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INCREASE FOR GOD

What has been exercising me in view of this meeting is that there might be something to induce spirituality. We are, alas! and I speak for myself, in large measure materialists; it requires only that we should analyse our daily experiences to prove that; whereas we are called to what is spiritual. God being a Spirit has a spiritual order of things in His mind, and He seeks to bring us into accord with that spiritual order of things; indeed, we are essential to it. The material was at best only intended as an index to the spiritual, and so my exercise was that there might be something to induce spirituality if there is none, and where there is spirituality, an increase of it. You will remember how it was said of the Corinthians that, although they had the Spirit, the apostle could not write unto them as spiritual. He was, therefore, limited in what he had to present, and there can be no doubt, dear brethren, that the limitation in what comes to us is due to the limitation that is in us. As the apostle said to the Corinthians, “Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your affections”. (2 Corinthians 6:12). The straitening was not due to him. So that the limitedness of what comes, and we ought to own it, is in no sense attributable to God, or to Christ, or to the Holy Spirit; it is due to the straitness of our minds and affections in that we are governed by natural and material things.

To illustrate this I would refer you to a passage in Luke 19:11 in which we read of the Lord as having entered into the house of Zacchaeus, and having spoken of Zacchaeus as a “son of Abraham”, giving him in that way a spiritual status, and having said that “the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost”, that “as they were listening to these things, he added and spake a parable”. The Lord was ready to go on if they were, and He spoke a long parable; He added to what He had already said, blessed and full as it was, because they were listening. Hence the importance of keeping the ear and the heart circumcised, for if there is readiness to hear there is always a readiness with the Lord to speak.

So the apostle says, “Our month is opened to you, Corinthians, our heart is expanded”. His mouth had been in a measure shut to them because of their state, but now he says, it is opened. His letter had brought about an enlarged capacity in them so that his mouth was opened and his heart expanded; but he was not yet content as to them, and he adds, “For an answering recompense (I speak as to children), let your heart also expand itself”, (2 Corinthians 6:11 - 13). That is a line the Holy Spirit would take, I believe, at the present time, so that there should be increase. I look for increase; not perhaps outward increase, but inward and spiritual increase. It is a time of the Spirit’s activities, and the fragments that are over are seven large baskets full; the Holy Spirit shows in that way the abundance that there is. Let us not despise the day of small things, but let us not be content with the small things, because there are greater things. The Lord said to Nathanael, “thou shalt see greater things”, (John 1:50) and that may always be said from our side.

And so in regard to sacrifice; a word that is very simple and intelligible in the ordinary sense, but I want to speak of it in a spiritual sense. Peter speaks here about “spiritual sacrifices”, and these are offered by “a holy priesthood”. I am aiming at that which, by the Lord’s help, may become a means of leading us on to a point yet unreached by us on this line. In speaking of sacrifices one’s mind naturally ^[p. 193] turns to Leviticus, for that book furnishes us with the law governing sacrifices. It is well to have the law, for if we do not have the law we shall not be kept right. Leviticus opens with the fact that God was dwelling in the tabernacle, and it was a suitable dwelling. A wonderful scene is presented to us at the end of Exodus; the tabernacle set up in every way according to the commandment and the pattern, and anointed with oil, and the cloud over it, and the presence of the Lord in it. Wonderful scene! And the book of Leviticus opens with God there, and now He says, “If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord”. (Leviticus 1:2). It is what the man does; God affording full scope, as dwelling there, for the affections of His people to move toward Him. It is as if He said, Now who has any love? Let him show it; I am here to be approached, and I have an ordained priesthood available in the court. The result would be normally that this and that one would come up out of the camp with his bullock, or his sheep, or his goat, or his fine flour, and Jehovah would look out, so to speak, and see the man coming up, and would have pleasure in him. But it was voluntary; it was to be of his own voluntary will. Although when he came God asserted His right as to what kind of offering it was to be. There must be nothing there that would in any way misrepresent Christ. God has always Christ before Him, and He would say virtually by His requirements, that there must be nothing in what you bring that would be in any way incongruous or misrepresentative of Christ. The offering must be without spot or blemish, but in a general way it was to be voluntary. In other words, God left it with love, reserving the proviso that there must be nothing in the offering that would misrepresent Christ. That is God’s only reserve when it is a voluntary offering; it must be according to Christ.

^[p. 194] Now having referred to Leviticus I would also take the liberty of referring to Numbers, because Numbers also speaks of sacrifices. When we come to Numbers He does not leave it with the people; He says, “My offering, and my bread for my sacrifices made by fire, for a sweet savour unto me, shall ye observe to offer unto me in their due season”, (Numbers 28:2). God has His claims now. You will remember that this comes in after the gift of the Holy Spirit typically. The Holy Spirit is typified in the springing well of chapter 21. The people drank at that well in the light of the uplifted serpent, the judgment of sin in the flesh. Henceforth they were typically no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit. They were spiritual, at least from God’s side. I wonder if every one here knows that the positive statement of Scripture is that “ye are not in the flesh, but in Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”, (Romans 8:9). That is a statement you should let sink down into your soul; it is, “if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you”. Think of what you are, and what I am, and what all the saints are who have the Holy Spirit! One loves to look at the saints as in the Spirit, and one is entitled to do it, for God says it, and He refused to allow Balaam to look at them in any other wise. Woe be to the man who does look at them, or speak of them, in any other way! God will not allow it. He opens Balaam’s eyes so that from the top of the rocks he sees them in the vision of the Almighty. Think of the Almighty! He that can call things which be not as though they were!

If God has given you the Spirit, He has power to bring you, spirit, soul, and body, into conformity to that. That is what God can do, for He is the Almighty. As seeing the vision of the Almighty, Balaam is compelled, for God put a word in his mouth, to bless the people. What he said with his ^[p. 195] mouth was in keeping with the sight of his eyes, and all was of God. What he saw was the order and beauty and fruitfulness of the people as typically having the Holy Spirit. We all need to see that wonderful sight; then we should never speak ill of the brethren nor leave them. Typically they had the Holy Spirit; that is the secret of it. Sin in the flesh has been condemned in the death of Christ; God has done that; and now we have a people in the Spirit who can be viewed in all the beauty and order and fruitfulness that the Holy Spirit puts upon them. There is power, too, for “the shout of a king is among them ... ... He hath as it were the strength of an unicorn”. (Numbers 23:21,22) But it is all God’s work; “According to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought”! (verse 23) What is He doing now? It will be the sum total of His blessed work when He shall have put us into heaven in every way according to Christ, answering to Christ, as the apostle says, “made the righteousness of God in him”. (2 Corinthians 6:21)

Then we have the numbering of the people by God in order that, as having the Spirit, they should have the land of promise. That is the second numbering; God now takes account of them as fit to enter the land. They are typically spiritual, and as spiritual they are to inherit the land of promise. And then in chapter 27 the fact comes out that there was an appreciation of the inheritance which God had proposed to give them in the daughters of Zelophehad, representing the subjective appreciation on their part of what God in His love had given to them. All that precedes chapter 28, and then God says, I have given you an inheritance, and I have fitted you for it, and I see that you value it; now what about My offering, and the bread of My sacrifices? He says, I claim that, and He does not claim from us what we cannot supply. He knows what we have,

^[p. 196] and He lays claim accordingly. God will never put you into bondage by His claim. They are now a wealthy people, and it is as if God said, I have given you an inheritance, but you are my inheritance. God has given us an inheritance in Christ, but we are His. Think of that, dear brethren, that we are the inheritance of God! “The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance”. (Deuteronomy 32:9) What a fact that is for my soul! He seeks a portion in His people, and so in Ephesians the apostle prays that we might know “the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints”. What a change it makes in one’s apprehension of things when one awakes to the fact that one belongs to those who are the inheritance of God. What can be an inheritance for God who is love, save those in whom there is love? No material things could be an inheritance for Him; it must be something that answers to what He is. God is said to be a Spirit, and He is said to be love; therefore the inheritance must be spiritual, and it must be in love; hence it must be in those who have love.

He says, “My offering, and my bread for my sacrifices made by fire, for a sweet savour unto me, shall ye observe to offer unto me in their due season”. (Numbers 28:2) It is not now when you please, or at your voluntary will; it is “in their due season”, for God has His own blessed needs, as one might say, the necessities of love. Think of that! God seeks the satisfaction of His own heart in our offerings, and in the bread of His sacrifices, and so they are to be “in their due season”. There was to be a lamb every morning and a lamb every evening. In addition to that there were to be two lambs on the sabbath day; in addition, mark, for God does not cancel anything that you have been giving by additional requirements. If there is a yield from Romans, or from the state that Romans produces, that is not cancelled by the yield ^[p. 197] from Colossians; Colossians is something additional. If I am led on in the apprehension of Christ as in Colossians, that does not diminish what I yield according to Romans. If I present my body a living sacrifice to God, that is never to be recalled; but Colossians implies more than that. In Romans the body is given as a living sacrifice; that is, as indwelt by the Spirit it is actuated by love. It is an intelligent service. But when we come to Colossians there is an advance in the truth, Christ is presented in another way, and that presentation is intended to produce a result in me, and that result is to be added to the previous one.

So we find in Numbers 28 beside the continual burnt offering and all its accompaniments, not one of which must be omitted, there is also what is additional. There is an accumulative process going on in the soul of the Christian until he is conformed in every way to Christ. For in regard to sacrifice Christ must be the standard as in all else; God has nothing lower than that before Him. So we get the standard in Christ, and one would feed on it. With Christ everything was entirely the outcome of His devoted love to His Father; everything was for the Father. “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body. Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings, and sacrifices for sin. Then I said, Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”, (Hebrews 10:5 - 7). He says, “thou hast prepared me a body”; in that body it was His delight to do the will of God, and that carried Him on to the cross, and through all that the cross meant to Him. But what underlay the cross, and all else, was the unswerving devotedness of the holy love of Christ to God, and God has nothing less than that before Him. He aims at bringing about correspondence with Christ in the saints. Let us not put it aside ^[p. 198] from us; it is His thought for us; He has nothing less before Him than that. So we have in Peter and in the epistle to the Hebrews the thought of sacrifice. Peter says, “A holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices”; that is the divine thought.

Now to turn for a moment to the Psalms again, we have in David’s psalm of contrition, (Psalm 51), a reference to material sacrifices. He says, “for thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it”. He had the means of doing so; but faith says, “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise”. He brings in these thoughts in contrast to material or legal sacrifices. I refer to it because it is well to understand how God takes account of sacrifice. That is, it is unseemly, and not acceptable to God, to assume to be sacrificing spiritually if one is not right in one’s soul. God says, No, that will not do; that is not what I regard as sacrifice from you; you do not belong practically to a holy priesthood. If there has been sin or crookedness, if you are out of communion, what I look for in you is a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart. That is what God looks for under such circumstances, and He calls it a sacrifice. I think that is what is needed where there has been disregard of divine order, assembly order. When saints are found in that which is iniquitous, in human organisations, you do not talk about spiritual sacrifices there. What God looks for is a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart in regard of that, or anything akin to that.

But then David goes on to say, “Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem”, (Psalm 51:18). Now we come in principle to the assembly. I am not saying this is the assembly, it is only the thing in principle; David knew nothing about the assembly. In fact we have authority for saying that he, and the prophets, did not know ^[p. 199] properly of what they spoke; it was revealed to them “that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things”, (1 Peter 1:12). But the Holy Spirit knew as He employed their hearts and lips, and it is for us to understand what the Holy Spirit meant. There is something that answers to Zion today, and we have to understand what God is doing for Zion. Zion is the centre for God, and if God does good to that, and builds the walls, and we have a return to assembly principles, then we can talk about spiritual sacrifices. So he says, “then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar”; but do not talk about that if there is need for brokenness of spirit and contrition of heart. When these take place in us, then we come to see that God has a centre of interest here with which His sovereignty and His love are connected. He does good to that, and builds up the walls, and then we have the conditions under which a holy priesthood can offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

Now that is what Peter has in his mind, and he sees it in the saints; but the saints viewed as newborn babes who have first of all laid aside “all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil speakings”. He views them as growing up to salvation, having tasted that the Lord is good, and then he says, “To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious, yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”, (1 Peter 2:4,5). That is in Zion, as we may say; indeed the passage goes on to speak about Zion, “Behold, I lay in Zion a corner stone”. The house is there, the conditions are there; “a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices”. Do we understand these things, dear brethren? What we are called to in the house of God, viewed as a spiritual ^[p. 200] house, is to offer to God His offerings and the bread for His sacrifices in their due season.

I read in Ephesians because it, of all other sections of Scripture, develops the state which answers to that of which I have been speaking, response to God, and God’s inheritance in the saints. So it says, “Be not drunk with wine”, That is a negative exhortation, for what excites the flesh must be abstained from. The positive thing is, “but be filled with the Spirit”. God looks for completeness. Then it goes on, “speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”, (Ephesians 5:18 - 20). That is what I understand to be the offerings of God. It is to be always; in the chapter referred to in Numbers we have daily, weekly, and monthly offerings, and then after that the set offerings, the Passover, Pentecost, and Firstfruits, and the day of atonement; all these come in as occasions of fruit for God. The chapter is worth studying; there is food in it, especially as indicative of what God is seeking in His inheritance.

In Ephesians we are exhorted to be filled with the Spirit; then there will be no room for the flesh, and there will be a constant yield for God. As God looks into your heart, what does He see in it? Is it full of the Spirit? If so, you will not be speaking to yourself about the things of the day. They may have to be referred to in the way of righteousness, but your heart is not in them. You will be speaking to yourself “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord”. That is what God looks for, and what He sees in spiritual persons. And it goes on, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. It is to be a ^[p. 201] continual thing; it is to mark us at all times. That is practical Christianity, and that is what God looks for. It is a spiritual people here on earth, presently to be in heaven, but as here on earth the inheritance of God.

May God bless the word to each of us!

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