VALUATION OF OUR BIRTHRIGHT
E. O. P. Mutton
Genesis 25: 29–34; 1 Peter 2: 4–7; Ephesians 1: 13, 14; Philippians 2: 19–21
I seek help to say a word about valuation. We have been speaking in the reading about the greatness of the things that God has prepared for those that love Him; the calling with which we have been called; the place of nobility and the throne of glory we have been made to inherit. We also considered the suited response in those who are affected by such things. I would like to say a little more about what will affect that response. Practically, it is a presentation of the greatness of these things by which God would attract our hearts into them.
It is the work of God in our souls that gives us to value them as we should.
I have particularly this first scripture in mind; a man who did not value his birthright. Now, beloved brethren, we have a tremendous birthright. I speak of ‘we’ as those who have been brought up among the
things of God. We have a tremendous birthright in the Scriptures themselves. Not only the way they have been written and given to us, but the way they have been preserved to us.
There are men and women who have died to secure the availability of the Scriptures. Near where we live there is a village, and there is a plaque there to a young man of eighteen who was burned at the stake because he refused to stop reading the Scriptures. There has been a line from the day of Pentecost of persons who have been committed, some of them losing their lives from Stephen onwards. I am assured that there are some even in this day who are actually losing their lives for the sake of the gospel. We should remember them in our prayers; men who seek to serve their fellow men, to bring the good news of the Lord Jesus to men, and suffer for it. It is a work that goes on in various parts of the earth, and there is a thirst for the truth too. Looking down a list of where the written ministry is sent—Korea, India, China, Africa there are persons there who value, according to the light they have, the birthright that God has given them. A little girl of eight wrote me a letter from Ghana, and started it, ‘To one who has love for my Saviour Jesus Christ’. How much light she has I do not know. Obviously someone has placed that in her heart; there is a work going on, and it is persons who value their birthright. What concerns me is whether I value the birthright I have.
We have this long line of men who have served God, men who have been faithful, men whose names we know, Luther and Wycliffe, for example. These men have suffered for the truth, and have been faithful to it; men for whom we should be thankful. Mr Darby said of Luther, ‘I see in Luther an energy of faith for which millions of souls ought to be thankful to God, and I can certainly say I am! (Collected Writings Vol. 7, p.205). These are men who valued their birthright, they were not prepared to sell it even in a moment of extremity. Some, alas, did fail, and that is like us all. You and I have
been brought up in an area where the light of God’s glad tidings, the light of the truth, especially the truth of the assembly, is treasured. The only work that is going on in the present day is assembly formation. You might see a man standing on a street corner preaching the gospel, preaching the truth, that is assembly material. You see others who seek to visit people in hospital to speak of Jesus, that is assembly material. We have the light of that among us in doctrine, it is part of our birthright, and because many of us have come positionally into these things easily, we might tend to value them lightly.
Now I was brought up in fellowship, as we speak, and we can thank God for Christian parents and Christian households. I often rebelled against it and could not understand the seeming restraints in it; but a Christian household is part of your birthright, dear young brother and sister, and we should value it. God has placed you in a locality, and that is part of your birthright, where practical fellowship and the enjoyment of the truth can be known. Part of your birthright too is the knowledge of the way God has wrought, and has brought us into this wonderful calling, and you may feel that that is something that you can dispense with lightly. Can I appeal to everyone here, young and old, Do not throw away your birthright; do not sell it. Esau remained the firstborn even though he sold the right to it. You cannot lose what God has made you in His grace. If your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ you cannot lose that; you will be with Him, when you are taken or when He comes, but you can despise your birthright. It says here, “Thus Esau despised the birthright”. Can I appeal to all of us to sit down soberly, and consider whether we value where God has placed us. If you value something highly you will be committed to it, and you will seek to preserve the things that belong to it. If you do not value something then you will let it go easily. You and I, beloved brother and sister, have no more right to these things than anyone else, believer or unbeliever, but God in His grace has given us this birthright. God does not
wish that any should perish, but you have been given a birthright, you have been brought up in a Christian home and among Christian company.
Our flesh is no different from the flesh that is in others in the world. One of the Lord’s servants said that there are more sins committed in the mind than in actions. Read what the Lord Jesus says in the gospels, as to certain sins, it is not the action, it is the thought. We are capable of the most heinous crimes but for the grace of God. That is where the birthright comes in because God has hedged us round with family. Christian parents who have had us baptised in faith that we might come into the good and gain of that baptism. It places us on ground that is of God. He has placed us in localities among His people where we can enjoy a little of what it means to be set among nobles. That makes nothing of us, nothing of the company, nothing of a position. It makes everything of the God who has done it. It is here for our enjoyment. The great thing in Christianity is to enjoy the things that God has set before us, not to despise them, and not to despise the place where God has put us. I would therefore like to raise exercise with us all as to whether we value our birthright. Just think about the wealth that we have in ministry. Sadly some would belittle the ministry. It is what godly men have contemplated and seen in Scripture as helped by the Spirit. It is not on a level with the Bible, it is not inspired, and those who gave it would be the first to say that it is not inspired.
If you pick up a book of ministry by one of these dear men, you will see spiritual instincts and spiritual thoughts that God has placed within our birthright, and all that is ours.
Then there are the spirits of just men made perfect. You think of what has entered into the testimony, what has been left here. Think of what we have in our hymn books. It is two hundred years since Mr. Darby was born, and he has been with the Lord for well over one hundred years, yet we still use his hymns and those of others in
the service of God. That is part of the birthright. We have the tunes too that have been composed suitable to be sung in the service of God. Many of the composers are no longer with us; either not with us in body, or sadly not with us in current Christian fellowship. These are things that form part of this birthright that we have, and we need to value them. Do not let them become a matter of flippancy or casualness. Casualness is one of the marks of the present age. Do not let it become a characteristic feature among us. Do not treat the meetings casually. Do not treat the people of God casually. God values them and He will not tolerate a casual or dismissive attitude about His people. There are men in Scripture who suffered loss because of an unguarded word against the people of God. God will not have it.
So I would like to raise this question as to whether you would sit down and consider the heritage you are in positionally. You may not appreciate it yet, you may be kicking against it, as many of us have done, thinking it is very restricted and thinking that it is really stopping you doing what you would like to do. We spoke of Daniel’s exercises about the king’s delicate food. Delicate food it was, education and that kind of thing. It may be right in its place, but do not let it spoil your valuation of the birthright. Remember something that I think many of us have proved, that the higher you go in the world the nearer you get to the god of it. I think many of us are finding increasingly that the very atmosphere in commerce is not conducive to the things of God. The beggarly principles of the world by which the world is increasingly operating are not part of our birthright and are certainly not the way things should operate among the people of God. There is an altogether different way among the people of God and that stems from God Himself. The way God has come out to us is the way things are going to be carried on. The way God has established His righteousness in Christ is the way things are going to be carried through. The place He has given
to Christ and the place He has given to the believer in Christ are things God wants replicated in the testimony, but it all starts by valuing your birthright.
I nearly started with the scripture in Peter because I want to say a little about the preciousness of the Lord Jesus. But in our experience many of us have some idea of the birthright before we really come to an appreciation of the Lord Jesus. Perhaps having been brought up in a Christian home but not yet knowing the Saviour, not having come to see preciousness in the Lord Jesus. If you want to value the birthright rightly you will need to come to an appreciation of the preciousness of the Lord Jesus. Peter says here, “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. You think of finding preciousness in the One whom God finds precious. Notice that comes first here. “Behold, I lay in Zion a corner stone, elect, precious”.
What preciousness God finds in Christ! Would you not find preciousness in One who did everything your will required—“Lo, I come ... to do, O God, thy will”, Hebrews 10: 7. What preciousness God finds in Christ! What a place He has given Him! Believers belong to a Man who has been crowned with glory and honour; a Man who is coming to reign; a Man who is going to be wondered at in all who believe; a Man who is going to be the centre of everything for God eternally. Now, what can compare with that in this world? You say, This is the gospel. Yes, it is and none the worse for that. I am more and more convinced in my own experience that getting away from the gospel is where I start making mistakes. God has given Christ a place of tremendous exaltation, having finished that work which has satisfied God. It says, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you”, Exodus 12: 13. It is what God thinks of that work that gives believers the certainty of our position before God.
Then Peter says, “To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”. How precious is the Lord Jesus to you? Is He increasingly precious? In relation to God’s
appreciation of Jesus that is absolute, with ours it is something that increases day by day. If you read the early chapters of Acts you will find that Peter preached mainly about the resurrection, the power of God in raising the Lord Jesus from the dead. I think the thought of preciousness is something that came with maturity. In Acts 1 Peter speaks of the precious blood, far more precious than gold or silver; he came to that, maybe it took time to sink into Peter’s soul. He was occupied in early Acts with the reality of a Man out of death, glorified and ascended. How he preached that! You young men, seek grace from God to be helped in preaching the gospel. It is not to make anything of you. It is what God has asked us to do, to proclaim the word. He needs persons who can do it in their lives and also in the rooms. Seek grace that God may help you in the preaching of the word, so that the saints might be encouraged and that their consciences might be constantly kept soft in relation to the great things of God. Very largely in our rooms it is the saints who listen to it. They need to increase in their sense of the preciousness of the Lord Jesus. When you are asked to preach you do not need a subject; God has chosen the subject, it is Christ. You need an impression of the glory of Christ to present in the preaching.
Remember that the testimony is sometimes in what you say, always in what you are. We may not always have the opportunity to speak, but our testimony to one another, and to others, can be in the simple life that we lead. How many of us have been affected by the sincere and simple life of an old sister in devotedness to Christ. I remember being taken to see an old sister in a little country cottage, with no water or electric lighting, but I do not think I had ever experienced conversation like it. She was housebound, bedridden, but yet she had a life of experience with God. Why? Because to her Jesus was precious. So if you want to value your birthright rightly, you need to increase in your apprehension of the preciousness of the Lord Jesus.
Everything you experience in the Christian household, or in the assembly, stems from the fact that persons love the Lord Jesus. That is why we are together here. I do not know if that is why you came. That is the basis of our gathering that we want to be with those who love the Lord Jesus, and we want to learn more about Him. Make sure you are where the Lord is.
Make sure you do not jump out of the boat leaving the Lord behind. The waves may be high but if the Lord is there you stay there; not because Mr. So-and-so is there or because Mr. So-and-so is not there, that is never the issue. The issue is, Where is the Lord? Your appreciation of the preciousness of Christ will make you want to be where the Lord is, and if you are exercised the Lord will show you where He is.
I do not think it is our job to persuade people to come into fellowship. To help them in their exercises, yes, but if someone is desirous of coming into fellowship the Lord will show them where He is. Recruiting campaigns always end in disaster. If a soul is true and wants to know where the Lord is, He will show them. Otherwise persons will be in something positionally and not really have this link of preciousness with the Saviour. There will be persons who are lost eternally, who have broken bread. That is a very solemn thing. Mr. Coates said that there were many with whom he was in fellowship of whose eternal security he was gravely in doubt (Letters, p.10). Breaking bread is not a passport to glory; a link with the Lord Jesus and faith in His work is. Thank God for every person, young and old, who has answered His request as loving Him. It is one proof that Jesus is precious to you that you want to remember Him in the breaking of bread. What preciousness we find as we come to the Lord’s supper and have some experience of His coming in amongst His own. The Supper is part of our birthright. Man has tried to add so much to it, but God has preserved it in its simplicity. Let us keep it that way, and let it increase our appreciation of the preciousness of Christ.
In Ephesians, I wanted to touch on the preciousness of the Spirit. Do we really value the tremendous gift we have in the Holy Spirit? He is spoken of as the earnest of our inheritance—“sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance”.
The more we commune with the Spirit the more precious the Spirit will become to us. Do we value the Spirit? You think of a divine Person taking up residence in your heart and mine and remaining there; not leaving us when we pay little attention to Him; not leaving us when we grieve Him or quench Him. How gracious is the Spirit. Let us make more room for the Spirit, personally and in our meetings too. Let us increasingly value the Person of the Holy Spirit.
What is He doing? He is linking hearts with Christ. He is beautifying and adorning the assembly for the heart of Christ. He is rejoicing with the Lord Jesus in what is being secured.
He is diligent to maintain us in availability; like the woman in Luke 15, seeking carefully for the lost drachma, the Spirit takes on that character of divine searching; He wants you and me in circulation. Is there anyone here out of circulation? Make room for the Spirit. Make the Person of the Spirit precious to you and you will be back in circulation. That is a great service of the Spirit. It is a wonderful thing, there is a Man glorified in heaven and a divine Person down here. The word “earnest” gives you that impression, that the Spirit wants us in the present enjoyment of these things. The Spirit is not just saying, Well, these are the wonderful things you are going to enjoy. He is the earnest of our inheritance. We read in Romans about groanings that cannot be uttered, the Spirit joining Its help to our weakness in regard to prayer when we do not know what to ask for. What a Friend we have in the Spirit! The Lord Jesus spoke of Him as another Comforter. If Jesus is precious to you, the Spirit will become increasingly precious to you too because He is here, at the behest of the Lord Jesus, to make these things good in our hearts.
Then finally just a word on Philippians as to our valuation of one another. Here was a man, Timothy, a youngish man we would glean from the Scriptures, and Paul says, “I have no one like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how ye get on”. It is part of valuing the birthright that we value those the Lord has given us. In fact, we should value all the saints.
We should value all men, they are all precious to God. A few months ago I was going to Glasgow by plane, and there were several people on the plane who were making a nuisance of themselves. The Lord spoke to me because as I sat there saying to myself, I thank Thee I am not as other men, I thought, God wants these men. Much trouble they were causing, they were using bad language and blaspheming and so on, and eventually they were put off, it came home to me that we may often say, I thank God I am not as other men. You may walk down the Kingsway in London and see all those people sleeping in boxes, and perhaps you are unaffected by it; but God wants them, there is a living soul there. How God must feel that! You see a funeral cortege going by; if someone has died in their sins, what must the feelings of God be? He is not willing that any should perish. He does not rejoice at such a death. So we should value every man as fellow creatures of God.
We should love every believer too, and seek to serve them if we are given opportunity; go with them as far as you can. Maybe there comes a point, as there will be, when you find there is a divergence of heart. We should be available to help any enquiring soul. Why? Because that is what the Lord would do, and that is what the Spirit would do. We need to seek grace to be able to do it in a priestly and sensitive way. I am not advocating promiscuous behaviour or anything like that, but I believe that God puts persons in our way. Have you ever noticed that in your life? You may not go out of your way to find someone, but God makes someone cross your path. It may be someone at work, or someone who asks a question and gives you opportunity;
and sometimes you get rebuked by your lack of ability to help persons. I tried to help a girl in the office; she wanted to know why I did not agree with official priests, and I was giving what I thought was a good outline of the truth about clericalism. Another girl in the office tapped me on the shoulder and said, Edwin, Brenda needs a Saviour, not a lecture. That put me in my place, and gave me a fresh link with her.
Then I think this would primarily have a bearing on those with whom we walk. Do we have this genuine feeling how the saints get on? Do you ever ask anyone how they are getting on in their soul? Mr. Walkinshaw used to do that. If you shook hands with him he would say, How are you getting on in your soul? It is genuine feeling how the saints are getting on. Do it with genuine feeling, not as a grand inquisition. If there is one skill needed among us, it is the ability on an individual basis to grapple with one another in our souls. We all get into soul exercise and difficulty; we all go through circumstances which perhaps are only known to us and the Lord. The ability with a shepherd spirit to draw near, to pour in the oil and the wine, to have a beast to carry the burden, and to have an appreciation of the inn, is something in which we need to develop. Let us serve one another because we all need it. It is not because some serve and some are served. There are times when I have needed a service, and there are times when I have thought that God has placed on me the opportunity to help someone; what I have found is that my substance is pretty low. I have gone for the oil and the wine, and I have found that my joy in divine things is not what it should be. Set yourself like Timothy,
“For I have no one like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how ye get on”.
Now I appeal to us all to be before the Lord as to how we value the saints, especially those with whom He has placed us. Most of us are in companies where that is manageable. I am in a small locality, about eleven of
us, and it is perfectly possible for me to pray for each one individually on a daily basis. If you cannot sleep at night try praying for your local brethren. See what you can say to God, what genuine feeling you have, especially as to those you do not get on with; take twice as long over them. As you get into His presence, and take the saints into His presence, you will see things as David did, as they are in the sanctuary. God will help you to see things as He sees them. Spread matters out before God with genuine feeling for the saints; not with a motive that you want to be vindicated, nor saying, ‘Please Lord will you put all my brethren right’.
Do it with genuine feeling that the saints may get into their spiritual inheritance to enjoy the things that really matter, and be free of things that are a hindrance to that. The saints, beloved brethren, are part of our birthright, part of what God has given us to enjoy.
Do not despise the birthright. It involves the preciousness of Christ; the preciousness of the Spirit, and our valuation of the saints. It involves the great heritage of all that God has given, all that has gone before, the line that goes right back to what God Himself set on in the beginning. The question is, Will I value it or will I despise it? God would help us to value it.
May it be so for His name’s sake.
Address at Kirkcaldy
6 May 2000