CLARITY

E. C. Burr

2 Kings 12: 11–14, 17, 18; Numbers 10: 1–10; 1 Corinthians 14: 8

The miracles which the Lord Jesus did when He was here, while for immediate relief to the person concerned, also have a moral bearing upon ourselves. We can trace in them the state of the person and relate that to ourselves. We can follow through the cure, and again see things in that for ourselves. One man who comes to my mind in relation to what I desire to speak of is the blind man who, in the process of his cure, first saw men as trees walking but then saw all things clearly. One great need for us, continually, is clarity of vision. It is not difficult to get into the frame of mind in which we think that we have come through various assembly crises and difficulties and that we now do see all things clearly—but then the Lord may allow other things to come up which test us as to the clarity of our vision. Then things in the history of the Lord Jesus Himself also have moral teaching for us; the brethren will remember that there was an occasion on which He spoke to the disciples and they did not very much understand, but then they said, “Now thou speakest openly”, John 16: 29.

Therefore clarity of speech is essential too—clarity of vision and clarity of speech.

I make these preliminary remarks as to the blind man and as to Jesus Himself in order to bring out that what one has in mind in speaking about the trumpet is that there is clarity in relation to it. I do not think

that there will ever be a time in assembly history when clarity can be dispensed with. Paul says, “We use great plainness of speech” (2 Corinthians 3: 12. A.V)—that is the trumpet sounding, and I think that that is a thing for which we have to be ready in our own day. We have been through a time, admittedly, in which plainness of speech according to man was thought to be fitted for the day; but the plainness of speech which Paul has in mind is what is spoken by the Spirit of God.

If we speak about the trumpet, we do well to carry with us the need for discernment as to who has the trumpet; we will find in Scripture that Saul had a trumpet and Joab had a trumpet and Shimei had a trumpet, and other men had trumpets, and it may not be too much to say that we have heard that kind of trumpeting; but that is not what is to characterise the movements of the people of God in the present day. One thing that we need to be clear about is that the trumpets that are according to God are sounded by priests that is absolutely fundamental to our understanding clarity of vision and clarity of speech, that the trumpets are priestly instruments. We are in a day in which, I suggest to the brethren, we need as much as ever not only the ability to discern things clearly, but the ability to speak rightly and plainly, but under priestly governance, in relation to whatever may arise.

This scripture in 2 Kings 12 is very interesting as you study it in detail. It was a day which you might well have thought of as a day of revival, and in one sense it was. Jehoash, who was king, discovers the house of God and the things that relate to it in ruin, and he sets on repair. I think we might say that characteristically this is an exercise

that we would be in. As we often say, the ruin is all round us and we feel that we are part of it and what we have contributed to it. The last is perhaps a thing that we should feel increasingly, because our own history may have given other believers a lack of confidence in the ability of any believers to walk in the light of the assembly in the present day.

So they become content with a lower order of things, and with what suits man and what meets man’s need, because you can go on with that and easily satisfy the people to whom you speak and whom you serve if you concentrate on the things that meet the need of man. You can maintain confidence in this, because you will always be able to produce spirited and lively believers who are ready to give plain testimony to the fact of what God has done for them—confidence in that order of things is easily built up. But I think we would judge that our own history has had the effect of diminishing the confidence of believers in the fact that it is possible to walk in the light of the assembly.

So Jehoash sets about rebuilding. It is, as I say, an exercise with which, characteristically, we would be in sympathy. Not that we think that the church in its public aspect can be built again—this is deceitful. While one seeks to speak carefully about such things, the enemy’s hand may even be in it, as leading men to think that it will be possible to reunite the church before the rapture, leading them to use natural and earthly means as part of the process, as they would say, of bringing the church together again; but it is leading people to rely on things that are not of the Spirit of God as the means of unifying that of which He alone is the unifying power. We

rest in this, that we shall see the whole assembly at the appearing of Christ. We shall see it, no doubt, and have impressions as to it, at the rapture, but display is in relation to the appearing; and those that love His appearing are characteristically assembly persons, because they are looking forward to seeing, not only Christ Himself displayed, but the assembly in its fulness as the answer that God has prepared for Him.

I was impressed during the week in reading Mr. Raven’s remark as to Israel that “they will see Him only in the church” (Volume 4: 44). Now that was a new thought to me, and I would like to reflect on it. The scripture says plainly that “every eye shall see him …” (Revelation 1: 7), and “They shall look on him whom they pierced” (John 19: 37), but certainly, according to Revelation 21, one manifestation is in the assembly, and we would value that; and we look forward to the time when, being manifested with Christ, we shall have a full impression of what belongs to Him. But it is not, I think, of God to set about now trying to reconstruct what in the assembly publicly has so patently failed. This is not in any way to say that we should not look for means of gathering others into the light that is available for them. We would present to them the light and count on God to work by means of that light, using the truth to enlighten souls, so that in the power of the Spirit of God they may be drawn effectively and, you may say, publicly on to ground which is fitted for Christ at the present time.

Jehoash is engaged in this kind of thing, but it seems, according to the account here (the account in Chronicles is slightly different), that he carried things only so far. He did the building certainly, he dealt with what was external and he made a great work of it. Even the children know how he had a chest set in the house and made a hole in the lid and people put money in it as they came in, and then he shared the money out to the people who did the work; but, it says, “However there were not made for the house of Jehovah basons of silver, knives, bowls, trumpets, nor any utensil of gold or utensil of silver”. What this suggests is that the external was maintained, but the internal and what was critically essential for the maintenance of the service (which was the only purpose of the existence of this house) was not prepared. These things were, as it were, left on one side; and there appears from this account) to be almost a degree of deliberation about their not making these things—they were, in that sense, content with the external order. We see what the end was at the end of the chapter.

One thing they did not make was trumpets, and I venture to suggest that we may easily get into the state of so feeling the breakdown and the ruin which is all round us that we omit to make the trumpets. It is a sad thing, but we may omit it. While it may well be that we would be right in relating the giving up of everything that was valuable to Hazael as a kind or bribe to their not making the other utensils of gold and silver, the dishes and things that were needed for the service of God, one reason why things were so lightly handed over to this invading king was that they were not concerned about the trumpets. That is to say, they thought that, in the circumstances, they could not make any claim to anything. I think that is what the not making the trumpets means—that they would give up what would, as it were, announce the ground that they held, what would rally the people; they would give up one of the essential priestly instruments. The external might be perfect—everything rebuilt like a model of what the old used to be—but no vessels, no

trumpets. I suggest, beloved, that if we are concerned about recovery in the present day, we should be concerned that we are making trumpets—they are not things lightly to be left out of the pattern of the house.

In Numbers 10, God, as you might say, went out of His way to instruct that trumpets were to be made and that they were to be made for certain purposes, and the inference from that is that the purposes would not be carried out if the trumpets were not made. We may easily get into such diminished ideas about what remains in the present day that we may say we cannot claim anything. We scarcely dare assert the truth that we hold, we scarcely dare say that this is right and that is wrong; we scarcely dare say that the level of christian walk is sonship, that the level of christian conduct is what is led by the Spirit of God, that the level of separation from the world is “I sanctify myself for them”, John 17: 19. All these things are involved in the making of the trumpets, and these are the kind of things that the trumpets are to sound.

We may even say, We could not possibly have any experience of the jubilee in our day, so we will not make any trumpets.

The giving up of the trumpets has very wide implications as to what is being surrendered. It may have appeared very suitable to the weakness of the day—We will have what is external right, but the dishes and utensils, well, perhaps we cannot rise to that; but the trumpets, well, we cannot rise to that. So the trumpets were not made, and the result is that everything went over into the hands of Hazael as a kind of bribe to keep him away. You might say, by way of application, that the church was delivered into the hands of the world, because there was the giving up of the assertion of divine principles and what is suited to God, which is one thing that the trumpets are intended to do.

I refer to Numbers 10 because this is where the trumpets are made. Trumpets are referred to earlier—brethren will recall that the trumpet is referred to at Sinai. (We are not told who made that trumpet, nor indeed who sounded it. It says, “When the long drawn note of the trumpet soundeth”, Exodus 19: 13, and the impression you would get is that God sounded the trumpet at Sinai, though maybe He used others in relation to it. I think that is the first reference to the trumpet). But as the people take up the wilderness way God gives specific instruction as to the making of the trumpets.

The first thing He says is, “of beaten work shalt thou make them”. This again has a bearing on us, because beaten work in Scripture has a great deal to do with the way things are worked out in us in our histories. It is not that God beats people, it is not that the Father’s chastening is chastisement. (There is a difference between chastening and chastisement—chastisement is generally an infliction of punishment for things done wrong; chastening enters into nurture and admonition). Sometimes we may feel that the Father’s hand is heavy on us in chastening, but actually the Father’s hand in chastening is never such as to leave a scar or a wound or a weal. What it does is to reshape the personality and bring it more into consistency with the great standard that the Father has before Him. But there is, nevertheless, experience. There is what we have day by day, and what we have over longer periods. We need to get the gain in our histories both of what is happening from day to day, or almost from moment to moment; but we also need the ability to look over periods during which God has dealt with us and see what He has been working out over a period, and how the day by day things enter into these longer-term operations of God.

All these things, I think, enter into the beating of the silver.

Now this is a process that calls for skill. As long as it is in the divine hands, the beating is always skilful. Sometimes the material under the beating becomes restless; sometimes it wishes the beating would stop; but if God is determined that there shall be silver trumpets, the beaten work has to go on. Beaten work enters into other aspects of the tabernacle system, but God is beating something out in the lives of His people, and especially of those who desire to be priestly, something that is going to be useful to Him in relation to the direction of His people. Therefore one would encourage brethren, brothers and sisters, to look back over their history and discern the way in which divine beaten work has entered into it. Sometimes as you look back you might reflect on even such a thing as your own sin; but it may be that in relation to that the Father has come in, and used even that to add to His beating operations that are not intended to damage or injure, but to produce material out of which He can make such things as silver trumpets.

Then in our history, we may feel that we have failed. I am very concerned myself about the damaging effect that recollections of failure have in the activities of some who could be serving the saints distinctively at a time when such service is needed, that is to say, there is the view that we have failed so much in this and that, that we had better now say nothing.

‘When I have spoken, I have so often been wrong, that perhaps now it would be better’—well, we would not say, ‘for me to say nothing’, ‘for one to wait on the Lord’, or something that sounds very pious; but, beloved, you are refusing to see the conversion by means of beaten work into a silver trumpet! It is essential that we should not allow our failures to become a reason why we will go on failing.

We are to understand that if the Lord has taken us by ways in which we feel that we have failed—and understand better with the backward view where the failures were—that these failures are part now of the beaten work, and the result is that there is something that can be made into a silver trumpet that is useful for divine purposes, and especially useful for the direction of the brethren in relation to their movements in the wilderness. One grieves often over men (not that I speak of brothers here, although we can all take these things to ourselves) who could be giving a distinctive lead to the brethren where leadership is needed, who seem to be affected somewhat by experiences of failure, and the feeling that having failed in what they have said in the past they dare not speak again, when their word now would have the effect of rallying the brethren either by way of alarm or, more profitably, into the distinctiveness of blessing which God has in view for them; because every sounding of the trumpet is not by way of alarm—there are soundings which are for the jubilee, Leviticus 25: 9.

I say these things with some exercise (I would not take it on myself to say things in relation to particular brothers individually as wishing to make a point of them); let us learn that if there has been failure, the trumpets are made of beaten work, and when the beaten work has been done a trumpet emerges. Failure in the past is certainly no excuse for failure in the future, and the inability to stem one tide of evil is no excuse for not seeking to stem another tide of evil. What we should do is to learn by our own failures that the Lord is making some material out of whatever failures we may have been through. We may feel that the Lord has

 

rightly and righteously dealt with us, even with a measure of severity, on account of failures that need not have arisen if we had been active in protestation against what was morally wrong—but the result of that is that there are instruments which the Lord can use for giving a decisive lead to His people. We are still in a day when a decisive lead to the people of God is needed. It is no time for wondering whether such-and-such would be appropriate, or reflecting privately that it might have been well if such-and-such a thing had been done. If the truth is known, then the truth should be stated, and if divine principles are known, then divine principles should be stated.

The blowing of the trumpet requires discernment as to whether one blast or two are needed; and it requires skill to know whether it is to rally the people by way of alarm, to rally them for blessing, or to rally them for increased blessing. There is skill needed both in the sounding of the trumpet and in the listening to it. In the army not very much would be thought of the regimental bugler who played ‘Lights Out’ at lunch time, or people who represented to the officer that when the bugle had sounded ‘Charge!’ they thought it was sounding ‘Cook-house!’ What is needed is the ability to declare plainly things as they are in relation to the circumstances of the time, and the ability to discern just what the trumpet has actually said; and this enters into the skills that are derived in the process of beaten work.

The Lord would use these things, and He would say, ‘In the wilderness I have found it essential that there should be trumpets; I have found it essential that there should be leadership amongst the people of God. I have committed this to those who are priestly—I have not committed it to everybody.’ It is not to every

one of the children of Israel that a trumpet is given—we know just what kind of thing that can lead to. The trumpets are given into priestly hands, those who sound them in consideration for the rights of God and for the benefit and blessing of His people.

You do not wonder that Paul said, “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for war?” It is not always battle, I emphasise that. What Paul is saying in 1

Corinthians 14 relates directly to battle, it relates to conflicts and to the prophetic word in relation to conflict; but it is not always conflict. If you look at Numbers 10 you will see that

“When they shall blow with them, the whole assembly shall gather to thee at the entrance of the tent of meeting.” Just think of that!—the trumpets sound, and they gather to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting. In what spirit would they gather? In a spirit of enquiry. They would understand that it was not an alarm that had been blown, it was a gathering sound—

like the announcements on the Lord’s day morning, and you gather in response to the trumpet to hear what God will speak, with a kind of spiritual curiosity to discern what He is going to say on that occasion. ‘Why has Moses called us to the entrance of the tent of meeting now? It must be that God has something to say to us.’ Therefore you come to the meeting expectantly in relation to God.

As the trumpet sounds, too, you realise that it is not optional whether you respond to it. There are not things that can be given higher priority than the sounding of the trumpet—you cannot send somebody else to get the message for you either—you go yourself and hear what God has to say. I think we very easily slip into feeling (although this may be an extreme way of putting it) that we can go to the meeting, especially on week-nights,

if we have nothing else to do! But, beloved, you have not understood the trumpet. You thought that the trumpet was sounding ‘Lights Out’ when it was really sounding for activity, if you thought that going to the meeting was optional. The Lord is calling His people together in order that He may speak to them. He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust, His own priestliness cares for us in those conditions, and the Lord does not impose things rigorously on us, but we need to be discerning in relation to the sound of the trumpet, that it has a commanding effect upon us; and what I speak of as this spiritual curiosity at least would lead us to go to the prayer meeting or another meeting and hear what the Lord has to say to us.

Sometimes the trumpet has to sound an alarm. This is recognised in this chapter. Mercifully, in the Lord’s goodness, the trumpet has not often had to sound an alarm of this kind recently, at least in this country. But the footnote to the trumpet elsewhere is ‘the reverberating blast of the horn’ (Note—Leviticus 25: 10), and it may be that reverberations of the sound of the trumpet have reached us from other parts. It may be that we have listened for reverberations of the sound of the trumpet and they have not reached us yet maybe because we are slow in hearing, maybe because the trumpet has not been blown with that long reverberating blast.

There may have been some little piping here and there, but what is needed in assembly matters is the reverberating sound of the horn. That is something that can be discerned by all the brethren in relation to any matter. It does not rally them to interfere, it rallies them because it is priestly, and in relation to where God is in the matter.

Then the scripture refers to the sound of the trumpet for journeying. We need to discern

whether the Lord is moving or standing still. In Numbers 9 sometimes the cloud stood still for quite a time. It is just as big a mistake to move when the cloud stands still as it is to stand still when the cloud moves; and we need to discern whether the cloud is moving or standing still, and if it is standing still, why it is standing still. I think if you read the gospels, you will discover that when Jesus stands still, you can discern the reason for it. “Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be led to him” (Luke 18: 40), “Jesus stood and cried” (John 7: 37), and so on. And there was a reason every time the tabernacle stood still. The great thing for us is to discern why the Lord is standing still or why He is moving. It is not actually a right assumption that the Lord is moving every day of every week; He may linger for a moment, for a day or two, perhaps for longer, in order that we may get the gain of the reason why He has stood still. He “stood still”, it says, “and …”—and we need to discern whether the Lord is moving and where He is going, and, if He is standing still, why He is doing it.

Then it says, “And when the congregation is to be gathered together, ye shall blow, but ye shall not blow an alarm”. We can remember a time, if I may go back by way of illustration, when the trumpet was sounded for the ministry meeting always with an alarm at the end of the call, because you never expected to get up straight from the ministry meeting and go home; you always had to have the alarm as well. Thank God we have not that now; we can get up after the ministry meeting and go home, reflectively we trust, carrying with us what the Lord has said. “Ye shall blow, but ye shall not blow an alarm”—now that is a sign of the Lord’s grace amongst His people, that He has found circumstances in which He

can speak and His voice is heard, but He does not need to have an alarm appended to it. If I may refer again to the army, the last call of the day, which is ‘Retreat’, includes, I believe, some element of every other call during the day. And the Lord would gather things up for us, He would speak to us. He would say, ‘This is not an alarm call, but I am gathering you in order that, restfully, you may compose yourselves into rest with Myself’. “Ye shall blow, but ye shall not blow an alarm”. All this, I emphasise, is in the hands of the priests.

Then, “If ye go to war in your land against the enemy”; that is, there may be occasion when it is necessary to rally the brethren against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. The conflict of Ephesians 6 involves war in the land, and it may require the trumpet. It requires great spiritual discernment to sound a trumpet in those circumstances. You can see it in Mr. Darby, how he would discern in a moment that there was spiritual wickedness in heavenly places set against some interest of Christ in relation to the truth, and the trumpet still sounds out of his printed pages. You can see it in Mr. Taylor and in Mr. Raven; you can see it in men like Mr.

Stoney. It is difficult to believe that Mr. Stoney’s ministry was given over 75 years ago—his ministry belongs absolutely to the present day. Every issue that has been current in the last two years is unfolded in detail in Mr. Stoney’s ministry, and the trumpet was there; some of it relates to conflict in the wilderness and some to conflict in the land.

But then, “in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt-offerings and over your sacrifices of peace-offering; and they shall be to you for

a memorial before your God”. This is what the Lord would have us in, beloved. He would not leave us with the impression that the trumpet is merely a military instrument. We have that impression sometimes. The last trump has its military aspect, but its prime characteristic is not military—it is our gathering together unto Him. God says, “in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in your new moons, ye shall blow with the trumpets …” Think of coming to the local reading when there are perhaps just two or three brothers, but coming in with the trumpet in the day of gladness. How many of us do that? How many of us come into our local occasions more with the feeling of something akin to Elijah, “I, only I, remain …”?, 1 Kings 18: 22. We would not say ‘I only’; we would say, ‘Well, there are six or seven of us here, we seek what help we can get’—but it does not matter, beloved, you should come to the meeting with the trumpet in the day of your gladness: It is an opportunity to hear what God is going to say.

So Paul says, “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound”—it is not to give an uncertain sound.

In a sense the music for each call is indicated in Numbers 10; each call on the trumpet has its own distinctive character. Paul would say the trumpet is not to give an uncertain sound.

Today it is not to, and if we are left here tomorrow it is not to. As we go on in assembly history the trumpet is to give a certain sound. It relates to the clarity of vision and the clarity of speech that I referred to at the beginning—the trumpet must give a certain sound. We were looking during the week locally at Abijah, when the division in the kingdom was becoming more patent, and one thing he says is, “We have God with us at our head, and his priests, and the loud-sounding trumpets”, 2 Chronicles 13: 12. Beloved, we are in a day like

that—publicly the kingdom is divided, publicly people are doing what they can to consolidate division, too (that, I think, would not be too much to say); but Abijah stands up in those circumstances and says with distinctiveness, “We have … the loud-sounding trumpets”.

If you said that today, many would say, ‘This is not a day for making claims’; or ‘Of course, we do not claim to be anything; we do not claim to be this, and we do not claim to be that’. It is all introduced with ‘Of course ...’, as if to say, ‘Nobody is going to dispute this’—but that king would dispute it. He says, “We have God with us at our head, and his priests, and the loud-sounding trumpets”. Beloved, have we those things? Have we? Ask yourself—would you say this if someone challenged you as to what you had? If a king with twice as many forces as you have came and set himself in array against you, would you say that? Would you say, to start with, ‘We have God at our head’? They could say that even in Corinth where there were local brethren who denied the resurrection of the dead—“How say some among you that there is not a resurrection of those that are dead” (1 Corinthians 15: 12), “God is indeed amongst you”, 1 Corinthians 14: 25. “We have God with us at our head”—that is, where characteristically assembly principles are maintained and the assembly of God characteristically is in the place, we have God at our head.

And we have His priests—Have we? We shall know tomorrow morning whether we have His priests—not that it is exactly in priesthood that the service is carried on, because the service of God in its highest level is carried on in sonship; but characteristically we have His priests.

Have we the loud-sounding trumpets? Have you the loud-sounding trumpets; do you still believe in them, or are you like

Jehoash who, in the day when you might have thought there was a great revival going on, had not really the courage to make trumpets again? Beloved, we need to see that in our equipment are loud-sounding trumpets, and have the confidence in God that will grasp that it is at His command that they have been made, and that it is at His direction that they are to be used.

But if He gives the direction, let us have the faith and the courage, and the dependence too, to use them in the loud-sounding way in which they are intended to be used.

May the Lord just use this to strengthen and encourage us, for His name’s sake.

Address at Southend-on-Sea
10 August 1974