PREPARATION
Our brother and sister and all of us this week have done a good deal of preparation for this occasion. It is a feature that is to mark the Christian’s pathway, preparation. Often we are exposed to the enemy through being unprepared. Preparation is something that has marked God’s ways from the earliest times, but especially in this dispensation. The preparation has in view the eternal day. It is not just something that comes about miraculously, but something into which a great deal has entered.
This matter is to affect us. God has worked on the principle of preparing things. So in regard to our Lord it says, “Thou hast prepared me a body” (Heb 10: 5)—a prepared vessel that the enemy assailed and attacked, but could not overcome, a ‘holy vessel of God’s pleasure’. The enemy put certain temptations before Him; think of these answers that He gave—“It is written”, “It is said” (Luke 4: 4-12), bringing out His perfect trust in God. The world prepares largely through rehearsal and in independence of God; that is not to mark the believer. The path for the believer is, as it was with Christ, a path that involves dependence. May we be helped to be prepared for matters of the testimony. God has entered much into it, vessels of mercy, which He had “before prepared for glory, us”. What a work is going on today! What a work is taking place that will eventuate in glory; it will be seen then “prepared as a bride”, Rev 21: 2.
So let this feature help us all to be exercised in regard to the local company. The meetings involve a need that we come prepared, prepared to take our place as brothers and sisters in the local assembly. We are not just sitting there as persons unexercised, not as persons who sit in a company as the world would sit, unrelated to each other, but we are sitting in a company of prepared persons. The exercises that have gone before in our pathway are preparing us for glory, but also preparing us to find our part in the local assembly.
So our brother and sister will be taking their place in a small company, as most of the companies of the saints are today; it needs all the more preparation for it. We are not there casually, we are not there, as I said, as the world comes to its occasions, but we are there prepared, prepared as brothers and sisters to fill out the place that each of us has. Every saint of God has a place, a place in the body. May we, through exercise, fill out that place for God’s glory. God would have that in mind. Think of the Supper tomorrow; we will be there as persons prepared, prepared in expectancy in remembrance of our Lord. So we are there with what we have, we are there as persons who have something. That should mark all our occasions, that there is some substance through preparation. Preparation too in our homes; Paul says, “Prepare me also a lodging”, Philem 22. It means that there is something there in our households that can be used for the expansion of the truth. Our homes are not just furnished, as men would speak, but they are prepared places; prepared places where young people can be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. May we be impressed that preparation involves time, prayer, time spent with the Lord and the Spirit about exercises, and time used in reading the Scriptures and the ministry. Things happen through persons preparing themselves to be serviceable.
Well, in that passage in Hebrews it says that God “has prepared for them a city”. Think of the whole outline of things in the chapter, persons who were prepared to suffer. That is how the testimony has come down to us today, dear brethren, through persons being prepared to suffer; they were prepared to suffer because they had their eye on something else. This occasion, the marriage of our brother and sister, has been worth preparing for. So the local assembly, the local meetings, are worth preparing for. Think of this day of glory; God says He has prepared for them a city. There will be perfect correspondence between the persons who are in the city and the city itself. Think of God thinking so much of the personnel that He has, in uncongenial circumstances up till now, that He has prepared for them a city. That preparation is going on in us today, dear brethren. May we put ourselves in the way of it. May we, through subjection, dependence, and the faith that it calls for, have these features in exercise among us, so that we are seeking to be a prepared people.
KIRKCALDY
22nd March 1980
Word at a marriage meeting