STABILITY AND CERTAINTY IN THE TESTIMONY OF GOD
1 John 1: 4-7; 2: 1, 2; 4: 9-19; 5: 20
This epistle of John is, of course, written to believers, and it is this last verse that I have read that has been somewhat pressed upon my mind, because it speaks of great stability. It says, “we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true”—that is God, “and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”. You may or may not understand fully what is involved in those words, but I think, at any rate, you will have the impression that they speak of great certainty and stability, known and enjoyed in the soul. And that is what is greatly needed in these days, that there should be divine certainty marking every one of us, and great stability, too; so that we are not carried away by the many diverse influences of evil that are around us on every hand. God has in mind that we should be completely saved from the power and spirit and influence of the world around us, and that we should be secured for His pleasure, and then, if He wills it so, that for a short time—for the ordinary span of human life is short at best—we should have the privilege of being identified with His name and testimony in this world. There can be no greater privilege granted to anybody than to be identified with God’s testimony in this world. Read chapter 11 of the epistle to the Hebrews, and see those whom the Spirit of God delights to speak of, beginning with Abel, and then Enoch, then Noah, then Abraham, then Sarah, and Abraham again, then Isaac, then Jacob, then Joseph, then Moses, and then Rahab. With what pleasure God speaks of these different individuals who, over a long period of years, figured in this world as identified with the testimony of God for the moment. Now, the present testimony of God exceeds in its glory anything that has gone before in past dispensations, and it is to you and me that the privilege is open, through faith of the glad tidings, and then obedience to it in all the detail of it, of having a part, a vital part, in the testimony of God. And this is not a dismal matter; the first verse I read shows that. The apostle says, “These things write we to you that your joy may be full”. Do you ever find anyone wedded to the world whose joy is really full? He or she may live a life of excitement and hardly dare to take time to look things in the face, but if you really see what people find their life in in the world, I am sure you will agree that you do not find people whose joy is full; whereas what Christianity produces in those who are really obedient is that there is deep satisfaction and contentment. Indeed, the apostle Paul, who is not only the greatest teacher of Christianity, but I think we might say the greatest exponent of it, says, “I have learnt in those circumstances in which I am, to be satisfied in myself”, Phil 4: 11. That is a remarkable result arrived at through faith of the gospel. You may say, ‘I would like to know something of that, in whatever circumstances I am in to be satisfied in myself’, not finding satisfaction in the circumstances, but finding it in one’s self. That, of course, involves the presence of the Holy Spirit of God, whom God gives to those who obey the truth, and He can bring in contentment in whatever circumstances you may be found in. And so the apostle says straightaway, “These things write we to you that your joy may be full”. In that way he would attract us to pay attention to what he is going to open up, because he says at the outset that the end he has in view in writing is that our joy may be full. And now he comes to a message. He says, “This is the message”. Now a message is something very distinctive; it is not just an item in the truth or the doctrine; it is a very distinctive matter. “This is the message which we have heard from him, and declare to you”. There was a man went to a king once and said, “I have a word from God unto thee” (Judg 3: 20); now this is equally important. That message involved the death of the king, and this is equally important, but it does not involve the death of anyone who is obedient to the message. He says, “This is the message we have heard from him, and declare to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”; no concealment of anything, no making things appear something different from what they are; “in him is no darkness at all”. Well now, are we all prepared for that? That very fact becomes a test to everybody. It says in chapter 3 of John’s gospel, verses 19-21, “that light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light; for their works were evil. For every one that does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light that his works may not be shewn as they are; but he that practises the truth comes to the light, that his works may be manifested that they have been wrought in God”. The light then from God becomes the test of every one of us. It says, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”, and “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another”. Well now, God has come out into the light; He dwells in light unapproachable. Indeed, it says (1 Tim 6: 16), “whom no man has seen, nor is able to see”. But then He has come into the light in order that He might be known; and He has come in in the Person of His Son. It is remarkable how much we get in this epistle about His Son, His only-begotten Son, the Son of God, “whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God”, it says in chap 4: 15. It is all a question of what appreciation we have of Christ, the Son of God, and the epistle finishes with, “We know that the Son of God has come”. That is an outstanding matter, and everything in Christianity depends upon it. “We know that the Son of God has come; and has given us an understanding”. How should we know God apart from Christ? How should we understand what God’s thoughts are as to evil apart from Christ and His cross? How should we understand the full measure of the thoughts of blessing which God has in His heart for men save as we learn them in Christ? And so we need to focus our attention on Christ, the only-begotten Son of God.
Well now, it says that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. When the Lord was here in the days of His flesh, He “went through all quarters doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with him”, Acts 10: 38. The whole course and character of His service amongst men was doing good to men, bringing to men the light of what God was toward them; and yet in no sense condoning or making light of evil, but His spirit and attitude amongst men was that of not imputing unto men their trespasses. “God was in Christ”, it says, “reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their offences”, 2 Cor 5: 19. And so a woman in the city, who was a sinner, received the impression that the Lord was not reckoning her offences. She was very conscious of her sins, and she found her way into the presence of Christ in spite of the chilly atmosphere of Simon the Pharisee’s house, and she was before Him weeping, washing His feet with her tears, wiping them with the hairs of her head, kissing His feet, and anointing them with myrrh. That was what she was doing! Why was she doing it? Because she had the sense that there was grace in Christ to meet her many sins. God had given her a sense of many sins. I wonder whether everybody here has a right sense of the guilt that attaches to them in respect of their many sins; and every day they live will probably add to them. I am not saying that it need be so; it certainly need not be so. Indeed, this epistle says, “These things I write to you in order that ye may not sin”, and there is power in the gospel through faith in Christ and the reception of the Spirit, and the reality of abiding in Christ which we can do by the Spirit, for us not to sin. “These things I write to you”, he says, “in order that ye may not sin”; and yet, as Scripture says, as even an apostle said by the Spirit (James 3: 2), “we all often offend”. That is not to make us careless: it is just a statement of the truth. It is intended to keep us humble, to make us feel how often we need to resort to the Spirit and the reality of repentance before God; even after conversion, after being sealed with the Holy Spirit, we still have to resort continually to repentance in the presence of God and in His sight, because of the increasing sense we have as we go on of the dreadfulness of sin and the wonderful provision which has been made for it in the blood of Christ on the one hand, and in the Person of Christ on the other hand; as it says in these scriptures we have read, that the blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanses us from every sin. That is the application to our consciences of the bearing of the death of Christ, His precious blood cleanses us from every sin; but then, it is not only that, but it is what Jesus is Himself in the presence of God, “he is” it says, “the propitiation for our sins”. He is it. Not simply His work has effected it, but He is it. He is there in the presence of God all the time, unchangingly, unchangeably, in the power of what He has effected in His death; and so it says, “he is the propitiation for our sins”. And then it adds, “but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world”. That is provisional, that state of things will come to an end soon. Once the world has finally given up the gospel, once the world has finally turned to antichrist, that position will cease, and we know not how soon it may come to pass. But for the moment that is the position, that Jesus Christ the righteous is in the presence of God, and He is the propitiation for our sins, and, it says, “not for ours alone, but also for the whole world”. What a magnificent position that is! That God should address Himself to men from that standpoint, that there is One in His presence, Jesus Christ, the righteous, One who in His Person is God, come in as Man in order to make propitiation for sins, that all that God is as hating sin might be vindicated publicly before the universe in the way that sin has been judged on our behalf in the Person of Christ. Magnificent it is, this way of redemption, involving the coming in of Christ, one of the Godhead, becoming Man, and in manhood taking up sonship before God, so that as Man He was moving here as a delightful object of the heart of the Father, but all with a view to His death.
Now we have, “God has sent His only-begotten Son into the world”, chap 4: 9. It is a term of peculiar endearment, as though to give us to understand that God has had, and has, an object of peculiar endearment and affection in the Person of Christ, His beloved Son, and He has sent that One, His only-begotten Son, into the world that we might live through Him. How could we live when we were under the penalty of death and under its power? How could we live? God wants us to live. He has taken steps by means of which we may live. In Christ He has removed the penalty of death and has annulled its power; and we are liberated now to have part in the love that has done it, the love of Christ, and the love of God. Both have come to light in this unmistakeable way and God has in mind that we should live in it and find fulness of joy in it too; and so he said in chapter 1, “these things write we to you that your joy may be full”. But now is there any darkness with any one of us? Is anyone here concealing something, trying to make things appear what they are not? I say again, Is there any element of darkness operating in the mind or life of anyone here? Because God is not going to tolerate it, He is not going to let it pass. There is going to be no darkness in the world of bliss, nothing of that sort is going to remain. God would dispel it all now from your heart and mine. God would give us to rejoice in the light, to delight in it, and our one concern would be to walk in the light continually, to come to the light, as it says in John 3, and like the woman of whom we read in chapter 4 of John, so often referred to in gospel preachings (but not too often!). You remember how gently the Lord dealt with her; and do not forget who Jesus is. God was there in the Person of Jesus in manhood form, in lowly grace causing Him to sit on a well, and as a woman drew near to draw water, He sought to gain her confidence by saying, “Give me to drink”. She says, “How dost thou, being a Jew, ask to drink of me who am a Samaritan woman? for Jews have no intercourse with Samaritans”. And the Lord Says, “If thou knewest”. Now see the skill, the tender grace with which the Lord is dealing with a woman, with one case (and He is prepared to deal with every case in similar grace and faithfulness), “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. That was something she had never heard of; have you heard of living water? Do you know what it means? It means the Holy Spirit of God in you as a fountain of living water, “springing up into eternal life”. It is the secret of what we have been speaking of a little while ago, what Paul could speak of as his own experience, that he had learned in whatever circumstances he was to be content in himself. And the Lord says, ‘I am prepared to give you living water’. Well, the woman said, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw”. And so the Lord leads her on; He said first of all, “Every one who drinks of this water” (of the well) “shall thirst again; but whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”. And so she says, “Sir, give me this water”. Is there someone here beginning to feel that they would like to know the secret of fulness of joy? Because the scripture puts it before us here, “these things write we to you that your joy may be full”. Is there someone saying, ‘What is the road to that? May I know something of it, fulness of joy?’ And so the woman was attracted and she says, “Give me this water”. And the Lord says to her, “Go, call thy husband, and come here”. I do not suppose she expected that the conversation would take that turn; and you must be prepared for all sorts of unexpected happenings if you begin to turn to the Lord seriously and not simply to hear about Him, but have to do with Him personally. That is the great thing, to have to do with Jesus personally. And so He says to her, “Go, call thy husband, and come here”. Notice that, “Come here”. Call thy husband, but come here. She says, “I have not a husband”. Now He goes further; He says, “Thou hast well said, I have not a husband; for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom now thou hast is not thy husband”. With what exactness the Lord knows all about us, all about your history; things, it may be, that you are keeping concealed, the Lord can bring it all out with perfect exactness. He knows it all precisely. He said, “Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom now thou hast is not thy husband; this thou hast spoken truly”. He is not condemning her, He is rather attracting her; He is giving her all the credit He can. He says, “This thou hast spoken truly”. He is winning her confidence by saying, ‘I will give you all the credit I possibly can’. That is the way the Lord will act. And she says, “Sir, I see that thou art a prophet”. And then she does what so many people do when you begin to speak about these things, she begins to talk about the correct place of worship. She says, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship”, as though to say, ‘Now, what is the correct place of worship?’ The Lord as much as says, ‘That is not the point at all’. He says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when ye shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father”. I can understand the woman saying to herself, ‘The Father? I have never heard of the Father’. Most of us here have been brought up in the truth, the idea of the Father is nothing new to us; but I can quite well understand the woman saying to herself, ‘What does this mean, the Father? I have never heard of the Father’. And yet here is the Lord speaking to her about worshipping the Father, not worshipping a God far off who would produce terror as He did in the days of old at Sinai, but the Father, to worship the Father. So the Lord leads her on, and she comes to a point where she leaves her waterpot and goes into the city and says, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done”. Now is everybody here prepared to have all things that ever you did brought into the light between yourself and Christ? I am not saying that the Lord will bring it into the light publicly, He might have to do that, but that everything has got to come into the light; indeed, God will bring every work into judgment. That is what the wise man who wrote Ecclesiastes led up to. That was his final word (Eccles 12: 13, 14), “Let us hear the end of the whole matter”, he says, “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil”. And so this woman went to the men of the city and said, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?” Now, what is the point in having everything out? I will tell you one great advantage of it. In the first place, it is an immense relief to the conscience, is it not? If anybody here has been harbouring something secretly that he knows does not really bear the light, it is an immense thing if it could all come out. That is one thing, one great relief; but I will tell you another thing, and a much greater thing, that as everything you have done that is not right in the sight of God is brought into the light, you will come to appreciate Christ as the One who gave Himself that it might for ever be put away. That is the great advantage of facing your sins; not the relief that you get, though you do get relief, but that it attaches your heart to Christ. Think of the grace of it, think of the dreadful things that you and I are capable of, and that we have done, and how thankful you are to have to do with the Son of God Himself, who gave Himself, that not only what was due to those sins might be met, but that in the cross of Christ sin itself, the very root, might be condemned, and that the person, capable of such dreadful things, might, in the Person of Christ on our behalf, be crucified, and his history ended in death, and he be put out of sight for ever in burial. Oh, dear friend, it is a great thing to come into the light! I can assure you it will attach your heart to Christ, to have everything out into the light, and you will find that you are attached in heart to none other than the Son of God.
And so we can pass on now to chapter 4, where it says, in verse 9, “herein as to us”; now this is a believer going over things. It is a great thing as believers that we should go over the gospel. You will never get beyond the gospel. Do not misunderstand me, but the gospel is so great that you never really get beyond the gospel, because the gospel is bound up with the purpose of God. If you like to read through the epistle to the Ephesians, which is the great opening up of the counsels of God, you will find, I think I am right in saying, seven references to the gospel. So it is a good thing, as believers, to go over the gospel and the way it has applied itself to your own condition and needs and circumstances. So here the writer says, “Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God”. Now do we just believe that God is love? Or is it really in our hearts? “Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”. God wants us to live, “that we might live through him”. Think of being set up in the life of Christ as Man beyond death! The judgment of sin must be met, propitiation must be made for sins committed, and the penalty of death must be borne; all this has to be done first, and that could only be done by the coming into the world of the Son of God. No one else was equal to it. It shows how completely we are shut up to Christ; and everybody blessed throughout eternity is going to glory in Christ. We shall glory in God, too, for God is known in Christ, but at the same time we shall certainly glory in Christ. And so it says, “Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him”. Have we ever weighed what it meant? You remember in Genesis 22 the history of Abraham and Isaac, how Isaac said to Abraham, “My father!”, and Abraham answered, “Here am I, my son”. And Isaac said, “Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for a burnt-offering?” You can see the easy, affectionate mutuality that existed between Abraham and Isaac, the father and the son, as they went both together. And yet Isaac was carrying the wood, and Abraham was carrying the fire and the knife. Have we ever thought of it? God has given us these things to think about. After they had been three days on the journey, they saw the place still afar off. Think of that! Three days, going on together, the father carrying the knife, understanding that every step he took nearer to the end of the journey meant that the time would arrive when he would have to plunge that knife into his only son. And Isaac was carrying the wood, and he would have the understanding of the use to which it would be put. You can see that God is pleased to give us these things in order that we should take time to think about them, and what was involved in God sending His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. God had in mind that we should live, not die; and to be really living is to be living in the enjoyment and the peace of the love of God. There is no other true life. You can find life among the saints indeed, and I am not disparaging that, and God intends that we should; but where the saints live is really in the love of God, that is where they live. So he goes on to say, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”. Both these verses speak of Christ as sent; that is to say, it was the Father’s action, but it only brought out the absolute obedience, happy, contented obedience to the will of God that marked Him as the sent One. And now it goes on to say this, “No one has seen God at any time: if we love one another, God abides in us”. What a bond there is between us, dear brethren; I speak as assuming that all here are believers in the Lord Jesus. Now, I say, what a bond there is between us! That we all have part in the love of God, we all have part in the love of Christ: what a bond there is between us! What sympathy there is, what affinity of feeling! What common joy we have, that we all have part in this! So he says here, “If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, that he has given to us of his Spirit”. That is to say, the Spirit becomes confirmation to you of these things, “that he has given to us of his Spirit”; we partake of the same Spirit of love that has been seen in God and in Christ. It says, “He has given to us of his Spirit. And we have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world”. Now it is a question of our being perfected in love, that we have boldness in the day of judgment. Perhaps someone will say, ‘I thought a believer was for ever free from judgment’. That is quite true, free from condemnation, he never comes into condemnation. That is quite true; he cannot possibly come into condemnation because of the righteousness of God. God is righteous as to the death of Christ; He could not possibly condemn a believer in Jesus, because the condemnation due to him has been borne and exhausted by Jesus. And yet, there is the day of judgment to be faced. God will bring every work into judgment with every secret thing. Let us understand that; He is the judge of all. We have come to Him; one of the items that we have come to in Christianity is “God, judge of all” (Heb 12: 23), that every single person on the earth will have to give account of himself to God. God has a judgment about every living person, about every person who has died; He has a judgment about every nation, He has a judgment about everything that is going on in the world. Think of that! And He is going to bring every work into judgment, too. He is going to make it manifest that He has His own judgment about all that has been done. And so believers must be manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body. That is a sobering matter. It is not intended to instil fear, but it is a sobering matter, that we are to receive the things done in the body. We may do things very lightly and think little of it, but when we receive them from the hands of Christ, (and, mind you, we shall be in glorified conditions when we receive them), there is no question of condemnation, we shall see them in a new light, see them as the Lord sees them, and have His own judgment about them. I have often thought, although I quite agree that this is different in this sense, in that it was a question of two wicked women; but I have often thought of Herodias and her daughter, and how when the king swore to Herodias’ daughter that he would give her whatever she asked, she went and asked her mother and her mother told her to ask for the head of John the baptist. So she went in and asked for the head of John the baptist on a dish, and the king sent and had him beheaded, and they brought the head of John the baptist on a dish and gave it to the girl, and she had to receive it. I am quite sure that when she asked for John the baptist’s head she had no idea of the solemnity of what she was doing, but it would be brought home to her when it was handed to her, and she had to receive it, the head of a holy man of God, and that she had asked for that head. It says, “he ... gave it to the damsel, and the damsel gave it to her mother”, Mark 6: 28. Both of those wicked women had to receive that head of a holy man of God, and I am quite sure that what they had done in asking for it would appear in a very much more serious and solemn light when they had it handed to them than when they lightly asked for it. So, dear friends, that is only an illustration; I quite recognise, of course, that that is not the judgment-seat of Christ which applies only to believers, and there is no condemnation attaching to it, but there is the sobering thought that we shall receive the things done in the body, that is, everything will be received with the Lord’s appraisement of it, what He can approve of He will approve of fully too, you can rest assured of that; what He disapproves of we shall be only too glad, as in accord with His judgment of it, to repudiate entirely and to appreciate afresh that all has already been met by His precious blood. So it says here that “Herein has love been perfected with us that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as he is, we also are in this world”.
Well, now, may I ask my fellow-believers here, young ones especially, what do you think of when you get up in the morning? Do you think of Christ as He is and where He is in the presence of God? It is a good thing if you do, because the Lord is there in the presence of God, in the unclouded favour of God; He is there as the Beloved, and this scripture says, “As he is, we also are in this world”. Now, do you really renew your soul every day in the light of that? It is a great thing to do it, commence the day with it, “As he is, we also are in this world”. It will establish your soul in the sense of the love of God and the peace that flows from the enjoyment of that love; nothing can alter the favour in which Christ stands, it is like the sun shining down upon you; and God has been pleased to set Christ there and give testimony to Him by the Holy Spirit to His people that every one of us should be perfectly established in the peace and joy of the love of God. And so it says here, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has torment, and he that fears has not been made perfect in love”.
I do not want to say much more, but in this final verse the apostle says, “we know”—“we know that the Son of God has come”. That is a most stupendous statement, “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true”. God is absolutely true. He will not have anything at all that is morally out of gear, if I may use the expression. He will have everything in its right moral relation; and He has secured us in right relations with Himself. It is right that He should have us, as His creatures, but His desire is that He should have us as sons. That is what love has purposed, and that is what love has brought about, that we should be before Him in the liberty and joy of sonship. Not that this epistle deals with that, but at the same time we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we should know Him that is true; God is absolutely true. He does not condone sin: He does not make light of it. What He has done is to judge it in the most unsparing and absolute way in the cross of Christ. In the judging of sin, all that God is in His holiness has been vindicated, and in the bearing of that judgment by the only-begotten Son of God, all that God is in love and all that Christ is in love has come out in wondrous expression; and now God has arrived at a fixed position in Christ in which He blesses all those who believe. So it says here that He “has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”. What a wonderful thing it is to be before God in the life of His Son! “In his Son Jesus Christ”! It is a fixed position, of which neither Satan nor the world can rob us, which neither Satan nor the world can alter. Of course, if you dally with the world, if you go into the world or dally with it, you will lose your joy of these things, you will lose your view of Christ in glory if you dally with the world. If you grieve the Holy Spirit you will lose the joy of these things, there is no question about it, and your only way back then is quickly to “confess our sins”, as it says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. So there is always the way back; but do not take too long over it! The longer you delay getting right, if you have sinned, the more danger there is of your finding it difficult to get right. I say, ‘Get right quickly’. There is provision for it in Christianity, that you may confess your sins and get right; and I might say incidentally that every time you confess your sins genuinely you are causing joy in heaven. There is no reason why you should not contribute to the joy that goes on in heaven, for heaven is aglow with the joy that is caused by repenting sinners, and not only those who are repenting for the first time in their lives, but as believers we have to be marked by the spirit of continual repentance, not that we are occupied with sin or with failure, but if they come in, as they certainly do in the history of each one of us, then let it become an occasion for us quickly to confess our sins and to prove afresh that He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness; and He would thus set us up in a fixed position, “that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ”; and so in the light of this the apostle says, “Children, keep yourselves from idols”. That is to say, be watchful against anything that would come in to turn you away from Christ or from God. May the Lord bless the word to us all.
LONDON
10th February 1963
From The Word Proclaimed, 1963
THE LAMB’S WIFE
Judges 6: 11-14, 19-21; 7: 17, 20
Revelation 19: 7, 8; 21: 9-12, 15-17
I want to speak primarily about the Lamb’s wife. “The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready”. Revelation 19 is occupied with the glory of Christ in the day of His public vindication, after having suffered here for the will and glory of God. The marriage of the Lamb is not so much the private side, but He Himself will be the Centre of a day of glorious display, and His wife is there enhancing the occasion, without the slightest discrepancy, and while from one aspect it is the effect of God’s work in the saints (as the bride in chapter 21 she is presented as the acme of divine workmanship), she is said here to have made herself ready—that is, there is what we have to do—being in every way in keeping in public manifestation with the one about to be manifested.
Judges was read to bring out that the work of God goes on in localities. We are to have the idea of the assembly before us. “My assembly” is that that in which He was in perfection here is to be continued in the saints, a vessel He can trust to be in the testimony as He was in testimony to His God. Those who lead in every locality should have as their ideal full correspondence in the saints with God’s thoughts. This runs along with Corinthians—the assembly here in testimony but also that in which the work of God is going on.
Conditions were very bad in Gideon’s time, just as now in Christendom publicly, even with some who are truly believers. The food supply was almost cut off. The Midianites (representing natural and social influences) were responsible for the deadened conditions existent when this history commenced. Gideon threshed wheat under limited conditions. Wheat represents what the saints are as taking character from the heavenly One. “The first man out of the earth made of dust”. He was never more than that! The “second man out of heaven … such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Cor 15: 47, 48. There you have the wheat, and Gideon as maintaining that. How much do we carry this in our minds? Are we threshing with this in view? It is a matter to be arrived at experimentally in the disposal of what is extraneous. Threshing wheat is what we should all be doing, arriving at the final separation of all that the work of God on the one hand, and on the other the disposal of all that is extraneous to it.
The Angel says, “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour”, but Gideon replies: “If Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” He has all God’s people in His heart, and carries all that God had been to His people in the past, in the sense that he can still do that. God’s thoughts are not given up. Where should we be had it not been for the recovery of the saints to the truth, and for the sense that with the recovery God intends to carry out all that is in His mind at the full standard of His thoughts as set out in Christ.
Gideon’s first thought is for the service of God. He “made ready a kid of the goats, and an ephah of flour in unleavened cakes”. The normal accompaniment was one-tenth part of an ephah. The great need of the moment amongst the saints is that they should be unleavened. The keeping the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth is the only right answer to the sufferings of Christ, the Passover involving how sin has been judged in an absolute and unmitigated way. All that God is in holiness and hatred of sin was against Christ. We need to have a more real sense of what it meant for Christ to take our place on the cross. “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Cor 5: 21. Consider what it meant to Christ to be made sin, in all its repugnancy to Him, and in that position to have all that God was against sin poured out upon Him in unmitigated judgment! Surely our answer will be that sin shall not have its place with us. God will have truth in the inward parts, Ps 51: 6. We should read carefully Psalm 51 on the one hand and Psalm 139 on the other. The first is penitential, but Psalm 139 is the language of one going on with God (see vv 1-5), continuing in His presence, and who has begun to realise the work of God in himself—and by extension it would allude to His work in the assembly—and he asks to be continually searched by God in His presence, see v 23.
Gideon brings this large measure with the kid, and “the flesh he put in a basket; and he put the broth in a pot”. Whatever is presented, he presents in a suitable vessel, typically the assembly. Then he is told to lay the flesh and the cakes upon the rock—which would speak of God in His faithfulness—and to pour out the broth. And the Angel touching it with his staff, “there arose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes”. All is acceptable to God.
Now in chapter 7: 17, he says, “Look on me, and do likewise”, and in v 20 we are told: “And the three companies blew the trumpets, and broke in pieces the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hand, and the trumpets in their right hand for blowing, and cried. The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon”. The breaking in pieces of the pitchers means that the reality of death has to be faced if we are to have any part in the testimony. The “sword of Jehovah and of Gideon” suggests power to effect something, the sword of Jehovah being what is authoritative as in the Lord’s commandment (1 Cor 14: 37) and the sword of Gideon being the power of exemplification as seen in Timothy, who was sent to Corinth to put the saints in mind of Paul’s ways, “as they are in Christ”, 1 Cor 4: 17. In every assembly in which Paul taught, there was the expression of the truth in him as a heavenly man. In every local assembly there should be the assertion and maintenance of the authority of the Lord, and, with it, the exemplification of the truth in one or more Timothys.
The great crowd in Revelation 19: 6 says: “Let us rejoice and exult, and give him glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come and his wife has made herself ready”. Are we making ourselves ready? Are we keeping in mind that we are to stand by the Lamb when His marriage comes? We read in Matthew 22 of the king making a wedding feast for his son, but the wife is not mentioned. The thought there and in Revelation 19 is rather a public celebration in which Christ is honoured than the inward side of affection between husband and wife. The title “Lamb” speaks of His sufferings and in Genesis 22 refers to what God would provide for Himself in burnt-offering character. John looked on Him “as he walked”. We want to contemplate Him thus, for Christianity is to take its character from “that which was from the beginning”, 1 John 1: 1.
It was given to the Lamb’s wife that she should be clothed in fine linen, bright and pure; for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints. There is bound to be a certain amount of suffering in the pursuit of righteousness. It may be that we suffer from circumstances we should never be in, but we must be righteous anyway, as building up that clothing—that fine linen bright and pure, all in view of standing by Christ in the day of glory. “We know … we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3: 2)—as He is now in glory. We must be like Him to see Him as He is.
Revelation 21 gives us the complete thought of the work of God in the assembly, referred to here as “the bride the Lamb’s wife”. A woman looks her best when a bride. She is seen coming down out of the heaven from God. Satan falls out of heaven. She comes down—not even said to be sent. She comes down in her own dignity and liberty. She has the glory of God—His love in expression, His wisdom, power, infinite grace—and not simply in an abstract way. Twelve is the dominant thought, a numeral easy to manipulate—pointing to the ease with which things are done because love is active. Her shining is as a crystal-like jasper stone, denoting absolute transparency, answering to truth in the inward parts. The great and high wall is there. This world’s ruler had nothing in Christ—could gain no entrance there. Think of that being built up in the saints! Alas! a fair amount of assembly administration arises from having to deal with evil. How desirable that we should learn in Christ true manhood according to God. The city is measured, and its wall. It shuts out all that is contrary to God. It was a man’s measure—this great thought is secured in man, and yet it is according to the divine standard, “a man’s measure, that is, the angel’s”. What God is after is a perfect answer to the One who suffered supremely that God’s rights should be secured and His thoughts brought in.
BELFAST
12th April 1963
____________________