DIVINE AUTHORITY
[p. 340] DIVINE AUTHORITY
Matthew 28:5 - 10; Matthew 28:16 - 20; Genesis 28:1 - 5; Genesis 28:10 - 15; Genesis 35: 1 - 8
I desire to speak about divine authority and how it is accepted and submitted to so that God will be with us. It appears in Matthew particularly, as I hope to show from the verses in the last chapter. It appears throughout all the gospels, even in John, who quotes the Lord as saying, “He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me”. No one loves Christ save as he observes His commandments. The profession is of little value save as it is accompanied by the observance of the Lord’s commandments. The observance of His commandments throughout is made the test of spirituality and gift, “If any one thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him recognise the things that I write to you, that it is the Lord’s commandment”. That is 1 Corinthians, so that the question of love to Christ is tested by obedience, and obedience is of prime importance, especially as the great apostle speaks in his epistle about the curse falling on those who do not love our Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew brings in the idea of authority peculiarly, for it is the royal gospel, in which Christ is seen as the great King, and Jerusalem as the city of the great King. It is the gospel in which we are told that He went up into a mountain and His disciples came to Him. It is not said that He invited them, but that they came, implying that it was a sacrifice to them to reach Him, for going up a mountain involves sacrifice, and is testing to our strength of heart. He sat down and opened His mouth and taught them, and we read that “he taught them as having authority, and not as their scribes”, Matthew 7: 29.
[p. 341] In chapter 5 there are many references to the personal pronoun, ‘I’, “I say unto you”, as over against what had been said at an earlier time. All this is in view of the assembly, for there could be no assembly at all apart from obedience.
Paul speaks of the obedience of faith, which is essential to the assembly. The lordship of Christ is presented in Matthew in order to promote obedience, indeed to enforce obedience, so that in the last chapter we have an angel who speaks with authority, “Behold, I have told you”, conveying that God was there. It is an angel of the Lord, not just an angel, but one who can speak with authority, as appears in the end of verse 7: “Behold, I have told you”. Any word that comes to our souls with this authority is intended to affect us. God has the means of impressing us with His authority, so we read of this angel, in verse 3: “And his look was as lightning, and his clothing white as snow”. This is to impress us with the authority and the means of enforcing it. It continues, “And for fear of him the guards trembled and became as dead men”. Such was the divine power there. This is no trivial matter, no passing event merely to be spoken of, but it is to affect men. He says to the women, “Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus the crucified one”, indicating that they were not ashamed of His reproach; they are accepting His crucifixion and the One crucified. This is very touching and is to reassure the hearts of these women that the look like lightning did not refer to them. Under that look was the knowledge of what they were seeking. The angel knew, and it really is divine knowledge. The Lord would impress everyone here that He knows. One of the most comforting words in Revelation is from the Lord’s lips, “I know”, alluding especially to what was creditable to the saints. If there be that which is discreditable, He knows that too, and will not fail to [p. 342] take it up with us in detail, as in the addresses to the assemblies, but it is very comforting when He says, “I know”, referring to what is creditable.
Here the angel says, “Fear not” to the women. It was something to be observed by them and would never be forgotten. We may be sure that they often spoke of this wonderful scene in later years, because such an important impression would remain with them, and it would impress them with the fact that God is to be feared, as the writer to the Hebrews says, “For also our God is a consuming fire”. These women would never forget this scene. The angel says to them, “He is not here, for he is risen, as he said, Come, see the place where the Lord lay”. It is not where Jesus lay, but where the Lord lay, and not only His body, but the Lord Himself. It must never be forgotten that the Lord Jesus lay in death. He says, “Go quickly”. We should notice the urgency of divine commands. Many trifle with them, and even christians will do so, but here the angel says, “Go quickly and say to his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and behold, he goes before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him. Behold, I have told you”.
Let us put ourselves in the position of these women, for the point in this address is that divine authority is a great matter and we have been told of it in an authoritative voice: “Behold, I have told you”. In direct contrast to the scribes, the Lord is said to have spoken with authority and here, also, it is the word of authority, “Go quickly”. Many hesitate in regard to what is divinely imperative, such as participation in the fellowship, and many other things involving privilege, but particularly requiring obedience. Many defer things for days, weeks, months, even years, and never really come to the thing. Hence, “Go quickly”. And they did. The message was sent by them. Think of the privilege,
[p. 343] dear brethren. If obedience is with us, then God will take us on; as the apostle says, as soon as your obedience is fulfilled, as soon as it is an actual and active thing in the heart, God will take us on for service, little or much. So the word is, “Go quickly and say to his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and behold, he goes before you into Galilee, there shall ye see him”. This is for service. Let no one hesitate if the word is clear, for divine authority can be enforced at any time. The divine presence is found with those who are subject, and in the end the Lord says, “And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”. But on what principle? On the principle of obedience and recognition of divine authority clearly enunciated.
Many a time one has asked young people if they have confessed the Lord Jesus, and they do not say anything, or answer in the negative, or only half-heartedly. Ask them if they have begun to break bread, and again the reply is negative. They have no deep sense of the divine authority or of the great privilege that is attached to it. The word here is, “Go quickly”, and they did. They ran and told His disciples. It is important, for young people especially, to note that these women did what they were told, and as they were told. Being told to go quickly, they went quickly. Do not hesitate or delay. Not only does the Spirit say they went out quickly, but that they ran, because the message was urgent. Is the Lord to be found waiting there for them? He is going before, but how long will He wait? Think of the Lord Jesus being obliged to wait. The disciples should know that they are to meet Him there. Suppose they came late and the Lord was to see that they were neglectful and withdraw Himself. They would miss Him. And so it may be with some of you who are delaying. You are not using the agility seen here. You may decide to go [p. 344] later on, but you may not find the Lord then. You will remember how the feminine speaker in the Canticles delayed to open the door to her beloved, and when she did so he was gone. How sorrowful! We may find these conditions with us, apathy, negligence, no recognition of divine authority, rights, or commands, and, when we make up our minds to go, He is gone. Her loved one was gone, leaving a testimony by the myrrh on the locks of the door.
These women went quickly and in going they ran, and the Lord met them. This is the privilege side. They were doing the right thing, carrying out the divine command, and as they were doing that the Lord met them, and not with a frown. It was “Hail!”, a salute. Think of the honour conferred on them. How many of us have experienced something of this in the path of obedience? The Lord meets us and says, “Hail!”. All is well. It is a felicitous word to set them on their way. They were already on their way and now they would quicken their pace. This matter of agility ought to be looked into, as many are slothful and neglectful. Psalm 22 is headed, ‘According to the hind of the morning’, which is a feminine thought. It is not masculine, it is not Christ’s agility that is in mind. He came up from the grave, He was heard from the horns of the unicorns, and immediately He says, “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee” (verse 22). He could say this because of the agility in the saints. It is evident that the assembly was already moving in principle; according to Luke the disciples were together in the evening and the Lord came in. It is a question of agility, but the hind of the morning is feminine agility, as in Mary Magdalene. “They ran”. It is a peculiar thought, a thought of love.
The Lord goes to Galilee. There is no discrepancy between Him and His message. Some doubted, we are told, but He does not stop here to put them right,
[p. 345] for it is a question of His carrying out the divine will. He is here, and everything has been given into His hand by the Father, and He is carrying it out, and if some hesitated or doubted, He went on and said, “All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth”. The word for power here is authority. He says to the eleven disciples, a broken number, “Go ... and make disciples of all the nations”. It is a broken number, and yet such an order was given to them by the lips of the Lord Jesus, not simply to spread the gospel, as in Mark, but to make disciples. What they were themselves, let others be like them. The disciples are to do that in view of all that He says: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you. And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”. This illustrates that the Lord’s presence is with those who are subject; that is my point. The Lord is with them. He does not make any condition here, the inference is that they were subject. Let no one assume that the Lord is with him unless he is subject.
I therefore venture to bring in Jacob, because the verses read point to subjection, that is, a man under orders. In these military times this thought is quite common: there can be no effective military operation apart from obedience. In spite of intensified democratic principles, when we come to military forces, there must be obedience and there is, too; that is, persons are under orders. There is something morally great in persons moving under orders and not according to their own wills. Jacob is moving under orders from both his father and his mother, and it is in a marital matter, a very important affair as regards young people. It is not a thing merely to be talked about, but it is something that enters into divine authority. Isaac and Rebecca, the father and the mother, are concerned about the wife of this son, and [p. 346] he obeyed his father and his mother, which is an important word for the young people; in fact their salvation lies in this. Many young persons have been ruined because of their marital connections, disregarding their father and mother. The father and mother in this incident represent divine authority, and Jacob is moving under orders. There is something morally great in this, because he is not a mere youth, but one advanced in years. He is not saying to his father and mother that it is his own business and not theirs. It was their business, for the authority of parents is to be recognised in these matters.
Here it is a heavenly matter, involving what is very practical, for it is a matter of households entering into the testimony. Esau had gone his own way, being a man of the field, and had taken wives where he had pleased, Hittites, worldly persons, and in this way had grieved Rebecca. But not so Jacob: he obeyed in this matter, doubtless as in others, his father and his mother. This affected Esau, who realised that he had not done so, but it was now too late. He endeavoured to make amends by taking other wives more nearly related to him, but the time had gone. He had failed in subjection, to his own and his parents’ sorrow, as many have done and are doing, to their ruin and sorrow. Obedience to parents is of supreme importance for young people.
Jacob is under orders. Alone he started out from Beer-sheba, the well of promise, the well of the oath. He started out with promise and the sense of the faithfulness of God, and God met him. He is under orders and God respects that attitude, and He appears to him. A ladder is set up from heaven. Jehovah above and Jacob below, and Jehovah promised him great things, and said to him, “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places to which thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done what I have spoken to thee of”, Genesis 28: 15. What a comfort that is, an unconditional promise! It is unconditional because he is a man under orders and obedient to his father and mother. He has this wonderful honour of an appearance from God: God above and the ladder linking Him with Jacob, angels ascending and descending, and God saying, “I am with thee ... and will bring thee again into this land”. It is the certainty of the divine promise to be with us on the principle of obedience to the end of the age. We cannot do without it; no one here can do without it, for salvation is impossible without the divine presence. The principle of authority governs the dispensation, and the advantages that lie in the Spirit come to those who are subject to authority.
God makes the promise here, hence the place Bethel has. It is the house of God, involving obedience, and is in keeping with Matthew, the way of the assembly being obedience to divine authority. The divine presence with us leads with certainty to Bethel, the house of God. Jacob named it, which is another thing. In obedience we begin to name divine things, indeed we know how to name them, a principle that began with Adam and now is seen in Jacob. He calls this place Beth-el, the house of God.
We refer now to chapter 35 to show how this movement went on. Jacob went to Shechem and got into trouble after building a house there. He is on the way back to Bethel, but stops, as many do, alas! Paul says, “Ye ran well, who has stopped you ... ?”. We should enquire as to why a person has been stopped. It has happened to some of the Lord’s people and they are now dark in their souls. What has happened? The world has offered something attractive, some mixed marriage perhaps, and we settle down at Shechem and get into trouble, disgrace, and even danger. God will come in here for someone tonight, when He says, “Arise, go up to Bethel”. This is the word, for Jehovah is still there, “And dwell there”. Is there anyone here dwelling elsewhere, once happily with the Lord’s people, but now no longer with them? God would say to you, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there”. It was not an unknown place to Jacob. In fact, he had been in it and he himself named it. It is often most pathetic having to deal with souls who have been in the place but are there no longer. It was Bethel, the house of God, which Jacob himself had named, but he is no longer there and has been away for twenty years. Maybe someone here is like that, his privileges abandoned these many years, and to such a one God says, “Arise, go up to Bethel”. It is not necessary to tell Jacob where the place is, or what is meant in the name, because Jacob knew all this, and you know, too, but something has happened, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there”.
The Shunammite says, “I dwell among mine own people”. The prophet had said to her, “Wouldest thou be spoken for to the king?” (2 Kings 4: 13), but she sought no such honour. Will you not arise and return to your own people, or do you not value them? Maybe you are looking out on the world with longing eyes, feeling the barrier, perhaps placed there by your father and mother, or some other circumstances which separate you from the world, and you are just not content with your own people, but these are the people God will dwell with for ever. If you are a real christian, these are the people; they are your own people, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”, Ruth 1: 16. Jacob knew, but he was no longer there. He had stopped on the way. He started out, but stopped on the way and got into trouble, met disaster, and was in the greatest danger of being engulfed by the opposition of the world. God came in at that moment and says, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there”. And he did. Jacob [p. 349] went up. I want to show that God was with him. The terror of God was against his enemies, and nothing can happen to him under divine protection and in the place of obedience, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there”. He knew what the place was, that it was holy. You cannot take anything that is defiling with you there. All your idols must be buried under the oak at Shechem. The idols are left, but his family and all the people that were with him he has taken up with him. Many people, alas, have lost their children during the days of their worldliness, but Jacob did not. He brought them with him, and God was with him. God came in at the moment so that his family is brought up with him. It is a remarkable statement from verse 9 to the end of verse 15. It is an account by itself of the recovering of this saint, to confirm what has already been said in the earlier verses, 6 to 8. Verse 6 reads, “Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him”. We are to take note of the fact that Luz is Bethel, the very place that Jacob had named, and now he is going there and God appears to him. Jacob builds an altar there. He had built one at Shechem in connection with himself, but now God has appeared to him and is with him, so that he builds an altar to God and calls it El-Beth-el, that is God, the God of Bethel. He had come back to God.
This is the end of matters in one sense, for coming back to God is the end of everything, but then the Spirit of God comes down to tell us more, “God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Padan-Aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I am the Almighty God, be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee;
[p. 350] and kings shall come out of thy loins. And the land that I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him”. That is very beautiful: “In the place where he had talked with him”. I am stressing, dear brethren, that in obedience God is there, no longer at the top of the ladder, but right beside the obedient christian, sitting with him. In changing his name the full position is made clear. Not only have we Jacob’s name now Israel, but we have the Almighty God. God makes His name known to him there and Jacob has the sense that God is pleased with him. I do not know of anything more to be desired than that, the sense that, as we are in the place of obedience, God is pleased with us.
We have often noted that Jacob set up a pillar in the place where God talked with him: “A pillar of stone, and poured on it a drink-offering, and poured oil on it”. Instead of the altar earlier, with no drink-offering, here a drink-offering is poured on it for God’s satisfaction. In the earlier incident Jacob was thinking of his own things, and what God would do for him for his own satisfaction, but now he is thinking of God’s satisfaction, and that speaks of the position of the assembly, for God would have us reach the point where we are sensible that God is pleased with us. Jacob anoints the pillar with oil. Properly speaking, only that with which God is pleased can be anointed, as we see in perfection in Jesus. The Spirit came upon Him and God said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight”. So that what is pleasing to God is anointed, and what is anointed is to be used in the dignity of service; therefore Jacob called the name of the place where He talked with him Bethel. He renames it, and it is now more the house of God to him than ever before. How many have such an experience? It is a second [p. 351] conversion. Some have more than two, but the second is peculiarly blessed. Jacob is now in Bethel as never before, and he is sensible that God is not only with him, but pleased with him, as the drink-offering on the pillar implies, and not only that, but the pillar is anointed, for Jacob is now also in the testimony.