RESTORATION

^[p. 41] RESTORATION

Hosea 6: 1 - 3; Isaiah 38: 9 - 20

Restoration is in view. We find in meeting the responsibility of the church a want of energy, energy of affection that there might be a response. Two days refer to the period of the Lord’s ministry, the third day is resurrection. Pentecost corresponds morally. They were on resurrection ground. They were living in His sight, many try to live out of His sight. One should be exercised that the response of his heart is ever God-ward; God looks for energy of life. In Romans 6 we reckon ourselves among the living. God has torn and only He can heal. He may use certain instrumentalities to humble us, but only He can heal us. The knowledge of God in a soul is the only thing that can save us at such a time. David bowed under the hand of God. Whether He binds up or tears, it is to one end, that the living might praise Him. Discipline is to the end that we might come to the house of the Lord as worshippers. The effect of Christ’s ministry before His death was revival but not life; the third day is life; we are quickened in our affections that we may live before God. God is our refuge and resource. If He has done it, it is that He might have us before Him in life, that we might have power, not only to live here, but to respond to God’s love. Romans shows us how our state is met consistently with God’s righteousness. Colossians is the third day, resurrection, we are raised by faith, quickened together, living in God’s sight, you are conscious of it.

We should be more concerned about what God sees than what the brethren see. In Mark 11: 11 the Lord came into the temple, and looked around; He inspects. He came into the temple, but He did not stay there. He went out to Bethany. He surveys all christendom, but He does not stay there. In Mark 3 he looked around on His brethren. He sees christians wherever they are, but ^[p. 42] He stayed in the circle. They would have Him come outside, but He answered them saying “Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother”. It was God’s will for them at that time to sit around Him and hear Him! He is always ‘looking around’. He has a right to it, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten”. A true christian may be so thoroughly asleep that he is no different from the dead. “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light”, “Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord”, Hosea 6: 3. Paul’s doctrine would lead one on to know the Lord. Rain is ministry, refreshment. Christian blessedness lies in two things — the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.

Isaiah 38 is “What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul”. Bitterness of soul is Marah, self-judgment, remembering what the flesh is, it is a bitter thing. “O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit”; his discipline was not for wrong-doing, but to bring about life. We must be living to answer to a living God. He is thinking of God, and says, “For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee”. God would get no praise from the grave, but “The living, the living, he shall praise thee”. God’s discipline was to the end that He might be praised by the living — “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple”, Psalm 27: 4. It is not enough to desire, one must resolve; resolution is stronger than desire. One may know what it is to go on in communion with the Lord but lose ^[p. 43] it; in such a case one may be “torn” of the Lord and left for awhile.

Isaiah 38: 20 — The house of the Lord is a moral thought, “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever”. The house of God is the circle of the saints recognizing what is according to God. Singing on the stringed instruments would be in the meeting — He touches the hearts of the saints and there is vibration. The father shall make known the truth to the children like Paul to Timothy. Faithful men like Hezekiah reached a higher plane than Job or Jacob. He sang to the stringed instruments in the house of the Lord. You look for freshness every time you come to the meeting. The Lord touches the stringed instruments. We want to be available to the Lord — that should be our exercise.