HOW WE ARE ENABLED TO WALK WORTHY OF THE CALLING

A. C. Craig

Genesis 14: 14–23; John 6: 54–69

I want to say something about the priesthood of Christ, and the power of the Spirit, to enable us to walk worthy of the calling by which we are called. The tendency all the time is to wear us down and make us compromise, or adopt an attitude of almost defeatism. But it is expected from us, beloved brethren, that we walk according to the calling wherewith we are called. That is not an impossible position even in a day of this kind with everything weighted against you. You are not long on the Christian path before you find that everything in this scene is weighted against you, but you can never expect, whatever is the weight of opposition, that it could outweigh what the divine provision would be. We are not called to take up an impossible path, but there is provision for us that we might walk according to our calling.

Now I must say something first about the calling. I want you all to listen very intently, especially younger people, as to this great matter of the calling. What is the calling? It should be of the greatest interest to every one of us. I will tell you what the calling is—You are called to association with Christ. Now that speaks for itself, I need not elaborate on the importance of that or the magnificence of it, that you, as an individual, are called to association with Christ, or in one word you are called to sonship. There could not be anything in this wide world, or any world, that would equal such a favour that the blessed God has bestowed on us, than that we should be called to association with Christ.

It comes to light first in Scripture in Abram’s case, that is why I have referred to him, but I want to speak something more about the calling, so that whatever else you may get from this meeting, that you may get some feeling, beloved brethren, of the greatness of this favour. It has not been extended to everybody, but God, through His grace and sovereignty, has brought you into a status and dignity that He has not vouchsafed to others; that is the calling. There is a calling, of course, that goes out in the gospel—‘Unto you men I call, and My voice is to the sons of men’; that is different. When you come to the call that is set forth in Abram initially, you come to God’s purpose. You are called to purpose, and as I said, it is to be in association with Christ, very wonderful. It is referred to as the calling on high, the holy calling and the heavenly calling. It is altogether out of this scene, it has its roots and objectives in another world, it lies in the purpose of God. Do you believe that you are called to that? Do you believe that God has picked you out from the inhabitants of this city and this earth, and has brought you into a position of such dignity and status as associated with His beloved Son. I think you ought to appreciate that. I do, at any rate.

Now you young people, when you go home today after this meeting and help your mother with the meal, after you have finished the meal, go into your own room, and write a little essay. Why should it be named the “high calling” in Philippians? Why should it be the “holy calling” in 2 Timothy? Why should it be the “heavenly calling” in Hebrews? Now you write something out about that. I am not telling you why these things should be in these epistles. I am not here to tell you everything or make things too simple for you, that is not my business.

There might be an examination, someone might want to see your exercise book. Be on the alert. Enter into these things, dear young people, value the greatness of the calling. Abram was called, it is the first time in Scripture that the idea is brought forward. Idolatry had come into the world, and God was not in the world system as it was; that is why He called Abram out. It was such a magnificent thing, the God of glory appeared to him in Ur of the Chaldeans. That is when the calling was introduced. It is no commonplace matter, the calling is most dignified.

So God said to Abraham, “Go out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house”, Genesis 12: 1. The tower of Babel had started to be built, that was man’s glory. The children of the east had come and built a tower and a city and given it a name, that they might not be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. Notice these things, a city and a tower and a name, they were set on centralisation; they did not want to be scattered, they were to save them from being scattered. That was the kind of thing that was taking place when God appeared to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldeans. Notice that, men were set on centralisation, a city and a tower and a name. The present name would be the Treaty of Rome. They are set on centralisation. A time will come when that will all be brought down as the tower of Babel was. In the meantime God is calling His people out, and He would have them to understand what a privilege it is to be called of Him. In Luke 14 you have the call to the great supper, “Come, for already all things are ready” (Luke 14: 17), and the three people invited made excuses because of land, oxen, and a wife. These three people represent the favoured Jew, favoured Israel, and they did not respond to the call. God is not going to be defeated by that. The bondman is told to go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and then the ways and fences. God will secure His end in people on the ground of sovereign mercy and grace. But I referred to that because the Lord goes on next to say, “If any man come to me, and shall not hate his own father and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple”, Luke 14: 26. Twice over in that section the Lord says that—he cannot be My disciple. The Lord would insist, dear friends, and have us to understand, that the privilege of being called will not allow for any compromise or sharing of interests with anyone else. It demands total application and committal to what the

calling is, and to the behaviour that is suitable to the calling.

Well, now there are two things I want to speak about. That is the priesthood of Christ and the power of the Spirit. These things are provided for us, that the truth of our calling might be maintained. Believers are no ordinary people. God would not have us like that; He has distinguished us and He will provide the means that this status and our being distinguished is preserved and maintained. What manner of men ought we to be? That comes up continually as to what we are in the presence of this world, which is totally antagonistic, as the Lord proved while He was here; the whole scene was antagonistic to Him, there was not anything that was sympathetic with Christ. We live in a very difficult time and very difficult circumstances. It is good to weigh these things up. I was saying recently that the time may soon come when we will be called racists. We speak about Jews and gentiles in the meetings, and someone might come in and hear you talking about Jews and gentiles, and say these people are racists. We have little idea as to the influence, the terrible influence of what is in this city, in this country, spreading from the east. We should be careful about these things, and maintain what is proper to the calling. It may cost us dear yet, who knows, to maintain the truth as it should be maintained.

Now there is the priesthood of Christ. Here is Abraham where the idea of the calling comes up, and there has been a battle, and his brother Lot has been taken. Abraham hears about it, and he goes out to recover his brother Lot. He is not concerned about this war, five kings against four, and the four had been successful; the five had been defeated, and the king of Sodom was one of the five, and Lot was taken captive, but Abraham led out his trained servants, three hundred and eighteen. Then it says, “And he divided himself against them by night”. That is a remarkable thing—“he divided himself against them”. How would he do

that? I think a man who can divide himself like that, you could expect great things from him.

I think the beginning of this matter would be like saying, ‘that is not me, that is the flesh’.

Which chapter am I referring to in the New Testament? When you say, “it is no longer I that do it” (Romans 7: 20), then you come to the inward man and you come to God’s law. I think that is the beginning of our learning how to divide ourselves, and to take sides with the work of God in yourself; that is Romans chapter 7. You take sides with the work of God, and you learn to distinguish and to divide. In these verses he finds a certain thing warring in his members, but having learnt that lesson he is able to stand by what there is in him of the work of God. You learn these things by your experience. I say that to you younger brothers and sisters, you learn things by your experience, and you are able to distinguish between what is of the work of God, and what belongs to the flesh and to sin. It is important to learn these lessons.

Abraham comes back successful, he has secured his brother Lot and all the property, and the king of Sodom sets out to intercept him. Then it says this, “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after he had returned from smiting Chedorlaomer ... And Melchisedec king of Salem brought out bread and wine”. There is not a word about his moving towards Abraham here, but in Hebrews 7, it says, “Melchisedec, King of Salem ... met Abraham “(Hebrews 7: 1), he met him. I want to point out that there is no intimation of any arrangement or meeting here, it just says, “And Melchisedec king of Salem brought out bread and wine”. We can have that thought about the priesthood of Christ, it is instant. The king of Sodom was on his way, and he would be the test, but there is Melchisedec and the priesthood.

Now I want to say something to you about the Lord’s Melchisedec priesthood. I think we are well instructed in the fact that He functions as Aaron, that is true, but you must allow that the order of His priesthood is

Melchisedec. Now I want to bring that forward in this meeting, what is proper to the Lord’s Melchisedec priesthood. O, you say, that belongs to the world to come! Admittedly it belongs to the world to come, but you must allow for this great feature in quality in the Lord’s priesthood that is set out by Melchisedec. He is raised up on high, as it says, “Sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies as footstool of thy feet”, Psalm 110: 1. Then again, “Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec”, Hebrews 5: 6. There is no other order; the function is Aaronic, that is to say He succours and supports, He strengthens and intercedes. Now that is the function of Aaron, but then what is one great characteristic of the Melchisedec priesthood? Blessing! Melchisedec set forward the great idea of blessing. It says he blessed Abraham and he blessed God. These elements, dear brethren, are intended to sustain and support us that we might not give way, for the test will come. It says he “brought out bread and wine”. The bread is the grace of Christ; the wine is the renewing power of the Spirit. These things are provided in view of test so that we might be maintained at the level of our heavenly calling.

Now let us go back to the matter of these features of His priesthood according to the order of Melchisedec. Younger brethren may pay attention to these things, and work this matter out, as to how it comes through in His service as Priest. There is no other order. The function is Aaronic, that will finish. Hebrews 7 thrills me when I read it, it says, “And here dying men receive tithes; but there one of whom the witness is that he lives” (Hebrews 7: 8)—“he lives”.

There is no cessation in His service; death has not come in to intervene. You might need a doctor, you might need in your lifetime four or five doctors, who will hand on your case history to someone else so that it might be known. Here is One, the same Priest when you were converted, He is the One who will be there when He takes you home. He is wonderful!

This Melchisedec priesthood is intended to lead you into the purpose of God. On the Aaronic side it is to sustain and support and help you. We need that as long as we are here, but He does more than that. He is a Priest after the order of Melchisedec to lead you into the purpose of God. What do you know about that? We make a lot of His function as to His Aaronic priesthood, and we need that; but He ever lives, and He is ready and willing to lead us into the purpose of God. I might illustrate it in Peter in Matthew 14; he was sinking below the waves, he got his eye off the Lord, he saw the wind boisterous, and down he went, but he cried out saying, “Lord, save me”, and the Lord stretched out His hand. Now that is Aaronic, that is what He does for us. He stretches out His priestly hand and saves us, that is the Aaronic side. We need that so long as we are here, and He is ready to provide it.

It says of Melchisedec that he is, “without father, without mother, without genealogy; having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but assimilated to the Son of God”, Hebrews 7: 3.

Such is Melchisedec, a mysterious personage. Now in chapter 16 of Matthew, the Lord says to Peter, and this is not Aaronic, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in the heavens”. Then He says, “And I also, I say unto thee that thou art Peter”. That is Melchisedec in character. Peter is not standing in any need there, he is in a position outside flesh and blood; it is “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona”. That is how it works, that is a feature of Melchisedec priesthood, that comes through, dear brethren. Do you think you have to wait for the world to come to experience that? Not a bit of it, it comes in now. But we want to have the sense that He leads us into the purpose of God and into the great realm where He is supreme, into the sphere where He is dominant. I would commend this to you, this matter of His priesthood, involving the order of it, coming through to us today in the way of blessing.

It says, “Melchisedec ... brought out bread and wine”, these things were to strengthen Abram.

Then he says, “Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heavens and earth”.

Notice that, that is the kind of thing that is coming out in the service of Melchisedec.

Melchisedec is bringing something out in the way of blessing and light that Abraham is intended to take on and he did. That belongs to this service of the Priest. He would bring forward things that are not only going to relieve us, as we come to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace for seasonable help, (that is what you do, we need that as long as we are here), but there are other things as well. This Priest has got a more excellent ministry, a better covenant, all this belongs to this order. This is the kind of thing that the Lord would introduce us to, and we are intended to absorb it.

The king of Sodom comes, and says to Abram, “Give me the souls, and take the property for thyself”. Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have lifted up my hand to Jehovah”. Would to God, beloved brethren, we adopted that attitude more, to realise that we are in the divine presence—“I have lifted up my hand to Jehovah ... possessor of heavens and earth”. Think of that, how readily he absorbed the light that came. We fall down there I believe, things come to us, what is there in the way of appropriating it or the absorbing of it? I may just act as if it was not for me. My grandfather used to say that some people are like the churches that had a lightning conductor. A big high building used to have a lightning conductor so that when the lightning struck this conductor it went right into the ground without damaging the building.

He said that some people are like that, they carry around this lightning conductor, and whenever the truth strikes them it goes into the ground, and so divert it. We should not be like that; let the truth come home to us. Let us absorb what comes in the way of ministry as coming from the heart of the One who loves us, the Lord Jesus who loves us, the great Priest, in His affection for us, in His readiness to dead us into the purpose of God, and to make us superior to the wiles of such as the king of Sodom. He wanted Abraham to take the property. Abraham could say to him, It is my property, by the rules of war it is my property. It was yours, he could say to the king of Sodom, but you lost it to the four kings. They took it from you, it was theirs and I took it from them, and so by the rules of war it is mine, but I am taking nothing so that you can never say that you have made Abraham rich. He has so absorbed the truth.

We too are expected to take in the things that we hear of in the meetings, they should make us far superior to the poor things of this world. Lest he should say that he had made Abraham rich. Abraham refused to take, “from a thread even to a sandal-thong”, I would not touch it, he says, you can have the lot. What a surrender! Abraham might have said to one of the young men, Bring out one of those bags with the property in it, empty it out, you see what will come tumbling out, rings and bangles and brooches, necklaces and beads. He would say to the king of Sodom, Do you expect Sarah to wear any of those things? or the daughters of Sarah? Peter speaks about the children of Sarah, “whose children ye have become”, 1 Peter 3: 6. They have ornaments but not this kind. Sarah’s daughters according to Peter have “the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price”, 1 Peter 3: 4. Dear brethren, is our Christianity real? Are we better professors than we are possessors? That is the point here, “which in the sight of God”, it says, “is of great price”. These tinsel things, Abraham would say, Have the lot! He did not want one thread, he stressed, that is character, there was nothing of Sodom’s character about Abraham. Then the sandal-thong would refer to associations, he was tied to nothing that related to this scene.

I do not need to instruct you as to what Sodom is, as to the character of it, how terrible it is. It says, “the people of Sodom were wicked, and great sinners before Jehovah”, Genesis 13: 13. Egypt is one thing but Sodom is worse. Let us refuse it, dear brethren, in the light of what is provided for us to make us superior to it, what we receive in the meetings in the way of divine teaching and instruction, and the wealth of things that comes through. Let us pay attention to those things and absorb them, and be able to meet the tests of the king of Sodom. Well, such is the priesthood of Christ. Carry this thought away from this meeting, that His Melchisedec priesthood comes in to serve you in view of leading you into the purpose of God, and the great realm of blessing that opens up to us through His leadership. That is the Melchisedec priesthood. You do not need to wait for the world to come for that, it can be known now inasmuch as you have the Spirit.

John 6 is appropriation, this is the way to it. What I have said is pretty objective, and we must have what is objective; but then too, there is the side of appropriation, eating the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking His blood. Seven times in this chapter it is recorded in connection with the bread coming down from heaven; that is the grace of Christ. If you want to learn the grace of Christ, Paul says, “ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes he, being rich, became poor”, 2 Corinthians 8: 9. Mr. Darby, in his French translation of the Bible, in translating that, ‘He became poor’, gives it that He lived in poverty. Is that not very touching? The Lord Jesus, Son of God, He came here, came down, the bread which comes down out of heaven. He lived in poverty in order that there might be that made available to us, His flesh and His blood, that means through death. These things could not become available apart from Him going into death; that is what He is meaning, you appropriate His death. Now we appropriate His death, that is the moral way to proving what the Spirit can be.

The Jews said, “How can he give us this flesh to eat?” Many of His disciples said, “This word is

hard”. He says to them, “If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?”

Dear brethren, there is not any chance of any of us knowing what that means, if we do not appropriate what is available in His precious death. You have to accept this, it is the only way to it.

He says, “It is the Spirit which quickens”—the Spirit quickens. That is like the wine, the renewing power of the Spirit, the quickening power of the Spirit that can keep you on the high level, that is the point, ascending up where He was before, and you follow Him in affection to where He is. How much time do I give to contemplating Christ where He is, the Spirit quickening my affections and supporting me, that it might be so? There has to be the side of appropriation, dear brethren, there must be.

Then He says to Peter, “Will ye also go away?” Many went away back and walked no more with Him. How sad! Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”—we cannot go to the temple there is no ark there; we cannot go to the synagogue because there is no fresh ministry there—“thou hast words of life eternal”. Beloved brethren, O for a greater sense of feeling after Christ—“to whom shall we go?” Peter says, “we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”. He comes out as the true Apostle, with the words of eternal life, Spirit and life; He comes out from God, coming down from heaven with those wonderful communications; but “the holy one of God” is the One who leads us in. He is the true Melchisedec, the One who leads His people in, into the great realm of blessing. Now, do you not think that if these things were in our affections more, that our walk down here would be in keeping with the calling? That is the divine intention. May it be so for His name’s sake.

Address at Glasgow
18 December 1993