DISCIPLINE TASTED
[p. 418] DISCIPLINE TASTED
Exodus 15:22 - 27; Exodus 32:20; Numbers 5:16-18; Numbers 5:27
JT What is in view is to show that we are to taste, to accept and taste the consequences of any position into which we may be brought in the divine ordering; of anything that is divinely appointed for us in the ordinary ways and discipline of God, or of anything that have occasioned ourselves through our own unfaithfulness. The first is in Exodus 15: “Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and [p. 419] they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water”. This is the ordinary course of God’s ways with us: Moses brought them there. God does not take us immediately into the land. It is in view of being in testimony in the wilderness that we are brought this way. It is the appointed way of God, and it implies that as Christ tasted death we taste it, not as a penalty, but as an experience. Then in chapter 32 the point is unfaithfulness. God says, Israel has to bear the consequences of that unfaithfulness; that is what is implied in verse 20. Then in Numbers, which is characteristically a wilderness book, things may happen that are not always apparent, secret things, but known to God, and we have to experience the terribleness of these things that are brought to light through the drinking of this bitter water. The teaching alludes to the assembly in unfaithfulness to Christ. It is sure to be exposed, but it is through this bitter water that it comes to light, and that, dear brethren, would make us see the practical importance of this thing: how it would make us real and transparent!
JL You refer to the position into which we are brought. Would you say a little more about that?
JT “Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And they came to Marah, and could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter”. Moses brought them there: young believers who have come to Christ are not left to themselves. This water is the testing place. Moses brought them to the testing place.
JL You refer to Moses bringing them there. Is that the faithfulness of leadership?
JT Many believers are not under leadership at all, hence they have never tasted of the waters of Marah; they have never thought on the sufferings of Christ, what it cost Him, and how He would bring us into accord with Himself in making us taste death, not as a penalty but as an experience.
JL What is the difference between the blood in Egypt and the water aspect of the death of Christ here?
JT The blood in Egypt was put on the doorposts; it is sheltering us from death. It would compare with the mercy-seat. It is the initial thought of the blood that covers us on the mercy-seat, but this type goes further: it is tasting it; it is to save us from ourselves; we may say that death is ours, and we become really separate in our ways, and consequently we come under the ordinances and statutes of God. If we do not learn this lesson we shall not be in the family.
AF Does this show the value of coming to the Lord?
JT Yes, they had already believed in Moses, he had proved himself worthy of it. Moses is a type of Christ, But then Moses is a bondman, too, so he cries to the Lord, and the Lord shows him wood (the word is ‘wood’, not ‘tree’ as in the Authorised Version); the allusion is to the character of Christ, that kind of manhood, such humanity as enters into the circumstances of others, amenable to the will of [p. 420] another, that is the will of God, the will of Christ, and indeed the will of the brethren, too. We must learn subjection as we come to correspond with Christ. I see that death is a necessity, for the flesh is incorrigible.
AM Is that the cause of the murmuring?
JT “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25). We murmur unless we accept Marah.
Ques Would it be like “Arm yourselves with the same mind” (1 Peter 4:1)?
JT That, is the point. “Arm yourselves with the same mind”; the mind of Christ is to die, and we arm ourselves with the same mind. It becomes more and more potent with us.
Ques Why should there be three days finding no water?
JT To bring out what was there. A young believer might appear in a good state but God is going to test him; in three days he might be in a very naughty spirit. It is a service to us to be tested.
AM Is the thought in this that they are going to learn to drink?
JT It is to get a taste of the death of Christ. The waters are the same as the Red Sea. So we taste what Christ tasted — not in the same way, He tasted death for every man, we taste the experience of it, to learn something of what that death meant to Him, and when we have accepted that we come under the statutes and ordinances.
Ques Do we learn the importance of these statutes and ordinances as the result of that tasting?
JT We accept the waters of Marah. Now we are subject to His will; we begin to learn fixed principles. If I must be subject, everybody must be subject. There are fixed principles. Statutes are for all, so we are having a variety here: “There he tested them. And he said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to [p. 421] the voice of Jehovah thy God, and do what is right in his eyes, and incline thine ears to his commandments, and keep all his statutes ...”. We are brought into the kingdom in the sense of subjection. The ordinances of God, His commandments, His statutes, His law, are a very important lesson to every young christian. I think it is when we come under divine rule.
GM What are the statutes and ordinances in our time?
JT What we get in the beginning of Acts: “They persevered in the teaching ... of the apostles”. The teaching of the apostles is not simply scriptural teaching, but the apostles’ teaching means that the authority of God and of Christ is vested in these men. It had been vested in Moses, but now it is vested in the twelve apostles. There are two ways of looking at the number twelve: it was administrative, but it was administrative of the will of God, it represents the authority of God. It is a most important thing at the beginning of the christian career to persevere “in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers”; that brings us into relation with the brethren. Young christians ought to see that. The breaking of bread is for all.
AF The flesh would cause us to keep aloof. After the testing of Marah we are to be marked by diligence; it says, “If thou wilt diligently hearken ...”.
JT Very good. The early christians were marked by that, “they persevered”, showing that there was opposition to it. Very often young christians are marked by indolence.
Ques Is that the point where discipline comes in under the divine ordering, “I will put none of the complaints upon thee that I have put upon the Egyptians”?
JT That is right. These complaints come upon us because we are disobedient, so in 1 Corinthians 11 it says, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you”.
JL So young believers do not profit by not partaking of the Supper?
JT No, they do not. They do not recognise the divine ordinances: the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread.
JL We sometimes question young people as to their age.
JT The early christians persevered. It is distressing to see young christians treat things so lightly. If we do not regard the statutes and ordinances the complaints of Egypt will come upon us; that is, God will deal with it judicially.
AM Is there anyone too young if he has answered to this?
JT Well, if he has understanding I should not consider age too much.
AM I asked this because age has been a hindrance in some parts.
JT I know that. It is a serious thing to interfere if the state seems normal. The young believer is tested every day, may be he is tested at school. If he is subject, age should not be a hindrance. Ample time should be given to prove. The word ‘testing’ here gives full opportunity; three days’ testing is a principle. If a young person says, I should like to break bread, parents should be consulted; they know best about subjection. Subjection is essential.
Ques Would that be exemplified in the book of Ruth? Ruth had tasted the bitterness of Marah in being linked with Naomi, but as in subjection she comes into fellowship with the reapers as under Boaz.
JT Very good. The word ‘Marah’ comes right down to us in the Marys so prominent in the New Testament. Three of them are standing by the cross of Jesus. Mary the mother of Jesus had been told,
“[p. 423] A sword shall go through thine own soul”. John says she was standing by the cross of Jesus. The word ‘Mary’ comes down from Marah.
JL So the testing really is to bring out what is there.
JT Yes, the Lord knows what is there; I may not know.
JL Paul at the end of Romans 7 found out what was in him.
JT That is the process; by the law is knowledge of sin — not knowledge of God.
Rem So it is good to learn what we are in ourselves.
JT It is most essential to know what is inside. The flesh is under the law of sin; it can do nothing else but sin; and as we see that, we put it in prison; we do not minister to it at all.
AF Is it because of what we are in the flesh that it says, “They ... could not drink the waters of Marah”? The wood suggests Christ, and it is only as Christ is brought into the circumstances that they become sweet. There is no change of the circumstances.
JT That is good. If I love the Lord, I do not want any other circumstances; I want to be like Him. Now they come to Elim where there are twelve wells and seventy palm trees. We have here the numeral seventy of the New Testament. It is not a punitive numeral here. The authority of the apostles might imply serious things: the apostle Paul had a rod; he delivered certain ones to Satan — Hymenaeus and Alexander; that is, an apostle can put under discipline, but these numerals here are administrative of what is good. In Elim we have twelve wells and seventy palm trees. We have the twelve wells in Luke, and the seventy trees. The seventy are sent out to go before the Lord “where he himself was about to come”. He sent the seventy, He sent them [p. 424] two by two. This numeral seventy would mean the Lord would be present Himself. The twelve wells would be refreshment that satisfies. The seventy are preparation for the Lord’s presence and the twelve are provision; all had been made to drink. In chapter 20:24 we get, “In all places where I shall make my name to be remembered, I will come unto thee, and bless thee”.
WAS Does this last verse of Exodus 15 suggest that there is a point reached answering to coming into fellowship?
JT This last verse is on the principle of the covenant: the seventy trees and the twelve wells are really representative of the saints.
AM Would it be right to say that Elim suggests the idea of restfulness as under administration?
JT I think so. The seventy were God’s provision. If they came to a town they were to enquire if a son of peace was there, and they would establish conditions of peace. The twelve would be the full administrative thought.
AF What would be the thought in camping by the waters?
JT It is well to consider that they came to Marah, and that they came to Elim; that is, we come to that, it is the consequence of what we have been going through in our soul’s history, and yet there is this beautiful suggestion of divine bounty and care.
GA How are these conditions to be brought about?
JT This is the young Christian’s position. They are deliberately led by the leader into that position. They came to Marah. That seems hard, but that is the normal history of an ordinary christian. But then when they came to Marah they could not drink the waters of Marah “for they were bitter; ... and the people murmured”. That is the state of their souls, that is the state they were [p. 425] in.
JL You mean we can speak freely of any position we have come to in our souls?
JT God needed them in the wilderness, but not as a grumbling people, and by the testing of the water they begin to build up a constitution that is like Christ.
Rem There would be no grumbling if they were in the good of what has been suggested in Elim.
JT You come to that; you say, Now I see that all these things are divine provision, everything is in love, “because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” (Romans 5), and you say, Well, I see now “that all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). That is a victory. Elim was the outcome of that. This is a positive thing; everything is in our favour: all is God’s provision, it may be discipline, but it is God’s provision.
JL God is not indifferent to the process, “I will put none of the complaints upon thee that I have put upon the Egyptians”.
JT I am sure God hates to make His people suffer like the Egyptians. In our case it is moral things, suffering in a moral way, like the Corinthians.
GM Do we get the principle of sowing to the Spirit here: life and peace?
JT We get “life and peace” in Elim.
GM Would you say that the murmuring here against Moses was really against God?
JT It is a question of the authority of Moses.
Now in chapter 32 we find an Egyptian state of things has arisen. “When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people collected together to Aaron, and said to him, Up, make us a god, who will go before us; for this Moses, the man that has brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what is become of him!” The outcome of that is that they make a calf — a state of idolatry. That is, we are in fellowship,
[p. 426] but not marked by the effects of the Lord’s supper. Those who partake of the Supper know that Christ is at the right hand of God; they know where He is, they know Him, too. This here is the opposite from being under the effect of the Lord’s supper, showing the importance of young people partaking of the Supper; if they do not, they will drift; they do not know where Christ is, and they want an idol, something to see; christians go after this thing and that thing because they do not understand where Christ is, “For this Moses, ... we do not know what is become of him!” Hence the importance of young people coming into fellowship. As we were saying, they will know where Christ is; they know those who love the Lord; He is enough for them. “He is the true God and eternal life” and John adds, “Children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20,21). That is the setting of this verse. So the mediator comes down, having already interceded for them on the mountain, “And he took the calf that they had made, and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink it”. As if to say, ‘You have got to taste these things, you have not been tasting that the Lord is good’. They had tasted His goodness at Elim, now God gives them to taste the consequence of their own disobedience.
CM Moses says, “My God ... My father’s God” (Exodus 15:2).
JT Well, we ought to be able to demonstrate to the younger brethren what the Lord is to us.
GM Would you give us an illustration of what this grinding to powder and strewing it on the water means?
JT Well, we have to bear the consequences of our own wickedness. Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden rings that are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters”. They were [p. 427] asked to do this; in verse 2 they are all in it. The young women do not readily give up things, particularly their jewels. But here they are all given up to this idolatry: “Make us a god”, they say. “Then all the people broke off the golden rings that were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron”. Ordinarily young people do not do that, but this is to show the drift of things, evil things and how we can be carried along: you see young people standing in queues at the doors of picture-houses, how distressing it is! You do not find them standing in queues at the door of the meeting-room; it shows how the evil becomes so influential over us that it carries us far beyond what we think, showing how infectious evil is: “All the people broke off the golden rings ... and brought them to Aaron. And he took them ... and made of it a molten calf: and they said, This is thy god, Israel, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!”. They said that. It looks as if Aaron was acting as a politician; he was afraid of the people; it was the state of the people. “This is thy god, Israel!” — what a lie! evil leading you along headlong: “This is thy god” — nothing of the kind, but it shows what evil is, and unless we judge it, we get carried along headlong.
AF Would it be the result of not being in the gain of their previous experience that these things come about?
JT Well, they do come into the gain of it. The point is the grinding has come about; how are they going to drink this water? It is to show what God feels, how terrible it was for Him! God had tasted that, they were making Him suffer. Now God would say, You made Me taste something, now you taste the consequences of your own conduct. See what it is, the work of the devil! It is a terrible thing to learn that I have been under the power of the devil. That is what the drinking of it means: bringing home [p. 428] to myself what I have been doing, how serious a thing it is that has been influencing me and I have got to face it. You say, That is optional, I am not coming back to the meeting any more. God says, You have to taste what that means in your very inwards, you have to go in for this matter.
GA Is it, ‘What we sow we reap’?
JT This is more than that. Your earrings are in it; you drink that; it goes right into your very inwards, so that you assimilate it.
Ques What is the thought in the earrings?
JT What we appear in, what we value. It shows what we do when we come under the influence of evil.
CM Would it be helpful to see that in the first scripture there is moral gain reached, now there is another end reached?
JT Well, Moses does this by himself; he does it conveying the mind of God — a solemn thing. God said, I want you to understand what you did; you did it to Me. You might think very lightly of Me, but I want you to understand what you did to Me in turning away from the Lord’s people. God would bring it home to us, what sin is, what idolatry is.
Ques Would Hosea show us the feelings of God in regard to idolatry, His feelings about Ephraim?
JT Quite so. I have often thought of the prophet Hosea — how he speaks feelingly of Jehovah alluring Israel into the wilderness.
Rem They all had part in this. Aaron made the calf, but it says they made it.
JT The young people’s earrings were in it. It does not say Moses made Aaron drink. Moses said to Aaron, “What has this people done to thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin on them?” It was the state of the people.
WAS Would it touch on “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you” (1 Corinthians 11:[p. 429] 30)?
JT It is an internal matter. They have to feel in their inwards what they have been doing.
GM Since all here seem to subscribe to it, does it suggest the voice of democracy?
JT Quite so. The cry of democracy is, ‘Man is God’. This is a movement of the people: This is the voice of the devil. The young Israelites were in this. A young Israelite might say, I did not do much, I only gave my earrings. So everyone in Israel has to swallow this. It is really self-judgment.
JL You distinguished between Aaron’s position and the people’s position. Moses was with God on the mountain.
JT That is good. Moses was with God, showing that as a leader I must not be with the people in the sense of being led by them. A brother may say, I wait and see what the brethren think about it. Such a one is not a leader at all. If he is with God, the leader will bring in the mind of God.
JL It is sad to see Aaron yielding to the people.
JT Stephen says, “They made a calf in those days, and, offered sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands” (Acts 7:41). God says, That is not My name; you might think very lightly of it, but you will have to suffer for that.
Then in Numbers, which is characteristically a wilderness book, we get what may happen in secret. The figure is the woman in unfaithfulness to her husband. The husband is typical of Christ in the way He feels when we are unfaithful. The thing may not be known. But the spirit of jealousy comes upon the husband, reminding us how Christ has suffered. Now the trial must go on. If anything happens in the meeting, the thing must be tried. This is really a priestly matter; that is, the spiritual are brought into action, and the test brings out where the real evil is — the curse here means evil — what is on the surface may not be the real matter at all.
FI [p. 430] Why are the holy water and the dust of the floor of the tabernacle brought together?
JT It would be death as it is before God — what it is in the meeting, we might say, death as it is before God. What comes out in Corinthians is the judgment of things within, what happens inside. Death had not been effective. How God looks at things is a sure means of bringing to light what is current inside. That, mixed with the holy water — it is called holy water, it is holy judgment — has to operate inside: there is a state brought about by this mixture. We have to do with God inside and get to know what is there. It is a remarkable thing this dust of the floor of the tabernacle. It had no floor, it was on the earth, and God’s judgment is continually there. Think what God feels when His people are unfaithful. So the state of the assembly is brought to bear upon the person who is suspected, so that something happens — the swelling is suggestive of something happening to bring to light the real trouble.
WF In the book of Judges the leaders discerned things and then they were taking action; they went to war.
JT That would be dealing with it more in a military way, but this is a very remarkable process. There is much more in the chapter. There is no point in hiding anything; it will come to light if you do not judge yourself.
Ques “For I am jealous as to you with a jealousy which is of God” (2 Corinthians 11:2). Would that feeling lie behind this working out?
JT Quite so. The full blown thing is seen in Jezebel in Revelation 2: “Behold, I cast her into a bed ... unless they repent of her works ... and all the assemblies shall know that I am he that searches the reins and the hearts”. Why should I not repent, because the Lord will deal with anything and everything? In Jezebel’s case it is final judgment.