LEARNING SKILL

David Willetts

Luke 12: 41-44; Acts 19: 1-9; Exodus 35: 30-36: 1; 35: 25, 26

This passage in Luke 12 has been before me. The Lord says, “Blessed is that bondman who his lord on coming shall find doing thus” – that is he was giving food to the household. The Lord’s coming is imminent – I think we all would subscribe to that, but the question is, how will He find you and how will He find me at that moment? Do you think we can just coast up to the last finishing line? Is that the idea of the race? We are all running the race (1 Cor 9: 24). Are we just going to take our ease and coast up to the finishing line, or are we going to be exercised as found as in this passage. It is interesting that Peter says to him, “Lord, sayest thou this parable to us, or also to all?” Clearly the parable is to you. How old are you? Twelve, fourteen, the word has its application to you, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, the word is to you. It is interesting that when Paul addresses Timothy he says, “Till I come, give thyself to reading, to exhortation, to teaching. Be not negligent of the gift that is in thee, which has been given to thee through prophecy, with imposition of the hands of the elderhood. Occupy thyself with these things; be wholly in them”, 1 Tim 14,15. I would like to encourage you, beloved brother or sister, to occupy yourself, but to occupy yourself with the Lord’s things. There are plenty of things in the world that you can legitimately be occupied with, but this word to Timothy is, “Till I come”. That is a connection with the passage in Luke 12, right up to the last moment, “give thyself to reading, to exhortation, to teaching”. I suppose the question is whether you have found what work the Lord would have you to do. I do not think the Lord has in mind that you should be a passenger. I think He has something for you to do, and if He has given you something to do He wants you to do it wholeheartedly, He wants you to put your energy into it. You say, I am only a young person, there is plenty of time. I doubt it, I think we are at the end and there is but a short time.

I want to speak a little by way of encouragement – as you look round the circle here there are brethren getting older. Who is going to take on things if the Lord leaves us here? When Pentecost came and Peter stood up with the eleven, what did they see? There were twelve men united in their testimony as to Christ, and I do not think one of them was over thirty. That may be profane history, but it has its bearing on you. Are you going to commit yourself to the Lord’s things early? I think the Lord has a very special interest when persons are converted at an early age for the simple reason that they are not encumbered with a history of things in this world which they may have to unlearn. They have fresh, verdant, ardent affection for Christ. Mr Ron Plant’s father often used to say, to know Him is to love Him, and to love Him is to serve Him. Have you not found that, young brother, young sister, that you really appreciate what the Lord has done for you? He could not have done more, but I want to ask you, What have your done for Him? There is no shortage of need, but I would like to encourage you to commit yourself to the Lord’s things. It may be that the testimony may continue a little while and there is a necessity for those who are younger to take on something of the burden of things.

I ask you another question, do you think in this day that there is any shortage from the divine side? What I want to speak about is skill. There is a good deal of shortage of skill nationally, and they are worried about it. They say we do not have the resources to train people, and companies say, it will cost too much to train people. That is not true in the divine system, every single resource is available, the cost has been paid and the Spirit of God is here. A divine Person is here, resident in the assembly and in that Person everything that you could ever need is vested. The question is how you relate yourself to divine resources. I point first of all to Moses. It says of Moses as soon as that inclination began in his heart to serve his people, “it came into his heart to look upon his brethren” (Acts 7: 23), the result of which, perhaps being a little unskilful in his movements, he flees from Egypt, and what does he do, “he sat by the well”, Exod 2: 15. Do you ever to do that, do you ever set yourself to be in communion with the Holy Spirit? “He sat by the well”. I think we should take time to sit by the well, to commune with the Spirit of God; it will not be long before He will find something for you to do. The very next verse says that the daughters of Midian came along to water the sheep and he finds that there is something that his hand could do and he did it with his might.

The other person I would point to is Rebecca. It was clear that typically the Spirit of God knew of her habit to go to the well to draw for the household. Do you do that, make it a habit to commune with the Holy Spirit of God that you might have the wherewithal to water the saints? Tuesday night comes, the ministry meeting, the meeting for ministry of a prophetic character, are you exercised to come with something for the saints? Have you something that you can refresh the saints with? The reading comes, do you depend on what others bring or do you come as a contributor? If you have an exercise to serve the Lord, the Lord will provide what you need. It will not be easy. One thing you will find in God’s ways if you are to serve the saints is that you will come in for a great deal of discipline. Look round the company here and I am sure you can see that there is a good deal of discipline. We have the book, Discipline in the School of God. God’s ways with every one of those that Mr. Stoney enumerates are different, God’s ways with me are different from His ways with you, but if you are exercised, He will see to it in the wisdom that He has that you will be suitably disciplined in order that you might serve the saints. You say, If I serve the saints I might go beyond my measure. I would say to you there are probably nine who do not come up to their measure for every one that goes over their measure. I would like you to come up to your measure. God has given you light, He has given you some impression of Himself. You say, I do not have gift. Are you sure? Have you not an impression of Christ? Can you not lean on the Spirit of God to open up that impression you have and make it available to others? You have what is unique, your impression of Christ is not mine, neither is it the same as that of anyone else in this room; that is something that is uniquely yours. He wants you to share it with others and He will develop that gift.

One of the things that the Lord wants is for you to be developed in your gift, hence I read these other scriptures. What has Acts 19 to do with me, it refers to Paul? I will seek to show you. We referred to the twelve men who the Lord used so singularly at the beginning of this dispensation, young men. What training had they had? Where did they get their skill? They came out as like Christ because they were the product of His handiwork. Thirty years experience? No. Three and a half years. That is all they had in close association with Christ. I think that is very special, to think what God can do in the soul of a believer in three and a half years. What have you done for the last three and a half years? Have you had to do with Christ? Have you been near enough to Him? Have you pondered the way He does things? … He has done all things well (see Mark 8: 37). Everything that came up against the Lord found its solution in Himself, there was nothing too difficult for Him, but what impressed Mark was not just what was done, but the way it was done. There was a certain impress, a certain stamp on the way He did things. Mark would say, I did not do things very well when I set out in service. Does the Lord write him off? No, He uses him to write one of the gospels. He writes the shortest one full of pungency and method.

I turn now to the reference to Paul, “And entering into the synagogue, he spoke boldly during three months”, a very short period of time. Paul was labouring amongst the Ephesian saints, and it says, “reasoning and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God”. He was dealing with what was basic, and if we serve the saints we need to have an outline of what is basic. The first thing said is “reasoning”: I do not think you can have ‘persuading’ until you have ‘reasoning’. Persuading takes us immediately to Romans; the mind is dealt with extensively in Romans. You have eleven references to it, more than in any other book in the Bible. You come in the conclusion of that to, “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”, Rom 7: 25. That is, you come under the influence of Christ in the way of service and your mind is controlled. The epistle to the Romans, I think, is a book we ought to be more familiar with, it used to be taken up much more amongst the saints than it is now. I think it is a book we all need to be grounded in. He says, “What shall we then say to these things?” (Rom 8: 31). The light is being presented to you and entering into your heart through the eyes of faith. “What shall we say then?”, what is your response to the outshining of God in grace? I think when you answer that in yourself you will come to this beautiful word, persuaded. Paul speaks of that too in Romans, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”, Rom. 8: 38,39). That is a wonderful thing to be persuaded of. Are you persuaded of that? It does not matter what enters into the testimony, whether it is angelic, or whether it belongs to the depths or to powers, nothing can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. So you come intelligently to this point where you can be persuaded of certain things. What has come to you as light becomes formation in your soul and it is as if a conclusion is reached in the epistle to the Romans. In chapter 9 he goes on to Israel and the way things affect Israel; it is as if he would reach a conclusion in persons who were persuaded.

Was that the end? It says, “But when some were hardened and disbelieved, speaking evil of the way”. Bear in mind that this is just three months, a concentrated time of education for these twelve men. You can be sure of this, if you set yourself for what is for the Lord that the devil will be active, he would seek to undermine any exercise you may have to get the teaching and to be occupied in reading and in the understanding of it. It says, “speaking evil of the way before the multitude, he left them and separated the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus”, He moved them into a new area of things because He was attracting them away from any influence that would spoil what God was doing in the company. I trust, as we said in the reading, that every one of us has in mind that we should have Ephesian conditions as our objective, as nothing less would suit Paul and nothing less should suit us. The school of Tyrannus, is not harsh rule. Tyranny has become to mean that today. A tyrant was a person with absolute rule and that is one thing that is fundamental to the enjoyment of the kingdom and to the understanding of the kingdom. The kingdom underlies the assembly and all its teaching, and the reasoning and persuading comes as the basic teaching to that. It says, “in the school of Tyrannus”, it means that my will has to go. The absolute rights of another, Christ, have to be owned by me and bowed to. If you get a company in which that is so, where everyone is there as under the absolute rule of Christ, there would be no difficulty as to the teaching. I think what you could write over this passage is that skill was given to Paul.

Is that going to continue? If so, how? In 2 Timothy Paul says to him, “cutting in a straight line the word of truth” 2 Tim 2: 15. How do you learn to cut a straight line? You take your pencil and rule and you mark a line down; you take your saw and you begin to cut. The way you cut a straight line is not to take your eye off the line. That is a most important thing in Christianity, to keep to the scriptures and to keep to the principles of Christianity as seen in Christ. Never take your eye off the standard and the pattern. You are not using a power saw; it is not switch it on and go quickly through it. You do not come into Christianity just in a moment. It means exercise, you have to pull the saw handle up and down, you have to apply yourself to it. It does not just happen. If you are going to take on the light of the truth, if you are going to understand the scriptures, if you are going to understand how one facet of the truth bears on another and is interwoven, it means you have to apply yourself. You have to cut in a straight line the word of truth and you have to use the right tools. It is no good using a blunt saw. It is no good using one with the wrong number of teeth. What it means simply is that you have to use the tools that God has provided and I suggest that they are the Spirit of God and the scriptures. You must lean heavily on the Spirit of God and keep your eye upon Christ and that way you will cut in a straight line the word of truth.

I read in the Old Testament – there are Bezaleel and Aholiab, two interesting men. It says in the earlier chapter, “And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding and in knowledge, and in every work, to devise artistic work”, Exod. 31: 1-3. God had given these men a skill with all-round ability. I think it relates very much to the twelve apostles to whom we referred earlier. Ephesians 2 speaks as to what is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (v.20). I think Bezaleel and Aholiab were typical of the twelve apostles, they laid the foundation of things. Notice this, “and he has put in his heart to teach, he and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan: he has filled them with wisdom of heart”. I think the idea of teaching is that what was in the apostles in principle was to come down to our day. Paul speaks again to Timothy of this line of things, “And the things thou hast heard of me” -that was an apostolic line of things – “in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, such as shall be competent to instruct others also”, 2 Tim 2: 2. You can see how what God had in principle in Bezaleel and Aholiab has come down to us on the line, not exactly as gift, but more on the line of faithfulness, persons who have laid hold of the truth and made it their own. But that word, “competent” involves skill, “to instruct others also”. I wonder, young brother, young sister, whether you will take your place as at the feet of those who are competent to instruct to learn the good teaching. We have a lot of it written down for us which makes it easy, you can go through the books of ministry. You say, I am busy. Yes I know, so am I, but you have to make time, even if it is only ten minutes or half an hour, make time to pray, make time to spend with the Spirit of God, but make time to make the ministry that God has given in His faithfulness to the assembly your own. The light of the recovery is there on our bookshelves. Are you going to leave it there? I daresay you have most of the ministry in your house, do you read it? I am not just referring to the young brothers, I am referring to the young sisters as well. I read the verse in Exodus 35, “And every woman that was wise-hearted spun with their hands”, so the sisters come in and I would like to encourage the sisters. If in the Lord’s ways He gives you a husband and you have children, it will be largely your lot to spend time with your children, and one of the things they will need is teaching. If you do not have the teaching, how can you teach them? Here they were, women who were skilled with their hands, where had they learnt that? I think they had learned it in the presence of God and they had applied themselves. You say, in the wilderness, where did they find time, they were journeying, busy with their flocks etc? How do I find time to do these things? Ask the Lord and He will show you. Just try a few minutes and I think you will find that you will soon find that you will want to spend half an hour and when you have spent half an hour you will want to find a bit longer. I am trying to encourage the young people. How did I start to read the ministry when the brethren encouraged me to? I picked up a book by Mr Stoney and read a bit, just a page or so, and I got something in my soul. Mr Stoney gives you a little story to illustrate the truth and suddenly you become interested. Then instead of that book you pick up another, and you pick up the scriptures and you find that the pages of the scriptures mean something to you. I would like to encourage you to commit yourself to the teaching because what will be needed are persons who are able to open up the truth to the saints. May you be found occupied in these things until He comes. It says, “to devise artistic things: to work in gold, and in silver, and in copper, and in cutting of stones, for setting, and in carving of wood, to execute all artistic work”. I love to go through this chapter and allow my thoughts to go over what these things suggest, such a variety of things. You say, I do not know what I can do for the Lord: let Him find it for you. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it, and you will find that He will find something else for you to do, and you will find that you will develop in skilfulness in the handling of God’s things.

I have no more to say, but I would like to encourage my younger brethren, that it may be that the Lord in His wisdom may leave us a little longer here and the needs of the testimony are that someone has to take up the exercise to teach the saints. It may be the brother next to you or the sister next to you has been totally uninterested in what I have said, but are you? If you have an interest, foster it and go to the Lord and let Him develop it into something with you that you might be useful to Him. May I remind you of what it says in that verse where we started, “Blessed is that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find doing thus”. There is a blessing related to it, there is a blessing related to reading the book of Revelation and there are other blessings, but this is one of them, “Blessed is that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find doing thus”. May He help us in these things. For His Name’s sake.

SUNBURY

18 October 2003