How We Get Help
HOW WE GET HELP
1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 (to “never fails”)
Romans 7; 21-25
The Lord desires to help us, and it is a great thing to be settled in the sense that He loves us. It takes away a lot of fear and prevents loss of time, too, if we get settled in the sense that the Lord loves us. He has a place for us in the kingdom and a place for us in His assembly, and He would give us to understand the dignity of that.
The Lord said that many sought to see His day; they had looked into the Scriptures and the prophetic word and, though they did not understand it, they could see that there was a wonderful time coming. They did not know about the assembly, but they saw that the prophets, the Psalms and Moses all pointed to a wonderful time when the Lord would come. The Lord said to the Jews, “Ye search the scriptures, for ye think that in them ye have life eternal, and they it is which bear witness concerning me”, John 5: 39. So there would have been brethren who saw that the Scriptures testified of Christ. Peter tells us that they looked into what they prophesied to see if they could understand it, but then what do we do in the time when things are fulfilled? What time these beloved men and women would give up to look into what was coming! Now that it has come, where are we in relation to these great matters?—we “upon whom the ends of the ages are come”, 1 Cor 10: 11. All that previously happened had our education in mind, so there is a great people on the earth at the present time. The word bore on the great people who are on the earth at the present time and who were in the mind of God for blessing. The gospel came to us, and we believed the gospel about forgiveness. That was not all the gospel, because the gospel is not about forgiveness only; it is about God’s Son. Forgiveness comes in because it is necessary; then what the gospel fully is opens out.
So the Lord is anxious to help every one of us, whether boys or girls, or young men and women. God would help the young men and women especially. If the Lord tarries, the care of the local assembly will come upon them. The greatest thing that can come upon you is to have part in the care of the local assembly and in the development of what is for Christ and God in it. If you have anything wider than that to do, it is all right, but then it must begin there. Your local assembly is where you qualify, where you get your credentials, where you are known. That is where you have opportunity to serve before you get any official distinction, or any distinction at all; because you can serve as early as you like in the local assembly, you can serve there without being sent. “Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might”, Eccles 9: 10. You do not need any commission to do that; all that you want is to love Christ. If you love Christ you look around to see how you can serve Him, and the saints and the local assembly provide the occasion for you to express your love for Christ. May the Lord help us, for it is very evident that we all need to be helped. I do not know anybody in my locality that does not want help. They may not always show it, but that is a detail so long as you realise that they do want help; and God is ready to help us. We want to know our size, too. Well, do not be too bothered about your size. Do not spend all your time occupied about your size because the Lord is wanting to help you!
I think that is what these scriptures involve—how we get help. The Lord says to the disciples, “Unless ye are converted and become as little children, ye will not at all enter into the kingdom of the heavens”, Matt 18: 3. That might have been a big pill for them to swallow, but they swallowed it because of the One that gave it to them.
What makes all the difference is whom you are dealing with. If you are dealing with the Lord, you are dealing with the most blessed Man in the universe. If He is your Lord, then you have the best Lord there ever was or ever will be. If He is your Saviour, then you have the greatest Saviour there ever is or ever will be. So you can boast about that all day long if you want to! You have the best Saviour there ever is to be known and the greatest One, too, and you have the greatest and most beneficent Lord that ever was or ever will be known. You have the greatest Friend, too, and the greatest Shepherd.
Now the Lord says, “Unless ye are converted and become as little children”. Reduce your size! That is what the Lord is saying. Reduce your size, you are too big! You cannot take it unkindly from Him, because of who is saying it. He loves you, He has chosen you. They were His disciples. He did not teach them about being the greatest. They got that from someone else, and things we get from someone else are not always right. We want to get things from the Lord, but not in independence, because you cannot do that, though you might think you can. ‘Oh’, you say, ‘I got this from the Lord; nobody helped me; I never read it’. Well, you had better read all the volumes and you will find it somewhere in them, that is sure. There is nothing that you have that has not come to you, you can rest assured of that. The Lord says, ‘You are too big, that is your trouble; you are not getting on because you are too big’. Thank God He says that, because you might go on being big and never get anywhere and eventually find yourself out of fellowship. I had a letter today telling me that somebody was out of fellowship because he got too big. I do not think there was anything else in it than that, but it is very sad. If that brother had only listened to the Lord a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, when He told him that he was too big, and that he should be converted and become as a little child, he would have been available and useful to the saints, and still in the place of privilege. The Lord says that to us, He says it to me and He would say it to anybody: “Unless ye are converted and become as little children”. It is your matter to be converted. “Unless ye are converted and become as little children, ye will not at all enter into the kingdom of the heavens”. You may lay stress on the entering but think of what there is in the kingdom of the heavens! But if you do not enter you will miss it.
Saul in I Samuel was a big man, head and shoulders above his brethren. Maybe God said to him when Samuel anointed him, ‘Be smaller, because I have a small man to take over’. If you are a big man, and stay a big man, God will get a small man to take over. He has always somebody who can take over, because He loves the saints. You might think that you are going to get round the Lord, but you never will and if you are going to serve the saints then you must be small. The Lord has always a small man available. Samuel said, “Jehovah has sought him a man after his own heart”, 1 Sam 13: 14. Are we after God’s own heart, dear brethren? As we grow up from youth into manhood, is our concern that we should be after God’s own heart, like God? We are to know His heart and that He is pleased with us. You do not need to wait until you grow up before you know that God is pleased with you; see to that every day. That is what Enoch did, he walked with God three hundred years and before his translation he had the testimony that he pleased God. You do not want to wait until you grow up to manhood before you know that you please God. Cultivate intimacy with Christ, and intimacy with God. If you are going to do His will then you must know the Person whose will you are to do; otherwise it is just a term of Scripture. Do not live on terms of Scripture, live on personal acquaintance with God as in Christ. People who live on terms of Scripture are upside down all their lives, and do not know where they are. They open the Bible casually and think they get the mind of God, whereas we have the Spirit and we have faith, so we have the means of knowing the mind of God. The Scriptures confirm us in what we already know.
God sent Samuel to Jesse to anoint one of his sons, and when the eldest came up Samuel was deceived. The seven passed by and perhaps for the moment Samuel thought it was all up, that he had seen all there was in the local assembly down where Jesse lived, and God had not told him to anoint any one of them. Then he said, “Are these all the young men?”. ‘Oh yes, there is one’. ‘And where is he?’ He is small, not like Eliab who is big, but no doubt he received the word about being converted. They must all have been converted by the time David was anointed, because he was anointed “in the midst of his brethren”; they had all become small like David! That is very beautiful, is it not?—a company of small people, so that God can get in and out as He likes.
He can move between us, in and out amongst us with nobody in His way. It must be very delightful to have a locality like that. And that is what happens when all the big ones are converted and become as little children, simple, impressionable. The first time God speaks they do it, whereas big people want to argue and get it their own way. The little children have no difficulty about the truth, or the application of it, no difficulty at all. I think you would soon have union if you had the locality like that, where there was no difficulty about what God said. Everybody would be in touch with God so that what is current is what God is saying. So do not leave it until tomorrow; let us be converted tonight and become as little children and know what it is to enter into the kingdom of the heavens, because it is all simple there.
There is so much wealth in the kingdom of the heavens, let alone in the assembly. Psalm 19 shows how benign the kingdom of the heavens is because the sun is in the heavens. Christ rules and shines and gives life and vitality to everything. That is how the Lord’s instruction works as we sit around Him. If everyone in the local assembly was sitting restfully at the feet of Jesus, how we should get on, what teaching there would be! Everybody is protected as everybody is small, because you will not offend one of these little ones. That is the danger the Lord speaks of in Matthew 18, that the little ones might be offended, and we do not want that, because it will mean they will be stunted. You can never tell the effect on a little one, it might cause permanent damage if you offend them. So we want to be free of giving offence, and I think we will be if we get converted and become as little children—harmless, simple, receptive, obedient; yes, obedient. That is the Lord’s word to His disciples in Matthew 18. He knows what He is going to open up in relation to the assembly so all this precedes it.
We shall not have any part in administration, or, if we do, we shall make terrible blunders, if we do not understand what the Lord said in the beginning of Matthew 18, that we are to be converted and become as little children, and then that the little one is the greatest. So you have no fear; the little one is the greatest and there is a guarantee of peace and tranquillity. There will be no war on persons, all the wars are for the truth. May the Lord get that over to us at any rate, that we are to be converted and become as little children, and then we will enter into the kingdom of the heavens and will be the greatest. Boys think they would like to grow up to be the greatest. That is what I thought. But grow up as a little one, and while you keep little, you will be the greatest. It does not sound sense, does it? But you get into the heavenly way of teaching and then you get the sense of these things.
1 Corinthians 13 brings in our measure, lest we should think that we measure up to more than we do. We usually think that. This chapter in 1 Corinthians is another sobering chapter, and we want to have what is sobering, dear brethren. Do not think above what you ought to think, Romans 12 says, “but to think so as to be wise”, v 3. Be sober. So 1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love has long patience”. Go through the list and see whether that is what marks you. I go through the list and see whether that marks me, “Love has long patience”. It is the easiest thing in the world to get irritable if you cannot get your thoughts over to somebody else. You keep on trying, but you never think about praying. When you begin to pray you begin to get your thoughts over to the brethren. That is what Mr James Taylor taught us, that the brethren you pray for will be the brethren you see, and the brethren you help are the brethren you pray for. Not the brethren you teach nor the brethren you lord over, but the brethren you love. The brethren you will be able to teach are the brethren you pray for.
I like to pray for all my local brethren before I go to a meeting, and I do, too, purposely, so that I should respect them when I sit down with them, and if I have anything to say that I might get it over to them. I would commend that to the young ones, too; pray for all the local brethren before you come to a meeting, for you are going to meet them. They may test you and you may test them, but then you see what prayer does, how love has long patience. You say, ‘Whenever will they learn? I will give up, I will shift to another locality’. But you will find it worse! Love has long patience.
You can tell where you are, beloved, by the tests in I Corinthians 13. It is not what you give, because it says you can give everything, even your body, but if you have not love there is no profit. You might just as well not have done it, you might just as well have kept your money. It is a beautiful chapter and it tells us what we have and what we have not, and whether we have love. You would always like to know whether you have love, would you not? You think it will drop down from the ceiling, but it never does! You can tell whether you have love by reading over this passage in 1 Corinthians 13. Are you worthy to be in the local assembly? If you have not love then you are not worthy to be in the local assembly. He says, “Love has long patience”, so sit on your chair and do not get uneasy. Be restful whether they take it in or not, because if nobody else is getting help then you can get help yourself. You can give an address and help yourself.
You need to know whether you have love, because you want to be in heaven, and you will not be there if you have not love. Nobody would speak to you in heaven if you have not love. They would say, ‘Where did you come from—some foreign country?’ Fancy having that salutation in heaven! They say, ‘You belong to the assembly. What locality did you have part in?’. I think that is what they will say up there. ‘And what did you do in your locality? Have you anything to show for it?’ So we want to know what the currency of heaven is. When you come to Australia you want to know what the dollar is worth, and the same in America, so that you know how to spend. Heaven’s currency is just the same as in the local assembly; it is love.
Love never fails. You have failed, so have I; so I say, ‘I did not have love’. That was not the first thing I said! No, I said it was the fault of so and so else that I failed; and then I had to come to it that it was because I did not have love, so I will set about and get some. How are you going to get love? O, you get near to Christ, and get near to the brethren, because they will show you some if you have none. I say to the young people at home, ‘I have not got much but I will give it all to you so that you can grow quickly. I grew slowly, you can grow quickly’. That is what every older brother ought to do so that the young ones can grow quickly and come into the good and gain of the assembly.
Now I should say something about new birth because that is another way of getting help. I have just spoken about two practical things, and now I speak about something that is very basic in relation to the truth. If we understood new birth better we should have our feet on something solid. We want to realise that new birth is not just something in you, new birth is yourself. Nicodemus was a very learned man and a teacher in Israel. I suppose, as Job said, when he came in all the young people in the synagogue would stand up. Nicodemus was a great student in the synagogue and he came to Jesus. The Lord is great personally, but He did not look great. There was God hid in a veil of flesh! “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” . But John said that as a contemplator, not Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to the Lord, and said, “We know that thou art come a teacher from God”. ‘I have come here to learn but I have brought my degrees with me’. That is a pity, to want to learn, yet bring your degrees! Leave them behind, but come to learn! The Lord withstood him straight away and took him off his balance. “Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God”. I suppose everybody in this room is born anew and can see the kingdom of God. You keep to that and it will save you a lot of wasted effort and wasted time. Maybe you read the ministry for what you think you can get to build yourself up. That will never do you any good.
The Lord goes on to say, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”. The Spirit of God is helping you in John 3 to identify two things: one, what the flesh is; and the other, what is born of the Spirit, and how to identify it in yourself. Why did you believe the gospel? Why do young people break bread? Because they are born again; they are subjects of the sovereign operations of the Spirit. Where did their desires come from? Where does any new and good desire come from? It comes because you are born anew. It does not come from the flesh. You may give the flesh all the privileges and all the education and all the environs you like, and it will still be flesh. And you can be born of the Spirit and have no apparently suitable environs, and yet you can grow. I can verify it in John 9. The man there had no suited environs to grow in, had no ministry to read and no parents to help him, and yet he grew in the divine nature. Now, dear brethren, we should come to what is basic so that we may grow and know where we are, where to trace every new desire, every desire that is according to God. However faint and feeble they may be, you can trace them to new birth. I wish I had known that when I was a young man. I spent a lot of time trying to find where to trace things to. Where did these new desires come from? They came from new birth. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit”, and though in new birth you have not anything developed or mature, yet you have all the potentialities that can be developed into manhood. So keep to new birth; I am sure that will help.
The Lord said to Nicodemus, “Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God”. It is not how much you can see, but you can see the kingdom of God. You must be “born of water and of Spirit” to enter the kingdom of God. That is what you are constitutionally. You enter the kingdom of God to participate in what is there and the means of entering is that you are born of water and of Spirit. That is, you have the means in yourself of cleansing and you have the means in yourself of power—two things which we want. There is the responsible side, I know; but if young people are to get on quickly then they need to know the sovereign side and to be able to trace things to what is of God, and to know that they are themselves of God. New birth is not just something in you that leaves you with something else. New birth is yourself really and involves your personality.
And now all you wish for is the environs, the right conditions, the right atmosphere and the right temperature. And where are you going to get them? In the local assembly. You will get the right atmosphere, the right food and the right temperature in the local assembly. There is not any truth that is divorced from the assembly, because the house of God, the assembly of the living God, is the pillar and the base of the truth. People go wrong because they divorce the truth either from God or from the local assembly. God keeps us on an even keel. Thank God for that, and thank God for the brethren who are kept on an even keel and become a demonstration of the things to others! May the Lord help us as to new birth and what He said to Nicodemus, so that we may get a foundation in our souls and trace where these things come from. They come from the sovereign action of the Spirit. Everything is there in new birth potentially but it is to be developed. You will not have to have a new arm or a new leg when you are developed; all is there in new birth. It is very wonderful, the sovereign action of the Spirit.
Now in what we read from Romans 7 we come again to dead reckoning1. It is a great thing for every believer to understand dead reckoning. Some of these young boys do not know what it is yet, but they will know what it is. I am sure they do not know what it is because God does not put things on them that they cannot bear. He carries them in His bosom. We need people in the local assembly who can carry the lambs in their bosoms and not let their feet touch the ground until they have got the wherewithal to do it. These young people are so tender and the potentialities in them are so great that we cannot afford to damage them. We must care for these young people, dear brethren, for Christ’s sake. Be an avenue whereby Christ can care for these lambs, so that they do not get damaged, or criticised or pushed into positions for which they are not equal. Do not push them into any position, just let them grow. Feed them, provide the temperature and provide the atmosphere and they will grow.
So in Romans 7, what can we say about this analysis he makes? One thing he comes to is, “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man”. I do not think there is very much difference between the inward man and new birth. He comes to something concrete, positive and solid in himself; he is able to identify something in himself which afterward is himself; that is the work of God. He says the law does this and the flesh does that, and he has desires to do good and is not able to. Where did that desire to do good come from? It must have come from another law. So he says, “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man”. When did he say that? Has everybody said that? Has everybody come to that experience, where they delight in the law of God after the inward man? Then he says, “I see another law in my members, warring in opposition to the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin”. But that is a foreign law. He sees it; what is he going to do? What is the issue of all this? The issue of all this is deliverance. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Thank God when you look outside! You looked inside a long time and did not find anything; and then you found what was vital, that you delighted in the law of God after the inward man. Then you looked outside and what did you find outside? You found the Deliverer. “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. He is the Deliverer. He has been there all the time waiting for you to look outside yourself and look to Him as the Deliverer.
Following this the writer says, “So then I myself” (emphatic) “with the mind serve God’s law; but with the flesh sin’s law”. Not ‘I myself with the flesh’, no; “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”—a great change in your outlook! It is a great change with you altogether that you have a mind to serve God’s law; that is, whatever He says becomes law to you. It takes you back really to Jesus and the temptations, when He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which goes out through God’s mouth”, Matt 4: 4. That is what you arrive at in Romans 7, I think, that you are governed by the law of God. Whatever God says becomes law to you, and then you have power in the Spirit to maintain your deliverance. May the Lord help us and bless us for His Name’s sake!
Adelaide
15th October 1966
From ‘Ministry of the Word’ 1968
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