THE TRIBES

^[p. 565] THE TRIBES

We see throughout the Old Testament, and in the New, that the tribes are always in view for faith. Elijah, you remember, built an altar of twelve stones, recognising the twelve tribes. In the Psalms the tribes always come in for affectionate recognition. Jerusalem is a city compacted together; it was divinely regulated, “whither the tribes go up” (Psalm 122:4). One loves to think of the saints in assembly order as before God; the psalmist says that the tribes go up for “a testimony to Israel”, Psalm 122:4. So the apostle Paul speaks of them; he says before Agrippa, “our whole twelve tribes” (Acts 26:7). What a witness! No one can explain how that is, only we see that it is on the principle of faith. James writes, “To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad” James 1:1, for him they were all there. I only speak of it in regard to the assembly, my desire being that we might always have before us the entire assembly, as being under the eye of the Lord. If anyone writes today, he writes as having all the saints on earth in view. Scripture not only speaks of speakers, but also of writers; every scribe is like unto an householder, we read. James writes to the twelve tribes, and so if you write it is not only for the few you know; it is for all. Anything that the Lord gives, He gives for the whole assembly, because His thoughts of the assembly are never narrower than to include every member of it. “The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19); they are not lost in this sense.