SPOIL (12)
[p. 475] SPOIL (12)
Nehemiah 9: 5 - 8; Deuteronomy 32: 39, 40; Joshua 5: 13 - 15; Psalm 102:23 - 28
AFM No doubt you have an exercise about our reading tonight, and we should be glad to hear what you have to suggest.
PL Could we not include in the thought of recently recovered spoil, along with the precious light as to Christ’s sonship, a clearer apprehension by the Holy Spirit of the Lord’s Godhead, glory, and majesty as underlying and giving character to all that He is and does in the sphere of revelation. With this in view might we trace, in at least three of the scriptures read, how He who is The Same, the I AM, which in effect is a name of God having its bearing toward the Absolute, affords in His own immutability, as thus apprehended by faith, the stability and strength needed in a recovered remnant to continue to the end in every feature and activity proper to the whole assembly. It is in John, the gospel bearing peculiarly on the last days, that the Lord, to the confusion of His foes, alludes to Himself as the “I am” (chapter 8: 24, 58; 18: 6).
Whilst recognising that the names, “The Same” and the “I am” differ in the original, their meaning generally is equivalent. In the apprehension of the glory and majesty of the great I AM a worshipful spirit is promoted which imparts its own impulse and lustre to every spiritual activity, thus assuring rich spoil to God in His service and testimony amongst His people. J.N.D. in the following lines pictures the celebration in heaven, by the unnumbered [p. 476] hosts, of the One who is hailed as the great I AM.
These — of Godhead’s counsels deep
Him th’ Accomplisher proclaim;
These — how Jesus’ self could weep —
Of Godhead’s love the witness came!
All, on love surpassing rest,
That clothed in flesh the great I AM
In Nehemiah 9, God is acclaimed under this name in relation to His sovereign operations from the outset in regard to creation and the call of Abraham. How strength-imparting to the weak but faithful remnant would be this apprehension of His immutability; the praising Levites reviewing all the ways of God in this precious light! Deuteronomy 32: 39, 40 would bear upon the levitical side, as we see how Moses, the pattern servant in his day, found, as reaching the climax of his great ministry, his strength and joy in the glory of the unchanging One, in contrast to Israel’s fickleness as depicted by him in this chapter. Psalm 102: 27 would rather stand connected with the service of God in the sanctuary; the Lord, as thus saluted of God, is to be apprehended as the One in whom that service is inaugurated and sustained through succeeding generations (verse 28). The quotation made from this psalm in Hebrews, an epistle largely devoted to the service of God, would furnish confirmation as to this thought. In Joshua 5, whilst He is not so alluded to, yet stability both in leader and in those led depends upon an apprehension of Him as the unchanging One: He who is Captain of Jehovah’s hosts.
AFM Would the side of things contemplated in Nehemiah 9 be a priestly one. The names of the priests or Levites are mentioned as giving the setting. The fruit is praise out-flowing to God.
PL Yes, and how all this praise contrasts with mere human creeds, which are the fruit of Babylonish influence on a captive people, but which are [p. 477] so unsuited to a divinely recovered remnant with spiritual affections liberated Godward.
Rem While the positional side had been recovered, is it not emphasised here that we must have substance to fill out the position.
PL Yes; “seeing your order” (Colossians 2: 5), might suggest the positional side as seen in the first epistle to the Corinthians, but the truth of the Lord’s Person as introduced in Colossians has particularly in view the formation of the assembly inwardly to correspond in love to her exalted Head.
AR Is the chapter in Nehemiah the climax of the result of spoil being distributed amongst the saints? The feast of booths being introduced by Ezra leads on to the glory position in the chapter we read.
PL Yes, the feast the tabernacles suggests our nearness to God and to Christ, and spiritual intimacy with one another, this is typified in the dwelling in booths. John not only tells us that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, but the atmosphere proper to the feast of tabernacles is set forth in John 13 - John 17. What intimacy and liberty marks the Lord’s intercourse with His own, and finally with His Father! The Lord alludes in that gospel to who He is, as the I AM; the truth as to His Person being the crowning feature of remnant recovery in a broken day. Indeed John, writing for such a day as this, gives us in Revelation the Lord’s word to Philadelphia, “that no man take thy crown”, the assembly’s crown being Christ Himself, as held in her affections in the full light of His glory. In John 8: 58 He disposes of mere orthodox judaism in His majestic utterance, “Before Abraham was, I am”, and later, when His foes came to take Him in the garden they fall backwards as He confronts them in His authority as the I [p. 478] AM.
CAM The light and glory of this Person as known and held in the hearts of the saints is what is really going through. It should give everyone a great desire to be truly recovered.
PL Quite so. What spiritual stamina would the apprehension of Him as the I AM afford Nehemiah and those with him in those days and nights of vigilance in conflict and construction, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other! All this leads up to the supreme object for which God has wrought in assembly recovery, that He might have among His saints those to whom He can entrust the light and glory of the Person of Christ with a view to the service of God being rendered in greater fulness and intelligence.
CAM Human innovations, such as creeds, could not change this glorious truth: He is “The Same”.
PL Yes. All Nehemiah’s toil has as its issue the remnant’s recovery to Jehovah as “The Same”, that One whose presence among them once filled the tabernacle in the wilderness with glory — as also the house in the days of Solomon.
Ques Is there in the background of this, what is furnished in the way of faithfulness on the part of the people?
PL Does that not take us back to the thought of the covenant, the unchanging engagements of divine love which call forth love’s response without reserve in a people committed to the God of the covenant? In Nehemiah 9: 38 we read, “Because of all this we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests are at the sealing”. In these statements the recovered remnant are seen representatively at their best. Their hearts thus move in fresh committal to God in His unchanging and faithful love. The immutability of Him who, as the I AM, imparts such stability to His engagements, is disclosed in contrast to the fickleness of [p. 479] Israel, to which their sorrowful history, as recited by the Levites in Nehemiah 9, had borne such undeniable witness. The revival thus issued in the princes, Levites, and priests, being at the sealing. The analogy to the sealing would be found in the cup of the covenant which we bless, as in partaking of it we own the claims of divine love.
AFM Would this sealing be in the nature of spoil for God on the part of Nehemiah and those with him?
PL Surely, in the securing of a people for God in the light of the covenant, and spoil for the Lord in this setting would lie in the espousal of the affections of the saints as a chaste virgin to Christ, as in the Lord’s supper. What spoil that is, that holy love-feast, having, in these last days, been lifted out of the superstitious darkness in which Satan had for centuries enshrouded it by the Babylonish captivity of the public vessel!
Rem I was thinking of what was said in prayer about what is vouchsafed to us in this day. It says in verse 2, “And the seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers”. I was wondering whether that is not preliminary to what the Lord is now vouchsafing to us in the way of light as to His Person.
PL Quite so. How deep and searching is the moral history which underlies all this, both personal and collective. By this way alone can there be assured to God, from the assembly, that priestly atmosphere in which He would confide to us what is so infinitely precious to Him — the truth relating to the Person of Christ. Those thus taught of God could, in spiritual fibre, survive every vicissitude of the responsible vessel, and go on together in love to the end. How many sorrowful defections in relation to the testimony could be traced to uncertainty as [p. 480] to the truth of His Person, with all the attendant lack of committal in love which, alas, affords the foe his opportunity to cut off stragglers!
WR Does not the history of the assemblies in Revelation 2 and 3 help us vitally?
PL Yes. Whatever the public break-up, the overcomer in Philadelphia abides a pillar as sustained in the apprehension of the Person of Christ.
ANW And the great response of the Spirit and the bride, in the last chapter of Revelation, is in answer to the presentation, “I Jesus” — who He is personally.
PL Yes, “The root and offspring of David”. The root, of course, alluding to Deity.
JTJr How do you view the Levites here, in verse 4, as standing up?
PL They set forth what is comely before God on so great an occasion, and give a lead to the people in the praise of God, as verse 5 shows.
AR Four times up to verse 5 we have reference to standing up. Does it suggest spiritual dignity and power? The last one is, “Stand up, bless Jehovah your God from eternity to eternity”.
PL Thus calling on us to bless God for what He is in Himself. What a priestly touch enters into all this, graced as it is with such depth of spiritual feeling, such as for instance, “Thou gavest also thy good Spirit to instruct them” (verse 20). How blest are such recitals as indicating what, from God’s side, has led up to the recovery of the light and truth of the Lord’s Person. Such a review is calculated to stimulate that service of praise to Him who, as “The Same”, has ever been the strength of His people.
Rem So that what the children of Israel refused in Caleb and Joshua in the wilderness, when they brought the heavenly ministry to the saints, was what was according to “thy good Spirit”.
PL Thus testifying among other things to the tenderness of divine feelings. John, who presents Christ as the I AM, also records the tears of Jesus in chapter 11. How near He has come! John, who dwells so much on His infinite greatness and majesty, thus touches on His tender feelings as in holy manhood.
CAM You can understand how that the glorious truth of the unchanging greatness of Christ would awaken ever fresh and distinctive response as time goes on.
PL Quite so; the reference in verse 8 to Abraham, “and foundest his heart faithful before thee”, shows that the reviewers are in the understanding, that such movements of love and glory in Him who is “The Same”, make their own searching but blessed claims upon us in regard to responsive committal.
ABP They must have had some very remarkable, prophetic ministry in those days. Haggai speaks of “the latter glory of this house”.
PL Prophetic ministry would largely involve the application by the Spirit of much that has been reserved by God to meet the unparalleled situations arising in these remnant days.
Rem The prophetic ministry of Haggai and Zechariah precedes this.
PL It does, and Jeremiah’s tears would water the early seed sown in his ministry which yielded so rich a crop many years later in the recovery under Ezra and Nehemiah. Christianity was sown in the tears of the Son of God, and remnant revival owes much to the priestly tears of God-given leaders and others who have wept through assembly sorrows to a divine issue. As the spiritual review of assembly history is made in the light of Him who is “The Same”, our hearts become restful in the [p. 482] sense that what is of God is going through to completion.
AFM Do not these successive steps, these cumulative thoughts that are being presented, indicate an answer to that utterance of Moses in Psalm 90, “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy majesty unto their sons”? In these present days of recovery, has not God’s work appeared to His servants and His majesty to their sons? Are we not to be encouraged by that kind of thing — “thy majesty unto their sons”?
PL Yes, and what a heritage we have come into, lustred as it is with the majesty of His Person! “And let men bless the name of thy glory, which is exalted above all blessing and praise”. In this chapter, as you say, everything is cumulative, and thus fresh strength is developed. “They go from strength to strength; each one will appear before God in Zion”, Psalm 84: 7.
AR How did they secure this knowledge? They say, “who hast made the heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth and all that is therein, the seas and all that is therein. And thou quickenest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee” (verse 6). They really bring in the whole heavenly realm and the earth, and they worship God.
PL Would you not say that in the sovereignty of divine mercy. Nehemiah’s faithful maintenance of divine principles has been rewarded with light from God as to the house as the place of divine habitation? What a spiritual outburst we have here, begotten of priestly feelings, fruit of the light recovered in sovereign mercy! What cause we have for thanksgiving to God that He has graced these closing years of assembly revival with the true light as to Christ’s sonship, so essential to a spiritual understanding of the Lord’s Person.
[p. 483] In passing on to Moses in Deuteronomy 32, we can see how he crowns his closing ministry with a song containing this ascription of praise to the great I AM.
“See now that I, I am HE.
And there is no god with me;
I kill, and I make alive;
I wound, and I heal” (verse 39).
He blesses Him who is without rival, supreme in His operations, in holy government as in all else, so searching in His movements, but ever ready to bless! Moses indicates that he had been true to his great mission as cherishing in his soul the I AM, the One who in that character had originally appeared to him and given him his commission (Exodus 3: 6, 14) and in whose unchanging faithfulness he executed it and endured as seeing Him who is invisible. What energy, what endurance and definiteness in his ministerial service — did Moses derive from his apprehension of God as the I AM! He is thus a suited model for us in service as we learn to go forward in it, through evil and good report, continuing to serve in that spiritual stability and authority which the vision of the I AM alone can impart.
In Joshua’s vision the Lord does not allude to Himself as the I AM, yet He who bears that name declares that He is now leading the saints in victory in relation to the heavenly inheritance. How important it is that in all conflict we should neither go before the Lord nor lag behind Him!
Ques Have you leadership in mind in this scripture, the need for waiting on the Lord before taking the road?
PL Yes. How establishing would this vision be to Joshua in his great commission! How conclusive is the Lord in His reply to Joshua’s partisan inquiry: “Art thou for us, or for our enemies?” Leadership [p. 484] as viewed in Joshua is to be reinforced by the apprehension of the Person who alone can lead His people in military triumph into their inheritance. The No of Jehovah’s Captain must have sunk deeply into Joshua’s mind and heart, as it may well sink into ours. Divinely accredited leadership is unmoved by all partisan appeals. How easily otherwise, alas, would the dignity of spiritual conflict be lost, its standard lowered, and its precious fruits forfeited!
AR Did he not recover quickly? As soon as he gets the rebuke he says, “What saith my lord unto his servant?”
PL Quite so. The footnote in the New Translation shows that the Lord’s words have a double force; it reads, “For I, the captain (or prince) of the army of Jehovah, am now come”. That is. He had not come into this before. The Lord chooses His own time to come into a matter, and if He has not come into it, do not let us presume, like Peter, to take the sword precipitately. When He comes into it, it is to unsheath the sword and deal with every element that is obstructing the entrance of His people upon their inheritance. How blessed, then, to fall upon our faces to the earth and worship, as did Joshua! The subduing sense of what the Lord is doing is the great adjusting feature in all leadership and conflict. If we do not go into battle with ever greater thoughts of who He is, we are sure to drop to the low level of a partisan cause, to our spiritual undoing.
Ques Would you say that partisanship shuts out priesthood? In chapter 6 the place the priestly element has in the conflict comes to light at Jericho.
PL Yes, a party spirit would tend to shut out Jehovah and His priests: “For as captain of the army of Jehovah am I now come”.
ANW Is not Joshua allowed to ask that question purposely to emphasise the greatness of the [p. 485] matter in hand, that is, conflict in relation to the inheritance?
PL Surely. How often have our mistakes, when we have judged them, but made room for spiritual adjustment in relation to that which, in divine instruction, is of the greatest moment!
AFM Is not that the way in which Jehovah gains spoil from such as Joshua? As you were saying, he was in the place of subjection; he takes off his sandal from his foot; he deports himself suitably to the presence of God.
PL As thus adjusted he is found in worship.
CAM I think that ought to help everyone. Anyone who wants to know the direction in which a conflict is going should see that it is moving in a course leading to an increased apprehension of Christ now in our hearts.
PL Would conflict have any spiritual value otherwise? In a crisis, the simple and uninstructed do well to follow those who are manifestly making much of Christ; but the full issue and fruits of the battle, ere it takes place, are anticipated in Joshua’s soul as worshipping, for if the Lord has taken charge of the conflict at the outset there can, for faith, be but one issue to it!
ABP Would Joshua being alone by Jericho mean that he was seeking the aid of God in regard of this great issue?
PL Yes. Joshua lifted up his eyes and looked (verse 13). The wilderness exercises had but sharpened his sight. His senses had not always been so trustworthy, his ear deceived him on that momentous occasion when he came down from the mount with Moses; but his sight here is not deceiving him. Forty years earlier he had looked upon that land in appreciation, and now his gaze rests upon Him whose land it is, and whose people Israel are!
AR [p. 486] If we truly understood that the Lord is the Captain of the host, whatever conflict we might go through, although persons may be employed in it, we would know that it is the Lord’s battle. Hence the issue is clear.
PL Quite so. How urgent that the great truth of the Lord’s Person should enter into all this with us! How can lost assembly territory be recovered otherwise or subsequently held? The truth of the Lord’s Person is to be woven into the very fibre of our beings, thus enabling us to be warriors without partisanship in Jehovah’s hosts. He will recognise no warriors save those who are doing battle under Christ for the whole assembly, and no true churchman would go into conflict for less than what pertains to Christ and to the whole assembly on earth.
RWS The truth as to the Lord’s Person is available by the Spirit for the whole assembly, not only for the few who may have entered into it.
PL Yes. The creeds at best bear Babylonish features. No doubt all ages have borne testimony to the presence of faithful souls who shrank from the system which held them captive, and such would not sing the songs of Zion in a strange land. Many in the Middle Ages died at the stake rather than join in the unholy revelry of Rome. How could there be light in Babylon as to Him who is “The Same”, when the Romish system which in describing itself as ‘Ever the same’, arrogates that name to herself to her final overthrow? Whatever glimmerings of light faithful individuals may have had in earlier ages, it awaited this great closing era of assembly revival for God to recover to His people not only the truth as to the sonship of Christ, but greater and more worthy thoughts as to His Godhead glory as set forth in Scripture, all tending to enrich the service of God and add to the volume of praise among [p. 487] the saints. May we be preserved to the end in divine mercy in the moral import of all that this involves!
In regard to Psalm 102, this name “The Same” is also used by David when speaking to God in 2 Samuel 7: 28 and 1 Chronicles 17: 26 (see New Translation). How David in those chapters covers the various names of God, as known to Israel, all leading up to his addressing Him as “The Same”! David went in and sat before Jehovah (1 Chronicles 17: 16). That is love’s climax — not standing but sitting! There were no seats in the tabernacle; the priests stood there, but the posture of sons is to sit. Sonship belongs to heaven, where we are made to sit down with Christ. And so David sat before the Lord, and then he began to address God in such choice spiritual feeling, crowning his utterance with this ascription of praise to God as “The Same”, the self-existing One. What liberty he had in this holy service! In 1 Chronicles 17: 16 he alludes to Jehovah-Elohim, rising in that deep sense of mercy in verse 17, which is so becoming in us in response to those sovereign movements of God in love and mercy toward us. So David moves upward in love’s holy ecstasy until he reaches the climax in verse 26 of that chapter; “And now, Jehovah, thou art that God”; that is, “The Same”, the I AM. What spiritual tone in the service of God is thus assured, both in depth of feeling and elevation of intelligent utterance!
CAM God addresses Christ in the beginning of Hebrews in a majestic way, quoting from Psalm 102.
PL Yes. It is good to see that those addressed in that epistle are called to prove the purity of their genealogy in a remnant day by going forth to Him without the camp bearing His reproach, (Hebrews 13: 13). Psalm 102, which is quoted in Hebrews 1: 10 - 12,
[p. 488] not only dwells on the majesty of the Lord in the divine greeting to Him, but dwells so touchingly upon Him who could liken Himself to a sparrow alone upon the house-top (verse 7). How enriching to our spiritual feelings is such an allusion to the depth of the Lord’s stoop in love, enabling us, as entering into this spiritually, to rise to the majesty of the divine salutation at the end of the Psalms! In that psalm He is greeted of God under this name in contrast to being cut off as the Messiah; in Hebrews 1 as the self-existent One in contrast to the transient character of the material creation.
CAM That is very beautiful. It seems to link up the beginning of Hebrews and the close of it. The Lord is referred to as “the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come” at the end of Hebrews, and His sorrows are subsequently alluded to. The working of the thing out, I suppose, in the covenant is in the body of the epistle.
PL Truly. It is evident that the deep emotions to which the Psalms give expression are largely penned by one who among Old Testament saints came nearest to Christ in suffering, that is, David.