MOURNING
E.C.Burr
Mourning, beloved brethren, has its place in Scripture. It comes in in the first book of the Bible, explicitly in relation to the death of Jacob: "The Egyptians mourned for him seventy days" (Gen 50: 3) and when the family took Jacob up and buried him it says that there was "a great and very grievous lamentation", Gen 50: 10. There is also mourning which is right in its place and has to cease. "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?", 1 Sam 16: 1. "How long"? There is mourning which is called for on account of assembly sorrows: "ye have not rather mourned", 1 Cor 5: 2. But there is mourning in the sphere of natural relationships of which God takes account. We are certainly here this morning as those that mourn. There are those who mourn in specific relationships; we all mourn in relation to a brother in Christ. Our beloved sister mourns a husband and sons mourn a father, daughters-in-law mourn a father-in-law and grandchildren mourn a grandfather, sisters mourn a brother; other relationships are here and mourning enters into them. We count on the truth of what the Lord Jesus Himself said: "Blessed they that mourn" (Matt 5: 4), no doubt having in view particularly in its setting those who sigh and cry on account of the state of Israel, but bearing also on the conditions in which we are; and we would draw from the Lord Jesus Himself the comfort which He adds: "for they shall be comforted" .
Mourning enters into this section that I have read. Its introduction is remarkable. God is giving commandment to Israel in relation to what they will be in the land and He gives instruction in relation to what is called here "the year of tithing"; that is to say, as we discover from the Scriptures, that there is a year when things are specially gathered up for God, when what is for God is the prime interest of all. I suppose we would seek that that might be true of us in every year. But the person who is speaking here is evidently looking back over a year, in which the crops have been reaped, in which the fulness and blessedness of the land that God had given them had been cultivated and its fruit drawn out. He reviews what the year has been, a year in which there would be things especially for God and for the divine system, the Levite, the fatherless, the widow, the stranger, all getting their portion; and he says, They have all had it, and "I have not eaten thereof in my mourning". He looks back over a year and says, Not on account of any personal sorrow that I have had has the divine system lost anything. Beloved brethren, we can look back over a year already in which there has been mourning amongst us, the Lord having taken different ones to Himself as He has taken our beloved brother. We can look back two years and think of others that the Lord has taken in two years, and we could look back over three years, as the scripture contemplates, and think of those that the Lord has taken to be with Himself; but as we look back can we say that we have not eaten the tithes in our mourning? that is to say, that what is for God and for the divine system has been fully yielded by us.
Our beloved brother has reminded us again of that great time of victory when Jesus will come for His own, but if He does not come we shall look back over another year from today in a year's time and the question will be whether we have eaten the tithes in our mourning or whether they have been fully yielded to God and to the divine system. I use the word 'system'; God has a system, a blessed system down here, a system that works amongst those who walk in the truth, that extends out to the stranger. It embraces the fatherless and the widow, but He has a whole system of divine operations here; and what the man is saying in this scripture is that on account of my mourning and my sorrow the divine system has lost nothing. Beloved, if the Lord leaves us here for another year, may that be so with us that we shall be able to look back, as many as the Lord does leave here because we only have to take account of one another, in the affection in which we hold one an other, to see that according to nature another year might see less of us here and more with Christ), will we have eaten the tithes or will we have given everything to God that is due to God? The man here says, and it is divine instruction that he should say it, "I have not eaten thereof in my mourning".
But then he goes on and seeks a blessing. He has had to do with mourning and with death, he has even had to do with uncleanness during the year; he has evidently kept himself in relation to all those things. Beloved, so may we keep ourselves, especially from in any way contaminating what is for God by what is unclean. But in the process God has lost nothing, the divine system has lost nothing. So he says "I have hearkened to the voice of Jehovah my God; I have done according to all that thou hast commanded me". Then he says "Look down from thy holy habitation, from the heavens". How it reminds us of the way Solomon knew God! (cf 1 Kings 8: 30 etc). In anticipation it touches prophetically the highest point that Israel would reach under Solomon. The man had had to do with mourning during the year, perhaps during three years, but what is primarily in his mind is that God might bless His people. I do not think, beloved, that any of us would doubt that the desire of our beloved brother now with the Lord would be that God would do this - look down and bless His people and the land which He had given them, as it says here, "as thou didst swear unto our fathers". That is, the desire is that, in spite of the sorrow through which we go, God will extend His blessing to His people as He always intended it. Beloved, let that be our prayer. Let us not leave aside the mourning; we will carry it with us - for the time being in outward expression we shall speak of the way we sorrow over our brother, we shall move from that into the more silent kind of mourning in which Abraham rose up from before his dead, and in which Jacob says - with such pathos, "Rachel died by me" (Gen 48: 7); you can feel the mourning in an expression like that. But, beloved, as we carry the mourning on, let us pray that God will bless His people and the land according to His own thoughts. Let us not be diverted by our mourning from entering more fully into divine thoughts. The thought goes back to God's original suggestion, "a land flowing with milk and honey". In fact it flowed with far more than milk and honey. In Deuteronomy 8 there were vines and fig trees and olive-trees and wheat and barley and pomegranates, copper and iron, waterbrooks and springs; it was a land like that. But if you go back in simplicity to God's original promise, you will find that what He has brought you into is far more than He originally promised; He is able to do exceedingly abundantly "above all which we ask or think", Eph 3: 20. And our mourning, beloved, only turns us back to the God who gives us all things richly to enjoy and, as we learn from Him in this time of sorrow, we shall find that amongst the things new and old are the variety of things in the land that God has prepared for His people and with which He will bless them.
LONDON
31 March 1976
AT A BURIAL (ii)
THE LOVE OF JESUS
G.W.Brown
"Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus"; it is equally sure that Jesus loved our brother, and that He loves his wife, our sister, and her children. They are loved by Him. Thank God, many of us here are conscious that the Lord loves us. He has His own way of assuring our hearts of His present and eternal love. There is no doubt that He is conveying to our dear sister and her daughters His love at this present time in more ways than one; in one way at least, that her brethren have gathered to be with her on this occasion. At the time of which we have read, the love of Jesus for this household was demonstrated in that it says in the chapter that He wept (v 35). He entered into their grief. He enters fully into the grief of our sisters and of the rest of the family, and of our dear brethren in this place. No one else can, but Jesus can and does. But the Lord says, and the Spirit of God has recorded it, that the end of what happened here was not death but the glory of God and that the Son of God may be glorified by it. In our poor, feeble apprehension of things we would say, What a way to choose for the glory of God! What a way to choose for the glory of the Son of God! But divine love and divine wisdom know better than we do. The crowds said "Behold how he loved him!" (v 36). Some among them said, "Could not this man, who has opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that this man also should not have died?" (v 37). Maybe we are baffled by God's ways in His wisdom and His love. Faith would bow to Him in them and trust Him in them. May it be the portion of our dear sister and of her daughters to bow to His ways and to trust Him in them. But the Lord had said that this is for the glory of God and that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. It meant much for Him (truly He went that day and waked Lazarus out of sleep) but, more than that, it meant for Him that He should go into death Himself that Lazarus might be raised, that the penalty might be lifted from all His own.
Our brother referred in his prayer to the sacrifice of Jesus and to the value in the sight of God of His precious blood, and the value of that precious blood in the sight of those that believe on Him. What glory eternally! How great it is! It shines already, the glory that He has brought to God in His going into death. What glory He Himself has as the only One who could effect redemption by His death! How He has been glorified by His saints, and will be glorified in His saints, the One who gave Himself! But He was glorified that day; He was glorified without doubt in the hearts of these sisters and of others present. Maybe they were onlookers, but He was glorified in their hearts that very day.
It is a concern, dear brethren and friends, as to whether God is glorified in us as a result of what is happening here this day. I believe He will be. He will be glorified in the hearts of many, including our sisters, and it may be in the hearts of some who have had but little part in this glory, glory for God, as bowed by His ways of love and wisdom, and in coming to appreciate the value of that great sacrifice by which God will secure His end, and have men for Himself eternally, and not only in the future but at the present time. May it be so.
WAGES
A.A.Bellamy
Isaiah 49: 3,4; John 4: 36-38; 2 John: 1-3, 8-11
These passages refer to wages, that is, reward for labour. It is affecting to our spirits to consider the labours of the Lord Jesus when He was here, and how apparently small were the results. The Spirit of Christ in this passage gives us light, and encouragement too, because labour is continuing, exhausting labour, the maintenance of what is due to God in testimony, and of what there has been in this very city, and of what our beloved brother, now with Christ, has had his part in. It involved exhausting labour. Nevertheless, it says, "my judgment is with Jehovah" - a great comfort that. The reproaches of those that reproached God fell upon Jesus in the course of His labours (see Ps 69: 9) only to bring out the infinite perfection of that manhood which sustained all for God. "My judgment is with Jehovah" (we can leave it there), "my work" (or my wages) "with my God". This is to help us - I speak to those who continue in relation to what has come in in the revival of the truth which is still current. It is to encourage us, beloved, in our labour. Paul says "knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord", 1 Cor 15: 58 . We are not to be weary in well-doing, for in due course we shall reap if we do not faint. There was no fainting with the Lord. He was not exhausted; the labour was exhausting.
So one thinks of what has preceded us, as the Lord refers to it in John 4. The labours of others in this city, as is known to us, involved conflict, and the enemy was met and defeated on his own ground over a hundred years ago. What labour entered into that conflict! The principle became clear, which Mr Darby said was indifference to Christ. Some years later he spoke of it as the coldest contempt of Christ that he ever came across. I refer to these things because the conflict continues and we stand in relation to what has gone before and continue in it. The Lord speaks of others having laboured. What of their labours? Something remains, continues up to this time in this city, albeit in such public weakness, but it is of the character of the Lord's own labour and He will support it. He will see it through until He comes. All is in the light of His quickly coming. "I come quickly" He says, "and my reward with me, to render to every one as his work shall be", Rev 22: 12. How encouraging that is! Now the Lord says that He had sent His disciples to reap that on which they had not laboured. "Others have laboured". We think not only of the conflict; we think of the normal labour of ministry and of what has come out in this city. 'From Eternity to Eternity' (J.T. N.S. Vol 33, p.198) was in the labours of one who was personally known to many of us, beloved James Taylor; that dip into time that he referred to, from a past eternity, issuing in glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus. I refer to that, beloved brethren, and other matters covered in ministry i n this city such as 'The Goodness and Severity of God' (Rom 11: 22, and J.T., N.S. Vol.60, p.171) and 'The Divine Way of Continuing the Testimony' (J.T. N.S. Vol 82, p,90). These things have a prophetic bearing upon every one of us here today .
Now John writes to this titled sister, the elect lady and her children. The children are not overlooked - "whom I love in truth". The subject of this epistle is love, but love consistent with the truth. The writer brings in these immense resources immediately. One would commend them to our beloved widowed sister here today. "Grace shall be with you, mercy, peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love". The deep sympathies of the brethren surround you, but these immense resources, John says, shall be with you. The incentive is to be faithful, for this elect lady was to be, and indeed was, a faithful person. It is worth considering the present necessity from that point of view, each one of us, for it is a time of apostasy. There are those who have gone back. I do not speak as critical of any, but there are those who have gone back, and there are those who go forward. There are also those who abide in the truth and in the doctrine. They have, John says, both the Father and the Son, but John's concern is that we should see to ourselves, that we may not lose what we have wrought, but may receive full wages. What those wages are is not stated. John had no greater joy than to see the brethren prospering and walking in the truth. They would be wages of love to John, but his concern was that they might receive full wages. It is put upon us, beloved brethren, in this momentous hour - so short, for the Lord comes quickly - to commit ourselves afresh to the upholding and maintenance practically of the truth, in every feature of it, and love consistent with it, for His Name's sake.