truth, in itself very enjoyable, but I think the burden that would be upon us is what result there would be from all these comings together. I think of it in relation to different matters: one is as to the preaching of the gospel every week. I would appeal especially to the young, who have not seen some of the things which those of us who are a little older have seen. There was a time when we used to listen to the gospel, to the wonderful story of Jesus and His love - the One who came into the world to save sinners, shed His precious blood to cleanse us from every sin, and Who is now a living glorified Saviour, able to save completely all who come to God by Him - and it was not unusual at the end of such a preaching for someone to come forward, maybe with tears, in the depth of their souls as to their need of a Saviour: how they may have felt that for so long "His gracious call they had oft refused", and how they had found He was seeking them again, and at last the claims of the Saviour had broken the heart, broken the will, in the subduing power of divine grace, and they confessed that the Lord Jesus was their own personal Saviour. I go over this because I have not heard of that happening lately, and this has been a burden to me. Things became, in a sense, automatic, in the time through which we have passed. It was one of the errors we have had to judge: the very young were brought into things in an automatic way, without really having had to do with God for themselves. Perhaps I am speaking to some who came in on that basis. You did not have to ask to break bread. Perhaps you broke bread before you were converted, before you even knew the Saviour for yourself. Maybe because of that you are slow in coming forward to say that you have found the Saviour. I heard of a brother once who came forward after the preaching; who had been breaking bread for many years, and confessed that he had come to know the Lord Jesus as his Saviour that very night.
These things can happen, and what have been missing are the mile-stones in our histories. Can all you young people here tell me when you were converted? "Converted" means "turned round". If Jesus comes into your life, things are different. Can you tell me when things were different in your life? I am not questioning whether you are converted or not, but have you that point that you can get back to in your life, and that others know about and they can get back to also. The enemy would assaiI you and seek to overthrow the work of God in you, if it were possible, and you will find that it is a great point of safety to be able to get back to something definite, and for others to be able to get back to it and to remind you, and God will remind you of it Himself. He remembers for you, like He did for Israel of old, "the love of thine espousals" Jer 2: 2. Or perhaps you did feel that you must yield and be true to your baptism, and ask to break bread - when it dawned upon you that His claims were paramount and absolute and that you must yield to them, and you had to ask. Maybe one or two brothers came to see you and you had to give account of yourself as to where you were in your soul, and what brought you to this point. Then a time, maybe, when a truth which is generally held by us and valued by us first came into your soul. Some of us were not brought up to be free in addressing the Holy Spirit. You young people grow up into it. It is the recognised thing among us, thank God for it, something that has been challenged, but which has been confirmed in power, the recognition that the Holy Spirit has His due in worship. Some of us can remember when the light dawned on our souls, and could take you to the very spot where first on our knees we addressed that glorious Person for ourselves. We had not seen it, perhaps, as quickly as others, but in His grace the Lord waited upon us and the light came - and it did come without a doubt. The matter of wrong associations too, that we speak about so much - I remember when I was concerned in a professional association and a brother said, "What is the difference between that and a trade union?" It struck me like an arrow. Something came into my soul, for it was a question I could not resolve. I went to see a brother valued among us, because there were those at that time ministering the truth who were in these things, and I could not understand it. His question to me was, "Is this a burden to you as you approach the service of God?" What an answer to all our difficulties! It is what we have been speaking of as to the oblation, the service of God and what we can present before Him. It relates to everything in your life. It is not going too far to say that. "Whatever ye may do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father by him" Col 3: 17. Is that you? I would not claim it for myself, to my shame, but that is the standard. Christianity is practical, it is not a system of sublime impossibilities. Read that address by Mr Raven "The means by which we are kept" (Vol 18 p.26). The word of God applied in power here by the Holy Spirit and the priesthood of Christ on high. Are these things real to you? These are mile-stones some of us can take account of. What about you?
Again I say, What is going to be the result of our being together today? Not for any credit it may bring to any - to God be the glory. If it abides, it is His work anyway and His alone is the praise, but what is going to be the result? Are you going to be a forgetful hearer? "If any man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like to a man considering his natural face in a mirror". You have been exposed to yourself as we have been speaking about that blessed, glorious, perfect humanity of Jesus, which is God's standard. As the word has been among us and you have seen yourself in a mirror, and have seen where you come short maybe, are you going to forget it? How are we going to fill out the rest of the day today? Is it in things that will help us to forget, so that the word, sweet as it may have been in our mouths, (how sweet to speak about the manhood of Jesus!) does not pass through to become bitter in our belly and have its way in our inward parts, to produce an answer in us constitutionally, and to build us up to be just a little more like Him, until the time when we are changed, and "we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is"? 1 John 3: 2. But oh, to see Him now! Have you seen Him? We speak of these things. "There am I in the midst of them", Matt 18: 20. Have you seen Him? Is it real to you? Is it a matter of faith? I think it is. I think it would be a matter of faith to every one here. Tomorrow at the Supper it would be a matter of faith. He makes Himself known in the breaking of bread. Then it is a matter of experience, something more than faith, because the Holy Spirit is able to identify Himself with the work of God in you in such an undisturbed way that the glories of Christ can fill your gaze? How He would delight to do it! How He does it! So let us not be forgetful hearers of the word, but, as it says, "doers of the work". It involves some effort, maybe, but it will be well worth while.
That is why I read the second scripture in John 14. I would hardly ask the question here, "Do you love Jesus?" Thank God for the lovers of Jesus in this room, but this is what He says, the One you love, the One who gave Himself for you, "If anyone love me". It is not doubting it, but just raising the challenge as to how far our love comes into demonstration. "If anyone love me, he will keep my word". He will not be a forgetful hearer, "he will keep my word". How thankful we are for ways in which we can show our love for the Lord Jesus. How it affects us week by week at the Supper. Naturally we would be like Naaman to whom his servants had to say, "If the prophet had bidden thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?" 2 Kings 5: 13. You feel that you want to do something great, but we can do nothing, because Jesus has done everything. Ours is simply to go down - "receive with meekness the implanted word". Then you feel as you come to know the Saviour and realise how much He has done for you, 'What can I do for Him?' Some may devote themselves to a life of missionary work, and some in other ways. But what does He say, what does He ask us, yea, what does He tell us to do? Something which the simplest and youngest lover of Jesus can do. "This do for a remembrance of me". Blessedly simple, taking something that was there, as we have been often reminded, already on the table, furnished, taking it and giving it a meaning so profound, so infinite, so that you and I, lovers of Jesus, might have the sense in our souls, that though so simple it is just what He wants us to do. Then again He says, "If anyone love me, he will keep my word". What an appeal! You are not going to let it go, are you? - what He may have said to you today, what He may have said to you last week, the word that maybe the enemy is trying to cause you to forget by crowding something into your life. You love Jesus. Are you not going to keep that word? The commendation of Philadelphia was: "Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied mv name" Rev 3: 8. You keep it, that is you value it, because it comes from the One you love. You keep it so that it is fruitful, something is formed, something which answers to Him, something which heaven approves. This is the New Testament answer to Daniel 9. It says in James "he shall be blessed in His doing", and Jesus says "My Father will love him". So Daniel is addressed as "one greatly beloved", Dan 9: 23. This is the man who understood by the books. He kept the word, he read it, not academically but searching out for himself and making it his own, and he had the approval of heaven. "My Father will love him". Thank God for the Father's providential care, but have you a sense of the Father's love like this, because you are keeping the words of Jesus? "And we will come to him and make our abode with 'him". Can anyone tell me what that is like? "The word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword" Heb 4:12. If anyone takes it up he feels the edge of it for himself. What can I tell you about the Father and the Son coming to me and making their abode with me? I want to get back to this, that what we speak of in these meetings is real. I want us to feel that. If we just carry that away with us and seek to work it out something will have been effected by our being together. It is not simply a matter of faith. It is one of Mr Raven's outstanding statements that we get nothing by faith. Of course we get nothing without faith but what we get we get by the Spirit as a matter of experience. The enjoyment of the forgiveness of sins, you know it by the Spirit. All that we have, we get by the Spirit. Lay hold of it by faith indeed, or you will get nothing. I may tell you a lot about what I believe and what I know by faith, but what can I tell you about what I have by experience? There are those here who could tell me far more than I could tell them, because they have kept His word and because they are conscious of what the Father's love is. "We will come to him, and make our abode with him" - so James says "'he will be blessed in his doing". Oh, does it not make you desirous of this blessing? Whatever the work that may be involved, whatever the effort, - not natural effort, that will not get you anywhere, but as you apply yourself in diligence by the Spirit - "Occupy thyself with these things, be wholly in them" 1 Tim 4: 15 - what will it be but another expression of what was seen in perfection in Jesus, "Did ye not know that I must be in the things of my Father" Luke 2: 49 and note. This is what is in view, that something like that should come into result. What an incentive; beloved: could you have anything greater in the way of blessing? "He will be blessed in his doing", and "we will come to him and make our abode with him", - that is, come to stay. Oh well, you say, perhaps I shall fall away. But it is keeping it, as Paul says, "by the Holy Spirit that dwelleth in us" 2 Tim 1: 14. The power for it is there. These men who have gone before, were men of like passions to ourselves. They were men of distinctive gift maybe, but it was one who styled himself the first of sinners and "less than the least of all saints", who could say "Keep, by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us, the good deposit entrusted" 2 Tim 1: 14. Dear brother, dear sister, however young you may be, the Holy Spirit Who dwells in you is the Holy Spirit Who dwelt in the apostle Paul. He is the Holy Spirit of Whom Stephen was full, of Whom we were speaking earlier today, "the same Spirit", glorious title of His, which brings us nearest to that wonderful, infinite Name, "Thou art the Same". The same Spirit that dwells in us is the power for these things. Do not allow anything that will hinder Him having His full way, and hinder God from having a full answer and having an abiding place in your heart and mine. Oh that this might be arrived at for the divine pleasure through our being together today!
So I read in Matthew 7, to emphasise this. It struck me for the first time in reading it that it does not say what happened to these men. It speaks about what they build. It is not a question of eternal salvation, not raising any doubts about that, but of what you are building. Paul could say, "Let each see how he builds" 1 Cor 3: 10. What are you building? "He that hears my words and does them, I will liken him to a prudent man, who built his house upon the rock; and the rain came down, and the streams, and the winds blew and fell upon that house, and it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock". I suppose we have seen that. We have known something of the rain and the streams and the wind, the onslaughts that have come in against the assembly, but "hades' gates shall not prevail against it" Matt 16: 18. Then there is what comes in upon us individually forth at is where it is worked out. If anything has been lost in these days, it is persons who have been lost to the testimony. The assembly has not been lost, the assembly is going through, for "hades' gates shall not prevail against it", but persons have been lost. Thank God for every person here who through divine grace and through no merit of his own, has been retained in the testimony, in what is going through for God's pleasure to the end, so near. Thank God for everyone, too, who has been in the environs of such. You young people, thank God that your father has built a house founded on the rock, and in the protection of it you have been preserved where the light is, where eternal life is enjoyed, where the service of God is maintained. What are you doing yourself? You are growing up, building. Are you keeping His word, like the prudent man building upon a foundation that will not be overthrown, so that when the winds come and the rain and the storm come another time, you will be preserved in the testimony? As I said, nothing is said about what happens to the man. It is not a question of eternal security, but what he is building. It may well be that whatever it is you are occupied with will not stand the test of time, will not stand the storms of life and the assaults of the enemy which are unrelenting.
So again I say: "He that hears the word and is a doer of the work, shall be blessed in his doing". What an incentive! "We will come to him and make our abode with him". It is open to us, beloved, and may we say simply it is due to Him. He would appeal to us on the basis of our love for Him, even as He appealed to Peter. It is the test every time: "Lovest thou me? " And last of all when Peter claimed attachment, how the edge of the word came home when Jesus used his own word: "Art thou attached to me?" and he said "Lord, Thou knowest all things", John 21: 17. Do not let me discourage any. The Lord knows your committal. He knows your brightest day. He will hold you to it, but if you love Him and keep His word, you will come into a blessing which is indescribable, which is infinite. I want to know more of it myself. I trust that our appetites may have been whetted and our desires quickened in this direction as a result of our being together, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
GRANGEMOUTH
27 July 1974