NEIGHBOURS

E.C.Burr

Luke 10: 25 -29,36,37; Leviticus 25: 25,35,39,40; Luke 5: 4-7

We have referred in our hymn (No 226) to things which were in the mind of the Lord Jesus when He came to do the will of God. How much we can say as to detail would be a question of how far we have spiritual penetration into what the will of God is.

Various things are said in the Scriptures which suggest to us why He came and what He had in mind to do. One of the things referred to in the hymn is that His brethren were in His thoughts, and it is a very interesting reflection that Christ Himself has done the work which enables God to give Him brethren. He speaks in John's gospel of being alone: "ye... shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me", John 16:32. But as to external appearances He was alone, and God gave Him brethren; and one thing that I suppose we increasingly appreciate in these days is that God has given us brethren. I have thought for some time how the idea of brethren needs to develop in our minds and perhaps to some extent be uplifted. Mr Taylor sen never objected to the word 'exclusive' and it is a word we should hold to in its right meaning, because if it is diluted or entrenched upon the enjoyment of what brethren are tends to diminish. The idea of brethren needs to be very closely related - that is brethren as together - to our standing as Christ's brethren; and while there is a point from which our affections extend towards all believers, we do have, in these days perhaps particularly, to hold securely in our minds the framework within which the substance of the truth can be worked out Divine thoughts are not to be worked out promiscuously, they are to be worked out in relation to established principles that God has Himself set out; but one thing that God has done for us is to give us brethren, a very great consideration for us. It says in Psalm 68 that He makes the solitary into families (v 6). That is something else He has done, God has put men in families; persons who would otherwise be solitary, persons who might even on the basis of the scripture in 2 Timothy 2 be solitary as naming the name of the Lord and withdrawing from iniquity, God has put them in families and they prove the blessedness of relations with one another. It is interesting that the Psalm should say that He makes the solitary into families because, as we all well know, the family is an organisation, if I could use that word for want of a better, in which many things are worked out; many exercises, sometimes differences, arise and they have to be resolved according to the principles that belong to the family; many joys and pleasures are shared, and we rejoice greatly with one another in the family feeling and the family setting; we should be very thankful for family feelings.

Then another thing that God has done is to give us neighbours and I would like to say a word about that. It is interesting that although God prescribes in the Decalogue that a person should honour his father and his mother, that is not actually presented as one of the great commandments of the law. The two great commandments in the law are first that you should love God with all your heart, and soul, and strength, and understanding, as the Lord's words are recounted by the different evangelists (some use different words from the others but what is in mind is that we should love God with all that we are). But He does not then say, And you should love your father and mother or your children, but that you should love your neighbour as yourself. I find that interesting, and I think that the Lord intended in it to bring out something for us that we should learn and in which we should grow. You might have thought that when asked which is the great commandment of the law one might have said "Ye shall be holy; for I am holy" (Lev 11: 44) - certainly that is one of the great commandments of the law; but there are two commandments, that you should love God and you should love your neighbour as yourself. I think that God has so arranged things that we are set in neighbourly relations with one another, and He looks to us to see that this commandment is fulfilled, that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. I do not think there is much difficulty among the brethren, nor would one ever expect to find it, in loving God with all our heart, and soul, and strength and understanding, however much we may feel we fall short in our obedience to such a commandment; but the other is that thou shouldst love thy neighbour as thyself I suppose we are all tested as to that, all challenged. The interesting thing is that this man says "And who is my neighbour?" as though the very thought had never occurred to him. Although well taught in the law his mind had never reflected on this commandment so as to be able to locate where his affection should fall: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The parable that the Lord speaks then is familiar to us, the children know about the One who is spoken of as the Good Samaritan. They know there was a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and that he fell among thieves, and they know about the levite and the priest that passed that way and were able to do nothing for the man; and in a sense were rightly able to do nothing for the man because they, upholding the law, or at least many principles of the law, were unable to come near and touch him, the man himself being, I suppose, in an unclean condition, if only on account of his injuries, to say nothing of his moral state. Then a certain Samaritan journeying came up to him and poured in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast and took him to the inn, and said to the innkeeper, Take care of him. All the children know that. But Jesus says, Who was neighbour to him? And he said, He that shewed him mercy. What this parable brings out primarily is that Christ Himself has come into a condition where He can be man's neighbour in order that He might be loved by man. It is always good to read a scripture carefully so that we begin to understand just what the Lord is saying. We read through this and we say, Who then was neighbour to him who fell among thieves? And we are left with the impression that this man was his neighbour. But this point had been brought out in order to elaborate what is in the second of the great commandments - that thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The parable is an answer to "And who is my neighbour?", and the neighbour is actually Christ who has come into man's condition where He can come up to him in order that being man's neighbour man might be able to love Him. What a remarkable level on which neighbourly relations are set, that they are in relation to the condition in incarnation in which Jesus has come, in order that providing healing and refreshment for man He might be the object of man's love. This is how things are set in this parable. It is not so that we might have abstract ideas about what neighbourliness is and that sort of thing, but it presents to us that Jesus Himself has come into man's condition where, as it says in the King James version, "he came where he was" (Not that I particularly set up that version as against Mr Darby's, but sometimes it has words that give you a close impression of the reality of things). He came where he was, and that is what Christ has done, He has done it as man's neighbour, in order to show man mercy, but in order that He might become the object of man's affection. This parable does not just demonstrate what it is to be kind to one another, or what it is to be philanthropic, or do merciful deeds, or that kind of thing; what it demonstrates is that God in Christ has come into conditions where being man's neighbour He can be the object of man's love. That brings out to us, I believe, the fulness of what is involved in this second of the great commandments, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Then you discover that there is really no difference between these two commandments as you think of them in relation to God, because you love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and strength, and understanding, but then you also love God who has come in to your condition to be your neighbour drawing near to you - coming up to him, pouring in oil and wine coming up to you so that you might discover that the One who showed you mercy now becomes the object of your love. I have often thought that our minds do not dwell enough on the thought of mercy. It has too little place in the service of God, and yet in Romans the nations are to "glorify God for mercy". chap 15: 9. We, beloved, are among the nations, and therefore there is a right place for response to God in relation to His mercy in the service of God. Not that we are dwelling on our sins and our history in relation to which His mercy has operated, but His mercy glorifies Himself and the nations glorify God for mercy. As the brethren well know, mercy is one of the things that is brought out in the truth on its highest level in the epistle to the Ephesians, and it should have more place with us in the service of God. But what is brought out here is that the One who showed mercy is the One who has come into a position where He could be loved by man.

Now this having been set out by way of example in a way that carries conviction to the soul of the youngest – that is that if someone has drawn near to you when you were wounded and half dead, and has healed you and revived you, and put you in a position of safety and of care, and you learn to love him – you begin to get some impression of the standard of love which we are intended to have towards others who may be our neighbours. It is the level on which we love God in Christ as having shown mercy to us that our hearts are intended to extend toward our neighbour by way of love. This is testing, challenging. We think of our local brethren as to whether we are loving them as being ourselves on this level; not loving them on the level on which I value myself to myself but loving them on the level on which we love God as having drawn near to us in mercy. As I say, if you follow the parable through, it begins, "Who is my neighbour?", then, Who do you think is your neighbour? Who was neighbour to that man? He was the one who came up to him and healed him and provided for him, God, as I say, in Christ coming into man's circumstances in order that being man's neighbour man might love Him. And that beloved, I believe, is the level on which we are intended to have neighbourly feelings in relation to one another. Let us search ourselves whether that is so. We value the brethren in these days, we value them as brethren; do we in fact value them as neighbours, do we value them on this level and love them on the same level as we love the Lord our God with all our soul, heart, strength and understanding? Do we love our neighbour like that?

Now Leviticus brings out that you do love your neighbour on this level. There are three references in chapter 25 to thy brother growing poor, and in two of them it says, "if thy brother grow poor beside thee". That is to say your brother is your neighbour. "If thy brother grow poor, and he be fallen into decay beside thee", and "if thy brother grow poor beside thee". Now how are you going to act in relation to that, in relation to your brother who is your neighbour, especially if he has grown poor? Poverty has many manifestations. You only need to look round the world to discover that. It can manifest itself in demonstration of the flesh, of what is natural, of everything save the grace of Him who being rich, became poor, in order that by His poverty we might be enriched (see 2 Cor 8: 9). Think of the way in which, beloved, One according to Luke 10 has come into the position of our neighbour; He has come into conditions of poverty. And what has been displayed there? Nothing but the infinite perfection of what He was in Himself. He never ceased to be lovable on account of His poverty, He never did anything that detracted from His lovability on account of the poverty into which He had come. We might say with reverence that He had come into a position where He became poor beside us; where, though rich (everything that is God's is His by right as God), yet He came into a position where if He needed a penny, He had to ask one of His disciples to show Him one. See the poverty into which He had come, not desiring to spend anything on His own aggrandisement or increase or even to supply what might be needed in Himself. If it was a question of nourishment: "I have food to eat which ye do know (John 4: 32), He says to His disciples who had gone away shopping. He had come into a condition of poverty. Not that His riches had become attenuated or that He had in any was sacrificed that was incompatible with the source of those riches, but He came into conditions of poverty - as Mr Darby translates it in the French, He lived in poverty, He came into conditions where He was poor. What an example to us, beloved! How do you regard Jesus as having become poor in that sense? Is not your heart attracted to Him? The heart, I think Mr Stoney says, is won by His humiliation. Has your heart been won by His humiliation? One who, if I may apply the word carefully, has become poor beside us, One who has come into conditions of poverty in order that we through His poverty might be enriched, but who in those conditions of poverty becomes infinitely attractive to the heart. That is how Christ becomes to us, beloved, in the poverty in which He was. How does this make you feel in regard to your neighbour, your brother who is beside you? You say, Well, they have grown poor, they are not getting on very well there, or he is not getting on too well at the present time; we have exercise and concern about so-and-so, he does not seem to be what he was. Beloved, is your heart extended to him as it is towards Christ? not in any way palliating anything that may be incompatible with the glory of the One who is so infinitely attractive to us in His poverty; maintaining all that and yet displaying the same kind of affection as you have towards Christ Himself. Relations between brethren, and relations as between neighbours and brethren who are neighbours, are intended to manifest the same feelings of affection as were manifested in Jesus who showed mercy, arid in the way in which we love the One who showed mercy thus we love those who are neighbours. These things, beloved, test us by their simplicity. Most of Christianity tests us by its simplicity, not by its difficulty and profundity; these things do not test us because we are then obliged to fall back on the Spirit for understanding of them, but it is the simple aspects of Christianity that are the most testing.

Moses says here "If thy brother grow poor". In the first place "If thy brother grow poor and sell of his possession, then shall his redeemer, his nearest relation, come and redeem". If you find that your neighbour has come under constraint or under difficulty, if in some sense he is under a kind of mortgage that someone has a charge upon, that someone could righteously demand something from him, that kind of thing, what then is to be done? The spirit of redemption is to enter into the situation, so that, as we understand it in our day, in virtue of the blood of Christ and what that effects before God in redemption we may in the spirit in which that blood was shed set our brother up in liberty from whatever may have hampered or be hindering him at the present time. Do you feel that someone is shut up and narrow? The spirit of redemption comes into that situation, the spirit of the way in which Christ met every limiting thing that lay upon man in the pouring out of His blood as already dead; as having given up His life to God His blood was poured out in order that there might be redemption. And the spirit in which a condition in which affection might otherwise be constrained is to be met in the spirit in which you apprehend what redemption is. Things are not approached in Christianity on the basis of law or of the letter but on the basis of the work of Christ. I have often thought in relation to Galatians, where persons were standing on the law and were constrained by the law, of what Paul says in chapter 6. Does he say, Brethren, if anyone be overtaken in a fault turn to Exodus or Leviticus, turn up the law? O no, "ye who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted" (v 1). That is the spirit of the neighbour. You can see it in Paul. Even, as Mr Darby says, that towards the Galatians Paul's approach is cold, yet you can see the spirit of the neighbour there: "ye who are spiritual restore such a one". And the Lord would look to us, beloved, to meet conditions that may arise amongst us in spirituality in the light of what He has done in redemption Let us never get far away from the fundamentals of our faith. Let us never think that we can carry on, for instance administration, as if it was a separate thing from the work of Christ. We have no right to handle administration at all save in the fact that Christ has met every administrative issue between us and God in virtue of His blood. The brother or sister who forgets that they are where they are because they are redeemed is going to make no effective contribution to the present manifestation of the testimony. What is needed in difficult situations where there is poverty (and we all have our own descriptions of poverty; we may say, Things are very poor down there, or something like that) is in the spirit of the Redeemer. Not that we ourselves can redeem our brother but, in the spirit in which we have ourselves appropriated redemption, we can meet a poor condition in our neighbour, be it in someone else in the meeting, be it in another locality, the spirit of redemption will meet every thing of that kind. And the spirit of redemption is not only healing but it is contagious, and those who have proved mercy are those who will show mercy. Many things might be resolved if the spirit of Luke 10 was allowed to inform activity so that the spirit of loving because mercy has been shown became infectious in the situation; so that one who received mercy went on and displayed mercy and extended mercy. Think of the parable that the Lord Himself sets out in the gospel of the man who was forgiven much and then went and took his neighbour by the throat, and the Lord says in effect, That is not Christianity at all. What is needed in those who have experienced mercy is that they show mercy. And beloved, much will be resolved in the spirit of neighbourliness if the principles of Luke 10 are fully established amongst us. The spirit of the inn cannot be experienced if rooms in the inn are isolated from one another; they need the spirit of neighbourliness in the light of mercy that has been shown, and the mercy that has been shown is on the basis of redemption. So you are reminded that if your brother has grown poor you are to act in the light of redemption.

Then it says, "And if thy brother grow poor and he be fallen in to decay". He has not only grown poor but he has fallen into decay. We all know what kind of thing that is, how, once the spirit gets down to a lower level, then one thing after another is allowed to drop; it may be you grow poor through worldliness and you soon find that falling into decay follows on it. Just admit a little bit of the world and you will find that falling into decay follows almost on the heels of the poverty. If you fall into legality or something like that you will find that the spirit of decay begins to work, just as it did in Galatia. "Then thou shalt relieve him", that is to say you take the burden off him, whether it is the burden of worldliness, or the burden of legality, or the burden of whatever it may be, even if in Galatia it is the burden of false doctrine, relieve him. And how will you relieve him? It says, "then thou shalt relieve him", that is you do not put extra impositions upon him, you help to see whether the burden that is upon him can be taken off. How we long, beloved, to meet conditions of poverty that exist amongst us at the present time. And poverty exists in the midst of unexampled richness; the general level of what the Lord is ministering among the saints at the present time is unexampled in its richness. I say nothing to qualify what the Lord has given through beloved men in the past, men whose names are on our tongues all the time; but what the Lord is giving the saints actually to enter into at the present time is unexampled in its wealth, and in the midst of it there are here and there isolated pockets of poverty. And what the scripture says is, If your brother be fallen into decay relieve him. And the relief is shown I believe in the epistles: shown in Corinthians, in Galatians, in Colossians; the way situations might be relieved is shown even in the epistle to Laodicea - "And to the angel of the assembly in Laodicea write... I counsel thee to buy of me", as the Lord says there (Rev 3: 14,18), relieve him by the counsel that the Lord brings in.

Then it says further, "And if thy brother grow poor beside thee, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: as a hired servant, as a sojourner, shall he be with thee; until the year of jubilee shall he serve thee"; that is to say that if for any reason brethren become, as it were, indebted to one another, owing something to one another, a situation which might easily arise. It says, "Owe no one anything, unless to love one another", Rom 13: 8. You may find you get into bondage through failure to love one an other, then what you have in mind is the year of jubilee. I do not think there is any objection in principle to anticipating the year of jubilee. I hope there is not because, if there is, most of the brethren would only have one in their lifetime. If you came into things when you were quite young, before you were twenty, you might on the span of three score years and ten just get in two jubilees in your lifetime, because they are every fifty years. But the spirit of the jubilee should be with us all the time. It says, "until the year of Jubilee shall he serve thee". It may be, beloved, that what we need in times when we are rightly affected by the history through which we have been, feeling the oppression and smallness of all that is current around us, in which we have had our own sorrowful part (and our part in it never ceases to make us mourn that we should have contributed to such things) yet the spirit of the jubilee is that in which persons will be released. It says in a most affecting word in verse eleven: "that fiftieth year". It is almost as if, as Moses wrote it, he savoured the words on his tongue like good wine, he took "that fiftieth year" on his palate and began to savour it, to discern what quality was in it, what taste, what flavour! What a vintage, "that fiftieth year"! Beloved, are you cherishing it in that spirit? "That fiftieth year" - do you long for it? Or are you still counting, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, and so on. Some have not time for another twenty years; the Lord would have us to be in the spirit of the jubilee now, the spirit in which persons are released, sent back to enjoy their inheritance. There is no question of enjoying the inheritance on your own; the whole idea of the inheritance in the Old Testament is collective, and if one person is not enjoying it, one part of the inheritance is not enjoying it, if there is any hindrance or holdup or anything of that kind, to that extent the whole of the land suffers and the whole of the people suffer. What characterises the year of jubilee is that normality has been reached universally.

Now in Luke 5 the Lord gives the disciples (of course He gives them much else in that section too, nobody could exhaust one scripture in applying it for one purpose) and to Peter in particular what I think amounts to some experience of what it is to be redeemed, and relieved, and in the year of jubilee; he has such that he cannot himself contain. And what does he do? They beckoned to their partners in the other ship. Think of that, beloved! We have such richness that we want our neighbours to share it as well. I commend to the brethren beloved Mr Taylor's reading at Andover on this scripture: "they beckoned to their partners who were in the other ship " (see N.S. Vol.43 p.488). Is that beckoning spirit with us, beloved! Are we beckoning to our neighbours? Are we in the spirit that the Lord has given us so much that not only can we hardly cope with it ourselves but we want our neighbours, our partners in the other ship, to share it with us? Have we that spirit, beloved! That is the spirit which Peter responded to. Of course he says as we know, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord". The Lord says, Peter, you will be catching men; your history I have dealt with, I am the Redeemer - if I may continue the spirit of Leviticus 25 - but you will be catching men. I think the implication is that Peter, you will need your partners in the other ship to deal with the men as well. Whoever could deal with three thousand souls in one day? Suppose that happened in Nostrand Avenue, three thousand people were converted one Lord's day afternoon? You would need your partners in the other ship. I think if one or two people were converted one Lord's day afternoon - you would need your partners in the other ship. Every locality needs its partners in the other ship. It is the ship nearest to you. The idea of beckoning in this scripture is just a nod, that is all it is. It suggests that our relations with our neighbours are near enough for us just to be able to give a nod and we are all sharing together in the bounty that the Lord is providing. Beloved, what this makes of neighbourliness! What first comes into your mind when someone says to you, 'the nearest meeting'! What comes first into the minds of a lot of brethren is a question of administration; your mind goes to 'the city nearest to the slain man'. That is the way our minds work. Why have they become accustomed to thinking in relation to our neighbours administratively! It never used to be in Mr Taylor sen's day. Only on a very rare occasion did matters arise in which the nearest meeting, the neighbours, had to do anything. Nowadays I am surprised that a matter arises in a locality and someone says, I thought our nearest meeting would have taken the matter up. Beloved, it would be wholly abnormal for the nearest meeting to take it up. The spirit of the neighbour is the sharing of blessing; it is the redemption, the relief and the jubilee. The spirit of the neighbour is one that is responding to the beckoning of one's partners in relation to a haul that only the Lord could provide, but which in His grace you have been given an opportunity of helping to bring to land. One is surprised as to why it should be that, if we think of the nearest meeting, our minds tend to be coloured by what is administrative. Beloved, we owe it to our neighbours to be towards them in the spirit of the way in which the Scriptures speak of what is neighbourly; and the way in which the Scriptures speak of what is neighbourly is enriching, and supplying, and supporting, and helping, and bringing in what will release from any spirit that is not wholly consistent with what rightly belongs to the present day. If you discover that your brother is growing poor beside you, he is falling into decay - it does not matter what the decay is, it does not tell us, therefore we are given liberty spiritually to discern what poverty and decay are - the response to that is redemption and relief and the jubilee.

Beloved, one wonders how often these things are tried. Are they tried very often? or do we love administration more than anything else? I do not think that when it says the Lord loves the gates of Zion, He is thinking just about administration. I suppose that thought would enter into it, but the gates of Zion are access into the sovereign mercy of God, the place that God loves, on the earth, you might say, better than anything. When the Lamb comes to the earth He stands on mount Zion, the place where sovereign mercy and divine love are manifested; the gates of Zion are the way into that. Of course they involve administration, but administration in the Scriptures is intended to be administration of bounty, administration of supply, administration in grace and fulness, and the heaping on of one blessing upon another. Grace upon grace is divine administration, the spirit of Leviticus 25 in regard to our neighbour. Why do we not try these things more? Why is it that we cling to administrative methods and procedures, that we have to look up ministry that tells us how this, that or the other ought to be done, when the Spirit is here, and the Spirit is the spirit of the Christian dispensation in a day when God is active in grace. If one is susceptible to the movements of the Spirit one would scarcely need to look up ministry in regard to what is administrative, and yet you find ministry is quoted, and this book is quoted and that page is quoted, and then you are required to construe how this goes with that, and that goes with this, and so on, when it may be that the spirit of the neighbour would resolve everything. It may be that the response to one another in love on the basis of ourselves having proven mercy would show that no matter how difficult the neighbour was you would show him mercy. If the person who lives next door to you came along and upset you, what would you do? Would you go back and upset him? You would hold tight on yourself, the more provoked you were the tighter you would hold on yourself. You would say to yourself, 'I must not respond to him in the spirit of the flesh, I must manifest the spirit of Christianity. Is that not what we all say in regard to the person who lives next door to us? What about our neighbours in the more spiritual sense, beloved? What about our neighbours in the nearest meeting? What about our neighbours in our own meeting? Do we then take tight hold on ourselves and say, 'I cannot act out of the spirit of the day, I must act in grace'. Well, beloved, these things flow from the Scriptures.

As I say, the hymn that we began with suggests that one thing, and I am sure it is right, that was in the Lord 's mind when He came was that He should have brethren. But having brethren as a result of coming into a position where He was man's neighbour, He has given us not only brethren but neighbours. The Scriptures probably have more teaching and practical instruction that bear on how to live with your neighbours than on anything else. Let us take it up, let us reflect on it. Do not be governed particularly by anything I have said. I trust what I have said has been in the power of the Spirit and led by the Lord, one would count on that; one would abhor speaking in the flesh or politically, but if you have the idea of the neighbour in your mind, take it away and reflect on it. What does it mean to be neighbours one to another? May the Lord just help us to pursue it, for His Name's sake.

BROOKLYN NY

23 August 1975