"SPEND AND BE SPENT"

“SPEND AND BE SPENT”

Romans 8: 31 - 32; Isaiah 49: 3 - 4; 2 Corinthians 12: 14 - 19

One has the desire, beloved brethren, that each one of us might be stimulated more fully to commit, without reserve, all that we have to the divine interests. One speaks for oneself, but I am sure most of us often feel humbled at how much there is with us that we reserve — reserve for ourselves. But one would desire that the Lord might increase the desire with us to be here for Him, with less reserve. One looks with hope at the potentialities there are with us in what the Apostle Peter speaks of as “the rest of our time” (1 Peter 4: 2). Even the oldest have that. How long they will have it no one knows; but they have that — “the rest of our time.” When one thinks of the young men and women, and the children, who can measure what there would be for God if there was less reserve in our committal to Him in all we have! The Apostle Peter said, “The time past suffices to have done the will of the Gentiles” (1 Peter 4: 3). He says that it is sufficient, whether it be long, as, alas! it is with some, or whether it be short. The time past suffices to have done the will of the Gentiles.

And so I thought we might, with the Lord’s help, speak of that which would influence the heart towards the spending that the Apostle Paul speaks of. He says of himself that he is ready to spend, and be utterly spent. There is a man who, under certain influence, says he is ready to be utterly spent. The word “utterly” implies that he will not hold back anything. That is not reached on the line of the sense of duty. It could never be reached like that. As one has said, “Not the sense of right and duty, but the sight of peerless worth.” That is what effects things for God. The whole period of the law showed that the sense of duty, the laying things down as a legal obligation, did not secure what God desired. God said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.” God required it all, but the sense of legal duty never secured it for God or man.

And so one would like to speak of what will secure it, and what did secure it in the Apostle Paul’s own life, and ways, and spirit, and steps. What secured it was what we have read in the second and third scriptures. There was, first, the knowledge of what God had done. It was the knowledge in his soul in power of the One who did not spare His own Son, and it was the constraint of the love of Christ leading him to come to a certain judgment. He says, “We thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5: 14 - 15). He judged that as under the influence of the love of Christ — the One who, in the scripture in Isaiah, says, “I have spent.” So that we have in the first scripture what God has spent, speaking reverently, and we have in the second scripture the Lord as the great spender, and, under the influence of these two wonderful powers we have the apostle saying that he is ready to be utterly spent. That is the secret of anything that has ever been for God, or that ever will be. That is the secret of all true devotion to Him now, and that is what we are really seeking to reach, that there might be with us increased devotion. Someone has said that if there was more devotion there would be more gift amongst us, and I am sure that is right. Gift springs out of devotion; it springs out of desire; it is given as the answer to desire . The line of it is devotion, and the secret of devotion is an apprehension of the love of God and the love of Christ.

There is another passage which speaks of spending. You remember the prodigal son? It says that he had spent all. That is the position of the sinner. It is the position of man as having received something of God, for man received something. There was one thing man had at the outset, and that was some knowledge of God. As it says in Romans, “When they knew God.” There was a time when man as a race had some true knowledge of God. But all that God gave to man, as set forth in the prodigal, was spent, and he spent in self-gratification. It says, “He wasted his substance in riotous living; and when he had spent all.” I do not know all who are here; there may be young men or young women who, in their hearts, are looking that way, who chafe under the restraint of what is of God, as the prodigal did, and who look forward to the moment when they will be able to spend for themselves — spend all, spend their time, spend their affections, on objects of their own choosing; spend, perhaps, what money they may have, as they will. But what the Lord shows is that this man, in travelling that road, found himself eventually with the swine in the field. That is, he found himself in the world with all its uncleanness, and fain to fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and he began to be in want. I would just call the attention of the youngest mind and heart here tonight to this — that, in giving up divine restraint, and seeking to spend for yourselves, is the road to the field where the swine are. It is the road to the husks which the swine eat. It is the road to want.

Leaving that for the moment, let us look at this scripture I have read. The Apostle Paul says, “He that spared not His own Son.” I would like to suggest a little as to God as One who spent, as the great spender of what He had, for scripture suggests the thought of God being rich. To spend, we must have something. No one can spend if he has nothing; but scripture shows that God was rich — rich in unfathomable, immeasurable ways. The Apostle Paul, as he thinks of it, says, “O the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge, of God” (Romans 11: 33). What a wonderful store of wisdom and of knowledge God has! Better than money, is it not? Even in this life wisdom is the principal thing, says Solomon. “Therefore, get wisdom.” But God’s riches, His treasures of wisdom and knowledge — think of them all!

I wanted to speak of God in connection with His own Son, implying that the Lord Jesus Christ, as man here, was God’s. Apart from what God has, as God, in His omnipotent power, and wisdom, and knowledge, the heart is directed in this passage to God’s own Son, meaning, dear brethren, that the Lord Jesus Christ, as man, was peculiarly for the heart of God. He was His. The Lord Jesus, in taking a body and coming into this world, and being here as man, was here for the heart of God.

Think of how that was proved and expressed! It was expressed on many occasions. It was expressed at the Jordan. There you have the divine review of the life of Jesus up to that point. The thirty years in secret are under the eye of God and for the heart of God. It says, “He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men” (Luke 2: 52). But the message from heaven at the baptism in the Jordan is God expressing what joy, what pleasure, He found in His own Son; as He says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I have found My delight.” He found it in Him. ‘He is mine,’ He says. On the Mount of Transfiguration you have the review of the three and a half years, and the same word comes, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him,” God in that way endorsing that wonderful life, and claiming it as His. “My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” What a thing for our hearts to consider — those wonderful days, lived to God — the life of Jesus — the true wine that makes glad the heart of God and man, every day of that life bringing joy to the heart of God.

Those days are not all heaped together in the divine account. Every one of them has been observed; indeed, the Lord says that days would come when men would desire to see one of them, just one. But, as God looked down, every day was observed, and the memorial of all those days is laid up before God in the golden pot that has manna. In the hidden manna there is the divine enjoyment and appreciation of each one of those days. They were the days of heaven upon earth. Scripture separates them. John loves to separate them. He speaks of Jesus and says, “There stands One among you whom ye know not.” He is standing there, and John is looking at Him as standing there on one day. And then it says, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” (John 1: 29). And then it says, “The next day after John stood ... And, looking upon Jesus as He walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1: 35 - 36). And then it says again, “The third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,”

the thought being how each day is observed, even by God’s servants, even by those who love Him, the friends of the bridegroom who stand and greatly rejoice. God’s blessed eye and heart delighted to look upon each day, the eyes of the Lord being upon the righteous. How those eyes would rest from running to and fro as they had done, and still do amongst men, and rest in blessed complacency on that One who lived here for Him — “My beloved Son.” How that ear would bow continually, and indeed did, to listen to His prayer! Whenever Jesus spoke to heaven the Divine ear was attentive always, for the Lord could say, “I know that Thou hearest Me always.” All this and much more might be said, indicating what is meant by the word “His own Son.”

When you think of Abraham, he was a rich man. He represented God in that way. What wonderful reserves he had! It says he was rich in sheep, and in cattle, and in gold, and in silver, and in man servants, and in maid servants. But there was one thing he had more precious than them all. They might all go, and yet Abraham have something left more precious to his own heart, and that was Isaac. God told Abraham to offer Isaac, “Thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest,” and in the surrender of Isaac God was well pleased, because, dear brethren, He saw the expression of what was in His own heart — “that thou hast not withheld thine only son.” And so He said, “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven” (Genesis 22:17).

That was God’s delight in seeing a feeble representation in a man, of His own character.

That was what the apostle had behind those words when he said, “He that spared not His own Son.” He looked at Calvary. He adds, “but delivered Him up,” the word “delivered” meaning the deliberate act of God. It was no question of chance, there was nothing done hurriedly, but He was delivered by the deliberate counsel and foreknowledge of God, delivered as a sacrifice; but the thought is that God did it, and He spared not His own Son. He did not spare Him, the reference being to God’s own heart, not in connection with the feelings of the Lord Jesus Christ at the moment, but what it was to the heart of God. It says, “He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.” In the light of that, the apostle Paul says that there is nothing God will withhold. “How shall He not with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8: 32). A heart like that would withhold nothing. That is God. How little we appreciate it, one feels! How little the greatness of those words “His own Son” is really laid hold of!

The church is purchased; there again is the idea of spending. The church is purchased with the blood of His own. That blood was what Scripture calls “precious.” The value of it, the value of the life of Jesus, who can estimate it to God? Worthless, I know, in this world, but Peter loved to speak of it. He called it “precious” blood. That is not what man, or even our own hearts, apprehend, it is what is seen by the heart of God. “When I see the blood,” we read. The blood is for the eye of God, and it is infinitely precious, and it represents the spending of divine love. That is what we come to in the Supper each Lord’s day. The Lord Jesus would bring to our hearts, as the Mediator of the new covenant, the divine spending — God’s spending of that which was infinitely precious to His own heart — the precious blood.

Now, dear brethren, we come to the other side. We come to that which is expressed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and so in the scripture I have read in Isaiah 49 we find these words, “I have spent.” It is the Lord undoubtedly speaking as the true Israel. He says, “I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain” (Isaiah 49: 4). The point to which I want to call attention is that He presents himself to our hearts as spending. That He had whereof to spend, how we delight to recognise! For, dear brethren, He was unsearchably rich; coming into this world, I know, in poverty, in this scene as, in man’s account, having nowhere to lay His head, having to say, “Show me a penny” — yet every heart would gladly see that He was unsearchably rich, that He had whereof to spend, and He spent it. He did not withhold it. It is the same idea as “He that spared not His own Son.” So when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ in manhood you see the One who was here in this world spending everything. He sold all that He had. No human heart could ever compass all that He had, but He spent it.

He sold, and He bought.

The word I read in Isaiah says, “I have spent my strength.” Have you ever thought (I am sure every heart has thought) of His strength, spent here for God, spent here for man? One loves to think of His strength, never weakened — the strength of that precious vessel, that holy body, never weakened an iota by the influence and effect of sin. There never was in that holy vessel a trace of human weakness that arose from sin. How much we suffer in that way God only knows; from our own sin and from the sin of our forefathers visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation; but in that blessed vessel, the Lord Jesus Christ, that holy body, there never was a trace, from the beginning to the end, of the weakening of His strength through the effect of sin. But He spent His strength. Think of Him at the well of Samaria! He had spent His strength. It says, “Being wearied with His journey.” Spent for what? Spent for himself? Never at any time! He must needs go through Samaria. Why? Because there is a heart there that can be a worshipper of God, that can add to the chorus of worship that will fill the heart of God through eternity. That soul must be found, that heart must be sought and found for God, even though He be wearied with His journey. On the other hand, there is a longing soul, someone who wants something. She knows not what, but she is longing for something to satisfy her affections. His blessed feet must go there to minister living water, that she may thirst no more for ever, and He was “wearied with His journey.”

Then on one of those wondrous days in the beginning of Mark we have the Lord again spending His strength. If you read the greater part of that first chapter of Mark you will see a most wondrous sight. You will see one day, beginning in the morning with prayer to God, and filled in in a way that makes any one of us ashamed of ourselves — a day that puts every other day that anyone has ever lived into oblivion. At the end of it it says, “At even, when the sun did set ... “ when everyone else was finished, for man goes forth to his labour until the evening, and then he returns. “At even, when the sun did set, they brought unto Him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with demons.” They laid them in the streets, and it says He healed many of their diseases, and He cast out many demons, right into the night; spending His strength, dear brethren, not for himself, but for God and for man.

We travel on in our thoughts. He is coming up to the grave of Lazarus. What for? He is facing the hatred of man, so that Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (John 11: 16). What is He going for? The glory of God. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,” He says. For the outshining of what God is; for the ministering to those in sorrow; for the healing of the broken-hearted, He comes up, carrying with Him the load of sorrow that He had accumulated already, for it says, “He carried our sorrows.” With the burden of sorrow weighing upon His blessed spirit, He comes there to take another sorrow; spending His strength.

We see Him at Gethsemane, sweating as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground; His strength going, not for himself, but for God. “Nevertheless,” He says, “not My will, but thine be done.”

We see Him at Calvary, in the midst of all the human suffering of the moment, spending His strength upon the thief. What for? To get a plant for the Paradise of God. He sees in that repentant man another plant for God’s blessed Paradise, to minister to the pleasure of God, and He will have him. He ministers to the dying need of a poor soul, I know, but He spends himself. We see Him in the weakness of death, crucified through weakness; His strength is spent for God, for man; spent, not because of any inherent weakness, as men have it, that must bring death, for it says, “He weakened my strength in the way.” That blessed strength of Jesus would have endured eternally as man here on earth, but He accepted the weakening of it by the hand of God. “He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened My days.” The Lord Jesus accepted that, for the service of God, and for the eternal blessing of man.

But He went on spending in other ways. We cannot speak of it tonight in detail, but He spent. It says, “He sold all.” Indeed, what the Supper brings to us is that He spent himself. “This is My body,

which is given for you.” His precious body represents himself. “Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it,” and behind that word “Himself” is everything that He possessed. Indeed, not only can the church take up that language, but each one of us can take it up. Each individual can take up this wonderful theme — “The Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” as the language of one’s soul, as well as of the whole church. He is spending, spending for the church, spending for each one of us. That is what the apostle has in mind when he says, “The love of Christ constrains us.” That is what helped him to produce that judgment — “that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves.” Those are the two great elements connected with the Supper. There is one other open to us, in the box. I do not say it is part of the Supper, but it is open to us to begin to spend. It is open to us to begin to contribute to the interests of God, as affected by what God has given, and by what Christ has given. There is the opportunity given to us to contribute.

That brings me to the apostle again. One loves to come to the Apostle Paul, because Christianity finds its living expression in a man like ourselves. He belongs to us. He says, “All things are yours, Paul.” We love to come to Paul and see the working out of what is to be seen in Christianity. Here is a man who says, “I am ready to be utterly spent; I am not holding back.” God knows, it is under the eye of God. It is not that we want to talk about it to men, but God knows. “I am ready to be utterly spent.” It was not always so with him. He had something to spend. What did he have? Well, he had what all of us have. He had a body, and he had a mind, and a heart; he had affections, and he had time, and sometimes he had even some money. But whatever he had he says, “I am not withholding anything.” Not a thing! As I said, it was not always so. We think of days when his body was used very differently; when his mind was engaged with this: “I verily thought I ought to do many things contrary to this Name;” when his heart, instead of being filled with love to God, and to the church, and to each individual, was filled with insolence and persecution, breathing out threatening and slaughter; when those hands were used to hale men and women to prison; when at those feet were laid the clothes of the young men who stoned Stephen; and when those lips were giving consent to it.

But I had in mind to speak a little of one more thing, as teaching us what the Lord Jesus had, for, as we have observed, we can only spend what we have. What did Jesus have? As a man here on earth He had the most wonderful thing of all. Not only did He have strength, but He enjoyed the unclouded light and favour of God. There never was, in the whole of that pathway to Calvary, a shadow. How much we know about shadows over our soul — the sense of darkness and shadow through the effect of sin. But the Lord Jesus sojourned here never having a shadow, able always to lift up His eyes to heaven. He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father.” Not a shadow! He had the sense always of God being with Him. It says, “For God was with Him.” What a wonderful spectacle for our hearts to see! Like Abraham and Isaac, the two went together; and from Bethlehem to Calvary God was with Him.

Then, dear brethren, He had the divine ear. He had the ear of God, for He said, “I know that thou hearest Me.” This represents untold wealth. I am sure that if our hearts were true in this world they would say, “Indeed, it is worth more than all things that this world can produce to have the favour of God, to have God with us, to have the divine ear.” Such the Lord Jesus had absolutely; and He spent it! He did not keep it for himself. It is wonderful to see that He spent it. When He gave himself He spent all that He had. I am speaking of what He had as man. If we turn to Calvary again we see it spent. Instead of blessed light and God shining without a cloud into His soul, He goes into the darkness — the darkness of the time of sacrifice that is referred to in Abraham’s day, the horror of a great darkness. He is in the darkness. Instead of God being with Him, we have those terrible words, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He is forsaken. Instead of the divine ear always attentive, it says, “I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not” (Psalm 22: 2). What is He doing? Spending — spending the greatest treasure a man can have, what He alone as man did have, for none other ever had it as He had it.

But here is a man in 2 Corinthians12 who says that there is not a thing withheld. He could show his hands to the elders at Ephesus and say, “These hands ministered to my necessities; I have not been chargeable to you.” Night and day he worked, so as not to be chargeable to them, making no claim on anyone, receiving at times the bounty of saints, not because he wanted it, but only because he wanted it put to their account. “These hands have ministered to my necessities night and day.” If a little money accrued to him, it was shared by those that were with him. Not only for his own interests, but there were those with him less able to work than he was — Timothy’s often infirmities, Trophimus left sick, others of the Lord’s servants needing to be brought on their way, such a man as Apollos. All this was in the apostle’s heart when he had anything. Those blessed feet, beautiful feet, corresponding with Christ’s, going from house to house, as it says in Acts 20, not to hale men and women to prison, but to carry into each house the knowledge of God, and the love of God, and the love of Christ. His heart open towards God, bestowed on the saints, even if there was no return — “though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.” But he went on, and held nothing back; spending his time, night and day. Whatever arose, Paul was available. The brethren knew they could count on him, that he would not keep anything back. His mind — he says to the Colossians, “Set your mind on things above.” He could not say that, if his was not there. His mind was given to the things of God. He says in Timothy, “Meditate on these things.” Only one who had done it could speak like that.

And so we have the picture of a man — not a picture, but a living reality of a man — held by the love of God and by what God had contributed, the spending of divine love, the love of God, and the love of Christ, so held by it, so constrained, that he was delivered from the dominating principle of the world, and that is selfishness. What Satan put into the human heart, and what is the governing factor of the whole world, is self — “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.” Lust is that I want something for myself. Pride is that I adorn myself with it when I have got it — I call attention to myself. There is nothing else but that in the world. What a solemn indictment! “All that is in the world,” says the Apostle John. Those two principles are enthroned in every human heart, but they were not enthroned in Paul’s. He says, “I am ready to spend and be utterly spent for your sakes,” delivered from the dominion of this world. How? By taking it up because it is right to do it? No. He is so affected by the sight of peerless worth that, his heart dipping into the ocean of divine love, his soul constrained by the love of Christ, he is held here for God, and for Christ, and for the brethren, and for man, without any reserve.

Now he says, “Not only myself, but I sent to you Titus, and with him a brother.” “Did Titus make gain of you? Walked we not in the same spirit? Walked we not in the same steps?” Do not let us think that is apostolic, and that it is beyond every brother and sister, weak and feeble and insignificant as we are. It says, “I sent Titus, and with him a brother.” We do not know his name, but it says, “Walked we not in the same spirit, and in the same steps?” Timothy is the man for our day. He says, “I have nobody like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how you get on” — not how he gets on. Timothy was a weak man naturally, but he says, ‘There is this concern with Timothy — he cares for you, how you get on.’ I love to think of Gaius. The Apostle Paul says, “Gaius, mine host, and of the whole assembly” (Romans 16: 23). What is wrapped up in that? Here is a man who has a house, and he does not keep anything back. “Mine host and of the whole assembly.” John takes it up in beautiful language, “The elder unto the well-beloved Gaius, who I love in the truth. Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth ... Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren and to strangers” (3 John 1-5). Above everything else he wanted for Gaius, he desired that he should prosper and be in health. He was a man that could be trusted with prosperity and health. Why? Because he was a man who had been delivered from the dominion of self. Self did not govern him. He had a home, and he used it for the saints. The apostle desired that God might prosper him and give him health to continue, not in the line of selfishness and self-seeking, but to continue to present to God, under the eye of God, something of His own blessed character, something of the features of Christ.

What a thing it is to think of what God sees, in this world! I know there is another side. What does He see? He sees everything, for everything is naked and open. If we think on the side of what is evil, what a spectacle for the eye of God! But on the other hand, what a joy it is to think of what God sees going on all over the world — the expression in life of himself, of His own character, of the features of Christ. You and I may contribute very little to it; I am sure one would feel that. It takes the whole church to express the glory of God. It takes the whole church to be the body of Christ in its fulness, to express all that Christ is. But it is given to us, and it is true of us in the measure in which God’s unbounded love and the love of Christ have really been operative with us, to fill in our day here expressing what is of God. How much God sees, unseen by the world, hidden away, of spending — spending time, spending strength, spending affections, spending money (may be), in some instances spending all, through the effect and influence of the love of God, who spared not His own Son. God sees every bit of that. We come across a little of it sometimes, but God sees every bit of it that is on earth. It is the only thing that makes this scene habitable. Scripture speaks of the habitable parts of this earth. The only habitable parts where the delights of Christ can be, are where what is of God is lived and expressed in the saints.

The Lord help us. One only desires to stimulate the earnest longing with each one of us that the rest of our days might be more definitely and unreservedly held here for God, and all that we have as well. May it be so, for His name’s sake!

W.J.H.