THE FAITH PERIOD
THE FAITH PERIOD
CAC I suppose the Lord was intimating in this incident that there would be a time of testing before the world to come would be manifested; there would be a time of ‘passing over’. The Lord is not seen here as sowing. He has the fruit of His sowing with Him but He does not put the disciples in settled or stable conditions; He leads them into a ship that they might be exposed to testing, but He is with them in it. This intimates that there was to be a faith period instead of the kingdom being set up. The Lord had been preaching the kingdom of God, sowing the word of God, but now He intimates in this section of the gospel that a faith period was to come in, and that the disciples would have to pass through unstable conditions, apparently without security or protection from evil and with no active intervention on His part, because He fell asleep. They were to have a time of testing; that is the present character of things. The question is, have we confidence in the One who is with His people? We have not the conditions of the world to come, we are not on dry land yet which could speak of settled conditions, but we have the Person who can bring about all the conditions of the world to come. Have we sufficient faith in Him to be restful in the presence of unstable conditions, dangers and things that test us severely? Can we trust Him? The Lord does not propose to secure His people from storms; He does not propose at the present moment to put us on dry land. It is a matter of moving through unsettled conditions where we are exposed to danger and the power of evil.
But then the Lord sets the pattern of what is suitable under such conditions. We have been seeing more than once, and we shall see again how in this gospel everything that is right is patterned in Jesus. His being asleep was a pattern for them. It indicated that the proper attitude for them to be in was one [p. 131] of restfulness and confidence. It was divinely right for Him to be asleep at that moment, and His attitude was, in pattern, the right attitude for His saints. The disciples ought to have been as restful as He was; if they had had faith in Him they would have been.
Ques Would Peter being asleep in prison convey the same thought?
CAC Yes, the storm had broken on the little ship. James had been killed with the sword and Peter put in prison; a squall of wind had come on the little boat and those in it. The Lord was with them but He did not manifest Himself; He was asleep as it were. He let Herod kill James and He let Peter be thrown into prison without any intervention.
Ques What would be the present application of the “other side”?
CAC We have not reached our destination. The destination of the saints is the world to come; that is what all Christians talk about: “the habitable world which is to come, of which we speak” (Hebrews 2: 5). It is that order of things which is under the Son of man, under Jesus; that is our destination.
Rem We are not to look for outward intervention today, but to be kept in peace and quietness.
CAC Yes, that is the great test. I know how it tests me when squalls of wind come. It is a great thing to know that the Lord is with His people though we are in unsettled conditions, exposed to storms, and there is weakness in ourselves; such a ship as they were in was not much security against a violent storm, but the Lord was there. We have to hold to the faith of His Person. Is the Lord enough for us even if He does not apparently exercise His power? If He lets James be killed with the sword is He enough then? The Lord feels it when we cannot trust Him. It is said of Israel that they tempted Jehovah; what was the temptation? They said, “Is Jehovah among us, or not?” (Exodus 17: 7). If we say that, we tempt Him; we have called His love in question.
[p. 132] Tests show whether we have faith. If the Lord was always intervening for us and swept aside any difficulty at the moment it occurred there would be no test of faith at all, it would be the world to come actually here. When we reach the world to come there will be no troubles, no sea to pass over, no boat and no storms! Most of us, perhaps, would like millennial conditions now. The Lord said His last word to us in the end of John 16: “In the world ye have tribulation”, but He says, “These things have I spoken to you that in me ye might have peace”. Is He enough? or can I not trust Him unless He does something wonderful for me?
The Lord knew what He was leading them into. “He entered into a ship, himself and his disciples”; He knew what He was doing and He knew all the circumstances in which they would be found; He knew all about the storm that was coming. He intentionally put them in that position, but He was with them in it. Note that word, “Himself and his disciples”. Let us ever think of “Himself”. When afterwards He said, “Where is your faith?” it was as much as to say, ‘Did you not know Me well enough to be able to trust Me in a squall of wind?’ It is necessary we should know the Person who is with us. The Lord in the previous part of this gospel had been unfolding Himself as the source of every grace, and now He put His disciples in a position where it would come to light whether they had really got to know him or not. It is a question of how we know the Lord. We may think we know a good deal about Him, but do we know Him so that we can trust Him if He leaves us to face a difficulty, if He lets a squall come down, and the waves beat into the ship so that there is a real danger? Can we trust Him so that we do not wake Him up? Unbelief woke Him up, faith would have let Him sleep, and we might say would have slept with Him. We have not the happy conditions of the world to come, and we must not expect them, but we have the Person who can bring in all the conditions of the world to come, and that is greater. We have at this moment something greater than the world to come.
[p. 133] The previous seven and a half chapters have been enough to show who He is. How have we been using the times of ministry? For every one of us there is a time of ministry: when we were converted we began to know Him, but we are led along in grace and have been brought to know Him as we have seen in this gospel, in the way that Peter, the leper, the paralysed man and others got to know Him. The Lord gives every newborn soul food and light, and brings it into the assembly to be fed and illuminated. We learn through His own ministry the Person who is with His saints. Now have we learnt Him so that we can trust Him even at a time when He does not appear to do anything for us? The Lord has told us plainly that it is through much tribulation that we must enter the kingdom of God, and Peter says, “Take not as strange the fire of persecution which has taken place amongst you for your trial” (1 Peter 4: 12). In those days they were imprisoned, thrown to lions and burnt to death; we have not such fiery trials as they had, but we get our testings, every one of us. But we have that wonderful Person, spoken of in Hebrews 1 and 2, who is greater than the world to come, for He is great enough to bring it in. Are we content to have Him, and in the peace of this can we be restful and sleep even in a storm? Stephen was perfectly restful; he was able to kneel down quietly and calmly and pray for his murderers, and he fell asleep though there was no outward deliverance wrought for him. The Lord does not always intervene, and faith does not expect Him to. Did the martyrs expect the Lord to intervene and save them from a martyr’s death? How many hundreds were burnt and imprisoned; they did not expect the Lord to intervene; they trusted Him and felt it was part of the witness for Him that they should go that way.
This is a wonderful instruction; we are passing over, and we have a Person with us who is going to bring in all the conditions of the world to come, but He is not always going to relieve us of our little pressures and trials; He is not always going to take us out of our difficulties, or keep the storm off [p. 134] us, and faith would trust Him even then. We have a precious word in the Song of Songs: “I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, By the gazelles, or by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please” (Song of Songs 2: 7). When He pleases He will awake and quiet the storm, but let Him do it when He pleases.
Ques Does Hebrews 2: 9 give the key to the position, “We see Jesus ... crowned with glory and honour”?
CAC Yes, that is the point. We do not see the conditions of the world to come, but if we see Him crowned with glory and honour, is that not enough? I know how it finds me out. Is it enough to see Jesus crowned with glory and honour? Is that not greater than to have circumstances changed, difficulties removed, or storms quieted? To look up and see Jesus crowned with glory and honour is always open to us. Such is the Lord’s tender compassion that He often quietens the storm, but He did that here in answer to what was really unbelief; He said, as it were, ‘If you cannot trust Me, I will come in and quieten the storm for you, but I would prefer that you should trust Me without any intervention’. He has done that for me many a time when I have been shaking in the presence of a ripple or two, but that is to His praise, not mine. We should honour Him now by trusting Him. He will assuredly not fail in consideration for us; He is so tender and considerate that if He sees it is too much for us, He wakes up and quietens the storm, but that is not exactly the triumph of faith. Some people can tell us wonderful stories of what the Lord has done for them, but it would be better if they could tell us how exceedingly precious the Lord Himself was to them when He did not do anything for them. J.B.S. used to say that when you sit down and talk to people the first thing they talk about is their troubles, and if you say, ‘Have you nothing else to talk about?’, they say, ‘Oh yes, I prove many mercies’; but neither the troubles nor the mercies are Himself. When we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour we are not thinking of either troubles or mercies.
[p. 135] The Lord sleeping was a divine voice to the disciples, and they should have listened to it. Things are patterned for us in Him.
Ques Would you say that Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego had faith?
CAC Yes, they counted on God for deliverance, but at the same time they said, ‘If He does not deliver us we are going to stand firm’. God is able to do anything, but can we trust Him when He does nothing? “Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11: 1).
Rem Here the Lord did awake and silence the storm.
CAC Yes. As we said last week, this section of the gospel looks on to the establishing of the world to come and all its blessed conditions; but the thing is to be in the faith of the Person who is able to effect full deliverance and bring in the conditions of the world to come. We have not got the conditions yet but we have the Person who is able to bring them in, and it is our true blessedness and confidence to think much of that Person. That is the present situation; it is not a time of outward intervention, but of trusting the Lord who is undoubtedly with His people. Do we want anything more?
Rem His being asleep does not mean indifference.
CAC No, it means He is not in manifested activity; He does not always do the things that we might wish to be done; He does not always change circumstances, but He overrules them all for the good of His saints and in view of His testimony. All the power of evil broke loose after the Lord went to heaven, and the storm has been raging more or less ever since, but the Lord is with His people, and faith has the privilege of trusting Him during this time of ‘passing over’.
In the next incident we see that something outside the borders of Israel comes into God’s account in grace. “The country of the Gadarenes ... is over against Galilee”, and what is seen there sets forth the conditions of things in the [p. 136] gentile world. The Lord uses this peculiar interval of passing over to land to the blessing of the Gentiles, the blessing of those in whom the full strength of evil was manifested. This man had a legion of demons — the full strength of the power of evil was in the gentile world.
I think this incident shows how the Lord would effect full deliverance for those outside Israel and would secure restfulness and testimony among the Gentiles. He secures one to whom He became everything and He secured him in restfulness to sit clothed and sensible at His feet. The Lord was not only going to have a company of Jewish disciples, but He was going to have a witness among the Gentiles of the power of the world to come. This picture does not contemplate the world to come as actually present, for He is rejected in the country of the Gadarenes, but as being in view and having its powers manifested in the way of testimony. Christians have tasted “the works of power of the age to come” (Hebrews 6: 5). The full power of Satan was seen in the gentile world in idolatry, licentiousness and every form of wickedness; we have only to read Romans 1 to see the legion of demons. The gentile world was the sphere where there was nothing that was adequate to check the power of the devil. In judaism there was what was of God, and it was a protecting influence; so the Jew in a certain sense was clothed; he was not quite like the Gentile.
The Lord brought Himself to have such a place with this man that this one desire was to be with Him, but he was left in his own place for testimony. That is secured now in those who believe among the Gentiles, though in general the Lord is rejected.
There is an intimation here that the Gentiles would reject Him because they besought Him to depart from their coasts and He did leave them. People are doing that really in christendom now: they are beseeching the Lord to leave them, and He is accepting His rejection. Jesus is not wanted in Christendom any more than He was in judaism, and as He accepted [p. 137] His rejection at the hands of the Jews so I believe He is accepting His rejection at the hands of the Gentiles; He got into the ship and went back again. It is intensely solemn. When the Gentiles definitely reject Him, as they are doing, He will return to bless Israel who has been prepared in the meantime to appreciate Him; they have learned to say, “Blessed be he that comes in the name of the Lord”.
This is one of the most instructive sections in this gospel, and if we want to be intelligent in the mind of God we should very prayerfully consider Luke 8. From verse 22 to the end of the chapter is one section; and it sets before us wonderful principles connected with the ways of God at the present time.
In the gentile world man was absolutely in the power of evil, but the grace of God had in view man’s deliverance, and it is represented in the demoniac. We have said several times that in Luke’s gospel it is not that man needs God but that God needs man, and we may say that in the fulness of His grace God needed the Gentile. It was not a sufficient end with God that the Jew alone should be blessed. The Jews alone could not fill God’s house, they were not great enough; so the bondman was sent out to the highways and hedges, that is the gentile world (Luke 14). This man never asked for blessing; it was rather the other way, but the Lord’s eye and heart were upon him, and in the sovereign power of His grace He set him free. What a marvellous sight for heaven to look down upon and see Corinthians, Thessalonians, Cretans and Romans — people, who, as we read the epistles addressed to them, we can see had been possessed truly by a legion of unclean demons — clothed in holy garments, and sitting at the feet of Jesus! What a sight for heaven! This man had been, as we should say, beyond the pale, an utter outcast, a terror to everybody, but the power of grace subdued him to Jesus.
This gospel was written that we might know the One who has power to subdue even all things to Himself, the power which will be manifested in the world to come is being [p. 138] manifested morally now in view of testimony. The Person is available in whom all that power subsists. What will He not do for us? He will deliver us as completely from the power of evil, if we let Him have His way with us, as if we were already in the world to come, so that instead of demons ruling us at their will, we shall be found clothed and sensible sitting at the feet of Jesus, loving Him, and left here in testimony for Him.
Speaking generally, the Lord is rejected in the gentile world, but He has left a witness here, and every believer is part of that witness. We are not allowed just at present to go with Jesus to the right hand of God, but we are left here in the place where we were possessed by demons to be a witness to the delivering power of Jesus.
It is solemn when people ask the Lord to depart out of their coasts. It will be actually so when the apostasy comes, but it is drawing near now and the Lord accepts it. He does not force Himself on unwilling hearts.