WHAT THE TESTIMONY IS, AND HOW WE PROMOTE IT
WHAT THE TESTIMONY IS, AND HOW WE PROMOTE IT
The testimony in a few words is, first, that all the sin, misery and judgment entailed on man through Adam’s sin has been removed by the second Man, the Lord from heaven, by His death and blood-shedding; and as birth involved us in the one, so does faith obtain for us the benefits of the other. Adam and his race, as the Scriptures testify, have failed in every position in which God was pleased to put them. When this was fully disclosed, God sent His Son: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”. There was a Man on earth entirely according to the mind of God: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” - the Son of man which is in heaven. The testimony then is, first, that Christ by His work has cleared every believer of the sin of Adam, and through grace, his state before God is not now in Adam but in Christ. This, which is properly the gospel, entirely supersedes the first man, placing the believer in perfect peace and blessed acceptance in new creation before God. This, as has been said, is our ministry. The other or second part of the testimony is that each believer is now a member of the body of Christ, united to Him in heaven by the Holy Spirit sent down, and also united to one another by the same Spirit; and in the latter is completed the word of God. (Colossians 1: 25)
There were three great testimonies before the coming of Christ. The first was given to Noah after the flood; he was to suppress evil, and to bring everything into subjection to his rule. The second was to Abraham, to walk outside of every natural influence in faith. The third to Moses, to maintain for God here, through the [p. 251] unseen power of God, in spite of opposition all around.
Noah failed because he could not deny himself; Abraham failed because of the famine, or the absence of resources; Moses - or the testimony - because of wilfulness, turning aside to some human means, and not simply confiding in the unseen power of God.
Our blessed Lord fulfilled all the testimonies in Himself. He pleased not Himself, and proved Himself eminently fit to rule: “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God”. He ever walked in faith, counting on God in the most resourceless circumstances; and He ever maintained His name amidst universal opposition, by the unseen power of God.
As we live Christ here, we are in the virtues of His testimony. We do not please ourselves, we walk in faith, not influenced by our senses, and we have no means for doing anything but the invisible power of the Spirit of God. We are His witnesses.
If we look at the church of God as a whole, we shall not find any trace of this great testimony as to either the individual part, or the corporate. The testimony relates to what Christ is in both.
True, as to evangelisation, there is a clearer note now sounded forth as to the grace of God in the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ, an advance on the way in which justification by faith was first preached, which was the first great step to recover lost ground or truth. But though the forgiveness of sins is clearly set forth as the gift of God to faith, yet there is little or no apprehension in the gospel preached of even the first part of the testimony, namely, that Christ has so set us free from the whole condition of Adam that the believer has an entirely new state in Christ. This is really the first part of the testimony now. With regard to the second part, there is generally nothing but the vaguest and most unscriptural ideas. A churchman so-called regards the church - the building - as the place and sphere of blessing, from some faint glimmer of the truth of the [p. 252] distinction belonging to the house of God; while the dissenters, who, for the most part from exercise of conscience, sought something more, regard membership with their co-religionists as a great step in advance. Thus in neither part has the testimony been preserved; and as in the type Israel failed to continue in the testimony inaugurated at Jericho, neither has the church continued in the testimony set up in Acts 2. But if the history of Israel, from Jericho to Samuel, is a moral parallel to our church history, it is replete with instruction for us. For though our failure has been greater than theirs, yet the same power to retrieve our condition morally remains with us as it did with them. They recovered the testimony sensibly in the days of Samuel, and in the same way we also can free ourselves from the oppressor. The position of Israel was very different in the days of Jericho from what it was in the days of Samuel. At first they took their stand against the inhabitants of the land; they were not under the hand of anyone. But in the days of Samuel they were oppressed and enslaved by the Philistines. It is a very different thing to encounter a foe when entirely free and ready for action, and to throw off the yoke of an oppressor in order to be free. The former was the state of things at Jericho, the latter the state of things in Samuel’s time, answering very distinctly to the state of things in the church of God at this moment. But as there was a way of escape in Samuel’s days, so there is now.
Let us now learn how Samuel revived the testimony, and escaped from the yoke of the oppressor.
The first great moral step in order to obtain the succour of God is separation from evil; the ear of the Lord is open to the righteous. Hence Samuel says, “If ye do return to the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines”. We cannot really approach God unless we separate from evil. “Come out... and be ye separate... and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters”. God is light, and we could not draw near without being challenged by the light. The perverse one will submit to any extent of religiousness in preference to the simple act of drawing near to God. The light of His presence requires that there should be no question or soil on the conscience. There must be a good conscience practically, and this necessarily, because we have a purged one. First, then, there must be separation from everything false; and false worship is the worst falsehood, because it contradicts what is truest.
The water poured out I apprehend implies that the line of separation is avowedly declared. Consequent on separation, the next thing is the offering of the burnt-offering, which expresses our acceptance in Christ - “accepted in the Beloved”. We are before God in the sense of perfect favour, and though, concurrently with this sense, the power of the enemy may increase and oppress, even to the terror of the heart, yet now the cry will be heard, and deliverance will be granted; and thus Christ is increasingly to our hearts the Ebenezer, the sure guarantee that no weapon formed against us can prosper. Through prayer the yoke of the oppressor is broken. “The Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel: and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel” (1 Samuel 7: 13). Samuel was the man of prayer.
Thus to the faithful remnant it is known that the Lord has not departed from us, and we are enabled to stand in Canaan, in the calling wherewith we are called, and “having done all, to stand”. Through prayer the Lord sets us free with an open door in Canaan, the heavenly position. The liberty to enjoy our position is restored to the prayerful one - simply calling upon God. But this position cannot be maintained except as the characteristics [p. 254] of the true witness are preserved. There is never a step in moral power where there is not first self-denial, not pleasing ourselves. There is no real following the Lord except as the cross is borne; here is the check to all progress. It is not in things grossly wrong, but in things right and lawful in themselves, but which are fatal to the testimony when I am brought under the power of any. The second - to walk in faith - is a comfort to me when the first is accepted and observed; and the third - no power but by the Spirit of God - gives unbounded confidence to the heart which is simply guided by and dependent on the word of God.
Thus the blessed God in the lowest state of things assures us that there shall be a tenth, a remnant, “as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves”. Nothing for the public eye, no leaves; but yet the substance is there, all the power of the grace given us of God.