THE END IN VIEW IN SEPARATION
One is impressed, dear brethren, with the thought in these scriptures of the need of continual watchfulness, and that it is to be a night and day matter. The scripture in Isaiah speaks of day and night; in Acts 20 it speaks of night and day; in Mark 13 it speaks of evening, midnight, cock-crow and morning. So that the whole time is to be filled out with this active element of watching.
Now the scripture in Isaiah is very encouraging; it says, “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, Jerusalem”. So the walls are there. It is not like the condition of things at the beginning of the book of Nehemiah when the walls were all destroyed or burnt. Here it is contemplated that the walls are there, and that is very much what the ministry of recent years, and especially in most recent times, has had in view, that the walls should be rebuilt if necessary, and strengthened and maintained. The principle of separation to God is being more and more enforced, and enforced not simply as a principle, but as something that is to be worked out in a practical way, and it is in the working out of the principle in a practical way that many exercises and difficulties arise. Many brethren are greatly tested in their faith and tried by the exercises that arise in answering to the truth, and there is great need with us all of entering sympathetically into their exercises and feelings, not in any sense to weaken the truth, but to see how far it is possible for us to help them. But then the scripture says here that the walls are there. That is a great matter, and there may be just a danger of our being so much occupied with the walls and the necessity for them (and nothing can exceed the importance of them, as Mr Darby said in his day, separation from evil is God’s principle of unity, and that is always to be maintained), that we fail to realise what the walls are there for. They are there for the protection and maintenance of all that is proper to the assembly. That is what is in mind.
Separation is not an end in itself; it has in mind that the conditions should be provided and maintained in which all that is proper to the assembly, and all the glory of the service of God as God intends it to be exercised, should be secured. And that raises the question as to how much in fact we are able to participate in the service of God in liberty in the Spirit, and in spiritual intelligence and right feelings. I am not suggesting that it is not present amongst us; I am sure it is; but what one feels for oneself and for many of the brethren is that it could be greatly enriched. There is room for improvement, and I believe we could well have our exercises directed a little more to finding out what the thoughts of God are concerning the assembly, and what readiness there is in the heart of Christ and what power there is in the Spirit to help us into these things, so that the service of God should be really enriched and should be maintained amongst us continually, week after week, in freshness and increasing substance.
And so this scripture says, “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, Jerusalem; all the day and all the night they shall never hold their peace: ye that put Jehovah in remembrance, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth”. The divine thoughts regarding the assembly have been brought to us and now God is to be given no rest; in our exercises, individually and assembly-wise too, there is to be no rest given to God until He has really brought in in a substantial way in those available to Him all the riches of His thoughts regarding the assembly. So if we will give ourselves to reading the epistle to the Ephesians, for instance, we shall get an impression of what God has in mind for the assembly. How glorious His thoughts are! It says, “to the praise of the glory of his grace”. How much do we know of the glory of God’s grace? How much do we know of the glory and reality of sonship? I am not suggesting that we do not; I am sure we know something of it, but there is certainly room for great increase, great increase in power and liberty and substance in these things. While we have to take up and face all the exercises as to separation, and they are often very acute and test us, at the same time we need to see we are not overwhelmed by them, but have liberty of spirit to pursue the great thoughts of God and seek that we might be enlarged in our apprehension of Christ in relation to God’s thoughts for the assembly. So we read in Ephesians of the glory of His grace, God having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to Himself and our being taken into favour in the Beloved, and then of the riches of His grace in that redemption in the Beloved is enjoyed, the forgiveness of offences. All these things are real; they are there; they are known by us in some degree. Then it goes on to speak of our becoming intelligent in the thoughts of God, because a feature of sonship is not only affection and liberty, but also intelligence, that we might enter intelligently into all that God has in mind to bring to pass, to head up all things in the Christ. And then that we have received an inheritance in Christ, so that we are brought in. How much do we know and enjoy these things? I believe there would be far more substance in our service Godward if we were enriched in the understanding of all that is opened up to us in the epistle to the Ephesians. Paul was so concerned about it that he tells us he bowed his knees to the Father and he prayed that the Father would strengthen us with might by His Spirit in the inner man that the Christ might dwell in our hearts, that we might be fully able to apprehend with all the saints the vast extent of divine glory and that we might be filled even to all the fulness of God. Do we pray on these lines? It is a question of God making Jerusalem a praise on the earth. It is His work, I agree, but then we have to co-operate with Him. We have to come into line with the direction in which God is working and see that our own exercises move on the lines on which He is working. So the culmination of what is for the glory of God and His praise is reached on the lines of the exercises that Paul sets out in himself, of praying to the Father that the saints might be strengthened by the Father’s Spirit. What possibilities there are as the Father’s Spirit is operating in our hearts! He can bring into our hearts what the Father thinks of Christ and give us the Father’s view of the whole system of glory, the many families. How much enrichment there would be in the souls of the brethren if we were exercised to pray on the lines of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3, so that as a result our Jerusalem might become a praise on the earth, that all that God has in mind for the assembly might be actually found amongst us in a substantial way, to the praise of His glory.
But then I had in mind the scripture in Acts, and I want to draw attention first of all to the fact that Paul reminds them that he had announced to them all the counsel of God. That is, he had in mind that the assembly at Ephesus should answer to the divine thought; it should not be made up of persons who have limited intelligence or undeveloped affections or only a small appreciation of the Christ, but he had declared to them all the counsel of God. He intended that at Ephesus they should really be set up in all the wealth of God’s thoughts and should in some degree answer to them. In the light of that he charges those who were elders—and I suppose in the spirit of it we may all take it on, even if we are not elders—to take heed to themselves first, “and to all the flock, wherein the Holy Spirit has set you as overseers, to shepherd the assembly of God”. We have had before us the thought of laying down our lives for the brethren, and this really includes shepherding. There is no service so self-sacrificing as shepherding, but then the saints are to be shepherded in the light that they are “the assembly of God, which he has purchased with the blood of his own.” We are to be imbued with the sense of what the assembly is to God and the price He has paid for it, and our service to it is to be carried on in the light of the way God regards His assembly and the value He attaches to it. And so he says, “Wherefore watch, remembering that for three years, night and day”. We have in Isaiah day and night—give God no rest day and night. Here he says “for three years, night and day, I ceased not admonishing each one of you with tears. And now I commit you to God”. That is to say, in Isaiah we are called upon to cry to God that He would work, but then He does it through His servants, through the ministry He gives, through the service of love amongst the saints. He operates through the saints, and we are to see we are co-operating with Him in this great matter of building up the saints so that they really have an inheritance among the sanctified.
Now in Mark the Lord is stressing the need for watchmen and there is a special word for the doorkeeper. I think the thought in the doorkeeper here is not so much what we often connect with the idea of doorkeeping, that is, keeping out all that should not be admitted and letting in what should be admitted, but that the responsibility of the doorkeeper is to see that things are ready for the Lord when He chooses to come, that we do not have to ask Him to wait while we put things right. He “commanded the doorkeeper that he should watch”. The Lord may come at any time; not only come for us, but before He comes for us He may come into any locality to see how things are going on there. It is a serious challenge to us to see whether things are being cared for and dealt with so that at any time if He comes He may find them as He would have them. So the Lord says, “Take heed, watch and pray, for ye do not know when the time is: it is as a man gone out of the country, having left his house and given to his bondmen the authority”. The authority is there, it is in the Spirit. Anyone who speaks in the Spirit can bring the word of God authoritatively to bear upon us. The authority is still here; to suggest that there is no such thing as authoritative ministry is to deny the presence of the Spirit, because whatever the Spirit ministers must be authoritative. So the Lord has commanded the doorkeeper to watch. And then He says finally, “what I say to you, I say to all, Watch”.
That is what one was burdened with, the need of urgently praying continually that God would accomplish in those who are available to Him His thoughts in regard of the assembly. Separation is essential, the walls must be there, but in the exercises that separation entails let us not lose sight of the great end that separation has in mind, and that is that all that is proper to the assembly may be realised by us in a substantial way. May the Lord help us in it.
LONDON
13th February 1962
From Ministry of the Word, 1962
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