THE SERVANT DEVOTED TO GOD'S OBJECT HERE
THE SERVANT DEVOTED TO GOD’S OBJECT HERE
I like to hear the subject of your lecture. I think when you got to priesthood you might have led them to “part with me”. You cannot enjoy Christ as Priest unless you are at His side, “passed through the heavens”. You must be of His “brethren” for this, and apart from sin. If in your weakness here you do not accept Christ’s sympathy, you cannot join Him where He is; you are rebellious; and then you must turn to Him as the Advocate, and not as the Priest. It is very lamentable that there should be so many devoted servants in this day, and yet so few, like Nehemiah, set for God’s object at the present time. Read Nehemiah; he was only a butler to a nobleman, and see how he wrought and suffered for God’s object at the time. If I man can suffer and endure as he did for stones and mortar — an earthly city in ruins — how much more should you and I suffer and endure for God’s present object on the earth — the body and bride of His Son our Saviour? Every service we render entails present blessing on ourselves in a way infinitely beyond any that was vouchsafed to Nehemiah. I do not see that there can be true affection unless you come to Him first, like Jonathan to David, or like the woman to the Lord in Luke 7. But you must come to Him now as the risen One, in faith that leads you [p. 229] outside of man; and you cannot join Christ in the assembly unless you leave the ship, as Peter did in Matthew 14, and are led, by the Spirit, to Christ as supreme above everything here. Thus only can one learn to be here for Him. I believe the soul that is really at rest through His work, will in heart, ask the question, “Where dwellest thou?” — where is He in this waste? and will thus find Him in His assembly. No one can serve Him to His pleasure who does not begin in the assembly (see John 15: 12). “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you”. That was said to the eleven; that is the way to begin.
The true servant is educated by discipline. The great mark of the Spirit’s power is that He removes the impediment before He contributes. The character of Moses’ first discipline is the same as at the end. From impetuosity he had to fly from Egypt; for the same he was debarred from the land.
Intelligence is excellent with devotedness, but without devotedness it is a snare. Devotedness is what we want; we know in a way more than we act up to. One devoted man would do more good than all the learning that is abroad, even if it could be centred in one man.