POWER BELONGETH UNTO GOD
[p. 85] POWER BELONGETH UNTO GOD
Exodus 3:13 - 15; Psalm 135:13; Luke 4:14 - 22
I desire to speak on the anointing of Christ, with the thought of showing forth that all that God is necessarily enters into that anointing. I think it is necessary to dwell for a little on the anointing, in view of the general denial of the principle set out in it, namely, that “power belongeth unto God”, (Psalm 62:11). The power descends instead of ascending. It does not belong to the people, as is generally and persistently alleged; it belongs to God, and He has vested it in One who, having been proved, has shown Himself worthy of such a trust; the welfare of all mankind is bound up in it. Indeed, the whole realm of the worlds which God has framed is entrusted into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, having been proved, is qualified, and has now been formally invested with that trust. There are many witnesses to the effectiveness of His administration, which was announced by the prophets; it will continue until the time when He will deliver up the kingdom to Him who is God and Father.
Now one would appeal to oneself, as to every believer in this company, for witness to it. What have you and I found in that One under whose wings we have come to trust? Yea, rather, who has taken us under His wings. Each one can witness, and all may swell the praise that belongs to Him who “sits upon the throne”. (Revelation 4:9) It is necessary to be reminded that power is from on high, and that now it is committed to one who has proved Himself worthy. As the prophet puts it, “Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him”, (Isaiah 42:1). And then the prophet goes on to say in the fourth verse, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth”. What a [p. 86] testimony! God asserting His prerogative, that power belongeth unto Him, has entrusted it to a proved One. The more you study the history, the more your mind turns to the perfection that is in Christ. A David, or a Josiah, or a Nehemiah may fail, but this Man shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judgment in the earth. The more spiritual you are, the more you will turn to that perfection which the evangelists present to us in the New Testament; the soul looks out for it. Simeon and Anna were expectant of it, and when the Babe came into the temple, Simeon, who had gone there by the Spirit, took the Babe into his arms. He had been expecting this, it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ; and so he takes the Babe, and says, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation”, (Luke 2:29,30). His heart could rest now, and he could depart, for the Lord’s Christ was there.
I trust one speaks with a measure of sensitiveness as to what is involved, and I would commend to you the importance of being moved by divine perfection in Christ; it is sufficient to move every spiritual heart. So Simeon held the Babe, in a spiritual way, in his heart; Anna, too, coming in, is in harmony, for she “spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem”, (Luke 2:38). There was the spirit of expectancy for this divine perfection in a Man. When I speak of divine perfection, I speak of what He was personally, for it is ever to be remembered that He is not a creation, He brought all into manhood. Nevertheless, He was a Man, and moved about in this world as a boy, a young man, a full-grown man in divine perfection. His was humanity as real as any other, but divinely perfect, for “He knew no sin”. “He shall grow up before him as [p. 87] a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground”, Isaiah 53. He grew up before Jehovah, He was for Jehovah’s pleasure. And so when He reached thirty years of age, full levitical manhood, He comes up out of the waters of baptism and the heavens are opened to Him. What a moment in the history of time! and as one might say, in the history of heaven, when the heavens open to a Man and a voice speaks to Him saying, “Thou art my beloved Son; in whom I am well pleased”. How much does it matter if the Pharisees were not pleased! It is a question of heaven’s approval; He is not to be the ideal of the populace, He is not to be a popular hero, He is to begin His public service as divinely approved. Paul thought it a small matter to be judged by man; to seek a place amongst men is wrong, for “that which is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination to God”. (Luke 16:15) The Lord began with unqualified divine approval, and in the approval there was the divine commission in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was there in a bodily form, and He abode upon Him. Such is the fact we read relative to the anointing of Christ.
I desire to say a word about the Name, for all that God is was there. There was the Father’s voice, there was the bodily form in which the Spirit came, and there was the Son upon earth. God was there, God in unity, for God is one. I desire to show briefly from the Old Testament how the Name expressively speaks of what God is, as necessarily bound up with the anointing, and so I go back to Moses in the wilderness, for one must be in such circumstances in order to receive such light. He was in the backside of the desert, and God arrests him by a vision, and he turns aside to see what it is. God was in the bush, and Moses took note that while the bush burned it was not consumed. It was God’s communication to Moses that He identified Himself [p. 88] with a suffering people, and Moses was to be with God’s suffering people. Paul says, “Ye have reigned as kings without us; and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you;” (1 Corinthians 4:8) but the reigning time is deferred; it is now the suffering time. The apostle says, “We are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things”, (1 Corinthians 4:8,13). What words to describe the apostles of the Lord of glory! These words should search us in our day. God intimates to Moses that He would be in the midst of a suffering people. The bush is not consumed, the discipline of God is there, but the bush is not consumed. Discipline all the way through, but then it is discipline from God who is with us He dwells in us. He chastens us for our profit, that we might live, and be “partakers of his holiness”, (Hebrews 12:9,10).
God reminds Moses that this is to be the history of His people. Moses asks, What am I going to say? How am I going to commend myself? God says unto Moses, “I AM THAT I AM”. “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you”. I wish to dwell for a moment on that; “I AM” — the self-existing One, yesterday and today and for ever, the Same. Then He says, “The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you; this is my Name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations”. And so Moses is sent with that precious light in his soul. Then Jehovah says, “Go, and gather the elders of Israel together”; the responsible ones are to have the communication of Jehovah delivered to them. The Lord suggests the position in Exodus, and, I may say, the truth is there presented from the divine side. When you come to the Psalm which I read, you have the truth presented, not from the divine side, but from the side of experience. I think one [p. 89] may say that the book of Psalms is the least understood of the books of the Old Testament. I understand the book of Psalms very little, but I take it to be the result, through God’s grace, in man’s heart of the testimony that He presented. You may be sure that, if God is presenting light to you, He is looking for results from that presentation. If fruit is not forthcoming, beware! Outward forms will not do, God looks at the heart. He is looking for results in the heart, and the books of Psalms is the result of the divine testimony in the hearts of God’s people. And so you have the language of faith in verse 13. “Thy Name, O Lord, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations”. That is not God’s side. The book of Exodus is the divine side, the Psalm is the result.
Now let me ask you, What have you found out? The writer of this Psalm had found out in his soul that God was what He was. Have I found that out? The Psalmist is not appealing to Scripture, he is speaking of the experience of his soul, he knows God now. Do I know God in that way? He has disclosed Himself to us in Christ, not only as Jehovah, in His everlasting faithfulness, but as the Father, in His everlasting love. “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God”, (1 John 3:1). And so the Psalmist here, according to the light that is presented to him is able to look up, and say to Jehovah, “Thy Name, O Lord, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations”. Where was the memorial? In the hearts of those who loved God. Let us not be content with the Scripture testimony, the memorial is to be in the hearts of God’s people.
In Nehemiah 9 the priests, Ezra and the leaders are assembled together in prayer to God, and they begin their recital of the history of God’s ways with themselves, saying, “Thou art the same, thou alone,
Jehovah”,(Nehemiah. 9:6). It is not “I Am” now, it is “Thou art”. What an outgoing as they review the history of a broken down kingdom! As they review all the failure of the people, their hearts turn to Jehovah, and they say, “Thou art the same”. The failure had only proved to them that He was what He was. They go back to the beginning of creation, and say, “Thou art the same”. There is no change with Him. What have you found in God for yourself? Do not tell me what the Scriptures say, the point is, experience; how much have you learned in your soul’s experience about God? Let us face this question, Where am I in my soul in regard to God? The Levites, in Ezra’s time, confessed where they were with Jehovah and that Jehovah was what He was; He was what He announced Himself to be. After the long years of humiliating history, they return to Jerusalem, and confess that they have found Him infinitely true and faithful. “Thy Name, O Lord, endureth for ever, and thy memorial, O Lord, unto all generations”. Now this memorial necessarily enters into the anointing. It was now a question of that holy Name and memorial being taken up and cherished in a way that had never been seen hitherto; it was in the heart of Christ, who cherished it and would witness to it as no one else could. One can well understand Simeon saying, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word”; for all that was of God would now be preserved and testified to.
In the fourth of Luke it is recorded that, after the Spirit had come upon Him, “he was led of the Spirit into the wilderness”. The blessed Spirit of God had come upon Him, and His presence is now signalised in that the Lord is led by Him. The Holy Spirit leads Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. The Lord would recoil from this, but the will of God required it, and He is led of the Spirit [p. 91] into the wilderness. We should avoid evil unless the Holy Spirit leads us to deal with it, and this is rare. It is only in very exceptional cases that the Lord takes up a man and leads him to have to do with evil, and with Satan. After the temptation He returned, it was His own act, to take up the service for which He was anointed. He is acting now in the power of the Spirit; He is intimating that He is to carry on His service in spiritual energy, and so He stands up in the synagogue; and the Spirit adds, “where he had been brought up”; where His infancy and boyhood days were spent. He begins there. “He went into the synagogue ... and there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias”. He turns to the passage in chapter 61, and He reads it as the text for the day: “The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”. The Spirit of Jehovah involves all that Jehovah is, and all that the Father is, for it was the Father’s voice that spake to Him, and of Him; so much so, that He said elsewhere, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”.
I desire to show that the anointing is based on the fact that the Spirit of Jehovah was there; the first representing what God is, the second representing God’s prerogative. God’s will enforces what He is, and how blessed that is! God uses His prerogative to enforce blessing in the human heart, hence the Spirit of Jehovah was there, involving all that Jehovah was in blessing and everlasting faithfulness. But, as I said, it was now not only Jehovah, but the Father; which name speaks of unmixed grace for men. The Spirit of the Father through the anointed Man [p. 92] brings grace and good to every man. “He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor”. Think of Him beginning His service as the Anointed in preaching the gospel to the poor! John asked from the prison, “Art thou he that should come?” The Lord says, “Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them”. These were the results of the anointing. If you have the Christ, you have everything. The woman in John 4 says: “When the Christ comes he will tell us everything”. She was beyond John the baptist there! God sent His blessed Son to preach the gospel to the poor, and so the Lord announced it was the first great feature of His service in Luke 4:18. How little is it true today! One would love to see a move on the part of God’s people to preach the gospel to the poor. I refer to those who are poor spiritually.
The Lord goes on to mention in detail His services in connection with the anointing, and these go on to the end of this dispensation. He will rule the world presently, but throughout this dispensation He is carrying on the blessed service indicated here. There is a beautiful touch in Acts 10:38. As anointed He “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”. He was not limited, He went about, and that is the principle of ministry. The passage goes on to say, “to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”. That is what He is employed in, and that is the service He continues until the end of “the acceptable year of the Lord”. He is not ruling, but He is doing these things as the Anointed of God, and He will do them. It is a question whether [p. 93] we are prepared to let Him serve as indicated here, and whether, according to the measure He has apportioned to us, we are with Him in the service. To this end the saints are also anointed, see 2 Corinthians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 12:11. I suppose we are sometimes bruised in spirit, so much so that we are unable to say a word among our brethren or to move spiritually; the Lord is anointed to heal and deliver us. And, further, “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”. There is a definite period in which God is receiving men and women, in grace on the principle of faith, and that period cannot be shortened. We are still in that year, and one would not wish it to be shortened; one would rather suffer than have it cut short.
I do not wish to proceed further, one can but call attention to the peculiar effect of all this on the hearers. He closes the book and He sits down, and it is recorded that “the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him”. He is the attractive centre as anointed, and sitting down He speaks, saying, “This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears”.
How many things are fulfilled in our ears that are not fulfilled in our hearts! You will find that it was not fulfilled in their hearts. How easy it is to have our ears pleased, but it is the heart that is the soil for the Word, not the ear. If it is only in the ear, Satan will take it out of the ear; indeed he takes it out of some hearts too, if it is not understood there; (Matthew 13:19). If the work is to be effective, it has to be heard and received into the heart and understood there; I mention this particularly. And then the passage says, “They wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth”. So that He is attractive as the Person anointed, and attractive in His speech. May the Lord bless His word!