LOVE

^[p. 318] LOVE

2 Samuel 12: 24, 25; Matthew 3: 17; 1 John 3: 1

I am venturing to speak about love. It is not introduced formally in the Scriptures as early as might have been expected. It is connected with Abraham; it is connected with Isaac; it is connected with Jacob. Significantly, it begins with Abraham, representing the Father, the Source of all, as we have been singing. Jehovah says to him, “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac”, Genesis 22:2. Then we find it with Isaac; he was said to have loved Rebecca. And we find it with Jacob in intensity; the character of Jacob’s love for Rachel was intense; the very existence of it shortened the time of his experience. So that, in that threefold witness of Genesis, we have love introduced as active.

Static love is hardly to be counted, for true love is ever active. So it is introduced among the family of God in an active way, and the intent is that it should be there for ever, increasing as it goes. We are reminded of it today in this gathering, affording scope for the Spirit of God to stimulate love; without any element of boastfulness one may say that the brethren do love one another. These special gatherings are intended to be peculiarly well-springs for us. The enemy would defeat the purpose. The more spiritual we are, the more we shall be conscious, as drawing near the time of these occasions, that the enemy is active and would rob us of our portion, diverting our minds to other things or irritating us; whatever it would be that would best hinder such occasions, Satan did not fail to present himself with the sons of God as coming up before Jehovah; Job 1 and 2. “There was a day”, it says twice over. It is literally a definite article, “the day”, as if there were fixed periods even then in which sons ^[p. 319] of God came up to appear before Jehovah. Satan also came. That is a solemn reminder of Satan’s activities in regard of what is before us to spoil the well-springs. However long he detained Jehovah in the conversation about Job, there would be a certain diversion. The sons of God normally would be engaged with positive things, and that is important in these gatherings. There is a time for everything and the care meeting is a time in which to take up negative matters. The Lord would be with us there. But normally the sons of God are occupied with positive things. We have a note in Job that “all the sons of God shouted for joy”. It is a characteristic of the sons of God, christians who are so designated are led normally by the Spirit of God. They are the possessors of joy in the Holy Spirit. So, in these holy convocations positive things are the order of the day. Positive things, not whisperings or back-bitings or even investigations. The time is too valuable; we are to be engaged with positive things and that implies that love is operative, love among ourselves.

Well now, as I said, this is a great matter, that this threefold testimony as to love in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came in among the family of God, and the thing is to continue. It comes out in Moses; it comes out in David particularly; his name means ‘beloved’. And so it is with Solomon’s name; his second name, but the name that should be written in golden letters for eternity, is that Jehovah loved him. A greater name than that of Solomon is Jedidiah, only mentioned once in the scripture, as far as I know. What it means is many times found in the Scriptures. But Jedidiah is to be outstanding. Its very solitariness makes it outstanding, the name derived from the immediate expression of divine love.

Jehovah loved him. He loved a new-born babe. David named him immediately, no doubt having in mind the message through Nathan as to him, that he ^[p. 320] should be a man of peace. His name is Solomon. He named him Solomon. The man of war himself found a convenient outlet, for the moment at least, from the realm of war into the realm of peace. Solomon was the guarantee for that, that there was to be an outlet from war. War was not to be forever. Neither in heaven nor on earth is war to be for ever. It is not strange to heaven any more than it is to us. The greatest of all battles, I suppose, is that between Michael and the devil in heaven, and Michael prevailed. How long the battle lasted we are not told, but Michael prevailed; that is the thought. And the devil is cast out, never again to have footing there. The Lord Himself takes up the battle later in the book of Revelation; He comes out of heaven riding upon a white horse, and the army that was in heaven after Him, following Him also on white horses. They are not battling up there; the battle is to be down here then. The generals are taken first, not the soldiers in outposts, but the generals themselves, two great representations of sin, the dual embodiment of sin with Satan behind them — a terrible trio of sin. They are cast alive into the lake of fire. That is the end of them. They will not see death as ordinary men; they are not given to the fowls of heaven as food, as the other battalions behind them; they are cast alive into the lake of fire. That is to say, the combination of evil fully developed, and marshalled against the Lord Jesus is met and defeated and destroyed — cast into the lake of fire. It was prepared for the kings; that is, the embodiment of sin; heaven would be peculiarly exultant in the embodiment of sin among men being consigned there. Satan would be allowed to continue in prison for one thousand years, and then be let loose again to attack the city, the beloved city, and then fire comes down from heaven and destroys the armies and he is consigned himself to his eternal doom. These are very striking ^[p. 321] matters, dear brethren, at the present time, and love is behind all this activity. You may not think it is love, but it is. The lake of fire is a necessity of love. The consignment of the false prophet and the beast is a necessity of love; the consignment of the devil is a necessity of love; the whole realm of creation is to be cleared. Not that they are annihilated, but they remain, a testimony to how love abominates sin as fully developed.

So returning to David, he found an outlet in his son. He is a type of Christ. Solomon is Christ; the outlet is in Christ. And so he called his name Solomon, an outlet for him for the moment — peace. One can understand that a great military man would be thankful for the opportunity of having recourse to the company of Solomon from the very outset. How quickly David associated him with himself! He modified David even on the throne. David began to say a great deal about love, about the service of God, about the outgoings of the hearts of the saints Godward as he had Solomon by his side on the throne. Thus Solomon bearing his second name, or really his first name, Jedidiah, would ever be the reminder that peace and love were associated in his person. David thus had this outlet, and I want you to understand that this is no theoretical matter; our outlet from the present sorrow, as from all sorrows, is in Christ. He is the outlet; hence the necessity of getting near Him.

Now I wanted to speak about Nathan and his part in this name. How David discerned that Jehovah loved him is not stated, but David himself was a spiritual man. He was a prophet; he had just lost the other son in the government of God. The son died; David’s heart had been wrenched. God was preparing him for the positive in the death of the first son, and David says finally: “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me”. David discerned and ^[p. 322] accepted and owned that he was not the centre of things. He was a warrior and he had no thought of his son returning into a realm of war. And so we have a Solomon who replaces him, an outlet from the realm of war, an outlet into the realm of love, into the realm of peace, where building is the order of the day, where the house of God is prominent, where the priests of God are prominent, the levites of God, the thousands of those who love Him, are prominent. That is the door opened in the birth of Solomon. Well may we understand therefore that Jehovah loved him. And it was no immediate matter, no local matter. It was a prophetic matter, and David understood that. My use of the word ‘prophetic’ here is because it applies peculiarly; it is directing our hearts on to the future. I know in myself, I am altogether too local both as to time and place; the prophetic ministry is to direct us to the future; it directs us to God and brings God to us, but all that with an eye to the future, that we are moving on. And Nathan represents a sort of ever-present prophet; he belonged to David. He belonged to the regime of David, as I may call it, as it is today the regime of the Lord Jesus, and the prophet is there. The whole scene is governed in a departmental way. That is what comes out in David’s ministry, departmental ministry, and amongst the departments is the prophetic department. It is to serve all the others, and primarily the family, the immediate family of the king. So we find Nathan here occupied with the babe. I am thankful for every babe amongst us — I say ‘amongst us’, for that is where they are. They come under prophetic ministry; they are not to be treated lightly. They are potentially great and that is what prophetic ministry implies; not only what is immediate, but what is potential, what great things are ahead for us; every prophet is engaged in enlarging the brethren in what is ahead and preparing ^[p. 323] them for that greatness. This clothes the prophetic meetings with peculiar importance, that we have prophets. Nathan represents the family prophet, and one does not wish to be anything else — not a military prophet but a family prophet; that is, a man of love, a man that will always be regarded as a gift. You say, A gift in the sense that he can preach? No, that is not the meaning of Nathan; the meaning of Nathan is that he is given in the sense of enlargement of the family, the family of David. The first mention we have of him is in regard to David’s desire to build a house for Jehovah. David inquired and challenged himself as to living in better circumstances than Jehovah lived in. He says, “I dwell in a house of cedars”. Nathan was there; the first mention of Nathan was in that connection. He says to David,”Go, do all that is in thy heart”. It is a heart matter, but then the matter was somewhat changed, and in the change David is instructed about the family, about the greater than himself, the man of whom God said, He is going to be My son. He is yours, but he is going to be My son. It is a prophetic matter, whatever we may think of our babes, and of course we sometimes make altogether too much of them; that is, we connect them with ourselves, but the prophet will not connect them with you; the prophet will connect them with God, and that is a much greater thing. I would rather have my child connected with God than with myself. Of course he is connected with myself, but the prophet takes him away from me and places him in relation to God. That is a fine thing. You know how in Elijah’s time there was a child sick in the house of the woman of Sarepta. The boy got sick in spite of the prophet being there. It looked as if he were going to die. That is, the presence of the prophet in itself will not save a child; prophetic ministry is necessary, and the prophetic ministry will detach the child from the bosom of the mother. That is where the ^[p. 324] difficulty lies; it is in the natural links between the parents and the children which allow too much latitude. So the boy is taken out of the bosom of the mother and carried up and laid on the bed of the prophet. He is detached from the natural and hence he is saved from death by the prophetic ministry, by the prophetic service.

So now, as we come to Solomon, David appropriates him at once. He appropriated the other child, and lay all night on the earth until the child died. God struck him, alluding governmentally to David’s course, David’s conduct. He accepted it; he arose from the earth when he heard about it, and he changed his clothes and went into the house of the Lord. How pleased God was with him! And then we have Solomon. Is he going to treat Solomon this way?

I have got a son of peace now. What is he going to be? He is going to be a wonderful man. Is David calculating in that way? David says, I love that child. Well, dear brethren, let us give God the preference, and that is what a baptism of a family means. I give God the preference. He loves the children more than I do; He has given each of the children a spirit, which I could not give them. It is God’s action, and the spirit is what is to abide eternally. He is the Father of spirits. Well, God puts in His claim in the most positive and blessed way. He says He loves him. What more favour could He put on a child than to love him? What is behind that love? All that God could give him! He loved that child. We have very little about Solomon afterwards until he goes on to the throne, but he was loved all the time by Jehovah. The child is called Jedidiah, ‘beloved of Jehovah’. What a fine name for a child! And the prophetic ministry is here to stamp that name indelibly on that family. It will never be erased from the family, because he is the object of the Father’s love, supremely so. It is Jesus.

^[p. 325] I go on to Matthew to bring out the fact: “This is my beloved Son”, God says. As regards the opening of the heavens it is said, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him”, chapter 3: 16. That was for the Lord Himself. There are things that are for each of us — secrets. A christian has very little value who has not a secret with God, things that He says to you Himself.

‘Called by that secret name
Of undisclosed delight
(Blest answer to reproach and Shame),
Graved on the stone of white’. (79:4)

That is secrecy, and the Lord had this precious joy of something for Himself. It was opened to Him, and the dove came upon Him, but others are to know by heaven’s voice: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. Others are to know it. We have therefore the development of Jedidiah; the existence de facto of love in the family; not simply in God’s heart, nor in Christ towards us by the Spirit, but the actual existence of love coming in through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but really coming in through the death of Jesus, for it says here, “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us”, 1 John 3: 16. It is thus we know it, but then it is not only attested in that way, but we know it in the Lord, as the Babe prophetically. Let us talk as we may about love, but really we come to know it prophetically. You may say, Well, I do not understand that, but it is so. Prophecy is a special provision of God to make us know things, to force them on our heart, to write them on our hearts, that they are there indelibly. That is the point of prophecy. It is a gift in those who prophesy, of course, but Nathan was a gift, not simply because he had ability, but because God would have David and David’s family to know that God loved that family ^[p. 326] and so would give him such a man as Nathan. He was engaged solely with David’s house. He helped in the kingdom. We cannot say what he did or did not do, but what Scripture designates of him is that he was occupied with David’s family. He was a gift to David. You may say, How does that work? Well, take for instance the passage read in 1 John 3 “^[p. 329] See what love the Father has given to us”. That is the meaning of Nathan; the thing is bestowed upon David and his family. And what about ourselves?

“See what love the Father has given to us”. He has given us love. You may say, He has shown it to us, but He has given it to us. How is it being given? Well, it is worked out that way: “that we should be called the children of God”. It is a prophetic idea, that the divine mind as regards us is that we should be called the children of God. But then the love is given. Let us take it down; let us appropriate it. God has given us something: “that we should be called ...”. Who is calling us the children of God? I quite admit that the word ‘called’ is not oracular as it is in Acts 11. We are called christians in an oracular sense; that is, God would have it, as it were, that everyone should know that we are christians. They were called christians. Christians are those who take on the character of Christ as over against all sectarianism; the disciples had been regarded as the Jewish sect, but they are not a Jewish sect. God would have it different. They are called christians and the word ‘called’ is oracular; it is God’s mind that they should be called christians; it is no accident. Well, it is not the same word here, but the same idea, that we are called children of God. You can see how the link runs through these three passages, first in the babe, in Jedidiah, and then in Jesus — “Thou shalt call his name Jesus”, and then again, “the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God”, Luke 1: 35: not ‘is

Son of God’. Many enforce this idea that He was that already, but that is not the way the Scripture puts it. He “shall be called” that; it means He is that, as born a Man here, and the testimony of it is there, that it is palpably so. The disciples saw it. They saw His glory, “a glory as of an only-begotten with a father”. And so it is here at the banks of the Jordan; John and those with him there would hear that voice: “This is my beloved Son”. What would they say about Him? He is to be called that. Every lover of God would say, I will call Him that. Have we learnt to call Him that? Has the light of God come into our souls, so that we call Him that? It is not simply because Scripture says that, but I see that that is His name, that that is what He is. I call Him that.

So it is that the Spirit of God takes up a man like John who loved the Lord, or better than that, whom the Lord loved specially. How precious is the thought, to be loved specially! John is loved specially, and he is the one who is taken up to say so much about the Son of God. John the baptist said, according to John, “I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God”, John 1: 34. That is the One he baptised. Did he hear the voice? Undoubtedly. But then he heard more than that. He says, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding on him, he it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God”. It is what He does. It is the concrete matter that is in mind. He is called Son of God, and so we are called christians for some good reason. The disciples at Antioch had been in the school of Barnabas and Paul for a year, and they are called something that surely is testified in them, that they are christians. They are taking character from Christ, not from Judaism or Presbyterianism or any ‘ism’. That is the force of the word ‘called’ there, that God would ^[p. 328] have it so. We are to be marked off from all sectarianism, taking character from Christ. The same thing applies to the Son of God, “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God”, Romans 8: 14. That is what was said of Jesus after it was announced that He was Son of God. “Then Jesus was carried up into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted of the devil”: He was led by the Spirit “in the wilderness” in Luke, not’into‘it, but “in the wilderness” for the whole forty days. He was led by the Spirit. Thus we see the marking off, the leading, as of sons. And so as to children. The Lord Jesus is not called a child of God in the sense in which we are His children. He is called a Child in Matthew, a Babe in Luke, but He is not called one of the children of God. He is the Son. God from the very start says this, “Thou art my Son; I this day have begotten thee”, Psalm 2: 7. It is to be known. He is marked off in this way. So it is that John the baptist says that this is the Son of God; He baptises with the Holy Spirit. But he heard the Father’s voice, too. He was there, and the voice was, “This is my beloved Son”. It is a question of love. I can understand, dear brethren, how that would thrill the lovers of God at the banks of the Jordan. I wonder how much we know about being thrilled with heavenly things, with heavenly reports, with heavenly witnesses. God began to speak of it in the wilderness at Sinai. In Genesis He says very little about love; there are only two or three references to love in Genesis, but in Exodus God says, “thousands of them that love me” (chapter 20: 6)not that ‘ought to love Me’, but “that love me”. It has a peculiar application at the present time, for surely there are thousands who love God. John takes it up, as I said, as specially loved by the Lord Jesus. He was taught by the love that Christ expended on him — “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. He is qualified to speak of love. And so it is that he says here:

“See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God”. That “see”, I suppose, is an expression of feeling — another thing that is very scarce among us — genuine spiritual feeling.

“See what love the Father has given to us”. It is a gift; it is not simply a development; it is a gift, for love is of God. If we have it at all it is His gift to us, taking form in us, so that we can love; we can love like Him. So Paul says to the Thessalonian saints — they were beloved saints — “to the assembly of Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. That meant that the Father loved that assembly. They were in His heart and so the apostle says to them, I do not need to speak to you about love, because you are taught of God to love one another. They were in the divine school and the main subject of that school is to teach love. It is the one abiding thing. “And now abide faith, hope, love; these three things; and the greater of these is love”, 1 Corinthians 13: 13. Faith and hope cease; love abides and God teaches us love, and in teaching us love He says, I give it to you, because He is the Source of it. It is not developed in us as a nature exactly. God is the Source of it. It does develop in us, of course, but God is the Source of it; it is a gift and we are called the children of God.

So, dear brethren, let us take it to heart, as in the valley of Baca, to make it a well-spring. What is it but coming together in love? — love among ourselves, for the brethren. You love to look at their faces, and they love to look at yours. We are glad to meet each other; we are not in a hurry to leave each other; it is a bond for eternity; a bond of love, attested through the death of Jesus, indicated in the name we are called down here, “children of God” — up there sons of God, down here children of God. “For this reason the world knows us not, because it knew him not”. Let us be content. We are not the great people ^[p. 330] of the world. We read of the seven thousand names of men slain. We are not among them, thank God!

That means the great people of this world. Men are making names all over the world. Let us be content to be at the tribunal, and say we are lovers of Jesus. We are of no account; we are in the way in the eyes of many. We can thank God indeed for the generosity of the governments. God is in that, too, but we are not aspiring to be among the names of men. We are unknown here, unknown and yet well known, for the children of God have more influence in this world than any others — a powerful influence. It is there, permeating secretly but invincibly, permeating conditions and affecting what I may call restraint of evil, and the opening up of the ways of God.