A TIME OF SPIRITUAL INFORMALITY
A TIME OF SPIRITUAL INFORMALITY
1
W. McKillop
THE GOSPEL CONTAINING COMFORT
9
N. T. Meek
QUESTIONS STIMULATING SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
18
W. Lamont
W. McKillop
John 13: 1–5; Numbers 10: 33; Joshua 3: 17; Mark 14: 6–8
It has been said, and I think rightly, that we are in John’s time. What I understand by that is that we are in an unofficial time, but a time of love. You will remember when the Lord spoke to Peter in John 21 He gave him a formal commission and although He spoke of John He gave him no formal commission. When He spoke to Ananias of Paul, He spoke of the formal commission he would have, and He spoke directly to Paul about it subsequently, but John is presented to us as a person who has no formal commission. That is the time we are in, not in the time of formal commission, not in the era of the twelve. The Lord formally appointed them, formally charged them, formally empowered them to do certain things, but the apostles are all now with Christ, including Paul. And so the question is—if we are in this time of what would call spiritual informality, how are we to proceed with what needs to be done? What I would suggest for our consideration is that we must proceed on the line of love.
The Lord is acting in John 13 deliberately in love and He furnishes us a model as He says in verse 15, “I have given you an example”. In a time that is marked by the absence of inaugural and apostolic formality, we must learn how to proceed from Christ. It says, “Jesus, knowing that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world to the Father”. The Lord knew that a certain time had come. The time has come morally for everyone in this room to depart out of the world. We are looking forward, of course, to the great event of the Lord’s coming for us, and our actual departure, but in the meantime, what love would be concerned about is moral departure out of this world. The great objective the Lord
had before Him is stated here, “to the Father”. How that must have filled the heart of Christ!
Much of course would intervene because He had yet to go to Gethsemane and then to the cross and then to the grave. But what He had before Him was departure out of this world to the Father. It says that having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the end.
What I would suggest, beloved brethren, is that the Lord’s service was always in the full consciousness of the Father’s love for Him. John 3 tells us the Father loves the Son and the gospel really has to be viewed from that standpoint. The Father loves the Son and the whole administration contemplated in John’s gospel proceeds from that point of view. If we do not understand that the administration in our localities must proceed from the point of view of our being loved by Christ, we shall miss something. What the Lord did, He did in the consciousness of being loved by the Father. “Having loved his own”, these are the kind of persons that the Lord could love. In chapter 1 it said, “He came to his own, and his own received him not”. That is not these persons. His own in John 1 are not His own of John 13.
They received Him not. But those called “his own” in John 13 have received Him. They became His own on the line of John 1: 12, 13, “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name; who have been born, not of blood, nor of flesh’s will, nor of man’s will, but of God”. The persons the Lord loves in John 13 are persons who have been born of God. They have derived their moral being from God.
You might ask, How does a person derive his moral being from God? It is by the action of the word of God in the hands of the Spirit of God that a person derives his moral being from God, and therefore becomes an object of the affections of Christ. It is wonderful to be among the persons that the Lord would call His own. What marks them is they have received Him. If we have received Christ, Paul tells the Colossians, walk in Him. The evidence of receiving
Christ is that we walk in Him. “As therefore ye have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him” (Colossians 2: 6, 7); your moral roots are in Christ, you are deriving from Him. These are the persons who are the objects of the love of Christ. So it says, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands”, the Lord knew that. I referred to His always being conscious of the Father’s love, but there is something else added here, that He knew that the Father had given Him all things into His hands. In the light of this, it becomes most affecting that He uses those hands to wash the feet of His own.
He knew that He came out from God and was going to God. Think of the majestic movements of the Son of God. He came out from God, freighted with the full purpose of God, with the full knowledge of God; and He was going to God. How majestic the circuit of the love of Christ is as presented in this passage. It says He “rises from supper and lays aside his garments”. I would suggest, beloved brethren, that this was the unofficial working of the love of Christ at a time of great pressure, at a time of spiritual exultation because He had in view His going to the Father. Having taken a linen towel He girded Himself, then He pours water into the wash-hand basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, and to wipe them with the linen towel with which He was girded. The Lord’s current service must be thought of in this light. The Lord is acting unofficially among us that we might really come to understand increasingly His heart, and the desire of His heart that we might have part with Him. I did not read that verse, but He says, “Unless I wash thee, thou hast not part with me”, John 13: 8. It is really part with the Son of God in the heavenly realm that is in view. The washing has in mind that we should be ready to move into that spiritual realm in association with the Son of God. The Lord laying aside His garments would point to the unofficial character of this service. In John He is viewed as the Sent One of God. But we do not find in John a formal commission exactly
with regard to the Lord Himself. The Lord is spoken of as a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God by the apostle Paul. In Luke’s gospel, the Lord says Himself, the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to preach glad tidings to the poor, and so on (see Luke 4: 18). But here there is no reference to anything like that; it is just, we might say, the immeasurable love of Christ to do everything needed that His own might have part with Him.
What I would suggest is, that the more we are in the consciousness of the love of Christ, the more ready we shall be to serve unofficially, that the saints might be in the full possession of their inheritance. See what a line of things is in view; the Son of God serving in the consciousness of the Father’s love and the saints serving in the consciousness of the love of Christ. Sometimes we think that if we loved Christ more, we would serve more and serve better; but I think the real secret is if we enjoyed the love of Christ more, we would serve more and serve better. I am not undervaluing our love for Christ, nor does He, but the real motive power in this day of what is unofficial is our enjoyment of the love of Christ. So the apostle says the love of the Christ constrains us. Not our love for Him, His love for us—the love of the Christ constrains us. Do you really have the sense in your soul, beloved brother, beloved sister, that the Son of God has loved you and given Himself for you? The apostle spoke of that as his own experience, but it is open to every one of us, to be conscious that the Son of God has loved me and given Himself for me. What will Christ not do in His love for the saints?
In 1 Corinthians 10 the apostle tells us that they all drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, now the rock was the Christ. How touching to think of the Lord, speaking reverently, as a water-carrier, that the need of our souls might be satisfied. The spiritual rock that has followed the testimony all through the dispensation has been Christ, and what He has furnished is the living
position of the assembly here on earth in testimony with Himself. The spiritual rock followed them, but the ark of the covenant of Jehovah went before them. The Lord intends us to prove this in our localities. It refers to the wilderness position as in Corinth or Antioch or any other locality, in the way Christ, typified in the movement of the ark, would in His love search out a resting place for us. Week by week, we should find this in our localities. The movement of the ark in self-sacrificing and unofficial love was to search out a resting place. Resting places are important for spiritual growth, for the consolidation of the truth in our souls, and that we might grasp what the Lord has in view in the movement. So the ark went before them in the three days’ journey. There is no commandment to Moses or through Moses about the ark doing this. It is the action of Christ in love, typically, that every locality might find a resting place, where we are free from pressure. The three days’ journey would allude to the thought of death and resurrection, and what the Lord would lead us to in the resting place is where eternal life can be enjoyed. And so the ark moved of itself. It moved because Moses drooped and wanted guidance from another. But the ark moved of itself. If we droop in our localities and begin to look for guidance other than divine guidance, we shall find that Christ so loves us that He will act of Himself and lead us to a resting place. It is one of the most encouraging things to consider, that we are not left to wander; even if we droop—even if we turn aside from divine guidance, the Lord will act to bring us into the mainstream of the movements of divine Persons. So the ark went before them.
If you connect this with the ark going into Jordan in Joshua 3, it is intended to help us ponder the greatness of the movement of Christ before us going into death. In the gospels, it seems to be the women who were especially affected by the Lord’s feet, as the woman in
Luke 7 and Mary in John 12. Mary, although she would not have understood it fully then, brings out spiritually the feminine affection that values the movements of Christ into death. It is not exactly the death of Christ to atone for our sins, although that would be included, but the death of Christ to open up the way into the purpose of God. Let that come home to our souls. Christ did indeed die for our sins according to the Scriptures, but He also died to deal with the last enemy which is death, to open up the way into the purpose of God, so that by faith and in the Spirit’s power we might enter into it at the present time together. The priests who bore the ark of the covenant of Jehovah stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan. The priests and the ark here must be viewed as one type and the priests are to bring out the holiness that marked Christ as going into death. He said Himself prophetically,
“neither wilt thou allow thy Holy One to see corruption”, Psalm 16: 10. The Lord has gone into death, He has gone before and dealt with it, but it requires faith to get the gain of what He has done. Publicly death still is in evidence on every hand. The Lord has annulled Him who had the might of death, but death has not yet been cast into the lake of fire; that time will come.
In our assembly experience, what the Lord has in view in His love for us is that we should know the power of God through faith so that we are superior to the power of death and we go over together into that spiritual realm, the realm of the purpose of God. It says here, “all Israel went over on dry ground, until all the nation had completely gone over the Jordan”.
That would be typical of the desire of every priestly heart that is affected by what the ark has done. All the saints are to go over. In the practical working out of it, we want all the saints in our localities to go over. We do not want to leave any behind in the world, to leave any here in merely earthly surroundings, not even in that territory which Moses gave to the two and a half tribes. That territory was right from that point of view, but it is not
the final position. Heavenly territory is in view. So the ark stood firm on dry ground. I would appeal to us, beloved brethren, to think of the love of Christ dealing with this matter that in our localities on the first day of the week, following the Supper, we might all go over into the heavenly realm in the power of faith and in the power of the Spirit of God. We have been raised with Him through faith of the working of God, it is a faith position, not an actual position. Anticipatively, we have been raised up together and seated together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, but in the experience of our souls what we need is faith in the working of God, which involves how the Spirit of God acts in us, that we might go into the position that the love of Christ has won for us. And that position is heavenly as typified in that goodly land over Jordan.
What Christ has done in love is surely to evoke something in our souls that would be an answer to this and I refer to Mark’s gospel in that connection. If you think of the unofficial self-sacrificing love that marks the saints, the Scriptures are full of it; Noah offering of every clean animal to God, unselfishly considering for the pleasure of God; Jacob, moved by the sight of Rachel, rising and rolling away the stone, watering the flocks; Moses sitting at the well and then rising and watering the sheep. As the writer says in Hebrews 11, “For the time would fail me telling of Gideon, and Barak, and Samson”, and so on. The time would fail me telling of Abraham and Isaac and Joseph; the three mighties that broke through the camp of the Philistines to draw water for David; and David himself in his exercises that there might be a resting place for the ark, habitations for the mighty one of Jacob. The Scriptures are full of the thought. But I want to bring it down to each one of us here.
The Lord says in verse 8 of Mark 14, “What she could, she has done”. I feel encouraged, since this was a woman, to speak to any woman here who may be
hesitant about what she could do fully for Christ. And you understand that I am using the word ‘woman’ in the sense that the Lord would use it. It is a dignified term in Scripture. Is there some woman here who has come so far as affected by the truth, has come so far in her love for Christ, but has hesitated about going the full way in love’s full committal to Him? If so, I would appeal to you to be like this woman! It says, “there came a woman having an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly; and having broken the alabaster flask, she poured it out upon his head”. Notice where she did this—in the house of Simon the leper.
You might say, I know about the history of brethren and I am troubled about things that have happened. We have to own that that belongs to Simon the leper’s house. But you may be sure he was a cleansed leper because the Lord was in his house. You may be sure that if the Lord is among us, He is in a company that has been cleansed. That is what the apostle told the Corinthians. If there ever was Simon the leper’s house in character, it was Corinth. But he says, “ye have been washed, but ye have been sanctified, but ye have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God”, 1 Corinthians 6: 11. So while publicly the position may be discreditable in the eyes of persons who do not know Christ and who do not, love Him, it is a position where Christ is honoured by persons who do love Him. She brought out this alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly. It will cost you something to distinguish Christ in the full sense. It is not enough just to go part of the way or nearly all the way. It will cost you something, but is He not worthy of it? This woman thought that He was. She poured it out upon His head. She recognised His pre-eminence and His dignity. Every deterrent will fade from your mind and heart as you are occupied with the pre-eminence and dignity of Christ. That will liberate you to rise up in moral power and go the full way in love for Him who has so loved you, and so loved all of us.
May this mark us too in our localities. We were speaking about oneness. The apostle says,
“that ye may with one accord, with one mouth, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”, Romans 15: 6. That is the divine intent. As divine Persons serve in love among us, as the Lord is active in love and leadership, and as the Spirit is active in love in inward formation, it has in mind that we might be ready for the full thought of the worship of God.
We have no greater privilege at the present time, as persons who are conscious of the love of Christ, than to be in His hand for the worship of God. May the Lord have His way with all of us and may these thoughts affect us more and more so that the power of His love might affect us and the results be seen in increased devotion in our own lives, in households that more and more are committed to the testimony, and in localities that are ready to surrender whatever is needed in order to go with Him into the realm of divine purpose as consciously loved by the Son of God. May God bless the word.
Address at Denton, Texas, 25 December 1992
THE GOSPEL CONTAINING COMFORT
N. T. Meek
Psalm 69: 20, 21; Isaiah 1: 18; John 14: 23–26
I would like to speak about the gospel as containing comfort; comfort is much needed by us all from very tender months and years. One divine Person, one of the hallowed Trinity is called the Comforter. Comfort must have, therefore, a great place in God’s mind and thoughts for One to take that name, the Comforter. This psalm speaks of One who did not know comfort, and it was through no fault of His; comfort was denied Him. It is a reference, as you may perhaps gauge yourself, to
the sufferings of Jesus, a prophetic utterance, “I looked ... for comforters, but I found none”.
You say, Did He not have the disciples? In one gospel narrative they all forsook Him. He was left alone, and He looked for comforters. He was entitled to do that, but He found none, everyone failed Him, even the disciples, even the twelve failed Him. If you and I had been there I venture to say that we would have failed Him too, we would have denied the Saviour the comfort that He should have had. What was He doing? He was suffering upon the cross, suffering for sins, “Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3: 18); He suffered for sins. It is a great matter, the incubus of sins heaped upon heap, and He suffered for them, “the just for the unjust”. My sins? Thank God, yes, He suffered for my sins. I have a consciousness of that, dear friend, that has been given me and is available for you too. It is intended that you should have the conscious sense that He suffered for your sins. For father’s, for mother’s? Yes, and for yours also. Perhaps there are not many yet, but beware, these sins mount up quickly, and every one needs to be atoned for, and that would involve the suffering work of Jesus. We sometimes sing, ‘Jesus, my Saviour! Thou art mine’ (Hymn 281). I wonder if every one of us here can say that,
‘Jesus, my Saviour! Thou art mine’. You embrace Him by faith, you have heard the terms of the gospel.
He suffered in His lifetime, but He suffered supremely on the cross, that cruel cross. It would be a place of suffering for anyone, to be on a cruel cross, a horrible, painful form of death, one of the worst the Romans could devise, and Jesus suffered there, not only at the hands of men, but also at the hand of God, and these were atoning sufferings when He was made an offering for sin. Why did He suffer there? He suffered for me. He was delivered for my offences, but He was raised for my justification. As you read Isaiah 53 you get an impression of the suffering position of Jesus, “he was
bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray ... and Jehovah bath laid upon him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53: 5, 6); but, dear friend—I come back to an individual appeal, as to whether you are conscious that He has suffered for you. The poet said—
‘Wounded for me! wounded for me
There on the cross He was wounded for me—
Gone my transgressions, and now I am free,,
All because Jesus was wounded for me’.
That is the greatest thing we need as unconverted, we need the forgiveness of sins, we need divine mercy, and God can forgive sins righteously. If God was to find a way of salvation for man, He must find a sure way, a sound way, and He must do the work Himself. If man had had any part in that redemptive work there would have been that much questionability. Even if an apostle had had a hand in it, it might have been in question, but it was all done by Jesus.
The work in all its entirety was done by Jesus. He did not delegate it. Persons delegate work to their subordinates, but He did not delegate it, not even to the apostles, He did it all Himself. All that God looks for in the sinner now is repentance towards Him and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet here He looked for comforters and He found none. There was no one to comfort Him in that hour. Let it touch your heart. I am not trying to work on your sentiment, but let it touch your heart that the Saviour, the One who came “to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19: 10), when He looked for comforters there was not one around.
He was bearing all that shame and scoffing rude, bearing all the taunts, they said, “He has saved others; let him save himself”, Luke 23: 35. What a callous thing to say! He heard it all, and because He was perfect He felt it more deeply than any other would feel it, because our sensibilities get blunted. We live in a world so wicked that the awfulness of what wickedness is, what unrighteousness is before God, does not come
Home to us, we do not feel it as we should. But His feelings were perfect, He knew and felt the smallest slight. He knew and felt it perfectly, and, as I say, when He looked for comforters He found none.
He is past His sorrow now. Man did his worst for Him but God has crowned Him with glory and honour; man rejected Him but God received Him; man dishonoured Him but God honoured Him. In which group will you take your stand? Would you take your stand with those whose judgment corresponds to God’s judgment, or would you take your stand on the other side? I would appeal to you to embrace the Lord Jesus as your Saviour. Take those simple words, ‘Jesus, my Saviour! Thou art mine’. You can claim Him for yourself. You cannot claim the queen of England for yourself, or the president of the United States, or whoever governs here in Canada, you cannot claim him for yourself; he will not pay attention, and understandably so, to every little claim, made by every little person; but there is One who is prepared to take up the whole case of every person, and take it up directly and resolve it to God’s full satisfaction and yours. What a Saviour! He would desire now to comfort you. Take the question of your sins, if they are hanging around they are going to be a trouble to you. If your sins are not cleared they will keep coming back to your mind. You have a conscience and you hear the preaching, you read the Scriptures, and you are aware that the question of your sins is not settled and you are uneasy, and sooner or later you get fractious; we get fractious then we get rebellious. The awfulness of sin and the awfulness of being a sinner hangs upon us like a heavy weight. God does not like to see you like that save if you are on the way to blessing. It is not a bad thing, dear unconverted person, that you should suffer at the time of your conversion. It is not a bad thing that you should feel what the Saviour went through for you. Some persons in Scripture clearly evidence the fact that they suffered at conversion. Pilate’s wife is a great
example of it, she suffered, she went through a lot in her soul, in the presence of a holy God, I have no doubt. She says, I have suffered many things in a dream because of this Man (Matthew 27: 19), the time of her conversion cost her something. I sometimes think the weakness there is among believers, oneself included, is that one is too superficial, I do not allow the depth of the sufferings of Jesus to affect my soul as I should. Dear friend, He is available still as a Saviour.
We get this appeal, this invitation, to reason together in Isaiah 1, God says, “Come now, let us reason together ... though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”. Who else could do that save Jesus? As they asked the question in His lifetime, Who can forgive sins but God alone? “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”, what a difference is there not? I suppose scarlet is one of the prominent colours. Very arresting, it is the ‘stop’ colour, red. If the matter of your sins is not solved yet it is high time for you to stop and consider. Think of the change, though they be “as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”. I remember an old Christian bringing a little book with him and he used to open it and preach the gospel to us from it, and it had four pages. The first was a black page, and he used to say that is your sins on that page, black and dark. Do not deny the existence of them, dear friend, you will not get any help if you deny the existence of your sins, just accept it as the truth; and you know it is the truth, and I know it is the truth. At times our conscience accuses us. Then the next page was red, and then the next page was white, and all those black sins had gone and were forgotten.
‘My sins—O the bliss of this glorious thought—
My sins—not in part, but the whole—
Were borne on the cross, and are gone evermore,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!’ (Hymn 238) Well the sins are gone. Then it says further,
“though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. Now this is somewhat similar to the first part, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”; that is what you see, what you look at, “they shall be as white as snow”. Then it says, “though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. Well, what do you make of this, “they shall be as wool”?
Wool is one of the most comforting materials around. If you want a nice warm bed, you want a wool blanket, not a synthetic, you want a blanket made of wool. When the storms come, when the winds blow round the house and the snow is pelting down on the windows, and you get into bed, there is nothing like pulling a nice wool blanket round your shoulders, it is very comforting. Out there is the blast, but within all is warm. I think that is the idea here that God would comfort you. He would say, Are you trusting in My work? Right, everything is all right then. He would comfort you. He would give you a word of comfort. You avail yourself of that provision; the wind might blow outside, but you are all right, the Lord would assure you. He put His hand out and saved Peter. He would give you comfort. Maybe you weep about your sins; that is not a bad thing. I would not discourage anyone from weeping about their sins, but the answer is not only the assurance your sins are all removed but you get the sense of comfort. God would give that to you. That is one of the gifts in the gospel, I think, that you should be comforted, and not only that you should be comforted by God Himself, but you might be comforted too, it says, as a mother comforts, “ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem”, Isaiah 66: 13. I suppose there is a peculiarly soft and gentle touch in that, a mother comforting. This kind of comfort should be known in a local assembly.
The work of Christ has been tested now for nearly two thousand years, and of course its value goes back further, it goes back to Abraham and beyond, I suppose to Abel himself. Think of a work like that, that has stood the test of time. How many cities will last two
thousand years. There are some very old cities on the earth, but: they are always being rebuilt. The work of Christ has stood the test of time, and it has stood every test, it stands inviolate, the precious work of. Christ. It is like a rock. There was a brother preaching in Portsmouth in England, and he was a sailor and he was preaching in the street, and he called out, ‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand’. Maybe you have heard that. The next line should read, ‘All other ground is shifting sand’, but when he got to the end of the first line, ‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand’, his memory went, and he called out, ‘All other rock is sham-rock’! He, was not far out either, all other rock is sham rock. You cannot trust anything else, only the work of Christ. I would like you to have to do with Him, I would urge you to have to do with Him. Get the question of those sins, out of the way, acquaint now thyself with Him and be at peace; we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If you read Romans you will find the teaching of what the Lord Jesus has secured for you, the ground He has secured for you, how God has set forth Jesus as a mercy-seat through faith in His blood, and how there is a way God has found of blessing you and maintaining every feature of righteousness. I have often said, and am quite assured that it is true, that whatever test was applied to the work of Christ it would stand; without question it would stand.
Now in John’s gospel the Lord Jesus is just about to leave His own, and how they felt it! The twelve had been with Him for three-and-a-half years or more, they had moved around with Him. He had become more and more to them. Whatever problem they had, whatever question arose, they found He had the answer to every problem, every question, every sorrow, every tear, whatever it was. They had been with Him, they had proved what He was, and He was going away. You can understand their feelings, can you not? They were losing One on whom they had come to rely, One whom they had come to love in a love that was a holy love.
There was nothing questionable in the love of the disciples for the Lord, it was pure and clear, and so it was with others. The Lord Jesus in His sojourn here, His love for man was a pure love. I say this because of some awful practices and awful things stated at the present time as to the Person of our Saviour. It makes believers angry to think that their Saviour should be so spoken of, and that His love should be regarded and testified to as a perverted love. That is an awful error, an awful thing to say. Do not let such an idea enter into your mind, dear friend. But here He is about to go away, and they are sad. That shows the reality of the persons, the reality of the work of God in them. The Lord Jesus in these situations always has the answer to hand, and He said, I am going away but I will send you another Person, the Comforter; I will manage your affairs for you up there and He will manage them for you down here. If the opposer is at the door and you need comfort, then there is One here who is called the Comforter, and He will do many things. One of the things is, He will guide you into all the truth. The Lord said, “I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now”, John 16: 12. That Comforter, that blessed Person has remained here with God’s people, amongst persons who have been cleansed by the precious blood of Jesus. That divine Person has remained here. He never became incarnate like Jesus did, never took human form like Jesus did, but here a Person. Not just an influence but a Person, a Person who can be spoken to, a Person who can be enquired of, a Person who is a Guide, a Person who gives you power to live in an unholy, wicked and sinful world. You find sometimes that the power of the world almost crushes you but here is a Comforter. What a comfort He has been to God’s people! The blessed Spirit of God, what a comfort He has been. The Lord, in the gospel, has prepared for everything. He says just before, “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him”, and then He goes on to speak about the
Comforter. It is almost as if for the moment a solitary believer has the service of every divine Person toward himself or herself. What an asset, you can see that can you not? The gospel does not stop short at the question of the forgiveness of our sins, but it is intended to, and does, establish the believer down here to wait for and to represent his Lord here, until the Lord Himself comes to take us to Himself.
I would say that the gospel involves comfort. Part of the gift in the gospel is comfort, and He wants your peace to be like the river, as we sung in our hymn, “Then would thy peace have been as a river”, Isaiah 48: 18. May it be so, may everyone here find comfort. Maybe you want to go over your conversion again, and maybe you want to think a little deeper of what the Lord suffered for you. It will not make any difference to His work. His work stands.
Maybe your faith was small, maybe you feel it to be small still, it makes no difference to the work of Christ, it is available towards you without stint, it is available towards you in full strength. But some of us, if we thought of it honestly, may find that we could perhaps spend a little more time in appreciation of the Saviour in weighing what He has done for us, and the way He has suffered for us, and the lengths to which He went to secure us, and how when He went away and was glorified He gave this singular and wonderful parting gift of One who is called ‘the Comforter’. May every one of us not only have the knowledge of our sins forgiven, be trusting in the precious blood and the work of Jesus, but may we have the knowledge of the reception of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Vancouver, 6 September 1992
QUESTIONS STIMULATING SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
W. Lamont
Joshua 5: 13–15; John 6: 60–71; 1: 35–39
One has been thinking about these questions that are raised in the passages we have read. The asking of questions is part of our instruction and understanding. Not, of course, the questions of 2 Timothy 2 where we are exhorted, “foolish and senseless questionings avoid, knowing that they beget contentions” (2 Timothy 2: 23). Without a doubt these questionings are the fruit of an insubject and undisciplined mind. There is no room for such a mind in God’s house, everything in God’s house has to be subject to Him. One was thinking of Exodus 32
where Mr Darby renders it, “And Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, He that is for Jehovah, let him come to me”, Exodus 32: 26). The Authorised Version puts it in the form of a question, “Who is on the LORD’s side?” I believe there never was a day like it when such a question needs to be asked and responded to, “Who is on the LORD’s side? let him come unto me”. There is a rallying centre and that is the blessed Man who is in the glory. He would ask us, “Who is on the LORD’s side?” On that day of terrible idolatry when Moses was on the mount, the people below fell quickly into idolatry because they had lost touch with the man who was on high. If we lose touch with that glorious Man, our Lord Jesus, we will soon fall into idolatry. What we see in that passage is that they found themselves a figure-head.
They thought their departure had been made respectable by the fact that they found a figure-head in Aaron; but they had to suffer the consequences of it. So the rallying cry was, “He that is for Jehovah, let him come to me”. I believe God is challenging us as to our motives today, as to where we are in these critical days in the testimony. Are we approaching matters out of self-interest, or are we considering for the Man that is on high? The One who came down as a lowly Babe to lie in a manger; the One
who gave Himself; the One who went into death to secure us eternally.
In Joshua it is another critical time. Jericho was the seat of the enemy’s power and it was a critical time in the history of God’s people. Jericho was shut up and barred because of the children of Israel, none came out and none went in. Then this man with a sword drawn in his hand appeared to Joshua. Joshua did not flee away from him. It is interesting how it says, “Joshua went to him, and said to him—Art thou for us, or for our enemies? And he said, No; for as captain of the army of Jehovah am I now come”. These critical times we are in, beloved brethren, are no time for partisanship, no time for party feeling. So it says, “No; for as captain of the army of Jehovah am I now come. Then Joshua fell upon his face to the earth, and worshipped”. How respectful he was! Then he says, “What saith my lord unto his servant?”. Another question, asking for divine instruction, “And the captain of Jehovah’s army said to Joshua, Loose thy sandal from off thy foot—for the place whereon thou standest is holy”. We should understand that divine things are holy matters. They cannot be taken up naturally, hence the word, “Loose thy sandal from off thy foot”. So that in divine things we have no merely human standing. Then it says, “And Joshua did so”. He recognised that there was One who was in command of the army of Jehovah. Think of that!
Every adverse element will be dealt with. Indeed it was dealt with, and dealt with totally, in the death of Christ. He is the One who will yet come out publicly, of whom it is written, “his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in the heaven followed him upon white horses, clad in white, pure, fine linen”, Revelation 19: 13, 14. Everything that is not according to God will be dealt with, and dealt with on this basis that a man can say, No; I am neither for you nor against you, a man who was captain of Jehovah’s army. The Lord is impartial, beloved brethren, let us learn that. He is
totally impartial, and will deal with every matter, and every element that is not according to Himself. I think we should have a sense in these days that we are together in the holiness of God’s house. The area which we have been brought into is an area that is to be in keeping with God Himself. So it says, “And Joshua did so”, which brings out that Joshua was an obedient man. It would reflect the glory of the blessed One who became obedient even unto death and that the death of the cross.
In John 6 we have a very testing time in the Lord’s life. Up to this point it seems that He had many disciples, they are credited with being disciples, and they were in the presence of the greatest heavenly ministry. What a chapter it is concerning the bread which has come down out of heaven—what spiritual food! What the Lord said can only be understood spiritually,
“This is the bread which has come down out of heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died; he that eats this bread shall live for ever” (John 6: 58). Many of the disciples heard it and said,
“This word is hard”. They just could not accept it and they murmured. Think of murmuring in the presence of the greatest spiritual ministry, they could not stand it—“This word is hard; who can hear it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmur concerning this, said to them. Does this offend you?” Think of spiritual heavenly ministry offending anyone.
It is offensive to the flesh, the flesh cannot stand it; just like the manna, at one time the people said, Our souls loathe this light bread. Then the Lord says, “It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing”. It is the power of the Spirit that brings in quickening in the soul, the line of things after the flesh has no profit in it at all. These are lessons we have to learn.
Then it says, “From that time many of his disciples went away back and walked no more with him”. That has been the history of the testimony, there has been a flow of heavenly ministry, and there are some who have turned their back on it, and in doing so have turned their back on the Lord. Think of persons turning their back on the Person of Jesus. You say, It is unthinkable, but it has been done, there are persons who are going back and are walking no more with Him. So the Lord said to the twelve, “Will ye also go away?” Beloved brethren, that is a challenge to all of us today; the Lord would say to us, “Will ye also go away?” We are in a day of recovery, but we are also in a day of departure. There has been departure from the truth, from what has come to us at great cost, both as to the Lord’s own work, and as to the cost of heavenly ministry, and there have been persons who have gone away, who have turned back. What is your answer?
What is mine? I believe it is not only a challenge, it is the appeal of love, “Will ye also go away?” What it must have meant to the Lord at that time, to see those persons whom He had served so well, having brought out this rich heavenly ministry of His own to them, to see them going away back and walking no more with Him. He would look at the few that were left; He did not plead with them. Do not you go away, but said, “Will ye also go away?”
What a challenge! Peter has the answer; not, Lord, to what shall we go? but, Lord, to whom shall we go? It is an appeal of love and it is the answer of love, “Lord, to whom shall we go?
thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”. Peter recognised that there before them was the true Aaron. What Peter had come to here, was by way of observation and personal experience as having companied with the Lord.
What an apprehension Peter had of the greatness and beauty of the Person of Jesus.
In John 1, we read that John, looking at Jesus as He walked, says, “Behold the Lamb of God”. He apprehended that Jesus was there sacrificially. Never was there a walk like it, it was leading Him on to death. It does not say in verse 36 what it says earlier, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, (John 1: 29). What a thing that will be, when the world is
Cleared entirely of the whole sin question. In the meantime it has been judged thoroughly in the death of Jesus, but the whole universe of bliss will be completely cleared of sin. As the two disciples heard John speaking, they would wonder what he was speaking about; they saw a Man walking there, of whom John says, “Behold the Lamb of God”. These men would say, What does he mean by the Lamb of God? But they followed Jesus, and “Jesus having turned”; what a turn that was! He is walking and He turned and His interest is concentrated on these persons who followed Him. Think of the Lord’s interest in such; how He would look upon such in the full shining of His love. He is interested in each one of us, old and young.
Then He says to them, “What seek ye?” That is another important question, the Lord would ask every one of us. What do you really want?—“What seek ye?” Are we here just because it suits us? Are we here because of natural connections? Are we here because of any ulterior motive? The Lord, in His love, would ask us these things. Then, “they”, emphatic, “they said to him, Rabbi (which, being interpreted, signifies Teacher), where abidest thou?”. What a question! Are you interested enough to say to the Lord; Where abidest Thou? Do we want to know? Are we desirous enough, have we enough spiritual exercise to desire to know where the Lord lives? He wants us to be with Him. He could say, “I desire that where I am they also may be with me”, John 17: 24. I would press the importance of spiritual exercise that we ourselves would ask this question, Lord, where abidest Thou? Let us reach Him where He is.
I believe that is another of the critical points of the present day. There is plenty here, beloved brethren, for us to enjoy, we have enjoyed much as together at this time, but, I believe the ultimate is to reach the Lord where He is, and have a knowledge of Him where He is. Paul could say, and it would bear on this, “to know him, and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3: 10), to know the Lord on the other side of death.
These two were genuine in their exercise, “They went therefore, and saw, where he abode”.
There is no description given of where He abode. I believe it suggests to us that it is open for spiritual interest and spiritual enquiry. We do not have any details, it simply says, “and they abode with him that day”.
They were in His company, in His own circumstances, and it says, “It was about the tenth hour”. The day is running out, that is what the tenth hour means, the day is fast running out, and I am sure all of us want to be in deep spiritual exercise, especially as to this question,
“where abidest thou?”. We know where He abides, and we shall soon be with Him, the One who abides in the bosom of the Father. He will soon claim us as His own, as He has paid dearly for each one of us. We shall be eternally with Him, but I believe it gives Him great pleasure now to have persons who are prepared to ask this question, “where abidest thou?”, who discover where He is, and find His company where He is now. That is the essence of Christianity, to have a link with the Lord where He is, and to have communion with Him where He is. As someone said, if you want to be like Him you will only become like Him by sharing His company. May these questions stimulate us all, beloved brethren, to further spiritual exercise, for His name’s sake.
Address at Birmingham, 31 October 1992
Edited and Published by J. Strachan, 59 Frederick Street, Dundee, DD3 9DE, Scotland Printed by Crystal Stationery, 22 Western Road, Billericay, Essex CM12 9DZ, (T) (0277) 650661