SENSITIVENESS TO THE MOVEMENTS OF THE TESTIMONY
W. Dickson
Genesis 8: 6–12; John 13: 21–26; 2 Corinthians 3: 1–3; Revelation 3: 12, 13
I desire to speak about the importance of being sensitive to the movements of the testimony.
That the testimony is in movement cannot be questioned. So long as the Holy Spirit is here, present in the church, the testimony will go on to its great climax when the Lord
will take the church to Himself. The great question currently is whether we are sensitive to and responsive to these movements.
Now I trust the young people will not think I am pitching the note too high for them, because well known scriptures substantiate how young believers can be sensitively attached to the movements of the testimony. One such person was Rhoda—another was Paul’s sister’s son.
These are two examples of young persons sensitively and actively linked with the movements of two great vessels in the testimony at that time. So we all may be encouraged in the matter.
Now all need to take spiritual bearings in relation to the testimony and we should take such bearings frequently. Am I today where I was a year ago? Am I behind the testimony currently, or am I ahead of what God is doing? After all the testimony is the greatest thing in the world. You may ask me, ‘What is the testimony?’ Well, it includes the gospel but moreover, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Man of God’s purpose, and all that He has presently in relation to the assembly. It also includes all that He is yet going to bring to pass in a world that is for the divine pleasure.
Now this attractive scripture in Genesis 8 relates to a time of momentous movement in the testimony. God had come in in judgment over the whole scene and now something entirely new was about to be introduced. What was of God had been preserved in the ark, and this was moving into a new order of things. What the narrative shows is the lack of sensitiveness on the part of the raven, but the wonderful sensitiveness on the part of the dove, while Noah stands out as the great head—a type of Christ—of the new order. If a bird flies into a house, it gets into a frenzy trying to get out again, but these birds had been in the ark for at least one hundred and ninety days and, when Noah opened the window of the ark, they did not fly away until he sent them. This would remind us of the supremacy of Christ over all
creation. He has been given authority over all flesh, and this will be seen in the day to come.
Here, these birds were waiting to be sent out according to the direction of Noah, and the raven “went forth going to and fro”. What was the raven doing those days? The world is full at the present time of what is morally dead, and has the marks of divine judgment on it. The scripture implies that the raven found a sufficiency in what was dead, and it never went back to the ark. If a believer is to be in the testimony, he must deliberately avoid what is unclean.
“But the dove found no resting-place for the sole of her foot”, so she was sensitive to the point reached in the movement of the testimony, and returned to Noah into the ark. Then it says, “he put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ark”, as if to suggest that there was an affectionate link between Noah and the dove. A conscious link with the Lord Jesus in love is a requisite to sensitiveness to the movements of the testimony. Then after seven days Noah sent out the dove again, and she returned at eventide with a plucked off olive leaf in her beak. It was not a leaf floating on the top of the water, one damaged by the judgment of the flood, but one taken from a living tree. In other words, God is moving in the present time in view of a scene of life—not one of death as represented in the moral conditions in the world. Then the next time she is sent out, it says, “she returned no more to him”. Does it not make your heart rejoice that there .is a day coming when under the touch of Christ, there will be nothing to grieve the sensitive spirit of the believer, nothing to provoke in him feelings of abhorrence at the moral declension attaching to the world? Our hearts can delight to contemplate a scene filled with Christ and the Spirit.
The background to John 13 was that of the most momentous movement of the testimony of all time. The blessed Saviour was about to go into death. All our joys, our blessings, all that we touch in relation to the scene of eternal life, depend on our Lord Jesus going into
death. Yet, at this point, He was troubled in spirit. He was deeply affected that one of His own was about to deliver Him up. Who was sensitive to what the Lord was saying? Was it Peter? After all, he was the first apostle—should not he ask the Lord what He meant? But it was not so. What the passage brings out is that sensitiveness and responsiveness to the movements of the testimony do not lie in gift or in leadership, but in love for Jesus. John was in the bosom of Jesus. It was his characteristic place near to the heart of the Lord. Do we have some little experience of the bosom of Jesus to know a love that never changes, that bears with us? John had habituated himself to that place in the bosom of Jesus and knew His love. Love for Jesus, a place on His bosom will always help you to detect when the Spirit of God is in movement. Then it says that he was “leaning on the breast of Jesus”. What a comfort to know that in such days as we are in, all the support and strength we need are ever available in our High Priest. Whatever the testimony requires we can be assured of support and strength as on the breast of Jesus.
At Corinth there were those who belittled Paul. There was a reluctance to accept that the testimony was deposited in that vessel. He had written the first epistle to them, because he was concerned about their state and what was hindering them spiritually. Now he was wanting to move on to God’s wonderful thoughts for them, as outlined in 2 Corinthians 4, 5
and 6. To this end he was concerned as to their hearts. The fleshy tables of the heart is in contrast to the hardheartedness which marks us naturally. We need to ask the help of the Spirit continually to preserve us from hardheartedness, if we are to move forward in the testimony, as Paul unfolds it in the following chapters, into the ministry of the gospel, reconciliation and new creation. Unless the fleshy tables of the heart have been wrought on by the Spirit of the living God, the truth may just be doctrine. We should not come to our gatherings like academics attending a seminar, but
should come to have our hearts written upon by the Spirit. God helps us to have impressionable hearts by discipline. When a calamity occurs we often say, ‘What is the Lord saying in this?’, but we should realize that He is wanting to affect our hearts. We rightly come to the meetings, perhaps an occasion like this, but what is the state of our hearts? Are they like adamant? Or have God’s ways with us affected us so that our hearts are fleshy? As that is so, we shall have the conscious sense of a fresh touch from the Lord as regards the present course of the testimony. There is an ample supply of spiritual food at the disposal of Christ to maintain every believer in the current testimony, if on our side we are sensitive and responsive to what the Lord is stressing at any particular time.
The assembly in Philadelphia is credited with having, “kept the word of my patience”.
Nothing tests the state of our hearts more than patience. The Lord is longing for His church, but He is waiting patiently, and we need to cultivate the spirit of patience—patience in the trials of the testimony, patience with each other, and patience as regards the development of the truth among us. Patience is a softening agent in the heart of the believer. Now the overcomer in this church is to be made “a pillar in the temple of my God”. The pillars of buildings of old, such as the Acropolis in Athens, had inscriptions on them, and on the overcomer will be inscribed, “the name of my God”. That means the overcomer is impressionable to what God would inscribe upon him. Whatever distinction any one might seem to have now, there is no distinction like “the name of my God” written upon us. In other words, the believer is to be in the full gain of the revelation of God, with no darkness about him, no Judaising principles, but is to be an exponent in power and freshness of the name of God. Also written on the overcomer is, “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem”.
That implies that there always has been, is and will be to the end of the dispensation, a great need for assembly minded persons. Churchmen make the best
preachers, because the real point of the gospel is not merely to save souls from judgment, but to bring them into the assembly. As having such writing upon us, how distinctive we should be! There is a great need among us for the development of distinctive spiritual personality.
May we be encouraged to find our place in the bosom and on the breast of Jesus, so, that by contact with Him, we may each find our distinctive place in the testimony in the locality where we are set, and may nothing deflect us from that place.
Address at St. Albans
6 July 1991