GOD'S END ATTAINED ON THE LINE OF SUFFERING
GOD’S END ATTAINED ON THE LINE OF SUFFERING
1 Samuel 1:9 - 18; 1 Samuel 1:24 - 28; 1 Samuel 6: 10 - 16; 1 Samuel 30: 6 - 8
What I have to speak of is suffering, but in a particular connection, for the subject is far too large for one short address. I wish to speak of suffering as the means or the way by which God reaches His end, and through which we reach God’s end, whatever subdivision there may be; that is, if we regard the need, it is reached through suffering. The Lord had spoken on this point particularly to His disciples before His death, indeed He says, “before I suffer”. He had not only spoken and foretold His apprehension and suffering but He taught the disciples that He should suffer. He taught them, and He had in particular tenderness spoken about their sorrow on account of His arrest. He said, “Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16: 20), and further, “I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”, John 16: 22.
But the sorrow should be endured. He had taught them about His sorrow, but theirs also had to be endured. “And ye now therefore have sorrow”. This subject is enlarged on in the book of Psalms, especially in those called the sorrow psalms. The book of Psalms is a field of immense import to us. As Peter says, we read of the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. The prophets, including the psalmist, spoke much beforehand, long beforehand, of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. They witnessed beforehand themselves, and indeed these prophets all partook of the sufferings of Christ beforehand. “Which of the prophets”, says Stephen, “have not your fathers persecuted?” But the Lord,
[p. 194] as about to be arrested and crucified, spoke with peculiar tenderness to the disciples of their sufferings, and in that connection spoke of the result — a man born into the world. That would be the end, it was what was needed.
I link on John 16 with the passage in chapter 1 of this first book of Samuel. What is in mind is a man.
A man is needed, and if one were conversant with the actual state of hundreds of gatherings of the saints, perhaps one would find that that is the crying need in most, the need of a man. And whatever insight Hannah had as to the state of things in Shiloh, that was the burden of her heart, that there should be a man, a man child that should be devoted to the Lord.
As we read the book of Samuel now we see that her exercises coincided exactly with the mind of God at the time and with the need that was publicly so apparent, the need of a man, not in the literal sense, of course, but in the sense of what was needed in Shiloh at that time. The situation was distressing.
I need not cite the passages in the succeeding chapters depicting the state that existed, but the state was distressing; it was scandalous. There was the absence of a man according to God in the place. The apostle seems to have the same exercises in writing his first letter to the Corinthian saints. There was the need of a man, or men. And so with Hannah, circumstances under the government of God brought her to these exercises. It was not accidental, it was of God; for God works in us so that we might come to an appreciation of what He has got to give us. He hates want of appreciation of what He has got; He knows the value of His things, and He does not care much about presenting them to unappreciative hearts. And so He allowed, in His government, these difficulties in the circumstances of this saint in order that she might value what would ultimately meet the current need, that the need might be met suitably,
[p. 195] that the offerings to God might be priestly, might be with intelligence and feeling and made in a suitable manner.
So she is found in Shiloh in prayer, and the facts show what I have been saying, that the end to be reached is through suffering, suffering of the bitterest nature. For there was an adversary, and a personal adversary is the occasion of the keenest kind of suffering. A personal adversary is one with whom you have to do day in and day out. If it be in the meeting the contact may not be so frequent, but in her case it was constant, and the adversary made sufferings the more poignant by the way she acted. And Hannah was a sensitive person. All exercised persons, persons exercised before God, are sensitive. We shall never have part practically in the wonderful sensitive organ that God has here on earth unless we are sensitive too, not in a fleshly way but in a spiritual way. No one was so sensitive as Jesus. I do not suppose there was anything in the nature of suffering intended for Him that He did not feel in the keenest way. His sufferings were constant; it is doubtful if, as in flesh, He was ever released from them. Sufferings that no pen of man can describe were there.
Hannah had part in this; being a sensitive person she felt the keenness of the persecution that was levelled at her day in and day out, but she did not succumb, and that is the word for us; we are not to succumb. Patient endurance is the word. “By your patient endurance gain your souls”, Luke 21: 19. To lose our balance and to become soured in spirit is to serve the enemy. Thus one who rules his own spirit is greater than he that takes a city. In spite of the keenness of the persecution levelled at us we should be able to maintain spiritual equanimity, spiritual balance, so as to defeat the work of the devil. It was so with her. She calmly goes to Shiloh, which was the house of God at that time, and she [p. 196] prays. In Isaiah we are told that God makes His people joyful in His house of prayer and that is what happened. She was persecuted, even whilst praying, by the high priest. One so acutely sensitive and so spiritual is apt to come in for persecution from those who should know better, and who do not really intend it. Eli was not antagonistic to her, but being so dull he lent himself to the enemy for the moment to persecute this saint of God as she was praying. Think of persecuting a saint of God while praying! He was attributing drunkenness to her. But she never faltered. She said, “I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit”. She was in the making, one of the finest products of the Spirit of God that we get in the Old Testament. She was in the making, a woman of a sorrowful spirit who was finding relief in the house of God. Anyone in such circumstances will be wise to follow her example and repair to the house of prayer. However low things may be, and they cannot be much lower than they were in Shiloh, she has recourse to the house of God and to prayer in it.
We are told, as you will observe, that she “went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more as before”. What a great change! Where did it take place? It took place in the house of God where she had an outlet to Jehovah. She had the assurance that, in spite of the persecution and the sorrow, her prayer was heard. If we know that He hears us we know that we have the petition we desire and that is the end of the matter. The whole matter was settled in her soul. She “went her way ... and her countenance was no more as before”. She had been in the presence of God, she was conscious of having been heard, although only her lips moved, for “the Spirit itself makes intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered. But he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for saints according to God”,
[p. 197] Romans 8: 26, 27. There is perfect representation by the Spirit of the state of our hearts and Hannah was conscious of this and she went away and did eat and her countenance was no more sad. She had now become, before the actual literal request was granted, a victor. It is one of the finest things that you can get, that you are victorious anticipatively. You have got into the presence of God and you know that you have been heard, and that God is true. “Let God be true” (Romans 3: 4); He is faithful to His promises. Every promise that He makes is yea and amen in Christ so that we have strong consolation even before the things we so much need are actually granted to us.
So we read in the second passage that Hannah, after weaning the child, brings him back. What a triumphal march that was up to Jerusalem; and she took three bullocks, one ephah of flour and a bottle of wine, and Samuel, the one she had asked for, with her. The treasured answer had been actually granted, actually received at the hand of a faithful God in answer to prayer, and now she is on the march up to Jerusalem. What a triumph! Is she going to make this boy some distinguished person in this world? Many a boy is ruined as his parents think of him in that way, in relation to something that distinguishes him and distinguishes the parents, too, it may be, and thus he is almost sure to be ruined. But not so Hannah, “there shall no razor come upon his head”, meaning that there is to be no crown of worldly glory on that brow. He is to be glorified in the house of God where all true lasting glory is for old and young. One can see the victory in her countenance as she brings up the suitable offerings. How expanded her affections had become as she received at the hand of Jehovah this answer to her prayer, a man child. One can hear the note of triumph as she says to the old priest, “For this boy I prayed; and Jehovah has granted me my petition”. She is not reproaching [p. 198] him in the least for calling her a drunken person, she is too great a woman for recrimination; she is a spiritual woman full of grace. She is a great priest herself, a greater priest than Eli, but she recognises Eli and she says with respect, ‘This is the child asked for and he is for the Lord’. “For this boy I prayed”.
She has made a complete change in the house of God; even the old priest is brought to worship in the presence of such spiritual power and wealth. Is this not a lesson for the youngest here, brother and sister alike, as to how matters can be improved? How can I add to the position instead of criticising?
She went to the house of God burdened, she came away with her countenance changed; and now she has come back with wealth and altered the whole aspect of Shiloh. That is what any one of us may do. It is a question of seeing the thing and resolving to improve it. As soon as you resolve to do anything for the Lord He will be with you in it and make a way for you, and change the whole situation.
What is to be learned in chapter 6 is the same lesson, only from the standpoint of spiritual instinct.
These cows are not, of course, persons, they cannot talk as we do, but a cow has instincts as much as a person and God uses these cows to illustrate and represent what is so needful in the circumstances, namely, right instincts. The ark had been taken.
It is not now simply a male child that is needed, what is needed now is a fully developed man. That is, it is Christ that is needed, Christ in His full strength as a Man here for the will of God. This initial change that we get in Hannah in the first chapter manifests the great change that had come about, for we have a wonderful contribution to the treasury of God in her prayer in chapter 2, which is a song of triumph; like Paul and Silas, in prayer she praises. There is hardly a note of prayer in the second chapter; it is [p. 199] praise. She is full of what she had acquired from the Lord. The whole aspect is changed initially; not only is Samuel there now but a wonderful contribution is made to the treasury of God.
But now we need Christ in another sense, not simply as young. He is called a Child in Matthew, a Babe in Luke, but Mark puts it, “Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ, Son of God”, Mark 1: 1. There are wonderful things in the house of God — from glory to glory in the house of God, and what is needed now is the glory of God and the power of God. Shiloh needed these two things, and is there a meeting in the world that is not in need of these two things, the need of the apprehension of Christ as presented in the ark of the covenant, the ark of God?
The ark is the power and glory of God. That is the point of the ark of God and I do not believe there is a meeting anywhere not in the need of this.
It had been taken by the Philistines in battle. Another mother appears in chapter 4, and she is dying. Her son is born and she dies at his birth, saying, “The glory is departed”. Were there such wails in sorrowful times in our meetings we should soon get an answer and deliverance. Ichabod — the glory is departed, the ark taken. She understood, she is in advance of Hannah. She is the wife of the wicked priest Phinehas, and she is speaking of the ark of God. There is no glory amongst the saints if Christ is not amongst us. As Paul says, “Christ in you the hope of glory”, Colossians 1: 27. It is His presence in us. “Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me ...” Christ spoke in Paul; He was there in power in Paul and that is what is needed. And so these cows are used of God to show how He can recover things where someone feels the loss, as that woman did in her wail of sorrow when the ark was taken.
Now the ark is coming back. Most ignominiously [p. 200] from the outward point of view; sent back by the Philistines in a cart drawn by two cows, a very humiliating state of things. But God sees, whatever you may say about that position, that there are instincts there that are not natural but representative of what is spiritual. You might question how a cow can have a spiritual instinct, but what is impossible with God in these circumstances? What made these cows go on by the straight way when their calves were kept behind? If their natural instincts are to govern them, they will turn back. As it was said of saints of old, they had opportunity to return but now they seek a better country; their instincts are right. Is it out of the range of God to put spiritual instincts into cows? The dumb ass with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet. Where did he get that voice? He got it from God; where did the cows get their instincts that led them to go along the one straight way? From God. One can always count upon God to show Himself even if spirituality be low. What can He not do? As the Lord says, all things are possible to Him.
And so the kine lowed as they went. They were suffering, in obeying the instincts there, for sufferings accompanied the instincts. They had motherly feelings for their calves, but the spiritual is greater and that is the point. It is the allowance of the natural and the allocation of the spiritual to the background that is the cause of all our difficulties. Personal preferences, personal links with one another, are merely natural and worldly. These cows overcome that. They went to Beth-shemesh by the one highway in spite of the drawing natural power behind them. They felt it; they were not insensible to their calves, to their young, but the power of the spiritual was greater. That is the great conflict that is ever amongst us, the spiritual versus the natural.
The kine go along the one highway — they would [p. 201] not take another; they went straight along that highway. You say, It was a miracle. Do not miracles belong to God? They do. John says “signs”, not miracles. The Philistines’ decision was if the cart went by the way of his own coast to Bethshemesh, then it was the hand of God — God was in all this. They went by the one highway. What a sign, a remarkable thing! The Philistines went after them. There are Philistines all around us. They sometimes come to our meetings to spy out what is going on, as the apostle says, “False brethren brought in surreptitiously, who came in surreptitiously to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus”, Galatians 2: 4. The Philistines were looking on. They seem to know the history of God’s people. You will be impressed by the remarkable kind of understanding they had. It looked as if God was inclining even these hardhearted Philistines in a right direction. What can God not do? A man may come in to spy out our liberty and stay to pray; he may be convicted while he is in. We need not be afraid. If God be for us, who can be against us? The daughter of Zion laughs the Assyrian with all his multitude to scorn. She despises them.
So those Philistines follow up the cows, the cart and the ark upon it. Where are they going? They are going in the direction of the land to which the ark belonged. It was going to its own place. Many years, alas! still had to pass before a David arose, who says, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob ... . Behold, we heard of it at Ephratah, we found it in the fields of the wood”, Psalm 132:4 - 6. That is what we come to here.
The ark had to wait, and God does wait, as John refers to the kingdom and patience in Jesus. He has all power in the kingdom and yet His patience is [p. 202] commensurate with that. The more power we have spiritually, the more we can wait; the man without power cannot wait. The waiting time may have to be years. “I wait for thy salvation, O Jehovah”, Genesis 49: 18. It is the present state, that one is patient, one is waiting for God, who will shortly come in. The ark had to wait for many, many years but it had begun to move, it was moving in the right direction, and David installs it in its own place in Jerusalem, where the power and the glory of God can shine.
That is what happened here; and so these cows suffered as they went. I am speaking of suffering, it is the order of the day in this book of Samuel, a transitional book beginning with failure and disaster but ending in everything recovered. What a book it is! I would urge every young person here to read the book of Samuel. It is a book of recovery beginning in a small way in the exercises of a persecuted woman, and ending with David recovering all. The second book is the ark installed in Jerusalem, but the end here is David recovering all. So it is a book to be studied in our assembly difficulties; we should see if we are true like Hannah, like these cows, like David; we shall reach the divine end, but through suffering. These cows suffered as they went. They felt the loss of their calves, and at the end of the journey they were sacrificed. They laid down their lives in principle. It is not too much to be expected from any one of us. We are to lay down our lives for the brethren. We are told that one man must die for the people. As a rule that is what is needed in all our sorrows: one man to give way for the sake of all, to suffer for the sake of all. These cows were put to death, and the ark was taken down by the Levites, those that should handle it, so that now it is in safe custody.
The final point is in chapter 30; perhaps one of [p. 203] the most distressing pictures you can get is this account of the burning of Ziklag by the Amalekites, a vicious thrust of the devil at an opportune moment. David had failed; he had turned aside to Gath, and the enemy took advantage of the position, carried away all and burned the city. But there was mercy, as is usual. No one was put to death. Is that not miraculous? Is that not a sign? Certainly. God comes in and the enemy is not able to do all that he wished to do. God holds back the sword of the Amalekites. God says to Satan, You can touch Job, but do not touch his life. Satan can come so near to me as to put boils all over me, but God’s hand comes between His child and Satan and he cannot take my life. Satan can only do so much and so it was the Amalekites could only do so much. Abigail was not put to death. None of David’s wives nor of the women and children was put to death; all were spared. How touching that is! How it ought to encourage us to have confidence in God that even if we fail He comes in in mercy and the disaster is not nearly so bad as it might have been. I suppose we can all say that, how infinitely worse it could be, and God loves that. I saved your wife and children, He would say; I did not allow the Amalekites to touch a hair of their heads. How touching that must have been to David! But still he went through the sorrow, he wept until he had no more strength to weep. I wonder if any of us has ever had such an experience as that. And the people thought of stoning him. Such a loved leader as he was, and rightly so, yet his followers could even think of stoning him! — they spoke of it, we are told. What a time it was! But he encouraged himself in the Lord his God. You see, God never intends a calamity to be overwhelming to His children. He intends us to feel it and go through it to the bitterest end, but He will save us in it; He will make a way of escape.
[p. 204] And so David went through the bitterest sufferings. The very thought of his people stoning him must have been dreadful to him. Not that he feared death, but their hearts were so changed towards him.
Now he is like Hannah, he has recourse to the ephod, to prayer: not ordinary prayer. There are many who pray in the ordinary way. I suppose there is hardly a christian in human organisations that knows anything about the ephod. “Our Father which art in heaven”, what is called the Lord’s prayer is said by hundreds of mouths, but the ephod is not understood. It is not properly a christian prayer, if you will understand me. It is Scripture, of course, and intended for that time, and will be comprehended later. But it is not the prayer the Lord taught His disciples when one said, “Teach us to pray”. He there touched on what I might call a christian’s prayer. He says, “When ye pray, say, Father”; that is a beautiful address. I do not suppose any name is so delightful in the ear of God as the name Father, spoken to Him by the Spirit of adoption. It is in that connection that the ephod stands today. It is brought to him by Abiathar. We read in Mark 2: 26 of “the section of Abiathar the high priest”, as if to say it is the christian position in type; and David is intelligent as to that, and has recourse to it; God heard him and answered him. As He answered Hannah He answered David.
And He says, David, you will recover all. What victory there was in that! But he had to go through the sufferings, and I am persuaded, dear brethren, that all our church affairs and assembly sorrows are educational. How frequent they are and how current they are at the present time! But as going through the thing, every sorrow is an education, and if we disregard the education the sorrow continues. It is as we accept the education and feel the sorrow and weep until we have no more power to weep that God comes [p. 205] in. We arise from our weeping to approach God by the ephod and God hears us and the answer is clear and complete. He recovered all (verses 18, 19).
First of all you have the man brought in, and then you have Christ typified in the ark, the power of God and the glory of God, and then you have all. That is, we do not want to lose a saint. No person who loves God and Christ and the saints wishes to lose a saint; he wishes that all should be recovered. That is the line we are on. As we feel the loss we shall turn to God. As we tell the Lord there are many absent, and we feel it, the Lord will respect that and there will be more and more recovered, but understand recovery means on the Lord’s terms, not on the terms of the one who has departed. Everything in the house of God must be on His terms. He must have His own way, His own principles and order in His house, and those who love Him know that the more there is of that the better for themselves.