ACTS 11 (NOTES OF A READING)
[p. 341] ACTS 11 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC We cannot do better than read this portion. We do not want to leave out the other vessel, do we?
Ques. What is that?
CAC Well, there must be a place for those who are cleansed. We were looking at the vessel last Lord’s Day which Peter saw come down from heaven with all manner of creatures in it, once unclean but now cleansed by God. The cleansing comes from heaven and the vessel is drawn up again to heaven to show that all the creatures that are cleansed are going back there. It is a broad and universal outlook on what God is doing at the present time. There are vast numbers of persons in that vessel. Where are they going to find their place in the meantime? Is there no place of protection, security and blessing on earth? The end of the chapter gives us the vessel down here.
Ques In Matthew 13: 48 “they gathered the good into vessels”. Would that intimate a place for them here before they go to heaven?
CAC There are vessels here for them to be put into. The first assembly in the gentile world was at Antioch. Antioch is a pattern assembly, a vessel where believers in the Lord find their place. It is wonderful to see that God in His sovereign power is cleansing all sorts of creatures. “What God has cleansed, do not thou make common”. There are a vast number of people whom God has cleansed that they might appreciate the gospel and value “words” whereby they will be saved and receive remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. They have the Spirit eventually and thus are suitable to go to heaven. The Spirit came down from heaven and those who have the Spirit are suitable to go to heaven. The sheet is drawn up again. But the question is, is there any provision made for us down here? The vessel that Peter saw is not exactly visible. He was “in an ecstasy” to see it and “saw a vision” and it is thus as to what God is doing at the present time.
Ques Cornelius is a pattern, is he not, of one in that vessel?
CAC Yes, he was unclean once but now cleansed; he is praying and doing things acceptable to God. He is interested in the gospel, delighted to hear “words” and accepted the message at once and received the remission of sins to which God bore witness in giving him the Holy Spirit.
Ques The gift of the Spirit is a necessity in view of the assembly, would you say?
CAC As having the Spirit, we get a wonderful sense of the lordship of Christ. The local assembly is formed in that way. Every person who comes under the lordship of Christ will find his or her place in the local assembly. Everything now turns on their knowing the Lord, not now God as in connection with the other vessel, where it is God cleansing, God sending, God anointing, God raising up, God giving testimony (chapter 10: 34 - 43; 11: 17, 18). Now, in connection with the other vessel, the assembly, it is the actings of the Lord, and it stands connected with what Stephen saw. “They then who had been scattered abroad through the tribulation that took place on the occasion of Stephen” (verse 19). What characterised Stephen was that “being full of the Holy Spirit, having fixed his eyes on heaven, he saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, Lo I behold the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”. He testified to a glorified Man at the right hand of God and he said “Lord Jesus” in the full sense of the lordship of Christ. Those who were scattered would have a good deal to say about Stephen and what he saw and said. His was a wonderful vision of and a wonderful witness to a glorified Man in heaven at the right hand of God.
Rem As to “the heavens opened”, it was a pleasure to God to have it announced. “Certain of them ... entering [p. 343] into Antioch spoke to the Greeks also, announcing the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus”.
CAC That is the Person they announced. The glorified Man at the right hand of God. When these scattered disciples go forth announcing the Lord Jesus, the hand of the Lord was with them (verses 20, 21). He has a far-reaching arm. He is at the right hand of God but His hand was with them. It changes everything in the history of a soul to get a sense of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of God and His hand working down here. It ceases to think much of man, though much of the Lord, and is then material for the local assembly for His pleasure. Antioch is the pattern for each local assembly in every place: the pattern of all the local assemblies in the gentile world. There is a power that nothing can withstand. A scattered people spread the testimony. The Lord is supreme, He is at the right hand of God, and nothing can interfere with what He does. “A great number believed and turned to the Lord”. I see here the kind of people who find their place in the local assembly, they believe and turn to the Lord.
Rem His claims and lordship were owned.
CAC They definitely turned away from everything else to the Lord. They found a new centre and finished with all their past worldly or religious life. I call that a good fish — one who has turned to the Lord. Not simply resting on the finished work of Christ, but turned to a Person, the living, glorified Man at the right hand of God. All expectation from man down here is done with, and they turn to the Supreme One in the universe of God, like Joseph in Egypt from whom all that was needed could be obtained. The Lord is the source of supply, the glorious Administrator. What a wonderful thing to turn to the Lord!
The first thing was that they “turned to the Lord”. The assembly in Jerusalem heard of it and sent out Barnabas and he has something to say next, he “exhorted all with purpose of heart to abide with the Lord”, which is a second thing; that is, not allowing anything to move one away from what [p. 344] Stephen saw. Worldly influences would tend to draw us away. Without purpose one is like a ship without a rudder.
There is not material for the local assembly if one is indefinite. The third thing was that they were “added to the Lord”; we are then suitable to the assembly. How many in P. have been “added to the Lord”, suitable material to be put in the vessel?
Rem We are responsible to recognise that vessel only.
CAC God would put before us the local assembly, where there are those who believe in the Lord. I have to learn what goes on there. Have I found my place in a vessel where I am safe and happy and where I am for the pleasure of the Lord? If not, it is an exercise for us. “A large crowd ... were added to the Lord”. One is so put into contact with the Lord that one becomes available for whatever the Lord would do with one. God has purified hearts through faith; that is the basis for it all. We have to see to it above all other things that we give the Lord His place. The Holy Spirit leads us to say ‘Lord’ to Jesus (1 Corinthians 12: 3), that is the kind of speaking that the Spirit would lead us to, giving Him His place of supremacy. He is Lord to command every blessing for us. He first of all commands blessing for us and then commands us for the blessing. It is supreme happiness to be under His influence and control, it is supreme joy and blessing. First you turn to Him, then you abide with Him; purpose comes in. You are set for things, you do not let little things hinder you from reading the Word, or from prayer, or from getting to the meetings. If you do, you are hardly added, joined to Him, available to Him to be put where He would have you be. It is a lordship of blessing; all the wealth of God is in His hand to serve it out to us. We need to be safeguarded from many things so that we do not lose the joy of it.
Then, when Barnabas finds this company of persons really “added to the Lord”, he realises that they wanted the kind of help that Saul, the vessel of help to the gentile assemblies, could give them (verse 25).
[p. 345] Rem Peter prepared the way with his witness to the death and resurrection of Christ; Stephen goes further with his witness to a glorified Man at God’s right hand; then Saul is introduced.
CAC Saul comes into teach: “And so it was with them that for a whole year they were gathered together in the assembly and taught a large crowd” (verse 26). They are now “in the assembly”, which is a fourth thing, in the local assembly, a divinely prepared vessel, a public thing that you could see. It is “in the Lord”. It is worthwhile to go a long way to see something “in the Lord”. This is how the local company of believers finds itself together for the Lord’s pleasure. Barnabas “was a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith”; such a man will bring in Paul’s ministry, he is a real help locally. All Paul’s teaching is needed that we may know how to walk together, etc., in the assembly. Barnabas seems from the first to have recognised the grace of the Lord in Saul. It is a great thing to see what is helpful.
Rem It would be helpful to us to catch that spirit.
CAC It is most helpful to understand what is needed and to give place to it. We can all be “good”. It is of the Romans that the apostle says, “Yourselves also are full of goodness”, not of the Colossians or the Ephesians! “Full of goodness”, never saying an evil thing of a brother or a sister. If you are “full of goodness”, evil is not there to come out. If “full of the Holy Spirit and of faith”, there is no room for anything else!
“And so it was with them that for a whole year they were gathered together in the assembly”; there was full scope for Paul’s ministry. There was with them preparedness for ministry that would carry them through a whole year. What a privilege it would have been to have spent that year with them. Our individual history is reckoned by days, the assembly’s by weeks, the “whole year” would speak of the whole scope of God’s ways in Christ. How they must have gone over the whole range of those ways! The thought of the whole year is set forth in the typical festive year of old which [p. 346] was gone through with God with something fresh about Christ before the heart continuously. In the first month there was the passover, the beginning of God’s year, which was followed by other feasts up to the feast of tabernacles, “In the assembly” you go through the whole year. The year is divided into months. Typically, each month, each new moon, marked a special festive time, and thus for us special times in our soul’s history. The whole year is provided for in the holy city, “The tree of life, producing twelve fruits, in each month yielding its fruit” (Revelation 22: 2). “Day by day” there are fresh supplies of grace for us, then we have our weekly benefit of eating the Lord’s supper and participating in all the weekly recurrences, while months would tell of special times of new illuminations and of a renewed shining like the new moon, additions to our knowledge of Christ. And thus we pass “a whole year”. We are set together locally to go through the whole year with God and with one another “in the assembly”, really in the vessel where the Lord would put us.
Rem Consciously available to the Lord and to one another.
CAC “For a whole year”. We are regarded as being always there, gathered together morally out of the idolatry, folly, worldliness and religion of the world around in the place in which we are locally. Now you are ready for Paul’s ministry and to travel through the whole year of God’s ways in Christ.
Rem.
‘Fresh and ever new are yielded
Fruits of life on that blest Tree’. (50:2)
CAC That is what I look for and that is what I am to find in the local assembly. There I learn to be a Christian, which is a fifth thing. “And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch”. “In the assembly” I learn to be a Christian. If we walk together rightly, people will call us Christians. The effect is that Christ becomes impressed on everyone. They carried the mark of Christ, they were Christians. Those are the sort of people we want to see walking about in our localities. “Christians” was the only name they could think of with regard to them. The assembly is looked at here as a vessel in which we find our places morally, the circle the Lord has appointed and where we live and enjoy things in common with our brethren. We are glad to come together.
It is a great thing to be called a Christian, one who has an impression of Christ about him. God is seeking to put an impression of Christ on our spirit, that we may come more practically under the power of the anointing so as to come out like Christ, not simply more intelligent, but more Christ-like. Am I getting an impression of Christ? The testimony resides in the local assembly as the expression of Christ. The world around is full of impure and corrupting influences, but we come under holy influences when we come together, and they have their effect upon us and we thus get impressions of Christ which are intended to become expressions of Him. It spreads.
Rem The testimony is Christ.
CAC Practically discipline comes in to help that. If there is going to be a testing, the Spirit gives a prophetic word, a sixth thing, so that we are prepared beforehand for the testing (verses 27, 28). If I am not truly valuing the ministry of the Spirit I shall not be ready for the test when it comes. We get a warning to prepare us for the test. An old saint once said to me, ‘I knew I was to have a time of testing because I was getting such an extraordinary ministry of Christ to my soul’. The test came and he was preserved.
And now we come to the seventh and last feature in regard of these believers, the beautiful care that was found with them, the spirit of love in caring for needs far beyond their own bounds (verses 29, 30), their “free-hearted liberality” (2 Corinthians 8: 2).
Rem Barnabas exemplified that (Acts 4: 36, 37).
CAC Yes, he had been “surnamed Barnabas by the apostles (which is, being interpreted, Son of consolation)”.
[p. 348] We ought to be able to surname all the brethren, not nickname them. We ought to be able to recognise some feature of Christ in each one and give each one a surname. One would covet to have a surname, one the saints had given one in holy affection. The Lord would bring out some feature of Christ in each brother and sister, and that would be the name by which he or she is known spiritually, the features that come to mind when one thinks of them. What I am spiritually is my true name.
“And they determined, according as any one of the disciples was well off, each of them to send to the brethren who dwelt in Judaea”. What one may have of this world’s goods becomes transfigured. Instead of being “the mammon of unrighteousness” it becomes an occasion of manifesting the “grace of Christ”. The messengers who carry it are called “Christ’s glory” (2 Corinthians 8: 23). It is His glory to see the bountiful giving of His saints. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 the whole question of giving is elevated and all put alongside the giving of God and of Christ.
There is a vessel at the present time in which we can find our place. These features that we have been considering together will guide you in regard of it, and see to it that you have these features yourself.