COMMITTAL TO THE TESTIMONY OF THE LORD
Mark 3: 9; 4: 1, 35-41; 6: 45-48; 8: 13-21
It is on my mind that in connection with the movements of the saints it is brought home to us that there is one common interest which binds the saints together all over the earth, and that is the greatest possible cheer in making a move. To leave a place where we have been for a long time, and especially to go to a fresh country and to leave our friends and relatives, is not that which appeals to us naturally; but as saints of God, if we are subject to the Lord, there is this great encouragement that, wherever we go in subjection to the Lord, there is the one common interest which binds saints together all the world over, and that is what scripture speaks of as “the testimony of our Lord”. It is that to which as saints the Lord would have us bend all our spiritual energies, it is that to which He would have our lives wholly committed, and, if one may venture to say so, it is as wholly committed to the testimony of our Lord that the spiritual prosperity that was prayed for will be realised. The more perilous the days, the more important the whole-hearted committal to the testimony of our Lord.
Now I have read these scriptures in Mark’s gospel because I believe they suggest certain features of the testimony which perhaps we do well to be reminded of. Pre-eminently among the gospels Mark’s gospel is occupied with the testimony, and what is a remarkable feature of the gospel of Mark is the frequency with which the Lord is seen entering into ships, as though the Lord would remind us that, as connected with His testimony here in a living way, there will be constant and incessant movement until the end. There can be no rest until the Lord comes; there will be nothing but movement and exercise the whole time. And when one enters into a ship one never knows what sort of immediate future is before one, one never knows whether it is to be calm or rough; so it is with the testimony that, as going on with the Lord, you never know exactly what exigency is going to arise.
Now in the first passage I read, He spake to His disciples “that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him”. I believe the Lord would indicate at the outset—because the Lord in this gospel stands as the vessel of the testimony—that the testimony is to be carried on in littleness and in separation from the world around. While the testimony was to have the multitude in view, while the preaching was to go on, as the apostle says in 2 Timothy, that “by me the preaching might be fully known” (chap 4 17)—the testimony is to be sustained, first in life, then in the preaching—at the same time the Lord would indicate that it must be in separation, so He requires a little ship to be at His disposal that He should push off from the multitude—and, beloved, it was a little one. The Lord would have us continually maintained in the sense that the things of God are preserved in the Spirit here in littleness.
So in the next chapter we see the same thing. In verse 1 He enters into a ship and sat in the sea, and it was in that position, separated in that way from the multitude, that He ministered. Now at the end of that chapter we come to what is important. It says, “when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship”. Now, that is of the greatest importance to us if we are to be preserved livingly in the testimony to the end. The Lord is not here personally now, one need not say—it is not a question now, as it was then, of taking the Lord into the ship, but it is a question of taking home to ourselves the present ministry of Christ by the Spirit; for the Lord, though not here personally, is here in testimony by the Spirit, and if we would be preserved livingly in the testimony to the end, it is of great importance that we should constantly be exercised to take the present living ministry of the Spirit with us. So it says they took the Lord as He was in the ship. Then the Lord would recognise the existence of other little ships going along with the ship where He was, yet at the same time they had not the Lord with them; they were with Him but He was not in them. He would take account of them as there, as identified in some measure with Himself and the testimony, but at the same time there was only one ship in which the Lord was just as He was. Beloved, what a serious consideration for us! It should be our constant exercise to be alive to the present ministry of the Spirit and subject to the truth, so that what should characterise us would be that we have the Lord just as He is with us.
Now the storm arises, and the storm seems to be directed against the ship where the Lord is, as one might expect, for there are constant exercises and testings connected with the saints as standing together for the truth of God, but what the disciples learn in this incident is that the Lord is undisturbed by what goes on around. It might seem as though He was taking no notice, but He was there undisturbed. Well for us if we so know the Lord that we can go quietly on, despite the exercises and opposition which the enemy from time to time raises, in the sense that the Lord knows all about it, and though not outwardly intervening, He has complete power to deal with it at any moment. In the sense that the Lord has only to rise and speak a word and every opposition and difficulty disappears, the saints of God can go on quietly if committed to the testimony, committed to the truth and subject to it, knowing that nothing can overthrow the testimony.
So in the next incident, in chapter 6, we find the Lord again commands His disciples. It says, “straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship”. It is remarkable how constantly the Lord enjoins upon His disciples to get into a ship, as though, as one was saying, the Lord would remind us that from first to last it is a case of constant exercise and constant movement. But here we get another feature, not that the Lord was with them in it, but that He was up in the mountain praying, and that He saw them toiling in rowing. This is a precious feature for every one whose heart is engaged with the testimony of the Lord, a precious feature for the saints as bound together with the testimony of the Lord, that the Lord is on high praying, and that He sees the toiling in rowing. He could come down and walk upon the water, but we see Him as on high praying, and He takes account of their toiling in rowing.
Now we come to the passage in chapter 8. He left them, and entering into the ship again departed to the other side. “Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf”, and the Lord takes occasion to charge them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. As has been well said by another, we may be apart positionally from what is contrary to God, from what may be suggested by the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, that which would introduce religious flesh in some way or other, or dependence on the principles of the world, yet bring the leaven of it into that position where we are. So the Lord charges them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod. He would remind them that if they have one loaf, which is suggestive of Himself, that is all they require. The one thing the saints require is to have Christ carried livingly in their affections to the end, as the apostle in writing to the Colossians reminds us, in whom “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”.
The Lord is greater than the greatest mind amongst men; He is greater than the greatest civil power amongst men; and if the saints have the Lord carried in power in their hearts, there is no circumstance for which the Lord will not be sufficient. So the Lord reminds them of how He had fed five thousand and how He had fed the four thousand, in which He had demonstrate His ability to meet every circumstance that might arise; and reminding them, He would say, “How is it that ye do not understand?” So the Lord would encourage us in the sense that there is nothing else to be committed to like the testimony of the Lord in this world, and if we are prepared to be committed to it wholly, as exercised to receive and give place to the living ministry of the Spirit, and preserved through grace in fidelity to the Lord, we shall find He is abundantly sufficient for every exigency that may arise in connection with it. It is not that any one of us can claim much in the way of faithfulness, but one is often touched by the word of the apostle Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, that he said certain things as having received mercy of the Lord to be faithful. Every heart that loves the Lord desires to be faithful, and if the heart desires to be faithful, we can, I believe, count on mercy from the Lord to enable us to be so.
STREATHAM
17 July 1929
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT
Exodus 15: 22-27; 16: 5, 22-26
I have the desire, dear brethren, to continue a little on the line of movement—spiritual movement—which we had before us last week, and we may just remind ourselves of what we were saying then, that the great incentive to movement on the part of God’s people is to get first of all an impression of what God is towards us in the blessedness of His thoughts. I suppose there can be nothing more impressive, if we take time to think it over soberly, than to get the sense that God has been pleased in His own sovereignty to mark us out beforehand in past eternity for sonship; as the epistle to the Ephesians tells us, He has chosen us in Christ “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love”, chap 1: 4. Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ having the Holy Spirit can take that up, that that is God’s mind in regard of His saints. You cannot explain it in any other way than that God is what He is, that it has pleased Him to do it; our part, dear brethren, is to receive it in deepening thankfulness of heart and mind, and in increasing humility, for I doubt if anything will humble us more than to get really in the presence of the greatness of divine thoughts concerning us. And God having those thoughts, beloved, having formed them in His own mind and heart, He will most assuredly bring His people to them. You may rest assured of that, that what God set Himself to do He will do, and if His love has embraced us, as it has (I am speaking on the assumption that all here are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ), He will bring us to these great thoughts.
But then, when it comes to a question of our being brought into them, what we had before us last week raised the question as to how we are found when God begins to move in regard of us, and we noticed that, in the type in the twelfth chapter of Exodus, the people of God who had been in His mind for a long time (I do not say that they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, but they were the subjects of promises that were made four hundred and thirty years before) were found in bondage in Egypt, and not only so, but themselves serving idols, as we may read in the twentieth chapter of Ezekiel. We do not exactly get that in Exodus, but we see it clearly in Ezekiel that that was their condition as in Egypt. Hence we can appreciate that a great deal of movement, so to speak, was necessary on the part of God’s chosen people if they were actually to be brought into the thoughts of God concerning them. And so it is with every one of us, that when God was pleased in His grace to move in regard of us in view of bringing us by the glad tidings into these wonderful thoughts which His love has formed regarding us, He found us in greater or less degree in bondage to the world and its thoughts and principles and ideas and ways, far from Himself. The grace made known in the gospel reached our hearts and from that moment, rightly, normally, a certain spiritual movement begins with each one, and we were seeing last week that the secret of moving out of Egypt lay, not only in the appreciation of God’s thoughts, which must come first (when God sent Moses into Egypt and told the people, through him, that He was “I am”, and that He was going to stand true to the promises He had made four hundred and thirty years before, the people worshipped, it says), but there was something else needed to set them in actual movement, and that was furnished by feeding on the lamb roast with fire. That is to say, that our souls have to be continually maintained in the sense that if we are to be brought out for God’s pleasure, it necessitated that Christ Himself should bear the judgment of God that must otherwise have fallen on us. And the feeding on the lamb roast with fire was what set the people in movement; it furnished them with a stimulus to move out of Egypt into a system of things in which alone they could be pleasing to God. And accompanying the roast lamb was the unleavened bread; that was the necessary, the indispensable, one might say, the inevitable, accompaniment of feeding on the lamb roast with fire. That is to say, that if our souls really do feed on the fact that Christ has had to endure the judgment of God against sin, against every form of self-will and self-pleasing, if we were to be brought out for the pleasure of God, it must result, dear brethren, in self-judgment being wrought in our souls.
We come to appreciate Christ in this way, and it is under the influence of His love that we do this, for God never brings us to things in a hard, legal way, but all the truth of God, I believe, is apprehended and made good in the soul under some appreciation of Christ and His love and His glory. The initial presentation that was to become effective in making the people of God move out is that wonderful presentation of Christ content to come in and endure the judgment of God that must otherwise have fallen on us. As we weigh these things in the presence of God and our souls feed on them, we come to recognise what we could never recognise otherwise, how terrible every movement of our own wills, of pride, and all such things, is in the sight of God. The Spirit will lend Himself to the support of these exercises, and the love of Christ becomes the power in our souls for us to come to a judgment with God of all that God has had thus to judge in the death of His Son. And that results in our feeding on the unleavened bread. Chapter 12 says that it became an ordinance that they were to keep the feast of unleavened bread throughout all their generations. Bear with me when I emphasise that, as I would emphasise it for myself; we can never get away from the necessity of the feast of unleavened bread whatever position we are in, in the home, in business, in the assembly, whether we are babes, young men or fathers—we can never get away from the necessity of keeping the feast of unleavened bread, it is an ordinance for ever.
Now what we have read brings us to a statute and ordinance of which I want to speak this evening. The idea of a statute is something that is obligatory upon us, and obligatory in a permanent way. A statute is more than a commandment, it means that the thing has been put on the statute book, something that is permanently binding upon us; and an ordinance, I believe, carries with it the thought that there is a kind of moral rightness about the statute; it is not arbitrary. So just as the feast of unleavened bread became an ordinance, we come here to another ordinance. Moses brought the people to the Red Sea. They had not only come out of Egypt, but they had had the wonderful experience of seeing all their enemies dead on the seashore, and in the gain of that they had sung to the Lord, “Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”. They had been exulting in their God. It must have been very precious to God to have His people at that moment exulting in Him; and I believe every one of us has known something of that at some time or other. When the light of God has come to our souls and we see the way that every accusation of the enemy has been met, when we get settled peace with God and see that God has undertaken everything for us from beginning to end, I believe every one of us has known something of this spirit of exulting in our God. And not only that, but the desire to be for Him. The people said, “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God and I will prepare him an habitation”—that was the language of their hearts at that moment, that in the sense of all that God was towards them, they wanted to be for Him, and it is a right Christian sentiment, if I may so express it, that we should want to be for God and for the Lord. As the apostle says, “Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price”, 1 Cor 6: 19, 20. You come to recognise that, as being redeemed, you belong to God, you belong to the Lord, involving that henceforth we are here for the will of God.
Now that has to be translated into actual experience, and what do we find? It says, “They went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter”. Now there is an experience of bitterness. You remember that in Egypt, as feeding on the roast lamb, one of the accompaniments of that feeding was bitter herbs. The truth of God, you see, dear brethren, always involves a measure of bitterness; we must be prepared for that, because the great end that the love of God has in view is that we should be “holy and without blame before him in love”. He has chosen us in Christ with that in view, and that means a journey in soul, so to speak, from Adam to Christ, and that journey can only be undertaken by way of death. Death in some form or other has always to be learnt, and learnt continually in the experience of the believer, if he is to pass over from the condition of things he has been connected with to find great and present enjoyment in the things of God. So there is always this element of bitterness, and I think this experience of the waters of Marah is just the experience we come to when we realise that henceforth as redeemed we are here for the will of Another. We learn that that involves practically the setting aside of our will, we learn that the will of God for us does not always involve that which is pleasant for us naturally, and the tendency is to do as these people did, and that is, murmur. How is it going to be met? There was no other water for them to drink but Marah; God did not remove those waters and substitute others; that was not His way of meeting the situation, but He has a way of making the waters sweet. And I would suggest to the youngest here, that you may have it before you as something that the Lord will help you in, that in the power of the Spirit you may prove the real sweetness of going on day by day as content to be subject to the will of God; you will find there is a sweetness in it provided you take God’s way. The principle of obedience is an essential one if there is to be any spiritual movement and prosperity. So it says, as it should read, “Jehovah shewed him wood” (JND Trans); it is not exactly the thought of the cross as a tree might suggest, and as one of our hymns suggests; it is rather the thought of wood, and wood in scripture is constantly a type of the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And you see, dear brethren, how this exercise on the part of the people of God was met typically was by a fresh presentation of Christ; Christ in a new light was brought before the souls of the people, not as suffering under judgment for their sins, but as here as man in holy obedience to the will of God in every detail of His pathway. I know nothing more encouraging to the soul than to get the sense that every fresh test that arises will be met by God by the presentation of Christ in some fresh way. The books of Exodus and Numbers are interesting in that; Moses does not know exactly the way in which a difficulty will be met; God shews him fresh things as the need arises.
So we are encouraged to wait on God Himself, and we shall find that fresh exercises as they arise are met freshly by fresh presentations of Himself. So it says, “Jehovah shewed him wood”; what a wonderful thing for our hearts, beloved, that the Lord Jesus has been here in the very same conditions, sin apart, in which you and I have to move, to that He has really come within our range. Think of a Christian child; as he reads the gospel of Luke he finds that it is recorded of Jesus as a boy of twelve years old that He was subject to His parents. Think of that, think of a child of twelve finding that the question of subjection to his parents is testing to him, that he or she has a will that is contrary to the will of the parent, and the Spirit can point that child to the wonderful fact for us to contemplate that the One who has made heaven and earth was content to come here in human form, content to be a child, and in that form has set out the principle of obedience to His parents. So every circumstance as it arises becomes an occasion for our hearts to feed on Christ. You will find that the waters become sweet. Instead of finding it irksome to have your own will set aside, you find that the path of obedience, of realising that the will of God is better than your will, is gradually appreciated as sweet, for in every step of it you can see the shining of the holy obedience of Christ. One speaks reverently: think of Jesus working as a carpenter! Think of the daily routine of a carpenter’s shop! Do we find our daily work irksome? What a thing for our souls to remember that our Lord Jesus Christ has been here as a carpenter, working patiently as a carpenter. Not only coming into humble circumstances so that they said, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” but actually Himself fulfilling the ordinary routine of those circumstances, sin apart. Matthew records that they said of Him, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” for Matthew’s gospel is occupied right through with the thought of the son; but Mark’s gospel records that they said of Him, “Is not this the carpenter?’’
So one might enlarge, dear brethren, on the wonderful obedience in the ordinary circumstances of life of our Lord Jesus Christ. I say again that whatever tests arise for us in our pathway here according to the will of God, if we are prepared to accept the principle of obedience as that which is to govern us, we shall find food for our souls in the appreciation of Christ. Think of the language of Psalm 16, how the Lord there in spirit said, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”. Was there a suggestion there of comparing His circumstances with others or of discontent as to them? He says, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”. All that Jehovah was to Him was sufficient for Him, sufficient in the exercises and in the routine of the carpenter’s shop, sufficient in conditions in which He had not where to lay His head. What a lustre is thrown on the ordinary details of daily life according to what God may have appointed for each one of us. Instead of coming under the power of a spirit of murmuring and discontent by which the saints of God often get overcome by the exigencies of the wilderness, here is a path we may take, that of recognising that the simple path for a believer is that of simple, happy obedience to that which the will of God has marked out for him. If God has committed Himself in past eternity to take us up for sonship, how can we doubt that His love in its absoluteness is behind all that His wisdom ordains for us. And if we do not doubt His love, we shall find it easier, especially as having Christ as food, to accept whatever His will appoints. Murmuring is but an outward evidence of disobedience of spirit; but what a path of victory for us if, instead of murmuring, we find day by day that we have in the wonderful life of our Lord Jesus Christ here that which we can embrace as shedding a wonderful light on the great principle of obedience.
In the first chapter of Peter the apostle addresses the saints as “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”; in that way he would bring us, so to speak, into line with Ephesians. He reminds us that God foreknew us in past eternity; but what were we elected to according to Peter? Peter is not occupied with the fact that we are elect for sonship. Peter’s view is that we were “elect according to the foreknowledge of God ... unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. God has found in the wonderful obedience of Jesus Christ in His pathway here a feature of such excellence in His sight that He has elected us according to His foreknowledge to set out that wonderful feature in our life here—“elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father ... unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. I suppose the sprinkling of the blood refers to the blood of the covenant, the wonderful fact that in the death of Christ, the covenant expressing all that God is towards us in unmixed blessing, is sealed irrevocably.
But not only the sprinkling of the blood, but we are elect according to the obedience of Jesus Christ. So “there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight ... I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians”. Wonderful promise for us, beloved, that if we are only prepared to accept this principle of obedience, this principle of accepting what God ordains for us as His will without murmuring, finding strength for it as feeding on Christ, we shall find ourselves prospered; we shall find ourselves infinitely better off than the worldling who may think himself free to do what he likes and have a good time, but as a matter of fact he only brings himself in for some trouble, and that continually. But the believer who is content to go on in this way will find himself immune from the diseases that are laid on the Egyptians. But it is a statute and an ordinance, remember that. Obedience is a moral necessity; any one who has children knows that. Any one who has children knows that a child who is obedient is happy, but a disobedient child is never happy. The parents’ affection can never be enjoyed by a child who is disobedient. Everyone recognises that obedience is a moral necessity in any family; how much more so in the family of God! In every test that may come upon you, you find that the Lord in the grace in which He came into manhood has been in those circumstances according to and with God, and has set out in its shining excellence the wonderfulness of obedience. Now this is set out as a divine principle, and if you embrace it you are making movement in your soul; the distance between your soul and the features of Adam is becoming greater, your soul is growing in the appreciation of Christ. I quite agree that Exodus does not exactly give us the experimental side of it; for that we have to go to the book of Numbers, and there you will find what answers to our own secret exercises with God when we begin to find as we set our faces in this direction what the flesh is in all its terribleness, and it may cost us a good deal before we reach in soul experience the final answer to these things. But Exodus sets the thing before us as light to be embraced, and if it is embraced, we shall find the power of the Holy Spirit and of the Lord to support us.
Now this presentation having been embraced, we see how we are to be sustained, so the manna was given as food; and there are just two things in connection with the manna I want to press upon you; one is, that it was given daily and had to be gathered daily; and the other is that the constant gathering of it for six days led them to the sabbath, which is rest. The result of constantly gathering the manna, of feeding on and appropriating Christ in the lowly grace in which He was down here and in which He touched every circumstance of daily life, is that you come to real rest of soul, and a wonderful thing that is, beloved, in a world of increasing unrest where there is so much that tends to irritate, that tends to disturb the mind and the spirit. Wonderful thing if it is possible for us, as it is, to reach in our own experience rest of mind and rest of heart, and that is what feeding continually on the manna results in. But first of all it was daily. It speaks, I believe, of the heavenly grace, the wonderful heavenly touch, the lowly grace, in which the Lord Jesus was found in the circumstances of ordinary life here committed to a path of obedience, happy and glad in it, His language being, “I delight to do thy will, O my God”.
The second chapter of Philippians sets Him before us in a wonderful way, that He “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”. That is one great stage, so to speak, in the down-stooping grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; and now, what does it say? “Being found in fashion as a man”, that is to say, having come into that condition, “he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”. The force of that expression, “unto death”, is not that it was simply one obedience expressed in death; the force of it is that He became obedient as the great governing principle of His life here as having become a man, and that principle of obedience continued through everything right down to death, and that the death of the cross. And in every feature of life down to that He set out that principle of obedience in all its blessedness.
And now He is available as food. It says, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day”. The idea is the daily need; not a vast supply that will last us for a month, but the daily need. You see, dear brethren, the intention of God is that we should learn dependence, that it should be a daily matter with us and that we should come to it that day by day we get a fresh impression of Christ, and that it should be borne in on us that Christ is indispensable to us. It may be with us at the outset a question as to how we shall get through, and as Christ comes before us, we are strengthened for the day, and that is what it is intended to do. But when the day comes to a close what is left is the impression of Christ you have gained, and think of a believer having ten or twenty or thirty years made up of days like this! Think what impressions of Christ will be gathered up. A very small impression of Christ will go a long way if our soul feed on it; but think of the possibilities of it. Even if we have only ten years; think of three thousand six hundred and fifty impressions of Christ! Think of the possibilities of our days, dear brethren, think of what it may lead to if we give ourselves to this! Think of how it will bind our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as making us sufficient for every exigency of the pathway. Think of the testimony of a feeble people here superior to all the exigencies of the pathway, moving here in the power of the Spirit and maintained in their souls in the apprehension of Christ.
Then they come to the seventh day. That is why I read those verses in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, because the Lord presents Himself in those well-known verses as one to whom we may come if we are burdened, if we are weary and heavy laden, One to whom we may come and “learn from me” (JND Trans); He presents Himself in that way as One from whom we may learn. We all know the circumstances in which He was speaking; the cities in which He had done many· of His mighty works had turned against Him, had rejected Him, and how did He meet it? That is the question which is raised. How is He going to meet it? It says in this gospel that, “He answered and said”. Luke’s gospel presents it a little differently, because the setting is different; but in this gospel He “answered and said”, it is the answer He gives to the test. “He answered and said, I thank thee”—no murmuring, no spirit of complaining when things went against Him, He turns to God the Father—“I thank thee”. And He comes to this—“For so it seemed good in thy sight”. Beloved, how it will remove a great many of the difficulties we come up against, how it would remove a great deal of the irritation we are subject to, if we exercised ourselves in that way to accept things from the hands of God, and nobody else. “So it seemed good in thy sight”. If it is what God has ordained for us, let us exercise ourselves to go through it with God. “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight”. I think those words are marvellous! It was sufficient for the Lord, it was good in the Father’s sight, and that was sufficient; and now the Lord says, “ Come unto me “; He says, “‘Learn from me”; He says, “Take my yoke upon you”; as though to say, ‘You come along with Me under My. yoke: if you move this way you will find rest for your souls. There is that present in Christ for our hearts to appreciate and appropriate, and as we give ourselves to it we shall find rest for our souls, we shall find it possible to move on in our ordinary life here in restfulness.
The secret of restfulness, the secret of victory, is that we know the blessed God, and knowing Him, we accept everything from Him in the spirit of confidence and obedience, and we are strengthened as having Christ in that way brought before us for our soul’s appreciation. As we move in this way, we shall not be overcome in our wilderness path, we shall find we are moving more and more in our souls from that which once marked us, and we shall be available to God for His testimony. But that is another subject. I would commend this passage to you that we may not forget that the principle of obedience is a statute and an ordinance laid down for us, and in the exercises of our pathway here we may find in them occasion for our souls to be enriched in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
PECKHAM
21st November 1930
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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