GOD FOR US AND WE FOR HIM

E. C. Burr

Genesis 1: 29–31; 2: 18; 1 Corinthians 8: 6

The verse which I read in Genesis 2 is familiar to the brethren and, if I may say so, it is very familiar on occasions like this, and one can understand why. I do not want to speak about it from the way in which it is generally applied in meetings like this. After all, it was some four thousand years before anybody knew that this was a type of anything else. What I want to speak about from these two scriptures in Genesis is one side of a relationship we have with God, that is, how God cares for us. I read the verses in chapter 1 to show how God made abundant provision for man. Had man understood what God was saying about it, he would have seen that there was full provision for him from God. What I had in mind in relation to this, and I commend that thought to our beloved brother and sister, and indeed to all of us, is that God is for us. As Paul says to the Romans, “If God be for us, who against us?”, Romans 8: 31. And if you find that God is, as we say, on your side, I think you will find that there is nothing that can triumph against you. If God is for you, even in the circumstances that He allows day by day, and there is a variety of circumstances for us all, you will find that God was for you. You look back over your life, and some of us can look back quite a long way, you find that circumstances that you thought were adverse have in fact proved that God was for you. My own experience, if I may refer to it, is that God uses what appear to be very, very small things to change your course so that you know that God is for you. You look back, You do not see it at the time, you say to yourself, ‘Why did God let this happen; I was going to do so and so and this happened; why did God do that?’ But you see that God was for you, and if God was for you who can be against you? These verses in Genesis bring out that God was for you.

I think if you study the book of Genesis—and it is quite interesting to see if there is a theme in any of the books of the Bible—you will find that the general trend of the scriptures in that book is that God is for you. God was going to bring about judgment on the earth on account of the wickedness that was there, wickedness which is very extensive in the present day; God was going to bring in judgment on the earth, but He makes provision for man. He as it were takes Noah aside and says, Build an ark for the salvation of your house. You see, God is providing for man. God will say to our beloved brother and sister, There is what will be for the salvation of your house. The scripture in 1 Corinthians 16 that our beloved brother has already referred to bears on that, that God provides for the salvation of the house—He provides for the salvation of the house in Aquila and Priscilla, two believers well known to us from the scriptures. If you go on in Genesis you will find that God takes up Abraham, and what God says to Abraham is in effect, I am for you. He says, Go out of the place where you are, I have something better for you. He says to Abraham, Look at everything you can see and it is all for you; everything you can see I will give you. Again, God is for you. And if you go on further through the book you will find that even in the history of God’s discipline in Egypt, God was for them. He gave instructions through a man that there should be, for instance, the saving up of the food in the first seven years so that man could be sustained through the second seven years. You can see that God is for you, and that is the general theme of the book of Genesis. It may not appear so on the surface, but if you ask yourself, What is God doing in Genesis? you will see that having created man He is making provision for him all the time, always bringing out that God is for him.

But then if you go on into Exodus you will find it is still a question of God for us, but it becomes “we for him”. In the beginning of that book the people are complaining about the hard burdens which were put on them on account of the slavery into which they had come, and God does not say to them, I will make things easier for you; He says, I have something better for you, and He says to Pharaoh, Let my son go, that he may serve Me (Exodus 4: 23).

“We for him” is really God’s objective in the book of Exodus, but as you go on through the history, you find that one thing after another occurs and God is showing all the time that He is in favour of the people. If He brought them out of Egypt on the basis of the passover, He demonstrated almost straight away that He was for them. He did not leave them to find their own way in the wilderness, He was for them; He had the pillar of cloud and He had the fire by night. Every time they looked at it they would say, Well, God is for us and He is leading us on. One thing, beloved, I might just remark because it came to my mind through something else I have read, that believers need no individual leadership save the leadership of Christ and of God. They do not need man’s leadership in the singular; what they need, if they have leadership at all, is “your leaders”. In the wilderness God provided leadership from Himself. If they needed to cross the Red Sea God was for them, He opened a way. And at the end of that book, what He comes to is, Speak to the children of Israel that they build Me a tabernacle. The objective in the history of the wilderness is “we for him”. If you read on as the material was gathered and the tabernacle was constructed, you will see that the people were caught up in the exercise of “we for him”. If you read the chapters that relate to the construction of the tabernacle, you will find that nobody lived for anything else but what was for God. Nothing interferes with the history of the building of the tabernacle; they were all concerned about doing things for God. Are you? If you read those chapters in Exodus you would find that they had hardly time to go to work, let alone anything else. The prime thing in their lives was “we for him”.

Beloved, let it be so for us. There was no one when the tabernacle was constructed who was kept late at the office so they could not do their bit. Nothing like that. If it had been in our day they would have been at the meeting, they would be there on the basis of “we for him”, righteousness secured and established but “we for him” as the overpowering constraint in their lives, “we for him”.

Then if you go on through the rest of Exodus and you come into Leviticus you find that “we for him” is the great objective of it all. God sets out a series of offerings, these offerings were for God. The burnt-offering is for God, the peace-offering is for God, the oblation is for God, even the sin-offering is for God, and the trespass-offering is for God, and the wave-offering is for God, and the heave-offering is for God; “we for him” is the great characteristic of the whole structure of things in Leviticus. I might even refer to the leper. In the healing of the leper you say, surely that shows that it is ‘God for us’, but, beloved, the man is recovered from leprosy so that he may be for God. No leper could come into the congregation, but this man must come in and God provides in that way that it shall be “we for him”.

I just encourage the brethren. In some senses I feel that I hardly need to encourage our brother and sister because we know them, but the objective must be that “we for him” is the over-shadowing principle on which we live. We enjoy ‘God for us’; we preach about it, but beloved, when we preach the gospel let us have the other side of it as well, that is, “we for him”. The greatest thought for man on God’s part is that he should be there as one of the sons of God, “we for him”—the sons of God. Something I was reading last night, some ministry in the latter part of the nineteenth century brought this thought to my mind. The context in which I was reading was that the brother said that the cause of the low state amongst us is because “we for him” is not the prime thing with us. Do we not come to meetings to enjoy ourselves? In the service of God, at the end of the service, are we not praising God for blessings He has given to us? Let us, beloved, have more in our minds that it is “we for him” in every different association amongst us.

I just venture, if I may, to put a footnote to our beloved brother Mr. Lamont’s remarks, that a marriage which is in the Lord does not break down. And I just say this, and I hope I shall be excused for saying it, the fact that two people are breaking bread does not of itself mean that their marriage is in the Lord. Let us bear these things in mind. We have too many sorrows of that kind among us, but in taking up relations between a brother and a sister let us be sure that “we for him” is the prime constraint in everything that we do.

Well, beloved, all that I have done is seek to bring out an impression that occurred to me from what I was reading last night. We dwell a great deal on ‘God for us’; beloved, let us have a bit more of “we for him”, for the Lord’s sake.

Words at a Marriage, Twickenham
16 October 2004