WEIGHT ACCORDING TO GOD
1 Samuel 2: 3 (latter clause)
I want to speak on the subject of weight as God takes account of it, because not only, as we have read in the verse in 1 Samuel, does God weigh our actions, which is something that we should all keep in mind, but a verse in Proverbs tells us that He weighs spirits (Prov 16: 2), weighs our spirits, and another verse in Proverbs tells us that He weighs our hearts (Prov 21: 2); so that we are to take account of God as weighing our actions and our spirits and our hearts, and not only so, but He weighs persons. We well know that Belshazzar had his feast, a most magnificent affair, with a thousand princes there, and vessels of gold and silver which belonged to the house of God, but which had been carried into Babylon, and in the middle of the feast there appeared the fingers of a man’s hand, and the writing was interpreted by Daniel; and one of the things that God was saying to Belshazzar was: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”. That would be a very serious matter for Belshazzar. You might think he was the centre of a scene of glory, human glory, but God says, “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”. There is also a very striking verse in Psalm 62, where it says that “Men of low degree are only vanity; men of high degree, a lie: laid in the balance, they go up together lighter than vanity”. And so these verses and these thoughts, dear brethren, are intended to impress us that God weighs every one of us, and as I said, weighs our actions, weighs our spirits, weighs our hearts. And He has in mind in doing that, to see what moral value there is attaching to us, because the only thing that has weight, according to God, is moral value. That is to say, the degree in which what we are or what we do is according to God Himself, as known in Christ.
You remember that the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, where there was a good deal of display of human wisdom and ability, and so on, says that “if I have prophecy, and … all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”. And if I am nothing, then I have no weight—that goes without saying. Weight is connected with substance, and if I am nothing, then I have no weight. Hence it is of all importance for us, dear brethren, to consider soberly, whether we have weight with God. I am not suggesting that we have not. I trust we have. At the same time it is not something exactly to be taken for granted. The point is to keep in mind that what God is looking for is real substance in the souls of His people. We have in Revelation 21 a description of the heavenly city, as it will appear when it comes down out of heaven from God, and it gives us certain dimensions of the length and the breadth and the height, and the effect of it is to impress us with what is immense in substance, a great cube. Not that I want to be arithmetical, but just to convey impressions, because if the Spirit gives us figures, and numbers, and dimensions, and so on, He intends us to be impressed with something—and the dimensions given us of length and breadth and height of the holy city, if we translate them into measurements such as we are accustomed to, would be to present to us the idea of a cube approaching three thousand million cubic miles. I do not say that to occupy you with arithmetic, but just to show that the Spirit of God, in giving certain dimensions and using certain figures intends us to be impressed with the immensity of the substance that will mark the heavenly city, which is the great acme of divine workmanship, and in which we ourselves have part, when it comes down out of heaven from God.
We want to see, dear brethren, that God weighs our actions. He takes account of the motives; what we do and why we do it. He is taking account of all these things. “By him”, Hannah says, “actions are weighed”. Now I do not pretend to be able to go in detail into this passage I have read from Chronicles, but what impresses you, as you read it, is the constant repetition of the thought of weight. In the instructions as to the tabernacle we get precise dimensions of length and breadth, but here in this passage, that has in view the house of God to be built by Solomon, not a lot of dimensions are given, hardly any at all, but the pattern was given to David by the Spirit, and he gave it in writing to Solomon. And Solomon was to see that it was to be constructed according to the pattern which David received by the Spirit. Well now, transfer it to ourselves, dear brethren, for we are the house of God. “Whose house are we”, it says in Hebrews—and what God is looking for in His house is that things should be according to the pattern given to David by the Spirit. That is to say, there is to be no intrusion of human thought or anything of that kind, but all is to be according to the pattern. Moses, too, had a pattern of the tabernacle—a pattern shown to him on the mountain. One has often thought how delightful it must have been to Moses to have God explaining to him, during the forty days and forty nights when Moses was alone with God on the mountain, what all the different things meant. What God would say when He came to speak to Moses about the ark and the mercy-seat upon it! What He would say to Moses about Christ! Because that is what the ark had in mind—Christ as the great centre of a system in which God intends to dwell, and all is to take character from the ark. You can understand when God spoke to Moses about the ark and about Christ as the antitype of the ark, that God would perhaps say to Moses, ‘He will not be the kind of man that you are. He will be meek and lowly’. Moses was not naturally meek and lowly. None of us is. But God would say to Moses, ‘He will not be like that. He will be a Man after My own heart’. And you can understand, after Moses had been for some time in the presence of God, and had heard from God what the things typified that He was giving Moses instructions about, his coming out as “very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth”. It certainly was not natural to him, for it is not natural to any of us to be meek, but then he was the meekest man in all the earth, and it was the effect, I have no doubt whatever, of God’s showing to him at first-hand what the ark typified, and the kind of man that God would have as the centre of the system in which God was pleased to dwell.
Well now, we can transfer that to ourselves, dear brethren, for the scripture says, “Whose house are we”. We are, too, the vessels of service in the house. That is what this passage in Chronicles goes into in considerable detail. It speaks of bowls and goblets, and all sorts of things. You will find they are mentioned also in Exodus 25 in connection with the tabernacle, in which, among other things, was the table of shewbread. It was not only that the shewbread was on the table—twelve loaves set in rows, referring to the saints as marked by unity and divine order (and the Lord is able to influence the saints and so hold them that they appear before God in unity and divine order, and that is a delightful feature of what God dwells amongst), but it says also that there were cups and goblets and bowls for pouring out—“bowls thereof with which to pour out”. Have we any idea of that, dear brethren? How God loves to see saints who are poured out! Poured out means that we are unreservedly committed to the will of God. There is no going back on it. Once you have poured out water you cannot gather it up again, and that is the idea of being poured out, as Paul says, “I am already being poured out, and the time of my release is come”. He had lived a long life of unflagging devotedness to the Lord and to the saints, and had indeed laid down his life for the brethren. And now it came to the point where he was just about to be martyred. He knew it. He says, “I am already being poured out, and the time of my release is come”. He was one of the vessels on the table. That is the idea, that God has a great system before Him in which He dwells and is served, and one of the features is this table, speaking of the ability of Christ to sustain the saints, not on the principle of priesthood but rather on the principle of headship and influence, in this great idea of unity and order, and devoted sacrifice even unto death if need be, set out in the thought of vessels for pouring out.
Now among the treasuries of the house of God there is plenty of variety, and that is what God secures in the saints, but all are to be marked by these features that He has indicated as pleasing to Himself. So we find this feature of weight. It says at the end of verse 13, “for all the instruments of service in the house of Jehovah: gold by weight for things of gold, for all utensils of each kind of service; for all utensils of silver, by weight, for all utensils of each kind of service”. And so all through the paragraph we get golden vessels and silver vessels, but all of them weighed, and the weight was taken account of. I suppose gold would refer to what we are as the result of the work of God, and expressing God in what we are, especially in love, because, as I have said, if I “have not love, I am nothing”. Not simply that I have nothing, but I am nothing—no weight attaching to me at all, and hence, dear brethren, that is why it is that the Lord has set us together in local companies and has set us in relation to different brothers and sisters. They may not necessarily be the sort that we would naturally have chosen for our companions, but then God is working definitely and according to His own plans in a complete way, to bring into view the result that He has in mind. It may be vessels, it may be utensils. It speaks of forks, candlesticks, tables, bowls and goblets; all these different things God has in view in His service, and the service of God is to go on all the time, not simply when we are together on the first day of the week. The praise and thanksgiving, serving one another in love, all goes on in His house, and that is what He is looking for in His house, that there should be all these different features of service, and vessels of service, that He can take pleasure in. And, as I say, they are all weighed. Gold, I have no doubt, would be what we are as a result of the work of God, what is substantial and takes character from God Himself as learned in Christ. As it says in relation to love, “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us”. That is where we have learned it. “God is love”, but then where we have learned it is in Christ. We may say, God is known in His love, in His goodness in the creation, but what Scripture says is “Hereby we have known love, because he (that is Christ) has laid down his life for us; and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”.
But then silver also is mentioned. There are the same kind of utensils or instruments of service in silver as in gold. I suppose that is to remind us that every vessel or utensil, every saint, can be regarded in a double light, the light suggested in the gold—what we are as a result of God’s work in us forming us according to Himself, as known in Christ; and then what we are as expressing how we have been reached and affected by redemption. How it attaches value to oneself, and value to the brethren. We can not only regard one another in the light of what we are, as expressing what God is as learned in Christ, but also as being an expression of the wonderful grace of God that has come into expression in redemption, worked out indeed in Christ at infinite cost, for it says, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins”. How we tend to take these things lightly, dear brethren. Every one of us has had to be redeemed. Every one of us is a silver vessel, and owes his all or her all to the blood of Christ. Jesus has gone the whole way into death, and has laid down his life for us. Every one of us owes all that he is or all that she is to that. We shall be eternally expressive of the glory of redemption. Think of God Himself coming in, in Jesus. One has been impressed with this, that all that is needed for our salvation, as being guilty of innumerable sins, and sunk in sin in our very nature, all that has been needed to deliver us from that condition, has been found in God Himself, either in the Person of the Son, Christ, or in the Person of the Spirit. God has the resource in Himself for the sin in which we were, and distance from God, and moral degradation, and everything else that has come in through sin, first in Christ and then in the Spirit. We have not had any share in our emancipation, or in our being set up before God for His pleasure in the Man of His choice, but God has found His resource for it all in Himself. We are to be vessels of the expression of divine glory, and it is most interesting to see that all the different implements, utensils, and vessels, that are referred to in this passage in 1 Chronicles 28, are either gold or silver, and as regards many of them, the fact of weight is mentioned. Well now, if I can only leave that impression upon us, this meeting will not be in vain—that what God is looking for now is weight. “By him actions are weighed”, “Jehovah weigheth the spirits”, “Jehovah weigheth the hearts”. God weighs persons—“Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”. What God is looking for is weight, and He is looking for it in every one of us, for it is a question of what is to adorn His house, and provide pleasure for Himself, in what the saints provide in the way of service acceptable to Him. It is interesting to read the epistles from this point of view. Take account of the way the Spirit of God, largely through Paul, speaks of the different brethren. Think of what He says about Onesiphorus. Apparently not a gift, or anything of that sort, but he had sought out Paul very diligently when he was in Rome, and he often refreshed Paul.
Do you not think that would be acceptable to God and that God would say, ‘There is moral weight attaching to that man’? He was prepared to go to a considerable amount of trouble in Rome to find out where Paul was, and Paul was then in chains, and Onesiphorus was not afraid to identify himself with this captive in Rome, and he did it often; “he has often refreshed me”, Paul says. Think of the privilege of refreshing an apostle of the Lord. God would say, if one may say so reverently, ‘There is weight attaching to that brother. There is something of real substantial value in that brother’. Think of what He says about Phœbe, “minister of the assembly”. Think of what He says about Aquila and Priscilla, having just one neck, devoted to the testimony. Do you not think God would attach a good deal of weight to Aquila and Priscilla, a good deal of weight to Phœbe? It is very interesting to read the epistles from this point of view, to see how great variety in vessels is coming under notice, each having its own distinctiveness, each having its own weight as God appraises it. As God looks down upon us, dear brethren, as His eye passes along the rows in this meeting now and takes account of each one of us, what can He say, what will He be saying to Himself, if one may say so reverently, as to the weight attaching to each one of us? I bring it home to myself. There is the idea of the candlestick here. Well, the candlesticks are for the purpose of affording light, and I suppose if anyone takes the ground of ministering the truth, he is in that position, outwardly at least, of affording light, but then the candlestick, whether it be a candlestick of gold or a candlestick of silver, is weighed. Therefore each of us is to be sober as recognising that God attaches weight to each one of us, and it is weight connected with vessels, vessels of service in His house. Of such importance is it that He has gone to considerable trouble in this paragraph that we have read to present the idea of variety of instruments or implements or vessels, and the weight attaching to each is taken account of by God.
Take Epaphroditus—what about him? I suppose we would never have heard of him if it had not been for the epistle to the Philippians. And yet see what is said of him. He was a Philippian, and the brethren in his city had charged him with the privilege and responsibility of carrying to the apostle in Rome certain things which in their love they had provided. There was no parcel-post in those days; there was certainly no air mail! If it was a question of carrying certain things to the apostle from Philippi to Rome, a very substantial journey, it meant taking them by road, amidst what the apostle speaks of as “perils of robbers”. Think of Epaphroditus coming forward and saying, ‘Well, I will take that on; you cannot all do it. I will take up the service of carrying this gift to the apostle Paul’. He would go all the way from Philippi to Rome, through perils of robbers, all kinds of weather to be met and so on, and we learn from the account that it nearly cost him his life. Paul says, “he was also sick close to death, but God had mercy on him”, and not only so, but there was such a fine spirit (we have read that Jehovah weighs the spirits—what a spirit He would find with Epaphroditus), for he was not only prepared to sacrifice his life for the apostle Paul, and serve the brethren, but was grieved when he heard that his local brethren heard about his illness. What a lovely spirit it was! You can see, dear brethren, how great these things are, as they come into evidence in all these day-to-day matters that arise in the history of the assembly. God would say, ‘There are features of Christ coming out in Epaphroditus’. “Hereby we have known love, because he has laid down his life for us; and we ought for the brethren to lay down our lives”. As I say, you will find it interesting if you look through the epistles, and see what the writer of the epistle, usually Paul by the Spirit, says about the different brethren. He does not say the same thing about them all; each has distinctive features. There are different kinds of vessels, different kinds of instruments; you get the mention of forks, knives, spoons, and so on, in connection with the house of God, each necessary in the service of God, and each having its own distinctiveness and value.
So you find Paul mentions Epaphras, “always combating earnestly for you in prayers, to the end that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God”. Epaphras would know what was going on in Colosse; certain ones were bringing in the mind of man, philosophy and vain deceit, something that would divert the saints from Christ. As a faithful devoted servant, Epaphras would feel that; he was on his knees, always combating before God. Prayer is not an easy matter always; combating—that is to say, Satan will oppose. If he finds somebody really considering for God, and concerned about the prosperity of His work in the saints, Satan will do his best to oppose, to come in with something that will affect the spirit of the one who is praying, or bring in circumstances that will hinder him, and so on. One has often felt put to shame by considering Epaphras, because he not only considered prayerfully continually for the Colossians, but he also took account of those at Hierapolis and those at Laodicea. He was at least equal to carrying in his heart the burden of three assemblies. Paul, of course, stands out as, after Christ, supreme, because he carried the burden of all the assemblies. There is no one else can come up to Paul, except, of course, that Paul had learned everything from Christ, in whom what is perfect is seen. The Lord does indeed carry the burden of all the assemblies on His heart before God as seen in the breastplate of judgment, which refers to the saints in their local settings and all the exercises that confront them. Do not let us think, dear brethren, that the intercession of Christ is an automatic matter. It is not by any means automatic. It is a heart matter. The Lord feels the conditions in our localities, and yet He is there constantly before God carrying them before God in a spirit of devoted love, and Paul had in large measure learned from Christ, so that he was able to carry the burden of all the assemblies. Epaphras was able to carry three. I do not know that I am able to, but I just bring it forward to show the practical character of these things, that the idea of weighing is with God as He takes account of the vessels in His house.
It is for us, as we see these things in Scripture, to desire to become characterised by what is substantial, what is really of God, what takes character from Christ, because we are all vessels of the house of God, vessels to provide for His pleasure in the different ways in which He may be served. So Paul speaks of Luke, the beloved physician. A physician—just a doctor, apparently committing himself to Paul. Luke was not with Paul always; there comes a point, as you can discern as you read Acts carefully, when Luke, instead of saying they did so-and-so, says we did so-and-so. That is to say, in between the time when you get the last “they” and the first “we” Luke had joined them. It may be that he felt that it would be a service to go along with Paul, and look after his physical needs. Well, God would take account of that. Paul took account of it; he says, “the beloved physician”. And not only so, but at the end, in 2 Timothy, he says, “Luke alone is with me”. What a wonderful thing that is! It shows that we have no idea what we may be led into in the way of spiritual privilege if we will just walk on the lines of devoting ourselves to the will of God and His testimony here. Do you know that Luke writes more of the New Testament than anybody except Paul? What Luke writes is more in volume than the whole of John’s gospel and epistles and the Revelation; and than the whole of what Peter wrote. Luke is privileged by his constant attendance on Paul to be able to write the gospel of Luke, that wonderful book, and the Acts of the Apostles, and yet he was originally just a doctor, who attached himself to Paul, having no official position, but who attached himself in love and devotedness to Paul, because he was the vessel of the testimony, and he remains with Paul in faithfulness to the end. He says, “Only Luke is with me” (KJV).
It is most interesting as you read the epistles to take account of different things that are said about different persons, and to understand that in saying these things, Paul by the Spirit is intimating the weight that attaches to them. Of course, he may have to say other things about certain ones. He has to say, “Demas has forsaken me, having loved the present age”. You wonder whether Demas had any weight at all. How much weight had Demas, if he forsook Paul having loved this present age? And then we read of Alexander the smith, who “did me much evil ... Of whom be thou ware also” (KJV), Paul says to Timothy. Well, what about Alexander the smith? I am afraid there was not much weight, if any at all, attaching to him. And then we find Diotrephes, who loves the first place, the exact opposite to Christ. “The Son of man”, the Lord says, “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”, but Diotrephes is not taking character from Christ, he loves the first place, John says, and would hinder John from coming to the assembly there; so what weight will attach to Diotrephes? You can see, dear brethren, that the scripture would have us concerned about moral weight as God takes account of it. There was no weight in Belshazzar, nor in those of low degree or those of high degree, according to Psalm 62; “laid in the balance, they go up together lighter than vanity”, is what it says; and so God would have us not attach importance to things which people in the world attach importance to, and which we might, apart from divine grace and instruction, attach importance to, but that we do attach importance to the measure in which we can take character from God, as known in Christ.
In this passage it says that there are the tables to be set in rows. There were apparently golden tables and silver tables, and then basons, silver basons by weight for every bason, and for the altar of incense, refined gold, by weight. The altar of incense has its bearing on our prayer meeting. The service of God at the altar of incense is connected with prayer. Read John 17, that well-known chapter in which the Lord, in all the holy intimacy and devotion of sonship, is speaking to His Father about the needs of the testimony and the men whom He had given Him in relation to it, and how He covers the whole period from His departure to be with the Father to His coming again to take us to be with Himself. What a prayer that was! What weight there was in it—refined gold by weight! How the Father’s heart must have delighted in that prayer! And how the Lord was considering for God and the needs of the testimony, emphasising on the one hand sanctification, and on the other hand oneness, two great things essential in the testimony, that the saints should be really sanctified, that is, set apart to God, every trace of or link with this world, its features, its thoughts, its outlook, completely repudiated and left behind, and then the unity—love amongst ourselves. There is hardly anything more potent in testimony than to see the saints going on together, week in and week out, and year in and year out, held together in the unity of love. It is a most potent factor in testimony. And so here we get this altar of incense, refined gold by weight. Well now, what about our prayer meetings, dear brethren? Is it refined gold by weight? Is there weight attaching to us, do we carry divine interests in our hearts, so that there is weight in the way that we speak to God about them? I am not suggesting anything but what I suggest to myself, but I can see this, that God is attaching great importance, according to this chapter, to this idea of weight. He weighs spirits, He weighs hearts, He weighs actions, He weighs persons. You can see what weight, if one may say so with reverence, would attach to the Lord’s prayer in John 17, what refined gold indeed by weight! God would look for something of that kind in us, in our prayer meetings, in the ability we may have to take up divine interests as intelligent as to what may be the need of the moment and feeling in relation to them in the spirit of devotion to God and His will.
In closing I come to this passage I have read in 2 Corinthians, for it says, “our momentary and light affliction”. That is the way that Paul speaks of the circumstances connected with the present time in which the testimony is carried on. You might say to yourself, Is it possible that Paul was speaking that way?—“our momentary and light affliction”. He had known what it was to be stoned, to be scourged, to be persecuted, to flee from one city to another, and he says, “our momentary and light affliction”. One wonders how far one is equal to that. But here it is in the scripture, “our momentary and light affliction works for us in surpassing measure an eternal weight of glory”. That is the work of God in the saints. That is what is being wrought out by our present circumstances, as we are with God in them, “an eternal weight of glory”. As though God would say, ‘See what I am working in this brother and this sister, see the aggregate of it when it all appears in the heavenly city, it is an eternal weight of glory’. I was remarking earlier as to the dimensions of the holy city being given to give us an impression of immense substantiality, and yet measurable, because it is creature perfection. We are to keep that in mind, dear brethren, so that however trying circumstances at times may be, if we go through them with God, you may rest assured that by means of them, God is working out something of real substantial value that He can weigh. It is “an eternal weight of glory”.
Well, that is all that I was impressed to say, dear brethren, and I commend to you this thought of weight, and how God weighs what is worth weighing, and leaves, so to speak, at its true level, anything that is not weighed. “Men of low degree are only vanity; men of high degree, a lie: laid in the balance, they go up together lighter than vanity”. No weight in them at all. And then you come to a humble saint of God, devoted to His interests, serving the saints in love, and God says, There is weight attaching to that, there is something there that is really of Christ, and really of God, and that can go into eternity. It is “an eternal weight of glory” that God is working out in the saints. May the Lord bless the word to us.
BOURNE
10th March 1962
From Ministry of the Word, 1963
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THE GLAD TIDINGS OF THE GLORY OF THE BLESSED GOD
I have in mind the expression in the first scripture we read, “the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God”. There is glory belonging to God, and it is made known so that men might understand what the glory of the blessed God is, and that it is favourable to them, it is on their behalf, it is for them to receive the light of the glory of the blessed God. One feature of the glory of God is that, at the very point where sin came out in its worst, He effected the means by which sinners might be saved. It is wonderful that, when sin was displayed in its worst features, at that very time God wrought by means of it the way by which sinners might be saved, I am referring of course to the circumstances connected with the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Think for a moment of what came out in the closing hours of the life here of our Lord Jesus Christ, when before the high priest; He was blasphemed, spat upon, struck on the head and buffeted on the face with blows. Think of all that, taking place against the Son of God! Think of what God thought about it as He saw everything that was going on. He did not send “his Son into the world that he may judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him” (John 3: 17), and yet when the Son came, that was the kind of treatment meted out to Him. That was the reception He received! Then He was taken before Pilate, and he, without having any reason for it, delivered Him up to be scourged, an innocent Man, and then delivered Him up to be crucified. Think of that. Then the soldiers took Him and crowned Him with a crown of thorn, bowed the knee before Him in mockery, and smote Him on the head with a reed. Yet it was the Son of God who was there; the One who created the heavens and the earth, the One who even now upholds all things by the word of His power, it was He who was there! Have you ever thought of it seriously? Have you ever thought of how it will appear when the judgment day comes? When those who had part in these things, and have not repented, appear before Christ, and the books are opened, and they are judged every one out of the books, according to their deeds; everyone who had a hand in plaiting the crown of thorns, everyone who used his voice in insulting words against Christ, how all these things will come out in the light at the judgment day; God has taken note of them, they have all been recorded with infallible accuracy, and every one of them will come out into the light in that day when God will make manifest counsels of hearts and judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to Paul’s gospel. Then after that, He was taken to the cross and then when He was crucified, they mocked Him, saying, “If thou art Son of God, descend from the cross”, and, “He is King of Israel: let him descend now from the cross, and we will believe on him. He trusted upon God; let him save him now if he will have him”, Matt 27: 40-43. Think of all that being said to the Son of God! Think of all that being said to the Creator of heaven and earth! All these things will come up, that was the point where what the heart of man, estranged from God, is capable of, came out in its fullest display; the worst expression of it all came out on that occasion.
Perhaps there is someone here who has been passing through the experience that many believers pass through, or those not yet believers, but exercised in that direction, beginning to find out in their own experience, what depths of evil their own hearts are capable of. They get all kinds of evil thoughts, they wish they did not have them, but they will come out; they are a kind of witness to what is there. You cannot get something evil from a good root, if something evil comes out, it shows that the root is evil; you find evil of every imaginable kind coming into your mind and into your heart; all sorts of things like that; perhaps you are distressed at it; I am not saying that you should not be, in one sense, but I would say this, that you need not be discouraged, because at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ the very worst came out. So you find that there were certain periods in that last day. We read in Mark 15 of the third hour, and then of the sixth hour, three hours during which what man was in his hatred against Christ and against God came out in full expression. Then we come to another three hours, it says, “And when the sixth hour was come, there came darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour”, Mark 15: 33. Man had no part in that. God was shutting man out completely; there was something happening then between God and Christ, and between God and Christ alone. You might say after the sixth hour, ‘Surely judgment would fall!’ When all that man was against God and against Christ had come out so grievously and so plainly, you would say to yourself, ‘Surely there must be judgment!’ There was judgment indeed! It fell without any mitigation, but instead of falling on sinful man, it fell on Jesus instead! That is the whole point, the very worst came out, calling for judgment, and then the judgment fell, but it fell on the head of Christ, and not on the head of those who were guilty, for it says that the Mediator of God and men is one, “the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all”, 1 Tim 2: 5, 6. Think of the magnitude of what was there, of what needed to be taken up, of the majesty of that statement as to Christ giving Himself a ransom for all! What man is in his sinfulness and his guilt, all exposed, calling for judgment, yet the Lord Jesus stepped into the breach, and said, ‘I will be the ransom, I will pay the price that is needed; I will take it all upon myself’. In taking up that attitude and being presented in that light, as the One who “gave himself a ransom for all”, He became the mediator of God and men, the One who can present God to us perfectly, according to what He is as hating and intolerant of sin, and judging it unsparingly; yet, at the same time, providing in His Son the ransom so that men might be saved. That was a wonderful thing!
Sins have been atoned for, propitiation has been made for sins. It says in Scripture: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”, 1 John 4: 10. Think of God taking account of our sins! This is the language of believers; you can take your place amongst believers, and then it applies to you! The work of Christ is great enough to take in all, and once you believe, you appropriate it for yourself, and all is yours, but you cannot say that Christ has borne the sins of all. It says He was “once offered to bear the sins of many”, Heb 9: 28. If you say that He has borne the sins of all, then it means that God is unrighteous in judging the unbeliever. You cannot say that. Thank God, Christ has given Himself a ransom for all, and He has borne the sins of many, and you may number yourself among the many, through faith in Christ, and as you do so, all that Christ has accomplished can be yours. It is yours, you can appropriate it. The death of Christ is great enough in its value in the sight of God to embrace everyone who believes. At the same time you cannot say that Christ has borne the sins of all. He has borne the sins of many. You have to remember that. It becomes true of every one who believes in Him, that faith in Christ appropriates to himself what Jesus has accomplished on behalf of all. As I was saying, the judgment fell during those three hours, and there came a moment when it was exhausted. If you or I were ever to come under the judgment of God, we would never emerge from it, for it says, “Where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched”, Mark 9: 48. Unquenchable fire, eternal judgment, is what Scripture speaks of. Hence it is a most solemn matter to play fast and loose with the gospel. It is a most solemn matter, because once your life here is ended, then your position is fixed for eternity. You die either as a believer entitled to all the blessing that Christ has secured through His death, or you die as an unbeliever shut out for ever, with no prospect but eternal judgment.
When the three hours were passed, the Lord uttered a loud cry, and said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. At the end of the three hours, that was the cry. He spoke as One absolutely abandoned of God. Such was the judgment of God, that there could be nothing but the most complete expression of what God is against sin in the intolerance of it, all poured out on the head of Christ. And the Lord acknowledged it in saying, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”. The Spirit of Christ in Psalm 22 gives the answer to it in saying, “And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”. That is to say, the Lord did not ask for any mitigation; He did not complain about the judgment; He admitted the rightness of it, He said, “thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”.
But then there were two loud cries. With another loud cry the Lord expired, He delivered up His spirit; He died, having uttered a loud cry. That is to say, the death of Christ was not the expression of weakness. I do not overlook that in 2 Corinthians 13: 4, it says that He was “crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power”. That was the character of the dying of Jesus from the public aspect of it. It was an appearance of weakness to the public eye, but actually it was in great power that He died. Why did He die? Because the penalty of death lay upon you and me, and if we were to be saved that must be borne, and not only so, but because the history of the man who was sinful must be ended. God is not going to perpetuate sinful man in His presence. What He has done in the Person of Christ, on behalf of men, is that He has ended the history of that man, and that is why Jesus died, that vicariously the history of the man who was sinful in the sight of God might be ended. Thank God for that! The Lord Jesus died uttering a loud cry. There was power in the death of Christ. When the ark (a type of Christ as coming in on God’s behalf, in the glory of His Person, to deal with things in power) moved forward, to seek out a resting place for the people of God, Moses said, “let thine enemies be scattered; And let them that hate thee flee before thy face”, Num 10: 35. That was the irresistible power in which the ark went forward against all that was opposed to it; then when the ark entered into Jordan, the waters of Jordan fled away. On the one side they fled away, on the other side they went backward as far as the city of Adam. You could not conceive of greater power than was manifested when the Lord Jesus went into death, “it was not possible”, Peter says, “that he should be held by its power”, Acts 2: 24. Thank God He has been into death. That is to say, before God the penalty of death has been borne, for all those who believe, and the history of the man that was sinful in the sight of God, has been ended in death. That is glad tidings for those who believe! You say “O wretched man that I am!” Rom 7: 24. ‘I have all these hateful thoughts that come into my mind; I do not want them, but they are there, and they come out; I have actually sinned many times over. I wish I had not done it, but all these things attach to me’. Is it not glad tidings for you to learn that in the Person of Christ on your behalf, your history, as a man has been ended in His death, and put out of His sight for ever in His burial? Is not that glad tidings? God has dealt with the whole matter, ending the man, putting him out of His sight for ever, so that these things no longer appear before Him. There is no reason why they should appear before you either!
And now what has God done? He has raised up Jesus from among the dead, and He has set Him down at His own right hand in glory. He has given Him the highest place in heaven. “What is to be done”, a king once asked, “with the man whom the king delights to honour?” Esther 6: 6. God has given the answer, “he set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies, above every principality, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name named”, Eph 1: 20, 21. That is what God has done to the Man whom He delights to honour, the Man who has glorified Him, vindicating His holiness by bearing the judgment due to sin, the Man who has been down into death, that the penalty of death for men might be removed, and its power broken by rising again; God has now set Him down at His own right hand in heaven, and the Holy Spirit has come to witness that repentance is open to everyone, and along with repentance, remission of sins. Remission of sins is administered righteously. You cannot call it in question. Satan himself cannot call it in question. God Himself delivered Jesus for our offences, and God Himself has raised Him again for our justification, Rom 4: 25. It is the clearest possible truth that the God who has been sinned against is completely satisfied by what has been effected by Christ in His death. So God Himself is the Justifier of the believer. And if God is our Justifier, who is going to condemn? If the Judge says, ‘Not guilty’, that is the finish of the matter. God has justified the believer, “justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus”, Rom 3: 24. That is to say, the abiding value of the work of Christ remains. The redemption is “in Christ Jesus”. In Christ we have a Man who has been under the judgment of God, exhausted it, been down into death and broken its power, risen again and ascended into the very presence of God, where He can be apprehended by you in faith as being beloved of God, and every believer in Jesus is taken “into favour in the Beloved”, Eph 1: 6.
If you have followed what I have said, you will begin to get some idea of the glory of God. No other Person than God could possibly do what God has done. You can see what glory attaches to it. So He has maintained His judgment of sin, and yet has been able to show grace to the sinner, and not only show grace to the sinner in that his sins are forgiven, but He sets him up in the highest place of favour “in the Beloved”. But you may say, ‘I do not quite follow. You say that sin has been judged, and our sins have been made propitiation for; I think I can understand that, and you say that the person who was sinful in the sight of God has been ended in death and put out of sight in burial; but what then?’ The answer to it is just this, that God gives the believer the Holy Spirit. That is to say He gives you life in Christ. That is what it means, that you are set up in life, in the Man who is in the presence of God, the delight of God. Think of living before God in Christ! It says in John 5: 26 that God has given to Christ “to have life in himself”, and He has given Him to have life in Himself as a Man in order that He might communicate that life as a Man to those who obey Him, and this He does in the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so the gospel is the “glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God”, the blessed God!
Then there is another thing. The verse we read in Acts 26, in which the Lord gave His commission to the apostle Paul, says that he was to go to men “to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God”. There are just the two positions, set one against the other. Either darkness or light, and either the power of Satan or the kingdom of God. There is no middle position. Do not think that because you have lived an outwardly commendable life it makes any difference to your position morally before God. Either a person is in darkness or he is in light, either a person is under the power of Satan or he is under the power of the kingdom of God. It is one or the other. “That they may turn” (it is you who have to do the turning) “from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God”. What a fine thing it is to know God, to be brought to God. It speaks of Jesus, suffering “the just for the unjust” that we might be brought to God, 1 Pet 3: 18. To be brought to God is to be set in the favour of God. I am sure you are all well acquainted with the fifteenth chapter of Luke, that well known parable; we all know well enough about the younger son, and how he went into the far country, as far from his father as he could go, and wasted his substance in riotous living; he spent all and no one gave to him, and someone sent him into his fields to feed swine. All his friends were gone; he had plenty of friends as long as he had any money left, when he had gone through all he had, then to be deserted by his friends; then it says, “coming to himself, he said ... I will rise up and go to my father”. He says, ‘How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare, and I am really a son and yet here I am, the hired servants are much better off than I’. “How many hired servants of my father’s have abundance of bread, and I perish here by famine”. What was wrong? He needed to come to himself and repent. So he said, “I will rise up and go to my father, and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee; I am no longer worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants”. That is what he proposed to say. Now, look at the other side. “But while he was yet a long way off, his father saw him”. While he was yet at the point where he came to himself, and had not as yet moved a step towards his father, only just made up his mind that he would do it, “his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell upon his neck, and covered him with kisses”. That is God, that is the God that you and I can be brought to. Christ has suffered for us, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, and that is the kind of God that we are brought to as we receive the glad tidings. He saw him, He had compassion, He ran, He fell on his neck, and covered him with kisses. That is forgiveness! It is forgiveness in the most unlimited way, “covered him with kisses”. Now the son speaks, and says, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee; I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”. Why does he say “against heaven”? Have you ever thought about sin? Heaven is God’s throne. It is a terrible thing to sin against the throne. To sin against the throne is treason! No country treats treason lightly. If treason is treated lightly there is an end of all security. God must deal with sin, it is a sin against the throne. Every sin on the part of a man or a woman is a rising up of the will of the creature against the will of the Creator; that is what it is, and it is treason in the moral universe, and must be dealt with severely. Well, the man had come to that. He said, “I have sinned against heaven”. I wonder whether you and I have a right judgment of sin. Perhaps we think lightly of it. The young man did not. Then he said, “before thee”. Think of sinning against such a God, who gives us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness, day in and day out, showering His benefits upon us, and we sin against such a God as that! That is what the young man said, “I have sinned against heaven”, on the one hand, and “before thee” on the other. Then he says, “I am no longer worthy to be called thy son”. Now what did the father say? He had already forgiven him. He had already covered him with kisses. The father says to the servants, “Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it”, that is to say, ‘he is not simply to come into my presence as one who has repented and been forgiven. He is to come into my presence as one who is wholly delightful to me, and he himself is to be made conscious of it, to feel absolutely at home in my presence’. That is what the Holy Spirit does to us. God gives the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit assures you and me, as we believe in Christ, that the measure of favour from God in which we stand is only measured by the favour in which Christ Himself stands. What a wonderful thing to be set up before God in the life of Christ; and we shall soon bear His image! That is the grace of God; how wonderful it is!
But now there is something more here in Acts 26. He says not only that they may receive remission of sins, but “inheritance among them that are sanctified”. Do you know who those who are sanctified are? “Sanctified” means set apart to God in this world. There are many people who are not set apart to God, but the saints of God who believe in Christ and have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, they are set apart to God. That is to say that God has His assembly here on earth. You say, ‘It is very difficult to find it’. But He has it notwithstanding. You can find it if you want to find it. If you seek the Lord, and want to find where the assembly can be found, and how you can find your part in it, you can do it. The Lord will not leave you without light as to the assembly and how to reach it in a practical way if you want to. He is always ready to answer the desires of those who seek Him in truth. That is what the divine mind is, not only that we should receive forgiveness of sins, but that we should have an inheritance or a portion among those who are sanctified through faith in Christ. There are the sanctified ones in Bourne; there are the sanctified ones in Peterborough.
I am not attaching the expression to any particular company. Do not misunderstand me. I am just stating the fact, that there are the sanctified ones in Bourne, and there are the sanctified ones in Peterborough; wherever you may be, if you want to find your place among the sanctified through faith in Christ, you can find it. The Lord knows where they are, and He will not fail to answer the exercises and the desire of anybody who wants not only to have the enjoyment of forgiveness of sins, but to enter into his present inheritance. That is what God has in mind, not only an inheritance in eternity, and inheritance with Christ (we shall have that), believers are “Christ’s joint heirs”; “heirs of God”, it says, “and Christ’s joint heirs”, Rom 8: 17. But there is also the inheritance that we are to enjoy now; that is to be known in the assembly, the assembly of God. God speaks of it as “the assembly of God”, 1 Cor 1: 2. Christ speaks of it as “my assembly”, Matt 16: 18. Do not think lightly of the assembly, it is the greatest thing there is on earth. I say it soberly; the greatest thing on earth is the assembly of God, and God expects that every believer in Jesus, sealed with the Spirit, should find his or her place in it vitally. Alas, a great many do not. But that is no reason why you should not. There is a way by which you can find it. If you name the Name of the Lord, you will soon come to understand, if you are sensitive to the Holy Spirit, who is present in you, that you cannot connect the name of the Lord with evil. If you name the Name of the Lord, you must withdraw from iniquity; I was almost going to say, that stands to reason. That is to say any right-minded Christian would realise that you must not connect the name of the Lord with iniquity, and therefore if you are connected with anything that is iniquitous, you must withdraw from it. You must not go on with it. “Let every one”, it says, “who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”, 2 Tim 2: 19.
Then there are persons who may be believers, and yet through ignorance or through self-will, or whatever it may be, they are supporting what is dishonouring to the Lord. Think of a Christian supporting what is dishonouring to the Lord! And yet, alas, there are many who do! So the scripture speaks of vessels to dishonour, 2 Tim 2: 20. God wants you to be a ‘vessel to honour’; not a ‘vessel to dishonour’. But then the same scripture that speaks of the one who names the Name of the Lord withdrawing from iniquity also says that we must purify ourselves from vessels to dishonour, by separating ourselves from them. If we do that we shall be vessels “to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work”. Would you not like to be available to the Lord for every good work? When Saul of Tarsus was converted there was a man that was available to the Lord in Damascus. He was named Ananias, and the Lord said to him one day, “Ananias”, and he said, “here am I, Lord”, Acts 9: 10. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go into a certain street called Straight, and enquire in the house of one named Simon, and you will find a man named Saul there, and he is praying. I want you to go to him so that he may receive the Holy Spirit’. Ananias went; it is true he did reason with the Lord at first, as though he knew better than the Lord, but still he was available for the Lord. Would you not like to be a vessel unto honour, serviceable to the Master, prepared unto every good work? The Lord would look round among the disciples in Damascus. He would say, ‘Where can I find one that I can trust to carry out this message?’ And so he found Ananias, and He used him. Now these things are open to us and, as we move on these lines, we find that there are others who are doing the same. We are to “pursue” that is an active matter; I might say, ‘You go along there and in half an hour’s time I will follow you’, but you do not “pursue” slowly! Pursue means that we are energetic and active about it, and we are to “pursue righteousness” (what is right in the sight of God) in every relation, at home, in business, among believers; we are to “pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart”, 2 Tim 2: 22. As you do that you will find others doing the same, and in principle you will have the assembly. That is to say, if you have two or more Christians obeying the truth and therefore moving together, the only light that is to govern them in their movements is the light of the assembly. It is on these lines that you will find the assembly, an “inheritance among them that are sanctified”.
I have only another word to say and that is about Acts 7. Stephen had been taken up by God to bring in a crushing indictment against the leaders at Jerusalem. They had had wonderful testimony in their midst in the power of the Spirit. Many had been healed. There was a company of more than five thousand men, even apart from women, going on together as believers, for the assembly in Jerusalem was there, they were enjoying love amongst themselves; the apostles had been put in prison and an angel had opened the door of the prison and had told them to “Go ye and stand and speak in the temple ... all the words of this life”, Acts 5: 20. What life? The life that could be seen in Jerusalem among believers there, a life that Jerusalem had never seen before, people having all things common, loving one another, full of joy, praising God, a thing which had never been seen before, at any rate not since the days of Solomon: or of Nehemiah for a short time, when they kept the feast of tabernacles. Such a thing normally was never seen, but now there was “this life”, and they were to go and stand and speak in the temple all the words of this life. But alas the leaders and many with them rejected it all; they turned a deaf ear. There was no doubt whatever about the power of the testimony by the Holy Spirit, but they rejected it, and now Stephen was used by God to bring a crushing indictment against them. He said, “ye do always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers, ye also. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain those who announced beforehand concerning the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have now become deliverers up and murderers!” What a terrible indictment it was; an indictment in the power of the Spirit! It says that as they were “hearing these things they were cut to the heart, and gnashed their teeth against him”. Think of men full of anger and hatred, gnashing their teeth against him! Then it says of Stephen, “being full of the Holy Spirit, having fixed his eyes on heaven, he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing”, the Man who had once been on the cross, and under judgment, the Man who was once laid in the tomb, he saw Him there in the presence of God, in His unclouded favour, and he bore witness to it. He said, “I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”. And it says, “they cried out with a loud voice, and held their ears, and rushed upon him with one accord; and having cast him out of the city, they stoned him. And the witnesses laid aside their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul”. What mercy from God, that that young man should be saved, and become the greatest apostle, the greatest evangelist, I suppose, who has ever lived. Think of the grace of God!
But you cannot guarantee that similar mercy will be shown to you if you reject the testimony of the Spirit. The Spirit is here and the gospel is preached by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is a most serious matter to reject it or trifle with it. And so it says that they “laid aside their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul. And they stoned Stephen, praying, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. How near the Lord is! Stephen was just about to die, under the violence of this stoning, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. It is, so to speak, as simple as that. The Lord on the cross said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”, Luke 23: 46. And now Stephen says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. And then it says, “kneeling down, he cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”, this sin, the particular sin against himself. He was showing the grace of God, the very Spirit of Christ. Their sin of resisting the Holy Spirit will remain against many of those who were present. Saul was converted, in the extreme mercy and grace of God, but there is no reason for supposing that all were converted, and those who were not converted will have that terrible sin of resisting the Holy Spirit against them, and will be judged for it eternally, but as to the sin of stoning him, Stephen, in the grace of the Spirit of Christ, says, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. Let it be forgiven!
That is what the gospel can do. But I say, it is a question of “the glory of the blessed God”, and I hope I have been able to convey some little impression of it. That is what the gospel is: “the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God”. It is God taking account of our need as sinful and guilty, and of all that we are, and of all that we have done, taking account of the need to come out to us in riches of grace and wonders of mercy, so that we might learn to glorify Him all our days!
May the Lord bless the word!
BOURNE
11th March 1962
From The Word Proclaimed, 1966
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