THE WORD MUST BE RECEIVED IN THE CONSCIENCE
THE WORD MUST BE RECEIVED IN THE CONSCIENCE
My text for you is — spiritual things are communicated by spiritual means. It is necessary in order that the conscience should be affected that you should understand the words addressed to you, hence the apostle says [p. 32] that he would rather say five words with his understanding that thereby he might teach others also. Though the truth is clearly presented to the understanding, yet there must be conscience (that is sense of the claim of God on you), or there will be no response. It is not merely that you see the truth proposed, but you see that you are to be an exponent of it as proposed. You are cast upon God, and then the Spirit works in you. The good seed sown on the rock is truth received with joy; there is not conscience work; where there is, there is no jubilant apprehension nor quick acknowledgment of the truth. When there is conscience, the truth works in the soul before it is confessed or expressed in words. It grows like a tree in the roots before the branches. Nurserymen transplant their young trees often, in order that there may be more roots than branches.
There is one unfailing mark of having received the word in your natural mind, and that is, you will be sure to rely on natural means for the accomplishment of it. Eve accepted the promise of God in her natural mind, and reckoned that it would be fulfilled in a natural way. Doubtless Lot accepted in his natural mind the word to Abram; he openly takes the path of faith, there was a good profession, the branches were there, but the roots were feeble. King Saul, in essaying to destroy Amalek according to God’s command, illustrates the way the natural mind accepts and interprets the word of God; all that was vile and refuse he utterly destroyed, but spared the best of everything and the king! He had no sense of the divine meaning of the word. The defection of Barnabas is a solemn warning to us; we should have expected from his course and service that there was no flaw in the roots. The branches were good, but a serious imperfection in the roots was disclosed when he was carried away by the dissimulation of Peter.
It is a notable fact that the day of increased light and power is the day of testing to every saint. A bright day had dawned in the church at the conference at Jerusalem, and now, with the increase of light the contrariety to it is exposed. Many a one goes on fairly in the twilight, who is detected and alienated in the bright hour. I wish for [p. 33] you as well as for myself that the word of God may be not only understood as to its meaning, nor merely admired. I think admiration is very deceptive. May God’s claim on us be so felt that the Spirit will be free to form the word in our souls. I believe as the sense of God’s claim is on me, because of His word, my conscience is exercised; I pray, and then the Spirit engrafts the word in me, it becomes part of my being, I grow thereby. May you be thus richly blessed.