GOD'S ESTIMATE OF WHAT IS GOOD
GOD’S ESTIMATE OF WHAT IS GOOD
1 Kings 14:1-6; 1 Kings 14:12,13; 2 Kings 22: 18 - 20; Revelation 3: 10, 11
In reading these scriptures I am thinking of how heaven regards what is good, and how it garners it, however little good there may be, or however much. The prophet Isaiah speaks about the righteous being taken and no one caring about it, ignoring that they are taken out of the evil to come. This is not always so, for Matthew would teach us that the evil is taken out of the good; that is, out of God’s kingdom. What is good remains here to continue for God. What is evil is taken away for judgment. John and Paul would indicate that the good are taken, as in our verse in Revelation, taken, or kept, out of the great tribulation.
Isaiah confirms Paul and John in that sense, saying that the righteous is taken out from the evil to come. He says, “He entereth into peace” Isaiah 57: 2. Not only shall they die, but they shall enter into peace, and “they rest in their beds”. This is a very comforting thought of divine care in special circumstances — resting on their beds, everyone “that hath walked in his uprightness”, whilst the wicked remain in discomfort and sorrow. For whatever pressure we may realise now, it is not equal to what is coming. The Lord Himself stresses the character of what is coming. He speaks of the “hour of trial” which is to be general, to try those that dwell on the earth — not the saints, but earth-dwellers (Revelation 3: 10), and then He says of a certain tribulation, more limited in area perhaps, that there never was one like it, nor afterwards will there be one like it; and unless God shortened those days, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect’s sake He will shorten them; Matthew 24: 21, 22. There is [p. 297] always divine consideration in the severest pressure, as the apostle Paul himself tells us, “From the Jews five times have I received forty stripes, save one” (2 Corinthians 11: 24); a very small mitigation, but still a mitigation of the terribleness of the great servant’s sufferings. One is ashamed to speak of any at all in oneself, or others now, as one thinks of the great sufferings of that servant. It was to be one of the features of his testimony, how much he should suffer for Christ; Acts 9: 16.
It is well to face these things, because suffering is part of God’s way to make us like Christ, and to make us fit for the new place, the place into which we are coming; it is Christ’s place, as He says, that “where I am ye also may be” (John 14: 3), “where I am”. One has been looking lately at the second chapter of Genesis, noting how God planted a garden eastward in Eden; He planted it Himself. It is remarkable how the workmanship of God enters into the opening chapters of the Bible, and the Spirit’s record is calculated to draw us into that, into the Father’s working, as the Lord Jesus Himself said, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work” (John 5: 17). He planted a garden eastward in Eden and placed the man there, whom He had formed. Adam knew no suffering; his formation was not through suffering; even if Eve were taken out of him, it was in sleep; it was not through suffering; there is no suggestion of suffering at all. He was formed nevertheless — God put the man whom He had formed into the garden, not simply whom He had created. He was fit for the environment, and the environment was fit for him.
I am speaking about good, and especially in a time of apostasy when there was very little good. I have taken up Jeroboam’s house, one of the worst kings of Israel; he inaugurated idolatry in Israel. He set up golden calves in Dan, carrying out the prophetic word of Jacob — Dan’s father - who said, “Dan will be a serpent on the way, A horned snake on the path, Which biteth the horse’s heels, So that the rider falleth backwards” (Genesis 49: 17). That is the kind of wickedness that Jeroboam inaugurated; therefore God was against him.
Our chapter tells us of God’s judgment on Jeroboam’s house, foreshadowing the present moment. Perhaps few of us take into account the divine outlook which God has before Him in all that He is doing at the present time. He has before Him the whole history of humanity; the whole history of governments in this world; the whole history of Christianity; and the history of Judaism, too. His outlook is extended, and He is dealing with things from His point of view. Most important of all, He has His beloved people in mind, and in dealing with others judicially, He would spare them, according to the word, “do not injure the oil and the wine” (Revelation 6: 6). He would also preserve the grass and the trees; and He would say to the four winds not to blow until His servants are sealed; the servants of the living God. These are before Him; such is God’s sovereign way, and what a scene He looks down upon! But His eye rests with peculiar satisfaction on His own, His children. “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 John 3: 1). I mean, of course, all Christians, that we should be so called. Were God to converse as to all the sub-divisions of the race, He would name every one of them aright. Also if anyone misnamed the saints, He would say, Behold the manner of My love as to them, that they are called the children of God; not simply that they are that; but they are called that. They have their own distinction, they come under My eye, He would say, with peculiar care, and I know how to preserve them; although danger may come very nigh, I [p. 299] know how to stand between them and it, and I will do so; and He would have us to be confident in that. Scripture says, “Thou wilt keep in perfect peace the mind stayed on thee, for he confideth in thee” (Isaiah 26: 3) — perfect peace. God would teach us how to be stayed in our minds, and to place them where they should be; not misplace them where they get troubled, but place them where we find peace; as I have quoted already from Isaiah — “He entereth into peace: they rest in their beds, each one that hath walked in his uprightness”.
Now, as I said, Jeroboam’s is an apostate house; horses are falling backwards, and God is taking account of that house. He would raise up a man, Baasha, to destroy it; which he did, and very quickly, too; no burials were provided for the members of that house. “If a man beget a hundred sons, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, but his soul be not filled with good, and also he have no burial, I say an untimely birth is better than he” (Ecclesiastes 6: 3). It is a way God has of showing His disapproval of a man, that he has no burial. Now there was a boy in Jeroboam’s house called Abijah; he was different, a remarkable fact; he is called a lad by his father, and his father, although an apostate man, a wicked man, cared for his child. It is no great credit to any father to care for his child; he is not worthy of the name of being human if he has not affection for his child. Apparently he had right affection for his child, and he sent his wife to Ahijah in Shiloh, who had told Jeroboam that he was to be king over Israel; she was to inquire what would become of the lad. He is right in this matter; but one right action or feeling will not make a thousand wrongs right; the wrongs remain, and have to be judged. She goes to Ahijah, who knows the whole matter before she reaches him in Shiloh. It is comforting to know [p. 300] that the whole matter may be known beforehand; it is part of prophetic ministry. Although we may not have formal communications, God does graciously give us impressions of what is coming; He would quieten our spirits; and say, in the language of the Lord Jesus, “O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14: 31). As the waves mount up, we are apt to doubt and fear, and cry out. God is not deaf to our cries and fears and groans, but unbelief under any circumstances He rebukes.
Ahijah had God’s mind; he was a prophet of note; and had told Jeroboam that he would be king, so no doubt Jeroboam had a friendly feeling for the old prophet who had befriended him. But Ahijah’s early acquaintance with Jeroboam does not warp his judgment of him now. Jeroboam is not what he used to be. When Ahijah received the word from Jehovah about him, that he was to be king of Israel, he was an acceptable young man; he came even under the notice of Solomon. But now he is a wicked man, and the prophet announces to his wife the terrible judgment of God about to fall on his house. We learn later that what Ahijah says was fully executed; and it is said to have been as spoken by Ahijah the prophet. So that God’s announced judgments are sure. Jeroboam is said to have been a wicked man, and to have caused Israel to sin; and he is doomed. The word of God is, “Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat ... for Jehovah hath spoken”. None of his house should have a burial. Such is the divine wrath against a man who apostatises. But still, Scripture makes much of the fact that there is a boy in that house, and there is some good in him; “something good toward Jehovah the God of Israel”. We are not to ignore any good in boys; we must watch for it. Boy flesh is very difficult flesh to manage; but when there is any good towards God it must be fostered.
[p. 301] Ahijah says there is some good in this boy, and he is to have a burial, as over against the others.
What I am speaking about is that he was taken away from the evil to come; and that is a word that covers the present moment — the evil to come. A lone boy in an apostate house is taken account of as having some good. What an appeal to every boy and girl here! Whatever your fathers are, or your mothers, or grandparents, or other relatives, is there any good in you? However little, God will take account of it. One trembles for the youth growing up in a world like this, but the coming of the Lord is the comfort of all true parents; He will take them out of the evil to come; but evidently in relation to the good in them, not simply because they are children of believing parents. I fully recognise that children of a certain age would be taken with their parents; the scripture, however, does not say much about that.
I am speaking now of good. Being holy externally, as stated in 1 Corinthians 7: 14, because one is born of believers, is not the point here. This boy had some good in him, and God knew it; it was good in the midst of a nation of wickedness. It is remarkable that the Spirit of God should make so much of this incident, of a mere boy in the midst of a world of apostasy; a boy who has something good in him. God says, so to speak, I am not going to leave him in those conditions; I am going to take him. You may ask, Why was he not left like Josiah? Josiah began to reign as a boy; why did not God use this boy to reclaim Israel, to resuscitate the life of Israel? No! Jeroboam’s kingdom is finished; I mean his own personal realm. The people of Israel continue, but Jeroboam’s house is to come under the immediate wrath of God, and his name execrated for ever; for the sin of Jeroboam is never lost sight of.
That is God’s way; how serious it is to have to [p. 302] do with our God, who is a consuming fire! (Hebrews 12: 29). But the one little bit of good in this lad, even as in any other, no matter in whom it is, is rightly valued and it is conserved, too. That is the idea; he is to be buried, for burial in this sense is conservation. Ahijah said to Jeroboam’s wife, “And thou, arise, go to thine own house; when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him, and they shall bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something good toward Jehovah the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam” (verses 12, 13). You see how burial is stressed here. You may say, All people are buried, and the cemeteries are full of Christians and non-Christians. But we have to learn the truth from Scripture, which teaches us that burial is in view of resurrection. The first person buried as mentioned in Scripture is a saint, and a cave was bought for her to be buried in, and the field in which it was, and the trees were also bought; (Genesis 23: 17 - 20). Is that mentioned for nothing? Is that a mere cemetery? No! That is God’s way of providing for the conservation of His people in view of the great and glorious resurrection about to come. So this lad Abijah gets a burial; he is the only one out of that house that gets a burial, and all Israel mourned for him. There must have been something very particular about this boy. I suppose the wickedness around brought into greater relief the goodness that was in him; and there were those in Israel who valued that; they mourned for him, and they buried him. He was taken out of the evil, for that is the point.
I now go on to Josiah. In the 2 Kings 22, we have the good that was in Josiah depicted; 2 Chronicles gives us more than this book. He is mentioned there at eight years of age, at sixteen, at twenty, at twenty-six, and at [p. 303] thirty-nine years of age. What a boy he was! What a young man he was! What a man he was, that the Spirit of God gives him such a place in the divine page! I am speaking now to the youth. What an outlook there is for you, as you go in for good, even in a little way! The little good grows; for God is watching, and He will make it grow, as we yield ourselves to Him, accepting baptism, which is to bring us out of the world, to garner us out of the world; baptism is to Christ, but it is also burial unto His death. That is where the secret of good lies. We are identified with Him, in the likeness of His death. That is where good begins to develop; it is the acceptance of the death of Jesus. “Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried” (Ruth 1: 17). That is where the roots begin, and the growth takes place; so that from the boy to the young man, from the young man to the full-grown man, and then to the old man, there is the steady growth of good.
In the case of Josiah, God tells him that He is going to gather him. It is remarkable: “Therefore, behold, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace” (2 Kings 22: 20}. Now I want you to take notice of that; not simply, I will have you buried, or others will bury you; but “I will gather thee;” I will do it, Jehovah says. It is a gathering matter; how touching that is in regard to death! No doubt most of us are more ready to depart to be with Jesus now than we would be in times of peace and ease. There is not as much value in that as there is in Paul’s wish; he says, “I am pressed by both, having the desire for departure and being with Christ, for it is very much better” (Philippians 1: 23). That is a legitimate thing, to desire to depart and to be with Christ, and it is also a legitimate thing to make up your mind that you will forego that benefit for the sake of the Lord’s people here below, which sacrifice is of great value to heaven. The apostle says in those verses in Philippians, that he elected to remain here for the benefit of the saints. Heaven thought much of that, I am sure. He remained a little while longer on their account.
As we are with the Lord, and look around and see the state of things amongst the Lord’s people we, like Moses, are concerned as to who will look after them. Shepherdly care is what they need; they need to be fed and cared for and ministered to in every way; and so Moses says to God, “set a man over the assembly;” and God names Joshua as the man. He has the Spirit; not simply that there is something good in him; he has the Spirit. That does not mean simply that I am sealed with the Holy Spirit; it is characteristic. Jehovah says, “Take Joshua ... a man in whom is the Spirit” (Numbers 27: 16, 18). He was characteristically a man having the Spirit. You can trust that man. It is right to look across the field and see who there is like that. You are comforted as you see persons who are characterised by the Spirit; not simply that there is something good in them like that boy Abijah. We are not told what that good was; it could not have been very much, but God shows in that particular case, how He takes notice of the little that there is of God in the young people, and He garners it into safety. When you come to Josiah, a man whose life-sized picture is given to us by the Spirit of God, then you see the kind of man God is looking for.
Another matter to notice is that Josiah, with all his godliness, with all his intelligence, with all his subjection to the Scriptures and his care for the Lord’s people, he could not stay the judgment of God, nor can any man stay it today. As you look back on the history of Christendom, you see apostasy [p. 305] has set in, and this sin is never forgiven. As the Lord Jesus said, “neither in this age nor in the coming one” (Matthew 12: 32). Never forgiven — how solemn! In the prophets, Jehovah says, “though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, should be in it, they should deliver but their own souls ..”. (Ezekiel 14: 14). That shows what God thinks of apostasy, and He would impress us with this. The time for reformation is passed; the time for the recovery of Christendom is passed; it is judged; the Lord is waiting patiently to take His assembly out of this terrible condition. It may take place at any moment; as far as I see, there is nothing in the way at all; it is only a question of the Father’s time; He has reserved the time in His own authority. And the Lord said, and says now to us, that when the time comes, “Behold I come quickly;” not one minute’s delay will there be. The Lord Jesus is waiting in patience, and He expects us to wait in patience.
I am speaking now of Josiah. God says to him here, through Huldah, the prophetess, “Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel touching the words which thou hast heard: Because thy heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before Jehovah, when thou heardest what I spoke against this place and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and didst rend thy garments and weep before me, I also have heard thee, saith Jehovah. Therefore, behold, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace ...”, verses 18 - 20. Is that not very precious? He is not going over the ground of Chronicles here. Chronicles tells us of Josiah’s passover in detail, and what intelligence marked him; how everything was according to the Scriptures. Josiah stood in his place “and made a covenant before Jehovah ... that are written in this book” (2 Chronicles 34: 31) — all was according to the Scriptures. God has taken great pains to write the Scriptures, and He looks for attention to them. In one section (Galatians 3: 16), He calls attention to one letter in one word, to show how the Scriptures must be read accurately, and that accuracy marked Josiah. The Bible was brought to him; and he read it and said, I must be governed by that. God views that with the greatest satisfaction; He says, a man like that must be gathered by Me; not simply left for his relatives to bury; I will look after that man Myself. I do not say it was done literally, as in the case of Moses; God buried Moses with His own hands; nobody knew where he was buried. That is a remarkable distinction that Moses alone has, but this comes very near, for Jehovah says, “Therefore, behold, I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil that I will bring upon this place”. You see, God is in this matter in a special way. Of course, it was men that buried Josiah, but God is telling us here of His part in it, and we are reminded by it how He looked after the burial of Jesus, His beloved Son. It seemed to be an accident, but it was not an accident. Men would have put Him in the grave with the wicked, but He was with the rich in His death. God had His Joseph of Arimathaea ready, and Joseph’s grave hewn out of the rock ready. That must happen, as the sun moves in the heavens; God would have it that Jesus should be in that with the rich. Joseph of Arimathaea was a rich man, and God said hundreds of years before that His beloved Son should be with the rich in His death; and it was so.
So here, if there were any question about Josiah’s burial, God would have it attended to; even if He used a Jeremiah, He would see to it that this man was properly gathered, properly buried to await the [p. 307] resurrection morning. How comforting that is! How restful to be in the hands of God! Nothing can happen without Him. Being thus gathered by the hand of Jehovah, Josiah should not see the evil that was about to come on Jerusalem.
Well now, there is just that one other thought; it is in the passage read in Revelation 3: 10. Some of us have been speaking about it lately. This remarkable assembly in Philadelphia has a peculiar place given to it; it is lengthened out a bit, but one thought in our verse is that she is credited with having kept the word of the patience of Jesus. “Thou hast kept the word of my patience”, it says; not simply the patience, but the word of it. That is to say, that which makes it intelligible. You may say, What can it mean, but that the Lord is patient? It means more than that; it is His patience. Lately some of us were speaking about this, remarking that the two from Emmaus coming back to Jerusalem, reached those gathered there before the Lord did, although He left Emmaus before them. They got back to the city and found the eleven and those that were with them, and they were already speaking in the assembly, and the Lord had not yet come. Where was He? Where was He on the way? Well, the point is that the Lord had in His mind that these two should be in Jerusalem and should be in the meeting, and should be even speaking, before He came in, as recorded in Luke 24: 36. He had all that in His mind; His apparent delay was no accident, but was primarily designed by Him. Well, He had to wait somewhere to give them time to get to Jerusalem!
There have been millions of incidents like that since Pentecost, when the Lord Jesus has exercised patience, so as to have His own where He would have them, and to appear to His own when He would appear to them; thus His patience comes [p. 308] home to us in a very forceful way; it is seen in the way the Lord waits on His people. The incident I mentioned is illustrative. The word of His patience would imply all that. The word opens the thing up to you; the idea of word is not merely the mind, but the thing spoken or conveyed. What could be more interesting than to have opened up to us the word of the patience of Christ! John says, “I ... in the tribulation and kingdom and patience, in Jesus” (Revelation 1: 9). But the “word of my patience” is what He speaks of in our passage. If you were to ask the Lord about that, I believe He would just speak to you as I am doing; He would tell you how patient He has been, and how at this very moment He is exercising patience; not only in regard of us here, but also toward those coming in late and the like. It tries the patience of the brethren; but it necessitates the patience of the Lord. Why should I keep Him waiting? If these two had spent a long time to get to Jerusalem He would have waited; in His mind undoubtedly, it was necessary that they should be there, and that they should have time to say certain things in the assembly before He came in.
So it is that the Lord is waiting for the assembly. He has waited long — nineteen hundred or more years; His patience enters into that. He says, I have the assembly that I love above all; I have given Myself for it, and I cannot have it with Me in heaven until the Father’s time is reached. Other things that are in His mind: His relations with Israel; His headship of the nations; all these offices that belong to Him, belong to His inheritance, and He is waiting for them. He cannot come into them until the Father’s time has arrived; and He is in perfect, infinite patience, moving here in relation to the gospel, and the formation of the assembly, until that day arrives. The day is kept by the Father; the angels do not know it; the Son does not know it; the Father [p. 309] has kept it in His own authority, and the Lord is waiting for it. He is not suffering, of course, in the waiting; but He is patient; he is not insistent upon it, but He says, when the time comes, “I come quickly” — He will come at once. How our hearts, as we have sung, rejoice in the hope of it! Think of the Lord coming into this meeting for us! What is there to hinder Him? If the Father’s time has arrived, He will come, and with one mighty wave of His power take us out. Let us take this into our hearts. It is a wonderful thing to steady us; He says, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial, which is about to come upon the whole habitable world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”. That is His promise: “keep thee out of the hour of trial”. The word “keep” undoubtedly includes the translation of the saints from earth to heaven; and so He adds, “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”. He puts that on us tonight; to hold fast what we have; what He has been ministering to us. We must not let it slip, nor fade in our souls, because of the present pressure. Let us hold it in the power of the Spirit; the Lord will help us to do it, so that the work of the Lord goes on in freshness and power until He comes.