THINGS THAT ARE TO BE FOLLOWED
[p. 467] THINGS THAT ARE TO BE FOLLOWED
1 Corinthians 12:31; 1 Corinthians 13: 1 - 13; 1 Corinthians 14:1
In what I have read I am thinking of what is to be followed in the sense of qualities or things; not exactly of persons. Much is said of things in almost a personal sense, and even love, of which I have read, is spoken of thus. God has furnished many things that are to be followed. We read of inanimate things too and how nature itself speaks to us and teaches us. We had it already today, and my mind came across the realm of truth and I decided that I would speak about things that are to be followed. We have in the second epistle to Timothy a peculiar group of things in this sense; the setting or arrangement of them is evidently according to the need as seen at that time in the assembly. We have a similar arrangement of things in the Corinthian epistle. 2 Timothy as addressed to a man is more personal, and obviously the list of things which begins with righteousness has in mind a condition that had to be met and remedied at that time. God has His own way; we might say a medical way, for God has placed all the medicines that are used; He has created them and placed them for use. And so 2 Timothy, which is the one I am touching on for the moment, contains this most important group that might well be made the subject of a discourse; one item after the other. But clearly the object would be to furnish believers with what they needed in 2 Timothy days. We often use those words, and we have spoken today, some of us, of Jeshurun. It refers to uprightness and covers the idea of righteousness. It covers more in a sense, but it certainly covers the idea of righteousness. And so it is that Moses sets out this idea. He is said to have been the meekest man in [p. 468] all the earth; that was a remarkable tribute paid to him by Jehovah. But it was not simply meekness. He had meekness in a peculiar way, but he had righteousness, and I hardly know of anything more important, only the discernment of the minister, whoever he may be; and of one it is said. “Blessed be thy discernment”, meaning that such a one would have discernment as to the knowledge of things and as to the application of them.
And so Timothy is a young man representative of the many that are now in the field of service. There are a good many both in this continent and elsewhere, especially in the British Isles and in Australia. I will come to that presently, because it is what I have in mind; but there are a great number of ministers, qualified ministers, and the epistle to the Corinthians has them in mind, but the epistle to Timothy has them in mind particularly, because of young men. In one of the chapters allusion is made to kindling things; kindling gift. It evidently already had become dormant and it was a sorrowful thing that a man like Timothy should have to be told to stir up his gift. Of course, we all like gift; we all like the thought of it and the use of it too, but 1 Corinthians rather arranges the matter differently. This epistle contemplates the great use of gifts; so much so that persons who know have been sometimes obliged to think that the dear brethren at Corinth were making toys of their gifts, just as children would make toys of certain things. Persons at Corinth seemed to so regard their abilities. In fact, the chapter contemplates from the use of words that that was just the case. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I reasoned as a child; when l became a man, I had done with what belonged to the child”, 1 Corinthians 13: 11. You can see how sometimes young people gather up their toys they have on their beds and [p. 469] put them away. One would be glad to see them put away for ever. You will understand I am not endeavouring to whip the young people here or the children, but only that God has in mind in this epistle and the next one that the saints at Corinth should be no longer babes. Time was when it was quite right and legitimate to be a babe, but to continue as such is wrong and has to be remedied; and the best remedy to use is the one Paul describes. You cannot improve on his methods. They are the methods of the Spirit of God.
So if we want to get young people to come into manhood, we have to teach them to put away childish things. I have not time really, but I should not mind at all if I were asked to give a list of the things that I would call childish things, but I forbear. I can allude to Timothy as a model young man who would serve an elder and serve him well and have no idea of displacing him or replacing him, but serving with him as Elisha served with his master Elijah. He served well and Elijah served well, and Elisha learned from Elijah. He was not slow and did not hesitate to use the very phrases, the very figures that Elijah used: we ought to be ready to do that. Language is of God. Man makes it to some extent but it is of God, and of course it is for all. The use of language is a most important ability. We can hardly serve in the Lord’s work unless we know something of it. So Timothy was taught by Paul and was rebuked by him: “Stir up the gift” Paul says. He also says in his letter to the Colossians, “Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, to the end that thou fulfil it”, Colossians 4: 17. So that if people are still on their knees or take their case in the services, when something is needed, then the Spirit of God will rebuke it because a gift is not given for nothing. It is given to be used. So [p. 470] it was that Timothy was taught in what was said to him in the second letter, particularly how to correct himself. Maybe you think me a little harsh to refer to a great servant, because he was that, but it is that he needed to be stirred up and to be corrected. So it is that the many of us who are now in the field in the service need correction, and we should not hesitate if we get it, if it comes as needed. It is a matter to be thankful for, because we are to correct each other; we are told to admonish one another.
Well now, the letters to Corinth afford a fine field for my subject, because of the use which the saints there were making of gifts. Paul has recourse to beautiful language in this last verse of chapter 12: “But desire earnestly the greater gifts, and yet shew I unto you a way of more surpassing excellence”. It is one of the best phrases in the epistle; you could hardly get a better anywhere: “a way of more surpassing excellence”. If anyone has a gift or is usable in the Lord’s service, he does well to study it, and see if he has part in this way. The apostle stops then and takes up the way he has in his mind, which is chapter 13. It is there he unfolds this way of surpassing excellence. He comes down to the last verse of chapter 13 and comes on to chapter 14 and he says, “Follow after love”. He had been suggesting that they might be following after other things, but he had the one thing particularly in his mind, that the servant is to learn how to follow after this great commodity which I may call love. The Lord speaks of it in that same way. He says, “if ye have love amongst yourselves” (John 13: 35); that is to say, it is to be in yourself. It belongs to the saints; it cannot be carved out into quantities or squares, or held in vessels in that sense. It is to be among us; it is in heaven. It is among the angels, I believe. It will be among all [p. 471] of us in full measure. There will be nothing else in a way, because love is the very life of heaven, and the most remarkable thing is that God is love. It never says that love is God. Some would say that, but it is not so. God is more than love. Years ago certain were saying that eternal life was Christ, but the truth is that Christ was eternal life. Christ is more than eternal life. God is more than eternal life. You cannot make a quality cover everything that is God. But still, God is love.
And so this chapter is taken up by the apostle and made the theme for the moment. I may say the apostle segregates the truth in the most skilful way - most wonderful are the verses running through this epistle - especially when it comes to the direct teaching of the assembly. Chapter 12 is worked out from chapter 11; but chapter 12 is worked out as the great matter of the assembly and the body of Christ. The assembly is the great theme of it, and in speaking of it the apostle seems to have stopped at the end of chapter 12, as if to say, I must make full room for this way of more surpassing excellence. I love that verse. I have already alluded to it. It is a way of more surpassing excellence. It is a most wonderful phrase and worthy of being left for the moment to shine in its glory, for that is what it is. We can look at it, go around it, and see how it does shine. And so he leaves it; and yet he does not leave it because he begins to delineate the thing in chapter 13, and it begins thus: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”; you can see how he changes his thoughts from chapter 12 to chapter 13. He says, “if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal”. Now I might say he is becoming contemptuous because he is alluding to persons who are not Christians and who would make toys of the truth, as [p. 472] I was saying. I venture to say it is contempt. The person endeavouring to show himself and speak with tongues of men and of angels and who has not love is become as sounding brass and a clanging cymbal. You can see the depth of the fall from that glorious verse in the end of the previous chapter, and how it may apply even to a person, maybe, in the ministry. Let us, for instance, suggest Judas, because he was in the ministry; he was numbered among the apostles. He was regarded as a gift and was a gift, such as is spoken of here. Hence the contempt: “I am become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal”. I am sure there is not a person here who would like to be classified in that way. I am certain there is not. And yet there are those who are no better. The so-called ministry is dumped in that way abroad in the sects. Men go to school and college and take the highest orders and yet you find them shining up their classics; shining them up to make what they have got shine. I do not mean shining the books or making much of the books, but ‘I know something about those books’. Well, that is what Paul means here. The very designation he uses earlier alludes to this. You may have ten thousand instructors and not many fathers. You may say, ‘well, were there ever as many as that?’ Are there not now? In the three hundred millions of Protestants how many ministers there are, how many of the clergy; and then the other sects. How numerous they are! It is a regular trade. So that the apostle says they make a trade of the word of God. I am not doing that, but how easily we can do it. I am not saying anyone here is doing that; I am just parading the truth, as it were, before us just for a moment so that we may see how Paul - as someone has said -shows a picture on the wall, if you can understand that figure; it means that in the Corinthians love was not there. It was there really, but it [p. 473] was not shining; it was covered over by other things. There was rivalry. Love was vanishing. That was the situation, and that was how the whole structure was laid in these two epistles, to reinstate everything so that the brethren in Corinth should be really the assembly of God in Christ Jesus. Abstractly they were that too, but the point was to get them to be that really. And hence he touches this chapter in that remarkable way. And so he goes on to say, “And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”. One has said you could hardly be less than nothing. That is what the most instructed Greek scholar or the most renowned cleric is if he is not converted. That is what Paul means. I am nothing; if I am converted I am something. But I can have these things that he describes here and be nothing. And then he goes on, “And if I shall dole out all my goods in food, and if I deliver up my body that I may be burned, but have not love, I profit nothing”. I need not comment on these ‘nothings’, these negative thoughts, because they are there. They are here before our eyes and we have read them and I am speaking of them now from my own soul to get a touch as to these things and to seek to discern if in any way I am defective in the service, because the service is entitled to the very best there is, heaven’s best, and heaven is ready to give us its very best in view of the ministry.
And so: “And if I shall dole out all my goods in food, and if I deliver up my body that I may be burned, but have not love, I profit nothing”. And then we get the positive side: “Love has long patience”. Now you see the glory shining. You say, It is a mere abstract thing you are dealing with. No, I am dealing with things that can only be in persons. It is not in dogs nor in cows, properly speaking,
[p. 474] nor in stones nor in clay, nor in anything of that kind. It is in persons. It is the most precious of things. It can only be housed, as it were, in converted persons. I believe that is what is meant by the Samaritan woman we have so often spoken of. She had a conversation with the Lord and she was very ignorant at first, but she gradually grew and grew, and she says of the Lord, ‘He is a prophet’. She would say that over and over again if people did not understand her. ‘He is a prophet’; she had come to that, and moreover, she says. “Is not he the Christ?” She had grown into the thing and she was the vessel of it. That is what I wanted to just touch on. She was a vessel. We have spoken of it elsewhere. This very epistle enlarges on this idea of vessels. I have spoken before of Belshazzar’s feast; he used one thousand cups of gold; they were called vessels. They were desecrated; they were profaned. That is what we have to be on our guard against, as we had today; so this epistle or rather the second epistle treats of vessels. In the Lord’s supper we have vessels. We have carrying vessels such as the pitcher of water. There was undoubtedly the man who carried it figuratively. He must be a valuable man. He was carrying a pitcher of water and the brethren were to follow him and go into the house that he went into. What he did with the water is not stated here, but there can be no doubt it was used. It was carried by that man for a purpose. And so, later on as the Lord introduces His supper -in fact, before-others laid out the vessels that were needed for the passover. There were vessels and I believe it can be shown that they were used. In those days when the Lord was here on the earth there were certain vessels used and certain wine poured into them. The passover, you understand, was the feast that was before them as the Lord was about to institute His supper. The passover was [p. 475] first and it had certain vessels. Then the Lord’s supper came and it had a vessel that is called a cup. I am just touching on the idea of vessels.
And so it is that the woman of Samaria had touched on things. The Lord touched on things in speaking to her. He touched on drinking. She says, ‘The well is deep and you have nothing to draw with’. But then the Lord was not speaking of that well. He had some other things in His mind, and that is what I have in my mind. We are all vessels. If we are converted we are constituted vessels for the Lord’s use; sanctified and meet for the Lord’s use and prepared unto every good work. That is the idea. This epistle has that in mind, as I said. It touches on the Lord’s supper and it touches on these vessels; but now I am speaking of the woman of Samaria, how her mind turned around from the waterpot which she had. She had a waterpot; she carried it from that city to the place where the well was. Her mind was changed even while He was conversing with her, and she got into her mind the idea that her own body was the vessel. That was the idea. It shows us how we are here to learn; we learn from another. Every one of us ought to be a teacher, and I might say, every one of us a learner. The very oldest of us has to learn something. In a person’s last breath, perhaps, something is learned as the Lord takes him. We all have to keep on learning or we will get rusty and forget what we have learned; forget that we have been purged from our former sins. Forgetfulness is a terrible thing if it is allowed to wear into us.
So the woman’s mind was changed in that sense and she said, “Is not he the Christ?” She had left her waterpot. We have often spoken of that; she left it, meaning it was not usable for living water. I wonder if the brethren here, listening to me, have understanding. Pardon me for suggesting that you [p. 476] have not; but it is possible that you have not. The living water is a usable thing and it is to be held in vessels and you are to be one of them. You are to drink it first and then use it for others. It springs up into everlasting life. “The water which I shall give him shall become in him”, not in the waterpot, but in herself, in her own person, “a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. She goes off to the men and is ready to preach to them. That is the kind of a preacher; she is the one; not that I would say she had a gift although women have gifts. They have now, no doubt, and they had in the beginning. She went to the men; that has often been commented upon too. She had to do with them before, but now she approaches them in a legitimate and holy way. She can converse with, and talk to, and even reason with the men. If there is any one here who is not a Christian, then I am saying to you, ‘That is the idea you want to get into your soul, that you should be a converted person and be a vessel, and God will be ready to use you and will use you eternally’. In fact, all the vessels the Lord has are hung upon Christ. You and myself, if we are not thrown in promiscuously or kept in cupboards, are ourselves the vessels, living persons. That is what Paul is here. He now comes down to the positive side of the matter in verse 4: “Love has long patience, is kind”. How easy it is to drink from a person who is ready to give you to drink with a spirit like this. “Love is not emulous of others; love is not insolent and rash, is not puffed up, does not behave in an unseemly manner, does not seek what is its own, is not quickly provoked, does not impute evil, does not rejoice at iniquity but rejoices with the truth”. With it; even if another has more of it than you, you are with it. The truth is the truth; you rejoice with it: “Bears all things”. A young man came to me last night and was very difficult to deal with;
[p. 477] he was not ready to suffer. No; he was not ready to suffer even from his father. No, he was not at all. He would do something else. It says here, “Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”. That is this thing, this wonderful thing called love, for charity is not a fit word for it; it is not equal for it. The word ‘love’ is the thing. Love is of God and God is love, and so it is that the Christian as converted, as born again and having the Spirit has part in it. The Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in your heart and in my heart. That is one of His particular offices in His lowly way of serving us down here, to pour out the love of God into our hearts, shed it abroad; ‘abroad’ is the word; to shed abroad the love of God in our hearts. I have already described a person who is not subject in his father’s house, not subject among the brethren. He is not ready to bear anything. No, he is not. But this quality is seen here abstractly, and it says, “does not behave in an unseemly manner, does not seek what is its own, is not quickly provoked, does not impute evil, does not rejoice at iniquity but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”, that means that all things are to be believed. We are not suspicious. We are ready for testimony from honest people, and so we believe all things in that sense and hope all things, and we endure all things. What a time for endurance it is! “Love never fails”. Never. One has often said that, and I feel it to be right to say it now. It never fails.
I go on now to the verse in chapter 14. “Follow after love, and be emulous of spiritual manifestations, but rather that ye may prophesy”. The apostle is able to say this word in chapter 14 because of the last verse of chapter 12. Now I am free to say what I have in my mind. I have gone [p. 478] through chapter 13, and I want you all to go through it too. Get the thing into your souls. That is what Paul would say, and when you do you will be glad to listen to me saying about the gift you have, because I do not want to enlarge on the gift you have until you get this wonderful thing called love. I would say just for a moment that in the types, that is to say, in Exodus, we have the allusion to love in chapter 21. A certain man there called a Hebrew servant appears and Jehovah speaks of him through Moses, and when the man says, “I love my master” — the word was that the man could go out free under certain circumstances. But he says, I have a master; I have a wife and I have children. “I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free”. I am going to stay and exercise this wonderful thing called love. My master will get the benefit of it; my children will get the benefit of it, and my wife will get the benefit of it. And then what you find is that in the book of Exodus, when that is attested, when that man has said, I love ... I love ... I love ... , the idea permeates the whole book. He has so said it and the Spirit of God has put it into his heart, so that it permeates the whole book, and hence the Spirit of God comes back again to the idea of priesthood. It had been already mentioned. Aaron was a prophet. There was need for priests, but there were young men that are just called priests. They are just youths, young people. They were to do the work of priests; but Aaron and his sons were not called priests yet. But this young man, this man called a servant, a Hebrew servant, meaning a slave, had learned the word ‘love’. He had learned how to use it; he enjoyed it. He had good times with his master and with his wife and with his children, and he says, I am not going to give up these good times. I am going to continue in love.
[p. 479] I love my master and wife and children and I am not going to give up the enjoyment I have had all this time. And so it is that God said, Well, if that be so, if someone can say all this, then I can call my servants ‘priests’ because they are going to serve me and I expect them to serve me in love. God does not expect us to serve merely to preach on the platform. He has come back now to the idea of the service of the gifts, whatever they be. They are to be used; heaven has given them, but this wonderful word ‘love’ is now become current. It is a current word and well understood, and Jehovah says, Now I have priests. Aaron is Moses’ brother; “Aaron, thy brother”; the idea of brother implies love. Aaron has four sons, and they also are priests, and they all are to serve Jehovah in the service of priests; not simply in the service but in the service of priests. The word ‘priests’ must be used, and that word can be used. The man can be adorned because of what it is. It is expressive of service, but service in love. That is my message now. It is that, as I said, we may learn, all of us, to look at this wonderful word and this lesson in 1 Corinthians 13, and see how the operations began. It is after we get this lesson that we get the full thought of operation. In chapter 14 the apostle comes back to his thought of the gift. Desire it, he says. Get the very best you can get. Be sure and get prophecy if you can. Work it; operate it. Therefore he describes a meeting in Corinth and a certain one comes in, he says, and he is a simple person; he has no pretension to be anything and perhaps he is not converted, but he comes into the Christian assembly, and they have been learning. They are not tinkling cymbals any more. They are real gifts and gifts exercised in power, and Paul says, Now I will give you an example of the operation of love. If a man comes into your assembly [p. 480] and you are having a meeting and the gifts are all operating; they know what scriptures to use; they know how to look at the brethren; their countenances shine, and there is ministry. There are addresses given and are all edifying. And this man that comes in falls down and worships God. Paul says, That is what I mean. But the gift that you are to follow is to be exercised in love. When you are on the platform it is to be used in love, not in rivalry. All is love. The idea, I believe, of these two epistles, especially of this one, is that the saints are together in love. “By love serve one another”. So every man is to be presented perfect in Christ Jesus and love is the bond of perfectness. May God grant it to us.