FAITHFULNESS TO GOD AND TO THE TESTIMONY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
A. P. Devenish
Psalm 105: 19, 20; Nehemiah 2: 11, 12; Acts 7: 55–60
I have in mind to speak about faithfulness to God and faithfulness to the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ. But first, I wish to apply this scripture in the Psalms to what has happened with our beloved brother, Gordon Thomson. The King sent and loosed him. I am referring to the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the King. I do not know if He is that to all here but I trust He is.
Our beloved brother was a subject of the King; he loved Him. In a sense, as Joseph was literally in prison, so our brother was held in a body of pain and suffering. One day the King sent and loosed him; set him free from the sufferings that he had endured for many years.
Those of us that knew and loved him realise how much he did suffer, but the day came when the Lord Jesus intervened and set Him free from that body of pain. He is now with Christ which is very much better, completely restful in the consciousness of the love of Jesus. Are we all conscious at this occasion of sorrow and loss of the sympathetic love of Jesus?
Our brother owned his full allegiance to Christ, acknowledging Him as his Lord and Saviour; that he had been bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ. Therefore it was His prerogative, the King, to take Him to Himself. We need to accept that, dear brethren and friends. I trust we all have a link with the Lord Jesus. It is a wonderful experience to know our sins forgiven; to know that the work that Christ accomplished on the cross of Calvary, the sufferings through which He passed, was on your account and mine. Many here can say that it was our sins that necessitated the sufferings of Christ and they are all forgiven for His name’s sake.
I wish to speak now about the faithfulness of our brother and the moral value of faithfulness. In Nehemiah, it was the time of recovery for the Jewish nation. Many were returning to Jerusalem, typical for us of recovery to the truth of the assembly. Nehemiah saw the terrible devastation of Jerusalem, that is the church publicly, but God put something into his heart. He said, “... but I told no man what my God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem”. That was so with our beloved brother. With just a few to work out the truth, he maintained faithfully the light and truth of the assembly in these times of public breakdown and reproach. In Nehemiah, we have faithfulness in a man. Some here might not understand what I mean by faithfulness. We know what it is for a wife to be faithful to her husband, and a husband to his wife, that is, to be true. We saw this in our beloved brother who unreservedly committed himself to the testimony of our Lord. In speaking of faithfulness, I am reminded of a brother whom Paul refers to in Colossians, “Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you”, Colossians 4: 9. What a fine tribute!
Now I refer to the scripture in Acts. This is Stephen who was martyred because of his love for Christ. Would we be prepared for such a death for Christ? There were many martyrs during the history of the church who suffered for the truth, who were faithful even to death.
What shone in Stephen was the spirit of Christ, the spirit of his Master; a different kind of spirit than we find in the world. This was seen in our brother. There was a young man, Saul, who was present and witnessed the
stoning of Stephen, who saw the beautiful spirit that shone in him and heard him say, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. This Saul became the apostle Paul who loved Christ perhaps more than any. Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and a voice came to him saying, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest”. He was causing the saints of God to suffer, dragging them off to prison. This is the man who was consenting to Stephen’s death, but I have no doubt his conscience was smitten in the presence of such a testimony, of such a spirit. The Lord says to him, “it is hard for thee to kick against goads”, Acts 26: 14. No doubt it affected Saul that Stephen, so persecuted, being cruelly stoned to death and yet what shone in him was the spirit of Jesus, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”.
Perhaps there is someone here who has witnessed this kind of spirit in our beloved brother, the spirit of Another Man, the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and has been affected by his testimony; someone here that will come into the ranks with those who love Christ, those who would give their lives for Him, those who would stand in the presence of suffering and reproach and be loyal to their Master. I trust there is someone here, perhaps more than one, who will take their place in committal to the Lord Jesus Christ and be faithful in His testimony here. May the Lord bless the word.