DIVINE HELP IN OUR CIRCUMSTANCES
J. Spinks
1 Kings 20: 26–30; Hosea 2: 14, 15; Psalm 84: 6, 7
I desire to speak briefly, with the Lord’s help, on the matter of divine help and support in our circumstances. These two valleys that are referred to by name were touched on in our reading on Wednesday and confirmed me in an exercise I had as to proving divine help. I think a valley relates to experience, often humbling and sorrowful, but it is a great thing to prove how God can come in and bring us through.
This chapter in Kings is very interesting. Ben-Hadad was a man who was against God and against His people. What he did not bring into his calculations was that in coming up against God’s people he was coming up against God Himself. The Syrians say that “Jehovah is a god of the mountains, but he is not a god of the valleys”. I would just like to touch on that before I go on because mountains in Scripture are very interesting. They are much referred to in Matthew’s gospel, showing that God’s thoughts go through. They would largely represent the majesty and greatness of God’s thoughts established in Christ, nothing can move them. We see all around us the attempts of men to build up a system without Christ. It will all come to nought. Any system that has not Christ as its centre is bound to fail because God has decreed that that blessed Man is going to be the centre of His universe, and anything that is built up by man, politically, religiously or socially will come to nought.
It is interesting to see that the first mention of mountains in Scripture is in Genesis 7: 19
where it says that “all the high mountains ... were covered”. That is to say there was no public evidence of them. I think that is like the present time; outwardly it appears that all God’s great thoughts have failed. Sin and death had
come into God’s creation, followed by God’s judgment in the flood, and it appeared that every thought of God had come to nought. “All the high mountains ... were covered”, that is the public position. All around we see the effects of sin, death and corruption. How awful it is, especially the corrupting influences that are abroad in the world. It is like the flood covering the whole scene, wherever you looked you would see the effects of corruption.
Now I would like to apply it to the time when the Lord came in. That is how He found things.
He felt the terrible intrusion of sin and death in the human race. At the grave of Lazarus we see divine feelings in a Man. As someone has beautifully said, ‘the tears of God in the eyes of a Man’. How fine the Lord’s feelings were! Our feelings are, in some measure, influenced and corrupted by sin, and by the scene through which we pass, but nevertheless as believers we feel these things, the awful effects of sin. I believe that as the dispensation draws to a close we are seeing the acceleration of evil, it is the principle of the steep slope.
I think the disciples came round to see in that one blessed Man everything for God. Like us, they were slow learners, but they began to appreciate the glory that was there. Then the time came when He was taken by wicked hands and crucified and slain. Think of the feelings of the disciples! The blessed Man in whom they had pinned all their hopes lay in the heart of the earth. What an apparent victory for the enemy. There was never a time in the history of the human race when things looked darker. The Lord of glory, the one Man who had the answer to everything, lay in death. Then we can think of the joy that filled their hearts when the message came that Jesus was risen; the triumph of it! God has triumphed. He has secured everything on the basis of the resurrection of Christ. That is the great thing that believers put hope and trust in; there is a Man out of death in whom God has placed everything.
So to refer again to Genesis, we find that as the waters receded, the mountain tops began to appear. For the believer it means that light dawns on your soul that everything has been secured in Christ. No matter how bleak the situation appears outwardly, God has secured everything in a Man out of death. The hymn-writer says so beautifully,
‘Where sin o’er all seemed to prevail,
Redemption’s glory shed’. (Hymn 235)
Think of the glory of it! God has secured everything in the death and resurrection of Christ.
Believers can think of Him as, “delivered for our offences”, bearing our sins in His body on the tree, and then—“raised for our justification”, Romans 4: 25. It is like the tops of the mountains beginning to appear, these great, fine truths dawning on your soul. I trust that every one here has a conscious link with the blessed Man who has secured everything for God. These mountain tops may not seem much outwardly; but it is a testimony to faith that God is going to fill the whole universe with the greatness of Christ.
Prior to where we read in Kings. Ben-Hadad had been thoroughly defeated. In the death and resurrection of Christ the power of the enemy has been completely broken. He accepts that
“Jehovah is a god of the mountains”. In principle, he accepts that God has secured everything in Christ. The Lord Jesus has bound the strong man; He has spoiled his goods, and secured everything on the ground of His resurrection. Ben-Hadad then seeks to change the battleground. He has had to concede defeat on the mountains so he attempts to defeat the people of God on lower ground. What does it mean? I believe it means that while the enemy can do nothing against what Christ has accomplished, he seeks to spoil the enjoyment and blessedness of it in the souls of believers. It says here, “the battle was joined”. I believe the battle now is in the souls of believers. The enemy cannot touch. Christ where He is. He can do nothing against these great principles of the truth that
have come down to us. The very fact that we have the Holy Scriptures in our hands, and our bookshelves full of these wonderful divine truths, is a testimony to that. He can, however, hinder the formation of these things in the souls of believers.
This seems a very uneven battle. This mighty king with his host, challenging the people of God, like “two little flocks of goats”. The goat is a solitary animal. To speak simply, you do not come into fellowship because your parents are in, or because it is the right thing to do.
You come to things in soul exercise, you feel you want to be true to the Lord Jesus. “God maketh the solitary into families”, Psalm 68: 6. I long that everyone here will make that committal. So we have these two little flocks of goats against the whole Syrian host. How vulnerable they appear to be! But then, God is not only God of the mountains but He is also God of the valleys. That means that He can take up our case, and He will; the challenge is really to the place Christ will have in the hearts and souls of believers. The enemy is saying, in effect, I cannot interfere with the great work of redemption, I cannot alter the fact that God has secured everything in Christ, but I can meet them on the ground of human weakness.
Outwardly, the testimony is in abject weakness. If we were left to ourselves, we would not have the strength or courage to remain in the testimony for one day; but if we commit ourselves to the testimony of our Lord Jesus, we can count on divine support. When God comes into a matter there can only be one outcome, and that is victory. Paul said that God always leads us in triumph in the Christ. It is the triumph of Christianity, that the power of God is available in Christ on high, and in the Spirit here—to make the weakest and simplest believer superior to the power of the enemy. I would like to encourage the dear young ones to get into their souls that God has power and resource to meet every circumstance that He may pass them through in His ways.
I pass on to Hosea, the valley of Achor refers to a time of great failure in Israel. How much failure has come in; not only in the history of each of us personally, but in the history of the testimony. We are not speaking about things abstractly, but grievous failure that we have had our part in, at least those of us who are a little older. When failure comes in, the great thing is to accept it; to humble ourselves before God. This scripture literally refers to how Israel will come into blessing in a day to come, but the principle holds good for this dispensation. “The valley of Achor for a door of hope” shows that humbling ourselves before God is the way into blessing. The situation is never hopeless as long as we have the Lord to take up our case.
It says, “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness”. I would like to attract the young people. Have you ever been brought into the wilderness? Do you know what it means? The hymn-writer says,
‘In the desert God will teach thee
What the God that thou hast found’. (Hymn 76)
Do you remember the time when the children of Israel appeared to be at the mercy of Pharaoh and all his host? What Pharaoh said at that time was that the wilderness had hemmed them in; but the wilderness never hems you in. Indeed it is a way of escape. It is the means by which we can escape the corruption that is in the world. There are wonderful things to be seen in the wilderness, such as the time when Aaron spoke and the people turned their faces towards the wilderness. They saw the glory there! As you listen to the voice of Christ your face is turned toward the wilderness and you see the glory.
You may say, I see plenty of evidence of failure, and that may be so, we read of their carcases being strewn in the desert, but I believe God would have us to be engaged with the glory.
You see the triumph of God that He can secure in the wilderness, in a wayward people, the abode of His holiness. It is like the local assembly. I would just like to impress your hearts with
the glory of what God has down here. In the wilderness there is nothing to minister to the flesh or human ambition, but the glory is there. As you listen to Christ, and allow His word to come into your heart, He will open your eyes to see it. God has committed Himself to His people and He is going to bring them through.
We read in 2 Timothy, “if we are unfaithful, he abides faithful, for he cannot deny himself”, 2
Timothy 2: 13. We cannot but be ashamed of the unfaithfulness that has come into the public position, and each one of us has been a contributor to it. I am more and more impressed by the glory of what the local assembly is in the mind of God. I would like to impress the dear young ones to in no way despise the local position. Outwardly it may be just a few. We all know our idiosyncrasies and weaknesses, and sometimes they loom large in our eyes, but let us look beyond that, see what God has secured in an evil world. The “abode of his holiness”
means that, in this corrupt and evil world, God has a company of saints in which He can find His rest, and where there are conditions suitable for His holy nature.
So it says, “I will give her her vineyards from thence”. The vineyards would, no doubt, have a spiritual significance, referring to what gladdens the heart of God and man; a sphere where there is real joy, real peace and happiness. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all. It has a strong pull on us when we are young, I am aware of that as much as anyone, especially at the present time. I would just like to appeal to the young people, there is nothing in the world that is of lasting satisfaction, but there is amongst the saints of God. Soon the whole world will be brought under the sway of Christ, but there is a sphere where these blessings can be known now.
It goes on to say, “and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth”. That may refer to the song of Moses on the banks of the Red Sea. It was a song of
victory, and the people were brought into it. Miriam’s response was very limited, but nevertheless it was real; maybe it depicts the state of most of us. I think that when we are brought back through recovery there is depth in the singing. What singing there will be in heaven! Tones that will delight the heart of God, from recovered persons who know something of God’s mercy, something of His love. Persons who know, too, something of His ability to meet every situation; to bring us through and put a new song in our mouths. That is the word of the psalmist, a man of experience, “he hath put a new song in my mouth, praise unto our God”, Psalm 40: 3. That is the language of a recovered believer; a person who through repentance and self-judgment has come to an increased appreciation of Christ and of what He has here, the Christian circle. He has an appreciation too of what there is rising in the service of praise to delight God’s holy ears.
I pass on now to Psalm 84, “Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a well-spring”—the footnote says Baca means weeping. You say, You do not know my circumstances, you do not know the pressures that are bearing on my spirit, how can it become a well-spring? God is able for everything! The psalmist says in that beautiful Psalm 23, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil—for thou art with me” (Psalm 23: 4). God passes us through things so that we can prove His love and His power. He is able for everything. The hymn-writer says, ‘Whose love is as great as His power’ (Hymn 23). May we increasingly prove these things. It goes on to say, “yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings”. The note tells us that the early rain has reference to the time of sowing. The sowing time is a time of testing, a period to go through. It refers to what is being worked out in a hidden way in the heart of the earth before fruit appears. As we go through things with God it may seem that the end is never in sight, but we can be sure that
He is working something out for His own glory. We read in Mark, “first the blade, then an ear, then full corn in the ear”, Mark 4: 28. That is to say that God will obtain a full result.
There are two sides to the matter; we have firstly to lay hold of all that God has secured in Christ, wonderful objective truth. I do not believe it is possible to go through things without some sense of what God has secured in Christ, because that is where everything lies. Security does not lie down here, it lies with a Man in heaven, and the more we allow the light and glory of that to fill our souls, the more we will be able to go through things with God. Then we can think of what God is able to do with a poor refractory, stubborn, people like ourselves. It says, “They go from strength to strength—each one will appear before God in Zion”, each one, no one left behind. Well, I just leave the word with us, trusting that the Lord may use it for blessing. May we prove divine help in every circumstance through which we pass, not only for our blessing but for God’s glory, for His name’s sake.
Address at Glasgow, 24 October 1992
THE LORD JESUS PRESENTING HIMSELF
A. Buchan
Matthew 14: 23–33; Luke 24: 36–43; Revelation 22: 16, 17
In each of these scriptures our Lord Jesus speaks of Himself. We have been speaking of great things today. In His mind there is no greater creature than the assembly; it is a divine conception and is formed by divine workmanship. Paul says, “This mystery is great, but I speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly”, Ephesians 5: 32. Some may say, Why speak of it when all
around is breakdown and ruin? There is no scriptural warrant for thinking that we shall ever return to what was set up under Paul’s ministry. Publicly there will be brokenness to the end.
But there is one thing, while you cannot have what is pristine, you can always have the Lord Himself. That is why I read these scriptures because in each there is a presentation of Himself.
In Matthew it says, “having dismissed the crowds, he went up into the mountain apart to pray”. How affecting that is; the Lord Jesus there alone! That is like the position now. He is above and the saints are here in all the vicissitudes of the way, and in the presence of all that besets the testimony. It says, “but the ship was already in the middle of the sea tossed by the waves”. What waves there have been! The power of the enemy has been operating against the testimony, but the Lord comes into the situation with a presentation of Himself to encourage their hearts. So it says, “But in the fourth watch of the night he went off to them; walking on the sea”. He is superior to the circumstances. I think that is the position currently and the Lord would make us superior to the present circumstances in which the testimony is. He is superior to them; He has the answer to every problem; there is no problem that besets the testimony that He does not have the answer to, He has everything in His control. John tells us that, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”, John 3: 35. The whole course of the testimony is in safe keeping and it is going to go right through, let us not think otherwise. Some have said, Everything is finished. It could not be; He is going to see every divine thought through to the Father’s glory. This is the time when we are to acquire a knowledge of Himself in such circumstances. You may say, Why does He allow them? Why did He allow this night on the sea, when they were tossed by the wind and the waves? Why has He allowed all the crises in the testimony? It is all to endear Himself to the hearts of His own.
So that it says, “And the disciples, seeing him walking on the sea, were troubled saying, It is an apparition. And they cried out through fear”. There may be some hearts quaking from fear of what the next wave will bring. Let us be assured that everything is in the control of the One into whose hand the Father has committed all things. It says, “But Jesus immediately spoke to them, saying, Take courage; it is I—be not afraid”. We need courage to go on. Our young people need courage to commit themselves to the testimony; it is not an easy path, because the enemy is set against the heavenly character of the testimony at the present time.
But the Lord Jesus is committed to it. He would come in and say, “Take courage; it is I—be not afraid”. Then it says, “Peter answering him said, Lord, if it be thou”. Maybe there was a feeling of doubt in Peter’s heart when he said, “if it be thou—command me to come to thee upon the waters”. But how inviting the Lord’s word is—“Come”. He would say that to any heart that may need to be encouraged as to committal, “Come”. You may say, Look at all that has happened. Nevertheless, the Lord is saying, “Come”. The present position in the testimony is that He is walking as superior to the storm, and you can walk with Him. You and I, as committed to the truth of the assembly, can walk with Him superior to every circumstance here, and come through with an added knowledge of Himself. Then it says,
“But seeing the wind strong he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, Lord, save me”. Oh, the availability of Jesus. He stretched out His hand and caught hold of him, saying, “O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?”. The Lord would strengthen our faith, little though it may be. The experience of His love, His appearing to us, would strengthen our faith in Himself.
I think that is what the Lord is doing in all these exercises. He is endearing Himself to His disciples. Although we cannot have things as they were at the beginning, we can have Himself. There never will be
Pentecostal glory again, but there is a glory in Philadelphia that will cover the whole church at the rapture. What a wonderful glory that will be, when the assembly will be complete, and there will be evidence of the Lord’s own personal love to it, “they ... shall know that I have loved thee”, Revelation 3: 9. It says, “hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”, Revelation 3: 11.
The assembly’s crown is Christ Himself. I do not think that Peter would forget this experience. The Lord may be saying to someone here today, “Come”. He wants you to come into the experience of Christianity. You start by coming to Jesus to find relief from your sins, but Christianity is known by persons who habitually come to Jesus in relation to every detail of their lives. The Lord Jesus is interested in you from your early years, and He would help you to regulate your life in relation to His assembly. Then it says, “And when they had gone up into the ship, the wind fell”. I suppose He will go back into the ship dispensationally when He resumes His relations with Israel, but there is nothing that Israel will enter into in a day to come that is not known now in the assembly. So that the outcome of this exercise is that they say, “Truly thou art God’s Son”. It is wonderful to be in a sphere where He is the Sun and Centre. The Son of God is the centre of another world and this is the way that Peter reached it. We were reminded this afternoon in the reading, “To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious”, 1 Peter 2: 4. Have you come to Christ to be built into this wonderful system? Have you come to Him by experience and found your place in relation to the assembly?
I read in Luke’s gospel because the Lord Jesus comes to His own collectively with a view to manifesting Himself. He comes just where the brethren are. It is like a local company seeking to walk in the light of the assembly; we need to value it, there is no sphere like it. It may not have been the persons you would have chosen to work the truth out with, but God in His ordering has
set the saints together in local companies. He has set the solitary in families, persons who may be solitary. He puts them in the family setting in the local gathering. So it says, “And as they were saying these things, he himself stood in their midst”. How precious that is! He did not send another, He did not send an angel; He did not treat them that way, He came Himself.
He will come at the rapture Himself as Paul says, “for the Lord himself, with an assembling shout, with archangel’s voice and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven”, 1
Thessalonians 4: 16. It is the same One who endears Himself to us in these exercises in the testimony who will come Himself. How it must have affected the hearts of the disciples to see Him standing there and saying, “Peace be unto you”. That is what He wants in every local setting, peace. He would impart peace when He comes. “But they, being confounded and being frightened, supposed they beheld a spirit. And he said to them, Why are ye troubled?”
He would use the existing conditions to endear Himself, to fill up that void that no one else can fill. He is serving constantly to this end. He says, “Why are ye troubled? and why are thoughts rising in your hearts? behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself”. It is not His hands and His side as in John’s gospel (see John 20: 20), but “my hands and my feet”. I think the two on the way to Emmaus would understand those hands. Those hands had served them when they were going away, bringing about recovery and their return to the eleven. Every one in the local company is a product of the hands of Jesus, involving His personal service to each one of us. Young brothers and sisters need to think of that; the Lord Jesus does not deal with us en bloc, but with each one personally. He leaves an impression that is your own, so that you merge with others who also have impressions. What He has in mind is that there should be something resulting for His own heart from the company. Those feet have been all the way to the depths of Calvary’s woe to secure you and me. His feet would remind us of the way He has gone in suffering love to secure a result for His own
heart. He is bringing out the reality of His manhood; He is a real Man, it is the heart of a Man that beats up there in relation to His assembly. Then He says, “Handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me having”. It is the new condition into which He has entered, in which He comes to His own. It is the appeal of His own love; the appeal of His own voice, saying, “it is I myself”. In the Song of Songs it says, “His lips lilies, dropping liquid myrrh ... His mouth is most sweet” (Song of Songs 5: 13, 16).
Then He said, “Have ye anything here to eat?” That would be a test in all our places. They gave Him “part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb”, not the whole thing, but it indicates part of the great universal thought of the assembly. So it says, “he took it and ate before them”. It is the Lord coming in amongst His own, and finding the truth worked out in the recognition of divine sovereignty and in the mutuality of love. He finds that which He can participate in Himself. If we came to every meeting with a view to providing something for Him it would greatly enhance the quality of our gatherings. The Spirit would help us to be ready and willing. There is need for willingness and committal to the Lord’s interests, so that every occasion is furnished by persons who are willing, as it says, “Before I was aware, My soul set me upon the chariots of my willing people”, Song of Songs 6: 12. When the Lord comes the saints are thus ready. The affections of the saints are quickened in relation to Himself and the Lord finds something there for His own heart.
At the close of Revelation He says, “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the assemblies”. How much He has testified as you think of this book. He says, “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. Oh the glory of the Person, who He is! The One who has seen the assembly through all the way, is none less than God Himself, the root of David. What He is as the Offspring of David
relates to the reality of His Manhood, known in our relations with Him in assembly service.
Here He says, “I Jesus”, how tender it is. He is “the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”. He is presenting Himself as the One who is to come. Peter speaks of the Morning Star arising in the hearts of believers. Is He shining brighter in my heart and your heart? We are looking forward to that glorious moment when He will come. He is coming for His own, coming for the assembly. He will actually have it for Himself. What a moment that will be! When the assembly will be complete; a vessel suited to the heart of Christ.
Then it says, “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’”. What are we saying currently? The result of the Spirit’s operations is that there is a present living answer to the heart of Christ.
Can we be stimulated to be in unison with the Spirit in saying, “Come”? We long for the glorious time of His appearing. “And let him that hears say, Come. And let him that is athirst come; he that will, let him take the water of life freely”. There is an abundance flowing today.
Revelation 22 begins with a river flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb.
Divine fulness has come to us in a wonderful way in the ministry of the recovery. It carries life and vitality everywhere where the river comes. But there are marshes which are never healed (Ezekiel 47: 11). There is the danger of getting out of the current of what the Spirit of God is doing. He has one objective, and that is of securing the assembly for Christ, of securing a present living answer to the affections of that blessed One. May we be committed to it for His name’s sake.
Address at Dundee, 24 October 1981
THE WORK OF THE GOSPEL
N. T. Meek
1 Kings 5: 8–18; Acts 13: 1–4; 14: 24–26
I wish to speak of the preaching involving labour. It is a very blessed service and one which to a greater or lesser degree every one should be concerned about. It is a very extended labour too. These scriptures may show that labour enters into it. We have here Solomon building a house in which God could dwell and be served. We speak of God’s house in this present dispensation; and the undertaking was, and is, very large, it was an immense undertaking.
The material had to be gathered from away in the mountains in Lebanon. Whether it was the stones or whether it was the trees, the amount of work involved was very large. The material had to be found, it had to be sought out, it had to be handled, it had to be squared, the trees had to be cut down, and they had to be floated down in the sea, the work was immense. You can tell by the numbers involved; it says in verse 13, “And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men”. Then it says, “And Solomon had seventy thousand that bore burdens, and eighty thousand stone-masons in the mountains”. That is one hundred and eighty thousand able-bodied men. You see the magnitude of the operation. A hundred and eighty thousand men would be equal to the population of a large city. It was an immense undertaking, and preaching the gospel in our day is a very large undertaking. We are all intended to be interested, and if we do not take up the service ourselves we can pray for those who do, for it is a very large undertaking.
By any standard, it is very substantial work; you can picture the labourers on the mountains, working away getting the stones. It was heavy work, they worked for one month and then they had two months off.
That would be divine grace and mercy so that they did not become over exhausted, but while they were at work the labour was hard. The trees were to be cut down too. Saul of Tarsus was a tree, when he was cut down at the time of his conversion he fell to the earth, for the Lord I suppose, personally saw that that tree was cut down because it was going to be of great value in His house. Then Ananias speaks to him and says, You must get baptised (see Acts 9: 18), he was floating Paul down, I suppose it would be the experience of burial. You always find that an Old Testament scripture and a New Testament scripture interlock together.
What I want to say, and especially perhaps to young men, and to us all who preach a little, we must be prepared for the fact that it will involve labour. Searching out souls is labour, and praying that you might be helped in the preaching is labour; it is intended that we should not shirk it, we should not miss it, so be prepared for it. It is all very well to stand up in the meeting room and preach to believers in a sympathetic atmosphere, it is part of the work and it will not be without labour, because if you are going to speak for twenty minutes, another has said you should pray for twenty minutes, and if you are going to speak for half-an-hour you should pray for half-an-hour. What I am trying to say is this, that the service is not to be taken up lightly, and the work, and especially open air work, is heavy and difficult.
Nevertheless, we are not to shirk it, because the house is worthy of the best material that can be found, it needs to be first grade material. What is going to go into God’s house as we know it at the present time, the assembly which is God’s house, has to be material of the first order. So it will have to be sought out, and have to be patiently worked at. You will get your relief, your time of lying fallow when your strength recuperates, you will get that, two months at home, and a month at the work; one month on the mountains and the work will be hard, but do not shirk it. John Mark evaded it at one time (see Acts 13: 13).
You can see in Acts 13 that Paul and Silas were called to the work, they were called to the levy, they were conscripted into it really. There was a levy and they were conscripted into it; as happens in wartime, no option, you have to go. They were called to the work. You can see how it happened here, that in the quiet, congenial, and favoured conditions of Antioch the word came one night that two were to go up on the levy. Paul and Barnabas were to go up on the levy, and up they went. There, on the first of their remarkable journeys, they went according as they were directed. It was not a case of going anywhere. They were called to the levy and they went. As you read that section at the end of Acts 14, when it says they returned to Antioch, you might have said they had done their month at the work and now they are back home. How glad they would have been to be back home, and yet how humbly thankful they would have been that they had had the privilege of labouring in the work. There they are: back, they had finished the work, as, it says, “whence they had been committed to the grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled”. Now I suppose that when we step down from the platform after the preaching we may think we have finished the work. I rather think we should continue to pray. Your speaking may finish, but do you think we should now cease to pray when you have been speaking to souls with some feeling, and it may be you have moved a soul towards Christ and towards the wonderful character of His work through the mercy of God? I think we would still do well to pray.
So we have this kind of work that continues, maybe in small circumstances, but the work is not intended to be an easy option. Preaching the gospel, or serving the saints in any way, is not intended to be an easy option; it is intended to make certain demands on you, it is intended to stress you, not distress you but to stress you, put you under a certain amount of pressure, so that those spiritual muscles get a little stronger, and you are more successful in hewing the next stone than you were
in the last. In the actual temple of course you could not hear a hammer, it was out in the quarry, at the mountain face, that the hammers were going. They were going hard, it was hard work. Why should we shirk hard work? You will have recompense, seeing that convert being built into God’s house. It is not intended the work should be without joy; it is not intended it should be without compensation, the blessed Lord will see to that. The work may be heavy, and you might be at the work for a good while before the stone shows signs of loosening; the work is heavy. I am saying this because you hear with thankfulness of young men preaching, and sometimes you could say that there is gift in evidence. The Lord sovereignly has given someone particular ability in the work, and therein I see slight danger, not that one would quarrel with the Lord’s sovereignty at all, but it is possible for one to be inflated. Especially if you have been out for two, three, four or five weeks running and you have kept fresh all the time, it is possible to be a little bit inflated. I think that is why the stress here is on the fact that the work is hard. That would keep nature down, it would keep down what you might naturally boast in. In the whole long span of church history, how many have been spoiled through initial success, it has gone to their head, as we say, and they ceased to be dependent, and they ceased to be effective! In actual fact I think you will find that if you are helped in the preaching one particular week, next week you will generally find it is hard going, and that I think is part of divine provision, part of divine ordering, that keeps you from being too big in your own eyes and in the eyes of anybody else.
That is what I wanted to say, that the work of the gospel, the work of the preaching, is intended to be heavy. Lord’s day comes round and you drive to another town to preach, you take your family and after the preaching you have a nice evening together. You talk about the Scriptures, you talk about the preaching, you have a nice time and come home, and maybe you can
live in it, maybe that can be the pattern of your life. You complete the preaching and maybe the Lord helps you. You get through, but perhaps it should be a bit more exhausting than that; perhaps this element of hard labour should enter into it a little more even if it is at the expense of something else. I just suggest it, because one fears that we might drop into a routine, in which you cannot find any fault, but which has lost its energy and vitality, and I would include the preaching in that. May we be urgent; Paul was urgent. If he saw a stone he would get it drawn out and squared as quickly as possible; he would make as much of it as he could, he would not cut more off than was needed, he would form it with labour and skill.
You can see how hard he worked at Corinth, he was eighteen months there with no time off; he far exceeded the levy! How skilled he must have been in the work; digging those Corinthians out, getting them away from idolatry and Paganism, and squaring them up and putting them together. You can see how skilful and how hard working Paul was, he spent a solid eighteen months doing it. What a labour it was! I would just like to leave that impression that the preaching is intended to be a labour. Nevertheless it is to be taken up, because God is using the preaching. The filling of God’s house depends on the preaching.
One of the Lord’s servants said that the preaching was the greatest feature of the present time because by it was found the material for the assembly.
May the Lord help us to think of these things. I do not ask you to accept everything I have said without thinking about it; it will be better if you weigh it up quietly and soberly. I would certainly not discourage you from preaching; I would encourage young men to do it. Those of us who are older maybe will be taken before the Lord comes, and it is very comforting to think of a generation carrying on the preaching, and carrying on the service of God, because you can see how interdependent these two are. The water flows out from the house (Ezekiel 47), and the preaching brings in material
for the house. Of course, the assembly itself does not preach. I would like every young one to be encouraged, and those of us who are older too, sisters and brothers, to pray for it; that may be where our labour lies, to water it with our prayers, and then when it is all over to pray again, that God might sovereignly add His blessing. May it be so for all of us, for His name’s sake.
Address at Peterhead, 12 October 1991
A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY
A. J. Gaskin
In all God’s purposes for His people He has always had the very best in mind. He appeared to Moses in the midst of the thorn bush when He not only had deliverance from their oppression in Egypt in view but also to bring them up into a good and spacious land—a land flowing with milk and honey. This rather fine but brief description of the attractiveness of the land that God had selected for His people occurs twenty times in the Scriptures, but always in anticipation of all that they were going to inherit. Isaiah and Ezekiel looked back on all that God had done in bringing them into it. Indeed Ezekiel speaks of it as a land “that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the ornament of all lands”, Ezekiel 20: 6.
There were some that despised what God had provided for them, but Caleb who had already seen it, and for the forty years which through unbelief they still had to wander in the wilderness, still treasured in his heart, could say, ‘It is a very, very good land, a land that flows with milk and honey’ (Numbers 14: 7, 8). There is a kind of abundance, a thought of full supply, with a land where these precious products are said to flow. The prophet Joel as he looked on to a day when all God’s promises will be completely fulfilled said, “and the hills shall flow with
milk”, Joel 3: 18. We take our daily supply of milk very much for granted, but on the third day of creation God caused the earth to bring forth grass, so that on the sixth day there should be food for the cattle. From this the cow can produce milk to nourish her offspring, but what an abundance of supply, far more than just needed for the calf, nor could human invention produce milk out of grass—milk a food containing all the ingredients needed to sustain life.
A beneficent Creator has endowed a clean animal with the ability that no machinery could imitate, a process beginning with chewing the cud, suggesting ruminating and digesting the word of God, so as Peter can say, “desire earnestly the pure mental milk of the word, that by it ye may grow up to salvation”, 1 Peter 2: 2. Let us not forget to take advantage of this supply, so that as Paul says, “that thy progress may be manifest to all”, 1 Timothy 4: 15.
Not only is the milk supply so abundant, but the land flows with milk and honey. When Jonathan who was instrumental under God in setting on a wonderful victory and was tired and hungry, the people came to a wood where there was honey on the ground, and it says,
“the honey flowed ... and he put forth the end of his staff which was in his hand, and dipped it in the honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth, and his eyes became bright”, 1 Samuel 14: 26, 27. It was the result of the sweetness that came out of that flow. Samson propounded a riddle to his Philistinish companions, and they answered,
“What is sweeter than honey,
And what stronger than a lion?” (Judges 14: 18),
but they did not really know the secret. Strong as was the lion there was One stronger than he who could by His death overcome the strong man, and bring in life and sweetness where there had only been death and decay. It says, “and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the carcase of the lion, and honey; and he took it out in his hands, and went on, and ate as he went”, Judges 14: 8, 9. Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century wrote,
‘Jesus the very thought is sweet.
In that blest name all heart joys meet.
But Oh! than honey sweeter far,
The glimpses of His presence are’.
When the Lord came to the disciples after His resurrection, they offered Him part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb, and He took it and ate before them. No doubt they appreciated the sweetness of the fact of His resurrection, but far more sweet the comfort of His presence among them. How gracious of Him to share it with them. Like the milk the honey was over-abundant, and in the swarm there is the suggestion of something collective. The individual bees are collecting nectar from the flowers; they can even indicate to one another in which direction the best supplies lie, but it takes the combined effort of the whole hive to produce and store the precious supply of sweetness and food. In this way each one can have a practical part in the fellowship in sustaining what is for the Lord’s glory and the blessing of the saints. And the apostle urges us to share in the abundance—“to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge; that ye may be filled even to all the fulness of God”, Ephesians 3: 19. May we be more anxious to go in fully for the abundance that can be ours in this land which flows with milk and honey.
Aberdeen
EXTRACT
There is another principle, which crowns and governs and gives character to all others: it is charity, love properly so called. This, in its root, is the nature of God Himself, the source and perfection of every other quality that adorns Christian life. The distinction between love and brotherly love is of deep importance; the former is indeed, as we have just said, the source whence the latter flows; but as this brotherly love exists in mortal men, it may be mingled in its exercise with
sentiments that are merely human, with individual affection, with the effect of personal attractions, or that of habit, of suitability in natural character. Nothing is sweeter than brotherly affections; their maintenance is of the highest importance in the assembly; but they may degenerate, as they may grow cool; and if love, if God, does not hold the chief place, they may displace Him set Him aside—shut Him out. Divine love, which is the very nature of God, directs, rules, and gives character to brotherly love; otherwise it is that which pleases us—that is, our own heart—that governs us. If divine love governs me, I love all my brethren; I love them because they belong to Christ; there is no partiality. I shall have greater enjoyment in a spiritual brother; but I shall occupy myself about my weak brother with a love that rises above his weakness and has tender consideration for it. I shall concern myself with my brother’s sin, from love to God, in order to restore my brother, rebuking him, if needful; nor, if divine love be in exercise, can brotherly love, or its name, be associated with disobedience. In a word, God will have His place in all my relationships. To exact brotherly love in such a manner as to shut out the requirements of that which God is, and of His claims upon us, is to shut out God in the most plausible way, in order to gratify our own hearts.
Divine love then, which acts according to the nature, character, and will of God, is that which ought to direct and characterise our whole Christian walk, and have authority over every movement of our hearts. Without this, all that brotherly love can do is to substitute man for God. Divine love is the bond of perfectness, for it is God, who is love, working in us and making Himself the governing object of all that passes in the heart.
J. N. Darby (‘Synopsis’ Vol.5, pp.307, 308)
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