MEETING FOR MINISTRY
(ii). F.C.Mutton
Song of Songs 5: 10,11 (to "gold")
I would say just simply, dear brethren, that my thoughts were running on Mark 14, and I am very thankful our beloved brother has read it and spoken on it. I would desire to link on with that, especially the impression the Lord has given us as to what befits a certain time. May I just give one impression that I think links with what he has said as to the surroundings at that time? The chief priests and the scribes in Jerusalem were seeking how they might seize Him and kill Him, and in Bethany He was in the house of Simon the leper. Does it not apply today - the bitter enmity of the enemy, of Satan, with his agents, against Christ, and also the public reproach such as might be connected with the house of a leper? That is what we have been involved in; thank God if we have judged it, and in that sense have personally got clear of it; but that is our public situation.
I feel the point and preciousness of what our brother has said that at such a time, and in such an environment, the most precious service is to continue where Christ alone is before us. I felt it linked with this verse in the Song of Songs. I think this is what the woman of Mark 14 would say: "My beloved is white and ruddy, The chiefest among ten thousand". (The footnote says, Strictly, 'lifted up as a banner'). Oh, that that may ever be so, dear brethren! Other banners have been lifted up, but now our Beloved is lifted up, the chiefest among ten thousand. Who else is worthy to be supreme? Who else is worthy, as it were, to be a banner lifted up that commands our loyalty and devotion save our Beloved, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ?
It was His head the woman anointed; it must represent on her part not only great affection but great intelligence. "His head is as the finest gold" - that blessed Man who always thought for God, who ever sought the Father's will, and who as a blessed Man in head ship embraces and encompasses the whole vast scope of the will and pleasure and purpose of God. Paul speaks of "the mind of Christ", 1 Cor 2: 16. Let us always be worshipfully in relation to Him and anointing Him. In a negative way would that not preserve us from making too much of any mere man or any servant at all? He is the glorious Head of the whole anointed system; everything that is for the pleasure of God is headed up in Him. One was impressed recently by that expression of Paul's in Ephesians 1: "the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself for the administration of the fulness of times; to head up all things in the Christ" - the One whose head is as the finest gold, who is, and will ever be, presiding over the whole area that is for God's pleasure, and according to His thoughts - "His head is as the finest gold". Let us hold fast the Head, reverently, worshipfully and dependently; all that is finest is there. What a word this is; "the finest gold". We get various kinds of gold in Scripture, gold of Ophir and other gold. The "finest gold" relates to the mind of Christ, what is His mind as to the assembly, what is His mind in any situation.
It just comes to me that we have been praying about situations among the saints, sometimes complex, sometimes difficult to resolve, but we have One as our Head whose head is as the finest gold. Let us lay hold of Him and draw from Him, because there is light and wisdom there for every situation, and from Him all is to be derived that fills out what is proper to the assembly, "the fulness of him who fills all in all". Amen.
MEETING FOR MINISTRY
(iii) F.G.Suckling
We often think of this verse, "even as he is, we also are in this world", and it would seem that that statement is set here in the midst of this matter of love. "We have known and have believed the love which God has to us... God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him". Then John says "Herein has love been perfected", and then "that even as he is, we also are in this world". I was thinking of that, beloved, in the sense of our being affected in a continual way by the love of Christ as being the wonderful thread that goes through all the time in our relations individually with divine Persons, and particularly, as we are thinking, with Christ, and how it has its answer in us as together. It says; as he is, we also". It is a wonderful thing that, while we have a sense of the love of God and how it has come out to us in the operations of grace in the revelation, and through the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and is made good in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, there is this wonderful binding effect that it has in a practical way in those among whom the Lord has set us. It has affected me somewhat, and will more and more I hope as the time goes on, as one moves around to observe this wonderful love that there is among the saints. God has given us to enjoy this love, which He has shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and has given us a sense of the Father's love. He has given us the saints to work these things out with and to enjoy these things together. In all our comings together, or our relations with each other in seeking to go on in the truth together, the wonderful binding thing is the love that is there. So it says "as he is, we also are in this world". The Lord said Himself that men would know that we are disciples of His if we have love amongst ourselves (see John 13: 35). I feel that if there was more of this operating (we know there are other matters that have to be lined up with it), if this love that has come to us from above were known more by us we would be helped that matters that may disrupt have little or no place with us, because we would fear that this love, this divine love, might be spoilt, if we could so say. It is a wonderful thing that, with the saints that the Lord has set us with, firstly, I think we can all say we have love amongst ourselves, and it is a substantial love that we can depend on because it is from God, and it extends out, and as we move amongst the saints and as the saints come to us, there is that wonderful love operating. We have been thinking of the Lord Jesus as He is in His present position; the love that operated in Him down here is exactly the same love; there is no change in that love, it is still operating, and love is a living thing, and it is what would keep us. The apostle says that whatever we do we are to do in love. We are to work out the truth in love all the time, and I am sure that if we can be more and more loving one another in that way as lovers of the truth and seeking to go on together, there is that that is divine that comes from above by the Holy Spirit, and we shall appreciate it and enjoy it. It is that that will keep us here going on together. It is really the nature of God, as we know, and this should be operating in us.
In John's gospel chapter 13 it says of the Lord Jesus: "having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end" (v 1). That is the settled disposition of love. The love of friendship is a wonderful love, but the settled disposition of love is also a very exalted idea and is stable and reliable. As we have that in our hearts more, and it is moving us at all times - especially in those that the Lord has set us with in our immediate settings - we shall be helped to go on, and we shall see that love operating in the saints everywhere. It is the great matter, so to say, that will win through, that will always stand the test. Whatever exercises the saints have to go through, if there is love amongst ourselves, as Paul says, it "never fails" (1 Cor 13: 8), and it is a thing that is going to abide when faith and hope shall cease. It is the love of Christ and that is what we are affected by all the time. It has been brought to us by the Lord Jesus personally, and then the love of the Father, and the love of the Holy Spirit and all that He is doing for the Father and the Son. It is a wonderful experience to have and to go on with all the time. May the Lord help us in it, for His Name's sake.
CHRISTCHURCH NZ
5 September 1983