IN A TIME OF FAILURE, WHAT IS THE REMEDY?
IN A TIME OF FAILURE, WHAT IS THE REMEDY?
There has always been, in the dealings of God with man on earth, some one special standing which was the test of the faithful for the time being. Adam failed to maintain [p. 344] the standing committed to him. Cain failed; but Enoch, the seventh from Adam, walked with God. The last one of seven generations pleased God. He “was translated that he should not see death... for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God”. There was a clear and distinct return to God by faith. “Without faith it is impossible to please him”. Adam by his distrust of God and His word lost the standing committed to him. But now Enoch, walking in faith, is translated, borne above all the consequences of Adam’s failure, though enveloped in them. It is unspeakably cheering to see a man enabled by grace to rise from the lowest point to the highest. Adam, set in the most favourable circumstances, was not able to keep his standing, while Enoch, through grace, though placed in all the consequences of his failure, was made superior to the penalty of Adam’s transgression, and was translated that he should not see death.
It is an immense comfort to be thus assured that the worst state of things, and the worst penalty itself, can be retrieved by simple faith in God. Abel, born under the penalty of sin, was killed by his brother because of his faith in God, and yet that same faith triumphed signally in the person of Enoch. There was clear evidence that the grace of God, when relied on, could carry the believer above the worst of penalties, and thus the new standing could be maintained, though impeded with the greatest difficulties. Faith in God had secured for Enoch a victory over death, the penalty which had fallen on man because of unbelief; so that faith can secure an immunity from penalty because of grace, and is more effectual, and better to man in the worst circumstances, than when everything is in his favour, and he only self-dependent.
In like manner faith secured for Noah safety from the flood, while he found eventually that everything here was put under a new covenant for his benefit. Thus faith in God enables the believer to maintain the standing to [p. 345] which at any time he may be called; he has only to ascertain the standing, and if he has faith he is sure to be able to keep it. It is as easy for God to do a great thing as a small one; and hence the moment we know our vocation, there is nothing required but faith in God, and He is sure to keep us to the standing He has assigned to us. Abraham learns this; he first declines from his calling because of the famine, but he returns to find that he need not surrender his standing because of difficulties, but simply walk on in faith. He finds that as he does so, the greatest and largest blessings are opened to him. Mount Moriah discloses to him the resources of God - Jehovah-Jireh: “in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen” - so that dearth and death are as nothing if there be faith. None of these things can hinder the power of God in leading the believer triumphantly according to the path to which He has called him. What is impossible with men is possible with God; this may be proved every day now by the man of simple faith. If I but know what God has called me to, and I have faith in Him, I must be according to His pleasure.
See the same principle in the life of Moses. He was able to surmount every difficulty which, however great and unexpected, blocked his path on the line to which God had called him. There was never a check to it except as faith waned. If Aaron doubts, apostasy, misery and ruin follow; but let Moses come forth, and he not only knows the right thing to do, but in the confidence of faith, at first single-handed, he rallies the pure in heart - those on the Lord’s side - and triumphantly maintains the standing to which Israel was called.
The unbelief of believers often begets unbelief in us, when one would have been proof against it if only opposed by the worldly and unbelieving. Moses never lost ground until, irritated by the murmurings of the people, he spake unadvisedly with his lips; he failed to sanctify the Lord.
In any and every time, as there was faith in God, so [p. 346] was the believer sustained according to the calling of God at the time. God always had a distinct vocation for His people in every distinct period. How fully and strikingly this is taught in the book of Judges! As there was faith there was recovery, whatever the nature of the misery into which they had fallen. And when it is simple and unmixed, as in Samuel at the close, the recovery was large and beautiful.
By faith Hezekiah can have a passover second to none since the days of Solomon, Ezra can rebuild the temple, and Nehemiah repair the walls of Jerusalem. As unbelief had led to the downfall and captivity, so faith obtains recovery and restoration. The children of the captivity and Daniel, though under the penalty of the apostasy of their nation, no longer the vessel of power on earth, are enabled by faith to maintain their proper vocation in their humiliating and circumscribed circumstances within the walls of Babylon. The same visible demonstration of power will not return, but the vocation wherewith the people of God have been called will surely be revived and restored. The same principle was in Haggai’s time - the house of the Lord lay waste; and yet the moment faith accepted their calling, it was, “from this day will I bless you”.
I refer to the Lord’s life here only to corroborate how simple faith ever commanded the exigencies of the hour. The widow of faith, in the very decline of life clinging to the calling of God, departs not from the temple, but continuing therein in fastings and prayers night and day, comes in for our Lord’s first appearance in the temple. And the widow, casting in all the living that she had for the house of God that was then, calls forth His commendation when leaving the temple for the last time to give Himself unto death. One met Him when He first entered the temple, and the other engaged His attention and called forth His commendation when He was in it for the last time. The Lord was so with Stephen that with his expiring breath he overcame evil with good.
[p. 347] He rose morally to the height of his calling in spite of the intensity of his suffering.
Thus, in this imperfect review of God’s ways with His people, we have seen that, as there was faith in God, the saint rose to the standing to which he was called of God. And this principle we must now apply to our own time. We are exhorted to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called. Paul’s doctrine sets forth this calling. There are three great facts in the apostle’s doctrine. I could not in the limits of this paper go in any degree copiously into any of them. I can only state them, and beg my reader to study them for himself. The three are: heavenly citizenship; the body of Christ on earth united to Him in heaven; and the wisdom of God, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. Such, as I apprehend, is Paul’s doctrine or teaching, and however the church has departed or lost sight of it, it is still its calling. And according to the principle which we have traced through Scripture, the man of faith rises to the height of the calling, though there be not - as in Samuel’s day, or in Hezekiah’s, or in Haggai’s day - a return to or a restoration of the power or outward distinction which marked the church at the first. Faith in God necessarily carries me to the standing which He has assigned to me. The first thing is to apprehend the nature of the standing; and then, as I rely on God, He by His Spirit raises me to the standing, and in a state suited to it, because all my progress is of God. Paul, baffled and confounded at Jerusalem, proceeds to Rome. He encounters great dangers on the voyage, but the word of the Lord cheers and sustains his heart in the midst of the general break-up. “God hath given thee all them that sail with thee”; a comfort to faith and a clear assurance of success and triumph to every one adhering to Paul.
In Paul’s time the greatest evidence of the prosperity of souls was their faithful adherence to his doctrine. It is not that Paul is to be elevated into anything beyond the [p. 348] chosen vessel of the Lord; but he was the one appointed by Him to unfold the status of the assembly as I have attempted to define it. What marked the true restoration of the Corinthians but “your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me”, 2 Corinthians 7: 7. What marked the declension of the Galatians but “Am I... become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” Galatians 4: 16. What marked the prosperity of the Thessalonians but “that ye have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you... for now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord”, 1 Thessalonians 3: 6, 8. What gave the Philippians the peculiar favour of ministering to the apostle, Philippians 4: 15, 16, which was denied to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians? “For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye are all partakers of my grace”, Philippians 1: 5 - 7.
So that as there was faith in God, there was adherence to Paul’s doctrine, and this the apostle in his last words impresses on Timothy (2 Timothy 3: 10), and illustrates the efficacy of faith in the most trying circumstances in himself personally. “At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me”. Can we conceive the distress of that moment to the master-builder of the assembly, to be deserted by all, while confronted by the full array of the power which had crucified his Lord? But he wavered not, and the Lord stood with him. Faith leads to victory; there is here a sure guarantee of divine support to maintain this calling of God under the most grievous and disheartening circumstances. No one since has been placed in circumstances in any way similar to them, who has not found that he was invested with Paul’s mantle, and that the Lord who had succoured [p. 349] Paul in such an extreme moment is the same to the one who now holds fast that which he hath. Philadelphia alone, among the recusant assemblies in Asia, as set forth in Revelation 2 and 3, holds to Paul’s doctrine. Though surely the one recovered out of Laodicea not only learns the comforting of the Lord’s sympathy as He sups with him, entering into his trials and difficulties here; but he is carried into the highest range the saint can ever know, even to sup with Christ, that is, to be led into fellowship with His interests and engagements with His body here on the earth.
May we have faith in God; and as surely as we have, we shall rise up to His calling and do His pleasure.