THE EXPERIENCE OF HEADSHIP

C. R. Byng

1 Kings 17: 7–16; Exodus 2: 1–4; John 12: 1–3, 7

These passages would bear on the way that the experience of headship is worked out in conditions of outward obscurity. It is a feature of the glory of God that He chooses to do things in a way which, as far as men are concerned, is hidden. Man does not understand it or welcome it. His brethren reproachfully said to Jesus, “No one does anything in secret and himself seeks to be known in public” (John 7: 4). “Manifest thyself”, they said, but the Lord Jesus did not do things that way. He moved into every situation when the Father’s will directed it, not according to the way that the reasoning of man would have operated to bring about human greatness and glory.

It is a feature of the glorious way in which He acts as Head, that what is hidden is in fact being developed to expand into a universe of glory. The universe of glory stands directly related to the Babe in the manger. What could there be more outwardly small and obscure than Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger? And yet think, beloved, of the expansion of that in moral and spiritual glory into a whole universe where everything that hath breath is going to praise God.

But the working out of it means that we have to face what is involved in conditions of obscurity, maybe famine. There was famine where we read in Elijah’s day and it was at his word. He said to Ahab, “There shall not be dew nor rain these years, except by my word”.

Not just that there was not going to be any rain, but neither dew nor rain, as though men would have to prove in detailed experience morning by morning that even the dew had stopped because God had not been served aright.

Then Elijah has to be tested in his own spiritual being as to what this word is going to mean, so he is told by God to go and to hide himself by the torrent Cherith. God commanded the ravens and there was a complete reversal of the natural order of things so that ravens fed a man; that was God’s command and the ravens had to be subject. Every creature of God is subject to God. The cattle upon a thousand hills are all subject to God. God brings them under tribute to the saints as the occasion needs. So the ravens here are commanded to feed Elijah in this hidden position and then the torrent dries up. Elijah was being freshly tested as to his own word. He is told to go to Zarephath, to the widow that God had commanded to maintain him. It is of interest that God should choose that this widow woman should be at Zarephath by Zidon. In the Lord’s time the Syrophoenician woman came from the parts of Tyre and Sidon. I suppose there would be a moral link of faith between those two women.

Elijah was a man who was subject, we might say, to headship and he immediately brings in the test as to headship. The woman is subject to his direction. There had been no rain in the land, but he asks for a little water and she goes to fetch it. The test becomes intensified as he says, “Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thy hand”. The whole sorrowful position opens out, but that does not deter Elijah from asserting the claims of headship. So he says, “Make me first” that is the claim of headship. It is similar to the word in Colossians 1: 18—“That He might have the first place in all things”. Well, beloved, has Christ the first place in all things? We have been speaking together of the glorious greatness of Jesus as Head, but how do we fare when the word of Jehovah comes to us in testing challenge; when all that is in mind is just to gather two sticks and eat and die?

Elijah was not unsympathetic with this woman’s exercises. Do not think that the Lord is unsympathetic. He knows the reality of obscure conditions. He knows what the heart of man according to the flesh would like by way of human greatness; but He puts that all on one side and He says, ‘I want you to give me the first place’. Well, this was a test for this woman; she was facing, literally, death and she has this request from a person who had suddenly appeared. She knew he had a link with God and she must have had some sense of having been commanded of God to maintain Elijah. Now this test comes as to whether she is prepared to make available to him what stood between her and death for herself and her son.

The Spirit brings “the first place” in in Colossians in relation to Jesus being Firstborn from among the dead. That is the setting, I think, in which the Spirit would always exert with us the claims of Jesus as Head; that is, we are having to do with Him in a great area of things where death and the grave have been eternally conquered and where we have to do with the God to whom nothing is impossible, suppose Abraham of old would be linked with this woman in the spirit of his being when he came into the truth of the Almighty God, that is the God who raises the dead.

So here she was, she was facing death, and the challenge comes, “Make me thereof a little cake first”. Well, she had not got much—and yet what there was! A little like the disciples when they thought that five loaves and two small fishes were not very much, but under the power of Christ in headship what expansion there was—thousands of persons fed as the loaves and fishes were made available to the hand of Jesus, the Almighty God. Well, what was it this woman had? She had a handful of meal in a barrel. Outwardly not very great, just a barrel and not very much in the barrel, just a handful. A handful is something that can be easily encompassed. It is not exactly the windows of heaven being opened in blessing, that was to come later.

What fulness there is as we seek help from the Spirit to get a handful of meal in relation to the life of Jesus. What handfuls of meal, we might say, there are in the four gospels. Another has rightly said, ‘strong meat’, yet a handful of meal is always available to us. It would link on with the manna as coming in at the beginning of the day, but it is always available all through the day. When some fresh test comes in as to the headship of Christ, as to whether we are prepared to give Him the first place in all things, what is available to us? A handful of meal, so that we feed on the One who was meek and lowly in heart.

It has been said that meekness is towards men and lowliness is towards God. God intended that this handful of meal should be constantly maintained. It lies behind all the ordinances as to the oblation. I think it is particularly enjoyed by those who are maintained in the spirit of an overcomer, so that to one of the overcomers the promise of the Lord was that he would be given to eat of the hidden manna. Mr. Coates referred to this as being some impression of the delight that God had in the life of Jesus.

Then there is the little oil in a cruse; the availability of the Spirit of God, despised by man but increasingly valued by believers on the Lord Jesus. Where would we be if the Spirit were not here? The Lord went back to heaven and after those ten days of waiting the Spirit came down. A body had been prepared for Jesus, but a dwelling place for the Spirit of God had been prepared by Jesus in the hearts of the disciples—the sound out of heaven filled the house (Acts 2: 2).

So what expansion there is as we connect the meal with Jesus and the oil with the Spirit. To the believer there is an opening up into a realm where God Himself is known. The service of God is re-established, when the twelve stones are taken and the altar built (1 Kings 18: 32).

The pitchers of water being emptied one after the other on the altar would intensify our feelings as to what Jesus has suffered that a universe for God might he secured. Feeding on the humanity of Jesus, and depending on the blessed Spirit of truth, strengthens us so that we can go through in assurance for a whole year, that is, for the rest of the days of this dispensation. The word of God stands that the handful of meal in the barrel is not going to waste, nor is the oil in the cruse going to fail.

What a sense we have, beloved, of being under the control of Christ who has given us His own personal assurance that He is going to carry things through until the completion of the age.

In Exodus 2 the circumstances were, of course, a marriage in the Lord, and then a child, a son, is born who is later called Moses. He is valued by the woman as being fair. Acts and Hebrews bring the father into it, or both the parents, but here it is the woman’s valuation and she hides him; she hides him in the house first, I take it, for three months, then she hides him in this ark of reeds. It is the same word, according to the note, as Noah’s ark, so there would be a link, no doubt, between this ark placed in the sedge on the bank of the river and the ark of Noah as facing the waters of judgment, and the child is preserved as Noah was preserved in the ark.

This would be preparation in view of reaching through to the discernment of headship so as to be available for service. Moses, of course, was distinctive, but what God does in a distinctive servant is a model for all. As we said in the reading, it is not a time when we would look for outstanding gift, although we would look for gift. I think we would be right, and would be with the Lord, in looking for gift, younger persons being raised up, and maybe older persons being liberated, persons being raised up who can serve the brethren and can serve men.

But the main point is being devoted to the saints for service; I think that is how we might think of Moses in this setting. The house of Stephanas in Corinth was not devoted to service—never let us have service as the object, that is the highway to disaster—but devoted to the saints for service. But that means a hidden preparation, facing obscurity.

You might say this would bear on household baptism. Yes, thank God for the truth as to household baptism. Do not let us think it is something that has always been understood. The Spirit of truth had to assert that it was not a matter of the baptism of infants, but of persons as members of households, because in the preaching of the gospel, whether as it came to the Gentiles through Peter in Cornelius’ house, or through Paul to the Gentile jailor, the word in both cases is, “Thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house” (Acts 11: 14 and 16: 31).

The Spirit would teach us lessons from the ark being placed in the sedge and not in the middle of the river. Let us remember that in 1937 Mr. Taylor said that universities were becoming traps for the people of God (N.S. Vol. 84, p.386). Oh, do not let the young people be placed in the middle of the river, in universities. That is not the line of preservation.

Preservation means that we keep as far away from the current of the world as we can. The higher you get up in the world, the nearer you get to the god of it, and what a god he is! A god that will allure persons to destruction, whereas the line of headship would attract persons into life.

Let us understand for ourselves, and all our young people, that the line of preservation to keep away from the main stream of the world’s independency and to be content to be in a safe ark. She was careful, this beloved woman; she would represent the spirit of motherhood in the assembly as she plastered the ark with resin and with pitch. And then the sister was there to see what was going to happen. God’s hand was over it all, of course, and over Moses.

The preparation went on. Think of those forty years in Pharaoh’s court. Moses was not spoilt, because at the end of that he did not aspire to the throne; he went out to see how his brethren were getting on. He had a desire to serve the people of God, a sense that the reproach of the Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, and what wealth there was at that time!

You might say he had within his grasp the supreme position in this world and he put it all on one side and went and spent forty years in the wilderness.

He was not ready after those first forty years. Do let not us think that, when we have been through a certain course of experience, our training has been completed. Maybe we have to have some time in Arabia, but let us learn God in it all, for in christianity we do not have to wait as Moses did; we can begin serving the brethren at once and as we serve them we learn in obscurity with God to serve them better.

It has often been said that placing footstools in the meeting room in the right places is one way in which the saints are served; often a hidden service, the footstools are just there, and nobody perhaps enquires how they got there, but somebody put them in the right place. Let us learn to serve the saints in detail, but as we want to serve them more it means we have to be developed in our secret soul history with God and learn more of the greatness of Christ as the One who did not come to be ministered unto but to minister. What a Servant He was! Let us catch something of the spirit of our Master; as we serve Him, we shall know how to serve the saints.

Mary caught something of the spirit of this where we read in John 12. The setting here no doubt would be what is presented as Paul writes to those beloved brethren at Colosse. This was not the Lord’s supper. The Lord prepares that for us. This is where lovers prepare Him a supper. They made Him a supper, and Mary is available with this pound of ointment of pure nard of great price. They made Him a supper; that would involve the recognition of Christ in headship as having the first place. Mary is not here, as we might gather from other gospels, with an alabaster flask, for the vessel here was herself. She contained this measured amount, this pound of ointment, and she made it available in herself with a sensitive understanding of what was in view in the Lord’s movements.

Another has pointed out that no one else there really understood what was involved, although the Lord had constantly taught them that He was going on to be killed. No one else except Mary understood the trend of things, but she understood that the only end to what was happening was burial for Jesus, and she brings this ointment in view of the day of His burial.

How it appealed to the Lord, what it meant to the Lord, just this touch of entering sensitively into His own feelings!

Do we have that power by the Spirit to enter sensitively into the Lord’s feelings at any time?

Mary was available at this time as a suited vessel with just what was needed by way of appreciation of Christ personally, and it filled the house. As the Spirit came down from heaven the sound filled the house, but this is ointment from one woman, one sister, representing the subjective features of the work of God in the saints.

Are we ready for that at any time, when something is on hand, especially in the assembly? Are we available as sensitive to the feelings of headship so that we can bring in just what is needed to minister first to the heart of Christ, and then, by way of enlargement, refreshment and encouragement to those who love Jesus? There was the voice of criticism, but the Spirit of God just refers to it, so that we are warned, and then passes on.

So we need not make much of interruptions or attempted diversions, because God is never really diverted. He is never hindered in any thought of His, so we can be assured that the power and resources of Christ as Head, and the availability of the blessed Spirit in support here, are going to continue until that moment when we shall hear the assembling shout of the Lord Jesus and we shall see Him face to face. What a moment that will be! The waiting time is to prepare us for it, and to help us to be available now for Himself in His gracious influence over us so that we may help those who desire to be here for the glory of God. So this great, divine system that we were speaking of is extended as God has His own way in the hearts of men. May the Lord bless the word!

Redbridge
7 July 1973