HOW CRISES ARE MET
[p. 21] HOW CRISES ARE MET
1 Samuel 1:9-11; 1 Samuel 1:24; 1 Samuel 4:20-22; 1 Samuel 25:18-21; 1 Samuel 25:23-31.
You will find in these early books of the Old Testament, that is, in the typical books, that certain spiritual women are presented. This refers particularly to Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth and Samuel. They represent the work of God in the saints as a whole, developing into what are maternal feelings and affections. Indeed, all looks on to what God proposed to develop in our own time, which will soon be manifested in a concrete way, for God’s operations must ultimately culminate in what is concrete in the most absolute way. We have to be content with light under certain circumstances and conditions, but what God has in His mind to effect is to be substantial in the most absolute way. This is seen in the measurement of the holy city, which is said to be the bride, the Lamb’s wife. All these holy women point forward to this great result. In Joshua, as an illustration, what is presented are certain women who represent that which maintains what had already been introduced; they are Achsah and the daughters of Zelophehad. They represent that subjective feature that maintains what has already been introduced by God in power. The same feature appeared in the early part of Judges in one of the same women, Achsah, the daughter of Caleb.
But what comes out in 1 Samuel is a series of crises. Some of these appear and are met by these women of whom I have read. It is not a question of prominent leaders who have their place, and who indeed are marked off in a most distinct manner in this very book; but what is in view in these passages is that which is within the range of the saints as a whole, whether few or many, or within the range of any one [p. 22] of us. It is a question of how to meet a crisis according to God. The history of God’s people in the Old and New Testaments furnishes a long series of crises, some of them met according to God, some of them unmet.
I dwell on Hannah first, because she has a most distinct place in the book as a woman. What she represents, as I apprehend, is soul-history occasioned by the most excruciating rivalry. Who can stand before envy it is said. Her rival, Peninnah, Elkanah’s other wife, was bitter in her opposition, and evidently without cause, for she had children, but she represents the flesh, especially as brought close to us. There is nothing more unreasonable than the flesh acting against what is spiritual. The Lord says, “They hated me without a cause”, John 15:25 it was gratuitous; there was nothing whatever in Christ to incite opposition under any circumstances, but the flesh is such that its opposition is most unreasonable. The Scriptures abound with evidences of this, so that we should not be discouraged in finding it so; we need not expect anything else. If the flesh be unjudged in any of us, we shall be not only unreasonable, but most refractory, most intractable and obdurate to all overtures, even the most reasonable.
It was so here, and what made the opposition the more poignant was that it came out more particularly as they went up to the house of God. Why should Peninnah be so opposed to an inoffensive woman deprived of what her heart cherished? God had deprived her of it, why should she be the object of opposition and persecution? And yet as they went up to the house of God her rival persecuted her. There is not a word as to Hannah’s retort, she makes no defence, but she felt the persecution most keenly; she was a woman “in bitterness of soul”; she was a woman of secret history with God. She was a wonderful saint in the making, one of the most remarkable [p. 23] in the scripture. The process was severe in the extreme, but it was all gone through with the knowledge of God; she said later in her song that He was “a God of knowledge”. 1 Samuel 2:3.
One might enumerate many things of which He is said to be the God. One of them is that He is a God of knowledge, and particularly as to what goes on in the hearts of believers — “the heart-knowing God”. Acts 15:8. And so He weighs things. “By him”, Hannah says, “actions are weighed”. 1 Samuel 2:3. He knew what went on in her lonely heart, what sorrow, and what a cup was hers! But it was a refining time, and it would culminate in a crisis being met in a most noble fashion in the end, in the current crying need being supplied in the most striking manner.
So one would invite your attention to this history, so that each of us might see that it is within our range to meet a crisis and to act in it for God and supply what may be lacking, so that the work of God should proceed, and all that is essential to it should be present. It is for each of us to determine what may be required in our respective spheres of responsibility. Let no one assume that he has none; all who do are morally worthless in this world. We are left here as responsible persons, and it is for us to determine in our respective spheres what is needed, and to see to it that at least we supply something in a positive way towards that need. No one is of any value unless he accepts responsibility, he has no moral value, but then evidently if I have nothing I can supply nothing.
Now Hannah, whatever her intelligence was, had one desire, she had one thought. It was a burning, persistent desire, for years ungratified, but one which had never waned. The fulfilment of that desire would fill a void in the most remarkable and effective way, and she kept to it. She kept to it in bitterness of soul and weeping, but persisting in what was right [p. 24] and legitimate, knowing that it would culminate in what was needed, in the supply of what was needed in the service of God. And so she makes a vow.
This came in the course of the exercise, not at the beginning. I have spoken of worthlessness in those who hold themselves irresponsible, and of worthlessness in those who have nothing. I now remark on the worthlessness of those who do not make a vow. What I mean is that many will own their responsibility but are wholly indifferent as to purpose, having neither definite resolve as to what is required in the service of God, nor resolve to meet it. Hannah makes a vow, and a vow is not to be recalled, for we are told elsewhere, “When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools:” Ecclesiastes 5:4. God looks for definiteness of purpose. And so in order to fulfil her vow she prays earnestly, for where can we get the means of doing things or of carrying out our purpose? Where is the power, beloved? We can only get it from God. He has the means by Him. Was Samuel an afterthought? Not at all. Samuel was in the mind of God long before he was in the mind of Hannah. How did the desire come into her mind? Why was all this sorrow, all this bitterness, all this rivalry, all this persecution? It was to emphasise in the heart of Hannah the desire for a son. The desire in God’s heart was infinitely greater than in Hannah’s heart; He needed Samuel far more than Hannah needed him.
Let us dwell, beloved, at our leisure on the place that Samuel has in the testimony of God, and we shall understand that he was no afterthought or accident. The thought was from the heart of God, it came into the heart of Hannah and the fulfilment of it was according to the mind of God. God would bring us through discipline, through persecution, and through suffering into such a state of soul that He can impart His own thoughts to us. We may not [p. 25] understand them, but there they are, they are given from God. Every right thought comes thence, no right thoughts are begotten in our own hearts, they come from God, He is the source of all that is good, of all that is blessed, of all that meets the need of His testimony here, and He it was who raised up Samuel.
But how blessed to be the vessel, as Hannah was, for the introduction of what is thus from God! As Mary, one so like her, said later, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word”. Luke 1:38. What absolute submission in a vessel for the bringing in of what meets the requirements of the testimony of God! The history is well known to us: Hannah needed a child and she got him. It was a man-child she wanted, a son, and she got him. She had to wait for him, like the patriarch earlier, for God would have us value what He brings in. We may not value or care properly for our own children. Mary and Joseph for instance, the most honoured of all parents, could even travel a day’s journey and think He was in the company and He was not. One wonders at Mary in this incident in view of all she knew about Jesus, none amongst women or men knew more for the moment. What a history was hers as that blessed Babe grew up year after year under her care; what an experience was hers, unwritten, unknown to all but God and herself! Think of the ways of that Babe, and the movements of that Boy, that young Man, year after year! What an experience was hers!
Hence we see how Hannah had to wait. God would make us wait for things so that we may value them when they come, for they come from Him. Whatever comes in here in the testimony is from heaven; whatever route it takes it is from heaven. But God makes us wait for things; the more you have to wait for them, the more you value them and [p. 26] the more they will be to you when you get them. You see in the progenitors of Abraham that a man lived thirty-five and forty years and then begat sons and daughters, but when we come to Abraham, he had to live to a hundred before he gets a son; God will have even the patriarch, the great father, value his son when he gets him.
And so Hannah had to wait, but now having got the desire of her heart she weans him; note, she does it. It is not even said of Sarah that she weaned Isaac, it is said that he was weaned, that is, it is a question of his own state not of her doing. But what is said here is that Hannah weans the child, meaning that she did not want to attach him to herself. Her thought was to detach him from herself and to attach him to God and the house of God. It is the giving over of things in self-sacrificing love; that is what it is, like God who spared not His own Son, but gave Him for us all, as we are told. And so Hannah does it, she detaches him, she weans him from depending upon herself in order that he should be handed over to God.
And she brings with her a fitting sacrifice, three bullocks, and one ephah of flour, and a flask of wine. There is no want with her, no poverty of spirit; it is whole-hearted devotedness to meet the need. It is a crisis, and has to be met, and she meets it royally, for she has learned something from God, she has been with God, and she has acted like Him who spared not His own Son. As we know that we shall learn to give up, and give up what we cherish most, whatever it be; we shall give it up whole-heartedly, for God loves a cheerful giver. Hannah gave bountifully, too — three bullocks, the meat-offering and the wine, all denoting a healthy flourishing spiritual state, a state that delights the heart of God.
It says of Samuel, “the boy was young”. Why should that be said? It is quite obvious that he was [p. 27] young, why then does the Spirit of God say he was young? To call attention to what is needful in such a crisis, not something old and worn out, not something sophisticated in the ways of this life, not that hard-hearted thing in us, the flesh, cultivated or sophisticated by experience, but something fresh and young that can take on impressions in the house of God.
But I pass on to the next woman, the wife of Phinehas the priest, in chapter 4. I shall comment on her very briefly. It is another crisis; it is a question of the state of the nation, the state of the people. They had thought that external forms would suffice to meet the Philistine attack, but external forms have in themselves no power. We may have the right order, all that belongs to the breaking of bread, the Lord’s supper, baptism, ministry, no lack of anything in the way of light as externally right, but that is not power. We need more than that for power to meet the Philistine attack. The ark of God had been taken by the Philistines, for it was detached from the state that was becoming to it. God would thus warn us as to reliance on mere light and external order. At this juncture a son is born, a notable event, but not a word of appreciation is spoken of him, and yet it was an auspicious event; but there was no power to take advantage of what God had done. There was a merely negative state, no power to regard or to say anything as to the son, save that she named him Ichabod. There is light negatively in the name, but that is not much to say; very many say it today, but have not a word to say about what God has done or is doing. What has God done? Ichabod, you say; yes, the glory has departed. But what was in the dying woman’s mind? The ark of God; yes, but also her father-in-law and her husband — a mixed state of things. It is not thus that a crisis is met. Here is a son that is from God, a son born; a life, as [p. 28] we say, in the midst of death, but why occupy us wholly with the death, with the glory having departed?
Is there not some possibility of glory in that son? You will observe that what I am dealing with is inability to take account of what there is of God. I have no doubt at all that Ichabod was rightly named, it was a proper name, but then it was purely negative. To say the glory is departing is a negative thing. What about that son born? Is that nothing? What I am occupied with now for the moment is that feature that shows itself in ability to take account of the little life there is; even a new-born babe is not to be ignored. May I not think of the possibility? The new-born, a man-child is something born into the world, are there no possibilities there? Certainly there are, and let us take account of them, however small the life may be. One regards this dying woman in her terrible circumstances, but she had only ability to say Ichabod, that is all, and that is not meeting the crisis. Can we think for a moment that God was indifferent to that crisis? Can we doubt for a moment that the birth of that man-child was an evidence of the power of God? Surely it was. However small things are, therefore, let us not be occupied with departed glory, but with the coming glory.
The glory had not gone for ever; the God of glory had appeared to Abraham; would He give up His thoughts? Never! Why not think a little of the coming glory; indeed, it is a word for the present moment, it is the coming glory that is before us, as it is said elsewhere, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former”. Haggai 2:9. Let us think of that. I was remarking of Shem and Japheth that they went backwards with a garment to cover their father’s nakedness, their faces were in another direction, they were not occupied with their father’s shame, they were looking in another direction. That other [p. 29] direction implies the coming glory, for it is to the line of Shem that the glory appeared, that is, to Abraham. Let us then think of the coming glory and make the most of what there is, for we are not to quench the burning flax nor to break the bruised reed; whatever little there is, cultivate that, as Paul did, who gathered sticks to make a little more heat, to add warmth.
Now Abigail is a bright finish to the subject in this book. I want to show you how nobly a crisis may be met where the features of the assembly appear, for that is what Abigail represents. She was a woman of a good understanding and of a beautiful countenance; a fine introduction! And you get that with other dear holy women, for God loves to introduce them in their best features. I think that with Hannah, for instance, the Spirit of God shows us the effect of her sorrow and the depths of her feelings of sorrow in her song in chapter 2. It is called ‘a prayer of the celebration of the power of God’. And here you have the introduction of this remarkable woman by the Spirit of God as a woman of good understanding and of a beautiful countenance.
What I would suggest is that that is how things are met. If you make a good impression at the start, if goes a long way. The same is said of David, he made an excellent impression; the first impression you make on a brother, if you have to do with him further, goes a long way. First impressions are hard to wear off, hence the importance of good ones. What is said of this woman — Abigail — is intended of God to convey the thought of a person who makes a good impression. It was said of David that as he appeared in the midst of his brethren he was ruddy, and “beautiful-eyed”. 1 Samuel 16:12. What an impression he would make on you as he looked at you! He would inspire confidence in your heart. Indeed, one of the finest commendations you can get of any person is by the young man who commended David to Saul. He said,
[p. 30] He can play well, he is a valiant man and a man of war, and skilled in speech, and of a good presence. You see what an impression a man like that would make, how he would inspire confidence, how he would allay fears; in fact, evil spirits were driven away from Saul by the music of David. Is there nothing in that? It is not simply what I may say, but the music as that which appeals to the feelings and the affections, and that drives away the wicked spirits. How much there is of that amongst the people of God — wicked spirits dominating us! for where the flesh is allowed the evil spirit is allowed, and he gets a footing in our meetings. Now how is that to be met? By the spirit of David; you see in him the impression that is made by spiritual power.
The story of Abigail is a long and beautiful one, well known to most of us, and it is to be noted that in meeting the crisis she supplies herself with plenty of provision; she has something to give. She makes an excellent impression by her appearance, but then besides that she has two hundred loaves, two bottles of wine, five sheep ready dressed, five measures of parched corn, and an hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs. Now you are facing a crisis that requires provision; it is not a question of the recovery of the ark, what is needed now is provision. David is demanding it, he had asked for it from Nabal, but he did not get it. There was a foolish man in the way; there was provision there and plenty of it, for he was a rich man, but his name was Nabal and folly was with him. One might enlarge upon this; in the book of Proverbs we learn what folly is, how it stands athwart the purpose and service of God. So here was plenty of provision, but a foolish man stood in the way.
It is a solemn thing to be standing in the way of what Christ demands, of what He expects, and of what He is entitled to. David asked for it in the [p. 31] most gracious manner, but he was denied it, contemptuously denied it, but now it was forthcoming. Who will come forward in a crisis with the supply? Abigail had plenty, and see how she comes. She sends her servants on before; will they discredit her? Not at all, she had the utmost confidence in them. She was not trusting in herself alone, she had confidence in others, confidence that they would not misrepresent her, that they would not do as Nabal had done, incite the judgment of David. So she sent them ahead of her and she comes riding on an ass, all to denote what is suitable in such a crisis.
And then notice the correspondence with David: she comes down the hill and he comes down the hill. They are both coming down. This indicates the spirit which insures the settlement of every difficulty among the saints. There is humility in it. It is not a question of effort, but the liberty and power that belong to sons, for they come down as Christ comes down. The first movement is coming down, and then there is going up. He went down and has come up again, and has gone up into heaven. We do not come from the wretched counsels of partyism, that is not coming down, that is coming up, that is from beneath, that will never meet a crisis, however many may be in the party; it will never meet a crisis in the house of God. Abigail comes down and David comes down, they are both on the way down, and she met David and his company. See the dignity of it! The matter is soon settled; we settle things by coming down, that is to say, by being with God and thus refusing to maintain our dignity in matters of difficulty. The assembly will come down from God out of heaven in the millennium, as we speak of it, in all its glory. Well, Abigail met David and his servants, they were coming down and the matter was soon settled.
I need not go further into the details; I only touch on these points to show how the crisis was met, and [p. 32] that instead of merely occupying David with the immediate circumstances that occasioned the matter, she enlarges in her remarks on David’s own position. It is no longer a question of some party matter or local position even, it is a question of the position of Christ, and that typically is her theme, for the position of Christ is really the assembly’s concern. What is Christ doing? What is He occupied in? Fighting the battles of Jehovah. We want to be with Him, that there should not be a stain upon His name here; that is to be our concern. “Bound in the bundle of life”, and his enemies are to be driven out; “Them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling”. Such is the contemptuous way she alludes to the adversaries of David. It is not a question of my enemy, it is Christ’s enemy; her position here is in relation to the testimony of the Lord, what He is going on with. We want to be in that, and hence the crisis here is nobly met in that Abigail appeases David and Nabal is slain by God; God does the thing, for vengeance belongs to Him. The enemy was slain by Him, and Abigail becomes the wife of the king. How beautifully the features of the assembly appear, and how the Lord can own us here as we are made to subordinate our own feelings and thoughts, so that we might put on something of the character of the assembly in meeting the crisis. Thus the Lord sees in us something of the beauty that He admires, as it says, “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him”. Psalm 45:11.