GOD’S HUSBANDRY
W. Dickson
I feel free to draw upon what was before us on Lord’s day. The meaning of the name which God gave to the garden in the beginning of Genesis, Eden, is ‘a place of delights’; that, is the meaning of that word, Eden. It is very elevating to consider why God set man in Eden. We may think that God set him in a place of delights so that he should enjoy life and companionship with his wife and all the blessed provision that God had made for him, but the primary purpose that God had in setting man in Eden was that He might have a place where He could commune with him. What touched God very much was the fact that sin interrupted that communion. After all the design of God in regard to the establishment of that garden, and putting man in it so that He could commune with him and enjoy the companionship of His greatest creature, sin came in.
So the garden of delights no longer exists, but there is a very attractive scripture which speaks of “God’s husbandry”, 1 Corinthians 3: 9. That is written to a local company, Corinth, and I wonder, dear brethren, if we think in that way of our local meetings as God’s husbandry, and a place that He can come to and commune with His people, I know my thoughts of the local meeting sometimes need adjustment
because I tend to look at it as a place where I enjoy fellowship, where I touch the sphere of eternal life, where I get congenial companionship, and where I listen to ministry which lifts my soul above the pressures of things here—I tend to have that outlook upon my local company. But sometimes the Spirit touches you with this thought of God’s husbandry, that God has set you in a place in order that He might have persons with whom He can commune and have companionship and whom He can enrich with His own presence. “God’s husbandry” is worth thinking about. It would take us a bit out of the outlook that our local gatherings exist just for our happiness to think of them as divinely provided for God’s pleasure.
In this scripture in Isaiah the prophet is seeking to console the remnant in regard to the various experiences that they would pass through, and the prophetic word comes in to encourage them. Have we not experienced that? In his opening prayer our brother asked that we might get encouragement, and the word of encouragement comes through the prophet to the remnant. They could not understand much of the pressure that rested upon them, and I suppose, beloved brethren, that in our city, in our sub-divisions, in our households, we find it difficult sometimes to understand the pressure that comes upon us. We know there has been a long line of devotion and sacrifice and suffering for the truth, and yet at times there are elements of pressure which test us in our families and in our localities. The Spirit helps us to come to it that it is Gods husbandry; it is God’s care over His inheritance with a view to getting something for His own heart and for His own pleasure.
Now this scripture is very touching, because it shows the feeling way in which God sets about
getting the best fruit and result from His people. It indicates that the ploughman is not always ploughing. There is a day when he ploughs, and we are thankful for that, but it is no mark of skill to be continually ploughing. If you are always ploughing, well, you know what that means; you will always be turning up the soil, but there is no great result for God in the ploughing itself. It has to be done, and the prophet says he does it. God works deeply with us, He works in very searching exercises, He turns up the ground, He exposes it. What a fine touch that is—“When he hath levelled the face” of the ground. Oh how much levelling some of us have had! God levels the face of the ground. It is a good thing to accept the levelling that God does. Why does He level it? In order to sow the seed; in order that it might rightly bring forth fruit.
It says he casts abroad the dill and scatters the cumin. That is a fine word, is it not? You see, the dill and the cumin are very small seeds, almost, you might say, microscopic, so small that if you took one in your hand you could hardly see it. You might say it represents a young person in the meeting. God needs that young person; God needs these young people. He needs them as part of His husbandry. He needs them to bring out something for His pleasure and His delight. He scatters the dill and the cumin, and then He sets the wheat in rows, and the barley and the rye, a more mature thought. God takes great care in the disposition of His people with a view to the best results in a local meeting. So if He has put you in a very testing position, dear brother or dear sister, remember that—God has put the wheat and the barley and the rye in its appointed place. He has ordered it in that way, with a view to bringing out the best result.
Then it says, “His God doth instruct him”. You see, our God is the all-wise God. God knows how to do things. We are clumsy at times, are we not? We have the desire to do the right thing, but we use the wrong implements sometimes. But God knows how to do things and He instructs His people as to how to do things in their localities. So it says, “the dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument”. In other words, you are gentle with young people, that is what it means. O, you young people, God is very gentle with you! Oh do not think otherwise! God deals feelingly with you; He is very gentle, He does not thresh you. Oh the tenderness of God in regard to young people! You want to avail yourselves more, young people, of Jesus! Think of your great High Priest, think of your Advocate, think of that blessed Person who watches over your soul to produce fruit for God’s pleasure. And then—
‘A Holy Father’s constant care
Keeps watch, with an unwearying eye,
To see what fruits His children bear—
Fruits that may suit their calling high’.
It says, “The dill is not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned upon the cumin; but dill is beaten out with a staff, and cumin with a rod”. It is not that you leave the dill and the cumin alone, but you touch it gently. Children are brought up in “the discipline and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6: 4), and the fatherly spirit is manifested in the local meeting—a gentle touch.
And then it says, “Bread corn is crushed, because he, will not ever be threshing it; and if he drove the wheels of his cart and his horses over it, he would not crush it”. I think brethren, that in bread corn we have an allusion to something that is
very marked in our city at the present time. We have elderly persons who show all the features of maturity; the threshing has taken place in their lives, the chaff has been removed from the wheat, there is something there you can feed upon, something that is bread to be appropriated. Are we not thankful for these features of maturity amongst elder persons?—
disciplined in their bodies, tested in their circumstances, but God has brought out the perfection of His work in them—God’s husbandry!—for the enrichment of the local company and to bring out conditions in a place where He can commune with, and enjoy the fruit of, His own work in His people. I just say again, brethren—I got the impression on Lord’s day afternoon—that we need to be lifted up as to the inheritance that God has in His saints, and to appreciate His work amongst us, amongst young people and amongst old people, and how He gently cares for it. God knows what to do and would instruct us. He is saying in this passage, There is a way to do things. Touch the young people gently; touch them with the rod, touch them with the staff, but bring on the fruitfulness, and feed upon elderly persons, the bread corn that God has matured through exercise for His own pleasure. May we be encouraged, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Edinburgh
14 December 1976