THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST EXERCISING CARE FOR THE SAINTS

^[p. 235] THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST EXERCISING CARE FOR THE SAINTS

Genesis 8: 6 - 12; Genesis 19: 9 - 11; John 14: 1 - 4

I wish to occupy you with the Spirit of Christ, whether viewed as operating by Himself, or in vessels employed by Him; and how He constitutes those in whom He is, in whom He moves and works, likeable to heaven. They are likeable to men, in measure, but principally to the saints, for in truth what is pleasing to God in the saints is characteristically displeasing to men, which necessarily implies persecution. But I am speaking now of the Spirit of Christ as constituting those in whom He is likeable to God and to one another, as Enoch was. Those who have Him please God. And they are caused to know that they please God and that they are worthy of divine care and protection; that indeed the Lord Jesus, whose Spirit dwells in them and characterises them, would have them with Himself, not merely to protect them, but because He loves them, and would have them where He is.

So I read from the history of Noah, and that history includes the early activities recorded in Scripture of the Spirit of Christ. I may say here that the Spirit of Christ, or the Spirit of God — for the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God — may act or move as the Spirit of God or as the Spirit of Christ according to the necessities of the testimony. And so it is that Genesis begins the history of the Spirit by connecting Him with a chaotic condition of things. Chaos is not foreign to us. The more we are possessed of the Spirit of God, the more we discern it, whether physically or morally. And so the first presentation we have of the Spirit is in relation to what is chaotic. He was not turning His back on it, leaving it, but He was hovering over it, over the face of the waters; so that we are reminded that the Spirit of God leads in occupation with a chaotic condition in ^[p. 236] view of recovery. To occupy ourselves with it other than with a view to recovering what is of God in it would damage us. The Spirit was occupied with it with a view to salvaging what was of God under the waters. The waters were prevalent throughout at the time. Darkness was upon the face of the deep, a great general thought, but the Spirit brooded over the face of the waters — the word is plural. The idea suggested is that they were of value as potentially useful and serviceable to God and to men. And so the Spirit was not hovering aimlessly, but with infinite intentness to bring out what was there; something not yet manifested that has been submerged by some wicked hand, now to be brought again into evidence in an ordered condition. The waters were prevalent, but the dry land was to appear and to become the divisive power in the waters, so that they should become waters — seas, useful to God in His operations, and to men. But I speak now of the great fact of the Spirit of God intent, for how long we cannot say, brooding over the face of the waters. I speak of it now, as I said, to call attention to how He had to do with such a condition, and how He can have to do with it again and succeed in His object of recovering what is of God.

Then we find Him in a limited state of things, some one hundred and twenty years, for we are now in time; that is the sixth of Genesis. Jehovah says, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man”. The striving is not said to be with chaos, although morally it was, but it was with man. God is showing that He is not for the moment dealing with the earth or the seas, but with men. His Spirit, having hovered over the material waters and indirectly the earth, is now occupied with men, and as striving with them. Those of us who have to do with evil in men and in ourselves, each in himself, know the power of striving by the Spirit of God. The Spirit indeed would enlist the individual on His side to ^[p. 237] strive against the working of evil. It goes on all the time. It is yet the striving time, and who is not conscious of it in himself as he has to do with evil in himself, and perhaps still more in those who are unregenerate? We are not to be occupied with each other as more or less marked by evil; we are to learn to be abstract in our regard for each other and to clothe each other abstractly with the good and the good only. We are entitled to do that. The Spirit has more liberty in that than in striving against the evil that is in us. So this allusion in Genesis 6 is remarkable, for it is a matter now of one hundred and twenty years — and how long before? It really extended back to Adam, for the striving began as soon as Satan got a footing. God could easily have slain Adam and Eve, but He did not do so. The serpent under penalty is allowed to remain according to the wisdom of God: he will be used negatively and positively in the discriminating government of the Creator. But the man and the woman should become the theatre of the Spirit’s striving, so that God should work out the great thoughts of His love. And the Spirit of God succeeded. According to the testimony of the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Genesis the striving was successful; God is seen gaining — not in the relative number of men secured for Him, but morally. Enoch is seen in the fifth chapter as walking with God, and so pleasing to Him that He takes him to Himself. Now that is what I am seeking to show — that God secures in those circumstances such a result, in a man, from his testimony, that He translates him to heaven. It is said in the New Testament that before his translation Enoch had the testimony that he pleased God.

So I come to chapter 8, where the Spirit of God is typically seen as a dove. It is the Spirit in subjection. The record is to call attention to a certain state which God approves. In the deluge judgment prevails, but it becomes discipline, which is used to effect clearance for ^[p. 238] a fresh start. The present is a great time of discipline. I have lived in a city half a century or more and that is what has largely characterised the testimony of God in it — constant discipline, constantly recurring need for judicial cleansing. But the disciplinary services are not without result, not without victory, even at the present moment. God is wonderfully patient with us, dear brethren, for He sends out the dove from time to time, as it were, to see how the persons under discipline are moving. It is a time of watching, a time of priestly observation, and the priests become the expression of the Spirit of God, or the Spirit of Christ, so that the eyes of the priests have to be active; indeed the five senses of the priests have to be active. The most difficult problem we have is that of transparency, to find transparency in disciplinary conditions, to find honesty and uprightness. Unless the priests’ eyes can see these features there is little or no hope. And so the raven went out.

Sometimes it is assumed that any brother or sister may go to discern a leper; it is not so. The raven was an inmate of the ark as the dove was, but the raven could go and stay outside and the dove could not. So that we must never send a raven; he will never bring back a right message. He will go and not return, he will never come back at all; he will find satisfaction in the company of the erring ones — partisan conditions are raven conditions. You will go and stay with the people that you should look at and leave, if there be not transparency and uprightness with you. There must be the coming back if we are going to serve on right lines; the dove did come back, there was a link between her and the commanding personage — representatively God. In the government of the house of God there must always be that — a commanding spirit, the spirit of authority, the spirit of leadership; and that spirit, in whomsoever it is, will always have a link with ^[p. 239] the dove. So that Noah took her in to him. He sent her out from him, as much as to say that it was no pleasure to him to be minus the dove in the ark. There was a void through the dove’s absence, but apparently none because of the raven’s, although it never came back. One idea of the Spirit of Christ is leadership, as in David, leading the people out and leading them back. So the Lord Jesus went in and came out, or oppositely under other circumstances, He went out and came in. The dove went out and came in. She was commissioned; she was a missionary, as it were. That is what is needed, not to affiliate with those in error, but to go and see, to exercise priestly observation as to what the condition is and return.

Well, the dove did not find a place to rest her foot, that is, the thing was not finished. The cause of the judgment was not over, the process was not completed. She waited until it was, she brought back the tidings. Things are not right yet. So, dear brethren, what I am aiming at is to set up a priestly, inquiring spirit, an observing spirit; it is needed most distinctly at the present time. So the dove goes out again after some days. There is no evidence that she met the raven or collaborated with him at all, she went out and she came back by herself, but with an olive leaf in her mouth. Now, she says in effect, I have got life — something is going on; now God is working, partisan spirit is broken up. Partisanship, I may say here, is deadly. It belongs to the raven and the raven belongs to it. The dove is concerned about life, not the number of persons that dissented from the judgment in the house of God. Think of counting up those who dissent from a holy, solemn judgment in the assembly — counting the heads of the dissenters! This would be to cast the shadow of doubt on the judgment — a common effort in such circumstances. That is not life. We are looking for life. We are not looking for partisans, we are ^[p. 240] looking for evidence of repentance, leading to recovery.

And so the dove comes back with an olive leaf plucked off. She had to do with it, as it were, she handled it. It was plucked off; it has not fallen off through death. It was living when plucked off, it was a perfect testimony that life was operating. And now there is hope, so that she goes out again, the solution is almost reached. We must reach solutions. The house of God is not a place of loose ends, letting these things drag along or pretending to be with the judgment of the assembly and really against it. No, that does not mark those who are with God. We must reach solutions and we must be true men and women to stand by the solutions and not to be in partnership with the raven. We must be with the dove, the olive leaf is evidence of life. As Hezekiah, who is a son of the resurrection, says, “The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I this day” (Isaiah 38: 19). He does not say, ‘as I am going to do’. Is there anyone wishing to enter the fellowship of God’s people in the assembly? Do not put it off; it is this day, this moment is the time to decide — it is a living state of things. The dove comes back with a leaf and when she goes out again she stays out, meaning she is at liberty now, she is not restrained now. The persons involved have judged themselves and she can stay there and help them, for the Spirit adds His help to our weaknesses. But there must be conditions for it. Until sin is judged and dealt with — until we have washed our robes — the Holy Spirit has not scope to be with us and act among us. I do not mean to say He leaves a real believer, but it is a question of action, direct service, and if we quench the Spirit He does not serve us; we rob ourselves of His service.

Well now, I come to Lot, chapter 19. I am going to deal with a worldly christian — a very grievous phrase to have to use. But I want to speak of him abstractly, and I am entitled to do so because the apostle Peter in ^[p. 241] telling us about Lot, calls him, by the Spirit of God, a righteous man; vexing his righteous soul every day because of the ungodly conduct, the lawless conduct of the people of Sodom. Every day he was vexed, and yet he was an official at the gate of the city. Inwardly as this one and that one came up to him, passed by him out of the gate, his righteous soul was distressed. A paradoxical state of things, a state of things that could not be pleasing to heaven; but still, heaven has wonderful power of abstraction, that is to say, as dissociating certain elements from others. And that is what happened as to Lot. Two angels came and found him at the gate. How distressing it must have been to them! It was really a question of fellowship. Can we have fellowship with this man? I can understand one of the angels saying that. We will abide outside, they said. He is urging them to come into his house, but no, they are giving him to understand they will stay outside; they are, as it were, taking the attitude before him so that he might understand that they are not ignoring his worldliness. Heaven is well aware of it if in any of us. But he persuaded them and that brings out what was there. It was not “yea yea, and nay nay”, but to bring out the sincerity that lay beneath the worldliness in Lot’s heart. He urged them and they came in. They came in to the house and the remarkable thing is that he is honoured in that the Spirit of God tells us that he made cakes of unleavened bread, as far as Scripture states, the first one to do it. Heaven knows the worth of that man, as it does each of us even when we are worldly. The worth underneath is known; like precious gold it is going to be dissociated from the dross, or whatever we may call it, that hinders its usefulness, that hides its usefulness, that hides itself, it may be. But heaven knows, and it is to be brought out. And so as soon as heaven manifests itself, as soon as the link is established with the agents of God and Lot, it is seen, and then Sodom shows its ^[p. 242] hand. I would say to any young person here who is worldly, Beware! Sodom is Sodom — up to that time apparently the worst city on earth. God said He would go down Himself to see it, and surely enough, the guilt was there; it showed itself immediately as soon as God’s hand was seen in the angels identified with Lot. From every part of the town the men of Sodom gathered to the house of Lot. Who are these men that have come in to him? They want to know and they would do something to them, evidently they would destroy them.

Well now, the angels took the matter in hand. Lot cannot cope with it. What could he do with every man in Sodom, from all quarters, attacking him? “Back there!” they say to him. They have changed their mind altogether about him and yet poor Lot calls them his “brethren”. He never would again, I am sure. For a christian to be hail-fellow-well-met with the world is abominable. He is not in life as we had this afternoon, he is not in the sphere of life, he is in a moral sense in the sphere of death, surrounded with death. He is powerless. The angels took the matter in hand, however, and that is what I am seeking now to bring forward. If there is anyone here whose conscience is affected, who is touched by what I am saying, God is going to show you that you are very interesting to heaven, and all the protection you need you will get. They pulled Lot into the house; that is the first thing. He was out, exposed to the wicked crowd who would have overwhelmed him. But the house is there: we may thank God for it, for the door; indeed for all the christian houses to which some one here who is exposed to the world may go. There is escape there, there is retreat there from the Sodomites in a crowd attacking it. The angels drew Lot in, they drew him to them. It is not simply his own house now, it is really their house; they are, as it were, taking charge of the house, and as there they are drawing him to them. He is of great interest to them. And there is ^[p. 243] a house now, young people, into which you may be drawn by God from the crowd outside, where there is safety, where there is protection, where there is love; for the angels here represent God. They drew Lot to them into the house. They take care of the crowd too, smiting them with blindness. They do not slay them, they are reserved for heaven’s avalanche of brimstone. Terrible, terrible judgment is reserved for them, as it is for the present world. Let us beware that we may not be judged with it. The angel is concerned that Lot should not be judged with Sodom.

Abraham was no doubt thinking of all this, waiting outside, as it were, in the spot where he had just stood before Jehovah — a precious thought. And he saw the flames of Sodom. Heaven rained its brimstone and Sodom became an inferno, and was utterly destroyed. The angels did not do that; I mean to say, they left that for the general conflagration. They caused blindness on the men of Sodom, they rendered them impotent, so that they wearied themselves to find the door. A christian will find the door; the door is Christ, as we learn elsewhere. Will a worldling ever find that door? No, unless God works with him. A blind worldling will fall into the ditch; blind leading the blind marks his position. You can picture those Sodomites: Can you tell me where the door is? one might ask. His neighbour might point to the roof or anywhere in answer, blind leading the blind, both falling into the ditch. “They wearied themselves to find the entrance”. Such is the sure action of God if He is seeking to help a worldling who is really one of His people. What comes out is the value of this brother. The angels took him to them into his own house. He is precious property; he is known in heaven and spoken of as saved thousands of years after. He is known by Peter’s pen among the dispersed of the Jewish christians. Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed in his soul by the wicked conduct of the ^[p. 244] Sodomites, is known universally now as a righteous man, not as the poor worldling he had been, although that is known too: but the great point of the Spirit is that he is a righteous man. His uncle Abraham had been talking to Jehovah about him as a righteous man — that perhaps there were ten like him in Sodom, so that the city might on their account be saved. But there were not, and the city was not saved, but Lot and his two daughters were saved out of it. Jehovah and the great saint Abraham were conversing about righteous men among whom, as regarded by Abraham, Lot was. But it was to be known in heaven and known amongst the saints that Lot was a righteous man. Thousands of years later Peter, writing by the Spirit, spoke of him as a righteous man. So the two angels urge Lot to leave the city. They say to him, We cannot do anything until you go. See how interesting he is, how important he is! It is a leverage in the soul of a christian in such circumstances as God gives him to understand how valuable he is.

So that the narrative here shows that Lot was greatly valued in heaven, so much so that nothing could happen to Sodom until he left it. The angels took hold of the hand of Lot, of his wife and of his two daughters and led them out of the city. Then they said, Escape for thy life, it is for him to do the rest. God is here showing the way of deliverance to those in such circumstances; do not look back to the world. Lot’s wife looked back; she would never have gone from Sodom if left to herself. It is the urgency of the angels, but, alas! she looked back and became a pillar of salt — another personage who has come down to us as a warning; one who, being a world-lover, looked back into Sodom after being delivered out of it, and became a pillar of salt. That is very solemn, but God would through it preserve others from doing the same. She looked back from behind her husband. She was deceptive. Her mind ^[p. 245] was different from that of the angels and even from that of her husband.

Well now, just a word about John 14 to bring out how the Lord Jesus loves us, how He likes our company. He says, “Let not your heart be troubled”. ‘I am going to have you with Me for ever, and in the place I have prepared for you’. He is impressing us, that is, the saints of this dispensation, that we have a peculiar place up there. Others also will have places of their own but none with such a place as ours. So that God is stressing this at the end. We cannot say there are one hundred and twenty years left as in the days of Noah; we do not know how many years or hours there will be, but we do know heaven is looking for us, preparing for us, and making us fit to be there. So the Lord says here, “Let not your heart be troubled”. That is the first thing He says, in this chapter. “Ye believe on God”, He says; the word is “on”, pointing to a definite Object of faith. It was not hypothetical, it was the truth. God was to them a settled Object of faith. Now, the Lord Jesus says, let Me be that too. Let Me be an Object of your faith. I am to be up there and you down here. The idea is, it is to be a settled matter; it is not for a moment, it is to be a settled matter with them: “Believe also on me”. How much that must have touched them! The One who, as down here, was with us familiarly, that One we are to have as an Object of faith up there. I am sure it touched them and the Lord intended that it should touch them.

Then He goes on to say, “In my Father’s house there are many abodes; were it not so, I had told you; for I go to prepare you a place”. That is, the Lord is saying, This matter is so important that I should certainly not leave it out — this precious fact that I am going to prepare you a place. The “many abodes” refer to other families of the Father’s. But the Lord says, “I go to prepare a place for you”. He is putting it into their ^[p. 246] hearts — or our hearts — that they are wonderfully distinguished in heaven and that they are going to have a particular place there. “For this reason”, says Paul, “I bow my knees to the Father ... of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3: 14, 15). But, the Lord says, I am going to speak to you about yourselves. I want you to know that you have a wonderful place in heaven. “I go to prepare you a place; and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall receive you to myself”. That is what the angels in Lot’s house did; they brought Lot into the house to them and shut the door. And that is what Noah did in the ark; he took the dove in “to him”. And now the Lord Jesus is saying, I am going to take you to Myself — wonderful promise! Surely the intent of what I have been saying is that we might be ready.

His coming is imminent now. The Lord is waiting for us. When the hour is come He will not fail; He says, “Behold, I come quickly”. That refers to the hour when He comes; the whole matter is in the Father’s hand, but when the hour is come He will come quickly. “The Lord himself”, we are told, “with an assembling shout, with archangel’s voice and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 4: 16). No one will be left of those who belong to Him. Hearing on our side will enter into it, for He says that those that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall go forth ... to resurrection of life; and those who are alive and remain shall be changed. The voice will be loud, the trumpet will be shrill enough to reach every ear of those who belong to Jesus; and all shall be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air; “and thus we shall be always with the Lord”.