Foreword ........................................................................... i
MEMORIALS
OF
MINISTRY
BY
JAMES B. CATTERALL
Edited and Published by Andrew Burr
81 Roxburgh Road London SE27 0LE UK
burr.andrewlinda@btinternet.com
2024
available from www.lulu.com
I am prompted to publish these articles by James B Catterall by having my attention drawn to a collection published after his early death by Mr Harry F Nunnerley. I have retained the title of that book for this one. It was issued with this brief foreword—
It is hoped that these memorials of the ministry of beloved J B Catterall will preserve permanently some of the wealth of the impressions of Christ which came out in our brother’s oral ministry. Our brother had a peculiar impression in regard to the sufferings of Christ, the fragrance of which remains. It has been a privilege to collect the ministry. Our prayer is that the saints universally may get the gain of it, proving “that he being dead yet speaketh”.
This book is long out of print but shows that our brother was well-regarded; his ministry also featured in booklets and periodical magazines—from which the rest of this book has been taken. I am grateful to those who have helped me find these items. The first fourteen articles are the pieces originally published together; they are followed by those from other booklets and periodicals roughly in the order in which they were published.
The scripts have not been re-edited, except to correct scripture quotations and add references; these are from both the King James Version and the Darby Bible—speakers at that time often had both Bibles before them, and quotations are a mixture!
James Bennie McLardy Catterall was born on 24 February 1879
in Glasgow. His parents, Andrew and Isabella, met at that time among the brethren in Glasgow. James became a bricklayer and later a draughtsman. On 30 August 1899, he married Annie Leishman McMillan, a ‘corn winder’ (winding yarn). While they lived in Glasgow, they had eight children, of whom their son, Andrew, died aged 7 in a tragic incident on the railway line—he and another boy were killed trying to save Andrew’s younger brother from a passing train.
About 1920, James and Annie moved to Deptford, in South London, and the meeting in Bermondsey, where he had work as an engineer in a brass foundry. They later moved again to Tulse Hill, also in South London—possibly attending the meeting then in Brixton, before Annie (suffering from TB) died in Goring-by-Sea i
in Sussex in June 1925. In April 1927, James re-married Lizzie Alice Walker, but after a mere three months, he died from a stroke on 24 July 1927 on a visit to Glasgow—he had been ill for a year and was retired from work. This gives force to his remark—
There never was a soul, in view of the work of God, that you could speak of as being taken home before its time.
Had the work in your soul and mine been done ten years ago, we should have been ten years at home by this time; because the Lord's work was finished.
James speaks of his early life, including this interesting tale—
My earliest impression of Christ was when I was less than two years old … I was taken to a Sunday school picnic on the banks of the Clyde. I was sat down on a log of a tree and we sang a hymn:
Down in the valley with my Saviour I would go, Where the flowers are blooming and the sweet waters flow.
I looked at the Clyde and thought they were singing about that, but presently I got the impression it was Christ they were singing about; I got an impression of Christ that day that never left me. Twenty years after I heard that hymn sung in the streets of Glasgow, and it all came back to me.
He may over-state how very young he was at the picnic, and his later recollection suggests that the true effect was much later—
... having been where the truth has been granted by God since I knew human life, there were many things clear to my mind that I thought I had got, and had laboured to learn, but my heart had not gone after Christ in them.
The ministry is very direct—and applicable a century later. I was also especially attracted by what our brother had to say about the Lord’s supper, in the first article and others later on; it is something I believe the Lord would constantly revive His people about. I trust He will use the reading of all this ministry to His present and eternal glory.
ANDREW BURR
2024
ii
Foreword ........................................................................... i
The Fidelity of the Love of Christ ...................................... 1
The Faith System ........................................................... 14
Following Christ ............................................................. 25
The Means by Which Fellowship is Maintained .............. 38
Samson and Jephthah as Examples of Faith ................. 49
Christ, the Test of Men ................................................... 60
The Three Great Feasts of The Lord and
Their Spiritual Import ................................................. 68
The Supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ ......................... 79
Discipline in View of Spiritual Enlargement ................... 89
The Lord’s Desire to Have the Supreme Place
in Our Hearts ............................................................ 101
Personal Links With the Lord Himself .......................... 112
The Lord’s Appeal in the Supper .................................. 125
The Bride Conducted to Christ ..................................... 135
The Sufferings of the Lord Jesus
Christ and Their Results ........................................... 148
Inflation ........................................................................ 156
The Love of Christ ........................................................ 160
The Consideration of Christ .......................................... 169
The Hebrew Servant ..................................................... 181
The Service of the Lord For His People ...................... 181
The Devotion of the Hebrew Servant ......................... 193
The Spirit of the Hebrew Servant .............................. 206
Followers of Christ ....................................................... 217
iii
The Power And Efficacy of the Ministry Of Christ ......... 227
The Support of the Lord in View of Formation ........... 238
Quails and the Manna .................................................. 257
Attachment to Christ .................................................... 261
Love’s Challenge ............................................................ 274
The Death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the Purpose of God .................................................... 276
Spiritual Life ................................................................. 282
The Lord’s Last Word to the Assembly .......................... 283
Extracts From Letters ................................................... 290
Christ as Manna in Relation to Heavenly Things .......... 292
Brief Notes of a Gospel Address .................................... 297
Meditation on Psalm 84 ................................................ 302
The Lord’s Own Ministry on Earth and
the Glad Tidings Preached Now.................................. 303
iv
THE FIDELITY OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST
John 13: 1-17; 20: 14-18; 21: 15-19
I desire at this time that the Lord may give us help together to speak of the fidelity of the love of Christ. I think we must feel that in regard of the love of Christ we touch a theme of peculiar blessedness and sweetness. At the same time, we cannot consider the subject without also feeling that we are drawing near to that which, with all its sweetness, must inevitably be very searching to our hearts.
I shall take a human illustration in a simple way; I might say that in regard of human affection, where there is a pure tie between souls there will always be the desire that the expression of it should be heard and understood. One thing that marks the love of Christ, beloved, is its intensely plain speaking, and that touches us in many ways, but in whatever way it may touch our spirits, it always has the great end in view of its own satisfaction, and connected with that, the satisfaction of the Father’s heart.
It was the plain speaking and inquiry of the love of Christ that tested the spirit of Peter so intensely. Even in the ways of the Lord with ourselves, and I touch on it with all affection, we may find the Lord speaking very plainly to us. We may be, for various reasons, inclined to interpret His speaking to us thus more on the line of His lordship than of His affection and care for us. Oftentimes the Lord may speak plainly to us, and it is of all moment to us that we should hear; but there is danger lest we might too readily interpret the Lord’s plain speaking as only bearing on matters that would shew our contrariety to His mind, and the fact that they were out of line with His own pleasure and rights as Lord; but there are times when the Lord speaks with intense plainness, when, if we knew the truth, we should know it was not so much that He was drawing attention to existing wrongs, as to the fact that even on the 1
line of rectitude there may be a lack of intensity and warmth of affection to Himself.
It is insufferable to the heart of Christ that there should be remoteness—distance—on our part. We may incline to it, but the longer we remain there, the more accustomed to it we become, and the more disinclined to leave it, but the love of Christ will not endure distance. The institution of the Supper, the service of feet-washing, the service and care of the Lord immediately on His resurrection in regard of Mary Magdalene particularly, and the dealings of the Lord with Peter at the close of His pathway here, are the plain speaking of the love of Christ that will not endure remoteness. I know of nothing that one becomes so accustomed to with all one’s knowledge of the truth, as the tendency to live in heart at a distance from the Lord. To know the things that are His pleasure and interest, to know the things that are changelessly dear to Himself, and yet, as to our personal links with Him, to be remote, could never satisfy His heart.
I should like to go over with you, as the Lord may help us, the movements of the love of Christ as indicated in the scriptures referred to. As the Lord drew near to the close of His pathway, with His own outlook before Him—death, and what death meant to Him—and to the great end that was to be the final and culminating testimony of His love to the Father, and His love to and interest in His own—one is deeply impressed with the way in which the Lord moved in regard of the passover and the Supper. I do not know that I should be justified in taking for granted that every soul here distinguishes between these, but I think it might suffice if I just say this in passing, that while we need the passover and the Supper, and each has its place, nevertheless, when we have distinguished between the two, we might lack the consideration of exercised affection for the Lord, that looks into the matter to see what bearing one has on the other, for assuredly, when we come together on 2
the first day of the week to answer to the Lord’s desire as the One who laid down His life for us, we would—if ordered aright, come together in moral conditions that have been produced by the keeping of the feast together. Are we taking it for granted that in our hearts there is a sufficient recognition of the fact, that when we come together to answer to the Lord in the Supper, we do not come together to create conditions, but to answer to the Lord in the power of conditions present with us? In whatever way we may order or regard the occasion, we may rest assured of this, that there is that in the Supper which touches our spirits in a peculiarly tender and searching way. In many ways we have been tested, when we have come to take the Supper, and have been made to feel more than in any other way how searching was the scrutiny of the love of Christ; but it was not instituted that we might be searched, or made to feel the remissness of our affection to the Lord, it was instituted that what is due to the Lord Himself in response to His great and precious love might be presented to Himself, the worthy Object of it all.
I draw your attention for a moment to the necessity in regard of the saints at Corinth, that the apostle should recall their attention particularly to the passover at the outset of his epistle. He says, “our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed”. Was there ever such a passover? Paul does not bring it to bear upon them simply to make a distinction between it and the Supper, but in order that their hearts might be freshly exercised as to the bearing of the feast on themselves. He says, “so that let us celebrate the feast ... with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”, 1 Cor 5: 7, 8. Whether in respect of the Lord Himself or in respect of one another, as bound up together with the Lord and His interests, may we be exercised that in all our goings, in all our thoughts of the saints in secret, or when together, and in our prayers for those who are precious to the Lord, that all might be maintained with us in sincerity and truth, for there is nothing that so leads souls astray 3
from the line that pleases the Lord as the lack of these.
Individuals, even souls together, may make mistakes, may be diverted, but the Lord places great value on sincerity of heart.
Sincerity, in its simple meaning, is this, that if I say I am going a certain way, then I go that way; if I say I am seeking certain things (the Lord sees my heart), then I seek these things. The Lord knows I may slip and fail in my footsteps, but sincerity and truth imply that what the lips say, the heart really knows to be true. It is not a matter of saying we love the Lord more than we do, or the brethren more than we do; sincerity and truth lie in this, that we love them more than we can tell. May we keep the feast together!
What will hold us together will be sincerity and truth.
I believe, that when we come together to the Supper to answer to the Lord, even though there may be a sense of the need of the Lord’s present grace in regard of temporal things and needs, yet He, blessed be His name, gives the grace, not only to rise above that, but also that an answer may be moved in simple response to His precious love. One wishes to speak simply of the Supper as that which marks the great love of the heart of Christ. What a serious thing it would be for our hearts if ever there came a time with us when the Supper became common! Every heart can answer for itself whether there be any such tendency with us. It should ever have in our hearts the greatness of the place that the love of Christ has given it; not a place as an ecclesiastical centre, not a thing which is the centre of one ecclesiastical setting or another, but that which is the most precious and most searching of all things, for it raises a constant question with us as to whether our hearts are right with the Lord as His heart is with ours. The question raised by the love of Christ is where our hearts are. You may remember the Old Testament incident to which I refer. “Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?”, 2 Kings 10: 15. This question was asked by one who was not 4
omniscient, but who would fain know how he was regarded by another.
The Lord knows our hearts omnisciently,
nevertheless in the Supper there is a constant appeal to our affections, and the nature of the appeal is this, Is your heart right, as my heart is with yours? There will never be any change in the heart of Christ; His love is the same as when He laid down His life for us. Well-known ground as the subject is, I trust that no heart here has the impression that it has become at all common ground. It never will be that to the heart of Christ, and may He grant it may never become so to us. If it become common to us, the thing that the Lord most sought in the institution of it will be that which we lack—a clear, simple, true, and affectionate answer to the Lord Himself for His own sake. He instituted the Supper; it was His own movement.
The hour of the passover had drawn near, and there is an inquiry on the part of the disciples as to the keeping of it, but the institution of the Supper came in distinctly outside the inquiry of the disciples, it came from the Lord Himself. It was not their request or desire that initiated it.
Who could have taken them off the ground of the passover, bound up with their affections as it was, but the Lord Himself? Sweetly the Lord served them in taking their hearts outside of Judaism and all connected with it. The truth as we know it will make us free. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”, John 8: 36.
The Lord knew what those disciples needed in regard of Judaism, and He took their hearts with Himself on to new ground in the institution of the Supper. I connect the two morally. What the Lord used for the institution of the Supper was provided for the commemoration of the passover—the bread and the wine. The bread and the cup speak to us of the body and blood of Christ. The cup speaks of the love of God. But I am speaking on this occasion of the Supper not only as the Lord’s provision, but of the 5
conditions which the Lord would have on our side in fidelity to Him.
If we have affection, what is the character of it? Is it that which stands in the power of its knowledge? For a moment I would attempt to make this distinction, that the Lord’s appeal is not best answered to by those who know most, but by those who love most. Then, you say at once, that must mean of course by those who have been a long time on the way. No, it does not mean that; but it is really given by hearts to whom the Lord in His own Person is more than anything else, any one else, time, place, or circumstance. It is hearts that love the Lord for His own sake, and respond to Him out of the sense of His own love, that please the Lord best in the Supper.
You may say any one might presume out of their knowledge. There is nothing like love for keeping people quiet. I do not know if you have tried it. I may be thinking of restless people, but there is nothing like love for keeping people quiet, for there is nothing like love so simple and easy to understand. In the presence of the love of Christ, when it lays hold of your soul and impresses your spirit, how much do you want to say? If you were speaking to my soul, which might be a little empty, I could understand your feeling much and saying it too, but in the presence of the love of Christ there oftentimes comes to us a sense that the most we can say may be said in the fewest words. We have nothing to tell the Lord about the Supper; infinite has been the patience of the Lord in what He has told us about it, and in the ministry of the Holy Spirit touching our hearts and bringing before us the great, precious, changeless love of Christ, and the love of God the Father.
The more the love of Christ settles upon our spirits individually or when together, the deeper is the sense our hearts have of the peace, the rest of the love of Christ. Then we do not say things to the Lord on the line of description, but our hearts move only on the line of response, and thus 6
we respond with a deep sense of the way we are indebted to the love of Christ. He instituted the Supper from His own side; it was not the suggestion of the disciples; the Lord knew they could not be without it. As one goes on, one feels more and more thankful that the time between the occasions of breaking bread are just what they are and no more. I do not speak as if the Supper was a place of refuge, for the more we taste of the love of Christ as it is conveyed to us then, the more thankful our hearts become that the space between one occasion and another is no longer than it is.
I come now to the service of feet-washing as connected with the love of Christ; it was not done by the desire of His disciples. It stands on the same ground as the Supper in this respect, that it was the Lord’s institution, and as much above the understanding of the disciples on their side as above their desire. We know much about it.
Were I to make a slip to-night and seem to confuse between the Lord’s feet-washing service, and His advocacy, I can understand even a young soul saying, You are confusing these things. Though I saw the distinction many years ago, I did not learn till long after what the preciousness of the love of Christ was in this particular form of service. We want the things themselves. Here we see the love of Christ moving—the same love that instituted the Supper. I would not say we come to the Supper to get our feet washed, but I believe that often and often, when we have come there we have proved in a most blessed way the manner in which the Lord touched our spirits and washed our feet—removing from our souls not only defilement but the sense of encumbrances and weights, and thus enabling our souls to move freely to the Lord with a fresh touch of the love of Christ that did it. Many things might press upon us—the care of the household, physical conditions, weariness of body, the effect of surroundings; these things might be on the spirit in coming together. God in His great wisdom made man a creature of peculiar sensitiveness. Before he 7
sinned, I believe his sensibilities were keen, but they became blunted by distance from God and sin, but may again become sensitive as a consequence of grace having reached us. Even when we are coming together to meet the Lord, we may pass by surroundings, and places, and conditions, that touch our spirits and fain would leave a shadow. You may say, Need I be so? Would it not be better if I did not feel them? No, it would not be better if you did not feel them, but it would be better if, feeling them, you knew the intensity of the grace and the love of Christ that would serve you in regard of them. Do not get away from the feeling; it might mean more insensibility than piety.
I wish now to say a word to the young that has been impressed on my spirit by reason of certain experiences of the last few days. Possibly you pass places you have been accustomed to enter that you could not enter now, because you love the Lord and belong to Him. But you pass the place and you look at it and say, I am glad I do not go there; I know better now. But is that safety? Is your preservation from the things you used to serve and follow wrapped up in your knowledge? No, it is not. Your safeguard is in the fidelity of the love of Christ. You are not safe unless these things touch your spirit with a sense of pain which turns you to the Lord, for you are depending then on the ministry of the Lord’s grace to your spirit.
The Lord instituted the service of feet-washing knowing that His hour was come to depart out of the world, knowing too that He was come from God and went to God, and that the Father had given all things into His hand. The widest possible outlook as to the divine dispensation was before the Lord, and He knew it all. All the inward certainty, and peace, and steadfastness of the Lord’s own spirit—if I may speak of it in that way—was in God the Father; and in the great desire and interest of His love He turns to His own circle, and institutes the service of feet-washing. What were His brethren to Him? A sort of second-best? just something 8
given Him because He had lost Israel? No, that is not the love of Christ; His is a love that holds the assembly as the first, and sweetest, and best thing—the treasure that is meet for His own heart and the answer to His own affection, and the gift, too, of the Father. “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me” (John 17: 6); and of all of them I have not lost even one. How He holds His own! He holds the best thing first; that which the Father would have for the Son, what the heart of the blessed God would give to Christ (I speak of it reverently)—the best thing first; He has given Him the assembly.
With that upon His heart, the Lord instituted the service of feet-washing; He inaugurated it above the desire, above the findings of the disciples’ feelings; He presented it to them in its desirability and in its dignity; actually it was the service of the slave of the house, a menial service in man’s ordering. What is its dignity? The dignity of it is that the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the lover of His own has instituted it; He did the service first. Will that ever become common to us, brethren? Shall we satisfy our hearts with the understanding of the doctrine, or do we value it in its own value as the thing Christ did first? He did it first, and as He did it must be its character to the end.
He laid aside His garments. It was His own act, done in His own dignity and in the peculiar greatness of His own Person. Then He took a linen towel and girded Himself. It speaks of the righteousness, lowliness, tenderness, and fidelity of His own affection. He took water, poured it into a basin, and began to wash the feet of His disciples. He
commenced to do it—notice the word. That was its inauguration. We cannot go into details now, though the more we ponder them, the more precious they will become to our hearts. Look at the circle! I do not know how far round in the circle Peter was, but, in due course, the Lord came to him, and when He came to him, Peter spoke; he had had ample opportunity to consider the matter, but even 9
when the Lord came to him he had not got over his difficulty about it.
Those who do not know what feet-washing is seldom continue. You say, What do you mean? Well, the sweetest thing that comes to us amongst the saints is the outcome of the understanding of the love of divine Persons, and when you get the sense that a thing that has come to you from another is for the sake of Christ, it washes your feet. You neither misunderstand the motive of the person who may be the instrument of it, nor do you misunderstand it on any false line of your deserving it or otherwise, but if the impression conveyed to your spirit is the impression of the love of Christ, your feet are washed.
How the things that are temporal drop away in the presence of the love of Christ! Preference for persons, difference of circumstances, and many other things, how they all drop out in the presence of the activities of the love of Christ in the circle of His own. You get a touch from a brother. You may think at times, Well, I wonder if I should be much profited by knowing that brother; perhaps he does not look attractive externally. How often we are surprised by the fact that from a vessel that on its exterior does not promise much, there may have been much in it to wash our feet—it was there for Christ’s sake. Our difficulty may have been rather this, that what was there was not for our sake.
Brethren, what washes our feet is not for our sake, but first and most precious of all, for Christ’s sake. It must be so, if He is above all others. Everything that makes much of Christ washes the saints’ feet. Peace and comfort now from it.
May I say a word as to Peter in regard of continuance?
What Peter trusted in was his own strength. In the things of God? Yes, he trusted himself. He said, Though all should be offended, yet will not I. He found himself out of touch with the Lord in feet-washing. If Peter had taken to heart the fact that the Lord had to expose to him that his own 10
feeling was out of accord with Himself, if he had borne on his spirit that tender word of the Lord in regard of feet-washing, might he not have been spared the rest? If I be not minded to accept feet-washing, am I on a line that I can have the Lord’s support?
This is the first touch in John’s gospel that shews us that Peter was not in accord with the Lord’s feelings, and a peculiarly serious one it is; as if the Lord said to him, Peter, the thing that matters most to Me is the thing you do not understand. If he had taken to heart the Lord’s word, may we not legitimately suggest he might have been saved the rest? Howbeit, he reached by discipline what the Lord would have brought him into by feet-washing; such is the fidelity of the love of Christ. I speak from experience which has taught me this. There are many things I may have reached by discipline that I might have reached by feet-washing, but it is the fidelity of the love of Christ that has brought me there in the end.
In regard of the Supper, our gatherings from time to time are so variable, in what I might call their spiritual quality, that we often raise a question as to conditions from the moral point of view, but may I suggest this? that if we washed one another’s feet more, our answer to the Lord in the Supper might be more decided and sweet than it is; and I believe too that our power to worship would be greatly enlarged in us.
In regard of Mary, we see the unchangeableness and faithfulness of the love of Christ. I see the Lord, not only in the sense of His suffering and superior to it in the greatness of His love, but I see the Lord again, the living One out of death, alive for evermore, having the keys of death and hades—as He speaks in Revelation, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore”, Rev 1: 18.
Ah, you say, that is a great guarantee of the fact that He will unlock the situation at the rapture. It is a sweet guarantee of the fact, brethren, that He can unlock it now. He took 11
the affections of Mary on to entirely new ground; rapture affections, in the principle of them, are affections that are engaged with the Lord in an entirely new place. He said to Mary, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”, John 20: 17. Before the affections of Mary were in touch with the brethren, in the power of the Lord’s word they travelled to a new place. It was the power of the ministry of the Lord to Mary that took her affections from earthly hopes even in Himself, and anticipatively carried them to the place with which the declaration was connected:
“my Father, and your Father … my God, and your God”.
Now He says, “go to my brethren”. She went and told them. It was the fidelity of the love of Christ securing a heart in the power of affection, connected not only with the lordship of Christ but sweetly and divinely connected with the Lord Himself—the Object of the Father’s pleasure, the Firstborn amongst many brethren, yea, I think we might say, as the Head of the assembly, His body, “the fulness of him that filleth all in all”, Eph 1: 23. Her affections went to the new place, and they went there to stay there.
I do not wish to be mystical, but I think no one can give you so much practical help in your difficulties as a person who is connected with heaven. God solves time’s difficulties for eternity. The person whose heart is where Christ is, is not necessarily an impracticable sort of person.
You will find far more help in your difficulties from a man whose heart is in heaven, for the reason that he brings in the light of God’s presence on them and not the accumulated knowledge of man.
I close with one word more. The Lord spoke thrice to Peter. It was in the presence of the brethren He spoke, and I would draw your attention to this, because it may touch our spirits without leaving any undue shadow on our minds, that the reason for His plain speaking these three 12
times to Peter was to draw out in tender expression to Himself the character and the quality of the love of Peter.
He did not ask Peter if he believed. Look at the tender movement of priestly care and shepherding that reached Peter! That must have been a tender proof to the heart of Peter of how much the Lord loved him. Nevertheless, three times He spoke, “Lovest thou me?” At last Peter was grieved because the Lord said to him the third time, “Lovest thou me?” and he said, “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee”, John 21: 15-17. Brethren, that is what the Lord is seeking. Then He says to Peter, “Feed my sheep”.
The object of the Lord’s plain speaking to our hearts at this time may be, that as we are helped to answer to Himself in simple and deep feeling, He may entrust to us in a deeper way than before the things that are most precious to His heart. May we covet these things.
13
What is on my mind, beloved friends, if the Lord help me, is to bring before you in a simple way the faith system to which we have come. It will be clear to most that faith is not only a principle, not only divine light in the soul, but that there is also a great faith system established. It would encourage our hearts if we came now more distinctly and positively to that system which has come to pass for the pleasure of God. It would be very encouraging if saints who may be depressed by things in this scene remembered that they are persons of high dignity spiritually. People naturally may suffer very great reverses in this life, and yet are maintained because of the fact that they are persons of distinction. Oh, that the people of God would go through this world in the dignity that belongs to the Christian family!
We may suffer very many reverses as to our public position, but these things turn us to the living God in the sense that what is established for His pleasure cannot be shaken.
In referring to reverses, I am speaking in respect of our discipline and our exercises. It is very encouraging to see that God never allows anything to go to waste, so to speak, in our circumstances here; every circumstance here we should take account of in a special way, not in a mere ordinary way; for God would turn all to profit. There is great spiritual loss if we put any circumstance of this life into the category that we have strength to carry it through without the help of divine Persons. For instance, a person may learn a trade, and when he has learnt it, he may suppose that he has no need of help beyond what human strength can give; but unless we are exercised and seek the help of divine Persons there will be spiritual loss. Our human occupations, interests, etc., are often put into the category that we can do things in precisely the same way as persons who have no link with God, thus going on in human 14
interests on the same lines on which persons go who have no link with divine Persons whatever, except as Creator.
But Christianity brings its own light into all circumstances.
I would draw your attention to Hebrews 13, where the human relationships of life are taken up in the light of Christianity. They are set in the light of faith, so that we by reason of the work of God in us, and the revelation of God to us, and also by the gift of the Holy Spirit, can take up these things for the pleasure of God. Before God took us up, everything we did was for our own pleasure, we were our own centre; but in every life, however small, there is room for the greatness of Christ or the reverse. A person may think it is a very little matter whether he lives one way or another; his sphere may be small, but in every human life there is room for Christ, and if that is so, there is also the great and solemn danger of excluding Him from our circle. There is the greatness, and reality, and power of this wonderful system of faith, and it is a great thing to every one of us to have the sense of having our links with God’s own world.
When this world has passed away, God’s world will remain, and all who have links with that world will remain with it and for it, and that is not a matter that you and I have made up our minds about, for God has decreed that no feature or element that has answered to Christ and to the Spirit will ever be lost. He has sworn by His own name; God has committed Himself, that what is precious and according to Christ, and of the Spirit, and of Himself, shall never be lost; it will all go on to God’s day, that great and glorious ending when God will rest in His love, and rejoice over His people with singing. So when all of this world has passed, God’s world will remain, and “he that does the will of God abides for eternity”, 1 John 2: 17.
We want to regard these elements of God’s world not only as light, but also as realities. We have the light of mount Zion, but it exists. It is possible that many here may 15
not knew what it means. They may think it is God’s way of describing something, but what that is they do not know definitely. Do we know definitely what mount Zion is? Are we conscious that we have come to something that exists for the pleasure of God? We have been touched in the glad tidings; God has spoken to our hearts, but have we the sense that there is not only that which God accomplishes in us individually, which He has brought to pass on the line of faith in vessels very small and ordinary, but He has brought to pass mount Zion? We are every one of us formed by divine workmanship, so that we might be part of a mountain never to be moved. We have come to it in Christ in the faith of our souls; we pass through this world as part of the great reality which God has brought to pass, and which can never be moved. We have come to the reality of divine blessing; we have been individually touched by the grace of God—a great and wonderful thing! We shall never get beyond the precious grace of the Lord Jesus which has touched us, and the goodness of God which has reached us. It is no point of spiritual growth to get beyond the joy of forgiveness of sins.
It is possible we may stay there too long. You may say, My sins were forgiven twenty or twenty-five years ago; but the truth is you have been a forgiven person twenty or twenty-five years.
We are set before God in the virtue and value of the Person and work of Christ, and it is never intended by God that their value should grow less to us. Divine things become mountainous to our souls as they are formed there in spiritual power. Mount Zion can never be moved; I might be moved, and my joy of things might be moved, but mount Zion can never be moved.
It may be that twenty years ago God touched us, that He began then to build into our souls what is of Himself.
How far have we gone, beloved friends? Do we imagine that because we have ceased to speak of forgiveness of sins that we have got beyond it? Let us think of the great things that 16
have come to us. What shape and form have divine things taken in our souls since divine light came to us? Faith is the gift of God. We never should have had it, if God had not given it. If He has given us faith, it is in order that an attachment to divine things should be definitely formed in us. How have things been going on in our souls since the light of God reached us? It is not simply that these elements have come as light to our souls, but we have come to the great divine mountain, the mount Zion which He loved and where He desired to dwell.
A great divine system has been brought to pass in Jesus, the foundation of which was laid deep in His sufferings, and it is as great and wide as the Holy Spirit’s work here. Jesus is on high and the Holy Spirit is here, and I am blessed by Him and in perpetuity. It is mount Zion that He loves, and there God will dwell because He desired it—that great principle of divine blessing is outside of all human pride and failure. It is measured by Jesus at God’s right hand, by the joy of God in divine blessing, by His joy in the Lord Jesus—all that in its apex is in the Lord Jesus there. Higher you cannot go; it is as high as the very desires of the heart of God Himself. The desire of the heart of God is greater than its requirements—“the mount Zion which he loved” (Ps 78: 68)—“there will I dwell, for I have desired it”, Ps 132: 14.
What shape have things taken in your soul? God loves you. Let that come to you in power; you have been made pleasurable to God. All the powers in this world can never accomplish your disaster. God has committed Himself to you, He has pledged your continuance—your continuance in connection with another Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit of God. All the powers of this world in their raging can never move mount Zion: “Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion”, Ps 2: 6. The question is not whether you are small and weak, but what is the mountain like? Can anything 17
move the mountain? It is unassailable. It is not what you and I are, but what the great faith system is; what the Lord Jesus Christ is, what the Spirit of God is; what God Himself is—the living God. Christianity is what the Lord Jesus is, what God is, what the Holy Spirit is. The power and stability of Christianity lie in what divine Persons are.
Go back to Pentecost when everything was maintained by the Holy Spirit. There is no change in the system of things. Think of the Lord Jesus Christ here, when the woman with the issue of blood came to Him. She had tried everything in order to meet her physical condition, but she says, If I can only touch the hem of His garment I shall be healed. Think of the crowds gathered together in different places, crowds of needy ones! and if they only touched the hem of His garment, they would be healed. Is there any breakdown in His sufficiency? You say, We are in broken times. But the mountain is intact; there is no change in the mountain. Well might the psalmist speak of the hills as a figure of divine blessing; there is nothing changes there.
Beloved friends, we have come to mount Zion. We may feel it and touch it, and if you have never felt it, I would counsel you to turn to the Lord to increase your faith. It is so clear to the mind and heart that I can put out my hand and touch it. There was a mount which could not be touched, because the creature in his presumption had undertaken to meet divine requirements. But we can touch mount Zion. All that we are need not disturb us there, because all that was taken account of when the wonderful foundation of that mountain was laid. All that I am, and am not, was equally answered in the death of Jesus, never to be raised again. The great reality of it was there before I came to it. Our coming into the world added nothing to the foundation, or to the existence of the mountain. We come to it on the line of faith, but we have also to come to it on 18
the line of reality; we have to come in our souls to the mountain that cannot be shaken.
God has raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead and given Him glory. Why? Listen to what Peter says, “that your faith and hope might be in God”, 1 Pet 1: 21. If there are any here to-night who have not touched Christ in the faith of their souls, God grant that they may get an impression of the greatness and glory of these divine realities. Everything else will perish, but these will endure for ever. His mercy is settled unalterably: “ye have come to mount Zion”, Heb 12: 22.
Now we shall go further; we have come to the city of the living God. This great spiritual reality has been brought to pass—the city of the living God. This world is proud of some of its great cities, but not one of them is the city of the living God. Take this great city of London; the elements of divine life may be in it, but they have no connection with it, they form no part of its history or its end. The elements of divine life belong to where Jesus is, and are for the pleasure of God Himself. The city of the living God is where divine good resides, where there is a divine generation, where divine order rules, where everything is established for the pleasure of God. The living God must move in His affections, and desires, and sensibilities. All in that city is filled out for the pleasure of the living God. We may be very clear as to principles, and yet why are we so weak in applying city principles? Because we apply the principles without the living God; I believe that is why.
You may say of another, I do not know what his end will be. If you have such thoughts about another, go to the living God, present your petitions, unburden your heart, pray in the name of the Lord Jesus. You desire that at the end and through the grace of God even now, such an one may appear before the living God in His city. See how it will enlarge your affections! The psalmist goes out in his affections and says, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let 19
us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem”, Ps 122: 1, 2. It is a wonderful city.
It is not only a mountain, but a mountain crowned with a city, the city of the living God. There is no need of the sun in that city, or the moon or a candle, for the Lord Jesus is the light thereof. That is what we have come to. There is a city. Do we pass through this world as those who have no commonwealth? Do we lower the standard because the world despises the flag? No, surely. Our citizenship is in heaven. Would you rather have it anywhere else? We want to have acquaintance with that city in our minds now.
The greatest vessel which comes out of heaven from God, having the glory of God and her light like to a stone most precious, will be the Lamb’s wife. Whose wife? The wife of the King—of the great and only Potentate? Yes, indeed. The wife of the Person who will sweep away all evil by the power of His own Person? Yes. But the city is the Lamb’s wife, formed according to God, formed according to Christ, to answer to Him.
He is the One whom the city expresses. Every element speaks to the heart of God of the preciousness and greatness of His own Son. Every one will be like Christ. As another has said who could express it,
Like Jesus in that place
Of light and love supreme.
Is there any one else we should like to be like but Himself?
Is there any one else our hearts are more drawn towards, or have more affection for?
Like Jesus in that place.
When I was born in the city of Glasgow, I knew nothing about the city, but as I grew up and its responsibilities, and privileges, and opportunities came to me, then I began to understand what sort of a city I was born in. You have been born into the citizenship of the city of the living God. What you may be in this life makes no difference. You may have 20
the commonest human lot, but in Zion where your interest lies everything is for the pleasure of God. It is the greatness of Christ that is yours there, not human littleness. All have the same divine letters there, the letters that spell divine working and that is Christ. Our greatness there is Christ.
You may say, What a wonderful end to the journey.
Yes, but it is very wonderful at the present moment. You may be exercised as to forming links with the saints. May the Lord grant that in your exercises you may link it up with mount Zion, and the city of the living God. What is ecclesiastical has no stability, but what is living has.
Jerusalem was a situation won. The fruits of divine glory and pleasure have been won in your soul and mine.
What God has won in our souls is measured by God Himself. I am not what people think I am. The world looks upon a Christian sometimes as a partridge hunted upon the mountains, pushed from pillar to post. That may be what the Christian is outwardly, but the inward is what he really is; he knows the living God. We belong to the living God and to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, and the Spirit that dwells in us is the Spirit of the living God.
That is what we are, and if we walk in faith we are not only in the light of these realities, but we are part of them.
Then we come to “myriads of angels”, Heb 12: 22.
“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out for service on account of those who shall inherit salvation”, Heb 1: 14.
What a wonderful company, what a wonderful sphere of divine interests that calls for an innumerable company of angels! We see it in this life; we see how a man orders his estate, we see his servants, etc., and every step we take nearer to the centre we form a fresh estimate of his greatness by the companies of his servants. It was so with the queen of Sheba; she marvelled at the retinue of Solomon’s servants. Is Christianity a small thing? “Myriads of angels”. Have you ever considered the strength of an angelic being? Man thinks a great deal of himself. Have 21
you ever thought of what God says of His angels? “Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flame of fire”, Ps 104: 4. What a system it must be that calls for an innumerable company of angels! Christianity is not a small thing. There is no need to go through this world as a poor person. Do you go through this world with the support and the help of divine Persons, in the consciousness of what Christianity is? We may go through in communion with, and in the company of the Lord Jesus Himself; we can go through close to Himself, and in the consciousness of the Father’s love, and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven.
But there is also the faith system, and we go through in the care of the angels themselves. Men call to their aid the organisations of human resources. Beloved friends, there are powers you can depend upon beyond everything here. You may say, You do not know my situation; where I am employed there are difficulties arising, and men are making up their minds that if I do not join their organisations, they will carry things to the bitter end. God has an angel for that. God has an angel for every situation.
During the time when there was terror because of what was going on overhead, how was it that the lives of the saints were preserved? What deflected the instruments of destruction? God had an angel for every one of them. You say, There were lives lost. But who can tell for every life lost how many hearts were spoken to? How many souls were touched by the living God by those raids, eternity alone will unfold.
The Christian does not pass through this world unattended. “Myriads of angels”. I ask you, have you ever experienced what it is to go into something where you carried with you the sense that you were in danger? There was something connected with your movements that you were not quite clear about. What explains that sense of fear? The Lord who loves you could not let you go there 22
without the sense of fear. You went unattended. You could not ask the Lord to go with you, and therefore you went unattended. You had contravened one of the great rules of the faith system. Satan tempted the Lord to cast Himself down from a pinnacle of the temple, quoting the words, “He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone”, Matt 4: 6. But to do what the Lord was asked to do would have been to infringe the divine pledge. When our path is not according to the will of God, we cannot ask His support. May the Lord help us to keep in the path of the will of God, and then we shall never go unattended.
Next we come to “the assembly of the firstborn who are registered in heaven”, Heb 12: 23. Is not that sweet?
Your title, your name is written where no power of man can efface it. It is never to be erased, you will never have your privilege and your title taken away from you; your name is written there, your name is enregistered there—the firstborn ones. Your place is according to His place as man.
Your standing is according to His standing in the presence of God. You can go through this world as belonging to the faith system. What a wonderful dignity!
“And to Jesus, mediator of a new covenant; and to the blood of sprinkling, speaking better than Abel”, Heb 12: 24. You do not know what you may suffer at the hands of sinful men, but what things do you speak? There we have come down to the precious foundation—to the blood of Jesus which speaketh better things than that of Abel. What is the manner of your speech? When you are condemned, do you resist? When your rights are taken away, how do you answer? “The blood of sprinkling, speaking better than Abel”. That which we suffer, God in the day to come will vindicate.
God grant that we may be so in the faith system in divine power, that we may pass through this world without 23
a single call for vengeance. If the Lord tarry, we may have to face fresh trials in the path, but if we call for vengeance, the spiritual gain of the suffering is lost. May the greatness of the faith system so come into our souls that we may go through this world in greater dignity.
24
My desire, as the Lord may help me, is to speak to you of what is involved in following the Lord. The thought of following the Lord must present very great attraction to every one of us, and I think, too, that the young whose hearts have been drawn out after Him must also have some sense of the gravity of such a path. I would say at the outset, that it is not a way that will be found easy naturally; the energy of nature, or even the strength that the knowledge of divine things as information can give, will not carry us through. It is a way in which we must find the help of the Lord, if we are to be walking in it for His pleasure, in fidelity, and in spiritual affection. I hope that I may be able to encourage your hearts before Him as to what it is to Him for us to be found in that way, and to have before us the preciousness and value of following the Lord; and not only what it is to us, bringing light, and comfort, and preservation of mind and spirit, but what it is to Himself, bringing joy and comfort to His heart.
At this juncture I shall refer to a very peculiar and sweet word employed by the psalmist at a time of very great pressure through the attitude of men in their wickedness towards him; speaking in the spirit of Christ and as a type of Him, he appeals to Jehovah and says: “The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me”, Ps 22: 16. Then he lifts up his heart to Jehovah and says, “Shew me a token for good; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed”, Ps 86: 17. I would impress upon our hearts that in the path of following Christ we are God’s token for good to Christ; we have been given by God to Him, not only that we may be associated with Him in that scene into which He has entered, but that we might come out in the spirit and character of Christ here; so that in that sense we have been given by God as a token of good to Christ. If we view for a moment the light that has come to us in these days of 25
brokenness, and departure from the truth, it is of very great moment to realise that we have been given it for Christ’s sake, not because of faithfulness in us; we have been given it in the faithfulness of God that we might come out as God’s token of good to Christ, that His enemies might be ashamed.
Now that precious thought is presented in the gospels as applying to us; in Matthew in connection with the kingdom; in Mark as connected with the holiness and service of God; in Luke’s gospel in regard to the testimony of divine grace; and in John’s gospel as connected with the fellowship of God according to the truth. In every case we come out as God’s token for good to Christ that His enemies might be ashamed.
I desire to raise the question in our souls as to the truth as it is known in Christ personally; the very knowledge of the truth which we possess, if we be unwatchful, may come between our hearts and the Person of Christ who is the expression of it. We may become accustomed to what exists in the company of those with whom we walk; what is
clear and concise in the knowledge of the truth is our very heritage, but there is the possibility and the danger of dissociating it from the Person of Christ, in receiving whom we have received all. Every one of us is being formed in soul history in relation to God; I do not speak of our public and known history amongst the people of God, but of soul history in regard to God’s things. Let me ask you how far in regard to your apprehension of the Supper has there been consecutive steps in soul history with God? How easy it is to regard our comings together as that which has to be formally sustained, comings together that may stand upon custom rather than upon affection! So one would raise the inquiry as to how far as we gather together from time to time, from the least to the greatest of us, are we working out our true soul history in regard of the things of God, and spiritually and livingly following Christ.
26
The connection that scriptures in Luke’s gospel have with the thought of following Christ may not be immediately apparent to you, but in various aspects it opens out with the view that is seen of the glory of Christ on the mount of transfiguration. The Lord, in His own movement, takes His disciples aside from their position here as connected with the testimony, and as the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, He takes them with Himself to the mountain apart, and while He is in prayer, as recorded in this gospel, He is transfigured. The sight of the blessed Lord in that attitude is deeply touching, and to see the glory of God in the Person of Jesus roll in as the answer to His prayer is very affecting. It is not the majesty of His Person that we see here, it is His moral glory as the Man who has come to do the will of God.
We have in that one blessed Person the answer to every yearning of faith and to every spiritual desire in the Old Testament dispensation, and the answer to every utterance of the Holy Spirit, “for the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus”, Rev 19: 10. The glory that shines there is the glory of the Man Christ Jesus, the One whose “visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the children of men” (Isa 52: 14); the One of whom the Spirit of God records the sufferings, through which the glory of God would be brought to pass abidingly. You will recall the word He spoke to two of His own who, discouraged by His sufferings, were turning away from the path of the testimony; He appeared to them on the way to Emmaüs, searching their hearts and said, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?”, Luke 24: 25, 26. Thus the glory of Luke’s gospel is the glory that is at the end of suffering: “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together”, Rom 8: 17. The beloved apostle, writing to the Philippians said,
“For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake”, Phil 1: 29.
27
The path of suffering is that into which we have been called, and we have not been called there because of any superiority on our part, but by the sovereignty of the love of God and by the measureless power of His grace. We have been called to it, not that we may shine in any way peculiar to ourselves, but that we might come out in the mind, and spirit, and character of Christ. I do not wish to discourage, but it is possible to have a very great amount of light, and be very clear in our minds as to divine truth, and yet not be following Christ. It is a very serious matter to be in the circle where faith, and separateness of heart are maintained for us, and yet not to be really following the One who by His faithfulness was the originator of it.
You will observe in this chapter that as the Lord comes down from the mount of transfiguration a condition of things is discovered, which had crept in by reason of the fact that Jehovah as an Object had been lost to His people Israel. I apply this in principle to ourselves. There are many of us, young in years and young in faith, and many who are older too, and we are following in one path together, having one blessed and peerless Object; but let us consider together whether we are at this present moment in our soul history in the light of the truth “according as the truth is in Jesus”, Eph 4: 21. Does that blessed Person hold our hearts as He should do? Is He nearer to us in a spiritual way than ever? Or are we in the spirit of our minds, while perhaps adding to our knowledge, less in nearness to His Person than we have experienced formerly? I have been greatly impressed by this fact, how possible it is to be adding to our intelligence, and yet to be drifting from His own Person; how possible it is to be adding to our store of knowledge and yet not “growing by the true knowledge of God” Col 1: 10. As we view these possibilities, it moves our spirits to exercise.
As the Lord descended from the mount, there was brought to Him by one of the multitude his child, possessed 28
of an unclean spirit, or as Matthew describes it, he was a lunatic. It is very striking that that statement follows immediately upon the manifestation of the Lord’s glory on the mount, where He is seen in His majesty, His face shining as the sun. Evidently the condition of things that had supervened was the result of the glory of His Person having been lost sight of. But in Luke’s account it is spoken of as an unclean spirit; the blessed Lord speaks of it in that way.
It is a spirit which is the result of a gradual process of drifting away from the glory of God in a living Person. Bear with me in a word to my younger brethren. Although you may be indwelt by the Holy Ghost, unless you are sustained in nearness to the Lord, you will become marked by another spirit. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit does not relieve us of the need of prayer for a supply of the spirit of Jesus Christ; nor does it preserve us from the need of exercise, lest we should be affected by another spirit.
The Spirit of God has been given to us, and His normal ministry is that our hearts may be held livingly, directly, and dependently in nearness to the Lord Himself.
So the condition of things which the Lord found in coming down from the mount had come in typically by reason of the Lord in His glory having been lost sight of, and now figuratively in place of the power of the Holy Spirit, there was another spirit that affected the mind, and character, and controlled the succeeding generation. If we who are going before others do not manifest unquestionable proofs of walking with a living Lord, we are leaving a door open to a contrary spirit in the next generation.
Well, the Lord meets this condition in His own power.
He casts out the spirit, which was a spirit of bondage, cowardice, and fear, a spirit which may gradually possess our hearts, unless we are kept by the Lord. Then we have in a very precious way this suggestion as to following the Lord.
29
If we were asked by the Lord Himself what we wanted most in the assembly, what should we say? Some might say, I should like to preach; others might like to teach; some, perhaps, would like to be wise; while others might desire to be available to the saints in whatever service opened to them. The greatest thing open to us in the assembly of God’s people is to be like Christ. But there arose a reasoning among the disciples as to who should be the greatest. The power manifested by the Lord, undoubtedly, underlay their inquiry and reasonings, and He, knowing their hearts, took a little child and set it in their midst as an expression of what He loved best—the thing that was nearest to His own desires, the subject of His most tender approval. Would any one accustomed to man’s ways have expected a way like this and a word like this? But if their hearts had carried forward the lesson of the glory on the mount of transfiguration, what else could they have expected but that the Lord would take a way that was entirely His own? Man in his greatness, and wisdom, and knowledge is set aside entirely; whereas one who has seen the glory on the mount will never desire to figure anywhere in the assembly but in the way which Christ loves, and which He approves. The fact is, the line of following Christ begins in the assembly. My dear young friends, you will find that the Lord will gently lead and direct your hearts to this point—to the assembly as the place where you are most tested by the mind and spirit of Christ. If I am in the world—the world that is against Christ and the testimony—
and its conduct comes out in a flagrant form, I may present a moral contrast, and I may set upon myself a mistaken value for that reason, but when I come to the assembly where, normally, the Spirit of Christ rules, I am tested by what is according to Christ, not by what is contrary to Him.
If the world speaks against Christ, any little syllable of mine for Him is great; in a sense, it stands out great by its contrast, but in the assembly I am tested as to whether I am near Christ or not.
30
It is where the Lord is enjoyed that our greatest tests are found. The Lord took that little child and put him in the midst. Can we follow Christ in that? It is one thing to follow Him in the world where there is such contrariety, but come to the centre and look at the position which is Christ’s own—for where else are His joys, His possessions, but in the assembly of His people? Into the midst of this company, He sets a little child and challenges their hearts as if to say, This is the starting-point, can you follow Me in this? Can we follow Him in it? Set together in our various localities as we are under the Lord’s hand, can we follow Him in this?
What men love is one thing, what the Lord loves is another.
He did not wait until we were like Himself before He loved us and died for us; it was when we were totally unlike Himself. Yes, we have to do with a loving Lord; what His heart is set upon is, that we should follow Him, and learn what it is to be set up here in the power, and fragrance, and wisdom of His own Spirit, so that we may be found in our little companies following Christ, in that we are prepared in relation to one another to take the lowest place possible, in order that the pleasure of God may be assured. Anything else militates against it. If I have gift before me unduly, I put gift before others; if service, service. If I have Christ before me as the living, loving object of my soul, I shall put Christ before myself and everything else.
In this same incident, according to Matthew, the Lord calls the attention of the disciples to the fact that unless they be converted and become as little children they cannot see the kingdom of God, let alone have greatness in it! That does not mean a person is not the Lord’s; it means that in regard to the Lord’s own circle, nearness to Himself as having been converted and become a little child, you are pursuing the kind of greatness which is greatness in His eye and in the sight of God. There can be no other greatness; it is that upon which God had already set His approval when He said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight: hear Him”, Matt: 17: 5!
31
I come to another point—one raised by John. Moving in the path in which the Lord had set them, the disciples encountered a man casting out demons in the Lord’s name who did not walk with them. We are surrounded with this, and this scripture is not only given as guidance in regard to it, but that we may be helped from pursuing that line. Will you bear with me in asking a question touching this? Have you ever felt inclined to use the power of the Lord apart from Himself? If we move in the light that God has given to us in these days, but apart from communion with Christ, what are we doing? We are using the power that has been given to us without reference to the Person. But, you say, I am responsible to speak for the Lord wherever I am. Yes, you are the Lord’s wherever you are. But have you ever felt yourself content to use your knowledge, as knowledge, while in your heart of hearts you know you are not walking with the Lord? You say, You are guessing! No, I am not guessing. Then you say, You know me! No, I do not; but I know my own heart; I know what I have done, and I feel that this scripture is given to affect us so that we may be lowly and in the mind of Christ.
Our business is to keep near to the Lord, to be in our minds and spirits free with Him that He may use us, but not to seek the Lord’s interference to justify our position ecclesiastically. In what we have from God, be it ever so much, if we are not following the Lord in it, what is it worth?
Whatever I know, if it be not held in my soul in relation to a living Lord, it is but religion; it may be a good brand of religion, but so far as its power and value go, it is but religion. May the Lord grant, in regard to what we have received from Him, that we may seek grace from Himself to test ourselves as to whether we are walking with the Lord as a living Person.
John was one of peculiar exercise, and I am glad that it was he who raised the question. He was the one who leaned on the bosom of Jesus, who asked the question, 32
Lord, who is it? John is marked off in scripture as one who kept near to the Lord personally, and I can understand his difficulty. He was not merely seeking the Lord’s guidance as to their relative positions; he was seeking the Lord’s mind in this matter, for he could not understand how a person who could use the Lord’s name could do so without following that Person, and if our hearts were rightly exercised, we should feel it to be an intolerable and unseemly thing that we should move on the line of using knowledge without being near Christ. May God keep us!
But the Lord did not interfere. He said to John, Leave him alone. That was enough for John; if his Lord did not interfere, neither should he. Do not frown on anything, even though it be marked by a lack of knowledge that seems to have little regard for Christ.
If you cannot go with it, leave it alone. Our business is to follow the Lord in what we know. Have we not experienced it? I have. One has come into contact with souls who in regard of knowledge needed help, but in regard to the preciousness of Christ to them, they put one to shame. Let us follow this line as to being called after the Lord. It is a precious line, one in which there is testing for the spirit, one in which, however, there is great comfort, and realisation of our desires as they are found centred in the person of Christ.
But to pass on. The Lord speaks to His disciples as to the end before Him, not an end of greatness according to man, but of greatness according to God. He was going to Jerusalem, His face set as a flint to go there, committed entirely to the will of God and His glory. As He moves in that way, a man comes to Him and says, “Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest”. The Lord says, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head”, Luke 9: 57, 58. The Lord pointed out to the man the character of the way; He never indicated to him the character of the end. We start on this 33
way with a very great deal of impetus; we start with the impetus that grace gives, with the sense of relief that comes to our spirits by meeting the Lord Jesus; so we say to the Lord, There is no place where we would not follow Thee!
Why does the Lord leave the question of the end of the journey when speaking to this man? To test his heart as to what Christ was worth to him. You say, I will not leave the testimony! But you will leave the testimony, if you leave the Lord. There is not a heart among us that can be trusted as to what might transpire to-morrow, if to-morrow finds us out of communion with the Lord. But, blessed be God! the testimony is independent of human resting-places—holes or nests—but we have the blessed love of Christ. We are not expected to stand in the place of exposure without that love holding our spirits; but so far as nature is concerned, and so far, too, as religious supports are concerned, are they sufficient without Christ? Oh, you say, I have been with the brethren from my early days, and my parents were with them before me! And so were mine, and in the mercy of God, through that provision, I knew what it was to find a resting-place; but I did not know its value until those who cared for me took another road from mine, and, even though professedly following the same Lord, we had different roads.
God may use what is human in bringing light to our souls, but there is not one thing in God’s system which stands with natural heredity. In John 9, we get a man’s eyes opened by the power of the Son of God; Jesus having made mud and anointed his eyes, he went to Siloam (by interpretation “Sent”) and having washed came seeing. You remember what happened; the very day he saw the light for the first time he had to turn his back on what he saw.
Blessed be God, he had the light of another world in his soul, or it would have been too much to leave! He never saw the synagogue until the day that he was cast out of it for the Lord’s sake. He never saw his father and mother until the day that they denied him! But he proved the truth of 34
the words, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up”, Ps 27: 10. It is not of nature.
You give God thanks for the saints; you give Him thanks for the parents who loved Christ before it became yours to love Him, but you have to learn that the light of Christ in your own soul is the tie that binds you personally to Him. There is no room for natural heredity in the things of God. We do not know what happened to the man in Luke 9. We have this word of the Lord to him as to His having nowhere to lay His head. There are few men who can do without sleep for more than a few nights; but the simple meaning of the Lord’s words is, Are you relying upon nature? Are you relying upon knowledge that came to you through the instrumentality of nature, to follow the Lord whatever changes may take place, if He tarry?
Let us learn this together, that our power to continue in the testimony lies in being kept near the Lord. Where is the Lord with you to-night? It is not a question of what we did five, ten, or twenty years ago. Has the Lord moved since then? Oh, you may say, I am in the same room and in the same locality. Where is God’s room and God’s locality?
Where is the Lord in matters, and where am I with Him?
Am I as near the Lord? Is He a name to me, or a Person?
Is it doctrine or the truth in a living Person who died for my soul? He gave Himself for the church, and to accomplish the will of God—the living, blessed Person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. To follow Him is not to follow a line, or a system; it is to follow all that is of God. The foxes have holes, the Lord says, and the birds of the air have nests; it was just as much as to say, If you think you can follow Me you will have to move in the path that I am in. Are you in it for Christ’s sake? May the Lord grant that it be so. I do not know why the youngest lover of Christ here may not step out confidently, lowlily, and dependently on a path even like this, having regard to the fact that the blessed Person of Christ will be their object and support in it.
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Now I come to another point; the Lord calls again. He says to another, Follow me; and this one answers Him, saying, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father”.
Then Jesus says to him, “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God”, Luke 9: 60.
Things connected with our lives here, natural objects, live long with us. I once came in touch with a brother who seemed to be under a shadow. I inquired as to what was the cause. Well, he said, I have never got over the matter of a brother’s defection some eighteen years ago. It had taken him eighteen years to bury his father, for it was the brother’s father, and for eighteen years he had been under a shadow because, looking back upon it, he thought that his father had not been rightly handled. It had taken him all those years to bury his father—nor was he buried then.
If we are not very careful, often what we think to be our rights, our own ways, and thoughts, will hinder us in the things of God. Is there any brother or sister here to-night who feels that in their companying with the saints they have not been treated as they might have been? Is it not buried yet? Some one may say, ‘Yes, but then you know it was wrong’. Well then, I say, for Christ’s sake, make it a matter of sacrifice, not of disappointment, but keep in the path of following Him. May we who feel that we have anything outstanding in our minds in connection with natural links or of our own rights, seek grace of the Lord to bury it; for the sake of Him who is our Object in the path, the One who has died for us, put it under ground, get it out of sight. It may cost you tears, but you will be able to enter into your relation with the saints happily, and without shadow to follow the Lord.
And now I come to the closing word. Another said to the Lord that he would follow Him, but wanted first to return to those who were at home. He wanted to save a rupture and to preserve a reputation; he wanted to follow the Lord in a way that would carry an element of nature with it. He was not prepared quite to set out in the reproach 36
of Christ. He was carrying forward elements of danger, of going back. My friends, we need not stretch our imagination. Our history as brethren has proved it, that there have been things carried forward in times of crises which have well nigh wrecked the saints and dishonoured the Lord. What is reputation in the things of God? Do you want to be reputed as a follower of the Lord Jesus? You can leave your reputation; it will hinder you in the race. Your reputation lies before. Keep to the Lord’s reputation, His honour, and yours will be all right. Make up your mind, as the Lord gives you grace, not to sully His name and yours will be cleared. Consider not your reputation now, it lies on before, and the day will declare it. No man can be a true lover of Christ who tends to look back; “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God”, Luke 9: 62.
Let me close with a word for all our hearts, especially those who are younger: that he who thinks to follow Christ must see to it that he is not easily turned aside by a word, by a threat, or by an attraction; such an one must keep his face in one direction only. I remember, as a boy in Scotland, watching what is not seen in these parts, a ploughing match, and in ploughing matches they do not usually set the furrow where all the ground is seen; they contrive in setting the men to plough that they shall finish their furrow perhaps over the hill, so that the end is not seen at the commencement. The man who ploughed the most straight furrow was the man who kept his eye upon one thing, and one thing only. He fixed his own mark and never watched what his neighbours were doing, and you do the same. The greatest power that can be found amongst us in following Christ is to be attached to Him with undivided affection. I do not get in your way, nor you in mine, if we are both following the Lord. May He help us, for His Name’s sake!
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THE MEANS BY WHICH FELLOWSHIP IS
MAINTAINED
1 Chronicles 22; 26: 26-28; 28: 11, 12; 29: 1-9
What is in my mind to bring before you, in a simple way, is the wonderful interest that divine Persons have in the activities of those who compose the assembly, of those whose hearts have been enlightened, and divinely instructed in what is precious to God. In bringing these various scriptures to your notice, I think one cannot fail to see how the Lord enters into all that pertains to fellowship, and how He would encourage our affections that we might all become exercised; for then the instruction will become divinely profitable.
One thing I feel has hindered us—we have given to fellowship a hard and fast form which has hindered the Spirit of God. We have looked upon it, I do not doubt, in the spirit of thankfulness, but I fear we have been bound too much by the mere form of our being set together. I would not say a word to encourage carelessness with regard to what is due to the Lord in a day of breakdown, but I do not believe that fellowship need in any way be diminished by outward circumstances. We are threatened sometimes with what is contrary to the divine principle of fellowship, but the Lord will maintain the fellowship in its entirety.
Where there are two or three desiring to walk together in the light of the Lord, there is no reason why the fellowship enjoyed should be anything but large. In the path itself, if the Lord be with us, and if our hearts are open to the door that He delights to keep open for us, there is nothing diminished. God’s things are as pure, as full, as powerful as ever, and I would encourage our hearts to get to God’s point of view. If we are occupied with the public situation, then distress must come into our minds, but if we turn to God’s side, we shall find the line of spiritual happiness, and spiritual power, lines on which we may hold things together.
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All along that line we shall have the strong consolation of the love of Christ, and at the end of the line we shall find the company and glory of the One who has set out that line.
There may be darker days yet to come; I think in a certain sense the days now are darker than ever they were.
It is not the bitter antipathy of the world towards the testimony which is the prevailing feature of our day, but the working of human wisdom that would turn saints aside from what is precious in the sight of God to what is great in the sight of men. The One who has originated the path of the assembly is the One who, though in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. One thing that has interested me much of late is the wonderful way in which the apostle Paul, in the later phases of his ministry, speaks of himself as the bondman of Jesus Christ. He never sought relief from the outward situation, save in the blessed Lord Himself who is the Head of the assembly. There is one thing very touching in the Old Testament scriptures which I have read, and that is, that although David was king and he had but to speak the word of power, yet what marked him was not the commanding of things, but the appealing for them. It is not the exercise of power, might, and majesty, seeking to actuate hearts on the line of obedience, but the heart of David seeking an answer in Solomon his son.
The chapters that follow chapter 22 may appear wearisome reading, being filled as they are with proper names, but remember, it is the book of life in relation to the work of God. In Philippians Paul speaks of the book of life.
God had a wonderful work on hand; David was not exactly the accomplisher of it, for we have to take David and Solomon together; but then we find that the Spirit of God has furnished us with a most beautiful type of Christ. We have to put together Solomon’s glory and capacity, and all the character, affection, interest, and tenderness of David.
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From chapter 22 to 26 there is a list of names of different persons doing different work—men of special fitness, brought into relation to the work of God in varied divine services—the result of the varied exercises through which the Lord had brought their souls. There you get the book of life. When God makes His own record of names there is much profit to be derived from it; there is not one name missed out that God intended to record. Each one is of use, and the name recorded is the name given in connection with our usefulness. The name pronounced on us is the name of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; but there is too a name in the book of life. The apostle Paul brings that book forward in Philippians because of the special relation of the assembly to Christ; not simply because such are saved for eternity, but because they are divinely intended to be serviceable in time.
Now in chapter 22 we find David moving; he felt the need of the house of God and there is something remarkable about his exercises. The thought in his mind took shape from the ark: “arise and build the sanctuary of Jehovah Elohim, to bring the ark of the covenant of Jehovah ... into the house that is to be built”. There was the need for the people of God to enter sympathetically into what it was to gather round the ark—to surround Christ. God had a certain thing in view; it was from God Himself the wonderful thought had come, and David looked round on the situation, and so he sets to work. David had to face the fact that in connection with flesh and blood the house could not be built; he was a man who had shed blood abundantly.
There could be nothing formed except in connection with the Son of the living God. He came into the flesh and blood condition that He might bring the light of God where the creature lay; He took upon Him the likeness of flesh of sin that sin in the flesh might be condemned, that in His new condition He might be the beginning of all things for the will of God. It was so with David here in the type. New ground had to be taken; all that was connected with God in 40
righteousness was connected with Jesus here, it was met in Christ here; but the fulfilment of all that was in God’s thoughts is taken up in Christ.
We stand therefore in relation to Christ as Son of the living God, as the One in whom divine light has come to our souls, but we stand too in relation to Him as man, and all that marked Him as man here. We read in Philippians of the One who though He was in the form of God, came to the point where we could first touch Him; He was found in fashion as a man. He brought into humanity all the greatness of divine glory, but in that humanity there was all that was precious to the mind of God. There is one thing we know little about, and that is the humanity of Christ. If we had understood that better, if we had been nearer to Him as man, and contemplated Him and His grace, we could never have borne the distance we have endured one from another. If we contemplate the graciousness of Christ, the hardness of our own touch would go. Standing in relation to Him, His mind—the mind of Christ—would take possession of us. The mind of Christ never takes forcible possession, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”, Phil 2: 5. Beloved, we have to give it right of entrance. God commits us to the whole truth, to all that He has in mind; and that is involved in His first touch.
David first presents himself as the one gathering great store and preparing material in abundance, and putting all into relation to the work of God; and the Spirit of God goes on to give the details of the wonderful store he had brought together. David is the type of the Shepherd, of the One who laid down His life for the flock, of the One who loved the church and gave Himself for it, of the One who humbled Himself down to death.
When we set to building a house we are greatly concerned about the foundation being sure, and then we forget all about it, but God never does. One of our difficulties in regard of the work of God is that we have 41
forgotten the foundation. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ”, 1 Cor 3: 11. Had the Corinthians remembered it? We are prone to forget it.
God reverts to our being on the foundation, because there it is all the character of Christ. Our character is determined by what we build on the foundation. One thing mentioned in Chronicles is the nails. I wonder if we have paid much attention to these, those secret attachments, those feelings, confidences, exercises that mean so much in regard of the work of God. Everything is produced by the work of the Spirit; but we can gather up. We have to do with a divine fellowship, with a holy fellowship, where everything of Christ will come out, and come out for profit. The saints are typically formed, and fashioned, and a value given to them as the mind of Christ prevails with them and marks them.
I come now to chapter 26, and a peculiar thing comes out there. David has given Solomon the charge, and now we get the book of life, so to speak. God has an intention with regard to every name that is written there. Whatever the exercise may be that is connected with every individual name, God’s end is one. He never allows anything to be unprofitable, 1 Chron 26: 28. If you look back through the Old Testament history, and think of Saul the son of Kish falling on mount Gilboa, where he really made a public suicide, you would never have thought that anything would have come from that source to be dedicated to maintain the house of God. And if you think, too, of Abner and David’s lament over him: “Thy hands were not bound, nor thy feet put into fetters: as a man falleth before wicked men, so fellest thou” (2 Sam 3: 34), one would never have thought that God would have brought anything out of that as treasure of the dedicated things. And again, reading of the end of Joab, seeing how he died by the horns of the altar, and how his sympathies were with Adonijah, and what his opposition was to Solomon—his treacherous career—who would have thought that God had anything out of that; but 42
He had. God had from Samuel all the testimony in the day of ruin. It was the testimony of Samuel that disclosed the spirit of Saul, and it is the testimony which God has raised up now which discovers things in the way they are discovered.
Why should we expect to come into the joy of things connected with the assembly without establishing a moral title to it? Why should we take it for granted that God has raised up a testimony that we may participate in with joy, without being exercised by it? The testimony that God has raised up is for all the people of God, but do let us treasure it at all costs; let us seek to be worthy of it! Indeed, we never shall be worthy of it, but let us have this in our hearts, that we so value it, that we retain it with the sense of dependence and self-judgment, for not otherwise can we hold it. The testimony of Samuel was in connection with defection, but it had nothing less in view than the accomplishment of God’s own thoughts, but it came out in the exposure of the evil; comfort and enlargement marked the progress of that testimony. There is that which comes from Saul the son of Kish. The tenderness which records it might well impress our spirits, for all our hearts have been on the Saul line.
You may say, But I have trusted Christ. But even then your heart may be on the Saul line, for you are liable to be so as long as you are here. It is not human judgment he was tested by; his sin was that he disobeyed the commandment of the Lord; he spared Amalek’s king and cattle. He ruled over the heritage of God, and yet he began in a way that should have been a discipline to him; he had to borrow from his servant a piece of silver. May God grant in His mercy that we do not begin on the borrowing line! We should begin in the consciousness that, little and poor as we are, we begin with nothing less than all that is treasured up in the Son of the living God. We need the faith of it, we need the greatness of it as divine light in our souls to impress us. If we had been writing the book of life we might have included Samuel, and possibly Abner, but I feel certain we never 43
would have included Saul and Joab. Every exercise that is wrought in a trying and sorrowful way for us, yields its profit when our hearts are in the right direction.
I pass on to chapter 29. David brings in there a special thought which we do well to take notice of. It is both testing and encouraging. The thought is that the house is not for man, but for the Lord God. We may be tested by that, but that testing takes us to God and brings God in; we are tested far more, and to our greatest loss, if we treat it as if it were for man. It is God’s house. Christ is Son over God’s house, and every influence in that house is actuated and governed by the One who is Son over it. David speaks of gold, silver, brass, etc., and we see the way he amplifies his instruction in regard of these materials. If the fellowship does not provide us with joy, the fault is on our side. There is no lack as to what David provided; there is the provision of workmen, of men skilled in all cunning work, and of all necessary material. So now in the assembly there is divine provision, and sufficiency of gift coming from the ascended Head; there is no lack of any good thing.
David tells Solomon the work is great; and enlists the sympathies of the people in connection with him; Solomon, he says, is young; and then he begins to touch on the gold, see v 2. In the previous chapter you get the purpose of the gold and silver. Everything that David gave out, he gave out by weight, it is all measured and tested in its true worth; and that is the purpose of the epistle to the Philippians; it is brought in to test the material for suffering. There are the scales, the balances of the sanctuary; and there are no unjust weights with God. The blessed universal balance that is applied is the mind of Christ—gold for things to be made of gold, and silver for things of silver. Who would have thought of anything else? But we have had other thoughts; we have put gold into things not worthy of its use, and have put other things where gold ought to be. Is there any lack?
Are you deploring the lack of certain elements among the 44
people of God? Gold will always be found until Christ comes and takes the church to Himself. “And the brass for things of brass, the iron for things of iron, and wood for things of wood”. There you have it all, “all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours”, 1 Cor 3: 21, 22. I do not think I can possibly exaggerate the importance of finding amongst the saints what is necessary to the things of God. The defect is, not that we look for too much, but that we look for too little. Look for Christ in the saints, look for Him in every feature; you will find Him there.
It is the work of the Spirit of God to keep the material there.
The Spirit of God will see to it that there will never be a lack of material in the people of God. Find it as it exists, and use it in the fashion that God intends it should be used—gold for things of gold, silver for things of silver.
Then there are the precious stones, “onyx stones, and stones to be set, glistering stones, and of divers colours, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance”. And then we have the willingness of the people and their readiness in offering. It says in connection with the precious stones. “They with whom precious stones were found gave them to the treasure of the house of the Lord”; they take some looking for, they are not found on the surface, you do not find them promiscuously.
Precious stones are things which have to be sought for. Have you ever thought how the affection of Christ in type touches the hearts here and there where there is desire, and purpose, and a mind to work the work of God?
Has it ever occurred to you how the eyes of the Lord go over the objects of His affections, and how the Spirit of God travels in His activities through the sphere given into His hands? What are they looking for? They are looking for things that are divinely precious. How can that exercise of yours come out—your part in regard to the work of the Lord? Go to the epistle to the Corinthians, where the 45
Corinthians make much of all they hold in the way of gift; one thing they lacked, they lacked the precious things; but when the apostle begins to encourage them in respect of gift, he does so on right lines; “covet earnestly the best gifts”, he says. The best gift is the gift that makes most of Christ.
You need not think you will have much spiritual support in what makes much of you, or any other, but you will have it in what makes much of Christ. “Covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way”, 1 Cor 12: 31. Yes, the more excellent way, that greatest gift ever given, is love; love—the best, the brightest, the most precious, and glorious stone in the assembly—that which fills it out and gives it its lustre and its glory. What will hold the glory of God and the preciousness of the light of Christ at the end will be the power of divine affections. “Love has long patience, is kind” (1 Cor 13: 4); could you say that of gift? Love is never exhausted; it suffers long, and has a store of kindness left; it is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own. These are all wonderful features of love. The precious stones are set out in 1 Corinthians 13, but they have to be found in the saints.
Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 shews you the way to them, and when you have found them, how to use them, and how they will affect others according to God.
I call your attention in the epistle to the Philippians to those addressed there: “the saints in Christ Jesus ... with the bishops and deacons”, it says, chap 1: 1. There are not those now who are set in these offices of a bishop, or a deacon, but the work has to be done, so the first thing is the brethren have to find him, and secondly he has to find himself. Everything connected with divine order now has to be found in the moral qualification and exercise suited to it, and held there when found. So when Paul writes to the saints at Philippi, he writes to them, as I have said, as saints in Christ Jesus, linked up with those who have responsibility and privilege in connection with them; and so he addresses with the saints those who have the care of 46
God’s people in their hearts, those who would lay down their lives for the testimony, and who have their names in the book of life, not in an ecclesiastical register; men who serve the flock of God. The apostle brings in for us in that remarkable epistle all the outpourings of his own heart, his exercises in regard of the saints, and all those deep emotions that would have had a public outlet if they had not had that private one. He was in prison, his public and outward path had ceased, but in the prison his heart is held in the secret of the preciousness of the assembly as the sphere of the mind and spirit of Christ; so he heads this epistle with this peculiar application.
Now in closing I want to touch briefly on the things the apostle has in his mind. He sees the things that were to be found in Philippi. He speaks of a class that look on their own things, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s, but he himself is concerned very largely as to the latter.
There are two spheres, and things belonging to each sphere; one is filled with the man that exalted himself at the expense of the humiliation of Jesus; the other is filled out with the Man the world has humiliated, but whom God has exalted.
The things of this blessed Man are treasured up in the assembly, it is the treasury of these precious things. So the apostle has the things of divine preciousness before him, the things that proceed from Christ, the things of the Holy Spirit, the things that are holy realities connected with divine fellowship. “For the rest, brethren”, he says,
“whatsoever things are true”, etc. Note that in the apostle’s mind there is no scarcity of these things among the people of God, there is not any lack of material for the divine building. He is putting them on the lines of self-sacrificing service. If you are dismayed about the people of God, you have not really seen what is to be found. Why do you not look for Christ? Because He is not enough for your heart?
If Christ is enough to my heart, I shall find Him in the saints, I shall look for Him there. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are 47
just, whatsoever things are pure ... if there be any virtue, and if any praise, think on these things”, Phil 4: 8. On that line you will find gold for things of gold, silver for things of silver, brass for things of brass. For every necessity and for every precious means of fellowship, you will find material in the saints. May God give us to look for it!
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AS EXAMPLES OF FAITH
It is my desire, with the Lord’s help, to speak of the line upon which the Spirit of God would move us in our affections and in our spiritual judgment. I should like to refer in that connection to the faith of Samson and Jephthah. They are exceedingly important examples, and my desire is to speak of what is of value in the eyes of the Spirit in regard of both. The details which the Spirit of God gives in the Old Testament as to Samson confront one with actings of his own which were not of faith, but which brought him into sorrow, that brought dishonour on the name of Jehovah, and that increased rather than diminished the pressure that lay upon the people of God.
One is greatly comforted, however, in considering how graciously God looks upon the movements of His people. We are liable often to lack the sense of this, and to have the impression that the scrutiny of God over our souls is exacting. It is, no doubt, a necessary feeling, but a feeling that is never complete in itself and really might conceal from us what God intends to do for us. One might pass a long period of one’s spiritual history occupied with the fact, perhaps legally, that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb 4: 13); nevertheless, it has become a great comfort to one’s spirit.
I get a little into the light of the fact that I am peculiarly under the scrutiny of the Lord because He cares so much for me, because He loves me; the light that shone out in His own Person has been made to shine into my heart, and He has made me His; and this is true in regard of all who love Him.
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One has often referred to the incident in the gospels, when the Lord was on His way to Jerusalem to be delivered into the hands of the chief priests, and scribes, and to be condemned to death, how His own followed Him in the way, and were afraid as they followed, yet at the same time they strove as to who should be the greatest. The Lord was perfectly aware of their fears, and their misgivings, but He was also aware of their reasonings as to who should be the greatest, and He waited in patience His own opportunity when they were withdrawn from their public position and were more directly under His own influence when He asked them definitely, and directly, What was it that ye reasoned among yourselves by the way?
Might I say reverently, we are all He has in the world; His most precious possessions are the saints; He loves them beyond all telling; and, with all their frailty and feebleness, they love Him, and so the Lord tests them, and tests them perhaps increasingly. There may be those here who are under pressure and testing in regard of the claims of Christ, and one would be greatly comforted, if anything one said should be of service to such in strengthening their spirits in it. Nothing in our circumstances here could make up for the spiritual loss resulting from want of fealty to Christ. It may be with some of us that ease as to circumstances having been assured to us, we have relinquished what is due to Christ; it might appear to be only in small measure, but as soon as we fail to respond to His rights over us, we become conscious of spiritual loss. Our desire should be that while our hearts may be comforted by these considerations, yet that they should be searched, and that thus we may be encouraged to recognise more fully His claims over us.