FOR JERUSALEM
A. J. E. Welch
Nehemiah 1: 11; 2: 11–13; 2 Timothy 3: 10–11.
The challenge ofttimes of the recovery must of necessity be deep, for in times of recovery God carries through what is of Himself, despite what may seem to have overcome it, what may seem to have overcome it. Soon we shall be in a scene and circumstances where no adverse thing shall ever come. The Spirit is able to sustain in us some conception of that—the scene and circumstances in which no adverse thing shall be. And yet we have to realise that what is adverse is with us yet. Not, however, without the availability and perfect efficacy of provision to meet every adversity. What a comfort it is, with the deep searchings of the present time with us, to realise that God is able to carry through everything which He loves to call attention to as being of Himself. He is doing that. But yet the scripture shows us clearly that the recovery involves persons by whom God effects what He is doing.
So in this man Nehemiah we have remarkable circumstances presented to us, first that God had intervened sovereignly from His side. The intervention initially is not in the book of Nehemiah, it is in the book of Ezra, which precedes, when God brought it into the heart of a Gentile ruler, Cyrus, to effect something in regard of what God had in view concerning Jerusalem—God came in.
I believe it right for us to remind ourselves at the present time that, 150 years ago approximately, God came in. That was not of man; it was of God. In certain respects the way in which things proceeded was not always marked by entire correspondence at every point; but the intervention was of God. It is good for us to reflect on that; to get back to it; God did that thing. Not that I want, today, to go over history or to make specific reference to particular persons, although God used particular persons; but God came in to effect something that was in His mind to be for the carrying through to finality of what was, and is, in His own mind. It was in His mind, and it is in His mind, because divine thoughts do not change. It was in His mind, and it is in His mind, to carry through what is of Himself to a point of finality.
Then there arose men like Ezra, Zerubbabel, Joshua or Jeshua, men of great worth that God used, and a point of recovery was reached, a house was set up for service, the service was provided for, and yet, alas, things fell back, to a certain point at least, for loss of impetus. We have to search out our own times and our own course as to that. So Mr. Darby refers in the notes in the beginning of 2 Timothy to a certain condition of things that called for stimulation, for stirring, for the reviving to the real spirit and character of what God was doing.
Have we not needed that, dear brethren? Is it not a sobering consideration to realise that, maybe as to ourselves, the impetus for things was lost? Elements of decline so quickly creep in—I speak feelingly, I know it in my own heart—elements of decline, at least to the extent of lack of devoted energy, come in. We need reviving. And God loves to see a reviving. He will bring about a reviving today as we hearken to His voice. I go back to times of earlier history—and we have sometimes to speak of our own experience and realise that when we are younger things often go, as men say, by fits and starts. You get a touch and you live on it for a little while and then, alas, things drift back a bit, and the Lord in His faithfulness gives you another touch. How faithful He is! Oh, the faithfulness of Christ!—the divine faithfulness we experience, especially early in our histories, but all the way through our histories.
You young ones here, have you not proved the faithfulness of God; that He abides faithful? It is simple to say that the very fact that you are here today is a reflection of the faithfulness of God. Have regard to that. Speak to Him simply about it—the way He has gone on in His faithfulness with you, just that you may come into the fulness of what He delights to revive.
Oh the wonder of it that any one of us is here today! Let us realise the faithfulness, the divine faithfulness, the mercy, that enter into that—God coming in from His side.
So what we find in Nehemiah is that God had a man in whom He signally wrought, and, you know, a man is needed. I just seek to bring out that point, that God has thoughts in His mind and He works them out as having a man that He can work on, and a man who is ready to stand in what He is doing. Here in Nehemiah it was just one man, and save for that passing reference to certain men that went with Him, in the second chapter, the concern of this is all his, Nehemiah’s. As the matter opens out he is not looking for support from anyone, basically, save from God.
Well, we have to come back to this, and maybe we have been wayward in getting back to it; but the point of help all the way through is from God. We try to depend on other supposed resources of help—what have they proved to be? The great resource of help is from God. He has the means that He uses. The full way of divine provisions is within range of His use; the gifts that He has established and used; the men whom He has established in right leadership and used in right leadership. All those have their place; but the basis of help is with God.
The simplicity of Nehemiah’s prayer is to be taken note of, “Let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants who delight to fear thy name”.
That is, Nehemiah is not entirely alone, in the sense that there are in his mind others. They are not seen as joining with him, but he is not leaving out those who, as he says, delight to fear God’s name. For we find that, though they may not be directly and immediately available, as we go on with God there are others who go on with God. There are others who go on with God. The point is not developed here in Nehemiah because the Spirit’s point in this book is to call attention to the exercise of this one man.
But what are my exercises about the testimony? What are my concerns? What are my prayers for the testimony? And if I may be personal and definite about it, what are yours? Is there anything formed in you in concern for the prospering of what God is doing in view of a glorious finish? Is my mind or heart empty of concern in respect of divine interests? I ask myself that. It would not be so, I judge, with any person here; but it might be. Is my mind empty, my heart empty, my prayers empty, of what relates to the full scope of divine interests?
Here is a man who is simple, brief, definite as he speaks to God, and feeling as he speaks to God. You might say you have remarkable elements of prayer in this single verse. Here is a man who has power with God and you see, even in this single verse, something of the basis of the power he had with God, the simplicity of the man, the definiteness of the man, and the committedness of the man. “Let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant, and to the prayer of thy servants who delight to fear thy name”. “Thy servant”—the lowly place he takes, God’s servant. What a God to serve: What a God we have to serve; but are we content just to take and accept and fill out the servant’s place, involving, as this does, all that we have been remarking about the recognition of authority in Christ, and all that we have been saying as to the workings of headship amongst us? But the servant’s place is to be known, and accepted by us; but what a God to serve!
“And prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man”. That is, the immediate circumstances are in his mind. We keep in touch with the immediate circumstances. God gives grace and wisdom and resource in the immediate circumstances.
We might wish them other than they are; clearly Nehemiah would have preferred circumstances other than those in which he was, but he accepts the circumstances perfectly, and God blesses him on that basis.
You see, we might be fretful in circumstances. Maybe that there are particular concerns as to the place where God has set me. Maybe there are very few available in the place where God has set me. We might easily be fretful in those circumstances. We feel the circumstances; God would have us to feel them, and yet this man just accepts the circumstances and seeks, as he says, “Prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day”. As if he says, if I may put a certain point into it, Thine interests are paramount. Here am I, and if no one else be available, I will be in Thy hand. What a point to come to! But it relates to what God delights to revive and to carry through; not only that His interests go through, but His interests go through in suitability to Himself by means of those who are committed in a feeling, intelligent way to what He is doing.
I read that second passage just to touch this fine point which is in it, “I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem”. That, to me, is a wonderful section of scripture,
“I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem”. It shows the view that is with this man—Jerusalem. What does he see? Ruin. He goes out at night. What night we are in as to anything in the public relations of what can be spoken of as christendom. What a night it is. And if we go out and conduct what we might speak of as a tour of inspection, what shall we find? As he says, “ruins, and its gates were consumed with fire”. Is he depressed? Is he overcome? No. He goes forward, he labours, he stimulates others to labour, he uses strong methods to stimulate them sometimes, as the end of the book shows; but he goes forward, committed on the basis of depth of conviction in himself as to the God of whom he speaks as my God, and convicted as to what he knows his God would have him do.
So he goes forward, but let us note, dear brethren, it is, as he says, “for Jerusalem”. It is not the personal prowess of Nehemiah that is in mind to be celebrated. It is not that they are to make deductions about Nehemiah that attach certain fame to him. Have you any personal motives in going forward in the testimony, of any kind whatsoever? Am I seeking, in any manner, mere personal advantage in what is proceeding? We have to face these things; not that I am accusing anybody of such base motives, but we have to search these things out. It is “for Jerusalem”. Though they be few with whom our relations closely and locally may stand, what is in our hearts is Jerusalem—the whole assembly, the full answer to the divine thoughts, the full answer to them. A city, Jerusalem, is presented to us as a complete, intact thought.
The enemy would rob us of that in relation to the assembly, and use every means and every conflict and every experience, if possible, to rob us of the entire and intact thought of what the assembly is in relation to Christ, and what that vessel is in the divine thoughts. It is “for Jerusalem”. There is nothing in this book to minister to what we speak of as independence—nothing. The labour is “for Jerusalem”, and yet it requires you, it requires me, it requires every one of us, in full, devoted committal and readiness as need may arise to go on in suffering. The end in mind—glorious! A scene of things, as I said, where no adversity comes.
In the course of what proceeds towards that great end the service of the Spirit brings in so much related to the glory of Christ for the present sustaining of true hearts.
So as Timothy went on with Paul how much he would constantly derive in Paul’s company of present satisfaction in the knowledge of the love of Christ as he saw it in Paul and as he experienced it in the circle in which Paul moved. I am speaking now of this that we may understand, as God would give us to understand, the present compensations. We are enjoying them today—I am, anyway—the present compensations. I do not set myself apart in saying that, but I say it in that sense because it is a question of reality in what every one of us is going through in experience, and what I find today is present compensation in the circle of those who love Christ, in the sense of fulness in our relations with Christ, and the sense of realisation of what the Spirit is to us in going through to the finish in the scene that is so adverse to Him.
Present compensation!—I am assured that Timothy had it in the company of Paul. I am assured that the Lord will constantly furnish it to faithful persons; a sense of present compensation in the realisation of a faithful love that knows no limit, and the experience of a circle in which that love is valued and enhanced to us in all its wealth and its power. Dear young people, go on in the realisation that the Lord will give you present compensation. It may not be in circumstances of an agreeable kind; it will be in the intimacy of your own relations in secret with Himself, and your own relations in the assembly with those amongst whom the Lord delights to come—present compensation. I would be failing in speaking of a course of things in time, in view of revival, if I did not call attention to that positive side of what the present activity of the unfailing love of Christ for the assembly furnishes to those who seek to stand in faithfulness to what the assembly for Himself involves on our side.
So that in speaking to Timothy and writing to Timothy at the close, attention is called by Paul to certain features—“Thou hast been thoroughly acquainted with my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings”. What a list of features called attention to by the apostle!—things that this young man Timothy had seen.
You know, many of us have seen such features in those whom God has used. Many of us have read of such features in those God has used. Many of us have been able to see those features working, even in the writings of those whom God has used.
But those features are to be taken on; they are to be maintained; none of them is to be allowed to lapse. They constitute the expression in love of the very recovery to which God has called His saints; the expression in love of the features that properly relate to this recovery. For the recovery is not a theory; it is not an abstraction; it is a reality in life. Would you not have your part in that? Is it not a wonderful thing to have part in, the reviving of life according to God, which leads to the presentation before Him, even, as need arises, in adverse circumstances, of what answers to Himself? And this would cover the whole extent, the whole area, of the course of the testimony. It is not just a question of times of privilege on the first day of the week (Oh, the delight of the Lord to afford us those times!) but seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, until the Lord comes.
Paul refers later to those who love His appearing. Thank God for those who love His appearing. We love to think that what is in Christ personally is to be brought forward in His full majesty and power, and yet we are left a little moment longer, a little moment longer.
Some of us were speaking in conversation this week of every indication that the little moment is truly that. Maybe we have been saying this for many years past, but we are saying it now with greater conviction than ever before, that there is but a little moment that may remain.
And yet these features are to go through. Take them up; one by one. They finish with the point of suffering. The testimony began in suffering—the testimony will finish in suffering.
The character of the suffering is another thing. It began in suffering, it will finish in suffering; but the suffering at the beginning did not in any sense impede the sense of divine supply in which the suffering was gone through. You could see that in the early chapters of the Acts, the sense of power that came in. In Acts 4, as the suffering became acute, the place in which they were assembled shook—power from God to sustain His lovers in suffering. God will never deprive us of that. The suffering circumstances may come upon any one of us severally as the reproach of Christ is borne. It may come upon all who seek to walk in the truth, generally or in particular areas; the sufferings will come.
The testimony began in suffering; it is finishing in suffering; the sufferings are with us now; but let us see that what is going through is of God, and what is going through is divinely supplied, and this second epistle to Timothy, often referred to, and needfully before us at the present time, relates to the reviving of love and to matters going through as God would have them sustained in the vitality of what is living according to God.
Well, I do not touch on these features severally, but it impressed me this morning how God has caused these features to be set out as something that Timothy had known in Paul, and now they are to be carried forward. And it depends upon us, beloved brethren, to carry them forward. It is not pretentious to say that—it is the acceptance of what God would lay upon us—it is not pretentious. It is for us to carry forward, in living expression, features which substantially answer to what came out in the beginning in God’s beloved servant Paul, so uniquely taken up and used of Him at the start.
May we go through, dear brethren, remembering that the recovery is always to what God began when the Spirit came at Pentecost, and nothing less than that is to govern us as we go forward together. May He strengthen us for it, for His name’s sake.
Helston
29 July 1972