"WALKING TOGETHER"
“WALKING TOGETHER”
1 Thessalonians 4: 1; Galatians 5: 16; Numbers 2: 1 - 3
I have in mind to speak about the walk suitable to Christians. Much is made of walk in the scriptures. It is said to Abraham “walk before me and be thou perfect”, and he did — he walked before God. And so Israel, the seed of Abraham, was called upon to walk through the wilderness, and it is said that Jehovah “taught Ephraim to walk”, meaning that Ephraim was the leading tribe (though not at the beginning but in later days, for the birthright was Joseph’s), but in Hosea, in the days of the prophets, it is said that Jehovah “taught Ephraim to walk” — chapter 11: 3, and this is in view in Numbers, as I hope to show. Israel was not simply told to go into Canaan, he was led, taken up in leadership, and taught to walk. There was no way in the wilderness, and yet Israel had to go through, but as going through, taught to walk, and obviously according to Numbers, taught to walk together. We read that their shoes did not grow old on their feet, and their clothes did not grow old. There was no need of shops on the way, nor of shoemakers or tailors. They started out with one suit of clothes and shoes and they lasted; they are spoken of at the end of forty years as still in existence, and therefore they have become types for us. We are to learn too that our shoes and our clothes and the like may last longer, in the goodness of God, as they are hard to get, for God takes account of circumstances to prove to us what He can be to us. So He proves to Israel that they could get along with one suit of clothes in forty years, and one pair of shoes. I am not speaking thus just to be odd, but it is a fact of great importance. We may not look for miracles exactly in the times we are in, times of great need, and dearth of everything, but we know there [p. 232] was a dearth in those days, wilderness days, and God caused manna to come down from heaven. One meal of manna did not last for forty years, there was plenty of it every day, fresh from God. These are important facts, dear brethren, that I am seeking to bring forward and apply to our times; times of dearth and shortness of everything, and yet we find we have usually enough — at least in these lands. At the same time we are to learn that even if dearth and shortness continue God is God, and He continues. Christ also continues, “the same yesterday, and today, and for ever”. There is no change in God and in Christ even as these things are happening, and above all we may reckon on increase in the knowledge of God. I believe we are learning God as we never did before, at least that is what I observe, and experience too. So that Israel proved what God was — what the God that they had found. Hosea spoke of Ephraim being taught to walk by Jehovah, and I want to come to that presently, and to show how it comes out in Numbers; but before coming to that I touch on the New Testament, as I believe that we should begin with the New Testament. Not that we should always do so, because the scriptures are the scriptures, Genesis as much as Ephesians and Romans, but nevertheless Genesis is not Ephesians, nor Romans. The Old Testament scriptures do not teach Christianity; Christianity was taught by the Lord, it began to be spoken by the Lord, we are told. “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son”, Hebrews 1: 1 - 2. That is the last word, as it were. The last word has come to us, and ‘in toto’, for Paul says he finished, or completed the word of God. So that we are on a sure footing in beginning in the New Testament, as the first converts did. We not only should think of the first preachers,
[p. 233] but of the first converts. Something is to be learned from the first converts to Christianity, and how they acted. We have not their names of course, there were three thousand of them, but they were very much alike and soon became closely associated, and they were all of one mind apparently.
What I am speaking of now is what belongs to Christianity, and that which has the first place — ‘priority’ to use a well-known word. Priority belongs to the writings of the New Testament, and particularly to what the apostles taught and did. We are not told much of the writings at the beginning, it was a matter of what they were saying, and we are told that the converts adhered to what they said. “They persevered”, we are told, “in the teaching… of the apostles”. There was no priority given to the Old Testament in the early days; it was recognised, of course, for you soon find it as you read the book of Acts, but the early disciples began with and accorded priority to the apostles — “they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles”. They persevered in these things, and so I begin with the New Testament, and in speaking of the apostles I would say that Paul has apostolic priority, and I read from his epistle to the Thessalonians — a very touching letter, full of freshness. He visited Thessalonica, according to Acts 17, and preached there three sabbath days. Apparently preaching through the week was not available or convenient, for he was in heathen territory, but he preached at least three sabbaths one after the other, “opening and laying down”, that is to say, presenting things in the sense of opening them up and laying them down, making them authoritative, and worth listening to and adhering to, so the assembly at Thessalonica was formed. Afterwards this epistle was written to it, and this verse is in it. “Furthermore then we beseech [p. 234] you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more”. The apostle is unstinted in his commendation of this assembly. It is called, as you will have noticed, “the church of the Thessalonians”, that is to say their local setting and identity is mentioned, showing how the testimony proceeds on geographical lines. Although geography may be regarded as belonging to the world, yet it is not really so, because God has ordained the nations and empires and given certain of them to rule from time to time, and the Romans were then ruling in Thessalonica. God regards rule, He has appointed it. Not only the sun and the moon and the stars, but He has appointed nations to rule, and we are enjoined as Christians to recognise the rulers, that they are God’s ministers and not simply people of the world. They are people of the world, of course, who go to theatres and other things of that kind, as well as rule, but while they are ruling they are God’s ministers and we are called upon to obey them, but within certain limits of course. We do not go to them for instruction as to assembly matters or as to gospel matters, but we do recognise them as appointed by God to rule in the world, and to keep things in order, and we are to pray for them. Some speak of them as if they were only of the world, but it is not so, they are God’s ministers, waiting daily on these matters, and we thank God for them. We should not be here tonight if it were not for them. I am speaking simply, but I am calling attention to facts that are important, and which should tend to make us restful. These Christians are called Thessalonians. I do not care much about brethren calling themselves Englishmen, Scotsmen, or Frenchmen — not that it is not so — but it is better to hold to our own country whenever we can, for our citizenship is in heaven.
[p. 235] Citizenship refers to politics and our politics are in heaven. We have politics but they are in heaven. We belong to heaven. These Christians are called Thessalonians and they are said to be “in God the Father”. That is a most precious fact. Whilst they are Thessalonians they are in God the Father! God the Father had priority in every respect. He has the priority of a Father; He is our Father, for “to us there is one God, the Father” and He is everything to us. So the Apostle intended to encourage these young Christians. I do not mean they were all young people literally, but they were all young Christians. I should say they were a few months old at the time this epistle was written, and they are held in the apostle’s heart in a precious way, as “in God the Father”. Not simply born of God, but “in God the Father”. He is concerned about many things, as we know, including their walk, and he exhorts them “as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more”. There is apparently no limit in his mind to the increase that may be made on the line of walk. We may walk in heaven, for the writer of the hymn we have just sung spoke about walking in heaven, and I think it is a precious thought too. We talk with the Lord there too. In the case of Elijah and Elisha, “they went on and talked”. Two men by the Jordan who could be seen from heaven going on in the will of God, “they two went on”. So the apostle has this in mind that the Thessalonians should go on — should walk. The word, of course, implies not only the use of one’s feet and limbs, but general deportment and conduct, and the apostle had in mind that the Thessalonians to whom he is writing should continue to walk. They were to walk together, and not only so, but as he says “as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God”. That is to say he was a model for them [p. 236] in the matter of walking. The word “walking” has a peculiar place here, showing how the walk of the Thessalonians, who were young Christians, became pleasing to God. I do not remember a time when the term ‘young Christians’ had more force, and was more important than it is now. They are greatly increasing in numbers and the burden of the testimony is coming on them, and it is most urgent that they should abound more and more, instead of slackening, and that the walk in these young Christians, as “in God the Father”, should reflect the Father. Paul was a model, and he was a model father. He said to the Corinthians, “yet have ye not many fathers”, though they had many instructors, and I would say, dear brethren, we have far more preachers and teachers (and I rejoice in them) than we have fathers. We have very few fathers, and we are in great need of fathers, that is persons who know God, and who are eye-witnesses of what God was in years past. They can tell us what God was, teaching us from what they have learned. Paul was a father, and he speaks of himself most touchingly. He had regarded them and cared for them as a nurse her own children. He had the skill and tenderness of a nurse, and the affections of a mother and a father, so that they were held in peculiar regard in heaven and in the ministry. So he would exhort them, “that ye would abound still more”.
Then the verse in Galatians 5 came to my mind in looking through the scriptures, and in thinking of what should be spoken of. We should think beforehand of what we intend to say. Not verbatim, but the principal thoughts should be in our minds. We are so constituted as to need such preparation for it is very important to have something to say and to be sure of it. This verse then came into my mind as following the verse in Thessalonians, “This I say then,
walk in the Spirit”. This is a great principle, this matter of walking in the Spirit. We are taught, of course, how to walk, as I have been saying, but it is to be “in the Spirit”. It seems to me that the Spirit must come into it. We cannot afford to lapse as to the Spirit at all. Even if we are considering prophecy, we cannot get very far without the Spirit. The holy men of God, that is the prophets, spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; and in the creation too, God viewed creationally operated by the Spirit. You may ask me why I should say that? You cannot say the rivers and the mountains and the seas were made by the Spirit. Neither can we, but we can say “By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens”, Job 26: 13. God did that, and moreover we can say that the Spirit was brooding over the face of the deep, a most touching matter. The Spirit is God, of course, God Himself, He must be so regarded, and we are reminded I think in the second verse of the Bible how God felt the terrible catastrophe that had come about, the devil acting against God and in a big way. The way the devil acted against God must have affected the whole physical universe, and God felt that, and so it is said the Spirit preceded what God did. That is a principle, if a person is to be born anew the Spirit precedes what God does. Whatever the superstructure is to be the work must be begun basically with the action of the Spirit. So it is that these scriptures I have read speak of the Spirit, as if the Spirit would say to us that He is here and actively here and on our account. Not on account of the first creation now, He is here in regard of the new creation. He is the Operator in it too, and so in this matter of walking or deportment or whatever it be, as Paul says “my ways as they are in Christ”. His ways would be included. The Corinthians had to learn Paul’s ways as they are in Christ, and the Thessalonians too had to learn Paul’s ways; they had to learn how to walk in the way he taught them.
And now we touch Galatians, another of Paul’s products, who were causing him great agony, for the Spirit of God was affecting him profoundly because of the retrogression of the Galatian assemblies, and because of the truth being affected adversely. The devil had damaged the universe, and he began to damage the assembly even in Paul’s days, and he is damaging it now. I am speaking soberly now, as I am speaking of the big things men have been handling lately in the war. Satan would make much of them, and of what he can do, and move and control, and there is always the danger of the devil finding a way to stir up sedition on the earth against God, which he directs against the assembly and against the scriptures, for that is his fine work. These big matters are rough ones. He does not avoid the big things, but he is concerned, dear brethren, about our little selves, a few of us in this town or that town. I do not think we should ever begin to count up our numbers at all. We can number the assemblies, but not the persons. Keep the number out of sight, because it is a day of small things, but a day of quality. And so the devil would spoil us, our little selves as I was saying, in these little meetings. These meetings are nothing at all in the eyes of the big men of this world, but they are everything in the eyes of heaven just now. I say everything because heaven is engaged with these meetings. They are the very centre of the divine operations. I do not hesitate to say that at all, and it is in order to stimulate us that we might be thoroughly in them, never avoiding them and always understanding that we should make the most of them and to give priority to these meetings because they work out the purpose of God. The defeat of the devil is a great matter which is now in view, and our [p. 239] coming together is to this end. We need to prepare to come together, too, so that we should be together intelligently as persons who know how to walk and how to comport ourselves; how to speak, and how to live with one another; how to love, and so to live, because to love according to God is to live.
“This I say then, walk in the Spirit”. I would extend the idea of walking to what I have said, and you will readily see that it implies how we get on together. It involves the way we meet and come together, because it is important to meet each other, and to greet each other, as the apostle says, “greet one another with a holy kiss”. Holy, affectionate greetings, that is the idea. Then we are to sit down together and deal with the things of God in the solemnity and decorum that becomes us, with due consideration for one another, loving one another, and above all learning to be subject one to another. The most efficient or able of us must learn how to be subject. I may say one’s age ought to give me priority; so it should, but at the same time it does not preclude that an old brother should be subject. Subjection enters into what this passage speaks of, “This I say then, walk in the Spirit”. The Spirit is the greatest governing principle of all walk and ways, the sure guarantee for everything that God requires of us, so that we are pleasing to God. If the Spirit is recognised and we do not grieve the Spirit, we please God. If we grieve the Spirit we do not please God. If we quarrel with one another we do not please God. If we wrangle over things we do not please God, and this would extend to our business affairs, our household affairs, and our family affairs. The Spirit is here ready to serve us, dear brethren, in all these matters, so as to bring about a heavenly condition here on earth, and in spite of the contrariety there is much that pleases God.
[p. 240] I go on to Numbers just for a moment to show how these things work out in the type, and the passage I read serves the purpose. It is a chapter that deals with the encampments of the people because they moved in groups divinely arranged. Divine arrangement marks the whole position, just as it does the physical universe. Arrangement marks it all, it would go to pieces if it did not, and so the moral system is in arrangement; indeed, the allusion to the tabernacle is that it was a pattern of heavenly things. It was a figure, suggestive of the universe, and of what the universe was to God, even His house — the allusion being to “He that built all things is God”. Arrangement marks the universe, and so when Israel was in encampment arrangement marked it and when they decamped and started to move arrangement governed everything, so that heaven is pleased with every move. Six hundred thousand men or more, besides women and children — possibly two million people — arranged in this way, and that in a wilderness where there was no way. God had made the arrangement Himself, and their wisdom and salvation lay in following it. It was the divine way, the way through, and Numbers is to show the encampments and how many there were. It would be interesting to go through and see how many. Chapter 33 speaks of the encampments of Israel. Much history entered into all these encampments in the forty years, and there was much for God, and God’s patience entered into every moment. Now to come to the point that is in the first chapter — which precedes what I am saying — for the first chapter presents the natural order, governed by the order of birth beginning with the firstborn of Israel. There is the firstborn child of the house, and the second-born and we go by this order. The family bible recognises these things, as it were, but then we have to stop sometimes [p. 241] and take account of the sovereign action of God amongst the children. We say ‘This one is going to be a doctor, and the other is going to be so and so’, but then God is showing that He has something to say about these matters. Nature might dictate certain things, but God has something to say, and it is our salvation to see that God has the right to say things in regard of our children, and of what we are going to make of them. So it was in Israel. The first chapter recognises the natural, but the second chapter does not. We have to stop at some time and pass by the natural for the spiritual, otherwise we shall never come into the assembly. The children will never come into the assembly if we go on the line of the natural. The natural man does not understand the things of God, or the Spirit of God, and we have to begin with the Spirit sooner or later if our children are to be safe and if they are to have a place in the assembly, and of course they should, for the children of a christian household are in view of the assembly. Paul would say that, he would tell us constantly that our children are in view of the assembly. That is what he would say and that is what scripture says. So here the second chapter is the spiritual. There were twelve tribes and they were divided into four sets, three each, that is the universal idea. God is saying to us that our children and whatever else, our business, our meetings, whether in Southport or Liverpool or New York, they belong to the moral universe, we are all of one. It is all one matter really with God, and it is going to be that when we get up to heaven, but He is working things out in detail and showing how His love can work them out and how His love can enter into our relations with one another. So He says, Judah is to be first, and you can see how nature would rebel and how the Reubenites would quarrel with that, every Reubenite would quarrel with it. Why should Judah [p. 242] be first? But God says Judah is to be first; he is to lead the first encampment, and every Israelite that quarrels with that will come to grief. God must have his own way amongst us, and so it is here, “Every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard… And on the east side toward the rising of the sun shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah pitch”. That is the best position. There were four positions, but this is the best, the most favourable, and so it says “on the east side toward the rising of the sun shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah pitch throughout their armies”. They are to “pitch” now, then in verse 5 “and those that do pitch next unto him shall be the tribe of Issachar”; Then in verse 9 “These shall first set forth”. That is Judah’s three tribes were the first to move, and to take the journey whatever it might be. God’s choice is to lead, and they had the most favourable position. Then we have Reuben and Ephraim and then Dan, each one in his place, each one representing something, but above all representing the divine order of walk or march. Judah sets out first and anyone attempting to take his place is running across the will of God. We have to learn, dear brethren, in this way to walk together in all matters; recognising one another and each taking the lead, as we are told, in paying honour to the other. Not taking the lead in being first, but in paying honour to the other, so that we are at peace, and free from quarrel. We grow by the true knowledge of God, as we enjoy His presence and as observing His commandments and His order. This is a lovely setting out of things under the eyes of heaven, for the angels are looking on. Even the devil must see it — and hates it — but it is God’s ordering. It is the testimony of God at the present time, and we are to learn to do these things. Think of all we have been through, of all the sorrows and the suffering that [p. 243] we might learn to love one another, and to care for each other, to salute each other rightly. All is to be done in love and in order according to the order that God has prescribed. So that it is Peter and John, not John and Peter. Peter is first, that is the divine order. There is wisdom in that. There is good reason for it, and if there is good reason then we find out what the good reason is and make the most of the divine arrangement, so that love may prevail.