ASSEMBLY MATERIAL
[p. 487] ASSEMBLY MATERIAL
1 Corinthians 11: 17 - 26; Acts 13: 1 - 4
JT I thought we might consider the assembly from the standpoint of its novel composition, that is, involving the idea of men. In our meetings on the Spirit earlier we spoke of the aim of the apostle to bring about conditions of soul growth in Corinth. He spoke in chapter 10 as unto intelligent persons but that would be men in a potential sense because they were that really. He could hardly introduce the great subject before him save as assuming that it would not fit in in any other setting. It is not a matter for children or babes in Christ but for men. The assembly involves something withstanding evil in this world. All is for God in testimony so that there is the idea of these men, in the sense of developed manhood. It was the thing I had especially in mind in suggesting these scriptures which would have a bearing on the Supper. What is needed for very many other things of God is fully grown manhood. If a local assembly is not composed of men it is sure to discredit the testimony rather than to help it. In truth we need the women, the sisters, and even the young people but obviously the men will form the prominent feature.
HG The intelligent men referred to in chapter 10 would be as potentially having the Spirit but not as being formed here.
JT Numbers helps us in that. All the males were taken account of over 20 years old: all believers who had the Spirit. But they were not necessarily full grown men, and able to go forth to war. But we have the idea of 25 years old and the idea of 30 years old in the Levites. The range from 30 to 50 years old would allude to a man in his prime, both physically and intellectually. All that enters [p. 488] into what we are saying. So that the Lord speaks to His Father in Matthew 11 about the disciples and calls them babes, but in His last remark to His Father in our hearing He calls them men. I think that helps to show what is meant: “The men whom thou gavest me”, John 17: 6.
HG Is it your thought that the place where it says, “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” suggests an infantile condition in the disciples?
JT I think so. He speaks to His Father about them in the hearing of others. In John 17 he calls them men. A good deal had intervened between these estimates of them. I thought in our remarks we might touch on the Lord’s way in His ministry with His own. I think that Peter in Acts 1 illustrates the Lord’s remarks about them in calling them men. Peter’s service before the Spirit came shows manliness. He knew what to do. He stood up amongst the brethren. He would feel that there were only eleven. That is a good point in any locality. You feel that they were not what they ought to be. The situation is broken up. Judas was gone. I think we ought to feel that. Anyone that does not feel that is dead. Peter felt it and spoke about it. Possibly he had thought over it many times because he knew the Psalms. He spoke about the Psalms and he said: ‘Now we must nominate one who has assembled with us to take this position, to fill this place’. The word ‘assembled’ is remarkable. “Assembled with us all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went among us ... until the day in which he was taken up”, Acts 1: 21, 22. That seems to me a very manly statement. It denotes a man’s way of looking at things. He was certainly quitting himself like a man. He was taught even before the Holy Spirit came. So that Luke makes a point of that and also that the Lord before He was received [p. 489] up was assembled with them, and he says He told them to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit would come “after now not many days”. So that Luke portrays the fully grown men, which the Lord indicated in speaking to His Father, they were there. In his gospel Luke does not give Peter so much credit and Mark exposes the eleven thoroughly in regard of their lack of manliness after the Lord arose; Matthew, too, also exposes them. But in the Acts the touch is beautiful bringing out the result of the forty days’ work of the Lord. What a change had come about! I thought it was illustrated in Genesis 46 and 47 in Joseph’s five brethren. He selected five men from the whole number of his brethren. That is, the whole number was searched out so that these five men might be presented to Pharaoh. They would represent what Joseph would believe would be suitable. He had already instructed them as to what to say, and I think that is another point. We cannot be in the assembly according to God save as taught of the Lord. So that we have to go over the gospels in order to get the full thought of how the Lord speaks with His disciples; how He was amongst them.
LS Would you suggest that the five men in Acts 13 were in accord with that?
JT Surely, very much so.
LS They are not just mentioned. They are fully furnished.
JT Just the idea; “The men” the Lord says. There they are. You are to ask Joseph about his brethren. He would bring the five forward. We are not told their names but we are told that they are selected out of the whole number. A real search out of the whole number.
— M. Mark speaks of the Lord calling twelve and Peter speaks of “the men who have assembled with us”. [p. 490] There would be training there.
JT Very good. There would be training in the interim. It is the handiwork of Christ.
HG In the selection of the five brethren which were presented to Pharaoh, have you any thought of the Lord’s selection in the morning meeting and His choice of the best to render to God?
JT I think He would select. If Paul were present the Lord would not pass by him. Would you have that in your mind?
HG Yes.
JT Undoubtedly there were these five in Antioch, who were the outcome of a year’s teaching by Barnabas and Saul. It would be a sort of pattern for us. You might say it is the opposite to Corinth. There were none there that Paul could write about in this way. Think of what they were doing. He says, “When ye come together in assembly, I hear there exist divisions among you, and I partly give credit to it. For there must also be sects among you”. They had the idea of the assembly evidently. He must have instructed them in that but see how they were degrading it! They were eating the Supper theoretically. And yet they had received from him “that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was delivered up, took bread”. It seems to me that there was no treasury there, no power to keep the things that he had delivered in a spiritual way. They had not kept things by the Spirit. We may easily drop down to just attending the meetings, and the Holy Spirit may have nothing to say to us at all. We may carry on the thoughts without the spiritual touch, without the substance. It would have been a godly soul in Corinth who could say, Why that is not anything like Paul said it. I heard him say it. “I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus ... took bread”. And he would go over what Paul had said to them, had delivered to [p. 491] them.
WB The five men in Acts 13 would be a great help to the meeting.
JT That is just it. They fasted and prayed. They would not get drunk before others.
LS How would that apply today? Would such a thing as eating before another and getting drunk be possible?
JT Of course our public manners are improved. You perhaps would not get that today even in the denominations. But you may get divisions (verse 18). What is so serious is what underlay the conduct. I suppose they came together in a large place and there was eating, and drinking, and ordering of meals. It is hardly believable, but that is probably what marked the procedure. They were just so many children dealing with divine things. They had the terms but nothing in substance. There was drinking to excess and eating before others, meaning that the others were not eating. The serious thing is touched on in verse 18. The extravagance they went to is corrected today, not by spiritual intelligence, but by orderly correct religious procedure. It would not be permitted today.
JB Would it not be possible to leave the Lord out and make it our own supper and not His? Not with the excess that they went to here, but to make it as though the Supper belonged to us in place of coming together under the Lord.
JT Yes, just so. The assembly is disregarded and despised. Current religious etiquette would forbid any such extravagance today, but it does not forbid the sects. There are heresies amongst them which have to be, and are, accepted as something which cannot be altered.
JB You get discerning the Lord’s body in the end of the chapter and there may be the possibility of not discerning that now in the loaf.
[p. 492] JT I am sure that is true. The idea of discernment is important in the assembly. But the serious matter to deal with in verse 18 is the divisions: “I hear there exist divisions among you, and I partly give credit to it”. He then says, “When ye come therefore together ... it is not to eat the Lord’s supper”. He proceeds to show that it was not. Their conduct made it something else. What they did was something else. And so today you cannot have the Lord’s supper in any sect. It is something else; it is not the Lord’s supper.
D What caused this sad condition?
JT A low state of soul, a fleshly state of things among the brethren. They were divided up into parties following local leaders, a distressing state of things.
D They had a good start. Paul had ‘delivered it to them’.
JT It shows they had not the treasury and put the deposit in it. The Supper belongs to the assembly normally. That is to say you look for normal assembly features. It requires spirituality.
HG Why is the term the “Lord’s supper” used? In the Acts they came together to break bread.
JT It is only used here. Would it answer to a certain moral dignity? The very term would solemnize them. It would prevent them from acting as they were doing. I suppose it is the idea of dominance. You cannot go on like this. He touches that in both chapters 10 and 11. The Lord will have to say to you about all this. But the breaking of bread seems to be connected more with the thought of a memorial. We have the memorial here, too, of course, but it is especially in the breaking of bread.
LS Say a word as to the assembly, distinguishing it from a company of people.
JT It is in a remarkable form. Mr. Darby omits [p. 493] the article in verse 18 and I think he is right. I think it is that brethren coming from their homes, or places of abode and their individual relations require and take on dignity. I always think of 10 o’clock in the morning that the brethren are getting ready for the meeting, closing up the home and taking the car out. I always think that as soon as they start out with the view of assembly the dignity is taken on. In a few minutes we are going to be together in an august way, in a dignity that is not known in this world. Heaven is looking on in this matter. How that sister is wending her way to the assembly: the footsteps of the flock. The Lord is building and He is occupied with all that movement. It is converging in a certain point. It comes in in verse 18. It is victory; there is no physical locality. What is in my mind is firstly all the persons and then that I am sitting in relation to them. We are together in assembly. Each is regarded and clothed in that. In a denomination a religious leader would speak and indicate the order, but the assembly sees no visible leader at all; it becomes a great instrument, so to speak, in itself, moving in intelligence and power. That is what I understand. How befitting it is that the procedure begins with the Lord’s supper. It is the Lord. Do you agree with all this Mr. G.
HG I was wondering if a member of Parliament might be very simple in his own house but would be dignified when he comes into the House of Commons.
JT A very good illustration. He would put on dignity. So that you cannot go in and sit alongside them. You might get into the gallery but you cannot get near to them. How beautifully Peter stood up and spoke in the midst of the brethren. There was real dignity. He spoke and there was not another man in the whole universe that could possibly speak like that. Luke’s record brings out the result of the Lord’s work in His men, especially during the forty days.
Rem Why did He speak so much of the kingdom in those forty days?
JT Well I suppose it was the great thing needed in the inauguration; power was needed. But then the idea of the assembly is interwoven in what Peter says: “assembled with us all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day in which he was taken up from us”, Acts 1: 21, 22. What a history that was. What manliness there was in His movements, His coming in and going out! In the beginning of that period, that auspicious day when the Lord came where John was, when He came up out of the water, when, as He was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended, what a day that was! It was the beginning of it.
JB Would the assembly not take the place today that He occupied in regard to the Holy Spirit?
JT Yes. “So also is the Christ”, 1 Corinthians 12: 12.
JB To get right thoughts of the assembly one would have to see how the Lord moves here in the midst of His disciples.
JT That was what I had in mind. It is strikingly shown in Luke 10 when the Lord had sent out the seventy: in chapter 9 it speaks about the “days of His receiving up”, and that is the great model for the assembly — how He is received into heaven. How He is received amongst us. In chapter 10 when the seventy returned telling of their success. He said, “Rejoice not, that the spirits are subjected to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the heavens”, Luke 10:20. The very thought, the very word ‘heavens’, and their names being there cause a change in His spirit; He rejoices. That is an indication of what you might find in the assembly normally, an occasion of peace in the Spirit. He [p. 495] rejoices in spirit and praises His Father. And then after doing that, He says, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son is pleased to reveal him”, Luke 10:22. That stands by itself. Then He turns to His disciples, and He says, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see. For I say to you that many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye behold, and did not see them”, verse 24. He turned to them. That is one example of how He was amongst His own, and how His Father and He spoke together; He was in a peculiar position that no one knew Him nor who He was, but the Father. In the same chapter He is received into a certain woman’s house. The mere reception was not all. I mean that this is not the idea. The idea is in Mary. Then it says He prayed, and then one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples”. So we are reminded in regard to all this scene in which He is, and into which He would have the assembly come, that we have got to learn everything in it from Christ. Even how to pray. I believe that is what is meant. We see how He spoke to His followers, and how His spirit rejoiced. We have to learn how to ask things from Him.
JB In the house of Martha, Mary was sitting at His feet listening to His word.
JT She indicates the attitude of the disciples in asking the Lord to teach them to pray. He accepts their ignorance, that they cannot talk unless they are taught. Joseph instructed his brethren before he brought them to Pharaoh, and I think that all culminates in Luke in the inauguration of the Supper, and how He acted: “When the hour was come, he placed himself at table”, Luke 22:14. That would mean that the idea of place, and public order in [p. 496] coming together in the room would be there. We behave properly; we are not in an ordinary house or public place; the very place is as you might say, sanctified. Every movement of mine should denote that I am about to have to do with great matters. Then we have His remark and the use of the passover cup, then the other cup. Luke tells us about the two cups.
I am sure the Lord is pleased with any effort we may make to put into effect what He indicates to us as His mind about things. He is pleased with any thought of it. Then we have to learn that it is not always a question of numbers, because the idea of men must predominate, men, important men.
LS The thought would be that they could be easily set in motion. They come under that touch of the Head.
JT Exactly. I think the Lord could settle all these things. The Lord loves to see His people facing difficulties and working them out themselves. “Take this and divide it among yourselves”. He puts it in amongst us. The angels look down and see what we are going to do about it. They see how we are concerned about the Lord’s mind. In Acts 1 the disciples were in the upper room; there was no Christ there nor Holy Spirit, but there were men there; they know what to do and heaven was pleased with that. I believe chapter 1 is morally the basis of Pentecost: the Holy Spirit came down on what heaven was pleased with.
HG It is also the men “who have assembled with us all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us”. That would suggest men that are exercised to become intelligent in the mind of the Lord.
JT That is very good. They would be watching the movements of the Lord in that way.
HG David was “he that leddest out and broughtest in Israel” even when Saul was king.
JT Very nice. Now Judas comes in. How abhorrent that kind of a man is to this kind of men. The elements that are in chapter 1 are very remarkable and are very much like those in Psalm 1. That psalm is the moral side, the godly man. The spirit of God delights in the moral. Psalm 2 is the anointed man. There is a link between the two and so there is between Acts 1 and 2. The first is the moral side and the second is the official, which constituted our anointing.
LS The fact of each being expressed by name would suggest intelligence in these things.
JT I think so. Every name in that crowd of names there meant something. It was not just a crowd of persons, but a crowd of names. That laying itself out in that way would be delightful. What went on must have been highly pleasing to heaven, just as the Lord Jesus was highly pleasing to heaven during all the days of those thirty years of His life down here, as manifested in the voice from heaven, “In thee I have found my delight”. There is no doubt that John 1: 18 refers to that, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”. He came into the effects; it is not, ‘In whom is’ but “In thee I have found my delight”. His moral perfection on earth here shows a most important matter. So the assembly, too, came into heaven’s delight before the Spirit came down. The Holy Spirit came down in relation to what was pleasing. All were present in one place.
LS The Holy anointing oil only comes into the pleasing idea.
JT Exactly. “So also is the Christ”. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is dealing with the significance of the Lord’s supper. It is a question of its significance, what it is, the communion. In chapter 11 it is the [p. 498] order in which the supper should be taken, the bread first and then the cup.
HG Chapter 10 brings the cup in first and has the idea of being in correspondence with it in that sense. To bless the cup. To bless, of course, is to take. Is that right?
JT I think so. It is a solemn thing to be blessing that cup, and yet to be inconsistent with the thing.
JB Do we get the thought of the covenant in the 10th or in the 11th chapter?
JT Oh, we do not get it in the 10th. There it is the fellowship of the death of Christ. I cannot connect that with anything in this world. The point in chapter 10 is to keep the saints from the world.
HG You would provoke the Lord to jealousy.
JT Yes. The word assembly is in chapter 11. It is a question of order. Great things are done. Everything should be according to intelligence. The angels are looking on. The very positions of the bread and the cup and the giving of thanks would all be in intelligence. So that we would, “pray with the spirit but ... also with the understanding”, we would “sing with the spirit, but ... also with the understanding”, 1 Corinthians 14: 15. Things must be done intelligently.
Anything inconsistent with heaven will grieve an angel. What they see in the assembly is something beyond that, “the all various wisdom of God” (Ephesians 3: 10), something working out as shown in Luke. When it is a question of order it should agree with heaven.
WB The five men in Acts 13 ministered unto the Lord and fasted. Such men would quicken and grow in spiritual assembly ability.
JT Well that is what we may say. I am glad you brought us back to it. It is the first mention we have in the history of the people, since Pentecost, of [p. 499] actual ministry to the Lord. God would say, ‘I am thinking of men’, but now He is being thought of and ministered to. It is all to bring out what is at Antioch, and to see what leads to the great effects of the ministry of Barnabas and Saul, men that stand out as the kind of ministers that please God. “Barnabas ... was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith”, Acts 11: 24. He brought Saul on the scene and a whole year they taught a large crowd in the assembly. Now verse 26 is a remarkable verse that needs analysis. It suggests much as to what follows in chapter 13. It is a matter of a year’s work. And then chapter 12 intervenes to indicate what is going on at Jerusalem; Barnabas and Saul had come up there but we do not know that they got any light up there about the assembly. They went up with a gift and they came back, we are told, having fulfilled the service entrusted to them; they also brought back John named Mark. I think you find in Jerusalem what is going on and then you find just what is here. It is not what is at Corinth. Look at the difference! Christians at Antioch.
HG Such was the anointed company there.
JT That is what I thought. It is presented as a result.
HG It had a purpose. It was more than a name given to them.
JT I think it is right and it was to stand as it has, too, ever since. It remains very much like the results in chapter 1, only there it is the result of the Lord’s own handiwork, and this is the result of the handiwork of two trusted men. The handiwork of the Spirit, of course, but they were there. They are the workers. It is to bring out what is there. The assembly that was there at Antioch. That is the present bearing. Of course, we are in a broken state of things, but the point is what can God see [p. 500] about a locality. What is there? Well, here is one thing that can be said. The five men were here and they were ministering unto the Lord, and they were fasting. The conditions that existed made way for the Spirit of God, to carry out administration freely: “Separate me now Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them”. That is an instruction which the Holy Spirit gives, and there is complete response in handing over these two men to Him. What can we do here? What can we hand over to the Spirit? But this is a question of the Holy Spirit asking for two men. Can we hand them over to Him? He has put His stamp on them, and he wants us to hand them over. That is the position, and I think there is a very fine product as a result of the work of God in these two men.