GALILEE – WHERE DEFICIENCIES ARE MET
A. C. Craig
These two scriptures refer to Galilee. It is remarkable that John, who we have been taught writes his gospel for the last days, should begin in chapter 1 and end in chapter 21 with references to Galilee. We have read about the third day, which was a marriage day, but the first day was occupied with John the Baptist’s testimony—“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29); that is the first great factor in John’s testimony; then, too, baptising with the Holy Spirit. John had a remarkable testimony to bear to Christ as the One who would remove every trace of sin from before the eye of God, and that is the situation today; there is not a trace of sin before the eye of God; Christ has been sufficient to remove it. He will remove it practically soon when He comes in judgment. Then the next great thing is that He is not only the One who has died to remove the sin of the world, but in glory He is baptising with the Holy Spirit; that is John’s testimony. Then the second day is marked by the Lord moving out and He moves into Galilee; that is in chapter 1. “On the morrow”, that is the second day (John 1: 43), “he would go forth into Galilee”. It occurred to me, beloved brethren, that unless our activities and testimony are Galilean they will fail of the divine objective. It seems to me that everything must come under the Galilean character, and that is for the last days.
John makes much of Galilee to bring out the Lord’s service to His own where there are deficiencies. We have come to accept Galilee to mean the scene of reproach, and I do not set that aside, but I have a thought that Galilee, in John, would be an area, a sphere, which the Lord comes into and manifests His glory. The side of reproach remains; that is Matthew, which is the fulfilment of Moses taking the tent and pitching it outside the camp afar off, afar off from the camp—notice that. The Lord defines the position in Matthew, He goes there first. That must always be the case; if any position is to be defined the Lord must do it, and so it is afar off from the camp that Moses pitched his tent and called it the tent of meeting. The golden calf had been smashed up and strewn in the water; that did not satisfy Moses. You might have said, ‘Well, why did he need to do that inasmuch as the golden calf had been already removed, and the people drank the water; why did he take his tent up and pitch it outside?’ Once that position has been defined that is it; it remains that way, a new position opens up. That is the thought, once Ephesus has given up its glory, you see, that position is gone; there is a new position, and that is Matthew, far off from the camp. You know, Galilee is about eighty geographical miles from Jerusalem. Think of that! The Lord went there, and the disciples had to go there before they saw Him, both in Matthew and Mark; He defined the position; that remains. If you want to find the Lord today you have to go outside the camp, to go forth to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.
In John, as I said, it seems to me that this provides at the present time an area which, while the reproach remains outwardly, gives the Lord opportunity, though with limitations. It is not Jerusalem with all its antiquity and all its divine favour; it is not that; it is a despised area, small and limited. It is remote; that word was used in connection with David when he had to go into exile because of Absalom; he came to the remote house and stayed there (2 Samuel 15: 17). But John gives you the idea of a sphere where the Lord is not hindered; He is sufficient in John. He is great enough in John in limited conditions, in the conditions of Galilee, to manifest His glory. I am impressed with that. I trust you will appreciate that; the Lord is sufficient in His fulness to bring that out in conditions that are Galilean; not in Jerusalem, but in Galilee. May we be encouraged, dear brethren, by that thought. Whatever might be the smallness, the Lord is not hindered. He can find a way to make Himself and His glory known. There is nothing to be coveted like that, to have the presence of the Lord, and to have some fresh impression from time to time of His glory—He “manifested his glory”.
Now deficiency marks these two incidents that took place in Galilee. The wine was deficient and His mother said to Him, “They have no wine”. Then in the other scripture, “Children, have ye anything to eat? They answered him, “No”—deficiency. That is when He brings in His fulness. What I want to say especially is that certain similarities exist between these scriptures; so far apart, you might say, but there is this similarity that I want to speak about, and that is that nothing goes right until things come under the direction of Christ. That is the question, beloved brethren; whether we are prepared in these times, at the end, in Galilean conditions, to accept the direction of Christ. Our social occasions test us. There are marriages, and they test us. Are they Galilean? That would be the question. Are our marriages Galilean, or are they tending towards the world? If so, there will be deficiency. These occasions test us; parties, and things like that, they test us. The great thing is to bring everything under the character of Galilee, otherwise there will be deficiency. It says that the mother of Jesus was there at this marriage; “And Jesus also, and his disciples, were invited to the marriage”.
It seems to me as if the feast-master, or whoever was responsible, had said to Jesus, ‘We have got your mother coming to the wedding, but we could make room for you too’. That will not do. That is what it looks like, “and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also, and his disciples, were invited to the marriage”. There is deficiency in that.
If you are going to have a marriage I would say, Ask Jesus to help you with the invitations.
You can be sure there will be no deficiency with the people He will invite along. Bring Him into everything; come under His direction immediately. There is a concern in many places as to our marriages, and what they have become. May they be Galilean; may there be plenty of water; that is what the Lord said. She said, “They have no wine”. He says, so to speak, It is not a question of wine, it is a question of water. There will be no wine according to Him if there is no water; “the mother of Jesus says to him, They have no wine. Jesus says to her, What have I to do with thee, woman? mine hour has not yet come”. Think of that; that is what He refers to. Some might say, ‘Fancy saying a thing like that at a wedding, talking about His hour at a wedding’. You can hear the critics saying, ‘That is not a thing to say at a wedding; you say all the nice things at a wedding’. He refers to His death immediately—“mine hour has not yet come”. Why did He refer to that? For the sake of the water. As was quoted today, when the soldier pierced His side immediately came there out both blood and water.
There are two sources in John whence the water comes. That might not be exactly true; but there are two ways in which the water comes to us, that might be more accurate. The water for washing comes from His side, that is the point, that there might be the full gain of that death applied by the Spirit’s power to us. I got that from Mr. Darby. The Lord having died before His side was smitten brings out the full value of His death. And so the Spirit will use that water, coming from His side, that we might be washed. Now John gives you that. In chapter 13 He washed the disciples’ feet; that was not drinking water, that was the application of His death to our feet here that defilement might be removed. The water for drinking in John comes from a glorified Christ, comes from Christ in glory—chapter 7; it speaks there of the Spirit, “for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (John 7: 39).
In John 4 He is sitting by the well, that suggests a glorified position, giving the living water to the woman, which springs up to its own height, its own level. From a glorified Christ it rises back up to that height; that is the idea in a believer, it rises back to that height. But the water for washing comes from the death of Christ. I want to make that distinction, dear brethren, that the full value of the Lord’s death is involved in our being washed and that is the point here. These six stone water-vessels are standing there, “according to the purification of the Jews”. The Lord says, “Fill the water-vessels with water”. If I could, dear brethren, that is what I would like to do today, fill you with water. That is the secret of there being any wine at all, any success, any making the occasion what it should be before the Lord and for the divine pleasure. ‘Fill them with water’; that is His direction. There are two items to His direction—“Fill the water-vessels with water”; then the second one is,
“Draw out now, and carry it to the feast-master”. These are the two items that constitute the Lord’s direction. I would myself like to be more one who is coming under the Lord’s direction. I see a lot of things, I must confess I see a lot of things, and they do not seem to me to be the Lord’s direction. We might as well, dear brethren, look these matters in the face.
There are a lot of things about our occasions, festival occasions, social occasions, and it seems to me they are not the Lord’s direction. I say there is exercise about it everywhere. We should take these matters up, and be sure that everything we do is Galilean, and is coming under the direction of Christ.
“Fill the water-vessels with water”. I want to draw attention to these servants; they are not the feast-master, not the bridegroom, they are servants with no social or official status, none at all, just servants. They are just there, they would not be invited to the wedding, to the marriage, they are just there to do the needful thing. It says of them, when the question comes up, when the feast-master did not know whence the wine was, “but the servants knew”—
those who were prepared to take on just what needed to be done without any status. They knew; they knew where the well was; they knew where the water was. That is a fine thing.
Everybody in the locality knows where to get the water. You have no outward status, but you are in the secret of where the water has come from. Indeed, you have an understanding with the Lord. These servants, I believe, were fully with Him; they were not out of it; they were with Him in what He was doing, like the little boy in chapter 6. When the Lord knew that that little boy was present with his five loaves and two fishes He said, “Make the men sit down”, (John 6: 10). He did not ask the boy if he would surrender his five loaves and two fishes; the boy had an understanding with Him; they had an understanding together, the Lord of glory and the little boy, the unofficials. It is the same here with these unofficial servants. Oh to be shed of all our officialism and to be those who are accustomed to drawing from the source of the water! It is wonderful, dear brethren, and let us not forget that the water for purification comes through the death of Christ, His smitten side; that helps us to understand and appreciate the water of cleansing, what cleansing from defilement means.
“The feast-master calls the bridegroom, and says to him, Every man sets on first the good wine, and when men have well drunk, then the inferior”. That is what is said in the world; people who get drunk do not know what they are drinking. I once sat beside a man in a plane and he was so drunk that I said to the hostess, ‘You have no business giving him that’. She said to me he was not getting liquor at all, he was only getting water. He had consumed so much that he did not know what he was getting. That is not here; this wine will not make anybody drunk; the wine that He provides will not intoxicate you, not the wine that Jesus provides. It is quite easy, you know, to lose your senses. We might have those occasions, pitiful to say, and you might lose your senses at them, might be overcome. But this, which He is producing, the joy that He is producing out of the water, the joy that He is producing, real spiritual joy, will not intoxicate anybody; it is not fermented; it is pure from the administration of Christ. Oh to come under His direction! Would to God that that was true of us all in every place, that we are prepared to accept the direction of Christ. The feast-master did not know; the bridegroom was astonished, but there is a system where the Lord is acting, and these unofficial servants are in the secret of where the true joy comes from, the true millennial joy—that is what it refers to, it points on to the millennium when Christ will be in complete control, and we want that, surely, in our lives because we are in the Galilean days.
It is a wonderful term; I would not mind being called a Galilean. The two visitors from heaven in Acts 1 called the disciples “men of Galilee”. There is this about it, it is distinctive from the general run of Jerusalem to be Galilean; it is reproach maybe, but you can be in this sphere unofficially, in this sphere where the Lord is active, and He is bringing in the very best, not only producing wine where there was none, but producing a better quality of wine than ever before; that is what He can do. “Of his fulness we all have received”; you might say, wine upon wine, grace upon grace. Such is Jesus in this gospel. “This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed on him”.
Think of that! There is further attachment and affection to Christ, as was said today. It comes back to that all the time, that you find a greater place in your heart for Him. Every visitation, everything He does, but increases His value, His preciousness to your heart; they “believed on him”.
In the next scripture it is still Galilee, the sea of Tiberias. You get seven referred to, two not named. “Simon Peter says to them, I go to fish. They say to him, We also come with thee”. They were all in it. They all said that, ‘We will go with you’. There might have been some more prominent than others, but they set on the great proposal, “I go to fish”. Do not forget you complied; you said, ‘We go with you’. We are all in that. Now the disciples were not called from the fishing in this gospel. I have pondered that. In the other gospels they are called from the fishing, but not in John. So it is hardly right to
Say they went back to their fishing. They take up something that is not mentioned in John at the beginning. It seems to me that John, including himself, would intensify the deflection, and it says, “They went forth and that night took nothing”—“nothing”— deficiency. Think of that; it was just an occasion, so to speak, for the Lord to come in. How fine that is! May we keep to the Galilean thought, and take care that there is nothing about our externals that would betray the great thought of baptism and the Lord’s supper. These things are this side of the rapture. I might say there is only one marriage on the other side of the rapture, and one feast.
In the first chapter we read we have the marriage; in this section we have the feast. Both are brought together in Revelation 19—the marriage supper of the Lamb. Wonderful! But that is the only one on the other side of the rapture. All our marriages, all our social occasions, all that we carry on, is this side of the rapture, and in that respect we dare not infringe on the truth of our baptism, or the truth of the Lord’s table; we must not do that. Always keep in mind that we are this side of the rapture. But how wonderful when the true marriage comes, the true feast comes, the marriage supper of the Lamb.
They had no fish, nothing to eat. “Children, have ye anything to eat?” “No”, they said. What a confession! That provides Him with the opportunity to say to them, “Cast the net at the right side of the ship and ye will find”. How often we fish from the wrong side of the ship; “the right side”, that is His direction, that is the direction of Christ. You can be sure that if you do not obey His directions you will be on the wrong side of the ship. There was no protest; that is one thing about them. They might have said, ‘Well, you are a stranger; we do not know who you are; we know
this lake perfectly well; we have fished on this lake often and often; we know it better than you’. No, they are prepared immediately to accede to His directions, Beloved brethren, I call for this, for my own heart, my own manner of life, my household, all that belongs to me, to come under the direction of Christ. Otherwise there will be the confession, ‘No food, nothing to eat’. How pitiful! But as immediately coming under the direction of Christ we have—
“They cast therefore, and they could no longer draw it, from the multitude of fishes”. Think of that! How immediate, manifesting His glory. This is the third manifestation after He arose from the dead, the third one, the completion, so to speak. We are at the end, at the very end, and He is looking that His directions are complied with, are obeyed, in relation to all about us.
“That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved says to Peter, It is the Lord”. But it took the draught of fishes, even with John; it shows you how dim the position was. He was the first to detect that it was the Lord, but it took the draught of fishes; that is not normal; John should have known it was the Lord before the fishes appeared. It shows how you can get into a state that is difficult to penetrate; but through the Lord’s activities John said to Peter, “It is the Lord”. “When therefore they went out on the land, they see a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread”. This is sufficiency; this is His fulness. You think of Him, blessed Son of God, coming that eighty miles from Jerusalem; that is where He was last seen by them in Jerusalem, I suppose, in the upper room on two consecutive Lord’s days; now He has travelled eighty miles pursuing those wayward disciples, disciples who had gone off to fish.
Here He is, standing on the shore. What a tender, affectionate appeal on the part of Christ! There He is, giving directions and being obeyed by the disciples. They come off the boat on to the shore and there is a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it. Now it is true this was a parental address to them. I sometimes wonder if it was not a maternal address as well as paternal. We think it is a paternal address, maybe, but it is not going to hinder me from thinking it is a maternal address. There is nobody like a mother to consider for wet, bedraggled, hungry people; a mother thinks about that, stays up all night to look after the children, care for them; it is like the motherly activities of Christ. He presents Himself as a mother— “how often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not” (Matthew 23: 37; Luke 13: 34). He presents Himself as the mother.
You think of the tenderness of this, “a fire of coals”. Think of Him collecting the coals, getting them alight, catching the fish, and then bread laid thereon; I think He even toasted the bread for them; He took the bread off the fire too. Such is the tender touch of Christ. You prove that as you are prepared to come, under his directions. I am sure, beloved brethren, in these days, when there is so much free thinking and planning for ourselves, we should not live like the world, but live like Galileans. In these days we need to come under His directions, to prove His service. After all the preparation He says, “Come and dine”. Think of that! “Come and dine”. It is early morning. He spoke about His death at the marriage.
Someone might have said, ‘This is not language for the morning, it is breakfast’. No, “Come and dine”; it speaks of the marriage supper of the Lamb wonderful feast!—“Come and dine”.
Oh the dignity that attaches to the service of Christ and His presence and His preparations! “Jesus comes And takes the bread and gives it to them”—that is fine, is it not? He does not say, There it is, you can have it. No self-service with Him; no. He comes and takes it and gives it to them.
Tender Jesus! tender touch! Oh that we might know that and come under His direction. That is the way to it; I am sure of it.
I finish with a reference to how John closes his gospel with a view of Jesus journeying on, still in Galilee. We are not told He moved out of it at all. As the gospel closes there is no mention that He moves out of it, but He is journeying on, and the two disciples are following Him, Peter and John. He says to Peter, “Follow me”. Peter turns and sees John following, and he says, “Lord, and what of this man? Jesus says to him, If I will that he abide until I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me”. First of all He said, “Follow me”, then He said,
‘Follow thou me’; that is peremptory. Beloved brethren, unless we are prepared for this, to have our part in the ongoing testimony, soon to finish at the rapture, we shall not be prepared for the peremptory commands of Christ. There is no opportunity, no room, for my self-thinking, my self-planning, it is a question of Christ. Now I think these two disciples represent the movement of the testimony almost at the end. The two silver trumpets were made, and two trumpets were sounded for the moving of the first two camps (Numbers 10: 5, 6). Judah and Reuben, Judah in the east and Reuben in the south. The silver trumpets were sounded and they moved into place; they moved into their pathway ready to move. Now that is Peter—“Follow thou me”; that is the peremptory call from the two silver trumpets. But the other two camps, Ephraim and Dan, had no trumpets to summon them into the pathway; they moved in, they followed their brethren. Once the ark took its place in the centre with two tribes ahead, these two camps moved in behind without any command; that is John. Oh just to be ready, you see, to follow the example without any command.
The Lord did not give John any command, he just fell in line, he was following. That is the attitude, beloved brethren, a Galilean state and condition, that we obey the commands of Christ, and keep up to date; we follow Him in the pathway in view of the moment when He will come to take us. Well, may we be encouraged by the fact that, even though it is in Galilean conditions, there is the opportunity for Christ to manifest His glory. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Address at Buckhurst Hill
13 October 1990