UNSEARCHABLE RICHES
J. N. Grace
Ecclesiastes 9: 13–18; 2 Corinthians 8: 9; Romans 11: 33–36; 2 Kings 4: 1–7
I would like to say something about this poor wise man. It is of course a strong allusion to our Lord Jesus, and I wonder whether we think of Him in that way. As far as I am aware Scripture never speaks of the Lord having any earthly goods to make Him rich, in fact at one time He said, “Shew me a denarius”, as if He did not have a penny. And then at another time He told one of His own to go and take a fish, and the first fish that came up would pay the Jews the tribute money that they were demanding of Him. Think of the Lord Jesus, the Heir of all, think of Him in circumstances of poverty. And when His parents brought Him into the temple as a babe, they brought two turtle-doves as an offering, the very smallest offering that could be brought. Obviously, the family were poor.
That is the way the Lord Jesus came into this world to become available to us; may I say, to become available to every one of humanity, however poor, however small. That is Jesus. It is lovely to think of Him as One who has come within the range of us all. He had not a place to lay His head; He was born in a manger; there was no room for Him in the inn. The more you think of it, the more you search the Scriptures, the more you will find that as far as the Lord Jesus was concerned there was no room for Him and He drew nothing from the riches of this world. He drew everything from His Father; that is where His resources lay. Well, that is our Saviour, that is the One to whom we owe everything.
That is the One to whom the church owes everything.
There was this little city; nothing big; and I do not think the assembly was ever intended to present a big front to the world. It was a little city, and we can bring that down, I think, by application to where we are. Men speak of this big city of Melbourne. I would say that, in the sight of God, it is just a little city. In our scripture someone came in to deliver that little city.
Now there were few men in it; we are thinking now of the testimony, of what is for God.
Things would have been overwhelmed had it not been for this poor wise man.. That is why we are here, beloved brethren, tonight because of a poor wise Man, that is, outwardly. As to His Person He is, as we sang, Heir of all things—how rich Jesus is in His own Person, and He was too when here. But He took this place outwardly of being a poor wise Man. And He delivered the city. Thank God, He did that when He went to the cross; it necessitated that work of Jesus to bring about deliverance for men, and to bring about any deliverance whatever in the course of the testimony.
If we have known anything of the expression of the assembly practically in our experience, maybe just in a few, we must think of the whole assembly when we speak of the saints. We would never speak of the saints without thinking of the whole assembly and embracing every believer who has the Spirit. But the fact remains that if there was to be any deliverance at all in the testimony from the pressure of the enemy, it must be through this poor wise Man—not through the wisdom of men, but through the wisdom of God that shone out in Jesus. So He delivered the city, and then they forgot Him. Oh, how Jesus has been forgotten!—forgotten in every way by the public position of Christianity. He is a forgotten Saviour. I do not speak now of the
question of our sins, your sins or mine, I am speaking of the city, which is an allusion doubtless to the assembly. If in any measure at all the truth of the assembly has been preserved and kept, in however few it may be, then it is due to the activity of Jesus—this “poor wise man”—to deliver the city. Have you remembered Him?—or have we forgotten Him? I am not speaking of the Supper, although I think it embraces the Supper. Persons who do remember Christ, who remember this “poor wise man”, will remember Him at the Supper. But it is wider than that, because all we enjoy in the way of assembly privilege we owe to the wisdom of this “poor wise man”.
That is our Saviour. Now let us remember Him, and let us give place to His wisdom, His wisdom, not the wisdom of men, so it says, “Wisdom is better than strength; and the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard”. Well, that is what Paul tells us in the beginning of Corinthians. The wisdom of this world has been set aside by the cross and Christ has been made unto us wisdom. Let us therefore hold on to Jesus and the wisdom that is to be seen in Him. That is the only way that we shall find the assembly going through in our experience—not a mere public position, but what is to be learned through Jesus.
Now we come into blessing through the gospel, and the wonderful thing is that. Christianity being here, we are in the time of the richest blessing ever to be conceived. Christianity is not a poverty-stricken system. Beloved brother and sister, the assembly is a system of blessing and substance and wealth the like of which has never been seen before this dispensation.
Many have a poor apprehension of the wealth of the assembly. In it, in the mystery, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now how far we touch that would be the question, would it not?—whether we feel in our souls that we are poverty-stricken. We come up against certain circumstances. Are they too much for us? They will not be too much for anybody who in his heart has given scope and place to the wonder of the assembly as under the headship of Christ. There has never been a vessel like it. There is sufficient in it not only to meet every contingency that can arise, and every problem in your life or in the life of any locality, but there is wisdom and substance that come from heaven itself, because of the Head and who He is.
His days of poverty, in the sense in which we have been speaking, are over. That finished with the cross. He went out despised and rejected of men. They would not listen to His wisdom. They would not have the wisdom that shone out in Jesus; they gave Him the cross; but God has exalted Him and Christ is made unto us wisdom. You will not find wisdom outside of Christ. Our hope and our blessing, the joy of our souls, dear brother and sister, lie in our relations with the Person of Christ and the presence of the Spirit. Oh, we are in a wonderful time! Let no one think that because of the scattering publicly of the assembly anything is diminished in the wealth of what, is available in the Spirit. No, because the Spirit of God is here we are in the wealthiest time that ever has been in the history of men. Have you touched it? Have you really touched the wealth that lies in the Spirit of God? It is like what is said in the book of Ruth, “Naomi had a relation of her husband’s, a mighty man of wealth”. That speaks of Jesus. That is Jesus in resurrection; He is the mighty Man of wealth.
Coming in touch with Christ in this sense brings you into an area the world has no part in, the area that the Spirit of God is working in. He is working in the hearts of the saints, that is where He is working, and He is working in relation to this mighty Man of wealth.
You know, sometimes you might feel unequal to preaching the word, whether in the street or in the hall, but our preaching should be full of wealth, full of it, beloved brethren. There should be no poverty in the preaching of the word. Paul speaks of riches; he connects the riches of God with the gospel, “the riches of his glory”. Oh, how wonderful that is! If you feel your failure, how short you have come, you come into the area where the gospel has been presented in the power of the Spirit and your soul is filled by a sense of divine riches, the riches of God’s mercy, the riches of His grace, the riches of His glory. Oh how wealthy is the time we are in, in the power and presence of the Spirit of God. So the truth in relation to the gospel has shown that God has not given up any of His promises. It might appear at the moment that Israel has been given up, but God says (Romans 11: 12) that the loss of Israel is the wealth of the nations; that is how God acts. If God in His sovereignty has for the moment set aside the Jew, it is in order that the nations might be brought into divine blessing in the gospel. That is the wisdom of God. Presently the nations will be given up, and the gospel will again embrace the Jews as a nation. What a time that will be! We have no conception of what a wonderful time the millennium will be, when God will show what He can do in conditions of flesh and blood here in the world where Christ has been crucified. He will show what He has in His heart for men in conditions of flesh and blood. He has still more in His heart in relation to eternity, but the time will come when God will display what a God He is, and in the very scene where Christ has died the riches of His glory will come out in relation to Israel. What a time that will be. when men will enjoy the blessings of God here.
Ours is a better time, when God is bringing in the riches that come from Christ in heaven and belong to what is eternal. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. So, again, let us not have any thoughts of poverty in relation to the time we are in.
Maybe it is an individual time, in a sense, where we tread our individual pathways, but you find somebody else being true to the assembly and immediately you have a link together in the Spirit, and you find that the joys and privileges of the assembly are open to two or three who gather together unto His name. That is where it comes down to. So we are not looking for big numbers. I do not think we shall have big numbers, but we have enough. We have enough to enjoy the richest of divine blessings that belong to the assembly. That should keep us humble. It will keep us, also, in dependence on the Spirit, because that is how the truth is arrived at, by our making room for the Spirit of God.
That is why I read the passage in Kings. These things exist; the assembly exists, and the wonders of divine grace, “the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”, but how do we come into it? You will say, Well, it is all very well to speak like this but sometimes I feel terribly poverty-stricken in my soul. I suppose we all do, and we shall if we do not give full room to the Spirit. I think the way we come into the riches is by giving room to the Holy Spirit, and that is what this passage in Kings refers to. What a problem it was! Who has not got problems? Anybody here without problems? I do not think so. We each think that our problems are the greatest problems that exist; but you do not know the circumstances of the brother or sister sitting next to you. You only know your own problems; every heart knows its own bitterness; but there is sufficient in the presence of the Spirit, dear brethren, to enable us to face all these problems that exist, and that we might have to face, with a sense of the divine wealth which is available to us to meet them. Now that lies in our making room for the presence and operations of the Spirit of God.
So in this passage in 2 Kings 4 someone is speaking to Elisha, calling upon the man of God, calling upon the prophetic word and, thank God, a prophetic word is always available. When the official priesthood had broken down, and the official system in the king had broken down, what remained was the prophet, and God used the prophet to carry the testimony right through; and He will carry it right through to the end. God has made provision for that in our day. The prophetic word should enter into all our gatherings because of the presence of the Spirit. So this woman at least made known her needs. She cried, it says, to Elisha saying, “Thy servant my husband is dead, and thou knowest that thy servant feared Jehovah; and the creditor is come to take my two children to be bondmen”. What a pathetic situation!—that poor, desolate woman; no resources left, her husband dead, and as to her two children whom she might depend upon to carry things through, now the creditor had come to take them. How was it to be met? Things in our day are not being met by what is miraculous. In one sense they are, because your presence here, and my presence here, tonight is just a miracle—that God has acted in His own way, in spite of our waywardness and self-will but then, from our side, things are met by making room for the Spirit of God.
So the prophet says, “What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house?” He was not going to bring anything in; all that is needed is here, dear brethren, furnished already by the presence of the Spirit. So she says, “Thy handmaid has not anything at all in the house but a pot of oil”. Well, that is pretty poor, is it not? She spoke of poverty and all she had with which to meet the creditor, and all she had to sustain life, was in a pot of oil. That is a small vessel, and she did not know the value of what she had. I think we come to that, that we do not know, it really has not gripped us, what the presence of the Spirit of God means as dwelling in us. Great potentialities are there for the filling out of things; not just to get through—how many of us are thankful just to get through sometimes, but that is not the full thought that belongs to the assembly. The thing is that we go through, with something to live on. And so Elisha says, “Go, borrow for thyself vessels abroad from all thy neighbours, empty vessels; let it not be few; and go in, and shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and pour out into all those vessels, and set aside what is full”.
It is not a mere knowledge of the truth that is going to bring in the blessing, it is the truth put into activity in our, lives. It is that you learn now to use the Spirit. I think that generally the brethren have a knowledge of the truth, understand the gospel, understand the fact that the assembly is here, but do we put it into practice? Do we learn to use the Spirit in the responsibilities of life? because that is what this means. “Borrow ... vessels from all thy neighbours”, as if to say associations of life are coming up. She has got to do with the neighbours and now she is fulfilling her responsibilities. “Let it not be few”, the prophet says, “Go in, and shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and pour out into all those vessels”.
She would not have had anything if she had not poured out. That is the secret of it, that we learn to use the Spirit, not only to know that we have the Spirit, but to use Him. We learn to call upon the Spirit in all the various exigencies of life as we go on day by day. Sometimes it is essential to go into our chamber and pray.
That is what the Lord tells us, “Shut thy door”. But that is not always what is needed, because the Spirit is with us. The Lord is guarding against formalities. Sometimes it is right that you carry out what is formal; there are formalities that are right. Have your morning reading and kneel down and give thanks to God for the family; that is all right.
But more than that is needed. This suggests that the Spirit is available all the time. “Pour out”—as you come up against a situation call on the Spirit. You might be out in the street, or at work, or at school; there is nothing to stop you calling upon the Spirit just where you are, and the Spirit will give you help and you will learn that wealth comes only through making room for the Spirit. That is the secret of it, dear brethren; that is the wealthy substance that belongs to the present time because of the presence of the Spirit. At Pentecost things that they had never heard of before came into view when the Spirit was recognized. Suddenly they got an interpretation of the Scripture they never knew was there. “This is that which was spoken through the prophet Joel”, Peter said; ‘This is it’; and the Scriptures began to give a living touch because of the presence of the Spirit. He is still here, and that is what we want every time we come together and the Scriptures are read, not just an unfolding of the truth or doctrine; we need a living touch by the Spirit that will bring substance and wealth into the soul of every brother and sister, then what a time it will be!
So, you might say, this was the local company and the prophet is saying, ‘Bring in all the vessels’. They are all needed, every brother and every sister, and start to pour out so as to get the gain of what is in every heart. It says, “she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons”. This brings us back to our communion with the Lord and with the Spirit and with God. We shall get nowhere unless personal communion is maintained with divine Persons. We come along to the meetings thank God we do; make the most of them; what else have we got?—but more than that is needed. We need the constant touch of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit in order that things should be maintained livingly amongst us and that something still more expressive of the assembly should come to light, not only for our deliverance and our getting through, but for life. “Go, sell the oil ... and live ... on the rest”.
That is what we want, dear brethren. We want life amongst us, not just getting through, but wealthy persons who have the earnest of the Spirit, that is, present income from the Spirit.
Presently we shall have a wonderful portion when we are taken into our inheritance fully, in Him, but we have a present income in the earnest of the Spirit. That sets us apart altogether from this world and its resources. So what a wealthy person the believer is as having the Spirit of God. So she said to her son, “Bring me yet a vessel. And he said to her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. And she came and told the man of God; and he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy sons on the rest”. What a time that woman had!—lifted out of the situation where the creditors were coming to take everything and she says, ‘I have nothing but a pot of oil’, and Elisha says, in effect, ‘Well, you do not know what you have’. So he proceeds to show her that in every avenue of life in which she moved responsibly, if she used the Spirit she would find not only that she had the Spirit—which is “life on account of righteousness”—but that she was able to “live ... on the rest”.
That leads from Romans into the other epistles. It leads rightly into Ephesians. Now I just want to say this, Romans is not the full thought of the assembly. There is a wonderful wealth in the gospel, dear brethren, in Romans that I guess we have not yet touched. When you go home just have a look at the scriptures in Romans that speak of the riches of God’s goodness, and the riches of His mercy, and so on. Then we come over into Ephesians and have a look at the wealth that belongs to the believer there—“the riches of his grace”, “the surpassing riches of his grace”; one thing after another is touched upon in that letter. And then Paul speaks of “the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ”. Now you tell me what that means!
I would like to know. I have a very small impression, really, of it, but I do have an impression, some impression, of what “the unsearchable riches of the Christ” are. They are unsearchable. They refer to the counsels of God in connection with what is not only for our blessing but for God’s inheritance in the saints. One thing to have before us is our inheritance and our joy in the assembly, but finally the assembly is for God, and the unsearchable riches of the Christ will secure that for Him.
Now that is the glad tidings. We come back to that; it is “the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ”. Now, you say, Well, that seems pretty full. It is full. I think that is the fullest expression of the glad tidings. But that is not the glad tidings of our need; it is not the settlement of the question of our sins; it is “the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ”, involving the counsels of God, involving what is for God, not only in your heart or in mine, not only in the local assembly, but the universal thought of the assembly and what is secured for God by His own counsels, and the working of that out in the Person of Christ.
So let us go in for it. If you have any sense of unsatisfied need in your soul, dear brother and sister, have to do with the Spirit, have to do with the Lord, have to do with the Father, and you will find there are riches there that have never been tapped in your soul, not only to meet your need, but to expand your enjoyment of the system of glory that belongs to the assembly.
The assembly up there, but also the assembly down here in a practical way in those you can walk with in the light of the truth, as drawing upon the Spirit. We learn to draw upon the Spirit individually, and then collectively; so let it be that every time we come together we learn to make room for Him. That means that we learn to make room for one another. We get the full wealth that is available under the direction of the Lord, in the presence of the Spirit, and we prove the wealth of the company. Oh, it is wonderful wealth!
It is like Esther—a very interesting scripture, where God is not mentioned formally—just a suggestion of what God can do. It says in Esther 1: 3, “In the third year of his reign he (Ahasuerus) made a feast to all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of the provinces being before him; when he shewed the glorious wealth of his kingdom and the splendid magnificence of his grandeur many days, a hundred and eighty days”. What a time that must have been! There is just a suggestion of what God is going to do in the millennium. We have little conception, dear brethren, of what God will yet do in this very scene. But it does not compare with what God is doing by His Spirit in the hearts of His saints. All the wealth of Christ in glory can now be experienced by us in the presence of the Spirit down here, because God is here in the Spirit. There has never been a dispensation like that, and never will be again, when God is indwelling men by His Spirit. It is because the assembly is here. How it ought to lift our thoughts of the assembly! Let us make use of the assembly so that something of the glory of God’s inheritance in the saints may be furnished, not only for our satisfaction, but for the satisfaction and pleasure of God.
May it be so. Amen.
Address at Melbourne
20 September 1986