GOD’S WAYS AND HIS PURPOSE
2 Corinthians 4: 16–18; 5: 1–5
I read this passage, dear brethren, to speak of two things which Paul puts together, two things which are clearly distinct and yet if we are to enjoy and make the most of the present time these two things are inseparable in our experience. I speak of God’s ways and God’s purpose. If we only took account of the sufferings we are feeling today, and which are felt universally (there is not a soul that has not felt and known in the ways of God sufferings, maybe discouragement, maybe despair), we might well faint. But what comes into those ways, dear brethren, is the light of His purpose that we may faint not.
God’s purpose is unchanging; Scripture uses that expression, “the unchangeableness of his purpose”, Heb 6: 17. Before His ways, before ever sin entered into the world, before there was ever a discouraged heart on this earth, God’s purposes were before all that. His purposes were before time began; His purposes will be when time has run its course. God’s ways are in time. Paul speaks of “our momentary and light affliction”. The man that is saying that perhaps knew suffering in a way that none of us has known it; he recounts his sufferings in this very chapter, the sufferings, and “seeing no apparent issue”, but what he also says is, “our way not entirely shut up”. Why was that?—Because into those very ways that seemed so dark there shone the light of God’s purposes—“our way not entirely shut up”, 2 Cor 4: 8. He speaks about being “cast down, but not destroyed”. You see there in Paul one who felt the sufferings in the ways of God.
We have spoken of the sorrows of losing a loved one; in all these things Paul knew something about them, as we do, but into those, we may say, seemingly dark circumstances there shines the purpose of God, the unchangeableness of His purpose. He refers to it in these passages that “we faint not”. “Our outward man”, he says, “is consumed”. That is what is passing in the ways of God, these very bodies that we are in, the outward man, passing; but in these very bodies of humiliation there is something connected with God’s purposes. You think of the tabernacle system of old. Paul uses that expression, “our earthly tabernacle house”.
The tabernacle was something that was taken down; it was something that could be dismantled; but what was in that tabernacle? It was an ark of gold. It went through, and the One of whom it speaks went through. The purposes of God, dear brethren, are not only centred in Christ, for us the purposes of God are centred in Christ in glory. That is what comes into those ways; that is what comes into those hours of suffering for us today—the purpose of God centred in a Man in glory. There are many who know Jesus; there are many know of Him who died for their sins, who died that they might live, but the purpose of God would point us to a Man in whom all God’s thoughts are yea and amen, a Man in glory. What an assurance that His purposes can never fail!—also the assurance that what He purposed before time began will be housed in an eternal home, an eternal condition.
What has been wrought in our brother will go through; we have seen in our brother what is going through to the eternal condition, a spirit that accepted the ways of God, a spirit that was submissive in those ways of suffering and disappointment. Many things came into it; our brother displayed a spirit that accepted those ways. Why? Because they were not sore? Not a bit; but because he knew the God whose ways they were, God whose thoughts were bound up not only with His ways, but a God whose thoughts are bound up with the unchangeableness of His purpose.
Well, dear brethren, that is what has been seen in our brother, an uncomplaining spirit; one who accepted those ways, and who lived in the midst of those ways; not unfeelingly, as I have said, but who lived in those ways in the light and in the joy of God’s purpose. Those ways are working “an eternal weight of glory”. Think of it being secured in a time of suffering; perhaps many of us feeling sufferings that we have never known the extent of before, but what is being secured in the midst of them is what is going to be housed in an eternal condition. Oh what a God He is! He that has wrought us for these things is God.
May we be encouraged to look not at the things that are seen. May we, feeling them as we do, not be stoical as to them, but may we, as in the midst of those ways of God, the sufferings of them, know more what it is to get the light and the joy of His purposes. As I said, they never fail; they can never break down, and in those ways, in these times of suffering, it says He “has given to us the earnest of the Spirit”. That brings Him very near to us. It brings what is in heaven very near to us; not only a text of Scripture, but in the earnest of the Spirit is brought into these bodies of humiliation, into these circumstances and times of sufferings, not only the light, but the joy, of the purposes of God, in the earnest of the Spirit. He brings these things, One who knows them, One who was there when these thoughts were divinely conceived in purpose. The Spirit was there, and in those counsels He had part, and that same blessed divine Person has taken His abode in us that we might be sustained in God’s ways in the light and the joy of His purpose. May it be so, for His Name’s sake.
BARNET
15th February 1984
Word at a burial meeting