Luke’s Teaching By Contrast
LUKE’S TEACHING BY CONTRAST
Luke 7: 47, 48; 10: 38, 39; 15: 11, 12; 16: 19-21; 18: 10, 11, 13, 14 (first clause); 23: 39-43
I have read a lot of scriptures, and of course they are Scripture; Paul says they are the sacred writings; that is a good thing to get hold of, then you will not treat the Bible in a common way. Perhaps you do. Perhaps you do not read it much. I think Paul would have read it a lot, and so would Timothy after he had had that word from Paul. Maybe you will, after you get this word tonight; you will read the Bible more. You cannot read it too much, because Paul says they are the sacred writings. That is, that they emanate from God. They are not sacred writings because they are in any place, they are sacred writings because they come from God and are inspired, inspired by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is God Himself; He is no less than the Son or the Father in the Trinity. He is equal with the Father and the Son; They all operate. They do not all do the same thing, and yet they are the Same, and They are never divided in what they do. If the Father does anything, the Son and the Spirit do it. If the Son does anything, the Father and the Spirit do it; if the Spirit does anything, the Father and the Son do it. There is oneness in the Trinity. So the Spirit is the One that inspired Scripture. The Son did not inspire it; the Spirit inspired the Scriptures. A lot of the scriptures are what the Son said, especially in the gospels, but the Spirit inspired the Scriptures, and they are the sacred writings. There is not any other book that bears that title, that can be said to be the sacred writings, not even the hymn-book. The hymn-book does not bear that title. They are spiritual songs; that is what they are called. Persons who write them, I suppose, write them because they are filled with the Spirit; but the Scriptures remain alone in their solitary glory, we might say, as inspired by the Spirit. They are the written mind of God. They are not the oral mind of God, but they are the written mind of God. So whatever you do you can consult the sacred writings to see whether what you are doing comports with the written mind of God. If you ignore Scripture you will go astray.
Now I want to speak about what I have read, and to see why the Spirit of God should put things as He does in this gospel of Luke; why He should keep on putting two persons together, so that they are in absolute contrast. Maybe you are in contrast to somebody else tonight. Perhaps you had better look at somebody else and see if you are like them, because the Lord said to Simon, ‘You look at this woman’. He had looked at her, but he had not looked at her aright. Now the Lord says, ‘Have another look, look at this woman’, He says, ‘because she means something’. Simon did not mean much, but this woman meant something, because the Lord was speaking. The Lord was there, too; the Lord is here tonight by the Spirit. The Spirit of God is here; He has never left the scene; He came down at Pentecost and never returned. So He is here, here tonight. He will return; He will return when the church goes up, because the Spirit will not remain here then; when the church goes up the Spirit will go up. Do you belong to the church? You say, ‘Why do you not ask me if I belong to Christ?’ I am asking you if you belong to the church, because the church will go up when Christ comes. Christ has gone up, that is where He is. If you want to know where He is, that is where He is! He is in heaven as Man! He has gone up, He has been received up! And He is coming down, He is coming back. The Spirit came down when the Lord went up, after the Lord was in heaven about ten days—not that there are any days in heaven as far as we know, and if you went up there you would know that, too. They do not reckon in days and months up there, they do not have calendars in heaven, no days, weeks, months or years in heaven! Jesus is there and He keeps everything fresh; He keeps everything brilliant up there, everything in song! The Spirit keeps everything brilliant, and in song down here! If you do not know where Christ is, you do not know where the Spirit is; a lot of people think He is in the air, but He is not; He is in the church. He is not even on earth, because the church is not on earth. How are you going to find it? You find it spiritually, of course. The Spirit is going when the church goes. So you must be in the church if you are going up. Independent people will not go up! The church is going up; that is the truth, that is in the Scriptures. That is why I am speaking about the sacred writings, because you will find it in the sacred writings, you will not find it in poems or religious books but in the sacred writings, that the church is going up, and the Spirit is going up when the church goes up, and the Lord is coming down for the church. So do you belong to the church? Not the Church of England, I am not talking about that, I am talking about the church, because there is only one church in Scripture. You can only find one church in Scripture. You can only find one Man and one woman in Scripture, that is Christ and the assembly. Well, do you know anything about the assembly? Perhaps not much, but thank God if you know a little, because it will take you a long time to know much about Christ and the assembly! So we have these scriptures, and Luke keeps on under the Spirit’s guidance; He kept His hand on Luke’s hand as he wrote, and He would guide his pen to speak aright in this gospel. He says, ‘You cannot write it like Matthew, because you are not Matthew; and you cannot write it like Mark because you are not Mark; so I am going to keep My hand on you so that you can write like Luke’. So he wrote, and he put two people together. All through he put two people together, one over against another. What for? So that the other one should be amply compared? No, but so that you should know which one you are! That is beautiful, is it not? You never thought God was like that, did you? that He wrote like that in order that if you cannot find out by way of doctrine you should find out by way of figurative teaching what person you are like, like this man, or like this woman. You have a hard man, and you have a woman who has been affected by grace. Now have you been affected by grace? Simon is hard, you cannot get through to him. I do not know how old he was, he might have been middle-aged, but you could not get through to him. Jesus had been in his house, accepted his invitation, a pretty casual invitation, I expect, but nevertheless an invitation, an invitation for show. We must not come to the gospel for show. You come to the gospel because you want to know what God’s disposition is, what His mind is, and then what He has to say about it in detail, whether He has got any place for you, whether He has thought about you in blessing, whether He has thought about any garments for you, because you have not got any worth wearing; I never had, until God provided me with some, and that is not the suit I have on now. God provides these things. You say, ‘Simon is not worth preaching to’, but Jesus did not say that, He said, ‘I will try and do something with him’. Who is Jesus? He is the Creator. He is the One that everything was done by in creation; He is the One who made the mountains. You could not make a mountain, you could not put it where it was or take it away from where it is, but Jesus could. He made you and me, He made the man. Who could make a man or a woman? Nobody! But Jesus did! So He is talking to these two persons. He is talking to the man, and He made him; and to the woman, and He made her. He is talking to Simon, and he is hard. He cannot really understand what the Lord is getting at; he does not want to, I suppose. That brings up what your disposition is when you come to the preaching. Do you want to understand, or are you just here for an hour and then you are off? That is not the idea of the gospel, because you and I will have to give account for all the gospel preachings we went to, and we shall have to appear before Him and He will say ‘that preaching you were at, and you did not listen to it, and pay attention to it; you did not think it was I who was speaking, although the vessel was poor, but it was’.
So you have Simon. The Lord said, ‘I will try to get at him finally through the woman’. Because he said something about the woman that was very disrespectful, and he inferred something against the Lord that He ought not to have allowed the woman to touch Him. I do not know who else He would have talked to, because they were all sinners! I do not know whom He would have talked to if He had not talked to the woman. Maybe you think you are not a sinner, and are entitled to the Lord talking to you, but the woman did not think that; He did not have to preach to the woman and say she was a sinner, because she had found it out already. I have found it out, that I am a sinner through and through. You are not just a sinner one side and not the other, but you are a sinner through and through. Whatever your exterior is, when you take your clothes off you are a sinner through and through! That is what the woman found in the presence of Jesus. That is what Simon Peter found in the presence of Jesus when He got into the boat. In the presence of Jesus, Simon said, ‘I am in the presence not only of a divine Person but in the presence of holiness in an absolute way’, and he said ‘I am full of sin’. It is a great thing to realise that. The woman in the presence of Jesus learnt she was a sinner, but she learnt that He was the Saviour, too! Have you ever learnt that? Because you have never learnt anything if you have not learnt that you are a sinner and Jesus is the Saviour! Have you learnt that, that you are the sinner and Jesus is the Saviour, and that He came because she was a sinner? He came because she was a sinner and could not do anything about her sins, and the only One who can do anything about them is Jesus! You would be in your sins eternally if it was not for Jesus, and that you could believe on Him and that God presents Him as an object of faith for your belief, that He is the Saviour of sinners and has borne the judgment of God in relation to your sins. Do you believe it?
So He said, ‘Look at this woman’, “Seest thou this woman?” ‘You have been rude to Me; she has not been rude to Me. She has not been rude, she is providing what you never provided in your rudeness; you simply invited Me, but you did not provide anything for Me that you would have provided for any ordinary person you invited. Now, Simon, can you not see that you are all wrong in this? Can you not see it? This woman has done what is right; you have not done what is right. You have been rude to Me’. You think of hearing the gospel and not believing it, what have you done? You have been rude to Jesus! There is nobody rude up in heaven, they are all respectful persons in heaven, they all treat the Lord Jesus with absolute respect, and with honour, too. Then you come down here, and what do you and I do? Are we rude to Christ, or are we polite to Him? This woman would not even stand in front of Him, she stood behind Him weeping. That weeping was not remorse. I expect Simon has shed tears of remorse before now. I know that, because of chapter 16. I suppose you could carry Simon into chapter 16, and then he got into remorse. Why did he get into remorse? Because he lost his opportunities. Maybe he thought there would be another preaching for him, but there was not. There may have been a preaching, but he was not there because he had been taken away. Can you guarantee you are not going to be taken away? I cannot guarantee I will be here tomorrow, let alone next week, so what about you?
So the Lord said, “seest thou this woman?” ‘Do you see what she bestowed on Me? Why did she bestow it on Me? Because she appreciated Me!’ She was not a Colossian; she simply appreciated Him for what He had done. Have you ever appreciated Him for what He has done? She said, ‘Nobody can do anything like that which He can do’. She said, ‘He has come here to do it, I know where those feet are going to take Him in suffering—where I should be—but He is going to be there instead of me’. Amazing grace! So He said, “she loved much”. The Lord says, ‘I will get at you, because you will have to answer the question whether you love at all’. So ‘he who is forgiven much loves much’. That is not the basis of forgiveness. The basis of forgiveness is the propitiatory work of Christ. You would never get forgiveness but for the propitiatory work of Christ, but because you are forgiven much you love much. That is one of the results of the gospel, that you get forgiveness, and of course how you estimate your debt is how you estimate how much you are going to love. Can you estimate your debt? I have never been able to estimate my debt. It is beyond estimation, what I owe. So she loved much. Is that what you do? Do you love much? That is the divine standard. If you want to know what heaven is thinking about you, that is what it thinks, that if you are forgiven then you love much. Do you love much? Is this the first time you have been here today? You say you cannot be amongst us; you had better get amongst us tonight, those who love much. They are the ones the Lord loves to have in His company, those who love much. ‘Oh’, you say’, you do not know!’ How does your love come out? Are you all breaking bread here, all committed to the fellowship? You say ‘no, I am not’. Why not? Well, I expect the first scripture is the answer to it, that you do not love much. If you have got some difficulties you cannot get over, why cannot you get over them? Because you are lacking in love. Not lacking in intelligence, but you are lacking in love, in love to the Person to whom you owe everything. And you think you are going to heaven when you die! Well, you want to be sure about that! Do not make these statements if you cannot verify them. You want to be sure about what you think and relate it to the sacred writings to see if what you think can be substantiated, because God is not thinking about your going to heaven! Maybe you thought that was the whole theme of the gospel! The theme of the gospel is that you should believe on the Lord Jesus and love Him much. And you have got ample opportunity to express that love.
Well, the Lord left it like that, except that He spoke to the woman, “Thy sins are forgiven”. Have you ever heard Him say that to you? Then He said another word to her: “Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace”. Have you ever had those two words said to you? Then you can go in peace, which means you are justified!
Now you come to two more, because we do not know which two will suit us! The next two are two women, two sisters, related naturally, I suppose that would be. One has got a house; I suppose she would be the elder one. And she invited the Lord in. I expect you could carry these two right through; there is a bit of Simon about her, that is, wanting to make a show. Is that what you want to do, to make it appear that you are a Christian? You need not try to do that, because at Antioch they did not appear to be Christians, but they were! They did not call themselves Christians, but they were first called Christians at Antioch; and why were they first called Christians at Antioch? Because they were so much like Christ!
It was not that they believed on Him for relief, but they were so much like Christ; the Spirit had so much place with them that He formed them after that Man. That is what the Spirit is here for. The Pattern is in heaven, and the Spirit dwells in you and me, and that is what He dwells for, to form us after Christ.
But Martha had a sister called Mary, somebody near to her, always about. Maybe these two are always about, but Mary is about, too. She is always about the house. So they would go to the meeting together, I suppose. It may be they would think more of Martha, but I think the Lord thought more of Mary! She did not do anything Martha did, so you must not judge your Christianity by what you do, but by what you are. So “she had a sister called Mary”. I suppose Martha was the housekeeper; Mary helped dust, and all that, but was subordinate. That is a very difficult thing, to be subordinate to somebody else, but you never get on unless you are. The greatest apostle—Paul—learnt to be subordinate to somebody else, inferior to him as far as gift was concerned, and he learnt it all in Damascus rather than in Jerusalem. He learnt a lot at the feet of Gamaliel, but his church education began in Damascus, and he began by being subordinate to somebody else; you will never get on if you do not learn to be subordinate to somebody else.
So Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to His word. Have you ever done that? Have you not got time? Martha did not have time, apparently. She was more concerned about the house looking spick and span than she was about learning. Oh, the great thing is learning—learn, learn, learn! But learn from the right Person! Learn from Christ, and then learn in the assembly. They are the two great places where you can learn; you can learn at the feet of Jesus, and you can learn in the assembly. So Mary sat at His feet and listened to His word. What words He would speak, what words He does speak! No vain words, no light words, no frivolous words; Jesus never said any of those. Whom would He teach about when He was speaking? He would teach about God. He would teach about God’s disposition—the new covenant—I suppose. What a scholar she would be! Although she could not give an address, she would know all about the new covenant ministry and all about reconciliation and new creation. Do you want to know about that new covenant ministry? Do you know anything about it? Why do you not know anything about it? Perhaps because you never want to learn, you think you know everything, like Martha. But Mary got into the place where she could learn—at the feet of Jesus—and He would tell her about the disposition of God’s heart. ‘It does not matter, Mary, what you are—God will send you His Spirit so that the love of God is shed abroad in your heart, so that you might be taught how to love God’. You cannot love God if you do not know that God loves you. That is what Jesus would teach. He would teach about God and the unchangeableness of the disposition of God and the favour which He takes us into—you have “access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”, Rom 5: 2. And Martha missed it all! Maybe she made up for it afterwards—you can do that—but you do not want to be too sure about that. Learn while you can.
So Mary sat at His feet and listened to His word. She would want to go there again! Because she got a liking for the teaching, and if you do not get a liking for teaching it is very hard, so you want to sit at His feet and listen to His word and get into the assembly, because there is divine teaching in the assembly. You will be taught by Jesus, and then you will be taught in the assembly. So the Lord said she had chosen that good part; that stands. You can put up with all that people say about you, about you being lazy and letting your house go, if you just get His word that you have chosen the good part which will not be taken away. Your house will be taken away, but your part with Christ cannot be taken away. So the Lord puts these two together. Now which are you? Are you Martha or are you Mary? And Martha will have to change to Mary. Mary will not change to Martha; Martha will have to change to Mary. I suppose that is what she did do, because she is all right in John 12. You will have to, because Mary is the learner, and she knows where the Teacher is, and she is charmed with the One who teaches. What solace that would bring to our hearts! She would no longer have doubts and fears, and if she made a mistake she would not wonder if God still loved her, because she knew He never changes in His disposition!
Now we have two sons in Luke 15, the younger one and the elder one. The younger one was the worse, a ruthless kind of young man, who does not seem to have any affections and does not mind whom he will violate, because if he would violate his father he would violate anybody. Now you want to look at your history and see what you have done. Has anything like this ever occurred in your history, that you have just been ruthless in regard to every divine overture to you? There was nothing in the father; you cannot find any fault with him. Whether in relation to yourself or to anybody you cannot find any fault in God.
So the younger said, ‘You give me all that belongs to me before you die; never mind about your dying and the will being read, I want all that belongs to me now’. You say, ‘I have not been so bad as that’. Maybe if you did not say that, and stopped and thought, you might find you are just as bad as the younger son! What have you done all your life in relation to the mercies of God? You have got good health, otherwise you could not be here. You could not be here if you were bedridden. Why are you not bedridden? Because of God’s mercy to you. Why is all Cardiff not bedridden? They all have sin on them. Why are they not all bedridden? Because of the goodness of God. Why are they all alive in Cardiff? They cannot keep themselves alive with oxygen; oh, no! God gives them breath. Every breath you breathe belongs to God. Every meal you take, God has provided for you. Do you read the Bible before your meal, do you sing and give thanks? If you do not do that you will soon be able to get alongside this young man, because he did not do that. He never read his Bible before he ate a meal, never sang, never gave thanks. He probably got out of all family prayer if he could. He says, ‘I will give it all up, and I will shift for myself’. Can you? Nobody can shift for himself. God is the Giver and Sustainer of life, physically as well as spiritually. If God liked to turn round on you, as you turned round on Him, you would be no more. God does not turn round on men, not even on this younger son. He just let him go his way. He says, ‘I will take away his money, I can give him a lot of friends that will get rid of it all’, then he never had any friends, never had anything to eat. He had a job, but poor pay. That is what God can do, because He loves your soul. He does not love to starve you, He does not retaliate. He says, ‘I will get at his soul’, so he never had anything to eat, and a poor job, and then he came to himself. The other son did not, because his circumstances were affluent. He did not care any more about his father than the younger son did. It is a good thing when you seem to be bad. The Spirit of God is making comparisons so that you can find out where you are. If you are the younger one you will have been in the house this morning, you have the robe, the ring, and the shoes, and you have been merry; and we are merry now. I am not downhearted in the gospel, not because I am a ranter, but because I have been into the Father’s house. The elder one is out in the field, miserable and self-complacent; he had friends and did not have enough. He thought if his father had given him a bit more they would have thought more of him. It is a miserable thing, self is! Get rid of yourself, and get occupied with God, and you will not be miserable any more. So you have these two sons.
Now you have the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man had everything he wanted, yet the more he had, the more self-occupied and the more self-centred he was. You might be a believer and self-centred. Everybody is self-centred until he is delivered. Perhaps you did not think that deliverance is as important as forgiveness. If you have not forgiveness you have not forgiveness, and that means you are not right with God. If you have not deliverance you have not deliverance, and it is time you were delivered. So the rich man had all this, and he never thought of God; he did not even think about this poor Lazarus though he was so near to him. Lazarus is not a sinner. I think these two bear on the testimony. Where are you in relation to the testimony? where am I? I think Lazarus is Paul. He did not provide for himself only; when he was in a place he worked and provided for himself so that he should not be chargeable on the saints; Lazarus never sent a note to the rich man to ask him for a gift. The rich man had not any sores; do you know anything about the sufferings of Paul in the Philippian prison? What stripes he had! Well, they had to be healed, if he is going on in the testimony. So the dogs licked his sores; what for? To heal him, because he was suffering in relation to the testimony. Perhaps you are the rich man and you do not think anything about Paul. You say, ‘I do not know anything about the assembly’. Well, you should, because there is a minister of the assembly—Paul! Who had the mystery?—Paul. He had the gospel of the glory, too. It relates to what I said about deliverance; Paul and the gospel of the glory. Then he is the minister of the mystery, too. Paul knew about the mystery, and he wanted us to know about the mystery. So he wrote about it in Ephesians 3. Now Paul has gone up, and that is what Lazarus has done. The rich man died and was buried; that is all that is said about him. I suppose he thought so much about himself, it would have been just folly to say anything about him after he died. You do not want a burial like that, where nobody can say anything about you, for you said so much about yourself nobody can say anything about you when you die; no meeting for ministry when you die! I hope when I die there will be a meeting for ministry, and the saints will bury me. Lazarus was caught up, carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. I suppose in principle he was caught up, like Paul, to the third heaven, into paradise; Lazarus was. What do you think you will have when you die? You will have to die if the Lord does not come. He was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man would like Lazarus to serve him. You will not get any benefit from Paul’s ministry when you are dead. If you do not get it now you will never get it. There is a great gulf fixed. It is flexible now; you can come to the gospel and go away; but not then, a great gulf will be fixed. He cannot go to where Lazarus is, and Lazarus cannot go to where he is. Lazarus would go to him where he was, no doubt, but, no, he cannot, a great gulf is fixed. Have you ever thought of that; that when you die things will be fixed?
We have now two men praying. Do you pray? ‘Oh yes’, you say, ‘I say my prayers’. I suppose a Pharisee would, too. To whom do you pray? It is possible to pray to yourself. But you pray to a Person—pray to God.
Two men went up into the temple. Why two men? Because of the contrast, and to enable you to find out whether you are the one who makes a speech and never gets through and comes back just as he went, or whether you are the other one who smites on his breast and says, “O God”. There was no feeling in the Pharisee. He thought God would have to take notice of him: ‘I am somebody, and do not you know how I live? everybody knows my exterior’. Very few know your interior, but God knows it. The publican knew his interior, so he says, ‘O God, I have no claim on You, but You have a claim on me!’ You never get very proud if you keep praying like that. If you want to know an antidote for pride it is here in this passage. Now which are we, the tax-gatherer or the Pharisee? The tax-gatherer said, “O God, have compassion on me, the sinner”. He said ‘there is not anybody like me’. Do you think you are the best one in the company? He was not, he was the worst one in the company! “O God”, he says, “have compassion on me, the sinner”. ‘That is all I could crave, mercy; I dare not crave anything else’. And he “went down to his house justified”. Something happened. Does something happen when you pray? Because you pray to the One that can make things happen; you pray to God. He does not want you to make up any prayers, because they will not get through if you do make them up. John says in 1 John 5: 15, “we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him”. The publican knew he was heard because he had the right sentence that would get through to heaven, because heaven is always waiting for that kind of prayer that makes nothing of yourself but everything of God and His attributes; and He is able to assent, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus—that is His right to show mercy, and He delights in it, and He says, ‘Nobody is going to rob Me of My right to exercise mercy’. So he went down to his house justified. Are you justified? You say, ‘I believe in Romans 4’; so do I! I believe in Romans 8, too, and I believe in James; the epistle of James. You say, ‘I do not like James, because he is too practical’. James says, ‘I am not going to listen to your being justified according to Romans 4 if you do not show it’. So this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. Have you ever been into your house like that? What does justification mean? That God has cleared you of every charge, and you are not only free from all charge because Jesus died and rose, but because you now have everything by the Spirit and you have a sense of being justified. God is justifying you in everything you do.
Now you are going to get to paradise! Is there a paradise? There is indeed, because somebody went into it; two people went into it, the thief and Paul. Jesus went there, too. Do you hope to get to paradise? Paul was there and came back, and you could see he went to paradise, though he did not tell you what he heard because it was not lawful. You cannot get into paradise and come back, and be no different. You say, ‘I am going to heaven’; well, leave all that, because you will have to read the sacred writings to see if that is right.
But lastly you have these two men, two thieves, equally guilty. The only claim they had was Jesus. Can anybody claim Jesus? Yes! You can go to the street corner and preach, because Jesus is Head of the race, so that men might claim Him.
So they were on the cross, both these men were on the cross, one on one side of Jesus, and the other on the other side of Jesus. One railed on Jesus; you would have thought he would have been afraid to! You do not know your own heart if you do not know that if you had been in that position you would have done just the same thing. You want to know yourself.
You say, ‘I never read from Romans 1 to the middle of Romans 3’. Well, you should read it. You say, ‘It does not apply to me, it only applies to me from the middle of chapter 3’, but it all applies to you so as to help you when you get to the middle of Romans 3, and you will get there more quickly, too!
This man railed on Jesus; oh, what a sad thing to do! He despised Him and railed on Him. But the other would take Jesus’ part. Have you ever taken the part of Jesus in testimony and rebuked anybody, have you? Have they spoken insultingly in your presence about Jesus and you have never rebuked them? This man rebuked him. You think you are going to paradise and you have heard people rail on Jesus, and not rebuked them? You will never get there! This man railed on Jesus, and the other rebuked him and said, “Dost thou too not fear God?” ‘You are on the brink of eternity, and you are talking like that!’ Yet that person who blasphemed the name of Jesus was on the brink of eternity! And when he had rebuked him he turned to Jesus. How lovely he must have been to Him; a shame to everybody else, but lovely to Jesus! Jesus was lovely to him; is He lovely to you? Do you admire His manhood, His form, His grace, His dignity, His wisdom; do you admire His Person? That is what this man did, and he said, ‘I want to be with you when you come in your kingdom’, and the Lord said, ‘I will give you more than you ask for’. That is what He did to Solomon. He said, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”, ‘you have shared the worst of the circumstances with Me; I will give you the best of the circumstances with Me for ever’.
May that be so for you, for His Name’s sake.
Cardiff
11th October 1964
From ‘The Word Proclaimed’ 1965,
No 94
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