BRETHREN
[p. 324] BRETHREN
I wanted to speak in referring to these scriptures about our place and relation as brethren — a designation that is familiar, not only amongst the saints of God, but amongst men generally. I wish to speak of it as it applies to the people of God, and to seek to show how this great relation is to be maintained amongst us as divinely designed and intended.
It is worked out in the gospels; in the synoptic gospels, as we speak of them, on moral grounds, and in John’s gospel on the ground of purpose; for it was a matter of purpose with God that He should have a family, and that that family should take the form of sons to Him, and of brethren to Christ. That is the standpoint from which this great matter is dealt with in John’s gospel, whereas the other evangelists deal with it in moral grounds, and it can only be maintained whilst we are down here on moral grounds. The moral element will necessarily be dropped as we enter on the eternal thought for us; we shall then know and realise that what we enjoy is a matter of counsel, and is the outcome of the necessity of love, for love has its necessities, and the counsels of God are to meet those necessities. He has predestinated us unto sonship, by Jesus Christ to Himself.
And then, further, Christ is to be the Firstborn among many brethren. Thus the matter is treated from the standpoint of counsel; and as we enter on our eternal portion, dear brethren, we shall know, we shall be conscious of this great fact, that we are there for the satisfaction of love, to meet the necessities of love. The position that God has wrought for the necessity of His own love could not be greater, nor could it be more sure.
[p. 325] But then we are still here in the body, having to do with elements within ourselves and outside of ourselves, that tend to defile us; and so the great necessity for the synoptic gospels, for they deal with matters more on moral lines. John assures us of the permanency of the relation; he places it on the highest possible platform. The Lord said, as He was about to ascend into heaven, “go to my brethren”, without the least reference to anything moral. “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God, and your God” (John 20: 17) — no qualifications, no reference to state, it is a question of counsel, it is the highest possible platform, and the surest, so that we start with that.
But then, as I said, the synoptic gospels deal with the subject on moral grounds, so that Matthew and Mark bring the brethren of Christ into view on the ground of doing the will of God, not as a question of counsel. They are brought to light here on earth in everyday circumstances where evil is, by doing the will of God. It is one of the greatest things morally there can be, that there should be those in this world who do the will of God. The Lord Jesus brought in that thought; He set it out perfectly. “Lo, I come ... to do O God, thy will” (Hebrews 10: 7), He said.
The will of God runs into the future, I need not say. Ephesians perhaps brings that out as much as any epistle. We read there of the good pleasure of His will in relation to purpose; we read of the mystery of His will, and of the counsel of His will. He carries His will through, and will establish a world here where evil has been and is, in spite of that evil. There are no forces that can stand in the way of the will of God. That is Ephesians. Things are placed on that basis, but it works out in every believer, and he is marked off as one of the brethren of Christ by doing the will of God.
[p. 326] That is what Matthew states. Mark adds a thought which is suggestive of our own time. He adds the thought of a circle. As the mother and brethren of the Lord come to Him and desire to see Him, it says, “And looking around in a circuit at those that were sitting around him” (Mark 3: 34); there were those who were sitting around Christ and hearing what He said. They were not listening to what was going on in the world. They had none of those modern things in their houses through which the things of this world reach men’s ears. They were sitting around Christ, that was what marked them. They were those marked off as sitting around Christ and listening to what He was saying, and He looked around on them in a circuit and said, “Behold my mother and my brethren”. His brethren were those who did the will of God.
Luke adds a further thought, “my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8: 21). That is not only the will, the divine authority, but the expression of the mind of God; God has a mind about things. He has things in His mind that He discloses by His word, and the brethren not only hear these things, but do them.
Now these three evangelists, as you will see, connect the subject with what is moral, and it is from that point of view I wish to speak of brethren, because there are forces against us to nullify the relationship, and the affections that belong to the relationship. Satan is against the idea, because it is a divine idea; it is one of the most exalted thoughts connected with us. It is a primary thought with God, and what is primary is eternal. Satan is against it, and there are elements in every one of us which can be employed against the divine thought, and elements outside of us, too. So that we have to take account of these moral features if we are to be preserved in the blessed relation and affections of it.
[p. 327] I have selected this passage from Matthew because this gospel has the assembly particularly in view, and the thought of brethren necessarily underlies the thought of the assembly. So in this remarkable chapter, in which the Lord denounces, in the most scathing terms, the scribes and Pharisees — the leading educationalists and religionists of the day — He says to His disciples, “be not ye called Rabbi;” and “call not any one your father upon the earth”, and “Neither be called instructors, for one is your instructor, the Christ”. “One is your instructor, and all ye are brethren”. Peter was there doubtless, he who earlier in the gospel is said to be first in the apostolic list. He is to be one of the brethren. Were he not one of the brethren he could not be truly an apostle. Judas indeed was an apostle, but was not a brother, so his apostleship came to an end, and he fell by transgression. To be an apostle according to God, representing the authority of the Lord in the grace of the Lord, and in the love of the Lord, one has to be a brother first.
I refer for a moment, dear brethren, to the book of Genesis, because there we have worked out in type, and, to some extent in substance, the great thought of the family. No one who has read Genesis can fail to see that God is working out in one great stock, which He took up sovereignly, the thought of the family. It was all with design; the whole dispensation that He had in mind to set up in Israel was before Him in the book of Genesis, for God works according to plan always, and goes far back in order to prepare for what He brings out in service and in testimony. So you find Genesis full of reference to the family: children, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, and great-grandchildren; the great-grandfather nursing the great-grandchild. Is it there for nothing? Is it not written for our learning, that we [p. 328] should know how to be in the family of God? The family of Jacob, which was broken up, is re-united and set up in Joseph, and there Jacob leaves the scene; he represents God in this connection. He was not an ordinary parent; the divine thought of a patriarch was seen in him, for he could bless Pharaoh, and he could bless the twelve tribes. He called Joseph and said to him, “I have given to thee one tract of land above thy brethren” (Genesis 48: 22). You have the principle in that of one set up in pre-eminence, which is the case with ourselves. “I have given to thee one tract of land above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow”.
We have to understand that spiritually. He sets Joseph above his brethren; he was morally above them, as the previous chapters show, but now he is formally set above them by his father. Then Jacob calls his sons to him, the twelve sons, and he blesses them. “Listen”, he says, “to Israel your father” (Genesis 49: 2). It is on spiritual lines he is blessing them, and he blesses them all. Every tribe is blessed; however much there was to reprove, and rebuke, and condemn, every tribe was blessed. They were set on a sure footing, for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, and the tribes are set up in blessing. Then they are carried over under the supervision of Joseph; they are in Egypt under his care. Thus you see how the family thread is maintained throughout Genesis, and Exodus is on that basis.
So the great deliverer, Moses, typical of Christ, moved by instinct, as I may say, went out to see his brethren. It is a question of the family. It is well to note how the Spirit of God maintains the link in Exodus, and so the great superstructure of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers is built upon the thought of the family; the priesthood, the levitical service, and the tabernacle system hinge on that. So that Moses [p. 329] went out to see his brethren, as Joseph had done earlier. He saw an Egyptian smiting one of them, and he slew the Egyptian. He thought they would understand that he was the deliverer. He was the deliverer, but they thrust him away from them. He went out a second day, and he finds two of his brethren quarrelling. Note that. All the difficulties amongst us, one may say, arise from that — brethren quarrelling. It will never do, he says, it is quite inconsistent. But the one who did the wrong thrust him away, saying, “Dost thou intend to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2: 14). He had wished to save them both.
I only mention that that you may see how the great deliverer and apostle Moses, who was charged later with the deliverance of the people, and the building of the tabernacle, thought of the brethren in his early days, and had them in his heart.
In Exodus 6 the list of the tribes is given. There is a list given in chapter 1, and another in chapter 6. In the latter you have Reuben, Simeon and Levi, and when the Holy Spirit arrives at Levi He stops, for the reason that it was in that family that the divine idea of service was to be developed, so there was no need of going further; we have a priestly family. Now a priestly family belongs to the brethren, it is a development from among the brethren, and so no more are given. The Holy Spirit gives us the genealogy of Levi down to Moses and Aaron who were typically the apostle and high priest of our confession and they were developed out of the brethren. The family is linked up there, and from that family we have the priestly order inaugurated, and both the priestly service and the levitical service set up.
I want you to see how important it is that the thought of brethren should be maintained amongst us. If it is not maintained, if there be brethren who thrust away Moses, so to speak, and refuse to be reconciled, refusing to go down, we cannot have the [p. 330] service of God nor the priesthood. How can one who will thrust away Moses have priestly garments on? Later on, the Israelites were glad to come under Moses. God brought them to it. When the tribes of Israel were assembled together, Moses was king in Jeshurun (Deuteronomy 33); but they began by thrusting him away from them. Were it not that God brought them to it, there could not have been the inauguration of the priestly service. That was the great thought that God had in His mind. If He has brought us back to the family thought — that of brethren, it is to build upon that a service for Himself — a priestly service.
The passage in Matthew furnishes us with very practical instructions, by which we may be saved from any family derangements, and by which we may maintain the blessed relation of brethren. He says, “one is your instructor”. Neither be called instructors, or masters; it is not that a brother is not to be an instructor, nor a brother not to be a father, surely; the point is, am I called that? Have I acquired that designation? Christendom is full of it, from the Pope downwards. It is not that they are fathers, the point is that they are called fathers; they are known by that designation. Why should a brother not be a father? John writes to the fathers; he does not write to those who are called fathers, in an official way, but to all brethren who have grown and become matured; brethren who have known Him that is from the beginning; those are fathers, and there is a great need of them. The father is rare, because he represents mature experience with God; he represents mature knowledge of Christ as from the beginning. A father will hold to what is from the beginning, he will test everything by what is from the beginning, and hold fast to what is of God. He will not reject a thing because he has not known it before, he will test it and see if it conforms to what is from [p. 331] the beginning; if it does, he will hold it fast, and he will add to it his own mature thoughts, the thoughts of his own ripened experience in the knowledge of God and the knowledge of Christ. It is therefore an immense thing to have fathers, men of experience; but then we do not call them ‘fathers’, that is the point; “call not any one your father upon the earth”.
What a sweeping rebuke we have here to all that exists in christendom at the present time! There is the great, ancient system that is marked by it — popery; but then there are other systems marked by instructors, masters, guides; all the non-conformist bodies are marked by these instructors. The apostle Paul refers to ten thousand of them; there may be ten thousand instructors, and only one father. Fathers are rare in the true sense. So the Lord here foresaw that the relation of brethren would be marred, and deranged, and obliterated, if this principle were adopted of calling this one and that one ‘father’ — maybe ‘Revelation’ So-and-so, or ‘D.D’. All these things, if admitted in the principle of them amongst us, are sure to derange and render void the precious relationship of brethren and the affections that belong to it. So the Lord, as I said, foresaw what the disciples would have to face, and He warns them.
“The greatest of you shall be your servant. And whoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and whoever shall humble himself shall be exalted”. You see what simple and yet what valuable instruction we have in these verses. However gifted, matured, or experienced I may be, my part is to be the least, to be the servant of all. Such is the divine way. One knows well enough what is in one’s own heart, one is as prone as anyone else to assume to be something, to acquire a reputation in the service of the Lord, and to sit on it as a little throne. The Lord foresaw that, and He warns them against it. Exaltation [p. 332] comes from heaven; it is the divine prerogative to give it, not mine, nor yours.
Now I just wanted to touch for a moment on the Psalm. There is hardly a psalm, perhaps, so well-known. The Holy Spirit dwells on the theme of it; it is the last but one of the Songs of Degrees. It conveys most beautiful thoughts. It is as if He said to us, I want to show you what it is for brethren to dwell together in unity; it is a lovely sight, a most exalted, a most precious thing. And so in describing it He goes back to the priestly system of which I have spoken; He goes back to that for an example to illustrate what He has in His mind; it is “Like the precious oil upon the head”, He says, “that ran down upon the beard, upon Aaron’s beard, that ran down to the hem of his garments;” that is to say, He likens it spiritually to Christ in His great personal distinction among the priests. It is not in the first instance a question of His exaltation to heaven, but of His great personal distinction.
From one point of view exaltation to heaven does not add to Christ — nor can His glory be added to; that is from the personal point of view. The High Priest is the Son, consecrated for evermore; He is a divine Person; and He is elevated above us in that regard, so that He is the Head; it is the dignity of Christ, the great dignity of Christ personally as the priest that is spoken of. The anointing that ran down upon His beard denotes His beauty. You remember how the leper had to shave off all his hair, his head, his beard, and his eyebrows; all that in which I shine in any sense has to go. I am ashamed of it, I am an object of shame; the Lord alone is adorned; the believer has to be brought to that measure of growth. The leper had to be shaved completely and then he is brought to the door of the tabernacle, and set up afresh in the personal excellency of Christ, through the sacrifices. The allusion in Psalm 133 is to the [p. 333] Lord personally — His dignity; the anointing oil is of course, spiritual. The oil refers to the Holy Spirit — the Holy Spirit coming down from that Person in His personal dignity to the very skirts of His garments. That is like brethren dwelling together in unity.
In the second reference we have an allusion to the exaltation of the Lord into heaven; that is Ephesians. Colossians is the Person of the Lord; you cannot, as I said, add anything to Him by any office, He is personally great; that is Colossians. But Ephesians is the exalted Man; He has gone far above all heavens, so that the dew comes down from the top of Hermon, and descends to the mountains of Zion — to the saints, viewed as taken up sovereignly. They love as brethren, they are together as brethren — the brethren of John’s gospel really. They are seen in relation to purpose, and they love, they are united and God takes account of it. The dew comes down upon the mountains of Zion — the brethren are refreshed constantly; the blessing is commanded there — life for evermore.
I think you will thus see the importance of brethren dwelling together in unity. I have no doubt you will agree it is well worth having it pressed home.
The Lord appeared to five hundred brethren at one time; and so now God has brought us back to the truth and blessedness of our relation as brethren. The point is to maintain it, but in order to do so, we must understand the synoptic gospels — the moral side.