THE INN

Edwin Mutton

Isaiah 61: 1-3; Luke 10: 33, 34; Acts 9: 4-6, 17; 2 Kings 5: 10-14;

2 Samuel 9: 1-4, 7, 12, 13; Acts 20: 9-12, 35

We have been occupied these days with the very greatest thoughts that God has for men. His thoughts are above our thoughts, and the things that God has prepared for those that love Him surpass anything we could find down here in this world. God wants us to be in them and enjoy them. We could have meetings like this and go away with more information about the Body, the Assembly, and the pathway of the will of God in broken days, but God also intends us to enjoy these things. The present time is for the enjoyment of Christianity. It is not only for talking about, although we love to speak over these things – I would that we did it more – but God wants us to enjoy things.

That is why I read in Isaiah 61, a scripture that we have referred to several times. The incoming of Christ and the manifesting of God’s attitude and desires for men, are epitomised in this scripture from which the Lord quotes. What you find here is that the incoming of the Lord Jesus and all that He brought to men was to form something amongst men. It was to have an effect. It was not only to enlighten, it was that – “the true light was that which, coming into the world, lightens every man”, John 1: 9. It was wonderful light from God and it is still shining. Then as you go into that chapter in John you find that those who received Him, “… to them gave He the right to be children of God”. If you read the footnote to that you will see that it refers to children in the sense of relationship, the family relationship that they could have with God. A little further on it says that they beheld the Person of the Lord Jesus, and what had they seen? They had seen, “as of an only-begotten with a father, full of grace and truth”. They had seen One Who was going to bring them into the enjoyment of the Light that has dawned upon man.

Here in Isaiah we see the things that the Word of God was going to do. It was going to bind up the broken hearted; it was going to liberate captives; it was going to open the prisons to release them that were bound; it was going to comfort those that mourned, even those that mourned in Zion. I think there are some persons in Zion who are mourning. I would apply that simply this way – that we may be in a position where we enjoy the very greatest truth and light, and where what we actually enjoy touches by the Spirit of what eternity is going to be, and yet we are in conditions where things come in that make us mourn. So you may be in Zion in your experience, but you may be one who is mourning in Zion, “That beauty should be given unto them instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness”. There may be someone here with the spirit of heaviness. God wants to give you a garment of praise. He wants to clothe you in something that will make you responsive to God. This whole passage of scripture speaks of the fact that God has come out in Christ and brought within our range the wonderful thoughts we have been speaking of these two days, because He wants you to enjoy them and to be altered thereby.

Christianity is about change. The gospel is about changing your man, and the work of God in you will change what is outward. We were having something about that this past week – how what is inward will change what is outward. The inward man is renewed day by day and there is a change outwardly (see 2 Cor 4: 16). We read stories of conversions of a hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago where men who were given up to debauchery, drunkenness, and violence were affected by the gospel and the whole of their life was changed. They became sober, their wife and children became looked after instead of beaten. Some of us have touched lives and situations like that where the gospel has changed persons dramatically. That is what the Word of God can do; that is what the Spirit can do; that is what new birth does. The work of God in a soul changes persons dramatically. Many of us in this room have been brought up, through God’s mercy, in Christian households where the truth is known, and we still need that dramatic change to enjoy what can be ours in Christ. Not just the knowledge of it. A brother said to me that perhaps some of us have too much knowledge, and I think I know what he means. We can, in one sense, never have enough of the true knowledge of God because that is what is going through into eternity, but sometimes we know more than we are actually in the enjoyment and gain of. My exercise in this is that God has come in in Christ that we might be affected, and come into the enjoyment of the great things of God. What is more, He has set up here a system of supply whereby we can help one another into the gain and good of Christianity.

So, I want to speak about the great system of care that is here on the earth seen in the second scripture I read, typified by the “inn”. It is not a permanent situation because soon we are going to be translated to glory, but it is a provision that the work the Lord made the way He brought these things within the range of man that might be continued among His own. I would like to enlist you and myself in being set to having part in that. It touches on John’s ministry. We have touched on Peter and we touched on Paul, but I think John’s ministry underlies all that. John asks how can you say you love God if you do not love your brother (see 1 John 4: 20)? That is the family side of the truth and there is a great area of help typified in the “inn”. I would like to engage you with some of the people in scripture that found the inn.

We have read of Saul, Naaman, Mephibosheth, and Eutychus. They all, by different means and in different circumstances, found the inn. Young people, this atmosphere in which you are, is yours. It is God’s provision here on earth. It is an experience of the Christian circle – persons who love the Lord Jesus and are seeking to walk here in accord with His desires, in a day which is so broken and fragmented. This is your family – the family of God. Family exercises, family feelings, and family conditions are something that we should be very, very careful to maintain among us in all our localities. The breakdown of the family is one of the banes of the world. We read about it in newspapers. The rise of juvenile delinquency, drug taking, delinquent behaviour in schools, and this kind of thing; men put it down, rightly, to the breakdown of the family and they cannot put it right. Why? Because without God and the influence of God, and without the help of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit, man cannot put together what he has broken. But we, beloved brethren, have the privilege of being where there are persons who love God and therefore are concerned that conditions among us should be such that we can all be helped into the truth. So that we can have an understanding, as those men of Issachar did – they knew what Israel should do.

In Luke 10 you get this “inn”. I do not go into the detail of the scripture, as it is well known among us, and we can apply it in many ways, but I just want to get this out of it – that there was a place where the Samaritan could take this man who was in a half-dead state, and where it says he, “took care of him”. That is, very simply, what is on my heart – a system of tender loving care.

We have an older sister who is over 90, and goes into the hospital fairly frequently. She can go into one of two hospitals depending on how full they are. In one she gets tender loving care, in the other she gets clinical attention. The difference, when she comes out, is demonstrable! They give her the right medicine in the clinical hospital, they give her food three times a day, they take her blood pressure, they give her pills, and she comes out. The condition she went in with has been alleviated, but she is ‘anywhere’ in her mind because of her age. The other hospital; they give the medicine, and food, but they also give her tender loving care and she comes out a different woman. That is like our localities; we may give one another clinical help, we can say the right things, we can bring the right scriptures to bear on exercises that are among us, but do we miss out on the tender loving care? It is not the easy option. The easy option is the clinical one because you can write it down and tick it off – take the pills three times a day – but tender loving care is notice at any moment. You never know when it is going to be needed. You never know when persons are going to need that. I am sure there is in our localities a good basis of tender loving care.

Most of us have been brought up in families. We know that whatever goes wrong, somebody still loves us. We know that if we do something we should not do our father or mother may need to correct us. But you know that they love you, and what you may not know is that it probably costs them more to bring you back on to the straight and narrow path than it did for you to accept it from them. Think about that, young people, the next time your father or mother has to put you right. Think about what it costs them. Then think about God, think about your heavenly Father and what it has cost Him to provide this area where you can grow and be looked after. “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”, Rom 8: 32. That is how much God wants you to enjoy your heavenly portion. So we can all understand how it works out in a natural family, and the same principles apply spiritually among us.

I have chosen these four people because they all had a different problem. If anyone had forfeited his right to heaven it was Saul of Tarsus. If anyone had offended God it was Saul of Tarsus. He speaks of himself as the “chief of sinners”, and I think he was. I do not think he made that statement in some kind of boastful way. I think if you added up his sins they probably would be more than those of anybody else, and God saved him. God spoke to him and brought him to the “inn”. God had Ananias there – Ananias was like the innkeeper, he took care of him. He said, “Saul, brother”. Think of that! A man you had heard was coming to Damascus, probably to drag Ananias and others off to prison, and the Lord says, ‘You go and talk to him’. Ananias said, “Lord, I have heard much about this man”, but the Lord adjusted Ananias. Sometimes we are behind the times with the news. It maybe just by half a day – we need to be with the Lord. The Lord had someone in Damascus who was in the good of the family of God; someone who was concerned about providing tender loving care, and he went in and said, “Saul, brother”. I do not think the Lord told him to do that. The Lord just told him he would find the man, so that was something Ananias did from spiritual instinct, “Saul, brother”. Could you go to every brother or sister in your locality and say that? Is that your feeling for your local brethren? I trust it is, but let it increase. We are not more than we are as a local brother or sister in our locality. We may, under the Lord’s hand, go about doing a little preaching, but I am no more than I am as a local brother in Walton-on-the-Naze. That is my true measure. I would love to think that any of them could come to me and say, ‘Edwin, brother’. Would that not be wonderful! Is that the kind of atmosphere that is in your locality? If it is, thank God for it and promote it, if it is not then seek grace to make it so.

In most of our localities we are few in number, and it is not beyond the measure of any of us to handle that number and to have happy, tender relations so that if something comes in we can draw near each other. Someone recently spoke about, “And if thy brother grow poor beside thee”, Lev 25: 39. Are you close enough to your brother to realise he is growing cold? You may not know the reason, he may not tell you, he may not want to tell you, but can you draw near him? If a man like Saul comes into your locality – a big man who is set against God – can you see that God is working, and can you be with God and help that work on? How much we owe to Ananias; the whole of Paul’s ministry, the mystery we have been speaking of, the transformation of Saul of Tarsus into the apostle Paul – in a sense Ananias was the touch-stone. Yes, the Lord worked with Saul and worked in his soul, but Ananias helped that on. He helped the brethren in Damascus to accept this man. A man that had come to drag them off to prison, and the next thing you see he has come to the prayer meeting. That would have taken a lot of grace on the part of the brethren would it not? A lot of grace!

Naaman was a man in a rage. I do not know if you have ever seen anyone in a rage? “He went away in a rage (2 Kings 5: 12), and you may say, ‘Can this man be helped?’ Yesd he can. By the system of tender loving care. His servants drew near and said, “My father”. Among the people of God, if a brother or a sister made an outraged comment or lost their temper, there is the ability to contain it by the Spirit. The assembly is a wonderful place. You or I may say something we should not have said, or may act in a way that is fleshly, but there is a means, typified by the “servants” that can bring us back to the inn. I am not saying that this is something normal, but I want to show the extremes that this atmosphere of care can cope with. Here was Naaman going away in a rage, he was wroth. Even when they pointed the way that was right, it says he “plunged” into the Jordan. He was not told to “plunge” into the Jordan, he was told to wash. I think he went into the Jordan in a rage. Perhaps you have been like that – I certainly have! You say, ‘All right, if that is what the word of God says I will do it, but I know better than God’. “He plunged into the Jordan”, but God kept His word, “and his flesh came again as a little child”. Can you handle someone in a rage? Someone who is really upset? Someone who wants to put the world right? Someone who does not want to accept what is going on? There is a system that can, and it should be present in all our localities. Bring in an element that can defuse and lower a high temperature.

That is a service you get in hospital. There is someone who is trying to lower your temperature. If you are overheated, can someone lower the temperature? God can do that, He says, “Come now, let us reason together, saith Jehovah: tough your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white a snow”, Isa. 2:!8. God lowers the temperature as you get into His presence. You may be in a rage. Saul of Tarsus was in a rage. You can almost imagine Saul cowering as he said, “Who art thou, Lord?”. Saul was probably expecting judgment, no doubt his conscience had been working. He had been kicking against the goads, and as that light came out of heaven, he probably knew who it was and he probably expected judgment was to fall. “Who art thou, Lord?” What was the answer? “I am Jesus”. The Lord, if I can say it reverently, took the heat out of that situation. The Lord can take the heat out of every situation that has to do with moral issues. He has borne the judgment of God against sin; He has made a basis upon which you and I can live in the favour of God forever. He has borne the judgment of God that was due to you and me, and exhausted it in those three hours of darkness.

Mephibosheth was of the house of Saul, and I think he speaks to us of many of our brethren who have missed their way. You might say it is the house of Saul and we have a real judgment of that. David says, “Is there yet any that if lest of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” and also, “… that I may show the kindness of God to him?” This was David’s exercise. He was concerned that someone needed help. Mephibosheth did not feel worthy of it; he calls himself a “dead dog”. Nobody else had gone to look for him, but David said I want to “show him the kindness of God”. When Mephibosheth came it was obvious that he was prepared to receive it. “What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?” If David had not gone looking for him he would never have found a repentant man. That would have been very sad, would it not? It would be very sad if there was someone who had not had any contact for a long time with this system of loving care. They are repentant; they have come to it they are a “dead dog”, and yet they are lame, and they can do nothing about it. They could not walk back. David says, “Is there any … I may show the kindness of God to?”

He sat at the king’s table. He was still lame on both his feet – sometimes we have done damage in the testimony that cannot be put right. Here was the testimony of Mephibosheth, that Saul’s system had left him lame. Things that had been among the people of God (because Saul was the anointed king) had left him lame on both feet. David says that he is going to sit at my table. It has often been remarked that when he sat at the table you could not see that he was lame. Is that not wonderful – you look at a brother who perhaps has a history that lameness might represent but, as he sits at the king’s table, you see no evidence of it. That is what this system of tender loving care can do, beloved, and we need to be sure it is. The Lord expects that; it is a reflection of how the Lord would act Himself. If you notice, the Lord said to the lawyer in Luke 10, “Go, and do thou likewise”. The next incident that Luke records is Mary and Martha and. As we have often said, Martha listened to the “Go, and do”, but Mary was concerned about the “likewise”, sitting at His feet. That is where we learn tender loving care. Learn to do things the way Jesus would do them. If you want to serve the people of God learn to do it as Jesus would do it.

There are lots of things that go on in a practical way, personal care for one another, and visiting those that are sick or lame. Visiting is part of tender loving care, there are many lonely souls among us as well as not among us, who need a touch from the Lord and it could be by you. Let us not neglect it even if we are young.

I knew of a young brother whose parents insisted that once a week, on his way home from school, he visit an old brother or sister. He told me he hated it so he left it until Friday night, but looking back he realised that what he got from those visits has been of immeasurable help to him in his soul. This is a service that needs to go on, and it does go on. There are some sisters who have a telephone ministry. They cannot move around, they cannot leave their house, but they regularly call persons who are elderly or disabled and cannot get out to the meetings – what a service that is! Just a touch that keeps them in touch with what is going on down here under the eye of God. It is all helping to keep the saints in good trim, and to keep them in the great things of God. Mephibosheth was one such; he was of the house of Saul. Do not forget those of the house of Saul. I am not implying that those we do not walk with, or have never walked with, are of the house of Saul, far be the thought, but it is not the house of David. They are not those with whom we have happy, free, and full fellowship. Under the Lord’s hand and in the Spirit’s guidance you can bring comfort and encouragement, and maybe help in setting someone’s step towards the house of David. Show them the kindness of God. That is what the Scriptures tell us happened when the Lord Jesus came, “The kindness … of our Saviour God appeared”, Titus 3:4. That kindness is to continue until He come.

We often refer to Eutychus in this connection and he gets ‘a bad press’! Mr. Coates said that this chapter (Acts 20) is one of the most important chapters in the New Testament. The reason why is because it is the final words of Paul. This is the height of Paul’s ministry. These are his final words, “I have showed you all things, that thus labouring we ought to come in aid of the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He himself, said, It is more blessed to give than to receive”. Paul’s final word to the church was that we ought to come in aid of the weak. His entire ministry is here – the whole counsel of God is in this chapter. Paul had shown them and told them everything and that is his final word, and I believe it is something for us to consider. As the dispensation goes on the Lord is in heaven. Paul is no longer here, but this system of care, and proving that it is more blessed to give than to receive, is to go on. Here Paul himself demonstrated it with Eutychus. There were long meetings and this young man was overpowered with sleep. This could be applied in many ways. Most of us get overpowered with something at sometimes in our lives. I do not mean that you sleep in the meeting, but that you have something that takes up too much of your time and your thoughts.

Mr Stoney said that he was very envious of persons who had a manual job and not a job that used their minds, because they could think about spiritual things while they were doing their job. I have a job which uses my mind all the time, I am reading papers and correcting letters and this kind of thing and all that time I cannot think on spiritual things. We had a brother among us when I was young who was a road sweeper, he swept the streets with a broom, and he used to bring some real gems to the ministry meeting! He got them while he was sweeping the streets. I am not saying we should all be street cleaners, but let us make time for these things. Eutychus had been overpowered and he fell down, and Paul stopped the meeting – this was the great apostle Paul – and he went down and enfolded him in his arms. There seems to have been a defect with the saints in this meeting because they took Eutychus up as dead – Paul said his life is in him. In spiritual things let us be trained to detect when life is still in him. Do not give up! Do not give up until you are absolutely certain there is no life there. Sadly, and I hope less and less frequently, we have to part company with someone. As we say, we have to withdraw from them because they are going on with something not pleasing to the Lord, and after pleading and pleading they will not separate themselves from it. That does happen but it should be the really last thing that happens. It is a terrible thing! It has been said that if you withdraw form someone that you are effectively saying that they are unfit for Christian fellowship, and that is a very solemn thing to consider. It may be necessary, but I suggest if this level of care is working in your locality it will be a very, very rare occurrence. Paul said his life is in him. Did he leave him to someone else? No, he carried him up himself. He was like the good Samaritan.

We came across an accident the other week. There was a man lying badly injured in the road and we had nothing we could do to help him. We had no bandages or blankets or anything else and we had to phone for an ambulance. The good Samaritan had the supplies with him. Paul did. He did not even delegate it to other brethren he did it himself. That shows, beloved brethren, however spiritual you and I may think we are, or however spiritual we may be, the more fitted we will be to meet a situation like this. He brought him to the inn; he brought him back to the local company. Then it says of the local brethren, “And they brought away the boy alive, and were no little comforted”. Paul gave them a lesson in spiritual first aid. Some of us should have some training in practical first aid, it is virtually obligatory in most firms in the United Kingdom. Spiritually how fitted are we? If someone chokes, or someone has a haemorrhage spiritually, are you able to meet that? Have you got what it takes? The good Samaritan had the oil and the wine. Think of what Paul had – he enfolded him in his arms. That is a lovely word – enfolded him. You might say, ‘I could not be identified with what he was doing. Beloved brethren, let us enfold one another in our arms and bring persons back to the inn. Keep them in the warmth. If you get away from the fire you get cold. This is where God has given us the enjoyment of the very greatest things and that is where people will get help. That is where people will get revived. That is where people will become warm.

I just commend this thought to the brethren – the inn – a wonderful temporary provision. You do not stay at an inn for long, just a few days and then you move on. It is comfortable, it is refreshing, and there is food – all that you need, and where you can be encouraged. “Take care of him”. If you worry about running out of money, the Samaritan says, “I will render to thee on my coming back”. There is all the supply in the Lord Jesus, and there is the presence of the Spirit in the inn to revive persons who may have fallen by the wayside. We have been engaged with such wonderful thoughts it would be a terrible shame if any of us missed the enjoyment of them because there was no such “inn” conditions among us, as I am sure there are, where we can encourage one another to be at the very centre of what God has for our enjoyment. May He bless the word. For His Name’s sake.

 

WHEATON IL

26 November, 2005