SERVANTS OF GOD

SERVANTS OF GOD

Isaiah 54:17; Job 1:8; Job 42:5-8; Numbers 14:6-10; Numbers 14:24; Psalm 18:30-33; Luke 2:36-38

I want to speak, dear brethren, of serving God, and to seek to show the encouragement there is in the Scriptures for every one of us, whether it be brother or sister, to be here definitely as serving God. The scripture we commenced with in Isaiah is one of particular encouragement, for Jehovah says that it is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, those who serve Him, that “No weapon that is prepared against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that riseth against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn.” He says, “This is the inheritance of the servants of Jehovah; and their righteousness is of me, saith Jehovah.” It is as though God would say to everyone who is prepared to take up the exercise of serving Him, whatever form that service may take, that they can afford to do so in singleness of heart with the assurance that God will stand by them. He will, of course, afford to them any adjustment that they may need. He will have His own way with them. The Scriptures are full of God’s ways with His servants, but He would at the outset say that the servant need not be concerned about what others think or say about them, if, in fact, they are in singleness of heart serving God. “Their righteousness,” Jehovah says, “is of me.” In speaking of serving God, one is not limiting one’s thoughts to serving in ministry or anything of that kind. I think the Scriptures read will show that servants of God is a term that goes far wider than serving in the power of gift in the ministry of the word or in the gospel. Certainly there is no suggestion of any such thing in the case of Job, yet he is one of whom God speaks as “My servant Job.” The thought of serving God is a very wide one.

I want to refer to these cases of Job and Caleb and David and Anna in order to indicate different aspects in which serving God shows itself, and also to show, not only, as the verse in Isaiah says, how God stands by those who serve Him, but also to show how He takes in hand any discipline that may be needed in order that they may serve Him more effectively. God will take that in hand Himself. I do not think you can read of any servant in the scripture who is not disciplined. In the case of Job the service that marked him in the first instance was that he was characterised by personal piety, concerned as to himself and his household to maintain practically what was pleasing to God. He was thus characteristically a servant of God, and God calls Satan’s attention to him. That is a serious matter, you might say a surprising matter, that God should call Satan’s attention to a servant of His, for God knew well that if Satan were allowed a free hand it would be in opposition to those who serve God. Yet God calls Satan’s attention to Job, with the result that Satan was allowed to put his hand upon him to a remarkable extent, affecting him in his circumstances in a most grievous way, and affecting him also in his body and in his health. What God had in mind was to bring out, I believe, the indestructibility of His own work in Job.

In speaking to Satan in chapter 1 about Job, God calls him “My servant Job,” and similarly in chapter 2, but in the remaining chapters to chapter 41 inclusive, there is no reference to “My servant Job.” In chapter 42, four times over in a very short space of time, God uses the same expression and says “My servant Job.” That is what Job was as serving God. He had come through in no way damaged by what God allowed Satan to bring upon him; but rather, greatly enhanced. That shows that whatever Satan may do against those who serve God, the thought is that he is not to prevail, even as the Lord says that hades’ gates should not prevail against the assembly, which is particularly the vessel of service God-ward. Whatever Satan does, faith understands that God has the matter well under control for those who are really serving Him; that is, those who have no other motive, whose activities and outlook are just in that one direction of serving God and doing His will. I say this, that in regard of all such, whatever evil there may be in opposition to what is of God, God is in complete control of it, and uses it for the furtherance of His pleasure in His servants. At the end of the book God has it in mind to bring Job into more complete liberty, and a fuller and better knowledge of Himself. He brings him to a point, as we know, where he says, “ ... but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

In order to bring Job to this point, God brought before him His wonderful wisdom and majesty, and concluded by drawing his attention to the creature who is king over all the children of pride. No one was able to handle him but God. I believe it is an allusion to Satan, one who cannot be handled by anyone but God, but then we are in the light of this, that God has handled Satan. The Son of God has been manifested, to “undo the works of the devil”, 1 John 3: 8. That is a wonderful thing, and the manner of the undoing of the works of the devil has been most marvellous, bringing to light what God is in His blessedness. Think of it, that the Son of God should have come in manhood, an incorruptible Man, and has met Satan and been into death to accomplish redemption, yielding Himself to pay the full price needed if redemption was to be effected, and that we might receive the Holy Spirit, and be set up in the life of another Man, in the life which is in Christ Jesus, and have the Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts. I say this, and much more, is involved in the way in which God has handled Satan. “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ,” 1 John 5: 20. The very fact of the power of Satan over men has become the occasion for the bringing in, in the incarnation and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and His ascension to the right hand of God, of what has been the greatest expression of divine love, and wisdom, and power. It has involved the setting aside judicially of the man that had come under Satan’s power, the man that was susceptible to evil, and the establishment before God, holy and blameless in Christ, of those whom He has called. That is a wonderful thing, dear brethren, I do not know whether we sufficiently give ourselves to contemplate these great truths of the gospel, for if we would contemplate them more I believe we would come to the point that Job came to. He says, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” What brings us to that point? Is it not the contemplation of the fact that no less a One than the Son of God has had to go into the place of death and judgment, which dust and ashes speak of, if we were to be lifted out of it, and set up before God in Christ according to the thoughts of His love.

Job says, “But now mine eye seeth thee.” He saw God as He was known in creation. We see God as He is known in the glory of redemption. If we begin to appreciate this it will work out in complete self-judgment. Self-judgment is a term we often use, but which one sometimes fears is not as fully understood as it might be, because self-judgment means judgment of self, it does not mean judgment simply of what has been done, it means judgment of the root, the man that did the evil. That is what God would bring every one of us to, and it is one essential element in spiritual stability that we arrive, in the light of what God has done in Christ at the reality of true self-judgment. In 2 Samuel 23 we read of David’s mighty men; the first of his mighty men is one of whom it says “he fought against eight hundred, slain by him at one time.” I believe that is a man who is marked by complete self-judgment. It does not say what the character of the enemy was. The remarkable thing is that he could slay eight hundred of them at one time. You wonder how he could do it, but I believe the spiritual suggestion of it is this, that if Satan brought eight hundred different influences of evil to bear upon one, one proves himself victorious over them all, they are all absolutely refused, eight hundred different influences of evil all brought to bear, pressing at the one time and all absolutely refused. The only man who can do that is the man who is walking in self-judgment by the Holy Spirit. A man who is walking in self-judgment will refuse every influence that appeals to what he is in the flesh, and though there be eight hundred of them, so to speak, they are all rejected, and that constitutes the foundation of spiritual power. Job is called “My servant Job,” and God supports him through all the discipline through which he was brought, and reaches His end with him, so that Job is brought into the fulness of liberty. There is no liberty like that of the one who has arrived at the end of himself and has Christ before him. Now following on that God says to Eliphaz the Temanite, “Mine anger is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken rightly of me, like my servant Job.” What characterised Job as a servant of God was that he spoke right things of God. That is something that is open to every one of us, to speak right things of God, and to move in this world in a way that is consistent with speaking right things of God; that is, to bear a right testimony as to God, supported by a walk in humility and holiness.

When we come to Caleb he is called God’s servant at a critical time; for the people of God had been brought out of Egypt and they had reached Kadesh-barnea. They were not very far from the land, and it was God’s desire that they should go into it. Twelve spies had been sent out to spy out the land, and Caleb was one of them; Joshua was another and there were ten others. They brought back a report, supported by a bunch of grapes of Eshcol borne upon a pole between two men. They admitted that the land was a good one, but ten of them said that the difficulties of taking it were too great and they discouraged the hearts of God’s people. That was a crisis. It was unbelief operating in the spies and finding its answer in God’s people, in the presence of which “Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up boldly and possess it, for we are well able to do it,” Numbers 13: 30. Then in the verses we read in chapter 14 Joshua and Caleb say, “The land, which we passed through to search it out, is a very, very good land. If Jehovah delight in us, he will bring us into this land; and give it us, a land that flows with milk and honey; only rebel not against Jehovah.” Thus Caleb, and Joshua with him, is stimulating the people of God to go in for that which God has in His purpose for them. Why should we not stimulate one another to do that, dear brethren? Paul says in Ephesians 1: 3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.” We may well ask ourselves, What do we know of it? Can we give an account of it? Are we ready to go in for it? There is the power to go in for it. “If Jehovah delight in us,” Caleb says, “he will bring us in.” The Spirit of God has come down from heaven for that express purpose. The Lord says “But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into all the truth,” John 16: 13. Are we going to slight the presence of the Spirit of God amongst God’s people, and refuse to take possession of heavenly things? That was the position here. Heavenly things were theirs as a matter of title. God’s love had provided them for them, but now when it comes to the point of going in they say “we are not able to go up.” The difficulties were too great. What are the difficulties? They are really in ourselves, and all difficulties are overcome just in the measure in which the Holy Spirit is given place amongst us. Caleb was one as to whom God said, “But my servant Caleb, because he hath another spirit in him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he came; and his seed shall possess it.” He is seen as characterised by an appreciation of heavenly things, not only an appreciation of them for himself, but having the ability and energy to stimulate God’s people to go in for them. Actually we have to move into these things together, dear brethren. That was a serious matter. Caleb and Joshua, though having the heart to go in, had to wait for nearly forty years before they could enter in, not on account of any failure on their part, but on account of the unwillingness of God’s people to move. What a serious thing that is. If I am marked by unbelief or slothfulness in regard of divine things, I may be hindering the saints of God from reaching practically their portion in the inheritance. We must remember that the state of spirituality in any company is simply the state of those who compose the company, and if the greater part of the company are unspiritual and unbelieving you will find little or no power in the company to move into the choicest things that divine love has prepared for us. This is a most serious matter.

The relatives of Rebekah said to her in relation to the servant, “Wilt thou go with this man? and she said, I will go,” Genesis 24: 58. She did go; she and her maids rode upon the camels and followed the man; they definitely committed themselves to the power of the Spirit suggested in the camels, and they follow the man, who I believe, is typical of the Comforter, the Spirit of truth. “He shall guide you into all the truth,” John 16: 13. We know how Isaac appreciated it. “And Isaac had gone out to meditate in the fields towards the beginning of evening. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and behold, camels were coming,” verse 63. “Behold” (as though when Isaac saw it his feelings were stirred) “camels were coming.” It is not too much to say that as the Lord sees the saints moving together in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the bridal affections proper to the assembly with desire to have part with Him in His own things, that the feelings of the Lord are stirred as He sees it, but does He see it? That is the point. Here ten out of the twelve, and then the whole congregation, apart from Joshua and Caleb, were marked by unbelief, and the result was that for forty years, those who desired to go into the land were not able to go in, they had to wait for another generation. The Lord stood by Caleb and Joshua. It says “and the whole assembly said that they should be stoned with stones.” Think of the opposition to the truth, and the opposition to two faithful servants of God which showed itself at that time, “the whole assembly said that they should be stoned with stones, and the glory of Jehovah appeared.” That is, the Lord came into the matter. “And their righteousness is of me,

saith Jehovah.” The Lord came into the matter and upheld Caleb and Joshua, and although Caleb and Joshua had to wait forty years before they could enter into the land that was held in their hearts, they were supported right through those forty years. The Lord says of Caleb, “But my servant Caleb, because he hath another spirit in him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he came; and his seed shall possess it,” and as we may read from the book of Joshua he did so.

Referring now to Psalm 18, you will notice that the heading of the Psalm is, “To the chief musician: a Psalm of David, the servant of Jehovah, who spoke to Jehovah the words of this song in the day that Jehovah delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul.” The Psalm is a recital by a servant of God when he had come to the end of his experiences. “In the day,” it says, “that Jehovah had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul.” I wanted to refer to this briefly. David, as we know, was a servant of God in a very marked way, a much more distinctive way than Job. Job is a servant of God characteristically, in his personal and home life, and he spoke right things of God. Caleb is called a servant of God in that particular feature that he appreciated the inheritance and sought to stimulate the people of God to go in for it, a very valuable service, but David was a servant of God in a very wide and varied way, one used to bring deliverance to God’s people, one used to collect material for the house of God, one used to institute the service of God in all its departments, and one used to compose many psalms that were valuable in that service. He had his failures, as we know, but God took in hand to perfect His work with His servant. It is a great thing that God does not give up those who serve Him. Even though they may fail He does not give them up.

David in this psalm recounts something of what he had learned of God as the result of the experiences that he went through. He says, “As for God, his way is perfect.” What a testimony to God and to the faithfulness of His grace! When we think of what David’s history was, that he should say, “As for God, his way is perfect,” and then he speaks of the word of God. “The word of Jehovah is tried.” We were speaking this afternoon of “Every word which goes out through God’s mouth,” Matthew 4: 4. David said it “is tried.” That is to say, it has been put to the test; it is proved to be something that can be relied upon. “The word of Jehovah is tried.” You may safely govern yourself by it. That is the idea. David would say to himself, I always prospered as long as I was governed by the word of God. If I got into difficulties it was when I was not so governed. “The word of Jehovah is tried; he is a shield to all that trust in him.” Then he speaks of God as a Rock. How blessed to be able to speak of God experimentally in this way. You can build upon a rock. There is something abidingly stable about a rock, and David’s knowledge of God was such that he says, “For who is God save Jehovah? and who is a rock if not our God? The God who girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.” That is one who is wholly subject to God’s discipline. David shines in that way, as one who was always subject to God’s discipline. One who is subject to God’s discipline prospers. He may have to carry the results of his failures to the end of his days. God’s governmental ways may follow him to the end. They did with David, “Now, therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house,” 2 Samuel 12: 10. David had to carry what was governmental to the end of his days. The one who knows God humbly submits to that, and understands that in the process, God is deepening His work with him, teaching him to abhor increasingly that in which he had failed, and teaching him increasingly to appreciate the grace that is working with him. He says, “God girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect.” That is, God has a perfect result in mind for us “that we should be holy and blameless before him in love,” Ephesians 1: 4. That is not to be put off to the future. It is something to be realised now, it is what God would bring us to, to be rooted and founded in love, and to be holy and blameless before Him in love. I believe God would bring us to it now, and it may be touched in assembly; for all God’s ways with us have in mind that we may be fitted to fill out our place in the assembly now, and have our part now in the service of God.

David says, “He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon my high places.” That is what we want to reach, dear brethren, our high places. I was saying that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.” That gives us what are our high places. Are we able to tread them? We discover in assembly the measure of our ability to tread our high places, and that is what God has in mind, that we should be able to do. It is a question of being formed in holiness, in spiritual intelligence, and spiritual liberty in these things. Hinds’ feet are feet that are able to move in regions where the natural man cannot move, and they thus refer to our ability to touch spiritual and heavenly things in agility and power, beyond the reach of the natural mind. That is what David reached as the result of God’s ways with him. He became increasingly skilful in the service of God, so that this Psalm is addressed “To the chief Musician.” All his experiences had in mind that he should be increasingly fitted for his service. Habakkuk,

another servant of God, a prophet, closes his book on a similar note. He says, “For though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive-tree shall fail, and the fields shall yield no food; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Jehovah, the Lord, is my strength. And he maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon my high places. To the chief Musician. On my stringed instruments,” Habakkuk 3: 17 - 19. That is the result that Habakkuk reaches.

Finally I refer to Anna in order to show, if it is necessary to say it, that serving God is not in any sense limited to brothers. Here is a sister brought forward. “And there was a prophetess, Anna, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, who was far advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity, and herself a widow up to eighty-four years.” She is one who had herself been the subject of God’s ways, ways which outwardly might seem severe. To have only seven years of married life, followed by eighty-four years of widowhood, seems like severity in God’s ways, but was there anything in Anna to suggest that she was not happy in the position that God had brought her to? Nothing at all, although of such a greatly advanced age she “did not depart from the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.” You may rest assured that that was precious to God. I do not suppose that Anna was of any consequence to the high priest and the elderhood in Jerusalem at that time. She would be regarded as past any usefulness, probably an unknown woman, but a woman who was day and night under God’s eye, departing not from His temple. The interests of God were her great concern, she had no other indeed. “Who did not depart from the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.” The result of that is that God saw that she had part in anything that was moving spiritually. She was not left outside of it. The Christ of God had just been brought into the temple. Simeon had Him in his arms and Anna comes in at that moment; God sees to it that she is in that, she would have her part in anything that is of spiritual value at that time, and so it is with those who serve God, that God sees that they have their part in it in the Spirit. They may even be cut off from it in regard to actual circumstances. Anna was not.

There are instances, where saints have been cut off from having personal part in spiritual privileges, and yet have been entirely in them in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what God always ensures in regard of those who truly serve Him, so this is placed in the Scriptures for our encouragement, for the encouragement of sisters who serve God to continue in it, and there is none who is able to support them in it but God. David says, “The God who girdeth me with strength.” It is God who is going to support them to the end, those who have the mind and heart to serve Him. It says of Anna, “who did not depart from the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers; and she coming up the same hour gave praise to the Lord.” She contributes her own quota, she yields something for the service of God; and not only that, she “spoke of him to all those who waited for redemption in Jerusalem.” She knew them all and she spoke of Him. Job could speak rightly of God. Anna here, at the end, is brought into the current of what God is doing at the moment. Her soul is filled with the light of God’s Christ, and she “spoke of him to all those who waited for redemption in Jerusalem.”

One’s desire is that we may all be stimulated to serve God, and especially in relation to His own thoughts, and His interests and people. There is no greater privilege which can be accorded to us, and the opportunity for it in the presence of adverse conditions will soon be past. May the Lord encourage us, in whatever way the service of God is open to us, to take it up and to continue in it to the end, for His Name’s sake.