ASSEMBLY AFFECTIONS
[p. 134] ASSEMBLY AFFECTIONS
Proverbs 31: 10; Revelation 19: 7
I have before me to say a little about assembly affections, believing that the Lord is working to bring about such affections so that the wife feature of the assembly may appear before Him.
In referring to this book of Proverbs it may be of service that we should be reminded of the nature of the Old Testament and of the ministry of the prophets, lest we should be in any way misled as to their apprehension of the truth. They did not know as much as we are likely to accredit them with. Peter tells us “holy men of God spake under the power of the Holy Spirit” and that they searched “what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them pointed out, testifying before of the sufferings which belonged to Christ, and the glories after these”. “Unto whom”, it says, “it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you”. Mark you they are the same things which are now reported to you “by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven”, and then he adds “which things the angels desire to look into”. The prophets desired to look into them and God revealed to them that the things they ministered were not for themselves — they were for us. It was the Holy Spirit by whom they spake, and so the things were spoken of anticipatively; they were spoken in view of Christ coming in flesh.
This book anticipates the assembly: not that the speaker in this chapter could open up and tell us what it meant. He could not. It was revealed to him that the things he ministered were for the future,
[p. 135] even for us; and so he is made to say here by the Spirit, “Who can find a woman of worth?” The same writer in the book of Ecclesiastes says “One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found”, chapter 7: 28. Now in a way, the book of Ecclesiastes does not require the woman, because it is the preacher who speaks and the theme for the preacher is the Man. If you have found a Man you can preach. Thank God, preaching goes on in the world by many who have no knowledge of the assembly at all, but they have some knowledge of Christ, and so they can preach, for preaching is about Christ; as it is said “the gospel of God ... concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”. So that in the Man we have the subject of the preaching, but then the book of Proverbs is the counterpart of the book of Ecclesiastes; and the more you become acquainted with Christ as the subject of the preaching the more will be the necessity for the woman to appear. “It is not good”, God says, “that the man should be alone”. God brought the animals to Adam to be named and among them there was not found one his like. Doubtless they exhibited remarkable variety of instinct and intelligence, but he found no helpmate, his like: and so God would provide one; “I will make him a helpmate, his like”. Adam, as he saw a lion coming to him, or a sheep, would see nothing like himself. He had intelligence to discern the characteristics of each, for whatever name he gave to a creature that was its name. God altered nothing. But it says, “as for Adam he found no helpmate, his like”. So. God caused a “deep sleep to fall upon Man; and he slept. And he took one of his ribs ... and built the rib ... into a woman,
and brought her to Man”. This was the supreme test of his intelligence. Where did she come from? He says, “This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out of a man”. It was a test of his intelligence, and he answered to the test. The woman is there. Now that is what was in my mind; that the features of Christ should be reproduced femininely — that there should be something for Christ answering to Himself, for that is the necessity. One would speak with reverence of the necessity of His love — the necessity of the love of Christ.
Now the Spirit of God is here with that in view: He is here in relation to the necessities of the love of Christ. You will remember how Abraham instructed his servant, the eldest in his house, to take a wife for his son Isaac. Sometimes we call him Eliezer, but Scripture says, “his servant, the eldest of his house, who ruled over all that he had”. Abraham already had light as to Rebekah for after he had offered up Isaac it says that he returned to his young men and went with them to Beersheba and dwelt there: and it was told him that sons had been born to his brother Nahor, one of whom was Bethuel, who begot Rebekah. But now she is needed, and the servant has to find her — to select her by certain qualities. Abraham might have given him the name of her father and sent his servant there. No, that is not the divine way. We have to find the bride: the wife is to be found by certain traits.
When the disciples said, “Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?” the Lord could have told them the street and the number in it and the name of the man who owned the house, but, He says, “Go into the city”. Divine things come before our spiritual intelligence, hence he says, “Go ye into the city and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him”. You have [p. 137] to look for him: it is a question of having your eyes opened. I refer to that to indicate the principles upon which divine things are discovered, that we have spiritual intelligence. I do not refer to the Spirit Himself, but to the principles upon which divine things are here — “There shall meet you a man”.
There may be a believer who would love to be where Christ is, where He eats the passover with His disciples, who would love to find that place. I would suggest to you the necessity for spiritual insight and alertness. The Lord says, “Go ye into the city and there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him”; that is the thought.
Now the servant is the chief ruler in Abraham’s house and he is to select the bride, the wife of Isaac, by certain traits. I want to speak of one or two scriptures so that we might see the traits which are proper to the assembly as the antitype of Rebekah. The Lord is looking for them: the Holy Spirit is looking for them; in all His dealings with us He has these traits in view. Moses said, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us”. Psalm 90: 17. In Psalm 45 the psalmist delighting to speak about the king says, “Upon thy right hand doth stand the queen in gold of Ophir”: that is what I would call the abstract idea: and I am persuaded that we shall never arrive at an understanding of the assembly unless we see it in that abstract way — that is as in the counsels of God. In the parables of the kingdom the Lord presents Himself as a merchant seeking goodly pearls who when he had found one pearl of great price went and sold all that he had, and bought it. The Lord found the assembly, but then it was not yet the concrete thing. It could not be until the Holy Spirit came down, but He saw the thing: and so it says, “Upon thy right hand doth stand the queen” — the counterpart of the king.
[p. 138] The question is how have we to reach that? For it refers to us. We have to learn to take account of things in the abstract, and if so, we have to begin with the ideal wife, with what God has in view, what I have called the abstract assembly. Isaac must have a bride, and Christ must have the assembly. Well, the believer begins thus. The light of the gospel comes: and what is that light? It is the light of a Man. If the gospel is rightly presented to your soul it is a Man that is presented to you. “Come see a man”. I have no doubt the woman at Sychar is representative of the preaching in the latter days. She is not the official preacher — she speaks of what she had discovered. “Come see a man ... is not this the Christ?” The thought is put into the soul, and nothing is more important than that preachers should present Christ. It is one man among a thousand; and that is all you want: one Man to preach about.
In chapter 30 of this book, the speaker in his enquiry as to who hath established all the ends of the earth says, “What is his name and what is his son’s name if thou canst tell?” so that the preacher has a Man, but what is His name? Preachers should be able to tell what His name is. If you begin to tell the name of Christ you have a wonderful theme. The apostle Paul, as you will remember, as yet an unofficial preacher in the city of Damascus, entered the synagogue, and preached “Jesus, that he is the Son of God”. It was it seems his first sermon; but he told them His name. The eunuch said, “Of whom speaketh the prophet this?” The prophet had spoken about a Man — a wonderful delineation of Christ. Isaiah could not have explained his 53rd chapter, nevertheless he saw it, and John says, “These things said Esaias when he saw his glory and spake of him”. Hence Philip announces Jesus and you may be sure he spoke about the name.
[p. 139] Paul tells us later that God was pleased “to reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations”. He made Him known in his soul. So the preacher can tell the name of the Man and the Man becomes attractive to the soul. The apostle himself sets the example: he says, “The Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”. Galatians 2: 20. Think of one who loves you! I do not know of anything that comes to one’s soul more forcibly than this. He loved me! As Paul says again in Romans, “Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ has died”. That is what the Son of God is: He knows you; He died for you.
Now the presentation of Christ in that way brings about affection. We have been speaking of the eunuch, and I have no doubt he is the representative believer. We have been seeing how he was an individual object with God. He is traversing the desert, and presently a man joins his chariot as if he had descended from heaven — it really was so in principle! The eunuch is reading the book of Isaiah the prophet, and Philip says, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” A voice from heaven is a voice to which everyone of us should pay attention. I am afraid there is too little reading of the Scriptures. Nothing, no amount of ministry, will take the place of the reading of the Scriptures — the private or individual reading of the Scriptures, and the family reading of the Scriptures. If these are neglected you will not be much attracted to Christ; think what a mine of wealth we have in the Scriptures! And so Philip enquires, “Understandest thou what thou readest?” What is the good of reading if I do not understand? but I do urge the importance of reading. Daniel says, “I understand by books”. Mark that! By books he means the inspired books. If we read with the understanding we shall get light from God as to any scripture. Christ would be before the soul for “they are they which testify of me”, as He said. The eunuch answered Philip: “How can I, except some man should guide me?” and Philip began at the same scripture, and preached to him Jesus. Then the eunuch says, “Here is water”. This man as it were came from above to him and announced Jesus, so that he says, “Here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptised?” He accepts that way out of the world, and then he goes on his way rejoicing, and Philip is caught away, as if indeed, he were a heavenly visitor. The scene is peculiarly a spiritual one.
There are many who love the Lord but who are still undeveloped in their affections. Some one has said that orphans do not develop the same affection as others, and that motherless children may be at a disadvantage in this respect. We read in Canticles, “we have a little sister, and she hath no breasts”; it is not implied that she did not have love, but the point is she had not developed what she had, and therefore she did not come under the notice of Solomon. But the bride says, “I am a wall, and my breasts like towers; then was I in his eyes as one that findeth peace”. It is as if we are set down together in the light of the love of Christ. There is one brother there it may be in whom there is not a movement. He breaks bread like the rest, takes part physically, but with no spiritual response. There cannot be a doubt but that he loves Christ, but what about development? The Lord is set for the development of our affections, so that the breasts are like towers. That is what I have in mind, that there might be a development of assembly affections in the saints.
You may say, what do you mean by assembly affections? It may be some one here has some love for the Lord in a personal way, but now, you enquire, How am I to love assembly-wise? That is an interesting question, because that is what the Lord wants.
[p. 141] He loves to have your personal affections: but what about loving assembly-wise? The Lord’s supper is to teach us how to develop assembly affections. And I will tell you how it comes about. If you love Christ you will also love your brother. It may be that you have only learned to love your neighbour — very good if you have! It is a triumph if one can maintain love for a neighbour, day in and day out. But suppose you do love him — you can love with him. If you have learned to love him you can learn to love with him, that is, two of you can learn to love the same object. That is simple and that is what I understand by assembly affections, and the circle becomes wider and wider until what is spoken of in the epistle to the Colossians is reached, that is love to all the saints, and hence I understand and enjoy what we have in that epistle: “quickened together with him”. If I am quickened with Christ, I want all the saints quickened with Christ; and if, as in Ephesians, I am raised up and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ, I want the saints there too.
That is how I understand the Lord would develop assembly affection. Hence the one who has the breasts like towers, says, “We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts”. She wants to have her little sister with her. She could teach her how to love, and it is a great opportunity for us of teaching one another how to love. God teaches us. “Ye yourselves”, the apostle says, “are taught of God to love one another”, and it is in this constant exercise amongst the saints of God that the Lord develops assembly affection. He sees the thing permeating the company, and that is what He is looking for.
It is that which the Spirit of God has in view in this last chapter of Proverbs. “Her price is far above rubies; the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her”. If the Lord is confiding in the assembly it is because He loves her. He will not entrust anything [p. 142] to one who does not love Him. Love is the thing. The chapter gives a prophetic view of the assembly; it is based on what the Spirit would provide as the result of the death of Christ. So we read in Revelation 19 that “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready” — an occasion of great joy. She has done it herself; that is the thing. What are we doing in regard of Christ’s coming, and the marriage? It is not the bride in this chapter, it is the “wife”, because it refers to what we are to Christ in the time of His rejection; and it is the marriage of the Lamb — the suffering one. The next chapter gives us the glory of the assembly in display, but the point in chapter 19 is that she is the wife — His confidante, the one in whom His heart can safely confide. Can anything be more enticing to the heart than that the Lord can confide in her in His absence? Here it is simply the wife, and she has made herself ready; she has put on such garments as are becoming; to her it is granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white. It is not here a gorgeous display of colours. Colours in Scripture have reference to varieties of public glory. They are for display. Whiteness is purity; it is essential purity; that which is known in private. The fine linen is the “righteousnesses of the saints”. So the king has a queen, but how do the saints come to the good of the position? Well, the first thing is, “Hearken. O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house, so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”. The Lord sees His own beauty taking form in you, and He desires it. In the Psalm it goes on to say, “The king’s daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold: She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework”. Needlework is one stitch after another; it is not a power loom; it is not machine work. Christendom is full of machine work: things are turned out in bulk but that is not the [p. 143] divine way. Fine linen is the righteousnesses all put together divinely one stitch after another. It is the daily thing, the work of the Spirit through the exercises of the saints. She is all glorious within. “Within” has reference to the king’s palace; it is within His apartments; there is not a discrepancy — she is in accord with that palace. One thinks of His “unrebuking gaze” — lovely thought! He sees her in His own perfection so that His heart is perfectly at rest.
We learn in part, and we can only minister in part; but one’s thought is to offer a suggestion, so that we may have it before us that the Lord is seeking to produce assembly affections and to bring about the ability to love together. It is thus that the assembly is formed; so it says, “His wife hath made herself ready”.