MEMORIAL
[p. 189] MEMORIAL
Exodus 3: 13 - 16; Psalm 135: 13; 1 Corinthians 11:23 - 26
JT What is to be remarked in regard of Exodus is that in it God prescribes or stipulates what things are to be. Whether it be a memorial or an altar, or whatever it be, He stipulates; He does not leave things to His people. Whereas in Genesis, generally speaking, things are left with the saints. Wherever an altar is built there is nothing said about a specification; nor did Joseph suggest anything to the chief butler as to what means should be employed to remember him. In Exodus it is not the subjective side that is in view, but what is from God towards us. And so with regard to the Lord’s supper, the Lord did not leave it with the disciples to devise something whereby they should remember Him; He Himself devised that which was to convey what He was towards them, and what God was towards them.
JS Would it be connected at all with the fact that in Genesis there is no system set up by God? He did not come out setting up the tabernacle system, whereas in Exodus He did. Also in Corinthians there is the assembly of God in the place. Do you connect it at all with that?
JT Yes, and what is to represent God must be according to His specifications. If God leaves me to do anything, what I do tests my spiritual stature.
WH And as it is towards us no conditions can come in in any way to alter it; whereas if the truth is on the other side we have to take into account the conditions that exist in christendom in carrying out the divine mind.
JT Yes.
[p. 190] W Does it not help therefore to remember that the books of Moses stand in relation to the rights of God?
JT Well, they do, especially what is called the law, including Exodus.
W I was thinking, with regard to what Mr. S. referred to, that what is set up here, if it is to be representative of God, must be expressive of what He has stated.
JT The memorial must convey what He is and His name; it is not what we are; it is not the stature of the saints. The memorial is in regard of what He is: “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations”. He had taken a new name, a name which included the promises of God, and the power and patience of God.
JS “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”: Abraham, the promises, Isaac, the power, and Jacob, the faithfulness of God that went on with the crooked man. Is that the memorial?
JT Yes, that is what is referred to here; but we have more than that, have we not, Mr. B.?
RB Surely, since a divine Person has become Man.
P I would like to ask, Do you connect what you were saying as to these three features of the name of God with “I AM”?
JT Yes, but He is also Jehovah: “Jehovah, the God of your fathers”. That was new. His memorial must carry with it in what it represents the revelation as far as it has gone, and hence when you think of the Lord’s supper you can thus appreciate what is in it. Moses was concerned as to what he should say when the children of Israel enquired, “What is his name?”. “And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM. And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses ...” (verses 13 - 15). So Moses may be taken here as a type of the Lord Himself; he is to be fully acquainted with the revelation, so that the desire to convey the name was a very right one on the part of Moses, and God evidently valued it. Therefore in addition to the thought of “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, there was the thought of Jehovah, meaning that He was now come to fulfil His engagements; that is what the new name means. It is everlasting faithfulness: “Jehovah ... hath sent me unto you”.
JS Was “moreover” an expansion of what is contained in “I AM”?
JT Yes, it was an expansion of the thought of “I AM”. “I AM” is the ever-existent One-the same yesterday and today and for ever. But you see, although He is the same yesterday and today and for ever, the time had come when He would fulfil what He had promised: His power and faithfulness on their behalf was to be shown them.
JS How should we get on without His being the same yesterday, and today, and for ever; but then He waits on one who is never the same any day, like Jacob, and brings such an one into blessing?
JT Quite.
P How is that name to be the memorial for ever? Do you say that the name was the revelation of God up to that time? Does this verse suggest that the name is to be a memorial for ever?
JT What He is in Himself as revealed. I think it is the name ‘Jehovah’ He refers to when He says, “This is my name for ever” (see verse 15, New Trans.). God never recedes from the position He has taken up; hence when He brings in the word ‘Jehovah’ that is an advance; it means to abide. The law, and the prophets and the Psalms would only attest it, would only fully develop it, so that in Nehemiah’s time after many hundreds of years of Israel’s unfaithfulness,
one says, “Thou art the Same”. That is the One Israel recognises, the speakers recognise; they had come to that, in spite of all their errings; the reality of the presence of God remained for faith.
JS Whatever they had been doing in the interim?
JT Yes; God remained; what He was remained a memorial, and that is so in the psalm that we read from (the Psalms come last-in the last division of the books of the Old Testament). The Psalms show that faith had respect to the primary institution and valued it.
RB The allusion you made to Nehemiah is a wonderful illustration of what you are saying, because when things had been forgotten they were remembered again and a memorial was kept; the idea of the memorial is that the revelation, however far it may be, is kept, is remembered.
JT Yes; do you not think that is one great feature of the Lord’s supper at the present time, Mr. B., that it keeps ever fresh in our souls the fulness of the meaning of the death of Christ, in which His love is disclosed and the love of God; these are kept fresh before us?
RB Exactly, not only when we eat the Supper, but all the time the memorial is kept; that is what you mean?
JT Yes. “He is the true God and eternal life”,
1 John 5: 20. The knowledge of the true God is preserved amongst the saints in this way. “I AM” is a primary thought of God, His memorial unto all generations. So that if the Lord’s supper is apprehended, it preserves the true knowledge of Himself amongst His people. There is doctrine; there are doctrines in all the denominations, but the doctrine in itself does not convey God. The Lord’s supper and the Spirit of God with it would preserve the true knowledge of God amongst the saints. No one can convey a right idea of God, a right impression of God,
except in that way. “He is the true God”, it says. John enlarges on the fact, as we know. He says, “We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life”. So he says, “Children, keep yourselves from idols”. I think the Lord’s supper would fit in there because it keeps the true God before us.
W In that way it is in the Supper that the apprehension of the true Man and the true God appear to us.
JT I think that is very good. What comes before us is what Christ is as Man, and what God is in Christ. “That we should know him that is true ...”, meaning that the true God is there in Him, because it is in the covenant really that the true God is apprehended; that is, God in love. The true God is the God whom we know in Christ.
W So that your thought is that, until the soul has reached the point conveyed in the Supper, the true Man and the true God are not fully apprehended.
JT No.
P The Supper then preserves the death of Christ before us; love keeps us in our affections free from false gods.
JT That is just what it is. It preserves the soul in relation to God in the death of Christ; it preserves it in constant freshness, so that it is not simply a doctrine or a system of doctrines, but living persons in their specific relation with Him, that is what christianity is essentially.
HWS It suggests the necessity of a memorial; it is in view of what we are.
JT Yes, and in prescribing what the memorial should be God would have Himself fully before us. It is His own device. If we had been left to devise what the memorial should be it would be very defective;
[p. 194] it could be only our conception, man’s art or device, as it says. That is what you get in the cathedrals, things that are intended to remind people of God and divine things; they are only human conceptions and very defective; some of them are pagan. Whereas what God devises is complete; He presents Himself from His own side.
WH So that His people say, ‘This is our God’; they recognise Him.
R Human devices appeal only to the sentiments, but divinely ordered things appeal to divine affections and produce response.
JT My appreciation may be less than yours, or vice versa, but the thing, the memorial, is there in its completeness; it is from God’s side and in making a specification God intends that the thing should be presented from His side.
WH The question of apprehension does not come in there.
JT No, it is the thing from God’s side; the stature of each one may differ, but the thing itself is from God’s side and therefore perfect. It is a full memorial of God in Christ. God and Christ are kept before us fully-the true God. That is what God intends, would you say that, Mr. B.?
RB I would, quite.
JT Do you think it important to have it from that point of view?
RB I do, otherwise we should become lawless or get astray.
W Is that why the Spirit of God has laboured so much of late years to get the saints into the good of the Supper, so that the memorial might have its proper force and right place in our hearts?
JT Yes, and it results in church affections in us, and in affection to the people of God as well.
S Do you think that in the psalm you get the appreciation of it on the part of [p. 195] the people?
JT I think the Psalms represent that. The Psalms represent the subjective result, therefore the writer of this psalm shows that he valued what God said to Moses.
RB Is it not a most affecting thing that God should have placed a memorial with us, that He should desire to be known and to be remembered? It affects one’s heart very much to think that God should place a memorial with us, does it not?
R The perfection of the memorial is true to us by the way that it appeals to our hearts and if our affections are preserved in that way, are not our feet preserved?
JT Yes, quite so, and when you speak to God, as the psalmist does here, you indicate just how much you appreciate what is presented in the memorial.
W Did Abraham, in Genesis 22, in relation to what he had, have some idea of what you have been bringing before us, an enlargement of things in connection with the name that you spoke of, “Jehovah-Jireh ... On the mount of Jehovah will be provided”? Did he see the expansion of the thing coming in, in that way?
JT Whether he understood it or not, he prepared the ground for further developments. It is an extremely touching narrative, and its being given by Moses makes it all the more interesting, because he had already had to do with God on the mount; in fact what is recorded here took place on the mount, the mount of God, which conveys a moral thought as well as a geographical thought. It says, “And Abraham ... took Isaac ... and rose up, and went to the place that God had told him of”, and “on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar”. It was a spiritual journey that he took with Isaac. “And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here ... and I and the lad will go yonder and worship”. ‘Bow down’ the literal word is,
meaning worship God. Then it says, “they went both of them together”. That is what it says in that short record. And Isaac said, “Where is the sheep for a burnt-offering?”, and Abraham said, “My son, God will provide himself with the sheep”. So that there is a spiritual development in view of something later. And he binds Isaac and takes the knife, and then the angel calls out of heaven to him, and the ram is seen caught by his horns in a thicket, and he offers the ram. And then it says, “And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh”, meaning ‘Jehovah will provide’, and then the writer Moses adds to that “as it is said at the present day”. That is after the forty years. He had been there forty days, and another forty days, and had received all the wonderful communications from God, the wonderful provision that God had made in the mount of the Lord, so that you can understand the expression “as it is said at the present day”. So that Numbers 10, Mr. W., would refer to all that had come out on the mount of Jehovah. It says, “they set forward from the mountain of Jehovah” (Numbers 10: 33), and there is all that entered into this wonderful name of Jehovah. It is not simply the mount of God, but the mount of Jehovah; it involves the full revelation of God up to that time, so that they moved from that point, and then “the ark”, it says, “went before them in the three days’ journey”.
RB You connect the thought of the covenant with the mount of Jehovah. I think you referred just now to the thought of God’s engaging to carry out all that He had intimated, so do you connect the thought of the covenant with it?
JT Oh, clearly. The covenant was given there, and it is remarkable that it says, “God is faithful, by whom ye have been called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”, 1 Corinthians 1: 9. That is set down at the very outset of the epistle, showing that [p. 197] it enters into what he had to communicate, that the Lord’s supper carries with it what God is in His love and faithfulness; hence he says in the second letter, “For whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the amen, for the glory to God by us”. Every promise of God has been verified; Christ is the ‘yea’ of it and the ‘amen’ of it, and therefore the faithfulness of God, necessarily, enters into the truth of the Lord’s supper, what God is in Christ. In the first letter he says, “This is the new covenant in my blood”, because the Yea and the Amen is there. Then in the second letter we have not only the new covenant, but the spirit of it, the administration of it; the Lord administers it. He has made the love of God effectual in dying. But I think the mount is the way that He brings the love of God into our hearts, so that all the people say ‘Amen’. I say ‘Amen’; it is through Christ’s administration. What do you say to that?
RB Yes, I see that, and the new covenant is connected with the memorial which we have, but we have very much more, would you not say?
P I was just going to ask, Mr. Taylor, if you connect the memorial with the name of ‘Father’?
JT That is the family thought.
P I wanted to be clear, because you said it was the revelation of God up to a certain point.
JT The thought of ‘Father’ comes out in revelation, but I think the death of Christ has to do with God more; the truth of the ‘Father’ came out at the Lord’s baptism.
Ques Would not that name involve all that God is? I was thinking the memorial is a very wonderful thought in that way, as conveying what God is in a name.
JT The name of ‘Father’ necessarily carries with it all that God is.
P I was not thinking of the name of ‘Father’,
[p. 198] but the name here; you said there was something further than what we have here.
JT I was going to say that the ‘Father’ includes all that God is, only it is God on the side of grace, not family affections; because it does not say that the Father judges anyone; it says that God judges.
R Do you mean that in the Supper God is distinctly before us?
JT That is what I intend to convey. ‘God’ enters into the covenant; the ‘Father’ would go beyond that.
BI So that in giving thanks for the cup, would you address God, really, and not the Father?
JT Well, I think so, because it is between God and the people, not between the Father and his children.
BI So God is before you in giving thanks for the cup?
JT Yes.
W That helps in regard of what you brought out some time ago as to the difference between family relations and covenant relationships.
JT Yes, and it is a very important distinction.
JS I have connected family relationships more with the Lord’s message, “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend ...”. “The Father” in a way connected with God revealed: “To us there is one God, the Father”?
JT Yes, John never refers to our Father, except in that one instance in chapter 20, so far as I remember.
JS “One God, the Father” is connected to a certain extent with revelation.
JT “The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, John 1: 18. It is that Person in the revelation of the Godhead.
JS Would you say that when the time comes for [p. 199] God to be fully known in all that the memorial suggested, He comes to light as the ‘Father’?
JT Yes, that is the memorial; we are speaking now of the covenant that God has entered into, where it is God more that is before us. Still, there is one God, the Father, and when it has the article before it, it is God, that Person viewed as God.
Rem It does not say the ‘Father’ and ‘a people’, but “God and his people”.
JT Quite. I think that is scriptural. An important point to remember in connection with the ‘mount’ is that it is said that “on the mount of Jehovah will be provided”. That was a saying current in Moses’ time, and a saying which he had fully verified as no other could have done, because he had seen what God was to His people on the mount; they had pitched before it, and remained there a long time, and in that long encampment God discloses what He was to them.
-. R. Would that be in the way of encouragement, that God had pledged Himself to carry out His thoughts in regard to His people notwithstanding all their crooked ways?
JT That is what I think comes out at the mount. The word was current; they referred to it.
Ques Does the memorial suggest the way that things are maintained?
JT I think it does, and God having prescribed it, they would be maintained in a spiritual way. Of course christendom is a testimony to the departure from this; they have taken things up on their own plane.
R You mean that in the bread the love of the Lord Jesus towards the saints is before us, and in the cup the love of God towards us is before us?
JT Yes, and it is the “new covenant in my blood”. The memorial is fully maintained, essentially, not generally. It is preserved in however few, but the point is to have the thing; it is nothing less than [p. 200] that. I often feel encouraged in that way, that what we have got is nothing less than what the Lord instituted; if it is not that it is nothing.
RB That imparts great preciousness to it.
S The Lord, as it were, conferred the privilege of a memorial on Mary: “Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her”, Mark 14: 9.
JT It is as if He would have that devotedness preserved here; it shows how He valued it.
W Is that why you say sometimes that the covenant is formative? Does the Lord bring it out in its fulness in that way?
JT It is formative, only the movement from the mount would signify that the people had spiritual power; they were to take three days’ spiritual journey, showing that we go beyond the mount spiritually; then it says, “The ark ... went before them in the three days’ journey, to search out a resting place for them”. That gives the Lord Jesus His own distinctive place as leading us in a spiritual way.
R Does He find a resting-place in the affections of His people?
JT Well, it was to seek out a resting-place for us, and a resting-place for Him. I think they are found together. But if He is seeking out a resting-place for us, where will He lead? He will lead you to the very best according to His own thought. “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a little”,
Mark 6: 31. He knew the kind of place to take them to. We might say a desert place is not a desirable place for rest, but spiritually it is, because there is nothing in it for the flesh; it is well there should not be, because if the flesh is enticed there will not be rest.
WH I think you intimated that God was pleased with Moses’ movements at this point and that he was a type of the Lord; would you say the same in regard [p. 201] of the Lord Jesus instituting the Supper? Would it be a pleasure to God-bringing the disposition of God to the people?
JT Moses wanted to be in a position to speak definitely-”What shall I say unto them?”, Exodus 3: 13. But then if you apply that to the Lord, He did not have to be told anything. I am not referring to what you were saying-it is only to bring out a point myself. The Lord knew the Father perfectly; that is what gives the gospels such wonderful interest “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen”. The Lord spoke with the authority of one who knew, so it says, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. And he says, “I have declared unto them thy name”. He could do it very definitely, and He did. The gospels, of course, give us the details as to how He did it. Then He says, “and will declare it”, because the declaration makes room for more, “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”, John 17: 26.
RB Would you say just a word additional to a remark you made as to the Mediator; that is an interesting point in connection with the memorial?
JT Yes, “The new covenant in my blood”, it says. That is His part in it.
RB So that in viewing the cup, and in partaking of it, our thoughts are not wholly of God, but of the Mediator through whom God is known.
JT Quite, because the Mediator is the true God. The Lord has His own place there. He fills His part in it too.
JS Question as to partaking of the loaf and the cup-as to whether there is the element of food in it. In the three days’ journey they were to eat and drink. Would you say the Lord strengthens us in that way?
JT I suppose there must be support. You [p. 202] remember that Elijah in going to the mount had to be supported.
JS He went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights.
JT Yes, he received two breakfasts, as someone has remarked, and went in the strength of that forty days and forty nights to mount Horeb; that was a humiliating situation (see 1 Kings 19). Numbers 10 tells us they moved from the mount; there was no need to go back to it, I mean in the sense that Elijah went back to it. He went back to say to God that things were hopeless; he says, They “have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life”. He did not say, “On the mount of Jehovah will be provided”. He had lost that, whereas God says that virtually to him. God says, ‘You have given up, Elijah; I have not given up’. So He sent him back to Hazael and Jehu and Elisha; ‘These’, He says, ‘will carry out My will’. And they would carry it out according to that very provision which is in the mount of Jehovah. Because Elisha is the great one of the three; he is the final, and he sees through all that the others leave; but how?-on the principle of grace.
R Would the three days’ journey suggest movement from covenant relationships to something beyond?
JT That is the significance of that particular position. It is not that you leave the other in a definite way; it is simply that there are two lines running together; if you leave the mount of God, the covenant line, it is to go into something beyond for a moment, because you cannot leave it permanently while down here. It may come to an end finally, when we enter into our eternal portion. I suppose the mount of the Lord will not be in evidence then. We have the family relationships for the moment, however short.
[p. 203] The experience you have there lends a wonderful colour to all that you do here in the wilderness.
R When David recovered the ark he wanted to find a place for it. Would that answer to having a permanent place in the affections of the saints?
JT I think there you come to the other side. Numbers 10 is His finding a resting-place for us, but in Psalm 132 David finds a resting-place for God, “Arise, O Lord, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength”.
JS I was going to remark, that when the ark goes before to seek out a resting-place for them, it is a moment, however blessed, in the provisional period here. The primary eternal portion of the church is not exactly ‘rest’. But, being introduced in this blessed way, during our sojourn here, it is called “a resting-place”.
JT Yes, it is provisional; “Rest a while”, He says to the disciples.
JS Properly speaking the millennium is the rest answering to the intrusion of evil into creation.
JT The resting-place is a provisional thing, and it keeps us going in heavenly lustre and power.
Rem The psalmist says, “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand”, Psalm 84: 10.
JT Just so, a day in them.
-. R. If we take the three days’ journey and find that rest, does not the Lord find something to rest in then?
JT I think He does rest when we rest.
RB Do you not carry the thought “On the mount of Jehovah will be provided” along with the memorial? If we come together with a sense of the memorial we can ever count upon provision, so that we need to wait for the provision to be given.
JT There is always the sense of that, you mean, there is a new supply always which keeps you fresh.
RB [p. 204] The memorial is there, but there is the sense of waiting, is there not?
Rem When the Lord says, “My Father and your Father”, does He give you the thought of the covenant?
JT Oh, He does, but I think that is God as we shall know Him eternally.
Rem That would be connected with the three days.
JT That is the way you are led into it. John 18, John 19 and John 20 present the New Testament answer to Numbers 10. The Lord had been speaking to the disciples inside and unfolding the divine thoughts to them and then having spoken these things He moved out and the enemy comes, and He says, “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way”. He had provided for them, so that nothing happened to them, and then in resurrection He goes the three days’ journey Himself and He brings them into the result of it in chapter 20.
JS “If therefore ye seek me”-the ram was caught in a thicket. It says the sheep will be provided, but it turned out to be a ram.
JT But the point in John 18 is power, because the ark is not held, that is not the idea of it: “Rise up, Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered”.
JS I thought perhaps it was the Lord held by His affections for them.
JT That may be. That would probably come in in Luke, but the ark is the power of God; it is not held, it is power to go forward. “They went backward, and fell to the ground”, it says. “Rise up, Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thy face”-and they fled before Him, so to speak. They were not destroyed, because it was to make a way for the disciples; that was all that was needed then.