“THEY SHEW CLEARLY”
S. McCallum
Hebrews 11: 13–16; Exodus 21: 1–6
These are well-known scriptures and much referred to amongst us, especially Exodus 21
where the Hebrew bondman is a type of the Lord Jesus and His devotion. I want to refer briefly to two expressions in these passages which we all need to be affected by. First in verse 14 of Hebrews 11, “For they who say such things shew clearly that they seek their country”. It is a great matter that things should be shown clearly, that there should be no vagueness as to our part in the testimony, in the great things of God. The second passage is in Exodus 21: 5,
“But if the bondman shall say distinctly, I love my master, my
wife, and my children, I will not go free”. It is a great and important thing that matters should be distinct with us in our committal. We are living in difficult days and in the public body of profession we find many who are marked by a lack of showing clearly where they stand in relation to the great things of God, the things of the testimony, especially in regard to what is heavenly, and also there is a great lack of persons, believers maybe, saying things distinctly.
It is a great thing that there should be clarity in all that we are in our movements and all that we say in our confession of God’s testimony.
These persons in Hebrews are remarkable. Of course, the whole of Hebrews 11 is a marvellous chapter, opening up the world of faith. It is an important thing to understand the world of faith and to be in it as marked by that which marked these persons and their faith.
Hebrews 11: 16 is especially affecting where it says that God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared for them a city.
Dear brethren, we know a great deal of what it is for persons to be ashamed of us and to be ashamed to be linked with us in relation to our God, but it is very comforting and establishing to think that as we are in the path of faith, showing clearly where we belong. God is not ashamed of us to be called our God. That certainly is affecting, when we think of the years that have passed and all that we have gone through and got deliverance from, things in which we were once held, and what it has meant—it may be with some of us the loss of our families—to know that God is not ashamed to be called our God. How affecting that is, dear brethren! What a person Sarah was, for instance; how she paved the way for the incoming of Isaac, typical of Christ. What a
line of things is projected on to our view in Sarah’s faithful stand in relation to Isaac, over against the bondwoman’s son, the casting out of Ishmael making way for Isaac. How great that was in the divine mind. We think of Abraham too, and what is said of him, that he
“obeyed to go out” (Hebrews 11: 8). He is the father of us all, the great progenitor of faith—
of those who are marked by faith—and it says, “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar off and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth”. It is important, dear brethren, that we should be marked by strangership, pilgrims and strangers in a world where we have been socially and morally cast out.
It is a great thing to live as those who really belong to heaven. Our calling is heavenly and it says of these that, “They were strangers and sojourners on the earth. For they who say such things show clearly that they seek their country”. How fine that is! It says, “And if they had called to mind that from whence they went out, they had had opportunity to have returned”.
Surely we do not want to return to a world out of which we have been called—a world that has been judged in the death of Christ. In John 12: 31 the Lord refers to His exit out of this world by way of the cross. He says, “Now is the judgment of this world”. We have often said, and it is well to remember, that whilst the Lord died at the hands of wicked men, cruel hands which had to do with His crucifixion, we must always also remember that the Lord’s exit from the world was judicial. He had judged every principle of the world. He could not fit into the system that the world constituted. It was all dealt with judicially in the death of Christ.
We always need to remember that, and He would have us, as His own followers,
judge in our hearts every feature that had to be judged by Him in going into death, taking His exit judicially out of this world that God was having to say to.
It says, “but now they seek a better”; thank God for the better, dear brethren; it is truly “a better”. More and more, though it may be in outward weakness and smallness numerically, we are realising what this epistle so often speaks about as the ‘better’ things. It is a word that is constantly used in this epistle. It says that they had had opportunity to return, “but now they seek a better, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God”. What a God we have; “this God is our God”. How blessed, how lovely, to think of our God—that God is not ashamed to be called our God. We love to think of what it will be eternally when, as it says in Revelation 21: 3, “God himself shall be with them, their God”. How wonderful to think that now, with all the upheavals in the world and in the public bodies of profession, and the upheavals that we knew so well at one time—how blessed to think that in the area in which we are God is not ashamed to be called our God.
Now I refer to Exodus 21 briefly. What a wonderful type of Christ it is! How distinctly He said, “I love my master, any wife, and my children”. How He loved His God; what God was to Him, and what a place He filled out as a Bondman in complete committal to the will of God, unswerving in His obedience. How distinct He was as He said, “I love ... my wife, and my children”. How blessed these statements are! It is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge; His complete, ardent devotion to God and to the assembly and to the saints—who would be affected by it. May we learn
to take on His spirit and to be marked by something, of His devotion, to have part in grace in the testimony and be able to say things distinctly, without a cloud, without a doubt, without anything that would mar the understanding of our saying distinctly, ‘I love my master, my wife, my children’. That is a full committal to God, to the assembly, and to all that is related to it.
It says his master “shall bring him before the judges, and shall bring him to the door, or to the door-post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl”. The judges and the doorpost are all suggestive of the administrative position. I think we might be affected by this, that as we have brought before us what Christ was, typically in the Hebrew bondman, in full and absolute devotion in love to His God and to the assembly, the whole administrative area is to be affected by this. On Lord’s day morning at the Supper the love of Christ for God and for the assembly is before us. He could say as to that holy vessel of God’s will, His body, “This is my body which is given for you”, Luke 22: 19.
Well, this is just the impression one has had today—one is affected by this matter of clearness of expression, saying distinctly what our love is as bound up in the testimony with others and declaring plainly the country we belong to, which is heavenly.
Word in meeting for ministry, Dorking, 12 October 1976
“THE LIVING, THE LIVING, HE SHALL PRAISE THEE”
A. J. E. Welch
In the bearing of this prophecy upon us we can say that Hezekiah was a man who was caused to experience life. The word had come to him from Jehovah, “Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live”—remarkably expressed, as if to set over against each other the great points of death on the one hand and life on the other. What we had on Lord’s day would give us the great basis of life—the quickening touch of Christ, operating in depth in our affections especially. The concern immediately now is just the measure of answer in life that there may be with each of us. I say each of us, because although the assembly is peculiarly in view, these elements of experience are personal to us, each one.
So we have Hezekiah before us, a king of whom much is said in the historical Scriptures that is to his credit, but what was needful was the experience and power of life. We might be in a path which bears a certain outward commendability; every commendable feature God takes account of; but what might be wanting at any time is the spring of life in the soul, leading to the element of praise—“The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I this day”. That is, the one who writes is not only conveying that there are such persons, but he is conscious of being among them—“as I this day”. One feels what substance it would bring to our
gatherings together if each of us came in the spirit of this, as I this day”. It was the occasion of very deep exercise with Hezekiah, which he goes over item by item in this writing of his, when he had recovered from his sickness; he speaks of Jah in the land of the living (Isaiah 38: 11), getting a fresh view in his soul of God in relation to life.
One feels increasingly, dear brethren, the need of this touch of life, constantly sustained and refreshed in the soul, leading to prosperous conditions in local assemblies, to that delightful sensitiveness to the Spirit which is to be normal in every assembling of the saints. How fundamental this element of life is to prosperity in what is for Christ’s heart in the assembly!
But it has to be entered into on the basis of experience; and that experience in some sense will involve the experience of death. It was very real to Hezekiah to be told, “Thou shalt die, and not live”. It caused him to weep, and God saw his tears, and told him that He saw them.
It is a question, for the little time for which any one of us might remain, how that time shall be expended. Shall we be in the gain of what is really life? In referring to this I am not just dwelling upon the physical thing. It was clearly in view for Hezekiah that the fifteen years’
extension of life that he received should be spent in the gain of the deep exercise that he passed through at this time. How much there is to be known of God Himself in relation to what is living! He is indeed the living God; Christ is the Son of the living God (Matthew 16: 16), and that point relates to the assembly and its building, as if the whole great scope of things before us is related in the divine mind to life.
So Hezekiah says, “Lord, by these things men
live”; he refers back, I take it, to the elements of exercise through which he had passed. That is to say, there are to be no short cuts into the reality and power of life according to God, no lack of searching out according to the exercise that God would pass us through—“by these things men live”. We are brought to acknowledge, I suppose, as to every element of soul exercise through which we consciously pass, and in which we reach an issue, that it tends to life. So let us not be reluctant to go into matters before God, and with God, in the understanding that, in the very process of exercise that He delights to bring about, the tendency will be into life.
The times in which we live are marked by a certain characteristic depth of searching, and God is in that; but out of the searching He will bring great results, and the results shall be in life. We look back upon the searchings in the sense that what God is proceeding with through the searchings is a living order of things; and He would have us in the conscious experience and gain of it. “In all these things is the life of my spirit; and thou hast recovered me, and made me to live”. God had done that. We have to realise that it is God who does it. It is the quickening touch. We think of the quickening side of glory in the several Persons of the Godhead—the way that quickening power is linked with the Father, and with the Son, and with the Spirit. Each is able in some sense to make us to live, as if the whole glory of the Godhead is connected with this realm of life into which God would bring us.
Well, dear brethren, this is a matter more to be gone through in experience than to be spoken about at great length; but this indicates to us, I believe, a certain line which marks the present time, as God
is active to deepen His work in His saints. We have spoken to the Lord tonight about the beginnings of His work in the saints, and the wonderful initial operation of the Spirit in new birth; and God is showing us how things are to be developed, how the beginnings of His work come to fruition, to maturity. How attractive it is when maturity of life is presented under the eye of God in His saints, as the fruit of the experiences by which men are made to live. And the outcome is for God—“The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I this day—the father to the children shall make known thy truth”. That is to say, this matter is to be transmitted through the course of the testimony, showing us the way in which the truth has been prospered amongst the saints.
Then Hezekiah says, “Jehovah was purposed to save me.—And we will play upon my stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of Jehovah”. It leads us to the house of Jehovah, and that with the stringed instruments, a delightful reference to the fruit of discipline, the fruit of pressure, maybe, that comes in upon us—“stringed instruments ... in the house”. You will notice how he expresses it ‘ We will play upon my stringed instruments’.
That is, as each one of us comes into the gain of these things, stringed instruments result which are available to the saints in a general sense, that what is precious to God may find its course for His praise in the assembly. Should we not, dear brethren, be a praising people in these days when the elements of life and power are so much becoming known in the midst of His saints? May there be a portion for Him from it.
Word in meeting for ministry, Helston
13 July 1976