RIGHT RELATIONS WITH GOD
[p. 57] RIGHT RELATIONS WITH GOD
The book of Exodus is perhaps as well known as any section of the Old Testament, and the same may be said of the epistle to the Romans in the New Testament. One is thankful that it is so, because aside from a right understanding of Exodus and Romans we can never be in right relations with God in our souls, and God’s thought is that we should be in right relations with Himself. It is His thought that His relations with man should be adjusted, and this book, taken with the epistle to the Romans, enables us to understand how God has effected His relationship with men. God desires to be in relationship with you. Do you desire this? God has been at great pains, as it were, to make it possible for Himself to be in relationship with men and yet to be consistent with His own nature. God proposes this. There are many here this evening who know God as the only true God and who know that they are acceptable to God in Christ, but the thought in a meeting like this is that all should be in relationship with Him.
The door is kept open by the Lord for the gospel, so as to increase the number in relationship with God. God’s thought is to have man reinstated in relation with Himself. The door is held open by the power of God so that light should be set before souls. The object is to cause exercise. We never get the mind of God apart from exercise. If we are not exercised we can never be right with God. Exercise is wholesome, though it may be very painful, but no one learns reinstatement with God apart from painful exercise. The soul enters on a period of darkness. Abraham had experience of darkness. People are extremely [p. 58] careless at the present time. They come into a gospel meeting as a religious duty, but there is nothing in that at all. What have you before you? Have you turned in here to hear of God? to hear of Christ? God is interested in you. God will never disappoint you; there will be something to answer to your desires. God is interested in His people. Moses essayed to deliver the people by his own strength, but he found in the wilderness that God was infinitely more exercised than he. God says in chapter 3, “I have seen assuredly the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and their cry have I heard on account of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows. And I am comedown to deliver them”, Exodus 3: 7,8. God proposes to do it, that is the great thought! God came down to earth in the Person of Christ to effect the deliverance of His people. One would seek to impress this on your heart. God came down to effect your deliverance; God came down. He saw and He heard and He came down to deliver. It would be in a human vessel; God was here in a vessel. I speak reverently, but He became Man so that there should be an adequate vessel here for God to speak through; and more than this, a vessel adequate for Him to act through. That was the Person of Christ here; God acted in Jesus and He spoke in Jesus, and we have that foreshadowed in this passage. Now Moses is selected to undertake the mission, and he says, “They will not believe me”. Many a servant has had that feeling come over him. But then the Lord says to Moses, ‘I will give you three signs’.
I want to dwell upon these three signs, to open up to you, if I can, their bearing. God gave Moses these three signs, in sending him back from the wilderness to the land of Egypt for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. First, God says, “What is that in thy hand?”.
God takes up what you have, whatever the thing may be. Moses had a staff, and that staff had a [p. 59] spiritual meaning. I have no doubt it represented what man was entrusted with here on earth, for the authority of God was invested in man. We do not naturally love authority. In connection with creation, God introduced the idea of authority, and authority invested in man. We must have to say to God on the ground of authority. Moses’ rod represented the principle of God’s authority here on earth invested in man; but that became satanic. We have to do with the world, and today, as it stands, the authority is in the hands of those alienated from God, for the authority in the world is, in principle, under satanic influence. Of course, there is God’s overruling hand; for God is restraining Satan’s influence, but the history of authority is the history of satanic influence.
Thus the word is, “Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent”. Think of the power that is active in that! That staff in man’s hand became a serpent. Such is the world, and it is only waiting the moment when the full satanic power will show itself. Well might Moses flee from it! The spiritual mind recoils from satanic influence exerted in authority. Pharaoh was the embodiment of satanic influence vested in authority, and the Egyptians were under this. Where are you? Think of being under the influence of a serpent! Passing out of the hand of God to Satan, you find your place in the world, and that world is under the domination of the serpent. Were your eyes open you would recoil from it. The power of the serpent becomes evident; well might the spiritual mind recoil from that. The hissing serpent was there, the governing power in the upper region of society with Pilate, at the death of Christ, a terrible terminus of authority committed to men’s hands! We have to do with that kind of thing. Souls are stupid in the indulgence of self-will which is the very essence of sin in the presence of God.
Is God going to suffer this? He says, “Stretch [p. 60] out thy hand and take it by the tail”. Moses took the serpent by the tail and it became a staff in his hand. What I understand by that is that God took up man afresh in Christ. God has not surrendered His idea, but He takes up man again in Christ, and, if you take in this thought, you get deliverance. The staff in His hand became the symbol of divine authority, the instrument in God’s hand for the deliverance of the people throughout their history. It brought about the overthrow of Pharaoh’s power and the deliverance of the people of Israel. What is the rod of God to you?
Do you ever think of it? Christ is the rod of God-a wonderful idea! What is authority in the hand of Christ? The sin of the race is implied in the indulgence of the will of the race, but God has taken up the authority in Christ; it is in His hand.
Now what is the character of the authority in Christ? I should like to refer to the case of Saul of Tarsus as an illustration. The Lord Jesus had died, had risen and had gone into heaven, and God had made Him both Lord and Christ. God had taken up the idea of authority in that Man and authority is invested in that Man in heaven. It waited for God to show what kind of authority was in that Man. There is a time coming when He will have a rod of iron and will rule the nations, but Christ did not rule Saul of Tarsus with a rod of iron, nor you, nor me. He said, “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”, Acts 9: 4.
Has the Lord ever spoken to your soul? If He speaks to your soul, it is to assert His authority in your soul. If so, you may become rebellious, but He overthrows your will. If ever the will of man was in activity, it was in Saul, but the Lord’s authority is greater than his will. He says, “Saul, Saul”-that is the rod of Christ! That is how He exercises His authority at the present moment. He speaks directly to your heart, He calls you by name! If the Lord spoke to you tonight by name would it not touch your heart?
[p. 61] If He singled you out and called you by name, it would make an impression on your heart and establish His authority there.
He extends His kingdom in this way. The ruling men of this world are always concerned about extending their kingdoms. Before the kingdom was limited to Israel, God intended that His kingdom should be correlative with the universe. The Lord would extend His kingdom in your heart and would assert His authority in your soul. In the words “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?” there was the Lord extending the benign influence of His kingdom. I suppose none ever understood the kingdom better than Saul; he constantly preached the kingdom. For him to preach the kingdom was to announce a Man who loved him; so he says, “We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus Lord”; that involved the authority of Christ in the soul of man. What souls suffer from is the activity of their own wills. Let Christ speak to you, call you by name; He will undertake for you! The next thing therefore you find is that the Spirit of God was given to Saul.
If the light of Christ enters into your heart you die as to your spiritual condition; so the second sign is, “Put now thy hand into thy bosom”. You may well consider your work and activities as under the Lord’s eye. What are your motives? Do you find them in your own natural heart? What is in the heart of man?
Every evil and corruption is there, it is incurably wicked! What are the governing motives of men? What can they initiate? Where would it end? There is nothing but corruption, men acting from their own bosoms, that is motives, and leprosy is written over the whole. That presents the world in a very peculiar light. In Genesis 6, God says, “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually”. The hearts of men remained unchanged by the flood, for the hand that built Babel was leprous. But then [p. 62] Moses was told to put his hand into his bosom again. The second bosom must be the bosom of Jesus. There was no corrupting there; every motive was pure; every movement of that blessed heart was Godward. The hand comes out as the other, the leprosy gone! I see work proceeding for God, no ambitious thought, no desire to be conspicuous. Every movement of that heart is Godward. That is the idea. God has received the hand that is not leprous. The hand of Christ was not leprous; He touched the leper and the leprosy departed.
I have said many times that the thought of God was to bring man into accord with Christ. If the gospel is announced to you, that is the thought. What is leprosy? It is sin. Whatever is the working of will, that is leprosy. The Lord brought leprosy to light in Peter; He asserted His authority, and there was a great draught of fishes. What was the result? Peter was discovered to be a leper. You are discovered to yourself, not to another; you are the leper. Peter said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord”, Luke 5: 8. See how he recognises the Lord’s authority! The light of the authority of God shines into his soul and he appears leprous. Man becomes leprous when he disregards the authority of God in a Man.
Disregard of the authority of God, as presented in Christ, is leprosy. But instead of the iron rod to destroy the sinner, leprosy is removed. In Luke 5, Christ touches the leper and the leprosy departs.
How great is the present moment; one would love to make it clear. It is the moment of the authority of Christ in a benign way, the reign of grace. Divine authority has taken this form to bring in conviction to the consciences of men-to show them they are lepers. Grace removes the leprosy it discovers!
What wonderful signs to take to Egypt! What testimony to ensure his being received from Jehovah!
The second lesson is Jesus’ bosom. The love of God to sinners, lepers, involved His death. How otherwise could it be removed? We see this in all the ritual applying to leprosy in the book of Leviticus; there had to be the death of one of the birds over running water. Leprosy has to go representatively. Your leprosy can only disappear in the death of another. Jesus took it upon Himself. I dwell upon it in reference to the hand being put into the bosom a second time; a different bosom it must have been, the leprosy was gone. God has in Christ another hand acting in resurrection power, and the divine thought is to bring us into accord with that. If you are doing anything now for the Lord it is not from selfish motives, but you are doing it for the Lord as Paul did. I warn you to be on your guard about the leprous hand, that is accomplishing things for selfish motives. That is a sweeping statement, but unless you are doing it as the outcome of the love of God in your heart, your hand is leprous. If you are under the influence of the love of God in your work, then your hand is like the hand of Christ; it carries out the will of God from pure motives.
The third sign has reference to life and its connection with Egypt. The life of the inhabitants of Egypt depended on the river. Apart from this river Egypt was a desert. Here is the benign influence of the authority of Christ in the gospel. It has been presented all these centuries and has been spurned. The result is that which is refreshment to you now becomes your judgment. The dispensation is not to continue; it is to terminate and that soon. That rod of blessing becomes the rod of iron; that which is the support of life to you becomes judgment, for the water is turned into blood. That is the end, a very solemn outlook. What is now the expression of the love of Christ in the way of cleansing and life-giving is reversed and becomes the expression of God’s judgment.
[p. 64] The two first signs refer to the testimony of Christ and His cleansing power. If you reject those two signs, as the Egyptians did, they will become judgment to you, the unmitigated judgment of God. May the Lord deliver us from this!