AN OPENED DOOR

Luke 24: 28-35; Acts 16: 13-15, 25-28; Revelation 4: 1,2

P.v.d.B. I trust the Lord will help us together in connection with the door the Lord has opened. In Luke we have the Lord's movements in recovery, recovering the two who were on the way to Emmaus. If the Lord recovers us He recovers us to His original thoughts. He opened the Scriptures, He opened their eyes and in the end of the chapter we read that He "opened their understanding".

In Acts we have the movements of the testimony, an opened door being given. The Spirit had come from heaven and the movements in the book of Acts are directed from heaven. Stephen sees the heavens opened. Then in chapter 16 Lydia's heart is opened and later on the prison doors.

When we come to the book of Revelation the Lord presents Himself to Philadelphia as the One "who opens and no one shall shut", chap 3: 7. He says: "I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut, because thou hast a little power, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name" (v 8). In chapter 4 John saw a door opened in heaven, and we can thank God indeed that our way is not entirely shut up. Things may be closing in the scene in which we are, certain things are being finalised, but there is a door opened in heaven. I thought we might be helped to see how this has entered into the recovery in the movements that have taken place and the way things will be carried through till the close. Finally the assembly will be in glory but it is our privilege to be in the Spirit now and to be conscious of a door being opened in heaven and to have a sense of the glory of the One who is there.

M.P. It is Himself who has opened the door for us. I am thinking of what we have in Micah 2: 13; "One that breaketh through is gone before them: they have broken forth, and have passed on to the gate, and are gone out by it; and their king passeth on before them, and Jehovah at the head of them". Here we have the One who opens, who broke through the door, and who goes at the head of them.

P.v.d.B. Yes, that is the great thing, that the Lord has things in hand and is going before us. He is the leader of our salvation and we are recovered to Him. We may not always be conscious of His speaking but there comes a point when, as here in Luke 24, He holds Himself as though He would go farther. Even when our minds are not reached there is something in our affections to be reached. Later on He opened their understanding but here their eyes are opened.

F.C.M. Is it not affecting that the Lord is prepared to serve just two of His own? These things are not dependent on large numbers. There had never been such an unfolding of the Scriptures - yet it was just for two persons.

P.v.d.B. And the Lord is prepared to go a long way with us. He has unfolded many precious thoughts to us. But we must come to the point of committal. So many are prepared to listen even to what the Lord Himself is saying without a definite committal to the testimony; and the Lord is bringing about a crisis here. The evening is fallen - will we let the Lord go alone? The Lord will go through but are we going to be with Him? In Mark's gospel when He came to His own in the ship He would have passed them by (see chap 6: 48). The Lord is sovereign in His movements and it is a great privilege to be with Him in the testimony. He gives us an opened door; I think we can expect that.

M.P. Is it important, too, to keep an opened door for Him to us? I am referring to Psalm 24 where the lifting up of the gates is spoken about.

P.v.d.B. Yes, we need to be lifted up in our affections to make room for the King of glory to come in. I think the gates were pretty much down in Luke 24. They were downcast but they were eventually lifted up and finally the King of glory comes in in the latter part of the chapter. At the Supper we need to be ready for Him to come in amongst us.

F.C.M. We see in verse 21: "But we had hoped that he was the one who is about to redeem Israel". Our thoughts, our habits of thought, may be a hindrance to us. He would open up, as you say, what is far greater than what we had thought.

P.v.d.B. Yes, the Shepherd in Luke 24 is moving in view of recovery. The recovery is to nothing less than the highest thoughts of God. We are not recovered to something that is half-way, we are recovered to the full thought and height of the purpose of God.

M.P. In John 10 we have the Shepherd who finds an opened door into the sheepfold of Israel.

P.v.d.B. Yes, He is the good Shepherd there who lays down His life for the sheep. Now He is out of death as the great Shepherd brought again from among the dead. The Hebrews were in need of being reminded of this, and the two here, too, were slipping, but the Lord patiently goes a long way with us. It is the word of God and the priesthood of Christ which is operating.

F.C.M. Why does it say He "disappeared from them"?

P.v.d.B. I think that would bring in our responsibility. The Lord is not going to do everything for us. He gives us the manifestation and we are responsible to move. Is that right?

F.C.M. I think that. So in a meeting like this He may give us an impression, a word from Himself, and He might say, How are you going to move in relation to it?

P.v.d.B. So that they rose up that same hour, they did not postpone it to the next day. They would not miss the opportunity.

M.P. Although it was late in the evening.

P.v.d.B. Yes, but they made the same journey back again.

F.C.M. And they now found themselves in the company in a new way, with something to contribute.

P.v.d.B. They went back to the point of departure. The Lord knows more than we do. They had thought that the Lord was a stranger in Jerusalem.

M.P. Have we a similar thought in John 21? I have in mind the thought of responsibility. In Matthew 14 we have Peter walking on the waters miraculously but in John 21 there is nothing of that sort.

P.v.d.B. It was Peter's breakdown and he had to go through the water instead of being above it. He had become so far away that he did not recognise the Shepherd's voice. It was John who said "It is the Lord" (v 7). So here in Luke their eyes were opened and they rose up and returned to Jerusalem. When there is a genuine work of God people will act. Peter came under the service of the great Shepherd of the sheep and the Lord prepared him for shepherd service. In his epistle he speaks of the chief Shepherd (see 1 Pet 5: 4). That is the thought of Psalm 24.

In Acts 16 we have the work of God appearing in Lydia. It must have been there for some time. There was a distinct movement, the Spirit of Jesus not allowing Paul to speak the word of God in Asia any longer and a Macedonian man appearing to him in a vision, beseeching him and saying "Pass over into Macedonia and help us" (v 9). There was a work of God in Macedonia and it says that the Lord had opened Lydia's heart. There was a ground ready for the word to be received.

F.C.M. There must have been, as you say, something working in Lydia which made it easy for the Lord to open her heart. She had been blessed with some knowledge of God, and the Lord would say now, I am going to give you what is greatest - the things spoken by Paul.

P.v.d.B. Yes, she was like the half-opened flowers in the temple (see 1 Kings 6: 18). I am not saying that things went half-way with her because the Lord had opened her heart, but we see here the development of the work of God. In Lydia it had gone on for some time; with the jailor it was immediate. God is sovereign in the way He works. This was the nucleus of the assembly in Philippi. Everything in meetings like this depends on hearts being opened and having a sense of beholding the beauty of the Lord in the temple.

F.C.M. The very greatest and richest things are being spoken. Is my heart an opened heart to receive them?

M.P. Was it similar with Cornelius? There was likewise a previous work in his heart and it was such that God perceived it; there were things which "have gone up for a memorial before God", Acts 10: 4.

F.C.M. Is it not very encouraging, as to both Cornelius and Lydia, that the Lord sees every exercise and desire in our hearts and would encourage and answer them?

P.v.d.B. Yes indeed. Cornelius would be part of what was in the vessel which Peter saw descending from heaven, potentially anyway, and Peter would be tested as to whether he could appropriate a man like Cornelius. Sometimes brethren cannot get on very well together because we do not get through to the work of God in one another, but we are not in fellowship on a natural basis, we are there on a spiritual basis, on the basis of what the work of God is in all its purity. So we can appropriate one another in our affections as part of that vessel which descended from heaven and was taken up into heaven. If there are things in the way it may need an earthquake, for there will be an opened door. Things do come up in the course of the testimony but God is over all and He can move the prison; it is not to destroy us but to save us; this worked out for salvation. There was a powerful testimony in that prison, there was prayer, praise and singing and the prisoners listened, and "the foundations of the prison shook and all the doors were immediately opened and the bonds of all loosed". We can be sure that the singing was related to an order of things which could not be moved.

F.C.M. In Luke 4 the Lord said He was anointed to preach to captives deliverance (see v 18).

P.v.d.B. That is just what the Lord did in opening the door. There may be opposition as seen in this chapter but the testimony is here in victory. The Lord has been given all power in heaven and upon the earth and the Spirit of God is here who is greater than he that is in the world. Things are pretty bad in the world today but the Spirit of God is here in the assembly.

F.C.M. That is represented by Paul and Silas, is it not? It is like the assembly, and the service of God proceeding normally amid the captivity, and the matter is evidently attractive and effective.

P.v.d.B. Yes, I am sure that is right, the service of praise is in the assembly and the gates of hades will not prevail against it. The gates of hades would silence the praises if they could but there is victory here; it is like the people shouting when the walls of Jericho came down (see Josh 6: 20).

F.C.M. And here it is in all its power and preciousness in two persons.

P.v.d.B. Yes, it shows the value of what is available for the testimony today. In Revelation John is where he is for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. If there is one thing we need to learn today it is the patience of Jesus. John had a reason for being where he was: it was for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. How attractive that is!

F.C.M. He was linked in spirit with the brethren - "your brother and fellow-partaker", chap 1: 9. The Lord may set us alone, or in a very small company, but in spirit we are vitally linked with what the Lord has universally.

P.v.d.B. So the door is not closed, it is an opened door which no one can shut. Doors may close in this world but it only opens up another world, a world where Christ is supreme; we want a door opened in relation to that.

F.C.M. A similar thought to this is Daniel's opened windows. In one way he was all alone, but Jerusalem was his outlook.

P.v.d.B. So that although he was the only brother there he was not independent. He was bound up in the bundle of the living, with all the saints.

M.P. Have we another akin thought in the window of Noah's ark? That window was directed upwards.

P.v.d.B. Yes. God had closed the door of the ark and it does not say that that door was opened again. What we do read is that the covering of the ark was removed. So what then would be our outlook? I think John was in the gain of the testimonial position here and, like Daniel, he not only had an outlook towards Jerusalem but he had a wide view of the whole course of things which was to follow. Not that Daniel could see what John saw; Daniel had to close the words and seal the book till the time of the end (see Dan 12: 4). But what is closed and sealed in Daniel is opened in Revelation - a book in which these great matters are opened up leading on to the day of Jesus Christ and the day of God. So John sees a door opened in heaven and the voice that he had heard as of a trumpet in the testimonial position is now calling him up. It is the voice that he turned to see in Revelation 1, the voice of Him who was in the midst of the seven golden lamps (see vv 12, 13). It now calls him up and tells him: "Come up here and I will shew thee the things that must take place after these things".

M.P. It is a remarkable word, is it not? - he turned to see the voice.

P.v.d.B. Yes, it was a voice which could be seen, and it was a voice as of a trumpet. It governs the movements of the testimony; we must not be moved by any other voice. In the prophetic word the trumpet would not give an uncertain sound; it should be the voice of Christ. "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy", Rev 19: 10. So now the voice is: "Come up here".

F.C.M. He sees a throne and One sitting on it. Does that not mean that everything is surely established according to God?

P.v.d.B. It is a throne which cannot be moved. The prison was moved but the throne is not moved. We need to be in relation to this order of things which cannot be moved: "receiving a kingdom not to be shaken", Heb 12: 28. You were reading Revelation here and would have noticed how in this book things are opened up.

M.P. Exactly. That very comparison of Daniel and Revelation as to closing and opening up things came up last Thursday,

P.v.d.B. Well, Daniel had to close the words and he says "my Lord, what shall be the end of these things", and the answer is "Go thy way, Daniel; for these words are closed and sealed till the time of the end" (chap 12: 8,9); but what is closed in Daniel is opened up in the Revelation.

M.P. Daniel's vision was sealed but in Revelation it says "Seal not the words", chap 22: 10.

P.v.d.B. Just so. It is important to be in the gain of the opening up of things. In the history of the recovery, as we speak of it, the Spirit of God has given us a great opening up, We need to be very careful that the enemy will not succeed in bringing anything about that will close things amongst us.

 

EASTERN EUROPE

12 November 1981

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE CHILDREN'S NEEDS MET

An old hymn which I am sure you enjoy singing begins 'I could not do without Thee, O Saviour of the lost'. Happy it is that there is no need for anyone to be without Jesus as Saviour. Indeed the apostle Peter said in one of his preachings that there is salvation in no one else. He also said that we must be saved, so that there is really no choice for you although your intelligent part is to believe on the Lord.

When speaking about children Jesus said that he had come "to save that which was lost". Little children are mentioned seven times in those few verses but you may not understand how it is that such are lost without a Saviour. As of the sinful race of mankind they cannot save themselves any more than can older persons. But Jesus also spoke of "these little ones who believe in me", so however young you may be do not only be attracted to Jesus but put your faith and confidence in Him.

We cannot think of a flock of sheep without thinking also of their shepherd. Even those of us who live in towns have an image in our minds of the care that he takes of the sheep and lambs even if they do not belong to him - how much more so if they are his own! As saved by Jesus you belong to Him, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. Learn by heart the lovely Psalm 23 which tells you how He is able to supply every need throughout the life of His sheep. The detail of Scripture is wonderful. One passage says that the Lord will gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom, which expresses His tenderness. Another passage speaks of the lost sheep, when found, being carried on His shoulders, the place of strength.

Fellowship is much needed in Christian life and is a great privilege for young and old. It means enjoying blessings together and a type of it in Scripture is a table. Long ago, when David was to be anointed as God's chosen king for His people, a number of great persons were kept standing some considerable time in front of a feast-table. Samuel, God's messenger, had said that they must not sit down until David came - who is a type of Christ. We have to remember therefore that there can be no true fellowship where the Lord Jesus is not the Centre. He is God's choice for mankind and ours is "the fellowship of his Son". Breaking bread in remembrance of the Lord is its great privilege. Have you taken your place in it?

 

J.C.Evershed