DIVINE SYMPATHIES

T. E. Druckenmiller

John 11: 35, 36; Luke 15: 21–24

The thought of the sympathies of divine Persons for us has come into one’s heart, beloved brethren and friends. Our households are a sphere where divine affections are to be known.

The enemy’s power is set against our households; he is set against the preciousness of a family, against the very thought of a family. But I believe the Lord Jesus would impress our hearts afresh at this time with the value of our families, and increase in our affections the value of the family of God, what it is to be here for the Lord Jesus Christ in the simplicity set out in the life of our beloved brother. The value of what has been expressed in the life of our brother is, I believe, to be expressed in every one of our lives. The Father has given His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is the coming into manhood of Jesus that has expressed in this scene among men the very impress of divine feelings.

So in John 11, where death had come in—and it is in the presence of death that God has a way of speaking to our hearts peculiarly—that it says that “Jesus wept”. Then it says, “The Jews therefore said, Behold how he loved him!” Think of the love of Jesus for this one who had departed. It says earlier in the chapter that “Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus”. The love of Jesus is for us all, it is toward us, the love of God expressed in that glorious Man who came into manhood and who went into death itself; but in His movements among men divine sympathies were expressed. In every contact He had with man in his need, whether it be Lazarus, who had died, or the woman in John 4 in all her need, or you or me in all our need, divine love is toward us today, just as it has always been. May we just allow our hearts to open to it.

Then, as to Luke 15, it has touched one’s heart to think of the way our brother enjoyed the Father’s love. This chapter peculiarly sets out the feelings of divine Persons. You get the thought of a sheep being lost, and one going a long way to find it. You get the thought of a piece of silver being lost, and the diligence of love to seek carefully till she found it, and then, what we know all of us so well, the prodigal son gone away into a far country. How the father felt it! We get in the end of the Old Testament, in the last verse of that precious portion of God’s word, “He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers”; that is what God is doing currently. The enemy is working the other way, to bring in disunity in the family, but God from His side is working to bring in right feelings and affections in our hearts, stirring them with a view to our expressing divine sympathies as we walk here.

Our beloved brother expressed that—divine sympathies. One recalls how he could refer to this verse, where it expresses the father’s feelings—“Bring out the best robe and clothe him in it, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet”. That is what the Father wants to do with every one of us, to clothe us, to bring us into the liberty and the merriment of His own sphere.

Well, may we be drawn into it today, as it says, “they began to make merry”. Oh, let us be in that merriment, in the rejoicing and the liberty and fulness of sonship. How our brother enjoyed it! and we are stirred with affection for those who were near to him in his own family. How he loved them! May we be encouraged and stimulated in our affections to yield our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ, to come into the enjoyment of divine sympathies, and thus to express the love of Christ in our lives, one toward another, in view of family affection being known and enjoyed among us, for His name’s sake.

Words at the burial of Mr. R. C. McDowell, Plainfield
6 September 1979