THE LORD COMING INTO OUR CIRCUMSTANCES
[p. 104] THE LORD COMING INTO OUR CIRCUMSTANCES
Genesis 17: 1 - 8; Mark 6: 45 - 56; Luke 24: 36 - 43
In these scriptures I purpose to show by the Lord’s help how God comes into the circumstances of His people. In Genesis 17 He comes in in relation to the age of the believer, and as approving his progress as a believer. In Mark the believers are in circumstances that are testing, but they are in them by the Lord’s appointment, not of their own volition. He comes into these circumstances. In Luke the circumstances are the outcome of light; they are the choice of the believers involved, they are of their own making, and right so far, inasmuch as they are the outcome of light. He comes into these too. Under these three heads I desire to speak, so that we may see the divine interest in us. No doubt these three sets of circumstances would cover most of us, so that I hope every one here will get something.
First as to Abram. He was an old man, but he had made good use of his years, and is approved. He is presented to us as a characteristic believer. He is Abram the believer, and is said to be the father of all believers — a very great distinction, but he is now an old man, although he lived a great many years after this, he had come to the time of life when nature is weakened. God knows that the weaker the nature, the greater the advantage of the work of God in us. So that elder brothers and sisters have a certain advantage in that way, and God knows that and never fails to use it. He never fails to use anything that furthers His work, or that enhances it, so if a brother is advanced in life and consequently nature is weakened — ninety-nine years of age here — God takes account of that, and He comes in to help him at this point, to further what He already approves of. For the principle is “more and more”. Whilst we are down here the [p. 105] education goes on, the work goes on to perfection. God intends to fill His universe with men, meaning persons of full development. There is no suggestion as far as I can see of any growth after we enter on our final state, answering to the counsel of God. Now is the time for growth, and in God’s mind it is “more and more”. Even the apostle Paul says, “Not that I ... am already perfected”. There was still something beyond, and he says to us, “Paul the aged”, being such an one as that. God would help him peculiarly, using his very age; for as I said, the weaker nature is, the greater the advantage of the work of God.
Here we get God appearing to Abram. It is one of several such appearings with which Abram was honoured. We have other interventions of God. In chapter 15 we find God speaking to him by “the word of Jehovah”, it is the first mention of this that we get in the Scriptures, and it means that God intends to make him intelligent. One of the most important things for us is to be made intelligent as to His mind, so God communicates by the word of Jehovah Himself. That is what you get in chapter 15. In chapter 16 Abram fails, but still he is moving on in faith, and has reached the age of ninety-nine years, so what I want to say will bear largely on the older brothers and sisters.
Advancing age should help us, as in Abram’s case. God had in His mind, “walk before me, and be thou perfect”. Paul said, I do not count that I am already perfected, but he was aiming at it. The idea of manhood is conveyed when the senses are fully developed, but there is a fuller thought of perfection involving the apprehension of the heavenly calling (Philippians 3) which corresponds with the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ — the full-grown man. The apostle did not count that he was just up to that, he did not consider that he had apprehended fully what he was apprehended for. Think of what we are apprehended for! Were we really to take it in, it would cause great jubilance of soul.
[p. 106] It is the great thought of God for us, and the apostle aimed at that.
Now God says to Abram, “walk before me, and be thou perfect”. God was entering into covenant with him, “I will make my covenant between me and thee”. A personal link is about to be established between Jehovah and this believer, this favoured man. It is a personal matter. God is usually spoken of in Scripture in the singular, sometimes in the plural, but we know from Scripture that there are three Persons in the Deity. We must bear that in mind, and so here it is a personal matter, the personality, speaking reverently, of God. The thought opens up much. The great possibilities of personal relations with God! Think what is brought into it! “Baptising them to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. That means we have personal relation with Them, with any or all of Them, and in Each we have to do with God. That is what I want you to keep in mind in what I have to say; God comes into the circumstances of His people. Now as to Abram — the name Abram as most of you will know signifies father — “high father”. It signifies moral dignity and elevation. The name Abram carries that with it. It is not cancelled by the new name, but rather carried forward, and added to it is the great thought of increase. Increase on lower ground is pernicious. What has happened in the history of the testimony is increase on lower ground; there has been constant descent in the history of the church, one divine principle or truth after another being given up, because it could not be maintained; so that lawlessness became legalised. The laws governing God’s house and truth generally could not be maintained, and so they were given up legally. Thus men could go on with a good conscience with a spurious christianity. That is a most terrible thing in the history of the church — the gradual setting aside of the great principles and the truth of God because they could not be kept. It is all around us, and God is calling us back to the law and to the testimony. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them”, Isaiah 8: 20. So Abram’s name refers to a high standard of things. He was called out, setting forth typically the principle of our position — “called saints”. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house”. Why is the father’s house not put first? It is carefully stated. It is country first because the patriotic idea is so ingrained in us, and so difficult to eradicate. I am not here to preach anything against the authorities, I am only presenting the truth that our citizenship is in heaven, our commonwealth is in heaven; it includes the idea of politics. The saints of God have politics of their own in heaven. Not simply that they are of heaven, they are in heaven, where we belong according to divine counsel; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our bodies and fashion them like His glorious body.
Abram is called out of his country, kindred, and father’s house, into the land of Canaan. He came into the land of Canaan. He is in it now, according to this chapter, and has this name Abram, which means high father, and yet he has no children. He has Ishmael, but no children according to God, for Isaac is not born. But he is suited now to have increase. He corresponds to the idea in Psalm 113, “He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children”. You must have the housekeeping before the children. The children are to be brought into an orderly house, and hence the mother is joyful. Abram corresponds to that. His name signifies moral elevation, as I said; and God says, I will give you children, a great number of them; you shall be father of a multitude. In saying this God says, I am God Almighty. He has called the universe into existence. He who has raised Christ from the dead by His exceeding power, can give increase in children — spiritually, I mean, but the conditions that God honours [p. 108] in this passage are the conditions that were present with Abram, the moral state of things in his house. How elevated he was as compared with what was current! This is a very loud voice to us who are parents as to how things are in our houses, and in a wider sense, how conditions are in the assembly, whether this moral elevation exists, or whether there is gravitation to the lower levels of religious order, and society. God would say, To increase you there is to increase the confusion; I am to increase you on the high level, on the level of the upper room, and so He says to Abram, “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly”; and Abram fell down before Him — very beautiful! It was the result of the appearing. The appearing signifies some sense in which God intends Himself to be known, as fitting into the particular circumstances. In this case it is God Almighty, but the appearing involves even more than the words. God Himself — in His love — was in the appearing. There was something that Abram saw as well as heard, and now Abram falls down. He is in keeping with this very great occasion; he falls down before Jehovah, and now Jehovah says to him, “It is I” (verse 4). Beautiful! God Himself coming in to talk to His faithful saint — God and Abram. One might ask as to whether brethren are in any way conversant with divine talking, and in a personal way. In the fifteenth chapter, we are told, God spoke in a vision, by the word of Jehovah — not an appearing. That is a question of the word of God, by which He opens up His mind, and leads us into it, but an appearing and conversation following is more personal. This is a personal matter, and it is very apropos to inquire whether we know anything at all about it. God has to say to us. He speaks to His people in this way. The “word of God” is a great general thought, but appearing and saying, “It is I”, and continuing a conversation, on the part of God is most touching.
[p. 109] Think of the blessedness of that! God says, ‘It is I. I want to converse with you and you with Me, I want to be in close relation with you, to enter into covenant with you, and bind Myself to you’. Think of God Himself coming to us in this way! God is not acting on the principle of mediator here. It is God with Abraham, it is a personal matter. How honoured this man was! Is it written for him alone? No, it is written for us, to show us what is open to us and what God is ready to do for us, but it depends on the state of things with us. God is approving the state of things in Abraham’s circumstances here, and He is coming in, in this way, to show what He thinks of a believer who is controlled by and is in keeping with faith. He says, “I am the Almighty God”, and again, “It is I”. He says to Moses, “I AM THAT I AM”; it is the personal thought. God did not say, “It is I” to Adam, or to Enoch, or to Noah; it is to the man called out, the man of faith moving in faith, and approved in that way.
Then God says to him, Your name is to be changed; that means that there is promotion. God comes in for that purpose, the believer is promoted before Him. He says, Your name is to be no longer Abram, but Abraham. God pronounced that name first. I have no doubt that is how spiritual things take form. God pronounces it first as far as we can see, and Abraham is to bear it ever afterwards. He is our great progenitor spiritually, he is called the father of all believers, and thus we are in direct relation to him. You may talk of ancestry, but think of this! The children of Abraham are not those born after the flesh but after the Spirit. We are all the sons of Abraham in that sense, and this is how our great ancestor spiritually was honoured of God, and He has in mind that all the seed are to bear the marks of this great distinction. We are the seed spiritually, the seed of Abraham, and God would intimate to us what a place we have with Him, and how we are brought into covenant with Him. Circumcision is the answer to this on our [p. 110] side. It is a question of the Spirit given consequent upon the death of the Lord Jesus; by whom we disallow the flesh in a practical way. We are thus, as seen here in type, bound up in everlasting covenant with God.
I will now go on to Mark. As I intimated, these circumstances are not the circumstances of the disciples’ own making; the Lord made them, and I may say that is the position of christianity. The circumstances are divinely made; the path of the will of God is never optional, it is always imperative from the divine side. Paul says, “if I do this thing willingly, I have a reward: but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me”. Our position as true believers before God is against our natural wills. That seems a peculiar thing to say, but it really is true. Our natural wills are against our position in subjection to God.
The Lord having fed the multitude says, I will send them away; He then constrains the disciples to go into the ship, and to go over to the other side. He constrains them to do it. Thank God they were constrainable! Some one here may not be constrainable. You come here under constraint, yet it may not go beyond what is merely natural. We thank God you are here, for even if you are unconverted you are in the range of the truth; this meeting is to bring you under divine constraint, and that will militate against your will. These disciples were amenable to the Lord’s constraint, so they went into the ship and crossed the sea to the other side, while the Lord sent the multitude away, and went up to the mountain to pray — an elevated position. Their position is on water level. How great a thought it is that we christians have Jesus interceding for us above! We can say, “such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens”, Hebrews 7: 26.
In the previous verse it says “he ever liveth to make intercession for them” as if He did nothing else. Surely the intercession is to maintain us in moral elevation, to [p. 111] keep us from gravitating to the level of the world, whether religiously or socially.
Now we are told that He was alone on the land, but they on the sea; and they were toiling in rowing, the winds being contrary to them. Satan knew they were in a plight. There was a state of hardness of heart there. This constraint came in immediately after the feeding of the multitude, as if the Lord would say, Surely there would not be doubt in your minds as to Me, you will not have hard hearts now. But they had, and they carried their hard hearts into the boat, and with hard hearts strained at the oars. We are told then that the Lord came into their circumstances — the oars being pulled and tugged, the winds being contrary to them, as if something were working against them. You say, you do not know my circumstances, but the Lord does, and He is not far away — He is interceding for you, that your faith may not fail; He knows all about what you are going through, and He is about to come into those circumstances. I made these circumstances, He would say, and put you in them for a purpose, to test you, to bring out what is in your heart, and I am coming into them. It may be there is someone here like this, in difficult circumstances, and you are complaining of them. The Lord knows that contrary wind, He knows the source and author of it. He knows your weakness, He knows the thing that is directed against you. He knows that the enemy is trying to overwhelm your faith, to make you give up your faith, and He says, I am coming into those circumstances. Are you ready to receive Him? Would you know Him if He came in? I want to bring home to you that in such circumstances we are very apt not to know Him. They did not know Him here. We have a word which signifies a phantom, they thought it was this — an apparition. That is how they understood their Lord. It is a poor thing if that is the kind of thought you have about Jesus as coming into your circumstances. Something to be recoiled from, that is what they thought [p. 112] it was, and yet He was feeding the multitude just a moment before. Here He is now on the sea, but not as they are, He is walking on it: they are in a boat, pulling their oars against the storm and waves. He is walking triumphantly. It is a triumphant Christ. What will He not do? Is there anything He cannot cope with? He has triumphed over every foe, if He comes in now He comes from heaven. He comes in spiritually. It is not a spirit, but a Person, a Man. God manifest in flesh, no less than that. Here they are afraid and are troubled. Is this a phantom? Is it against you? Do you not recognise the well-known form? Did you ever know of a person walking on the water before? Never. It is the Lord Himself — it can be no other, He is walking on the water. But now He made as if He would go past them. This is a most serious matter. There is a voice in this as regards our position; the Lord has come near to you to help you, and things are not just right. You have just seen a gracious miracle by the Lord, the outcome of His compassion — and still your hearts are hardened. He does not deal with externals, but internals. God looks at the heart, and the Lord knew the state of their hearts, and saw the unbelief. He would say, You may be without Me altogether, you are not in a state to receive Me, you do not know Me, you forget Me, and it may be I shall have to go on to others. It is a most serious matter; it applies to individuals as well as to companies of saints. You may be overcome by hard circumstances, but the Lord intends to make something out of you for His service through them. You may be nominally in His service, but ineffective, and He needs effective servants. In the meeting you are not serving as you should. He put you in these circumstances, but you are not hearkening, you are hard, you are complaining. He may have to go past you, and you do not want that. All these thoughts enter into this remarkable scene. But in result, He came up into the ship and the wind fell. Think of the scene — He came into the ship and the wind fell! As soon as the Lord comes into [p. 113] your circumstances, their hardness ceases: the wind falls. One important lesson here is to keep a clear vision. Use what you already know about Christ to discern Him when He comes into your circumstances and do not retain a hard heart. A hard heart may mean that He will pass you by; He has done it to many. They are not amenable to discipline. He made as if He would pass them by, but His love knew the real thing was there, and He came into the ship. As Peter says, in John 21, “thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”. In his first answer Peter used a word meaning conscious knowledge; he appealed to the knowledge Christ had divinely; but finally he referred to the external evidences of his love, and so he used a word denoting objective knowledge — as if to convey to the Lord that He could see that he loved Him. Some little thing was manifest in Peter that the Lord could see, and it was no longer a question of appealing to His divine knowledge. There is some little thing that shows you love Christ and He takes notice of that. When we have a refractory brother to deal with, how refreshing it is when there is some little thing that we can see that shows there is love for Christ. That will spread, and we pray that it may spread, and the spreading of it will mean the dissipation of what has caused the trouble. The Lord came into the ship and they come to the land, and there is a wonderful time. You see how He was recognised on the land, and how they ran everywhere to bring their needs to Him. He has the cure for every ill, even a touch cured people. What a Person He was to them now! You can hardly get a passage greater than this one that speaks of the wonderful works of Christ. He had said, as He appeared to them on the water, “it is I”. He would have you to know it. It is not an apparition, “It is I”, and now they know Him and others know Him, and they bring all their needs to Him. He has a cure for every ill; not only can He silence the storm, but all the diseases that sin has occasioned are dispelled by Him.
[p. 114] Now in the final scripture, it is a position of our own making. It is agreeable to the Lord. The circumstances are of our own making, the outcome of light. God has been gracious, and has given us much light; many of us here have moved in this light, and we have circumstances similar to what is described in these verses. The two disciples from Emmaus came to Jerusalem and they found the eleven and they that were with them gathered together. The assembly is in view here. How we thank God for the light of the assembly! Through grace many move in that light, and there are little meetings in many countries throughout the world, all known to heaven, and the Lord has His eye on them, and visits them constantly. But now the question is whether we are equal to His visit in these circumstances of our own making, and whether there are conditions in keeping with heaven, where the Lord can come in and find a welcome. Why this perturbation? Why not readiness to receive and enjoy and reciprocate the love of this glorious Person? The position for Him here is a little better than in the house of Martha, seen in Luke 10. He was received there, but He was criticised severely, and Mary, who sat at His feet, was criticised too. It was a very uncomfortable state of things. We do not want to make the Lord uncomfortable, so to speak; we may be gathered on the right ground and according to right principles and yet things may not be comfortable, and He has to set them right. Time has to be spent putting things right that ought to be spent in the enjoyment of happy reciprocal affections. The Lord has to spend a good deal of time correcting our state. They came together here intelligently, and the Lord came into their circumstances on account of that. He says, “Peace be unto you”. He did not come in to criticise, He does not imply there was anything wrong. He acts as if all was right, and that He was expecting things to be right, but they were not. He said, “Peace be unto you”, as if they were ready for Him, but they were not. He has to do much to adjust them, so that they may be intelligently [p. 115] restful in His presence. He was in a spiritual condition, but nevertheless as a real Man, and so He says, “it is I myself”. That is the position. It is now clear; and He proceeds further to open up the Scriptures, and to open up their understanding, so that great results follow. Where the Lord comes into our own circumstances, great results follow, there is great hope in it.
The Lord would encourage us to take up this line of things, and see what there is in these last days in the way of divine visitations — divine Persons coming in in a personal way and having to say to us, and we to Them.