OUR RECEIVING WHAT GOD SENDS
Luke 8:4-8; Acts 17:10,11; 16:14,15,40; Luke 2:25-32; Deuteronomy 11:10-12
My simple exercise for this occasion is that we might receive what God sends. First of all, I should ask if everyone here has received the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. If you have not done so before now, I enjoin you to receive the gift of salvation that God offers everyone in the person of Jesus and the work that He has accomplished on Calvary’s cross, in His dying and the shedding of His precious blood. God offers that to you for your reception; God offers you something that is worth receiving. Beloved, receive the Lord Jesus if you have not done so. You need Him, you are a sinner and you need a Saviour. I know that this is not a gospel meeting, but we have to begin with what is fundamental in relation to what we receive from God. He has sent His Son. Receive Him, and come to know your sins forgiven and know peace with God. Receive the Holy Spirit too. Obey and ask the Father and He will give the Holy Spirit; He delights to give Him. Have you done that? Are you a believer on the Lord Jesus but you have not yet received the Holy Spirit? I encourage you to ask and receive what God gives. It is always worth receiving. The Holy Spirit will come and make His abode with you and in you, and help you to learn more of the Saviour whom you have received.
You may ask, Does God stop giving? Does God stop speaking? No, God in His grace knows that we still have a need at the present time to receive from Him and God continues to give because of who He is. His nature is love, His heart is a heart of love, and He gives with a purpose. That is why I read in Luke’s gospel chapter 8. The intention is that there should be fruit one hundred-fold. Who is the fruit for? It is for God, for the Sower, it is for God Himself. Ask yourself what fruit is there in your life for God, that One who gave His Son for you, the One who gave His blessed Spirit to dwell in you. What is there in my life for Him in the way of fruit, what is there in my life that pleases Him?
I wanted to speak about the good ground. There are other kinds of ground and we feel tested as to what we can say about them, but there is the good ground. I think that would speak of receptive ground. I read in these passages about different examples that we could think of where there was good ground. First of all, it says here, “He that has ears to hear, let him hear”. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, it says seven times, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”. And the Lord Jesus in John’s gospel chapter 16 speaks about the Holy Spirit; “but whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak” (v.13). There can be no doubt that the speaking and the giving of God continues; it continues with purpose, it is current today. Perhaps even in an occasion like this, God may speak to us: we trust it may be so. He is speaking with a purpose. The purpose is that His word may enter freshly into your soul and fructify, that there might be something present and real in your life for His pleasure and for His glory. It begins with the ear, “He that has ears”; let us all make sure that we have ears that are attuned to what God is saying. There are so many other conflicting voices vying for your attention in the world. Man’s world is full of what vies for your attention in every possible way; all the different media that men use, vying for your attention and for your ear. You see people going round with their ears covered up, their ears filled with devices that feed sound and music into them. Beloved, God desires that you might have an opened ear to hear what He says to you as a believer. We can use this parable in the glad tidings of course, but God continues to give His word. It says that “The seed is the word of God”. It does not stop. God in His faithfulness provides His word so that we might not only be directed and fed and encouraged and refreshed, but that there might be a result for Him. So let us have our ears attuned to what God is saying. Let us by the Spirit hear what the Spirit says, and He says it to “the assemblies”. That might be in a meeting of this character where believers on the Lord Jesus who seek to be faithful to Him are gathered together in a local gathering, or from a number of local gatherings. The Spirit speaks in such an environment and we do well to hear what He says to us.
In Berea, they had readiness of mind. You hear something and your mind processes it, speaking simply. We need to guard our minds because sometimes we hear something that may sound right, but we need to test by the Spirit whether it is truly of God. We need to test its source, and test its fruit. Can you find out if it is from God, does it derive from God? If it makes much of Christ and only Christ, it will be from God: that is the simple proof. If it makes anything of man, be wary of it, beloved. God would have us to have ready minds like the Bereans. It is interesting what is said; “receiving the word with all readiness of mind”. I do not think that meant that they were in any way gullible or careless, but they were receiving it without question. They were careful, their minds were guarded; the Holy Spirit would help us in that. Part of the panoply of God in Ephesians is protection for the head, the “helmet of salvation”, Eph.6:17. Let us by continual communion with the Holy Spirit guard what thoughts come into our minds. Then when we hear something, we are able to immediately discern whether it is good and of God, or whether it is something that is merely of man or of this world, and we can reject it. The Bereans had readiness of mind. There was good ground in Berea, you might say, the word came, the seed was sown and there was good ground there; “with all readiness of mind, daily searching the scriptures if these things were so”.
A very important fruit of the Spirit is patience, longsuffering. This was a daily matter; if you are going to bring forth fruit for God, it is going to require patience. There is a fine article of Mr Coates which I would commend to the brethren which is entitled ‘Daily’; it is worth reading. The Bereans were “daily searching the scriptures”. Let us be exercised that it may not be just an occasional thing with us, but a characteristic thing to provide a receptive state of mind so that as the Holy Spirit’s word comes to us it may have a result for God and for His glory. It is interesting that it says in verse 12, “Therefore many from among them believed”. It was having its result. Here is some of the fruit being borne towards God, more souls secured for God for His pleasure – eternally, yes, but what about the present time?
Lydia had an opened heart. It is not simply a matter of receiving something into my mind that I can then repeat, maybe something I have heard someone else saying in a meeting that is right and good and true. If I only repeat it, I have not really received it for myself; it needs to enter into my heart, my affections. Beloved, God would open your heart. Lydia was a faithful person, she was marked by prayer. The matter of patience was with her too, I believe. She knew what it was to have the custom of prayer. Young brothers and sisters, come to the prayer meeting: it is an excellent custom. You will get something there. It is not a time of teaching exactly, but you will learn. You will hear brothers speaking who have greater experience than you have, and you will realise that there is something precious about that meeting. It is a good custom to come to the prayer meeting. As you hear the brethren praying with genuine affection for one another, it will have a softening effect on your heart. You will see the genuine affection that exists in Christ’s body, members considering one for another. Your heart would become receptive. Perhaps you hear something about the Lord Jesus and His sufferings, perhaps about His glory – it gets into your heart and that is where it is going to produce fruitfulness for God.
So Lydia’s household was receptive. Beloved, let us be careful about what we bring into our houses, and let us receive the things that Paul says, indeed let us receive Paul. It is specific here, “the things spoken by Paul”. The word of God, you might say, is always for our benefit but “the things spoken by Paul” are of particular help at the present time for our households and for our local gatherings. Paul, especially in his epistle to the Corinthians, speaks about what is orderly and suitable for God; that is part of the fruit. There should be what is orderly in our households. Lydia not only listened, she attended: “whose heart the Lord opened to attend to the things spoken by Paul”. You might say that she acted upon what she heard; she said, “come into my house and abide there”. There was a suitable place for Paul in her house, it was a receptive area, and at the end of the chapter it says that the brethren were there. “And having gone out of the prison, they came to Lydia; and having seen the brethren …”.
What a joy it is to see the brethren. You might say that this was more than just a household, this was like the nucleus of a local assembly. Think too of what there was in Philippi later. There is what is cumulative in Christianity; there is what we have as individuals, then there are households, and there are local gatherings. Each builds on the other. The individuals contribute to the households, and the households contribute to the local gatherings. Let us be receptive to what God says as to these things in order that there may be fruitfulness, not only from us individually, but from our households and in our local meetings, that there may be something for His pleasure at the present time. I feel challenged and tested by it, but it can be so.
Then in Luke’s gospel, we read about Simeon. He was in the temple; that in one way would suggest a gathering of the saints. We speak of our readings of the Scriptures as ‘temple enquiry’. Come to the week-night readings, come to the week-night readings in expectation and in patience. Simeon had been marked by patience; he was “awaiting the consolation of Israel”. He was a just man and pious, he was orderly, he was doing what was righteous, he was marked by piety – that is, he brought God into his circumstances. Paul wrote to Timothy about “piety with contentment”, 1 Tim.6:6. Simeon had piety but he was soon to have contentment too, because he received the Lord Jesus into his arms. He said, “Lord, now thou lettest thy bondman go”. He said as it were, I do not need anything else, I have Christ. Beloved, come to the place where Christ is valued, so that you might receive fresh impressions of Him. He will satisfy you like no one and nothing else can.
This world cannot satisfy you. Do not think that you can go somewhere else, outside of where the Lord is owned and cherished, and find satisfaction. It is not possible; you will only find disappointment. Let us come to the place represented here by the temple where there are those who in simple dependence and patience are waiting on fresh impressions of the Lord Jesus. What a full impression Simeon receives. It is not exactly his head or his heart, it is his arms. He now had a wholehearted appreciation of the Lord Jesus; he was holding Him in his arms. It is like receiving an impression of Him that you can embrace, something you can value and treasure. Simeon would never forget this moment; in fact he was willing to die then. He had been told that “he should not see death before he should see the Lord’s Christ”. Well, now he had seen the “Lord’s Christ”. He did not need any more than that; what a delight it was to him. He was content; he had piety and now he had contentment. What a wonderful gain it is, beloved, to be in the place where God speaks, where God gives impressions of Christ that we may receive them and that they might have their effect on us in our minds and our hearts. We can lay hold of them for ourselves and give glory to God; it says he “blessed God”. Remember that the One who is the giver of all good, the Sower, is due a return. He works it all out in His wonderful ways of grace, and as we delight in that, it results in something for His pleasure too.
Then in Deuteronomy, it seems as though the whole land is receptive. It does not just say that it rains there, it says “which drinketh water of the rain of heaven”. That is suggestive to me of an active idea; it drinks the rain. Beloved, have you had an experience of being in what speaks of the land? What God has given to us, the experience of eternal life at the present time amongst those who love the Lord Jesus. It is an atmosphere that is like nothing you can find in this world, it is a place where there is receptiveness of heart, it is a place “which drinketh water of the rain of heaven”. It realises that the source of its blessing is from heaven; it is not like Egypt. We were hearing about the river of God last week, contrasting it to the river of Egypt. It says of the land that it “is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot”; it is not like that. That is not what God’s land is like. It is an interesting study to look at the Nile. There is virtually no rainfall in central Egypt, and the Nile that flows through it is largely conveying rain from Ethiopia. So, typically, there is nothing there in the land of Egypt, as typifying this world, that appreciates what comes from heaven. This world does not value what is heavenly. But there is a land, there is an area that does, and it is found amongst God’s people, believers in the Lord Jesus who seek to be faithful to Him. Stay in such an area, stay in the place where there is the receptive attitude to what God gives, a place that drinks “water of the rain of heaven”. It is a place of satisfaction, we can see how fruitful it is, and there is the thought of patience too, the whole year being mentioned; “the eyes of Jehovah thy God are constantly upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year”. God in His faithfulness continues to give His word, constantly and faithfully and consistently, and it is for us to pay attention to it by the Spirit. It is to affect us inwardly that there may be glory for God at the present time.
May the Lord bless the word.
Address at Colchester
8 September 2018
J.S. Speirs