DELIVERED UNTO DEATH FOR JESUS' SAKE

DELIVERED UNTO DEATH FOR JESUS’ SAKE

Exodus 12: 1 - 4; Exodus 14: 21, 22; Romans 6: 1 - 6

JT As subjects for these readings, I have been thinking of the passover and baptism for this morning, and the Lord’s supper and circumcision for this afternoon. The exercise leading up to this is that, the present time rather stresses the thought, that the saints are as appointed to death; death is the order of the day in this world for God’s people. All the institutions attaching to Christianity carry that thought.

What is in mind is expressed in Romans 8: 36, 37; “According as it is written, For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us”. The Old Testament types link up with the doctrine in the New Testament; the passover, and the passage of the Red Sea, will thus enable us to see that God intends His people ever to be in this attitude that speaks of death. The apostle says in 2 Corinthians 4: 11, “we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh”. The passover was the first feast in the year, and while we, as Christians, are not governed by the observance of days and months, yet the feasts of Jehovah are for our instruction, and the passover, which is the first of them, carried with it striking thoughts as to the way in which death enters into the food of the saints. What we partake of as food, is to build up a constitution which will accept death as the ordering of God for us in His governmental ways. It is only whilst we are here in the body that this is needed; it is ^[p. 311] essential to our salvation; we should accept it, that in the government of God, death attaches to us. In baptism the same thing applies. For the passover the lamb was seized on the tenth day and slain on the fourteenth; it was a household matter, and for each household; it would solemnise all. We are told also, that “the whole congregation of the assembly of Israel shall kill it between the two evenings” (Exodus 12: 6). It was one act, but done in each house. The whole of Israel, therefore, would be affected by the thought of a harmless, innocent, loveable creature, having been there for four days, and then slain on the fourteenth of the month. The flesh, roast with fire, was to be eaten, and the feast kept with unleavened bread. In baptism, we have death in another form, seen in the waters of the Red Sea; to the Egyptians it was overwhelming. The waters of the sea became a wall to Israel; they were on either side of them, so that believers are impressed by the reality of death, in that sense, which had reigned from Adam to Moses; it is there now to overwhelm those who are disobedient. The Egyptians were drowned in it; but the Israelites see the waters, and go through them on dry ground; later they are made to taste them, so that death as represented in the Red Sea became experimental. Baptism is not only to Christ, but also to His death, as taught in Romans 6.

JS Would you bring in the present experience of some of the saints in connection with the bitter herbs?

JT Quite so; that is, we taste the waters of death. Baptism, therefore, is not an empty ceremony. Death with Christ has to be accepted; thus the believer walks in newness of life.

AR What about, from the tenth day to the fourteenth day of the month? Is that like what we have been speaking of — “we have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter?” The four days would be the reckoning time.

JT That is the idea; the lamb being representative of Christ. John the baptist sees Him coming to him; that is, He was coming to him for baptism, symbolical of death. He says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29). He names the Lord, as walking to him. John represented the administration of death symbolically in baptism. I think the idea begins with Abel. Abel is the first believer who is seen identified with death in this sense. It says, “Abel ... brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of their fat” (Genesis 4: 4). He was a shepherd, we are told, and he identified himself with his offering; he brought of the firstlings of the flock and of their fat. The creature was slain; he handled death in that sense, and understood it, and appropriated it. Then he is slain himself, as a martyr, so that I think he leads the way in what is before us. The people of God are appointed to this; this marks the external position. The Israelites, the whole congregation of the assembly, were to take the lamb on the tenth of the month and keep it till the fourteenth, so that it would be there vividly before the family. The whole assembly killed the lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month.

ABP Do we read the gospels as having the death of the Lord in view?

JT They would have no force otherwise. John the baptist says, “Behold the Lamb of God” — he begins with that thought — “who takes away the sin of the world”. Then John the evangelist says that “This is he that came by water and blood” (1 John 5: 6). That would include the gospels; the gospels present that great fact, that the Lord Jesus came to die; came by water and blood — “not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that bears witness”. The Spirit, in the Acts and the gospels, bears witness to the great facts of the gospel; that the Lord Jesus came in vicariously. He did not come into this world merely to be in it, but to take our place as in death. He came to die; in other words, He came by water and by blood; meaning that His coming would have no lasting effect aside from that.

JHE His death was not a secondary matter; it was primary, was it not?

JT It was in the thought of God — “Lo, I come to do thy will”, Christ said (Hebrews 10: 9). This chapter further says, “by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (verse 10).

SMcC Would the principle of what you have been suggesting be seen in Philip’s ministry to the eunuch? Understanding that the Lord was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and that His life was taken from the earth, caused the eunuch to respond, and seek the way out, as by death.

JT That is the thought. It is remarkable that he should have been reading that passage. Philip took it up and from it “announced the glad tidings of Jesus to him”. It was Jesus the Sufferer; the One who died, and the eunuch accepts baptism at once. Philip does not propose it to him; the eunuch sees it as the counterpart of the position of Christ, who died here; who went out through death.

CN According to Hebrews 2 the very condition into which He came involved death, the suffering of death.

JT Yes; “made some little inferior to angels on account of the sufferings of death” (Hebrews 2: 9). The incarnation was for the suffering of death, that He should taste death for every thing.

FHL Is your thought that this line is peculiarly ^[p. 314] needful at this moment, in view of our translation, and on account of present happenings?

JT It is in view of the happenings, because there is a testimony in them. God is dealing with mankind; with the nations, and with the whole profession of Christendom, and we belong to that profession. He is also allowing the conditions to affect those who walk in the truth. The two countries most involved in the current sorrow have had special identification with God’s testimony. Germany led in the Reformation, involving the testimony of God in an earlier day, and the British led in the later testimony, that is, the great revival of the truth of Christ and the assembly, continuing now for over a hundred years. Though all are not actually exposed to the things that are happening, we are all feeling them in our spirits, and the Lord intends us to get the gain of the experiences along with those who are actually going through them, and to draw the saints into God’s side of the matter.

ANW To say, “For thy sake we are put to death all the day long” (Romans 8: 36) — we need a large view of the things that are happening, because others share in them?

JT I think Satan would turn the calamities towards us; towards the saints who are seeking to walk in the truth. He would seize any opportunity for this, and as a result the saints are suffering.

CAM Do you think there is significance, in this relation, in the fact that John the baptist is prominent in the beginning of John’s gospel? He speaks of the Lord as the Lamb of God, as well as serving in baptism. This prophetic ministry would introduce us into another world as we are ready to disappear from this world by death.

JT You are struck with the fact that John was martyred early. He was quite a young man, and designated by the Lord Jesus Himself, as one who ^[p. 315] was as great as any born of women; yet John is cast into prison and beheaded in the most unceremonious and humiliating way. The death of Abel, and the death of John the baptist, and thousands more, “of whom”, the Spirit of God says, “the world was not worthy”, raises the question as to whether we are accepting this governmental matter; what the bearing of it is as to us.

RWS In Genesis 4, in Cain’s line, there is nothing said of death, but in Genesis 5, death seems to be emphasised.

JT Death in Genesis 5 is in line with what we are talking about. Enoch is the characteristic man of the chapter — Enoch implies discipline — man upon whom death rolled. Enoch is said to be “the seventh from Adam”, as if the educational significance of death developed in him. His name would indicate that divine discipline was understood by him, before he was translated; he had the testimony before his translation that he pleased God. If he walked with God three hundred years, we may be sure that God would acquaint him with the fact that death was the order of the day; if he did not literally die it was because of the sovereignty of God, and that God was pleased with him. We want to come into that, so that we have testimony beforehand, and then translation because we please God.

SMcC The scriptures you have referred to in Romans 8, quoted from Psalm 44, come in at the doorway of the section of the Psalms which speaks of Christ as the Anointed, the King, and then the greatness of God, and the greatness of Zion.

JT Quite so; I am sure that is right; it is the second book of Psalms.

AR Why is it that in church history the assembly of Smyrna is enjoined to be “faithful unto death”. Is that linked on with what went on in the ^[p. 316] Reformation?

JT Well, it rather comes in earlier, but it is very striking — ten persecutions, or as the Lord said, “ye shall have tribulation ten days” (Revelation 2: 10). He says, Satan is about to cast some of you into prison, and then says, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give to thee the crown of life” (verse 10). It is not the translation of the assembly that is in mind there, but it is clearly in mind in Philadelphia. The address to Smyrna enters into what we are saying, and shows how the stress of death was brought in, in a series of persecutions, on our earlier brethren.

Rem The present happenings — pressure amongst the saints — become a test to us as to how far we have been practically in the good of the passover and freedom from the world.

JT Well, the passover, being symbolical of what is for us as food, would build up a constitution, so that we are ready to accept death. Christ was slain; and we appropriate Him. The lamb was not to be boiled; it was to be roast with fire; the full force of the fire was to be applied. It was not to be sodden, nor boiled; but subjected to the direct action of fire; and through the appropriation of such food we become ready for the acceptance of death. If any remained over it was to be burnt with fire. They were not to move away in their souls from the idea of the severity of judgment in the death of Christ; it is there at all times. So that if in the government of God death is rolled in as it is now, the question is whether we are accepting it, sharing in it. We may share in it, though indirectly, in a spiritual way, as bound up with our brethren, so that we may not miss what they are coming into.

FHL It is quite possible that if none had been slain, we might have felt the saints were in some measure immune, but God is allowing some to be ^[p. 317] taken and the glory is beginning to appear — the fruit of God’s work.

JT It would not be intelligent to assume that the saints should be exempt from damage in such circumstances as now exist. The government of God is often inscrutable. Abel was a saint, standing out at the beginning, as indicating what God may permit; his blood cries from the ground. In his death he was a witness to the truth. Death in this sense brings out what God’s work is in us.

WB-w As stated in Acts 12, Herod laid hands on some of them in the assembly, and did them hurt, and slew James, the brother of John, by the sword. Peter almost came into it, but was delivered.

JT Then Stephen; I think that Stephen, among other things, represents a believer who knows how to die; not only that I am put to death, but whether I know how to accept it, that I glorify God in it; that I know the will of God is in it. It is not an accident, or simply cruelty on somebody’s part, but it is the will of God.

WB-w Paul uses the expression “the sentence of death in ourselves” — he thus opens the second epistle to the Corinthians. Is that the right state to be in?

JT Quite so; “that we should not have our trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1: 9). We are told in Hebrews of some who would not accept deliverance, that they might get a better resurrection. That was the attitude of Paul’s mind in the second letter to Corinth, so he says, “we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4: 11). It is not as if God would put that upon persons who are not characteristically living; they could not stand it; so that those upon whom it is put must be in some sense equal to it, for God is the God of measure, and ^[p. 318] would only allow such severe pressure as knowing that His people could stand it, and could glorify Him in the experience.

GVD Is it a token of the grace of God that we are first built up constitutionally before having to pass through death?

JT That is right; I think that is the point in the passover, because it is in the beginning of months; the beginning morally of the believer’s history, and it is in eating such food that we begin with a good constitution.

GVD I was thinking of what Paul said; he must have had something built up constitutionally to be able to say, “for I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21: 13).

JT He says, I do not deprecate dying, if I have to die. I think one part of the truth is in knowing how to die. Stephen, I believe, represents one who knew how to die, to the glory of God. He was perfectly like his Master.

CAM In a way this violence is against Christ and the spirit of Christ. It would seem in that way that those who are taken are in a very privileged and honoured position, in the sense that it is for Christ’s sake, would you say?

JT Just so. Satan turns it in that direction. He seizes the opportunity to turn the evil against the saints; but then God is ordering it. He raised the question with Satan as to Job: “Hast thou considered my servant Job” (Job 1: 8). We can understand that God would raise the question as to His people, in what is being done during these last days, having in mind what formation there has been. Satan would seize the opportunity to attack, but God is testing it out, and therefore the importance of accepting what He orders in this sense. “For we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4: 11). It is a question of the reproduction of Christ in some measure, and it makes for fitness for translation.

AR Stephen, as persecuted, could have become depressed, but what you say is interesting, that as dying by the will of God, he died spiritually buoyant.

JT There is not the slightest evidence of any depression with him; he is able to kneel down even, and pray.

ABP The tyranny of Egypt had brought about a groan from the people; was the introduction of the passover to bring their feelings into priestly expression?

JT That is a good suggestion; the passover was immediately celebrated at Sinai. They had it in Egypt, but now they celebrate it in Sinai; and God would say, Now I have a people constitutionally ready for the position; because the wilderness means that we are exposed to death. The tabernacle is set up and the ritual every day would bring in a regular series of deaths. One might call it a shambles, if all the offerings were brought that should have been brought; that is what would be witnessed publicly in the wilderness; and God has a people, through the celebration of the passover (at least, this is so spiritually), that can stand this experience. They can go through it, because all these offerings simply represent that death was there, that it had reigned from Adam to Moses; the Red Sea was the end of that typically. They passed through the walls of water, as having eaten the passover; they could well say that they merited the Red Sea as much as the Egyptians, but there was the substitute for them. The idea of substitution, Christ as the passover Lamb, is carried throughout their generations in the feast every year.

WR So you would say the type here, the lamb slain and eaten, would be the way ^[p. 320] out?

JT Yes, the ground of Christ risen, as in Romans, not yet our resurrection with Him; the latter is Colossians. It is the way out as you say. The Lord says, “Fear not those who kill the body and after this have no more that they can do” (Luke 12: 4). Appropriating Christ as in the passover, we accept death with Him, as in the Red Sea.

CAM Would you say that the eating makes us inwardly in accord with Christ’s death, because you become like what you eat; whereas baptism is the outward position?

JT That is what we shall see — the eating is stressed in Exodus 12: 3 - 8: “Speak unto all the assembly of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month let them take themselves each a lamb, for a father’s house, a lamb for a house. And if the household be too small for a lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; each according to the measure of his eating shall ye count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a yearling male”. A year old; although youthful, the idea is not diminutive. “Ye shall take it from the sheep, or from the goats. And ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; and the whole congregation of the assembly of Israel shall kill it between the two evenings. And they shall take of the blood, and put it on the two door-posts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire”. Well, that calls forth very tender feelings; that one thus typified should be slain touches our hearts. The reality of such a one in death is to be appropriated inwardly. Christ thus known, is to be eaten, appropriated in our souls and assimilated in our constitutions, so that we might become like Him, able to accept death with Him.

AHP The allusions to the passover in both ^[p. 321] Old and New Testaments are significant, as bringing the saints practically into accord with the light and truth that has been held, one might say abstractly. Do you think that in the same way the saints today are being tested as to how far we have been practically assimilating Christ as typified in the passover?

JT That is the point before us; the idea of death is stressed; we are to appropriate Him who has been slain. It is roast with fire; it is stipulated that it must not be cooked otherwise than by the direct action of the fire.

SMcC Would the eating of the inwards suggest that the inward feelings of Christ would be taken in by the saints; His feelings in the suffering circumstances?

JT I am sure that is true; and it is seen specially in the first book of Psalms. It is there we have, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Psalm 22: 1). The full force, not only of death, but of the judgment of God, the Lord experienced. Well, the passover is to bring us to enter, in some way, into that, first by appropriation, and then assimilation, of what is presented. Israel as a typical people suggest those in whose constitution this was worked out.

WB-w Would eating the head imply intelligence, and eating the legs, power to walk according to God? The inwards follow that; the head, the legs, and the inwards roast with fire.

JT Yes. “Ye shall eat none of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire; its head with its legs and with its inwards” (verse 9). All this would denote what Christ was here in testimony, intelligence, and walk; also His inward feelings and affections. There is to be a reproduction of all these things in the saints, in that sense constitutionally.

Ques How would you differentiate between the eating of the flesh here and in John 6?

JT ^[p. 322] John 6 is for life; the great point in it is life. The Lord Jesus says He came down to give His flesh for the life of the world. His flesh is truly bread and His blood is truly drink. The end in view is that we may come into everlasting life, which is later in the types than the passover. The passover is initial; it carries the idea of what is needed constitutionally, for going through what is adverse to us, the wilderness. Eternal life belongs to the land; we shall see that a little in relation to circumcision. The passover refers to a constitution that is capable of going through whatever may happen in the government of God, even death. Stephen exemplifies what is before us.

APT This is eating to die; is that the thought? Our brother’s remarks refer to the other side — the purpose of God.

JT Yes; the passover, as a matter of fact, is seen in three distinct positions in the history. The first is here, the second is in Numbers, and the third is in the land. The passover runs through as an element of food; other things are added to it as we shall see, but all is to build up a constitution. This is initial, so that I can go through the wilderness and accept whatever comes; if it be death, I can die.

ANW The apostle goes so far as to say, “we more than conquer through him that has loved us” (Romans 8: 37).

JT That is the idea; the passage refers to suffering. You will notice, “him that has loved us”. It is not simply that He loves us now, but He has done it; it is a cumulative thought. The apostle says elsewhere as to himself, “who has loved me” (Galatians 2: 20). It is again the past; the love comes down in a cumulative way; so that it is through Christ really; through Him that has loved us, that we are more than conquerors. We have the constitution, He being formed in us; and He is present ^[p. 323] with us. Romans 8 is wonderful in that sense in the triumphant way in which it closes; Psalm 44 being brought into it.

EH How do you view Peter’s rebuke to the Lord when He spoke of going to Jerusalem to die?

JT That is the thing we have to rebuke in ourselves. My tendency would be to avoid anything like this, to avoid dying, to put it far away: “God be favourable to thee, Lord; this shall in no wise be unto thee” (Matthew 16: 22). He wanted the Lord to save Himself, but the Lord called that Satan. “Get away behind me, Satan ... thy mind is not on the things that are of God, but on the things that are of men”.

FHL Thomas in John 11: 16 says, “Let us also go that we may die with him”.

JT John, by the Spirit, was considerate of Thomas in recording that.

WR John 12: 1 says, “Jesus therefore, six days before the passover, came to Bethany, where was the dead man Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from among the dead”.

JT That bears on what we are saying. Conditions at Bethany were suitable for Him to come at that time; six days before His own death; six days before the passover. It is where Lazarus was, who had been dead, or “where was the dead man Lazarus”. Outwardly that was the position, because if one died for all, it was because all were dead. That is Lazarus’s position, but then it adds, “whom Jesus raised from among the dead”. Lazarus is a risen man at least, in principle; he represents the position in that sense too: it is Colossian. It is a life scene there, but as regards Lazarus publicly, he is a dead man; he is morally a dead man; that is the position. He had gone through death. But then Mary was there, and she had what belonged to the dying time, not outwardly the living time. The ^[p. 324] dying time was six days hence; she had what was needed in view of that. She had the box of ointment of which the Lord tells us, she has “kept this for the day of my preparation for burial” (verse 7). It was, as I said, the dying time, in which the Lord was leading. I may add that the present is the dying time in the government of God, and I believe the brethren will all find salvation in taking it up and accepting that it is for Christ’s sake. It is not accidental; it is for Christ’s sake. The devil is having a hand in it; he is working in this, as well as in certain rulers of the world, and he has his eye on the Lord’s people; the thing is bearing on us, and our wisdom is to know how to die.

JTJr The Pharisees sought to kill Lazarus because many believed on his account.

JT The point, however, there is, that he is the one whom Jesus raised from among the dead, verse 9. From the human point of view he is a dead man; he does not belong to any societies in the town; he is out of it all; still he is a living man, but his springs are not of this world, and people are believing on Christ through him. That principle for Christians is in Colossians. As risen with Christ, we are as dead to this world; we set our minds on things above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

AC There must have been some intense interest when the passover was kept in Josiah’s time for it says, “there was no passover like to that holden in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet” (2 Chronicles 35: 18).

JT It was properly kept; king Josiah influencing all. There must have been something in his constitution corresponding to it, and no doubt others were similarly affected. The occasion was blessed of God, and afforded a remarkable testimony. The question is whether we can go through this ^[p. 325] terrible ordeal with God. We ought to be able to go through it although it may not directly touch some of us, but if we understand the body of Christ we are able to go through it. The body is an organism, and all in it are affected. If we go through it with God, we are ready for translation.

Ques “Let us celebrate the feast” (1 Corinthians 5: 8). Would that not be an appeal from the apostle?

JT That is right. He says first, “For also our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed”. It is an objective thought there. “So that let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”. It was a question of the bread with the Corinthians. The objective side was recognised there, but the bread, the unleavened bread, is the needed thing to prevent inflation. The great difficulty at Corinth was inflation; hence the feast of unleavened bread was mainly in the apostle’s mind. Christ has been sacrificed for us; that side was there objectively, but their real difficulty was inflation; they were puffed up; the old leaven was there, although abstractly the Corinthians were unleavened.

SMcC Do you not think that the ministry the Lord has been giving of recent years has been preparing us for this? In Matthew 16 the Lord in speaking to the disciples stresses that He must go up to Jerusalem; then we have the ministry of chapters 17 and 18, and when you come to Matthew 20: 18, the Lord says, “Behold we go up to Jerusalem;” He would bring them into it.

JT Quite so. He would bring them through it. I believe it was essential that they should be at Jerusalem. He had told them in chapters 16 and 17 that the Son of man must suffer, but they must go up to Jerusalem and go through the pressure; so that, after the institution of the Lord’s supper, He ^[p. 326] takes them out to Gethsemane, which has to be experienced. They were there in the position to share in what He was experiencing in view of the cross. They were not equal to it, but still there was something they gained there, that the Spirit of God would take up later. They must go that way, they must be there with Him.

FSC Would you say a word about His desiring to eat the passover with them before He suffered?

JT It was the Jewish position and He would, in His love for them, share the passover with them. It is this passover, the last one. I suppose it was never eaten like that, not that He did not eat the passover before, but it was just before He suffered. What a model He would be as to how the feast was to be celebrated! “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22: 15) — it is “with you;” they would come into the realisation of the passover as understanding how He appropriated it.

Rem I was looking up the word “roast”. It was not to be eaten raw or boiled; has that any correspondence with what was suffered in Gethsemane?

JT Well, that was in mind — “before I suffer”, the Lord says. Then Luke later says, “after he had suffered”. Before He suffered He is partaking of the passover; you can see what was in His mind in partaking of it; how He was affected in partaking of it. Gethsemane follows on that. I believe the roasting enters into all that; the boiling is indirect action of fire, and is more what you might see in Luke and John, although what we are quoting now is from Luke. Gethsemane and the forsaking refer to the roasting, the direct action of the fire, and these are mentioned in Matthew and Mark.

CN Both the Jewish and Christian economies ^[p. 327] seem to begin in this feature of death; the one in the passover; the other in John’s baptism.

JT That brings us to baptism, which is the second part of our subject this morning. Instruction as to it is in the passage of the Red Sea. The Israelites were baptised to Moses in the Red Sea; it was not a river; it was a sea, an extended idea, which would be expressed in the remark in Romans that death reigned from Adam to Moses; it was prevalent. Well, it is not reigning for the Israelites, because they go through on dry land, but the wall is on either side; there is a wall of death on either side. These are persons that have appropriated the passover, that are going through. What we have been speaking about covered their position. God has passed over them; they go through on the principle of faith. “By faith they passed through the Red sea as through dry land” (Hebrews 11: 29). Faith is there; they are covered in the passover, by the blood on the lintel; they are covered under God’s eye, but then they are constitutionally in accord with the passover; typically, they are going through death as a known thing; they accept it. Sacrificially all is dealt with in the passover, and the blood shielded them. When we come to John’s baptism, the Lord is brought into that, and He gives a lead to us as to how to be baptised. The eunuch, as in Acts 8: 36, says, “Behold water; what hinders my being baptised?” There is nothing to hinder. Philip does not propose it to him; it is the outcome of what Philip has said to him in the gospel; the eunuch saw that he must go down into death with Jesus. Philip preached unto him Jesus. The Lord had to do with John’s baptism, but later He says, “I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it shall have been accomplished!” (Luke 12: 50). That was baptism in the sense of actual death, but He also had to do with John’s ^[p. 328] baptism, and I think if you were with Him there on the banks of the Jordan, you would understand how to be baptised, as you would learn from Him how to eat the passover, as already said. Jesus came from Galilee; a place of religious reproach, we are told, not from Jerusalem. He came to John, and John saw Him coming, and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1: 29). Evidently the idea of sacrificial death was reflected in Him; He was reflecting the thought of dying. He came to John. John was administering baptism, but he “urgently forbad” the Lord, saying, “I have need to be baptised of thee”, and the Lord says, “Suffer it now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3: 14, 15). The Lord’s word extends with great power to ever one who is not baptised, or whose house is not baptised; both thoughts are seen in the Red Sea, for Paul says, “were baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10: 2). “All” including children. The Lord says it is a question of righteousness. He says to John, “Suffer it now; for thus is becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”. And John admitted it and baptised Him; and then heaven owns the Lord Jesus. Heaven always owns a man who is set for the fulfilment of righteousness.

NMcC You made the remark that we should know how to die. John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3: 30).

JT Yes. The keeping of the passover with unleavened bread would deflate us; reduce us. In baptism, death is a wall on either side; we go through it by the power of God. God makes a way through for His people, although outwardly death is reigning yet. God is accentuating the position at the moment, but He is making a way for His people. We want to see how God is doing this for us — making a wall on either side of us, it is a way for His people.

AR “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear” (1 Corinthians 10: 13). He makes the issue also.

JT That is the idea exactly. He will make a way for the saints. Outward government is weakening at the present time; there is but little protection; but then God will make a way for His people. You see death accentuated in the Red Sea, but walls of water were there, and Israel passed between them on dry land. The waters were a wall to them. “By faith they passed through the Red sea”.

ABP Would you say what part the cloud had in this? “All were baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea”.

JT I think the cloud would be symbolical of the presence of the Spirit; the Spirit is the positive side of position. The cloud is the symbol of the presence of God.

FHL It is a way of life then.

JT It is. “We who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4: 11). Death is the way to life.

APT If there is no reference to faith after the Israelites go through the Red Sea till Rahab, is the wilderness necessary for us?

JT It is necessary to work out in us all these great things. There is a state of faith contemplated in the passage of the Red Sea, which normally appropriates the mind of God as presented, and the believer is formed accordingly. The passover was celebrated at once — at mount Sinai. God would work out subjectively by the Spirit, correspondence with the death of Christ, fitting the people for the land of promise. The wilderness is a testing period; forty years is a long time, but it is a time of testing so that the end of the wilderness brings the question,

“What has God wrought?” This implies that He has wrought in His people.

WR Would you say the Colossians came this way — “your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3: 3).

JT Yes; but Colossians bring us into the land. We are at the beginning of the wilderness in what we have before us. When Paul touches on baptism in Colossians 2: 12, he says, “ye have been also raised with him”. In what is before us now we are facing the wilderness; at the Red Sea the idea of death, in its extensiveness, is before us, and we come through; but the truth involved is to be worked out in us during those forty years in the wilderness. So that the conditions around us today are the wilderness; death is being rolled in upon us. The question in due time will be, What has God wrought in us? Colossians contemplates the passage of the Jordan, which is a figure of death in concentrated power.

AR Is that why the apostle in Romans 6 says, “We have been buried”?

JT Yes. The apostle there is bringing out baptism as expressing death. “As many as have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, have been baptised unto his death?” (Romans 6: 3). It is the question of the death feature of it being pressed in upon us. The Lord says, “He that believes and is baptised” (Mark 16: 16). Not has been but is; it is an ever present thing to the believer. The apostle here is alluding to a historical fact, that they were baptised but being baptised to Christ they were baptised unto His death. So that we reckon ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6: 11).

Rem The way of the land of the Philistines, Exodus 13: 17, involved conflict for Israel, but God chose to bring them by the way of the Red Sea which ^[p. 331] involved death. Is that the first step in the conflict — that we go through death?

JT That is it; He did not want them to see war so early. I suppose that until this principle of going through death with Christ is worked out in us we cannot safely face war. We must come through the Red Sea and then the wilderness; it is the way of God by which His mind is worked out in us.

SMcC As on the other side of the sea, should we have a peculiar sense of God’s delight in us corresponding to what was seen when the Lord came up out of the waters of baptism. It was then that the Father’s voice declared the delight He found in Him.

JT That is very beautiful. God’s delight in Christ as extended to us, we have foreshadowed in Exodus. The pattern of the tabernacle which Moses saw, and the material which was to be supplied by the people, would mean that they come into the sense of the pleasure of God in them. Ye shall “be my own possession out of all the peoples ... and a holy nation” (Exodus 19: 5, 6). That would be worked out in relation to the pattern of the tabernacle that Moses was shown above. When Moses came down, a great point was that God rested on the sabbath day “and was refreshed” (Exodus 31: 17). You do not get that earlier; it points to the delight God had in the unfolding of Christ, as in the pattern of the tabernacle. We are brought into that. The material in Exodus means the saints; that what is in the tabernacle has not simply come through the Red Sea; every bit of it is for the pleasure of God.

APT Paul, when converted, preached Jesus as the Son of God, but immediately they want to kill him.

JT Yes. The Lord said, “I will shew to him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9: 16). He himself said later, “I think that God has set us the apostles for the last, as appointed to death” (1 Corinthians 4: 9). This especially marked Paul.