CHRIST’S LONGINGS

J. N. Grace

John 4: 7–16; Philippians 1: 8; 2: 26, 27; 1 Chronicles 11: 15–18

There is one thing I would like to do, beloved brethren, and that is to provoke in our hearts an increased longing for Christ. What a wonderful Saviour we have! He understands us so perfectly. How little we understand Him, but He understands us because He is a real Man.

How little one realizes the perfection of the manhood of Jesus. All that God purposed in relation to man is found perfectly in Him. Everything the human heart is capable of in right feelings came to light in Jesus, and therefore He knows our hearts and knows our longings too, the secret longings that nobody else knows. He not only knows them but there is in Jesus the answer to them. So we have read in this gospel of John that deals with the greatness of the Person of Christ, who He is. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Think of Him—that is Jesus our Saviour. John’s gospel, maybe more than the others, expresses His feelings and affections. It speaks of Jesus loving certain persons; it speaks of Jesus weeping. It speaks of Him being deeply moved in spirit. Oh the wonder of the manhood of Jesus!

But then He had longings too, the Saviour had longings. Here He is in chapter 4 expressing those longings and He says—“Give me to drink”. Think of that—to a poor sinner at the well.

The Lord was wearied with His journey and He sat on the well. Along comes this woman and the Lord says, “Give me to drink”. That is no passing

expression in this gospel; the Lord says on the cross, “I thirst”. Think of Him having unsatisfied longings in His heart—the Creator come into manhood and expressing an unsatisfied longing to the creature He had made. There He was at the well and He says to this woman, “Give me to drink”. Have you ever thought that the Lord had a longing which you could satisfy? Now how could this woman, a sinner, a woman of Samaria, a woman with a corrupt life—how could she satisfy the longings of the heart of Jesus? This is the wonder of the gospel really. Jesus can approach a woman like that and say, “Give me to drink”—He could bring all that was needed into that woman’s heart so that her history should be met, and instead of being a vessel that drank of the waters of this world, so unsatisfying in their corrupt springs, she could be brought to be a worshipper, one in whom was a fountain of living water.

What our Saviour can do!

We should not give up anyone as to what the Lord can do at any time, and you will not either if you realize what He has done for you, what He has done in your soul and in your history.

Oh how we need to come to realize our need of a Saviour! That is something that continues with us until the end. And this Saviour that we have come to know is the only One that can meet our need and satisfy our longings. I do not think there is anyone in this room but would say they have broken down completely in every responsibility that they have come into in regard to this life. Just look around upon the world and see the corruption that is there. Well, that is in your own heart. It may not be seen publicly but the seeds of it are there anyway because the flesh, under the bite of the serpent, is no different in any one of us. Therefore it needed the Son of God to deal with these things. How ready He is to do it. How reluctant we are to face our histories. I do not

think there is anyone here who could not honestly say that we do not like having to face our histories. And yet the One who has come so near to us would give us that confidence, to draw us out in His own winning way so that we are prepared for a complete exposure not only of what we have done but what we are. He only had to say to her, “Go, call thy husband, and come here”, and it exposed to this woman her whole history.

How simple the gospel is, is it not? You say, This is not the preaching. Oh yes, it is! Every time you stand up and speak of Jesus it is a preaching. That is the word that God has given us in these days; in the midst of all the breakdown Paul writes to Timothy and says, ‘Look, if everybody else goes wrong, Timothy, you keep right. Preach the word!’ I think that is a responsibility that lies on us. We go on with the truth of the assembly in our hearts and in our practice. Even if there are only two or three of us in a locality we can work out the truth of the assembly together. And then we are also thinking of others the way God is thinking. God has taken us up that we may rightly represent Him. Now that is the teaching of Romans, that the man who has misrepresented God in this scene, guilty of all sorts of things, in the power of the gospel and in virtue of the redemptive work of Christ and the gift of the Spirit is set up here, in the very place where he has failed, to represent God. Now that is the result of the gospel. So Paul says to Timothy, You preach the word. Of course you cannot preach the word if you are not right yourself, but there is power to enable us to represent God rightly in the very place where we have failed. Thank God for that! I would not be here tonight if that were not so.

And so this woman draws near with a longing

in her heart and says, “The well is deep”. How deeply she had drunk of that well! The Lord said to her, “Thou hast had five husbands and he whom now thou hast is not thy husband”.

She was still unsatisfied and she was before the Lord Jesus with longings in her heart, in the presence of the One who said, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him”. Oh, He can satisfy the desire of every living soul and He wants to satisfy our longings tonight. You say, We are all converted.

I am not saying we are not. I am just saying we are in the presence of One that can satisfy every longing today. And that will continue throughout our history here—He is still the same.

Beloved brethren, we need a Saviour always while we are here. Things may change around us but they will change for the worse. How rapid is the declension of things morally, every moral standard being swept away, not only by some who profess Christianity, but even by governments in the western nations. The whole moral fabric is being weakened and government is condoning what is wicked in the sight of God and what has been condemned by the life of Jesus.

The divine standard is the life of Jesus, and God’s intention is to bring us around to that. If nothing else condemns you then just measure yourself up against the life of Jesus. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, which is Jesus. So the Lord says to this woman,

“If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. Forgiveness of sins is available, and He gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in those two things we have all that is needed at this present time to go right through in the testimony to the end. Oh, come to know Jesus! that is really the crux of

everything—the knowledge of Jesus, Christ Jesus our Lord. And this woman is turned into a worshipper. The Lord promotes certain longings in her heart, a different kind of longings, and that is what He does—He meets us in our sins and puts a fresh longing in our souls to know God as He has come within our range. He is always doing that. You come into a meeting feeling a bit dissatisfied, maybe after a bad day, and you go out of the meeting feeling different because you have been in the presence of Christ who knows every one of us and just what we need. It is a fine thing to go out of a meeting satisfied that you have had to do with Christ. Now that is the way the Lord acts. That is the way He acted with this woman. John’s gospel is like that. A little later on it says, as to persons that come to Christ, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”—instead of the need there is something flowing out that meets the needs of others.

The women in John’s gospel are very interesting. They come to represent the assembly, and that is a fine thing that there is something in this scene that represents the assembly for the heart of Christ. Persons that have been under the domination of sin, persons that have failed in every responsible avenue of their lives, the Lord Jesus can take them on and meet it all and turn them into worshippers, and then the surprising thing is that we come to find that God has a longing. We think of our side and our longings but the Lord says, “The Father seeks …

worshippers”. That is the God we have. We are thinking all the time of ourselves, but God is thinking of us in blessing. He says, ‘I want something for My heart’. And the fact that He can take up a poor sinner and turn him into a worshipper shows the God we have, made known in Jesus. We sang about that life of suffering and the depth of woe

to which our Saviour went. So what a gospel John’s is, showing how He can satisfy every heart and turn them into worshippers, turn them into enthusiastic believers. And so John says that if all the things that Jesus did were written, the world itself would not contain the books.

Do you feel like that when you look into the things of Christ and get a touch from Christ in glory—that the world itself is not great enough to contain what could be written about Him?

I read in Philippians because Paul is writing to a company of believers in a city where he had been put in the gaol and smitten with stripes and treated roughly and harshly. Why? Because he was preaching the gospel. Do you think such times are over? I do not think so. We are so confined in our thoughts and our knowledge of things. How little we know of what is going on in this world in respect of the testimony of our Lord. I think down the centuries there has always been some representation of the sufferings of Christ in His people. There are persons today who are not available to us but they are available to the Lord, and they are going through sufferings. We ought to think of them. They are going through sufferings for the name of Christ. Maybe we cannot walk with them, perhaps they are out of our range geographically, but under the eye of God I think the life of Jesus is being portrayed every day in the lives of His people. Well, that is what happened at Philippi. Paul had come into this city and was portraying the life of Christ, and the devil wanted to obliterate it. He would do that today if he could. He is not working quite that way publicly in the western nations, where the Spirit of God has operated in the recovery, and is still working. But the devil is still working and there are places under the eye of God where Christians are suffering physically because of the

name of Jesus. Let us not forget that, and let us remember in our prayers that God is thinking of all men.

What is available to us is the area where the Spirit of God is working, particularly in the recovery, and what we need today is to take on another kind of suffering, particularly in the area in which we are. We know some of these sufferings in those near and dear to us. But let us think of all our brethren in relation to the sufferings of the Christ—bereavements, husbands being parted from wives, children from parents—and the devil will not let up. He thought he had obliterated the whole testimony as to the assembly in this area, but he could not. He was up against a stronger than he and God in His mercy brought about just a little revival in a few; let us value it, dear brethren, let there be no compromise with us. Let us go on in the truth and maintain it at this time and work it out in our affections with one another.

“By this shall all know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love amongst yourselves”, John 13: 35. That is collective—that is what the Lord is looking for.

That is what was found at Philippi in a suffering company and Paul speaks about it and he also speaks of the gospel. There was something in the assembly at Philippi which represented the best for Christ. The pearl which the Lord had looked for and paid everything for was represented in the Gentile assembly at Philippi, and Paul says, “I long after you”. Paul at this point, I think, represents the longings of Christ in regard to the best in a feeling way in regard to the assembly. Philippians sets out the feelings of the apostle as no other epistle does, as if he was always free to let his feelings go in regard to those beloved brethren at Philippi, in relation to the defence of the glad tidings and the working out of the choicest things Scripture unfolds. And that is where the unfolding of divine thoughts will come, where affections towards one another are so free because of love for Christ. I suppose there is not a setting in Scripture like Philippians 2 where there is this wonderful unfolding of the way the Lord came in a bondman’s form and went on in obedience even unto death, and that the death of the cross. He went to the extremity of things, and Paul was prepared to go the way of suffering.

So he binds the hearts of the brethren together and says, What I have been through in relation to you has made me love you all the more and I long to see you. Well, I think that is what the Lord is promoting, not only here but universally, that we long to see one another. Paul uses some wonderful language as he speaks of the things that are “more excellent” and he says, “God is my witness how long after you all in the bowels of Christ Jesus”. That is a very touching expression, is it not? as if all the inwards of Paul’s affections stood in relation to those brethren at Philippi. Can we translate that into what is current today when the whole breakdown is around us and with us? Can we carry affections like that in our hearts for the saints in Auckland, shall we say, that we long after them in the bowels of Christ Jesus? What a fine standard of affection that is, expressed in the longings of a heart that appreciated the sufferings of Christ—because that is how all came about.

Then Paul speaks of one of them. He says he sent to them Epaphroditus “my brother and fellow-workman and fellow-soldier, but your messenger and minister to my need”. They had ministered to Paul and he is telling them how he appreciated it. He uses simple language that finds its expression in longings and affections going out to these

brethren at Philippi as he says to Epaphroditus, “He had a longing desire after you all, and was distressed because ye had heard that he was sick”. This is the pearl, this is the assembly.

We want to translate these things, dear brethren, into actualities as to those we do know. Just a few maybe, but we value those we know who are walking in the light of the assembly and desiring to express it in the power of the Spirit. Paul speaks in this very epistle of “the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”. That is the only way we will get through. The supply lines are still open, the resources are still here in the power of the Spirit. And that is how Paul found an entrance into Europe by way of this suffering assembly and by expressing the Spirit of Jesus Christ. In the day we are in, dear brethren, we have nothing official whatever in relation to what belongs to the assembly. We cannot claim a thing. We wish to be the thing, but we cannot claim it, yet it is open to us all.

So I read the passage in Chronicles. David was in rejection in the cave of Adullam, corresponding with the present time. Three of these men went down to the cave of Adullam.

How near they were to David! Beloved brother and sister, how near are you to the heart of Christ to know His longings today? That would be a challenge, would it not, to all of us—to keep near to Christ, to know what longings fill His heart, and whether we are prepared to do anything to meet them? David longed and said, “Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is in the gate!” And they broke through. Is there one mighty man here today? Well, it may be, but here we have three, and I think it has a connection with what is collective. “Where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them”, Matthew 18: 20.

I think if there are two or three in a locality who are thinking of the longings of Christ, then they will break through all the Philistine line of things that has grown up over the centuries—

the traditional line of things—they will break through in the power of the light of the recovery and they will satisfy the longings of Christ.

So let us carry on, dear brethren, in outward weakness, maybe two or three in a locality, but sufficient to work out something in connection with the assembly. What if it is very small, if it meets the longings of the heart of Christ? And that is the thing, is it not? And the gate of Bethlehem? It means that David was going back to his youth, to the youthful freshness that marked him at Bethlehem where he was born. You find that in Psalm 132. What was David thinking of then? Was he thinking of himself in his afflictions? He was thinking for God. He says, “Remember for David all his affliction; How he swore unto Jehovah, vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob—I will not come into the tent of my house, I will not go up to the couch of my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids, Until I find out a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob”. And then he says, “Behold, we heard of it at Ephratah, we found it in the fields of the wood”—that was Bethlehem. David is going back right to his youth to say how he had longed for the things of God. He longed for a place for the ark. He said, “Arise, Jehovah, into thy rest”. Oh, can we forget our suffering, can we forget our limitations, and put all our energies into finding a place for the ark, so that in our localities we are going to see that something of the assembly comes into view so that Christ can have a resting place? It is the ark of God involving all God’s best thoughts as they centre in the ark, and it should find a place collectively just where we are set.

That was David, and do you know what David represents in Scripture? He represents the very best in personality. It says that all Israel loved David. In other words, all the saints love Christ. What it would be in every one of our localities if we came around to that, that all our afflictions might pale into insignificance when it is a question of finding something in which Christ will find His rest in the centre of His own. What a triumphant composition Psalm 132

is! Read it at your leisure. Then we have David’s longings in the cave of Adullam for a drink of the water of Bethlehem. Well, may they be answered to, for His name’s sake.

Address at Auckland
4 June 1988