EXPERIENCE WITH GOD
W. Lamont
Genesis 32: 22–32; Psalm 73: 1, 13–17: 2 Corinthians 11: 32, 33; 12: 1–4
I want to say a brief word, beloved brethren, as to the necessity of experience with God. I suppose in our lives we have many experiences of various kinds, some pleasant, some perhaps bitter. The greatest experience of all, whether for man or woman, boy or girl, is to have a real experience with God. It can begin early. I would encourage you young ones not to wait until you are old to have experience with God. One example comes to
mind; Samuel as a boy, and the word of the Lord to him, “Samuel, Samuel!” (1 Samuel 3: 10) in a day when things were broken, in a day when the glory was about to depart from Israel, the ark of God was to be taken. The priesthood was corrupt, the temple desecrated, and in that day God spoke to a young boy. It is an encouragement to young persons to make sure of having a real experience with God. Your parents’ experience will not do for you, though it can help; in faith your parents have baptised you, have shown clearly that they hold you not for this world, but for another world, and for another Man in another world. That is what is involved in your baptism, and your parents did that in faith for you in order that in faith you may come to the realization of these things and become exercised, that you might have your own personal, distinctive, definite links with divine Persons, with the Father, with the Lord Jesus, and with the Holy Spirit. These things are essential to be in Christianity rightly.
So I have read of three men. There are many examples in Scripture of persons who had experience with God. You can just look round this room and see the evidence of persons who have had experience with God, experience of the rigours of the testimony, experience of the sorrows of it, and more than that, persons who have had rich and deep experience with God and have been formed by it.
So I read first of Jacob. With him he had his wives and his children and he passed over the ford of the Jabbok. He was on a journey; he had lost twenty years of his life. Think of that, a man who had misspent twenty years of his life. He had had experiences and gone back on them, became occupied with other things. His wives and his children were the fruit of what he had acquired in that period of twenty years when he had been away from God, but
God had him in mind. God has every one of us in mind; in His love for us He has in mind to secure us, and to secure us in order that we should have this rich experience with Himself.
One feature to Jacob’s credit (we often speak discreditably about Jacob) was recorded of him earlier. He was warned not to take a wife of the daughters of Canaan, and it says of Jacob that he was obedient to his parents (Genesis 28: 1, 7). Young brethren, there is safety in being obedient to your parents in all your practical matters; they have your safety and salvation in mind. Jacob’s obedience reminds us of the Lord Jesus; He went down and was subject to His parents, the One who could say, “did ye not know that I ought to be occupied in my Father’s business?” (Luke 2: 49), saying this at twelve years of age. How beautiful it is! Some of us may think that being obedient and subject takes something from us, detracts from our dignity; rather the opposite, it adds glory, it adds dignity, adds moral beauty to a person, the fact that they are seen to be obedient. That would apply to all of us, old and young. Again the great example is the One who became obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross (Philippians 2: 8). We are constantly touched in our affections as we contemplate the way He went. One who was on equality with God, God as to His Person, yet coming into manhood, obedient, and obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross. What a death it was!—a death of shame, a death of ignominy. The way He has gone makes Him very precious to the believing heart.
Well, Jacob here remained alone, there came a point when he could not depend on his wife, his family or his goods. You come to a point in your life when you cannot depend on externals, they are of no avail, and you have to learn to be alone. We have many instances in Scripture of persons being alone with God, but again it is supremely
seen in the Lord Jesus, when they all went to their own homes and He went to the mount of Olives in order that He should be alone in His own intimate, distinctive, sensitive relationships with His Father (John 8: 1). So here Jacob remained alone—“And Jacob remained alone; and a man wrestled with him until the rising of the dawn”. What protracted exercise! Some of us give up too easily; some have lost their way in their exercises because they have given up too easily. But Jacob, to his credit, was prepared to wrestle until the rising of the dawn. Dear young believer, do not give up; there is much, I know, that is against you; the whole world is against you; Satan is against you. But God is interested in you, interested in you for your blessing. Satan is also interested in you, very interested in you, but for your destruction.
Well, Jacob is alone and he wrestles until the rising of the dawn, “and the joint of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated as he wrestled with him. And he said. Let me go, for the dawn ariseth ...
And he said to him. What is thy name? And he said, Jacob”. How simple it is! He wrestles with this man for so long, and then he says to Jacob, ‘I want you identified’; God would identify you in a definite way in your own spiritual personality as you are prepared to go through protracted exercise. Then he says, “Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob”; I will call you something else, I will dignify you; and he called him “ Israel”—‘Wrestler, or prince of God’ (see note ‘d’). If you want to become a prince of God, if you want to become a dignified person, and be marked by these features that are pleasing to God, you have to be prepared to wrestle through protracted exercise and keep at it. We were reading in the house this morning, “The slothful roasteth not what he took in hunting” (Proverbs 12: 27), and elsewhere, “A sluggard’s soul desireth and hath nothing”, Proverbs 13: 4.
Desire of itself is not enough; you might desire and do nothing about it. I am sure everyone here, every true heart here, would like to be for God, would like to be devoted in total committal to the Lord Jesus. But then that is desire; you have got to do something about it; you have got to persist in the moral exercise the Lord would have you go through to produce something formed in you that is after Himself so that you come out in your spiritual personality in features that are pleasing to God, seen in absolute perfection in the Lord Jesus Himself.
So Jacob persists. “And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel—For I have seen God face to face”. Wonderful! At the end of all the struggle and wrestling he finds that God is shining; of course He is shining towards you all the time. Jacob had much to go through after this, many exercises; for one thing he had to get his house put right, he had to get all the idols out of his house. What we were saying earlier today was just that, a man and his house. These are important things, that we are to be right in every sphere that we walk in and move in; our households are right; we are right in every area of our movements. Jacob had to learn all that. Nevertheless, his name is changed, his name is Israel, a prince of God.
I go on to Asaph. It says, “Truly God is good to Israel, to such as are of a pure heart”. It links with what our brother was bringing before us so beautifully last night—“to such as are of a pure heart”. It is a great challenge, beloved brethren, the question of our motives; a pure heart would be that. What, for instance, is my motive for saying certain things? What is my motive for doing certain things? These are very challenging matters. All this is involved in a pure heart; that your motives are pure; you stand in the
shining transparently, and what you say and what you do is in the light of God as made known, and you act as He would act; you act in the features that so distinctively marked the Lord Jesus.
Well, it says, “to such as are of a pure heart”. Then Asaph was a bit upset, a bit disturbed, maybe a bit obsessed by conditions that were around him. We get like that sometimes, we get upset about things, get disturbed by things around. He speaks of the disturbing, upsetting effect in his soul, a destabilising effect if you like; he is concerned about all these things, and he had to come to it that the only answer was to be found in the presence of God. That is where answers are found—“Until I went into the sanctuaries of God”. In the sanctuaries of God everything is in keeping with God Himself. In Psalm 72 the reference is to Christ exalted. Psalm 73 is what exists down here in the saints that is in keeping with Christ where He is; that is the bearing of these two psalms.
So Asaph had to learn that what he was down here had to be in keeping with what existed in the presence of God. So he went into the sanctuaries of God, and he says, “then understood I their end”. Beloved brethren, it is essential to get the divine viewpoint as to everything, then one can be at rest and at peace in one’s soul. Not that we cease to be exercised; that is not the point, but we learn to see every matter as God sees it, and we are exercised about matters, but the peace of God fills our souls. In every circumstance you can view things as God does from His viewpoint and you can be restful and in touch with the One who has all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28: 18). Asaph had to learn these things, as we all have to learn them.
I trust we are getting something as to the essential matter of being in the presence of God,
and having experience alone with God. It seemed as if Asaph went in alone here—“Until I went into the sanctuaries of God; then understood I their end”.
Well, I touch on Paul. Paul refers to the matter in Damascus where Aretas the king wished to take him prisoner, probably to put him to death. Paul experienced the tender care of the brethren; we sang in our hymn of the Lord’s tender heart. I think, beloved brethren, another feature that we need to learn something about is the matter of tenderness; how we speak to one another, respect one another. Paul had to learn that. He had been persecuting the assembly. How harsh he was, how brutal he was, how callous he was. Someone said he would go to the local meeting and see widows there, he would see orphans there, and he would say to himself, ‘I was responsible for that’. What is done can never be undone. I remember Mr A. J. Gardiner saying in Glasgow that the government of God decreed that Saul of Tarsus should suffer, the grace of God ensured that he suffered as a Christian. I think that is very fine. But then here he is being persecuted himself, and no doubt he would think of the contrast in the tender way the brethren let him down by this wall; he would think of the walls of Jericho, no doubt—he would be well acquainted with these things—where the spies were let down with a scarlet cord through the window. In Acts it does not refer to the window, it just says the disciples “let him down through the wall” (Acts 9: 25), but here Paul says,
“through a window in a basket”. How humiliating that would be! the great Saul of Tarsus, the one who had had authority and letters from the high priest, being let down in a basket through a window, by the wall. Paul accepts it; it was done not by the cruelty of his enemies, but in the tender affectionate care of the brethren.
After this he goes on to this heavenly experience. Wonderful incident! We speak in meetings about what we know; Paul here speaks of things that he was not sure of, that he did not know,
“whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not”, but he had this great experience, this great heavenly experience. “I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago”. I think it is generally accepted that it was at the time fourteen years before when he was stoned and apparently dead. What a thing that was, the hatred of man. How fickle men could be; one time they are pushing Saul of Tarsus on in the destruction of the saints, and the next minute, because of his conversion, they are ready to stone him to death. How unstable, how untrustworthy, man away from God is. Paul had learned that there was something to be seen in Another—“Who art thou, Lord?”—“What shall I do, Lord?”—what a perfect example of one who was ready to be obedient, and it marked Paul all his life.
“For ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”, Galatians 3: 26. That is true of every believer; whether they are in the gain of it or not, it remains blessedly true of every saint.
From that standpoint we have no advantage over any other believer; we have a great deal of light, and hence are the more responsible to act according to the light we have, but our standing in Christ is no greater than that of any other believer. So we have this unique experience of Paul—“I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago”; he was caught up to the third heaven, as far as man could go. Paul no doubt would think as he went up to the third heaven of One who has gone above all the heavens, the One who came into this scene and suffered and died, shed His precious blood for us, descended into the lower parts of the earth, and was caught up into heaven. He passed through all the heavens, being greeted as He went up, receiving, as we sometimes sing, ‘The Father’s greetings, honours rare’. What it must have meant at that particular moment when the Lord ascended as Man into the uncreated sphere, according to His request in John 17, “glorify me, thou Father, along with thyself, with the glory which I had along with thee before the world was” (John 17: 5). These are tremendous things that we are privileged to meditate upon, to feed upon and to be formed by. I have often thought that after Paul’s conversion he would re-read Isaiah 53
and other scriptures which speak of One whom he with others had counted as an imposter and see in them the beauty of Jesus.
Then he had this experience and he identifies the third heaven; “he was caught up into paradise”. The Lord said to the thief, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”. It is a wonderful thing; “Today”; no delay, none whatever, “with me in paradise”, a state of bliss, a condition of blessing. Paul was caught up into that. Then he “heard unspeakable things said which it is not allowed to man to utter”.
Well, may it be, beloved brethren, that we learn to set ourselves, and be diligent in making sure that we know vitally the experience individually of what it is to be alone with God and be formed in His presence. Only so are we fit persons practically to take our place in the assembly of God which He has purchased with the blood of His own. May it be so for His name’s sake.
Address at Redbridge
3 November 1990