BEING MAINTAINED AS LOVERS OF GOD
Acts 20:24-32; Joshua 23:1-13; Ezra 7:10; 10:1;
We have been speaking together about what it is to be lovers of God. I would seek grace to speak now of what it is to be maintained as lovers of God. The first two scriptures I have read indicate a warning. Things can come in which test us to the core, test us as to whether we are maintained in the love of God. I would draw attention to Paul’s pleading with the elders of Ephesus. He had been there for three years and he was there amongst them, he said, “night and day”. “Night and day”; think of that. What work had taken place in Ephesus; what treasure there was in the hearts of the saints there; what had been built up in the knowledge of God; what had been built up morally through the preaching of the kingdom of God. Paul says, “among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom of God”. As we go back to the beginning of chapter 19, we see that he began by drawing attention to the need of receiving the Holy Spirit, and then he reasoned and persuaded “the things concerning the kingdom of God”, Acts 19:8. But it was opposed by some, and so he separated the disciples and he continued to teach them; there were lessons that had to be learned one by one, deep moral lessons. That is really what the epistle to the Romans teaches us – what I have to find in myself, “O wretched man that I am!”, Rom.7:24. I find that there is nothing in my flesh that can please God, no good dwells there, and I find that I need the Lord Jesus as my Deliverer. I find that I need the power of the Holy Spirit by which I may please God. Only then are we able to prove how wonderful the will of God is. We begin to see that it is good, and then we realise it is acceptable, and then we realise it is perfect (Rom.12:2). We come to an end of ourselves; the struggle is over, the struggle in which I have been engaged to improve the flesh and to try to come to God on my own terms. I find that I am totally in submission to God and I prove that His will is perfect.
Then I think Paul would have spoken to the elders of Ephesus about the truth he wrote of to the Colossians. He wrote about what it is to die with Christ, what it is to be buried with Christ, what it is to be raised with Christ (Col.2:12). He first of all engaged the saints in that epistle with the greatness of Christ, with who He is in the wonder and glory of His person. It is illustrated in the ark going into the Jordan, and the people of Israel looking in wonderment on the ark; they followed it, they went after it. And so in Colossians we see that we have died with Christ, we are buried with Christ; the twelve stones put into the Jordan went out of sight for ever. But then stones are brought out of the Jordan and there they were to remain. Think of what it is to be raised with Christ – that is Colossians.
Then in Ephesians, God has purposed for us to be, “together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus” (Eph.2:6); that is a wonderful thing. That was tangible there in Ephesus. It was a great joy to Paul as having ministered to them, but it was hard work and it was not easy going for those who accepted his word, because he spoke here about “admonishing each one of you”. You think about what that meant. They might have wondered when Paul was going to come knocking on the door, and they might have said, ’What is he going to say to me now?’ They might have felt a little bit resentful, but then they would see his tears. I think Paul loved these saints into the truth, into their inheritance, into what belonged to them. But now he was concerned because he could see wolves on the horizon, he could see that the wolves were going to snatch away this one and that one; men speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them. So he drew attention to the assembly of God and the need to shepherd the assembly of God. He put the responsibility on these persons who resided in the city of Ephesus. “Take heed therefore to yourselves”, that is the first thing. “Take heed therefore to yourselves … to shepherd the assembly of God, which he has purchased with the blood of his own”. Think of what the assembly is in the sight of God and the price He has paid for it. It is not the sense of the assembly as seen in the type of Eve in Genesis, we understand, where she is seen in her beauty, in her attractiveness, before sin came in. This is the assembly of God as here in testimony, and its purchase was with “the blood of his own”. Think of that; how much God has expended! Whose blood was it? “The blood of his own”. Does it not affect your heart, how much God has expended? The purchase price for the assembly was paid by Him, He has rights over it.
We have just finished reading Joshua locally, and what struck home when we were reading chapter 23 was that Joshua, just like Paul, appealed to those who were going to continue after him. He appealed to their affections. He said, “I am become old, advanced in age”. What is going to happen? And he then said, “be ye very courageous”. They certainly needed courage, did they not, when they took the land? When they entered into the land, it needed very great courage to overcome all those enemies. Think of what it was for Jericho to be overthrown, one enemy after the other defeated; what battles there were. What battles there have been, dear brethren, to recover us to the treasure of the truth. What battles there have been that we should understand what eternal life really is, that we should understand what salvation in the assembly means, that we should understand that the Lord Jesus has come into manhood to be known as Son. What treasures these are to the hearts of the saints, but they are to be maintained. What is for God is to be maintained, and it needs courage. Why does it need courage? Joshua gives the reason. He says, “to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left”. How much is written there! You may ask, ‘Are we not delivered from the law?’ The law of Moses would reveal the mind of God and the will of God. We have been speaking about the will of God, about what is treasured in His heart, what He has in view for each of us, and what He has in mind for us all collectively. It needs courage to maintain what is in God’s heart for us. Why does it need courage? It says, “that ye enter not among these nations, these that remain among you; and ye shall make no mention of the name of their gods” – that is the first thing. Here it is the opposite to what you find as increasingly proving the will of God in Romans 12. There is a decline here, it gets worse and worse. Joshua said “ye shall make no mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them”. So that you can see there was a danger of a slide away from allegiance to and love for God.
The principle of separation, dear brethren, protects what is for God, so that we should enjoy the treasures that God has for us, that we should enjoy the land, that we should enjoy our inheritance, so that God may come into His inheritance. God would appeal to us. What did Joshua say? He said, “Take great heed therefore unto your souls”; the same thing that Paul said. “Take heed therefore”. That is the first thing, to take great heed to my soul. You need to take great heed to your soul. “Take great heed … that ye love Jehovah your God”. If we truly love God, we shall appreciate what is precious to Him, what has cost Him so much – the assembly of God, the price that He has paid for it that it should be maintained here for His pleasure. We know we are in a broken day, we know that we are part of the ruin. It has been said that if we are testimony to anything, we are a testimony to the ruin. But then, love for God is to be maintained as precious, and that needs great courage. It needs great courage to be kept from influence, from those who may be near and dear to us, those who may be very nice people. It might be that we come under an influence that is not of God, so we have to take heed unto our souls.
We read about Ezra. A lot had happened between the time of Joshua and the time of Ezra. What Joshua had warned of, what Paul had warned of, had actually happened. We know that Ephesus left its first love, its love for Christ, prime love for Christ; it went into decay. What we find with the inhabitants of the land is that, little by little, there was decay. This was first seen with the two and a half tribes, who thought it would be all right to stay on the other side of the Jordan. They built an altar of grand appearance and caused displeasure to God, although He allowed it. They really did not want the land. Although they were prepared to fight for it, they were not really prepared to live in it. So later, they went into captivity first, and then we see that all the people went into captivity. But in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra there was recovery, there was revival; not all was lost. And we are in a day, dear brethren, where there have been those who, like Nehemiah, have gone before. The Holy Spirit has wrought in the hearts of men and women who loved Christ. We think of what happened nearly two hundred years ago. It was like the days of Nehemiah; there were those who the Spirit stirred and who were exercised in their hearts as to what was due to Christ, “Behold, the bridegroom”, Matt.25:6. What a wonderful call that was; that was of the Holy Spirit. Think of how He prompted that, and it brought about a revival. We may sometimes speak rather glibly about the revival. Is it in our affections, that it was a real revival? But then we see here that there was decay again, and then Ezra came onto the scene. What had happened? The people had married foreign wives, weakness had come in, there was that which was not pleasurable to God. There was mixture through lack of separation, lack of what was due to the holy rights of God. So what we see is that grievous failure had occurred, and revival was needed again. Ezra took it to heart, he took the blame.
Are we prepared to take the blame? Are we prepared to take the blame for the present moment, when there is much that would burden the dear saints? Am I prepared to take the blame? I feel much searched about that. A young family goes away – am I prepared to take the blame? Is it because I have been lax in drawing attention to what is due to God? Have I really loved God enough to protect them from going away? Ezra was like that, he took the blame, he took the lowest place. I believe that is needed. Ezras are needed in the present time, dear brethren, prepared to take the blame and confess the whole matter before God. In chapter 10 of Ezra we see not only the tears of Ezra, we see the tears of the people. We see that they are the tears of repentance, of facing the whole matter for what it is and bringing it before God. It says, “while Ezra prayed, and made confession, weeping and falling down before the house of God, there were gathered to him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children”. Think of how there is that which is available, not just the older brethren, but “of men and women and children”. Then it says they “wept very much”. God took account of those tears, God treasured those tears; they are in His bottle (Ps.56:8). Think of how God takes account of the tears of such as Ezra, those who take the lowest place, so that God might come into our affections, and be given what is due to Him.
We read in Nehemiah 8 how “all the people gathered together as one man”. I think that is a very wonderful thing. Chapter 8 is the positive end of all the exercise about this great failure and what it brought about. As a result of priestliness, as a result of the exercise of what was priestly for God, a positive result comes about, and what is it? It says, “all the people gathered together as one man to the open place”. That is what God has in mind, that we should be one. But how is that arrived at? It is arrived at through subjection to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is speaking to the assemblies. The Lord Jesus, as I understand the truth, asserts His rights in every assembly, rights in every place where He is represented. The Holy Spirit speaks to all the assemblies. It is universal, and so where oneness is known, it is known as recognising and being subject to what the Holy Spirit is saying. So we see here that “the people gathered together as one man to the open place that was before the water-gate”. It speaks of the Spirit. I would like to read from what Paul wrote about the unity of the Spirit. In Ephesians 4 he says, “I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you therefore to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye have been called, with all lowliness and meekness” – that was like Ezra, was it not, lowliness and meekness – “with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love; using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace” (vv.1-3). That bond of peace is the recognition of what the Spirit is saying. Do we accept what He is saying to us? That is how oneness comes about in the face of difficulty, in the face of challenge. So what we see is that the law was written, it was read, it was loved, and it was recognised. It brought about feelings of repentance in the people; they all wept much. As self-judgment is arrived at by each of us, we come into something in a full way that we have never enjoyed before, something that is very precious. There was something that was there in the mind of God as written in the book of Moses, something that had not been appreciated since Joshua, all those years before. Now we see that the people came into very great blessing together, as recognising what God was saying to them, as having His mind.
It is wonderful to accept the will of God for us. How great it is, the good pleasure of His will. Think of the counsels of His will, think of the mystery of His will. Paul wrote of it to Ephesus. So what we see is that the people came into the good of that as showing repentance, as showing recognition of what the Holy Spirit was saying; it says, they found “written in the law which Jehovah had commanded through Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month”. The seventh month is the completion of God’s way with them, the completion of all that God had in mind for them. They went up in energy to cut down all these branches, whatever they would need, all speaking of life and power and vitality. That is what God has in mind for us all, what He has in mind for our local assemblies, that we should dwell together according to the purpose of God.
May God bless the word, for His name’s sake.
Address at Grangemouth
16 November 2013
J.B. Ikin