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HOW GOD WORKS TO SECURE HIS OWN PLEASURE

CAC I suggested these scriptures because in the first we see the pleasure of God accomplished in Christ, and in the second we have a hint of its accomplishment in the saints. We often consider from the side of our blessing but it is an immense thing to look at things from the side of the pleasure of God. Anyone who loved God would delight in looking at things from that standpoint. We should not lose our blessing; we should find it magnified and glorified by looking at it from this standpoint. It is one of the greatest privileges and brings us nearest to the occupations of heaven, to look at things from the side of God’s pleasure.

Ques Is it not a triumph that that is possible?

CAC Yes, God’s pleasure has taken a definite form: “Lo, I come: ... to do thy will”. I connect that with the thought of the book; what is written down is definite; it suggests the immutability of His counsel; you have it in black ^[p. 321] and white. We have here the thought of an eternal book, and all that is written is for God’s pleasure.

Now in Psalm 40 Christ is distinctly in view — it must commence there because everything for God’s pleasure must be carried out by a divine Person, and a divine Person come into manhood; that is, there is a Person great enough to compass all these thoughts. If you think of God’s thoughts you are lost: there is creation, which is marvellous; but what about the mind and thoughts of God? They are immense! Just think — they are adequate to yield eternal pleasure to the heart of God, and we are brought in as an essential part of that pleasure. The thought of it would deliver us from even spiritual self-occupation, and that is the worst kind of self-occupation there is because it is so insidious.

‘Our God the centre is,
His presence fills that land,
And countless myriads, owned as His,
Round Him adoring stand’. (72:2)

All there, is for God’s pleasure. There is nothing so great as the incarnation. Psalm 40 speaks of that, and that is essential so that we might be brought in. It speaks of Christ as One whose ears are digged, and the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 10 translates that, “Thou hast prepared me a body”, showing that the ear is a characteristic member of man’s body. There was a divine Person here in a place of obedience, One equal to the pleasure of God, and whatever God said to Him He was able to carry out; not one element of divine pleasure failed.

Ques Why does it say, “Sacrifices and offerings ... thou willedst not”?

CAC All that was connected with the legal system, sacrifices which were offered under the law. The great point of this is that the Son has come forth to bring to pass the pleasure of God and to do it all in the obedience of love. He delighted in what He came to do; He was in communion with God as to it all. He could enter into every thought of God ^[p. 322] and find delight in carrying them out. Who could do that but the Son? We can understand the Father’s delight in that blessed Man in this world.

The moment we come to Christ we leave all failure behind. Many are breaking their hearts over failure, but turn to Christ and you get into the region of divine favour; we come to things that abide, and that have an eternal character. How blessed to come near to God to have the joy of contemplating His will fully accomplished. The soul is prepared to worship, to bow down in the presence of all the blessedness of God. What could be so elevating?

God has a Son, a Son-servant, “He shall be to me for son” (Hebrews 1: 5). All the blessed God could look for in a Son, and in a servant, He has found in One who could fulfil all His pleasure, and leave nothing uneffected: nothing will fail. There seems to come a voice out of eternity engaging to bring to pass all that is in God’s heart: “Lo, I come: ... to do thy will”; and then notice another voice in Revelation 21: another voice from the coming eternity says, “It is done” (verse 6). All the pleasure of God is accomplished and put on such a footing that it can never fail; it is put on the platform of resurrection. We only read this psalm aright on a resurrection platform. It begins with One taken out of a miry pit and set on a rock — the rock of resurrection — and you read the psalm from that standpoint. It is put upon an imperishable foundation. How the fragrance of the service ascended up.

Ques What is the force of “Thy law is within my heart”?

CAC That relates to man’s responsibility. Christ has filled up the whole of it with divine perfection. Nothing has failed that God looked for in man; He magnified the law and made it honourable. The tables were broken first but put in the ark afterwards. Everything is secured in Christ. God found all he looked for in Christ.

Rem The pleasure of God needed such a man.

CAC Yes, the word “will” is really pleasure; there is nothing negative about it. We dwell too much on our relief, but to see the pleasure of God sets us free. We are always ^[p. 323] hankering after our relief, but if we saw the infinite pleasure of God in Christ and His work it would set us free. Many souls are in bondage because they have never seen that.

Then in connection with that, there is the testimony of all God is for man. We see both sides in this psalm. Christ fully undertakes for God, but then He makes known all God is for man: righteousness, love, truth; His delight is that others may know it. Think of the delight of Christ in making known to us all that God is for man. If we want to delight Christ now, let Him make better known to us what God is for man. It is very precious to think of the Lord proving here all that God is for man and then making it known to others. We think of the Son coming forth to reveal God, but I think we must have in our hearts the thought that He carried in His heart the full knowledge of God. He could say, “I know him” (John 8: 55): he could speak of the Father as One whom He knew, in whose love He dwelt and whose righteousness and faithfulness He was proving continually. If we get into the company of Christ, and get our impressions from Him, we shall have the same thoughts of God as He had. Can you conceive of anything greater? — to think of God as His Son thought of Him! Think of His righteousness and faithfulness and loving-kindness as known in Jesus here.

Ques Is declaring it more than preaching it?

CAC Yes, the point is that others are to know what He knew. What He knew He does not keep to Himself. What a joy that the Lord would have peculiar pleasure in giving us the knowledge of God. His knowledge was perfect. He was great enough to be equal to the revelation, and as Man He walked in the light and good of it. That is the character of the knowledge that he imparts. He could not give us any other. He proved it, before he made it good to us. He knew it as Man Himself. He could express it in a way that brought it home to man because he was a Man.

Now in Psalm 139 we have suggested in a mystical way the formation of saints. It is new creation. We have the thought of the pleasure of God taking form in the saints. There are ^[p. 324] two great thoughts — divine searchings and divine formation. The searchings are necessary because of what we are, and the formation comes in because of what God is. We see God working out His pleasure in saints. In John 4 He searched out all the woman was, but He found a worshipper. We get the thought of the book (verses 14 - 16) again. “I am fearfully, wonderfully made”. It is a question of being formed under the hand of God, but it was all written in a book beforehand.

How blessed that God has written in a book all that He is going to do with us. Here the great thought is formation.

God has written all the members in His book and He has provided an effectual means of forming His saints, and though it takes a long time to do it, He will finish His work. “I will not leave thee until I have done what I have spoken to thee of” (Genesis 28: 15). God has taken up His people to form them, and it will never be changed. It is written in black and white in His book, and He has an efficient means of bringing it to pass. The means by which He does it is the death of Christ!

It says in verse 15, “I was ... curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth” — that refers to His death. We are told in Ephesians 4 that He descended into the lower parts of the earth. In the death of Christ was “curiously wrought” all that God would use in forming His saints for eternity. We do not think enough of the death of Christ as the formative principle of God’s new universe. We are all familiar with the thought of Eve being taken out of Adam; he was put to sleep, and Eve was taken out of him. We all think of the church as taken out of the death of Christ, but we have not very clear thoughts of how the church was formed by the death of Christ. All was wrought in the lower parts of the earth.

There is nothing so formative as the consideration of the death of Christ. Every formative element was concentrated in that death; everything came out that was positive and formative. Christ in death becomes the efficient source of all that is for God’s pleasure in men in new creation: “He shall see a seed” (Isaiah 53: 10), and, “It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation” (Psalm 22: 30).

We need to come under the formative power of Christ, and of everything that was curiously wrought in His death. Everything has been brought into a spot where it applies in a most blessed way to us. Take the love of God, where do you learn it? Is it not the chief means of formative work? Where does it come out? In death. The love of God has been worked out in the death of Christ to form us in the knowledge of God Himself. Take the sin you find in yourself — under divine searchings you find sin in yourself, but if I turn to the death of Christ I see that sin dealt with according to all that is due to God. That becomes a formative influence. You learn righteousness in the death of Christ. You have a righteous thought of your sin, and you see how it is dealt with, so you cannot go on with it because you are affected by the way it has been dealt with in Christ.

Take the world, where does a saint get a right judgment of the world? Only in the death of Christ. You do not get it by looking at the bad things of the world, but by looking at the world in the light of the death of Christ. So the death of Christ becomes formative and you make a clean break with the world. We are formed morally by what is wrought in the death of Christ, and in result there is complete formation according to God. Nothing could be more formative than the Lord’s supper if we took it rightly. We are in the presence of Christ as gone into death, and we have the full display there of what was curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth. We should not eat the Lord’s supper without being affected in a formative way by it, so as to come out a little more formed after Christ and for the pleasure of God.

Ques Is that increasing by the true knowledge of God?

CAC Yes, the searchings and formations go on together. All that is contrary to the death of Christ is exposed by the searchings, and at the same time we are formed by all that was brought out in the death of Christ, including ^[p. 326] righteousness, holiness, love, and truth. All discipline and ministry help us to be formed by what came out in the death of Christ, and every saint is the subject of this work. You get here that the searchings are desired. “Search me” (verse 23). You welcome them because you desire to get rid of all that is contrary to what was curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth. All this is going on with us (verse 16) “during many days were they fashioned”. It is really ‘through many days’. They have lasted over one thousand nine hundred years. The fashioning of the members has been going on, and we are nearer the end, and the saints will be for the pleasure of God eternally as a result of this work.

The consideration of this should have an effect on us; to see how God worked in Christ for His own pleasure, and now is working in His saints, so that all that is written in His book is to take effect. His thoughts are infinitely great and precious, but they will all be carried out.

We ought to be exercised as to formation, and then, when the thoughts of God become precious, they are the objects of pursuit. The searchings expose all that is contrary to God, and the divine formation effects all that is for God’s pleasure. God will help us on that line.

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