SPEAKING

J. McKillop

Jeremiah 1: 4–9, 17, 18; Psalm 48: 1–5; Galatians 2: 11; Acts 15: 13, 14

I have read these scriptures to help in the development of what impressed me in this first chapter of Jeremiah. The book itself has engaged me for a little while on the matter of speaking. One can say he, too, at times has felt like a child, that he could not speak. Yet it is a reflection upon God if He has given one something and one does not speak. Whatever our excuses may be, we have to learn that in whatever circumstances, and whatever God has in mind in view of His people, we have to allow Him to give us what we should speak. Moses said, I am not eloquent, I am not able to speak, but God says, I am not restricted in my speaking; I have a reserve; I have your brother Aaron, I know that he can speak well. So I thought there was a link, beloved brethren, in the way in which we too have to learn to speak well.

This was a critical time in the history of Judah and the kings. What I desire by the help of the Spirit is to state what my exercise is in relation to the present moment. Are we prepared to speak in relation to conditions that exist among us that the enemy would bring in, the attack of the enemy in the circumstances and in the localities in which we may be? I remember when I was afraid to speak when I should have spoken. But I think, as being before the Lord in a conscious sense, you are not dependent on your ability or your own wisdom.

Well, I have had this exercise as to this scripture. Jeremiah, like most of us, said, “I am a child”. “But Jehovah said unto me, Say not, I am a child; for thou shalt go to whomsoever I shall send thee”. The word is very plain in Scripture that in God’s dealings with His people, or against the enemy, He raises up men of ability and men of renown. Moses was a renowned man, and he was ready to carry things out in relation to the natural mind and the natural propensities that marked the Egyptian. So he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. That was not God’s way of having Moses carry out His will. As you know, Moses fled; but he was able to perform a service for the daughters at the well and he did a good service to them there.

The father, Reuel, said, “Why then have ye left the man behind?”, Exodus 2: 20. Well, the point is that Moses was able for something; in a right way, according to the will of God, he watered the sheep.

Now we come to Aaron, and he is a brother, and Jehovah knows him, and He knows each one of us. He knew Jeremiah before he was born; and He tells him that. He knows each one of us, our genealogy, our antecedents. He knows what we are and He has designed certain things for us. But he is able to make a man out of one like Jeremiah who was timid and, as we know, the prophet who wept. We may

weep too. We should do it in private before God. If conditions are such that they affect us, let us weep in private in our closets, in our place where we are alone with God. The Lord says,

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who sees in secret will render it to thee”, Matthew 6: 6. We may pray with prayer and we may pray with weeping. The great point is to move in relation to what God has put in your heart. Well, He takes up Jeremiah here in view of this matter. But He says, “Thou, therefore, gird up thy loins”. That is the first instruction Paul gives in regard to the panoply of God, “Having girt about your loins with truth”, Ephesians 6: 14. That is a very important issue or principle with us at the present day, beloved, because at times inaccurate reports are circulated. We have to be on our guard and on the alert that our loins are girded with truth. The Lord speaks of Himself as the way, the truth, and the life.

Now Jeremiah is told he is to be certain things. “I appoint thee this day as a strong city”, and I think it is beautifully set out in Psalm 48. The sons of Korah have come through a great and deep exercise and this is the expression which they have arrived at as to the greatness of God in “A Song; a Psalm. Of the sons of Korah”—“Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the hill of his holiness”. This points to the assembly and our local positions. “Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces as a high fortress”. What could be greater? What more could we want for preserving the principles in relation to the assembly as mentioned in this psalm? I am sure we could all say we are sons of Korah. We are sons who have experienced the mercy of God.

But we have been brought into an impregnable position. Are we going to maintain it in relation to God and the principles in which we have been taught in the ministries that have opened up the truth of the assembly? These are things, brethren, which remind me of the time when Mr. Taylor said in Chicago, You have to learn to have the backbone of the ram. The ram, like the lion, turns aside from no one. The backbone of the ram is mentioned in the offerings (Leviticus 3: 9). These things are testing to us.

Are we prepared to stand and, as issues come up, maintain the holiness that relates to the assembly and righteousness, faith, love and peace? So here we find a city and Jeremiah has to represent that. Am I prepared for it, maybe in a simple measure? God says, “I have put my words in thy mouth”, and He touched his mouth. I feel it is a critical time, dear brethren. It is a time for speaking according to what God has given us. We may say, Well, we must be gracious. Well, we want to be priestly. Grace reigns through righteousness. Let us get that into our souls and our foundations.

The word is, “I appoint thee this day as a strong city, and an iron pillar”. I think you find that with Paul in relation to Peter. He withstood him to the face, standing against such a man as Peter, who was given the keys of the kingdom. This is what God appointed Paul to do in view of what was encroaching into the assembly, the effort of the enemy to introduce Judaism.

And it is coming in in small ways and in different ways and principles. It is the little foxes that spoil the vines. We are to be aware of it. Solomon says, Let us take the little foxes. Let us take them and get rid of them. You have to be an iron pillar. And so you find that Peter is faced by

Paul and it says he withstood him to the face. I think we need this matter of facing issues; not just speaking of them in the living room; that may be profitable at times, but let us speak to the persons and face them in regard to the issue if they are wrong. Paul withstood Peter to the face because he was to be blamed. Paul was made an iron pillar in regard to this issue, the introduction of Judaism and circumcision and eating with the nations and then going back and eating only with the Jews, vacillation, like a branch blown in the wind. Paul is given the power to meet this issue. I am sure, dear brethren, if we have Christ’s rights before us fully in regard to the assembly, we shall be prepared to meet the issues that bring in divisiveness among us and bring in difficulties and cause estrangement among the brethren. God is looking for someone to be an iron pillar to meet these diversions and attacks of the enemy.

Paul meets it in Peter, the one the Lord chose to give him the keys of the kingdom, who opened up the door of the Gentiles by the bringing in of Cornelius.

Then we find James coming in as a brazen wall in Acts 15. First Peter sets out that matter in Jerusalem before the whole assembly. It says, “And all the multitude kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul relating all the signs and wonders which God had wrought among the nations by them”. Then James answered saying, “Brethren, listen to me”. Here is a man in the power of what God has given him as a brazen wall. He is setting up a defence against any further encroachment of the divisiveness amongst the saints. You must have moral power and spiritual ability to stand up and say to the brethren, “Listen to me”. You cannot do it according to the first order of man or by what is natural or fleshly. He says, “Listen to me; Simon has related how God first visited to take out of the nations a people for his name”. The Lord was challenged as to the things that He said and He could say in absoluteness, “as the Father has taught me I speak these things”, John 8: 28. Furthermore, He said He was “altogether that which I also say to you”. So James here goes back to what Simon had related to them and the great result is that the brethren arrive at unity and oneness. They send the message out as to what had been arrived at, “To abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what is strangled, and from fornication; keeping yourselves from which ye do well. Farewell”.

Think of the finish of this matter, that everything related to the attack of the enemy is completely overthrown. I think James relates to the brazen wall because he brings silence into the exercise and the issue by the way in which he presented things to the brethren, and they were carried, and the brethren would have been in the matter. So they write the letter; the issue is settled. I feel myself, beloved brethren, that the more we are with God in secret the more we shall be able to speak from God in public. The Lord could say he was, “altogether that which I also say to you”. That is a wonderful example; He is the strong city; He is the iron pillar, and He is the brazen wall. He never yielded for one moment to the enemy in the carrying out of the will of God. He said, “the words which I speak are spirit and are life”.

You think of those things that marked the Lord as amongst His disciples. He came to His own, and His own received Him not, but, “as many as received him to them gave he the right to be children of God”, John 1: 12.

Think of the privilege and the blessedness of what we have been brought into despite our weakness and our failure as to things at times. We can rely upon the God who gave Jeremiah to be a strong city, an iron pillar, and a brazen wall. I just seek, beloved brethren, in presenting this, that it might be in the light of what God is going to be as with us and for us as we take on these matters, not in any fleshly way, not in any way of animosity. We all break bread in remembrance of the Lord on the first day of the week, the Lord’s day. How can I be in relation to my brethren if I have feelings against them?

But let us take up the truth, as Jehovah said, I will put words in your mouth, I have touched your mouth, I have made you suitable, I have made you a prophet that I have sent. What Jeremiah represents is the principle of recovery. It may take the whole book to arrive at it, but, thank God for Jeremiah and men like him, including Ephraim as a recovered man, and any of us. We are all recovered persons. Let us fill out the ministry and the truth that God has given us and see that these things in principle are maintained among us, a strong city in the local assembly, an iron pillar, and a brazen wall, for His name’s sake.

Word in meeting for ministry, Plainfield
29 May 1984