FATHERHOOD AMONG THE SAINTS
J. R. Surtees
Genesis 48: 14–16; 1 Thessalonians 2: 5–8; 2 Timothy 2: 1
It is in mind to say a word as to fatherhood, in the character of providing from resourcefulness in circumstances of need and pressure. I think there are many examples of it in Scripture, as if God would delight to display, delineate perhaps is the word, this quality, in the detail of it. We know that it comes to light in a distinguished way in Abraham and also in Isaac. These men are for our instruction and contemplation. I trust we all here have some little understanding of what it means to have Abraham as our father and to walk in his steps; we derive from him in this way. Abraham walked in faith, he was distinguished in faith.
When all else was against him he believed God, and God reckoned it to him as righteousness.
It was, by nature, impossible to believe that what God said was going to be true; he was even more tested to believe God when he was called upon to offer up Isaac. “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac” (Genesis 22: 2), the first reference in Scripture to love. That relationship between father and son is delineated in the scripture.
When we come on to Jacob, it is more the experience of it in the pressures of life. Jacob had known pressure; he had known what it was to have things not work out as he expected, and have to discover after all that God was behind the scenes, and that what he thought was not as he would have perhaps liked it in the first place, but God was greater than his thoughts. We come to that, do we not, that God is greater than our thoughts; He is also greater than our hearts. It is a sorrowful matter with us to prove what is in our hearts, they are deceitful. How often we prove this. The brethren of Joseph proved that, it took them years to come to it, and so it is with us. But God is greater than any deficiency on our side. God is greater than Jacob. You get some impression of how great he was when the scripture says he wrestled with God and with men and prevailed (Genesis 32: 28). It was a very far reaching and deep experience he had with God on the night when he was about to face Esau. Mr. Gardiner pointed out, and I found it very helpful, that he put off the matter of facing Esau when it was possible to sort things out between him and Esau alone, and after about twenty years Esau came to him with four hundred men. That would be far worse than one angry brother. It does not help to put things off in our histories, most of us find it easy to do it, but nobody is helped in this way.
Jacob was greatly helped in meeting that matter as it arose, but first he was caused to spend a night with God; he wrestled with God and with men. The man with whom he wrestled said,
“Let me go, for the dawn ariseth”, and Jacob said, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me”, Genesis 32: 26. Have we got links with God like that? Have we understood God’s heart towards us like that, that He is minded to bless us? Have we laid hold, dear brethren, of the reality that God will bless us come what may? God will bring in blessing, He surely will. He will use those difficult circumstances, those pressures that we find so difficult to understand. He will use them as we are subject, to bring blessing in our hearts.
Well now, Jacob, or Israel as he is named here, has reached, I think, the purpose of God in what he is saying and doing. He would carry all this experience with him in relation to these two lads. He stretched out his right hand and put it on Ephraim’s head, and his left hand and put it on Manasseh’s head. They did not want to wriggle away, shall I say, or escape. There was something about his touch, his disposition towards them that would make them feel safe, I think, make them feel ready to receive something. Jacob as a father was a man who was able to impart things. Anyone here who has the great privilege of experiencing fatherhood would know that the best thing of all about it is to be able to give; there is nothing that affects the heart of a father, I think, like being able to give. Israel had the wherewithal to impart something to these two lads. First of all it says, he blessed Joseph. Joseph needed adjustment here.
We know, of course, that there are times in the Scripture when Joseph rises to a type of Christ as no other ever could. Wonderful man he is, he suffered unjustly, and he received honour in Egypt unselfishly; maintained everything according to God; brought all the people into blessing; brought his brethren into blessing; settled his father in the land of Goshen. How unselfish he was. The Lord Jesus as the great Administrator in a day to come will do everything, may we say reverently, in the most unselfish manner, everything will be done for the glory of God, calling attention to the glory of God, and, of course. God will call attention to Christ in that day. He will display the work of God, the detail of it. What a day of display it will be!
Now here Israel speaks of, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked”.
He knew Abraham, did he not? It says in Hebrews that Abraham dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob (see Hebrews 11: 9). Jacob would have been a young man then. I worked out once that Jacob would have been about fifteen years old when Abraham died. He would have been formed in some impression of that man Abraham in his early years, in his impressionable years. Then he came into the prospect of blessing, he thought he could make a good success in Syria. In the end, much as he was prospered in his material circumstances, it was when he returned to go to the land of Canaan that his experience with God developed, and it was then that his discipline developed too. Disciplined as he was in Syria, for Laban changed his wages ten times he says, it was on his way back to Canaan that he started to face discipline at the hand of God. Rachel died there on the way back. It says there was a little way to go when God touched him very deeply. There was all the sorrow over Succoth, also Simeon and Levi, and the reproach that it caused but he came back into the land. God helped him in the land, and then there was the sorrow of Joseph being wrongly treated by his brethren, who were Jacob’s sons: Then the time came when God said to him, “Jacob, Jacob! ... fear not to go down to Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation”, Genesis 46: 2, 3. Much history entered into Jacob’s experience with God.
So he says, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God that shepherded me all my life long to this day”. While spoken to Joseph, that would be imparted, I think, to these two lads, his hands were upon them. They would listen to Israel speaking to their father and blessing him. Something would enter into their constitution that, I have little doubt, would never leave them; it was something that Israel had acquired from God, something that he could pass on. So we are tested, dear brethren, I am sure we would all say that, as to what we have that we can pass on. What is there in my experience with God that I can pass on to others?
Then he goes on to say, “the Angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads”. How Israel knew a Saviour God, did he not, a Redeemer God; how he knew One who was purposed to preserve him, and could turn circumstances around so that Israel was caused to have to do with God in relation to them. He adds, “let my name be named upon them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac”. There is a lot in that, is there not? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is referred to by the Lord Jesus, when he says, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living”, Mark 12: 27. So the experience of this goes on as it did with Abraham, Isaac and Israel. What depth of feeling and history there is! Do we know it? Have we derived something from it? I suppose we can all speak of those who have greatly helped us. I can think quite easily of certain persons who have signally helped me in the apprehension of God in His benign goodness and mercy and love toward us, in the assurance that He will achieve His end and that He will accomplish His will with us. He will bring the saints into blessing according to Himself. Then there are the many who have prayed for us; we may never know who they are until the day to come, persons who have prayed for us and do still. No doubt many of us are a living testimony to the fact that there are those who prayed constantly for us.
All that is preserved, the Father has all that in hand, nothing is lost, it awaits the day when it will be displayed.
So we think of Paul among the saints in Thessalonica, this was in his early ministry. I have understood that the epistles to the Thessalonians were amongst the first, if not the first, of the epistles Paul wrote. He is speaking here of what they might have been entitled to as apostles, and by way of contrast what they did not seek. But he speaks of two things which I wanted to draw attention to, their gentleness and their yearning over them. He speaks of being gentle like a nurse would cherish her own children. Now that was the caring service of Paul. Such a man as he was in his affection for the saints of the assembly, was able to care for them, able to bring in what was needed for their maintenance and sustenance. How he would care for them as a nurse would cherish her own children. That is a good word, cherish. The Lord Jesus cherishes the assembly. Do I understand what it is to appreciate the heart of the Lord Jesus in relation to the assembly, the depths of it? Paul speaks of this and then he speaks of yearning over them, “Thus, yearning over you, we had found our delight in having imparted to you not only the glad tidings of God, but our own lives also”. Now that is the fatherly service, I think, of Paul among the saints, he had something to impart. There was what he was given to bring in, the glad tidings of God; he was sovereignly given to minister the glad tidings. How fully did he commit himself to that! But then he gave what was more, like the Lord Jesus, he gave his own life also. What a man he was! What a service he rendered! How this would bear upon the saints in Thessalonica, that they had seen and witnessed Paul. He speaks of being among them, he was not over them, or standing at a distance, he would speak to them and draw near to them.
He was only there, it seems, for a short time, it says three sabbath days (Acts 17: 2), and yet in that time he imparted something to them, and even “our own lives also, because ye had become beloved of us”.
We may feel we have very little that we can give. We may feel that we have failed in our capacity to love the saints. We shall never serve them rightly, of course, unless we love them.
We should never be critical of them, whatever they might be like, or however wrong things may get; we shall never get things right on that ground. We have to be found as loving them out of a full heart and praying for them every day. Do not forget that. Do not forget anyone, especially in our local companies, in our families too, to pray for them. I do not think any of us do, but let us just remind one another. Be maintained in prayer before God. We might feel Paul’s word to the saints in Corinth bears on us, “For if ye should have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers”, 1 Corinthians 4: 15. It does not say there were not any fathers, but there were not many.
I think the need remains still as it did at Corinth. We were speaking earlier today in the home about personality. Mr. Darby has a very interesting article, written at the time of the first Reform Bill, about the change that would take place in England (Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Vol. 32, page 333). What he said has come about pretty closely, including the point that individual personal independence of character will disappear almost entirely. How true it is that personality, men and women who have had to do with God, persons who have been able to address situations, and address needs, and influence families, and influence for good all sorts of circumstances, that kind of quality has very largely disappeared. People are no longer formed in a general way by having to do with God.
So that as Paul was among the saints in Thessalonica he was one who had that influence, had that which he could impart, even to his own life also. Such was his committal.
Now I just refer to 2 Timothy, I think the last writing of Paul that we have. Paul was in prison here and it was evident that he was lonely, saddened by the departure from the truth, and he is calling upon Timothy. He had been a father to Timothy, and he had encouraged him. Timothy had shared in the rigours of the testimony, and had been greatly strengthened and taught by Paul. The result is this relationship, “my child”. He says, “Thou therefore, my child, be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus”. He would say, so to speak (in the need that exists at the moment, and the temptation to water down the meaning and wonder and beauty of the truth).
You continue by being “strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus”. How strong Paul was in that! He showed grace to the saints at Corinth where there was so much need, so much departure and so much pressure. He says, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he, being rich, became poor, in order that ye by his poverty might be enriched”, 2 Corinthians 8: 9. Timothy was to remain “strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus”, and then he is to remember these things that he had heard of and witnessed. Timothy had witnessed the sufferings of Paul; he had witnessed the power of Paul preaching, he had witnessed the committal of Paul. Timothy was to maintain what was suitable for the testimony. He had certain things committed to him, and he had to maintain them and commit them: to others as a trust to faithful men, “such as shall be competent to instruct others also”.
So that a father, besides understanding the smallest as well as the greatest of pressures that come into the lives of each one, be they the least esteemed or the most important in the meeting, he understands it all. A father’s instruction, a father’s counsel and influence has to do with the maintenance of the testimony according to God. It has to do with it by way of influence. I trust, dear brethren, that we all understand the need there is, by way of right influence as being with God, and of right counsel as coming from God, to maintain the testimony intact, according to the light which has been imparted to us, until Christ comes, in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Address at Glasgow
22 October 1994