AT A MARRIAGE (ii)

TESTIMONIAL HISTORY IN HOUSEHOLDS

A.J.E.Welch

Luke 7: 44-46; 10 : 38 -42 ; Acts 10: 22

The glorious matter which rightly fills our minds at such a time is that of Christ and the assembly. We have touched the glory of Christ in our hymn and prayer, and I get a sense that it is to run through this whole occasion. I am thinking of these three houses, the house of Simon into which the Lord came, the house of Martha in which He was received, and the house of Cornelius, which relates particularly to the way in which the truth as to the assembly is brought forward. Our houses are to be intelligently and affectionately set for the glory of Christ, for contribution to what answers to and satisfies His heart - set in relation to what He has in the assembly in service and testimony here. A new household is set up this day. We know from long and affectionate acquaintance with our brother and sister that it will not be like the house of Simon where a critical spirit prevailed. The Lord reminds Simon in the passage I read that He had come to his house and it was by invitation that He came. "I entered into thy house", He says. It reminds us that the Lord would have the fullest access to our houses and that He has a right to scrutinise what conditions exist in our houses. But He brings forward the matter in the wonderful positiveness of divine grace. In what takes place in this house of Simon the whole character of our time in the outshining of God 's grace is brought to bear. The household is often the sphere of working out things. The assembly is greater, the local assembly is greater, and nothing that we say is to conflict with that; but the house, as available under the Lord and as a sphere where the Spirit has place, has a great part in the working out of things in divine skill. The Lord asserts Himself in this house. He calls attention to this woman, saying to Simon "Seest thou this woman?". The Lord delights in relation to our every affair to bring forward what is substantial related to the assembly. He has something in Simon's house to which He can in an unreserved way call attention. The lack on Simon's side is plain, and the Lord makes it plainer if it were possible. But the Lord would remind us that He is looking for a substantial expression of what relates to the longings of His own heart. "Seest thou this woman?" He says. And then He brings in these contrasts, which are used to remind us of the element of genuineness and reality that was here in this repenting woman. "She has washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with her hair... she from the time I came in has not ceased kissing my feet... she has anointed my feet with myrrh". You sense the feelings of Jesus as He draws specific attention to features which relate to a direct answer to Himself. This is where our houses are to fit in, in furnishing the conditions and the features to which the Lord would delight to call attention. He has something for Himself. He will yet secure more for Himself. The Spirit will yet bring in more for Himself. But we want our respective households, including the household of our beloved brother and sister, to have part in what is brought to light, in substance and character, answering to the affections and longings of Jesus.

Now I had particularly in mind the other two houses. The Lord in chapter 10 "entered into a certain village; and a certain woman, Martha by name, received him into her house". She received Him. You might say in certain respects she does not shine later in this passage; she was occupied, careful and troubled about many things, as the Lord says; but she received Him. Here is a house where the Lord is received. That is to be a prime thing in every household among us, that the Lord in every sense is welcome there. It may be there are conditions that call for adjustment, and the Lord is able to bring the adjustment. In what positiveness of grace He brings it! I would press that side, the immense positiveness of the Lord's service and the grace which characterises it. The Lord comes in and He, in that grace, adjusts matters in the most positive way in this house. But it is a house where He is received. If that is basically true of a household, there is room and way for the Lord there. I am more and more impressed with the need in our time of a more settled occupation with Christ, a more definite pursuit of those holy links of communing with Himself. Such links are to expand us in the appreciation of the moral worth, the moral perfection, the moral excellence (the fine flour mingled with oil, as we might say, referring to the oblation) that we find in Jesus. The Lord finds that in this house in Mary. He says she "has chosen the good part, the which shall not be taken from her". She was, as it says, sitting at the feet of Jesus "listening to his word", a fine attitude which the Lord commends without question. I am concerned that we see the point of this episode. We might be so busily occupied, even in our household relations, that a due contemplation of the glory of Christ is wanting. We may find that things hasten us on from one point to another in the day so that the Lord has but little time, little opportunity, to engage us, as He loves to do, with Himself. This house is a right house. Martha received Him into her house and she is one who receives adjustment. The household relations may bring adjustment, in the grace of the Lord Jesus, but it is that the house might be brought into accord with the depth of His own feelings as seeking that which answers to Him receptively. Mary was sitting at His feet, listening to His word. She is receptive of what He may say, and that is a fine feature, making way for the glory of Christ to come in and affect us; there is attentiveness at every point to what He may say.

Now the house of Cornelius has a distinctive place in the course of the testimony, but the scripture is at pains to show us that conditions pleasing to God were there. The summons to Peter comes through the messengers, men who speak of Cornelius as "divinely instructed by a holy angel to send for thee to his house, and hear words from thee". What happens in the house of Cornelius is wonderful. The passage is presented to us in such wise that we see what transpired in a house, peculiarly in relation to the whole course of the testimony of God. It is the setting in which Peter's vision, as to the sheet let down from heaven thrice, is really filled out into substance by the bringing in of Gentiles according to the Lord's intent. But the Lord used in that relation a right house. Persons there were needing instruction, and who of us does not need instruction? What a time of education we are in! We begin each day, I trust, with a sense that the Lord would have us to learn something that day. It is a time of instruction. And here was a man who was ready for instruction. Cornelius said (v 30) "Four days ago I had been fasting unto this hour, and the ninth I was praying in my house, and lo, a man stood before me". What an experience for Cornelius, praying in his house! Our brother has a house to pray in, in that sense, and our sister, too, and all of us as matters are normal. The point would be, to what extent are we thus engaged with the whole great area of the interests of God ? How much do we pray? Here was a man who fasted and who prayed, and great things took place in his house; the Spirit came down, according to the reference later in the chapter, and entered into those persons. The full, glorious light of the assembly was beginning to take distinctive form; room was being made manifestly for Paul, who had already been secured according to the account in chapter 9. It was a critical time, and the house of Cornelius just fits into the whole history and becomes used of God to bring out the choicest elements of what He has in mind, leading on to what Paul, in due time, would bring in. So that every one of our households is to fit into testimonial history and that in a positive sense, through availability to the Lord, through conditions that the Lord can take on, through conditions that the Spirit can take on and into which He can come for the furtherance of what belongs in the assembly for the heart of Christ.

So we have in Martha's house Christ made much of, in Cornelius' house eventually the Spirit made much of, and the assembly in mind. Every one of our households is intended to be marked by those features in view of the fast approaching end of this time in which we are. May God bless the word.