“DO YE KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE TO YOU”
I would like, dear brethren, to speak, briefly I trust, of the Lord’s question here: “Do ye know what I have done to you?”. I would like each of us to bear that question. Maybe you would like to go home today and answer it more fully, write it down. “Do ye know?”. Perhaps it will take a lot of pages as you start to go over it. You know the old hymn:
Count your many blessings ...
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
Johnson Oatman jnr 1897
You might begin that He has forgiven you your sins; that is something He has done for you. I would like to make things a little more personal. We will speak about what He has done for you. Ah, the day will declare it, beloved, what He has done for us. What He has done for God! What He has done for you, forgiving you your sins! Why should He? Have you ever thought of that? Why should He have forgiven you your sins and left the sins of others upon them? Does it not endear Him to your heart, what He has done for you? Could you say, like some others, that He has done for you what no other one could do? He has. Father, mother, ancestry, money or anything else—He has done for you what no other and nothing could ever do. That is the claim of Christ. There is a great deal that He has done for you which He has done for many others, but I would like to get just a little more personal, if I may, as the Lord would raise this question with you: Do you know what I have done to you? I would like to ask the question. Has it left its mark? Has what He has done to you left its mark? I think we could say it did on these men. The scene here never fails to affect me, that the Lord was going back to His Father. What expectations must have been in His heart! During those thirty-three years He was here in circumstances of humiliation, tasting as He alone could the sorrows and sufferings of humanity, and He is going back to His Father; yet what occupies Him for this short space of time is His own who are in the world. And He lays aside His garments. How affecting that must have been! He takes water, a basin, a towel: how simple but how affecting, and after He has done it He says, “Do ye know what I have done to you?” It left its mark upon these men, I am sure. You could almost say this is the Lord training those who were going to be here to represent Him in the dispensation during His absence, and this is what He does. He does not send them to college, He does not give them indoctrination, an intensive course of study; He takes water, a hand-basin and a towel and He washes their feet and wipes them with the towel, and He says, “Do ye know what I have done to you?” Where was the wisdom of this world? There was Christ impressing upon these persons something that was going to come into expression in the dispensation.
If we could turn to Genesis for a moment I would like to speak about Abraham. Verse 16 of chapter 14 speaks of Abram returning from the conflict and it says, “he brought back all the property, and brought again his brother Lot and his property, and the women also, and the people. And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after he had returned from smiting Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, into the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s valley. And Melchisedec king of Salem brought out bread and wine. And he was priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heavens and earth. And blessed be the Most High God, who has delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him the tenth of all. And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the souls, and take the property for thyself. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lifted up my hand to Jehovah, the Most High God, possessor of heavens and earth, if from a thread even to a sandal-thong, yes, if of all that is thine, I take anything ... that thou mayest not say, I have made Abram rich”. He knew what God had done to him, done to him, not just for him, and in the conscious sense of it he refused all that the king of Sodom could offer.
I would like to speak for a moment about the priesthood of Christ, what He has done to you as a Priest. Great resources and wealth met Abram here, Abram the believer, a man of faith, a simple man in many ways. He had been promised the whole earth. What have you not been promised? What would God not give you today? What is not available for you in Christ? The king of Sodom tries to deflect Abram away, to tempt him with the world, its resources, what it has in the way of education, what it would offer in the way of prospects. Abram, in the conscious sense that the Lord has done something to him, says, You could not add anything to me. That is a very testing thing, very real. Here is a man in humble surroundings and the king of Sodom says to him, You can have all the property for thyself. Abram says, No, I belong to somebody better. Could the world add anything to you, beloved? Could the world give you any more satisfaction? Think of this priest that met Abram. “Melchisedec ... brought out bread and wine”. Oh! what is available in the priesthood of Jesus! “What I have done to you”. He set Himself apart as a priest, brought in the resources of bread and wine, bread that would satisfy, that would nourish and strengthen the constitution, and wine that would make glad the heart, speaking of a great system of blessing that is available in the priesthood of Christ. I want to say, it is part of what he has done to you. It is not the priesthood of Christ only as a general idea. The world knows nothing of it. I may say that unexercised believers scarcely know the benefit of it. You have to put yourself in the way, as Abram did here. Melchisedec brought out bread and wine. How ready the Lord is to bring it out to you today, dear friend, young or old. There may be exercises pressing upon your spirit, the world offering some kind of palliatives, maybe just the enemy offering an easier path; what a temptation! Is there a heart that does not feel tempted by it at times in the sorrows of the way? The priesthood of Christ is there bringing out bread and wine. What a priest He is! “Melchisedec, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine”. It refers to the Lord in His deity. It is not Aaron that would meet you here about your exercises and wilderness circumstances. This is another touch, like the man from Baal-shalishah. It is Christ coming in with the wealth of heaven, the infinite resources of divine love that no world could ever provide. Abram absorbed it, and when the temptation comes he says, No, you cannot add anything to me. I suppose the king of Sodom might have made him a duke. Melchisedec made him a prince. What a great line of dignity and royalty Melchisedec brought Abram into! The priesthood of Christ: I wonder at times how much we know of this kind of priesthood. We cry to God and the Lord, rightly so, about our exercises and our sorrows and our circumstances, but do we know anything about Him bringing us into what we are before God? Oh! what strength Abram received here. He says, “I have lifted up my hand to Jehovah, the Most High God, possessor of heavens and earth”. The king may have said to him, Abram, I do not think you know what you are talking about, you have only a tent. Ah, he says, I have everything through what He has done to me. He has enriched you, beloved, in a way that the world can never enrich you. He has left His mark upon Abram. He went through in the steps of faith, “the steps of the faith ... of our father Abraham”, Rom 4: 12. May we be encouraged, dear brethren, as to what He has done to us in His priesthood, what He has brought out in the way of bread and wine that would nourish us in the midst of trying circumstances, that we may not turn to the world. Can it add anything? It can; it can add something to you, and that is sorrow and grief and distress; but Melchisedec brings bread and wine. He strengthens Abram so that he can refuse, like Moses, the great system of what the world could supply because he knew something that God had done to him.
I would like to read another scripture, in Judges: “The trees once went forth to anoint a king over them; and they said to the olivetree, Reign over us. And the olive-tree said to them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to wave over the trees? And the trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou, reign over us. But the figtree said to them, Should I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to wave over the trees? Then said the trees to the vine, Come thou, reign over us. And the vine said to them, Should I leave my new wine, which cheers God and man, and go to wave over the trees?”, chap 9: 8-13. There is something else that the Lord has done to you; He has set you in the body, the body of Christ. He has done that to you. He has set you in a place where you can function in your measure for the glory and praise of God. The setting here is a man who was mourning the loss of his brethren, and I trust that is the feeling in every heart here, that we are mourning the loss of our brethren. I never go to a meeting but I miss many. You never travel through this country without passing through places where you used to know some brethren who are no longer available. These are sorrows of the testimony that we should feel and we should carry day by day. Let us never become accustomed to it. This man was feeling it, he was feeling that some of his brethren had been slain, some of his brethren were no longer there, and so he comes to what I want to speak about—the need for the body functioning.
Maybe you are tempted to be out of your place. The enemy brings all sorts of things, he puffs up our minds, and we may function out of our place, but God has set you in the body, in your own place. That is something He has done to you, and may I say that you have a place that nobody else can fill, and please do not try to fill anybody else’s place but be with the Lord to know what He has done to you. What place has He given you? It is a very disturbing thing if the feet should go beyond where the eye may see in the body. What would happen? You would stumble. But the body works so beautifully, the eye sees the path in which the feet tread for safety and for blessing. So here are persons who are enjoying their place in the body and nothing would tempt them away from it. The trees want to anoint a king over them. What a sad thing that would be! There is one body; the Head of the body is Christ. In that body there are many members, and here is the olive-tree enjoying its place. It is like a believer who knew the touch of the Lord, what He had done to him. The olive-tree says, “Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to wave over the trees?” Oh beloved, our minds are very open at times to the enemy giving us thoughts that may be beyond our place in the body. God has set certain in the assembly, but the body has been tempered together, each in their place to function in glory to God. Then they go to another tree. They say to the fig-tree “Come thou, reign over us”. It says, “Should I leave my sweetness”. What a fine brother that would be! Well, these things are open to you. Desire to be in the body in your place, whether it is a foot or an ear, or maybe some member that is not seen. Each has its own function: “Should I leave my sweetness ...?”—a conscious sense of being there under the direction of the Head. There could be nothing more blessed. I say again, these brothers, these sisters, knew what the Lord had done to them. Then they said to the vine “Come thou reign over us ... Should I leave my new wine, which cheers God and man, and go to wave over the trees?” They speak of persons who could not be moved from the place of functioning in the body. There are many not available to us today and you may have to take on a little more; instead of just being sweetness you may have to take on something of the fatness. There is more to be done. Most of our companies are smaller than they used to be but the body is still to function. The resources from the Head are the same. The numbers enjoying them may be less. In a sense there is all the more to be done. Nehemiah speaks of those who committed themselves to dwell in Jerusalem. Jerusalem in one sense is a public idea where there is breakdown. There is a great deal of outward pressure but somebody says, I will commit myself in the midst of the pressure to fill out my place in the body that Jerusalem may be held in view of the great King. There are people today who are holding things in view of that time about which we sang: ‘wider praise in Zion waits for Thee’, hymn 75. What a time it will be! But how is it going to be brought about? It is being brought about by persons today filling out in obscurity their place in the body.
Now there is much more of which we could speak, but these are some things that the Lord has done to you. I would like to return to John 13; may you allow the question: “Do ye know what I have done to you?” Having washed their feet He says, “Ye call me the Teacher and the Lord, and ye say well ... If I therefore, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet”. Peter would not forget what the Lord had done to him. You see Peter in the Acts with John as bondmen; indeed all the apostles, if you look at their writings they refer to themselves as bondmen. Peter, John, James, Jude, Paul, all take that place. They were affected. Affected by what? By the love of Christ. That is what He has done to you, He has loved you, and the impress of that love is to be upon every believer in Christ. May the impress of Christ’s love grow with us, dear brethren. “We know that we have passed from death to life”. Oh why? “because we love the brethren”, 1 John 3: 14. The impress of the love of Christ was to be on them. How it was set out: He laid aside His garments. Is that how you approach the brethren? The way the Lord corrects the disciples is very interesting; usually it is by a question. They went fishing, a fruitless expedition away from the Lord, and He says “Children, have ye anything to eat?”, John 21: 5. That is not how I would have done it. I would have said, See what you have done. We would have met it by the rod, would have said, This has to be met, we cannot pass this by; all these things have to be taken up. No, He says “Children, have ye anything to eat?”. Everything was met. They said “No”. May we learn to be simple, dear brethren. Love gets through all the complications, it gets to the root and it saves and enriches the person. That is how the Lord was instructing them here. He laid aside His garments. Do you do that? Is that how we approach one another. In matters needing to be attended to, do we lay aside our garments? Or do we go armed with all the references to this and to that? If somebody questions it we can say, Oh well, it is on page so-and-so. Can we approach, laying aside our garments? Can we take a wash-hand basin so that that brother says, Well, in the presence of the love of Christ I was wrong. That is what the Lord does. He says, Now that is what you have to do, “I have given you an example that, as I have done to you, ye should do also”. What He did to them, the impress of it, never left them. Maybe what He did to me has waned with me, what He did to me in bringing me into this one body. It did not wane with Peter, it did not wane with John. He made them other kind of men. It did not wane with Paul. He says, “what things were gain to me”, Phil 3: 7. The Lord did something to Paul, to him personally, that changed his whole way of life and his whole outlook. I say, He has done that to you, He has done it to me. May we allow the impress of it to function among us, for His Name’s sake.
LONDON
16th November 1985