THE IMPORTANCE OF OVERCOMING
N. J. Henry
John 16: 32, 33; 2 Samuel 22: 1–4, 30; Judges 6: 11–21; Genesis 5: 21–24; 2 Corinthians 12: 14, 15
The thought in my heart is to raise the matter as to overcoming and the importance of it. I feel measured by it but that should not cause us not to take it up. There has never been a time since sin came in that God has not required it. I would like you to keep that in mind as we go over this thought, that as long as the will of God was in question and God’s rights were in question, God required the principle of overcoming. We have read an extraordinary verse at the end of John 16 where the Lord said Himself, “I have overcome the world”. I do not know if I could say much about that, I cannot explain it, but it was extraordinary that such a glorious Person came into an area where overcoming was required.
In the three synoptic gospels we have the account of the temptations, where the devil comes personally; he has not done that with anyone else as he did to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am sure he uses agencies and other things, but I think it was unique as to the temptations that he came personally to Christ; but the temptations are not mentioned in John’s gospel. I think it has a much wider application in John’s gospel where it is sometimes hard to see the difference between Judaism and the world. The last thing the Lord Jesus says to His own as together before He died, in John’s gospel, are these words, “be of good courage: I have overcome the world”. Later, after He prays to His Father in John 17, He addresses Peter in chapter 18 where He says to put the sword back into the sheath, and then on the cross He speaks to His mother and John. In resurrection He speaks to His own as together after completing His work. Judas having gone out, He had opened up His heart from chapters 13 to 16, and finally said, “Behold, the hour is coming, and has come, that ye shall be scattered, each to his own”.
What word is this blessed Man giving to those who have persevered with Him in His temptations from the Jew and everything else that contradicted Christ in His pathway. He says, “ye shall be scattered, each to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me”. He is still in communion here. I know of course the forsaking is not mentioned in John, although it is in other gospels.
And He adds, “These things have I spoken to you that in me ye might have peace”. What a benefactor He was! This gives you a touch of rich grace from the words of Christ as He was going forward to suffer. He says, “In the world ye have tribulation”, the same kind of pathway as Christ. He suffered uniquely, but they would have the same kind of pathway. He says, “In the world ye have tribulation; but be of good courage—I have overcome the world”.
He was personally morally superior to the whole system that was here, a glorious Person. He was here in the midst of it, but He was morally greater in every way although He was amongst men, alongside them. He worked in the carpenter’s shop, He lived a life of perfection and sinlessness. He knew no sin; that was the life of Christ, and at the end of it, having faced everything in the world, the whole system, of Judaism and everything it included, He says, I have overcome it, I am morally superior to it. Is that not a word of comfort for us, beloved brethren? If things get difficult in the world, remember these words of Christ, “I have overcome the world”, and if He leaves that powerful support, you and I have to enter into the pathway of overcoming.
I just want to go on now to David; he is a remarkable overcomer. Compared with Solomon he was certainly a remarkable man. You could not say Solomon set out overcoming although he was momentarily a great type of Christ. I say ‘momentarily’ because he did not continue with it. The psalms are the product of overcoming. You would not have psalms if there is no overcomer as far as I know. Solomon had three thousand proverbs and one thousand and five songs but he only had two psalms linked with him and they appear to be early in his life. In the first one, Psalm 72, he speaks about receiving judgment, the king receiving judgment of the people as an early desire, and he refers, for instance, to “the kings of Sheba and Seba shall”, that is future, “offer tribute” (Psalm 72: 10). Well, the queen came from Sheba. Then the second is, “Unless Jehovah build the house, in vain do its builders labour in it”, Psalm 127: 1. They appear as early expressions of Solomon, but he did not continue as an overcomer. But you have an overcomer in David. He was a remarkable man and wrote at least half of the Psalms. There are a hundred and fifty psalms, so he had at least half of them; there is reference to him in the headings. David is a remarkable man and sets out the feature of overcoming. He is a lesson book to us; he did not fear the enemy. When he came to the enemy he was fearless, but he feared the adversary. He said, “I shall now perish one day” (1 Samuel 27: 1), in other words he would lose his life at the hand of Saul, but he did not think about that when he was dealing with Goliath. The adversary is a hard thing to face. The Lord said, “For it is not an enemy”, Psalm 55: 12. If it had been one who had hated Him, that had magnified himself against Him, He would have hidden Himself. He said, “mine intimate, my familiar friend” (Psalm 55: 13); that was the adversary. The adversary is from within, that is a solemn thing. You have to overcome the adversary, and I do not raise that in any way except, beloved brethren, that any of us might be drawn into the spirit of the adversary. I say that soberly, I might be marked by that spirit. Christ suffered from the adversary, Judas was the adversary. David suffered as a type of Christ; he suffered from Saul the adversary.
I often think of that book of Jasher, the upright; I suppose that is the book of the overcomer.
In 2 Samuel 1 David laments over Saul and Jonathan; I love to read that. He has no ill feeling. He had suffered, he had been chased. He had been like the flea and the partridge. He had been put in despicable places and chased out of the inheritance, from what was rightly his according to the mind of God. Morally I think it is one of the high points of David. He speaks well of Saul and Jonathan, “beloved and pleasant in their lives; Even in their death were not divided”, 2 Samuel 1: 23. He speaks about “The shield of Saul, as not anointed with oil” (2
Samuel 1: 21). He died in a way he should not have died at the hands of the Philistines. I would say that was true overcoming. For instance, look at the brother who withstood Mr. Raven, and after he was taken, someone spoke and criticised him, but Mr. Raven said, He is better than us all now; that is the spirit of overcoming. Whatever attack there may be, keep in the right spirit, the Spirit of Christ.
In 2 Samuel 22 he is setting out certain things and he admits that God made him an overcomer. He says, and this comes into one of the psalms too, “Jehovah is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer”. What a manifold way he describes God, and that was not something that he had read somewhere; that was from experience, and it means more when someone speaks from experience. He says,
“Jehovah is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; God is my rock, in him will I trust—
My shield, and the horn of my salvation,
My high tower, and my refuge,
My Saviour—thou wilt save me from violence”.
Think of the manifold experiences that he had in the pathway of overcoming. He says,
“For by thee I have run through a troop;
By my God have I leaped over a wall”.
Think of the power that God gave him in the pathway of overcoming. Dear young person there is plenty to overcome. There is not a moment in your day that you will not be required to overcome. It is not a great matter, it is a simple life of overcoming because you are in a world that is set against you and the line of faith that you have started on. The enemy is set against you, he cannot touch Christ where He is, but he will certainly do all he can, using the whole system surrounding you to attack you where you are down here; so you need to overcome.
In Judges you come to Gideon who is a young man. Poor Israel! Instead of living in conditions where God would have placed them, they are in the dens, mountains, and caves and strongholds, and things were incomplete; they did the sowing and that was the finish of it. They never had any produce. They did the sowing, all the work, and then the Midianites came along and took the lot, and here this young man is working away. It says, “And an angel of Jehovah came and sat under the terebinth that was in Ophrah, that belonged to Joash”. Now he did not come there for Joash, for Gideon’s father was not an overcomer because he had the altar of Baal. He had that so he was no overcomer. The angel came and sat over against him but he did not come to see Joash, although Joash submitted to it later.
Here he came to see this young man. I think God is taking account of young men and women who are overcomers. They will not be missed by the eye of God. It says here, “the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him”, that is Gideon. Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress to secure it from the Midianites; it was an unusual place to do it, a confined place. It was a place that the Midianites would not have come to. If anything could have been saved they would be after what might have reached the threshing floor. Gideon was prepared for confinement. That is to your salvation, young brother and sister. There are many here today, for which we thank God, but you need to know what it is to be in confinement and under the eye of God, and it will not be missed.
The brethren might not notice it for a start but God will never miss it. It says here, “Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valour”. Gideon did not feel that way and you will not feel that way either, but he said, “Ah my Lord, if Jehovah be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” What about all our fathers have told us? What about all the power exerted by God in taking them out of Egypt, holding the waters of the Red Sea to make a way through? The power of God was there delivering them out of Egypt, typical of the power of the world. We have heard all that from our fathers and now we are reduced and in weakness. How was it going to be recovered? You know this man was used to recover; he was one of the great recoverers in the book of Judges. God in His faithfulness raised this man up and it was on the principle of personal overcoming. I would like everyone to take that up personally. I need to do it, we all need to do it. This man overcame and he was doing something that God loved and recognised, and He identified Himself with it. When it comes to what he presents he takes a kid of the goats and an ephah of flour in unleavened cakes; that would be the result of his work. He put the flesh in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out and presented it to him. What a feast it was! The Angel told him to take it and lay them on the rock and pour out the broth. The Angel touched them and “there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes”. It was as if. God accepted wholly what he had brought to Him. Not only the psalms require an overcomer, but the service of God requires it. The service Godward requires overcomers. There is probably no book like the Psalms that expresses the inner feelings of Christ. Think of the feelings of Christ at the forsaking, think of the feelings that He went through from the adversary that were expressed already. It is an astonishing book.
Overcoming not only supplies the psalms, the expressions of experience, but also enriches the service of God. Others have done it and I want to be in it.
I have read of Enoch from Genesis because Genesis gives the circumstances in which Enoch moved. You do not get the family reference in Hebrews but here you get it, and the expression ‘with’ is what struck me. This scripture is often quoted, but it does not tire you, does it? I love to think of Enoch and I look forward to meeting him. Here it says that “Enoch walked with God”. Overcoming brings you alongside of God (I say that respectfully). If you look at the footnote in Jude verse 14 to the word “amidst”, it says that the Lord has come
‘with’ His holy myriads. It is an important word, with. In other words He will come in the midst of, or with, overcomers. Enoch was alone but there will be holy myriads, that is, persons who have overcome will be with God; you might say alongside of God in everything that He is doing. Is that not a reward for overcoming? To be with God and coming with the Lord to execute judgment. It says in Jude, “to execute judgment against all; and to convict all the ungodly”. That is how overcoming actually affects persons without. I think overcomers affect persons without, to convict the ungodly. Enoch looks out at everything that is ungodly; he sees things in a different way because he is with God.
Now finally Paul is a remarkable overcomer. Here he is dealing with the Corinthians, and it seems the more he works with them the less affection he gets out of them. He says, “if even in abundantly loving you I should be less loved”. He was prepared for it; he is an overcomer. I suppose if they turned away from him, turned their back on him, it would not have affected Paul; he was an overcomer. He came in the fulness of the blessing of Christ (Romans 15: 29); that is how he came. To Philemon he said, “if he ... owe anything to thee, put this to my account”. He was rich, he was wealthy because he was an overcomer. Whatever conditions there were in this local assembly at Corinth he held it with divine thoughts in view, a chaste virgin for Christ; he worked towards presentation. He wanted that local assembly to be a chaste virgin for Christ. That would be so for every local expression of the assembly. The only way I can see it can be arrived at in the Spirit is through the principle of overcoming. Someone made reference today to the overcomers in the assemblies, and in most of the assemblies in Revelation 2 and 3, the overcomer has what is given to him, but when it comes to Philadelphia he is made. In the other assemblies, the overcomer is given things largely, but the overcomer in Philadelphia is made; “Him will I make” (Revelation 3: 12), there is something special. There is something special to overcomers whatever conditions they come out of. In every local assembly that is addressed in Revelation and every moral state. God requires overcoming. He requires it from every one of us, none of us is excepted. You cannot say. It is beyond me; that is unacceptable to God. He requires overcoming and for every true heart to say there is need of it. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Address at Kirkcaldy
20 April 2002