DIRECT RELATIONS WITH THE LORD

A.A.Bellamy

John 4: 39-42; 2 Timothy 1: 8 -12; Song of Songs 2: 3 -6, 8 : 1-3

It is my thought, beloved brethren, to speak simply of direct relations with Christ, not only personal and individual relations with Him, but what is normal in a local assembly. Each local assembly is to have its own direct relations with Christ, and that involves experience. It is not a matter of doctrine, important as that is in its place. The living character of response to the divine thoughts as presented to us in the good teaching depends upon the consciousness of the relationships into which God has brought us with Himself and into which the Lord has brought us with Himself. It is on these relationships, and the affections that are proper to them and our being preserved in a lively and responsive state towards God, that everything depends. We have often said that John gives us the line of life. In a day of public departure, when lawlessness prevails and the love of the many has waxed cold, we need to have recourse to John's line.

We usually turn to this chapter in John's gospel to consider the woman, but I wish to draw attention to the Samaritans. They belong to the city out of which the woman came and to which she returned with her powerful testimony regarding the Person of Christ. She says first, "is not he the Christ?" What seems to have impressed these Samaritan believers (it says they believed on Him) is that she had said "He told me all things that I had ever done". That, I think, bears upon what was said in our earlier meeting as to the roots of faith being in the conscience. One's thought is to speak of the Christian affections, but we need to bear in mind that God's work stands related to His word which has come into us by way of our conscience. The word of God is living and operative, sharper than any two-edged sword. That would be known by this woman and therefore entered into her testimony to these Samaritans who believed. They received her testimony and it says "many believed". I think they represent a great principle in God's ways in blessing men. He uses, it may be, His servants, to unfold the truth to us and to lead us into the light of His great thoughts for us. The Lord has given gifts and the great aim and object in all their service is to bring the saints into the light and the blessedness of the great thoughts of God. But then something further is needed, and that, beloved brethren, is also seen in these believing Samaritans. Not only did they believe on account of the woman's word but they heard Him themselves. That is to say, there must be with us the sense of direct relations with the Lord and of hearing Him for ourselves. I wonder if in the occasion in which we have already spoken together we all have a sense of hearing Him for ourselves. If so, that is good and let us be more exercised to hear Him, as these Samaritans say, "we have heard him ourselves, and we know" - we know! The Lord says something to us in this way and we can say without presumption, We know. It is an expression running right through John's ministry "we know". They say "we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world". I rejoice in that glorious title of Christ, "the Saviour of the world". It is one thing to say from personal knowledge that He is my Saviour but think of the greatness of the Person who is capable of filling out this glorious title, "the Saviour of the world"! One of the titles accorded to Joseph in Egypt is 'Saviour of the world' and along with it we have the thought of the 'Revealer of secrets' (see note Gen 41: 44), and it is striking that those two cities are referred to together. Man has many secrets; there are secrets in all our hearts. They are not secrets to God; He knows, He is the heart-knowing God. The Lord is the Revealer of secrets and it is a very great blessing if He reveals to you and to me just what may be working in our hearts at any time. We do things, we say things, and what lie behind our actions and words are motives and they are largely secret. The meeting for ministry is a great occasion because the Lord may appear and speak to us as the Revealer of secrets, as when Jacob spoke to his sons (see Gen 49: 1-27). He revealed the secrets of their hearts, the bad and the good. In the secrets of the believer's heart there is what is good, there is what God has put there, what is there by way of new birth. Nehemiah speaks of something that God had put in his heart to do for Jerusalem. God had put it there, that was not an evil thing. If God has put something in a person's heart he can keep it like a secret, he can cherish it. Now the woman has rendered her testimony, as many of those who have gone before us have fulfilled their part - Paul, Peter, John, James. Then Mr Darby, Mr Raven, Mr Taylor sen - what we owe to those men under the Lord who could say? They have rendered their part, they have completed the ministry that was given to them, but what remains, dear brethren, is the need to hear the Lord Himself, and I just desire to awaken exercise as to that with each one of us.

Now I take as an example of it Paul himself. He is writing to Timothy, a young man. Young men and young women are to be encouraged with the sense of being in a sphere where they are of interest. I have no doubt Timothy was a man of great interest to the apostle who wrote two letters to him. John also writes letters, he even writes a letter to little children. So let us be encouraged, dear young brethren, in the sense that we are in a sphere in which there is great interest in us. Now Paul is writing and enjoining upon Timothy, his beloved child, not to be "ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner". Paul was the Lord's prisoner. To be identified with a man in prison was an occasion of reproach, but we are not to be ashamed of Paul's chain. Sometimes we are accused of being narrow. Well, Mr Darby said in one of his letters, 'the feet in the narrow path, the heart as large as we can, by grace' (Vol 2, p.422). That is the secret of spiritual prosperity.

Then Paul alludes to the knowledge that he had. He says "I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed". We know that it was his exercise to have these direct links with the Lord Himself, because when he writes to the saints in Philippi he speaks of all that was an advantage to him, the knowledge he had acquired as a Jewish rabbi, the power that that knowledge had given him in the religious circle in which he had moved, but over against that he desires to know Him - that is his Saviour - "to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings", chap 3: 10. We know that Paul's desire was to know Christ. Now I wonder what the measure of our desire is. Can each of us say "I know whom I have believed", Paul had entered, I suppose, into an understanding with the Lord; not through a mediator, the Lord Jesus is the Mediator. We do not need a mediator to approach the Mediator. With the Mediator we can have direct relations, and I think Paul is referring to his direct relations and his understanding that he had with the Lord. It is a great thing to start your life with an understanding with the Lord. There will be difficulties and tests and trials of faith, and there will be the need of sacrifice, and Paul says here that he had entrusted every thing, so far as that side of things was concerned, to Christ. He says "I... am persuaded that he is able to keep for that day the deposit I have entrusted to him". 'Our happiness, O Lord, with Thee, Is long laid up in store, For that blest day when Thee we'll see, And conflict will be o'er' (hymn 47). Mr Darby was prepared to wait to get this reward. He will get his and you will get yours, if you are faithful. It is not a time of relaxation now. It is not the millennium yet (I need not say that to anybody here) but that time is coming. The Lord comes quickly and His reward with Him, and that will be the time when what has been entrusted to Him will come out again; the Lord will have kept it for Paul. He speaks of other things that are kept for him, such as the "crown of righteousness.... to all who love his appearing", chap 4:8.

Now, in closing, just a brief word as to the local assembly and its direct relations with Christ. The Lord has rights in every local assembly, and we may say that that is a matter of principle, and so it is. The truth does not change. In Paul's teaching he shows the Lord has rights in every local assembly, and I would not like to interfere or to be a part y in interfering with the Lord's rights in a local assembly. Let us be very careful, dear brethren, to regard His rights in the local assembly. I think where there is assembly-consciousness, that is an assembly conscious of its own relations with Christ, and His with it, there is also a great element of protection. In the beginning of the Acts it says, "of the rest durst no man join them", chap 5: 13. No one trespassed upon what evidently belonged to the Lord in Jerusalem at that moment. Now there is what is the Lord's in each local assembly. It is referred to in the Song of Songs typically as His garden - the local assembly. "Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat its precious fruits", chap 4: 16. It is a question of His right to do so. Christ has a right at any time to come in. The spouse speaks of her beloved as the apple-tree, not among the apple-trees of the wood, but among the trees of the wood. It is of all importance that we apprehend that Christ is of His own order, and He has brethren who are of His order. That is the appletree, distinctly of His own order, among the trees of the wood. The Lord says "my brethren" - wonderfully dignified thought as to the saints. The speaker here says " So is my beloved among the sons". It is remarkable that such a touch comes into a book which is mainly feminine, a book that refers to feminine affection for Christ. Yet we have this thought of the sons, and surely it is in view of the service of God being filled out. And she goes on to speak of being brought into the house of wine and His banner over her love; she desires to be sustained, and then finally she says "His left hand is under my head" - that is, she is supported in the presence of what is beyond her in its greatness; and we are supported in the sense of the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge. "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me". It is a fine thing to come under the sense of the Lord's love for the assembly.

Now in the last verse I read I just wish to point out a certain difference in what the spouse says. She speaks of what she would do. "Should I find thee without, I would kiss thee", and "I would lead thee", and "I would cause thee to drink", and "His left hand would be under my head" - it would be so. She is not immediately conscious of His love. It is not in any sense, beloved brethren, to suggest that we are lacking, but there is the possibility of falling from the constant sense of the Lord's love for the assembly, to a lower level, and then we begin to speak abstractly of His love, not consciously. In the first passage His left hand is under my head, his right hand does embrace me, in the last passage she says it would be.

Let us be stimulated, as we come now to the close of this week, in view of the Lord's day, that there may be a full answer from our hearts, assembly-wise, to the love of Christ. Amen.

RYJSWIJCK

1 November 1975