THE PRESENT TIME
R. Taylor
1 Peter 1: 1–9; Romans 8: 18; 1 Corinthians 3: 9–16
I would like the Lord’s help to say a word as to the “present time”. In its widest application it would refer to this whole dispensation. There has never been a time like the present dispensation which has been enriched and illuminated by the fact that a Man has gone into heaven. There is a Man already in final conditions. That has never been before. We are in provisional surroundings and circumstances, but into them, as never before, has come the light of final conditions. In previous dispensations there was the idea of covenant, man’s responsibility, but into this dispensation has shone the glory of a Man who has gone into heaven. As if that were not enough, scripture says He has gone into “heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us”, Hebrews 9: 24. Nothing I could say could enhance the richness of these words. He has gone into heaven to appear before the face of God for us. So while we are in provisional circumstances and surroundings, the present time has been enriched by the light and glory of final conditions. This is to regulate us in our present circumstances. Paul says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are the most miserable of all men”, 1 Corinthians 15: 19. Our aspirations, our objectives, our plans for our careers, are they bounded by death? Is that going to terminate all the aspirations that are beating in your heart tonight? May our hearts be filled with the glory of another world. The embracing of it is to enrich us, to encourage and strengthen us in the midst of the present surroundings. You remember the Sadducees brought to the Lord the case of a woman, enquiring, ‘In the resurrection whose wife would she be?’ They reasoned round it, how could it work out? The Lord’s answer to that was about another world. He says, “they who are counted worthy to have part in that world, and the resurrection from among the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage”, Luke 20: 35.
The light of that world can solve countless difficulties. Administrative matters may come up or questions in our histories and we may enquire what men would say about them. The light of another world brings a different viewpoint into the present circumstances. That world has different standards on which it administers, that world of which Christ is the blessed centre.
The Lord would encourage our hearts by the light of that coming into these difficult times in which we are. Even as the people were in the wilderness, God was bringing to them the light of the land. He says to them, “When ye come into the land of your dwellings”, Numbers 15: 2. They were not to dwell in the wilderness. They were to pass through it. Some of them died there. It was all they knew. How sad that was. Caleb and Joshua came into the land they longed for. May the longings grow in our hearts for that heavenly land we love!
I read in Peter because there we have persons who were suffering under the governmental circumstances that God had brought in. That is our position today. I do not use that word lightly. The economic problems of today in this country, you may say, are in the government of God, and we are part of it. The recession, unemployment, people having to economise, these are all part of God’s ways. Peter here is encouraging the brethren not only to accept them but to live in them in the light of another’ day. There is, too, what has come into religious circles, scattering, reproach, dispersion. People are suffering, and we suffer through not having our brethren. We never come to this place without thinking of some of them. We miss them. God misses them. What are we to do—despair? Some have looked on the breakdown and have given up. They have said, Things are so broken and confused, how can we know a right way? We see here in Peter, that in the midst of these happenings, God is bringing in, the light and glory of another set of circumstances where all
depends on Him. Peter says, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. These verses bring out that divine Persons are very near and very real to us. The Father has had to do with us. Is He going to change His mind? In the ways of God there are things that we pass through individually and collectively, but the government of God is always for us. It may be reducing us. Maybe we got too big. It may cause us to pull in a bit, but I believe in the end it is all to cause us to value divine things increasingly, that our faith and hope might be in God.
We may rest in these other things. These people were driven out of their country. They did not only lose their jobs, but they were driven out of their country. But Peter says, Be that as it may, you are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Before ever these happenings were necessary in His ways to chasten and discipline us, He elected, He chose to have us. He passed by many others. Elect, not because men have made the selection, but
“elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. See how God has come into this dispensation. Divine Persons have made Themselves very real to us and very near to us, and maybe the sorrows and sufferings of the present time are to make the Father and the Spirit and the Son all the more real to us. They never change. If in my ways I have departed, the Father still looks on me as one of His sons. There is no mistake in that, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. The economy has come onto view. The Persons were always there but they have come into these relationships in the present time, in grace making Themselves indispensable to us. May we learn, dear brethren, that the government of God is for us.
In it all there is “the proving of your faith”. But before that Peter speaks of, “an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance, reserved in the heavens for you”. It is the great goal on which our eye
is to be set. No man could ever propose this for you. It is reserved in the heavens beyond the reach of man and unaffected by the breakdown; unaffected too by your history and mine.
God’s ways and His thoughts and His counsels all revolve round Christ, “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. There is a whole new world opened up, founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is the light that has come into these circumstances in which we are at the moment. He is the blessed assurance that we will come into it, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead. What powers were there against Christ.
Scripture says the kings of the earth were there against the Lord and against His Christ; Herod, Pontius Pilate, the nations, all the power that men could muster was gathered together against God (Acts 4: 26, 27). They sealed the stone at the tomb. The whole power of the world that the enemy could energise was there to keep Christ in death, but He has been raised from among the dead, given a place of glory and honour, the blessed assurance that we have an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance. It is all centred in Him, and the power that raised Christ from among the dead is working for us, on our behalf. Paul says, “all things are yours, Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death ... all are yours”, 1 Corinthians 3: 21, 22. Our faith is being proved. Where is it? Is it in a company? Is it determined by the numbers in the company? Is it determined by the social standing of persons? No, our faith is in a Man who has been raised. The amount of it may vary, it may be
“faith as a grain of mustard seed” (see Matthew 17: 20), but what is important is that it is in a Man who has been raised. We are being tested at the moment as to our links with Christ.
When other props on which we have leaned are broken and removed, we are brought to lean more heavily on Christ. Our faith is in a Man who is already in final conditions. May He become increasingly precious to us! That is what Peter is trying to develop
with these suffering brethren, “To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious ... To you therefore who believe is the preciousness”, 1 Peter 2: 4–7. How precious Christ is! How real is it to me that God, through grace, has given me to have part in another order of things outside of what this world can provide? It says, “the proving of your faith, much more precious than of gold”. It will go through. What is worked out through faith will go through from these provisional circumstances into eternal conditions. The faith of the saints, the righteousnesses of the saints, that is what comes out through the proving of our faith. The Lamb’s wife is said to have made herself ready and be clothed in fine linen which is the righteousnesses of the saints (see Revelation 19: 8). What the day will declare of the proving of our faith! Peter says it is much more precious than of gold though it be proved by fire, and it will be found to praise and glory and honour in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
That is what we are looking for, we do not expect wonderful things here. We are thankful for the mercy that meets us and helps us through, but what we are looking for is the revelation of Jesus Christ, the One who at the moment is hidden from the world. We are looking for the time when He will be manifested. He will not be alone then, but the saints will be manifested with Him in glory. What a time it will be! What a tribute it is to the Spirit’s work that there has been gathered up in this present time a vessel which will be eternally the counterpart of Christ. Be it in administration or be it in praise Godward, whatever it is, He will never be alone again. Once He was alone, once He tasted loneliness as no one else could ever do, but when He is manifested the assembly will be with Him. Those whose faith has been proved will be justified too in the revelation of Jesus Christ. It will be seen then that what men despised was precious to heaven. May it encourage us, dear brethren, in all that there is at the moment, that we are looking for the revelation of Jesus Christ. How worthy He is to
be revealed! All shall bow in honour and tribute to Him then. “Whom, having not seen, ye love”, he says, “on whom though not now looking” with the natural eye, “but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable”. May we be helped, dear brethren, to have more of this “joy unspeakable and filled with the glory”. Peter then says, “receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls”. It is not body salvation; it is soul salvation. The saints are suffering in their bodies, there is much weakness, but this is what is vital. May our hearts be strengthened in these ways that God is passing us through, the hand of His love lying behind them all. May our feelings be developed as we feel the present time, but may we see that our faith is nourished, and seek to nourish and stimulate faith in one another.
Paul speaks about the sufferings of the present time. He says they are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory. How real they were! He was soon to be in Rome, bound with a chain. I do not think he changed his thoughts. I do not know how much he had suffered to this point, but he had known what it was to be in a city shut up and to escape the hands of men by being let down through the wall in a basket. He had known humiliation and the plots of the Jews. He says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory”. He did not speak about them too much. We may speak too much about the sufferings of the present time and not enough about the coming glory. Later, as I said, Paul was in this city, bound with a chain. I like to think of one and another going to visit him. You can think of them saying to him, ‘Well, Paul, that is a heavy chain you have round you’. Perhaps a hard soldier was standing by his side. Paul’s answer would refer to the coming glory. He would not allow them to speak too much about the sufferings of the present time, real as he felt them, and as we are meant to feel them. As they were visiting Paul, perhaps taking him a present, they would be thinking of his sufferings, but if they looked over his shoulder maybe Paul was
writing to the Ephesians about the counsel of divine love. Perhaps when they went in he was praying, and maybe they would hear his prayer, “I bow my knees to the Father ... of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named”, Ephesians 3: 14, 15. There is a man who believed that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory. May our hearts accept Paul’s reckoning. It was not a light matter with him. He had weighed it all up and the balance is all on one side, the coming glory. The sufferings are not worthy to be compared. He said no more about it. He did not check the books again to see whether he had made a mistake. The matter was finished in his eyes. The coming glory shone within him. How real is it to us, dear brethren?
It may be tonight we shall be ushered into it, but it is coming anyway. The fulness of it will be the day of display, but for us who believe it will be when we see Him. John says, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2. That will not be public, it will be private, and John’s heart was longing for it. How great and blessed the change will be when we see Him, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. Do we know much about Him, dear brethren, as He is? It has been well said, ‘We may know more about Jesus as He was than Jesus as He is’. It is what He is today, what He is in heaven, the same Man as the Man of the Gospels, the Man who was here in humiliation, we shall see Him then in all His personal glory. What a sight! The same Man but the surroundings will be different. It is like the mount of transfiguration. The Man who went undistinguishable from the rest of men, we may say, but on that holy mount His garments became changed. His face shone as the sun.
Oh, what a sight Peter had! You can understand Peter encouraging the saints as he had a sight of the glory in the face of Jesus Christ. How precious the mount of transfiguration was to Peter! You can understand how he would bring out in his epistle the majesty that was in Christ. Majesty is not in the
governments of this world. Majesty belongs to Jesus. Governments may be persecuting the saints today, but majesty in its finality is in the hands of Christ. Things are working out from Him. Paul says, “the coming glory to be revealed to us”. May we be encouraged to speak more about it than the sufferings of the present time. We are not unfeeling, but may the coming glory be more real to us. The service of God goes on by overcomers, in whose hearts the light of the coming glory is precious. They are strengthened in the Spirit’s grace to give glory and honour and praise to their blessed and glorious Lord.
In Corinthians we have the collective setting as to the present time. Paul is writing to this company where man’s will was very strong. Present circumstances at Corinth were stamped, you might say, by man. Paul has to write to them that that is not how things stand. There was mixture at Corinth as there is with us. To correct that Paul strove in that local company to present Jesus Christ, that Man alone. The great leaders at Corinth are all put out of court as Paul presents Jesus Christ and Him crucified (see 1 Corinthians 2: 2). So he is bringing before them, and before us, the foundation, “other foundation can no man lay besides that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. It has been laid. It is the ground on which we would seek to gather. It is what is to give character to the local assembly. We should just test ourselves as to the ground we are on, to use a common expression. Is our ground of gathering this foundation, Jesus Christ? There are many companies, but what is the foundation that has been laid? In his second epistle to Timothy Paul speaks of the foundation of God, “the firm foundation of God stands” (2 Timothy 2: 19). That is the general position. What men may do brings in confusion but there is what stands that can be laid hold of. This is not quite the same but it has the same character. “Other foundation can no man lay”. There has been interference with what Paul has said. That is the day we are in, men have interfered with the apostle’s teaching and have introduced something else; churches that have men’s names in them, for example. How can that be a foundation or ground of gathering? Paul says, “other foundation can no man lay besides that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. Our gathering together is to be in accord with that precious blessed Man, Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “if any one build upon this foundation”. We gather together and what is before us is this Man, Jesus Christ, no other man. At Corinth there were other men, and the saints may have patterned themselves after some of those leaders, taken on their habits and so on. Paul says the gathering is to be marked by no other man but Jesus Christ. So he says, “if any one build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones”. Can I bring a touch into the local meeting that is in accord with this Man, Jesus Christ, or am I bringing in something of myself, or of a party leader? Am I promoting some person that appeals to me, or is what I am contributing in the local assembly patterned after and in accord with the foundation which is Jesus Christ. Paul is really saying that if you give out a hymn in the meeting, or make a remark in the reading, or give a word in the ministry meeting, is it in accord with the foundation? Is what I am contributing promoting Jesus Christ? Well, to obtain these things you have to be a miner. You do not just gather them on the way to the meeting. You do not just put out your hand and pick what is on the by-ways. Gold, silver and precious stones are mined, they involve divine workmanship. Did ever man make gold? They have tried it, but this is referring to what God alone can make. There are no imitation pearls there. Gold, silver and precious stones refer to what is gained through exercise by looking at the foundation. So our contributions (and we all make some contribution in our ways, our habits, our dress, our attitude), are they in accord with the foundation? You see the brethren coming in and you see something of Christ in their histories; you can take account of the gold, the silver and the precious stones. There may be other things, but
may we be encouraged to contact the gold, the silver and the precious stones in one another and seek to stimulate that. Paul says, “if any one build upon this foundation”. So let us look at our contributions to the local meeting in our manner of life, our habits, our attitude to life.
Are they in accord with the foundation which is Jesus Christ? Nothing else! Jesus Christ, that Man who had endeared Himself to them, that is the foundation.
He says there are other things, but each will be made manifest, the day will declare it, because it will be revealed in fire. There are things about us that will be burned up, “but he shall be saved”. But how blessed to have part in contributing something that will go through the fire. It will be tested but it goes through. It is all the brighter, all the richer, all the more valued as it has gone through the fire. It says, “the fire shall try the work of each what it is”.
That is very sobering. We are apt to become very loose as to what we may bring in and the standards that we employ. There are two points—one, we look to the foundation, which is Jesus Christ, and the other, we are looking on to the day when the fire will try the work of each. There is nothing which passes His holy gaze. Careless words, a careless manner of handling divine things, a wrong spirit, these things do not pass by His gaze, “the day shall declare it”. We do not look on it with fear, but in order that in that day we may be well-pleasing unto Him. May the day in which the work will be tried thus regulate us. Spurgeon had a dream one night, during a most successful period of his ministry, in which someone appeared to him who said that he was going to analyse his zeal. He took it and ground it all down in a mortar and at the end of the day it was analysed. Spurgeon awaited the report, thinking that it would be good. The report said, Zeal to God three per cent, the rest man. He said he prayed as never before, Lord save me from myself. He saw that previously mixture had come into his service, but now he saw that the whole point was to glorify Christ, to magnify
Him. So that, “If the work of any one which he has built upon the foundation shall abide, he shall receive a reward”.
The Lord has committed certain things to us, the parable of the minas would bring that out.
The Lord has committed something to us all. There is a very beautiful touch in that parable where it says, “Trade while I am coming”, Luke 19: 13. He might have said, ‘Trade while I am away’, but that would not have been the same. He says, “Trade while I am coming”. So in the trading, the contributions we are making, we are looking on to that day, to the time when,
“the day shall declare it ... and the fire shall try the work of each what it is”. May our hearts be sobered and yet encouraged to fill out our part in the local gatherings of the saints. So Paul goes on, “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God”. What beautiful adornment the temple had. Are those glorious precious stones and the gold that the temple was adorned with to be marred by man’s intrusion? No, dear brethren. “Do ye not know”, he says. At Corinth, with their parties and their habits and customs, they must have been arrested by that word.
May it arrest us too, in each local company where we are, small, feeble it may be, “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God”. It is to enhance the local gathering in our eyes and may it enhance our contributions to it, so that in every place where God has placed His name, there is what is according to His mind and for His glory, and for His glory alone. May it be so, for His name’s sake!
Address at Grangemouth, 14 November 1992
THE BELIEVER RECEIVING
C. F. Dadd
Luke 19: 1–10; Acts 19: 1–3; 2 Corinthians 5: 9–11
The gospel is still going out. What grace on the part of God that the word of God is still being preached! Man changes, man becomes deeper and deeper in sin, evil, violence, corruption, but God does not change, we change, He changes not. The God who has been using men in the proclamation of the glad tidings for nearly two thousand years, is still doing it. What a day we live in, the day of grace, and the message is still going out, and it is going out in a greater way today than we have ever seen it in our lifetime. Many people are hearing the word for the first time. Bibles are being spread to persons who have never seen a Bible in their lives. This is what is going on in the very time in which we live. You cannot help but feel that it is just prior to the rapture. The Lord is waiting the word from the Father, because that is in His hand. How men have been trying to predict the closing of the dispensation, and of course they cannot do it. Why? Because it is in the hands of the Father, and the Lord says that is where it is going to stay, but divine Persons are doing great things. You look back over the past year and say, What an amazing year it has been. This is the first Lord’s day of the New Year, and it is a time to look back. We know the assembly calendar is based on the week, seven days, but you can look back in the year and see amazing things having happened; the challenge to you and me is. Is there anything that has happened in you or in me which we can look at and say. Is that not wonderful, it is the work of God? It is a great thing to be able to locate the work of God in your own soul. We are supposed to be able to do this because there is that in believers which is indestructible, it represents new creation, and this is what is going through to a coming day. All that you are in flesh and blood, all the time you spend in
trying to build up the first man, all the efforts that go into business, and into your education, it is all going to go, there is not a thing going to remain. The only thing that is going through to eternity is the work of God in your soul. If we can get this fastened into our minds it might be that we will rearrange our priorities, and we will start to emphasize more the great things of God.
That is what they began with in the beginning of this dispensation. They heard the great things of God proclaimed in their own languages, and it is a marvellous thing that the great things of God are still being proclaimed. Even if the word goes out in weakness, we thank God for every place where the word of God is being sounded out. It is not returning to God void, it is accomplishing that for which it is sent. But the challenge is whether it is accomplishing something in your soul and mine. What has been the change in you and me over the past year? Am I more devoted now than I was a year ago? Am I more committed?
Am I reading more of the Scriptures? Am I reading more of the ministry? No one has to ask you directly questions regarding your own activities, you can take your own pulse yourself and just see how you are getting on. I would like to appeal to every one of us to take a fresh look. What has happened in your soul and mine over the past year? Well, the Lord is interested; the Spirit of God is interested. They are labouring. The Lord when He was here said, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work”, John 5: 17. Just think of divine Persons working, all in view of reaching Their ends, all in view of reaching something in your soul and mine. So that we should be here not as those who are marked by earthly mindedness or worldliness. It is so easy to be caught up in the flow of what is in the world. It is very attractive, it was attractive when I was a young man, and I suppose it is much more attractive today than it was then. The enemy has many more enticements to use to draw us aside and divert us than he had fifty or sixty years ago; he has become more skilful, and he has more things to
offer to you. The world is full of glitter, but there are the wages of sin, and there are the pleasures of sin for a season.
But I would like to attract you to Christ; I would like you to receive Christ. You say, I have known the Lord, I confessed the Lord ten years ago, or three years ago, or two years ago.
That might be, and if it is true, thank God for that because that is the work of God in your soul. I would like to attract you to Christ so that you become attached to Him, that is the test.
As you go through times of difficulty and exercise and concern, what holds you is attachment to Christ. You can be a believer but you can still wander and go off into the world. When you are attached to Christ you have something that is firm, the foundation is firm; you have something that will hold you when the going gets difficult. One said years ago that Christianity is one crisis after another. We do not like crises and we do not like conflict, we would rather things go along easily. God does not allow us to go through easily; He works with us. He brings discipline into our lives. I can go back to my early twenties and I can remember well the talk about discipline. I could not see discipline coming into my life, but how patient and tender God was. He waited, but the time came when the necessity of discipline came into my life, and it will into yours. But what will take you through is attachment to Christ; there is no substitute for it. Young people, and older ones too, want to think about this. Peter spoke about attachment to the Lord, he said, “thou knowest that I am attached to thee”, John 21: 17. The Lord could trust Peter because he was attached to Him, and that is what He is looking for now. The Lord wants to be able to trust you. It is wonderful to be one of the Lord’s confidantes, whom He can trust. He could not trust everybody when He was here; He trusted Peter. He trusted James and John, these men were trustworthy. Now the testimony is to be extended in persons that are trustworthy. We would like to qualify for that. I would like to qualify and
be one of the Lord’s men that He can trust. These things are open to us, and we can be here as rightly representing Christ.
I read about Zacchaeus, because it says he received the Lord gladly—“Jesus looked up and saw him ... And he made haste and came down, and received him with joy”. One of the things that marks Zacchaeus is that he is an interested man. If we are interested the Lord can do something with us. It is very difficult for the Lord to do something with us if we are not interested, but if we show some indication of interest, the Lord will link on with that and He can use it. Zacchaeus was interested, and I would like to direct you to Christ so that you might be interested in the Lord, interested in His things, interested in His people and in the continuity of the testimony. We have not long to go, but the Lord needs men and women to see the thing through to completion. Paul was going off the scene but he could confide in Timothy. Timothy meant so much to Paul because he was a man in whom things would be continued, and he was to pass things on to trustworthy persons who were able to do as he would do in the spreading of the word.
Well, Zacchaeus was interested. Are we all interested in Christ; interested in the gospel? You have come along, it may be because your father and mother brought you. I did that for years so that is nothing new, many of us did that, we came to the gospel because our parents brought us along. What better place could we be? Maybe I wanted to be in some other place, and maybe sometimes you do too. But there is no better place for you to be than within the sound of the glad tidings. So Zacchaeus is an interesting man. He was short, he could not see because of the crowd; so what does he do? He runs on ahead and he climbs up a tree and he looks down as the Lord comes along. You say, he should not have been looking down on the Lord. Maybe you are right to say that. But the Lord says, I am interested in that man up there—Zacchaeus come on
down. I do not suppose that Zacchaeus thought the Lord was going to point to him and say, Look, I want to have a talk with you. Would it not be good for us if we had that feeling that the Lord is interested in us, and wants to have a talk with us? It would be wonderful to have a personal talk with the Lord Jesus. So Zacchaeus comes down, and the Lord says to him, Zacchaeus, I am going to come to your house today. What a surprise that would have been; he did not have to rush around and hide a lot of things, he did not have to do that. No, he says, Lord here is my life style, and he says certain things and the Lord is affected by what Zacchaeus said. Of course the Lord knew His man, and He knows us; the innermost thoughts of our hearts are all known to Him. We think sometimes the Lord does not know; the Lord knows everything. He knows even your thoughts. Nothing takes the Lord by surprise. So Zacchaeus comes down, and the Lord goes to his house. Zacchaeus in the meantime says,
“Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor”. He is telling the Lord how good he is, and the Lord listens to him. It was the special collection today and the Lord saw what you put in. The Lord sat over against the treasury and He saw how they were casting into the treasury. He saw a widow there and she cast in a very small amount, but the Lord says that she has given everything, she has given her all. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. It is a good thing to get on that line because that is set out in Christ, it is set out in divine Persons, the great idea of giving “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son”, John 3: 16. The Lord gave Himself, and then we are given the gift of the Spirit, we come to that next. The whole divine system is marked by wonderful giving, and we want to be in the spirit of that. It is a wonderful thing to get a touch that divine Persons have given us everything that is needed to see us through.
The Lord says, “for the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost”. Is there anybody lost here today? There might be somebody here that
has not really put their trust in Christ. It has been amazing to me over the years, that persons have gone off on their own line, and after they go away out into the world, all of a sudden they hear a gospel preaching and they are changed. They find that having heard the gospel preached maybe hundreds of times they had never really got the point, they had never really received Christ. It says of Zacchaeus that he received Him with joy. What a moment it is in our lives when we receive Jesus. It says at the beginning of John’s gospel, “He came to his own, and his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name”, John 1: 11, 12. One of the great things that you can be is one of the children of God. What a family to belong to! We have our own families and we are often quite proud of them, but we are humbled through our families. You find the flesh is the flesh, and it is the same in you and me, and we are liable to all kinds of things, because of the terrible character of the flesh, that possibly we thought we were never liable to. One could write about the fact that the heart is desperately wicked, deceitful above all things, and who can know it (see Jeremiah 17: 9). You read that and it is objective to you, but that is you and me; the deceitfulness of our own hearts, who can know it? You see things coming out and you know it is the flesh, but the Lord said He had “come to seek and to save that which is lost”. There is no need for anyone to be lost. What a day of grace! What a day of salvation! There is no need for anyone in this room to go out of the door without having received Christ. When you get Christ into your heart you will have a sense of salvation; you will have a sense of a power coming into your life which you had never experienced before.
In Acts 19 the apostle goes to Ephesus, and he said to certain disciples, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye had believed?” They said to him, “We did not even hear if the Holy Spirit was come”. I would like to put that question to every one of us, “Did ye receive the
Holy Spirit when ye had believed?” We are talking about something that is extremely important, that is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit you will never know the enjoyment of Christianity; you will never really be in the joy of salvation. You need the Spirit of God for these things; the enjoyment of everything down here lies in the Spirit. The whole sphere of testimony has been committed to Him. You want to come into the joy of Christianity; you want to come into the power of Christianity; you want to have a living link with Christ where He is; you need the Spirit of God for these things. Christ is in heaven, we are here, what is your link with Christ where He is? It is the Spirit of God, giving us a living link with Jesus at the right hand of God. You need the Spirit. I would appeal to our young people who maybe have been breaking bread five years, maybe eight, maybe ten. I would like to put this question to you fairly and directly, Have you received the Spirit of God since you believed? Maybe you have not received the Spirit and yet it is the greatest gift we can ever receive. You will never receive a gift greater than the Spirit of God, because He is a divine Person and nothing can be greater than that. I would just like to fasten that question on every one of us, as to whether we have received the gift of the Spirit since we believed. Paul is not talking to unbelievers, he is talking to twelve men at Ephesus, who were the nucleus of a remarkable locality. We like to speak about it because it is so wonderful, the spiritual attitude that marked them, the way Paul was able to minister at Ephesus like no other locality, for he says, “I have not shrunk from announcing to you all the counsel of God”, Acts 20: 27. Things were opened up there but the Spirit of God is the key.
They said they did not know that the Spirit had come. After Paul had spoken to them, it goes on, “And when they heard that, they were baptised to the name of the Lord Jesus. And Paul having laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied”. So the Holy Spirit came upon
them; that is a wonderful thing. The Spirit is here now and He is ready to fall on us. You know the embrace of the father to the son returning in Luke 15, is like the Spirit of God coming upon us now; it is a horizontal falling. There was only one time when the Spirit of God descended after the Lord Jesus was glorified (Acts 2: 1–4); now it is a horizontal falling, and the Spirit of God is ready to make Christianity real to us. Meantime you may struggle along but the Spirit of God is ready to help us get through, and show the evidence of the fact that we have arrived at something substantial. Just think of the Lord ready to give us this gift to fill our hearts with the joy that He will bring.
Then I read the scripture in 2 Corinthians 5, where it says, “For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to those he has done, whether it be good or evil”. Now maybe you do not believe this; but we will all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ. There is the great white throne in Revelation 21, and persons will be brought before it but they are unbelievers. They have rejected the gospel, they have rejected Christ. So we need to consider seriously this reality that every believer will appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. We need to think about this because this scripture tells us that we will receive the things done in the body whether good or evil. I am not saying anything that is new. Believers are going to have this private moment with Christ. These things are not going to be before the gazing eyes of the world, but everything done in the body, both good and evil, is going to be reviewed before the judgment-seat of Christ, and we shall have the Lord’s assessment of everything. It says here, “Wherefore also we are zealous, whether present or absent, to be agreeable to him. For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to those he has done, whether it be good or evil”. There is no way around it,
we must all be manifested and we must all receive; never mind what you thought yourself; you might have high ideas about things, but the Lord’s judgment is going to be the one that really counts. When we go into final conditions we will have the assessment of the Lord Jesus as to everything done in the body, both good and evil.
But the thing is that now we want to have the Lord’s judgment about matters. Let us be with the Lord as to matters in our own lives. I appeal to you again, as I did at the beginning. Take a fresh look at your life, just assess these things that you are going on with; these places to which you go, and these things that you do. Can you take the Lord there? Can the Lord be with you when you go to these places and do these things? I am not charging anybody because I do not know. I do not know your life any more than you know mine. Go into the presence of Christ, and get the Lord’s judgment of what you are going on with, and just see if there are not some changes that need to be made. I am saying it for myself too, maybe there are some changes that need to be made. Let us be amenable. Let us receive the judgment of the Lord Jesus at the present time, and know what it is to be here as He was here, pleasurable to God. He pleased God in everything that He did. May this be our portion for His name’s sake.
Preaching at Kirkcaldy, 5 January 1992
EXTRACTS
This is one of the greatest thoughts, I suppose, with those of us who would remain with the saints, and, of course, it is our privilege as it was Paul’s to desire this. There can be no doubt that if we were really concerned about the needs of the brethren and that we should stay here instead of dying and departing to be with Christ, the Lord would hear our prayers, for a prayer of that kind is
doubtless quite acceptable to the Lord. There is great need at the present time, and so there is an opportunity for many of us here to be on those lines. It is not done selfishly, it is not for our families, or our own interests, but for the sake of the saints. Paul did not have a family, but he had the saints; he called them his children, and he was a father to them; he says to the Corinthians that they had not many fathers, but he was one, and John was a father to the saints too. There is, perhaps, nothing the saints need more than fathers. A young man is not a father. A father is a person of age and experience, and he knows that the age and experience going with it qualify him to be of some service to the Lord’s people. He thinks of the Lord’s people, and prays to the Lord that he would like to stay with the brethren. I do not hesitate to say that; for I have an exercise about that very thing, to stay with the brethren, if it be the Lord’s will. For that we must be kept alive, for if we are not alive morally we are of very little use to the brethren. We may have means, money and the like, to help young people, but there is very little in that. The real value of money is very small, unless the moral side is behind it, and the moral side is in the person who has it being kept alive by God. It is a very great thing that God does such things as that. He kept Hezekiah alive, adding fifteen years to his life. He kept Moses alive until he was one hundred and twenty; and He kept Caleb alive till he was eighty-five. I do not know how many years more, no doubt it could be found out, but he was alive till he was eighty-five, and he was a good father, too, and would be a good neighbour, I am sure, and a good brother. The point, in any case, is to be kept alive by God, and God is occupied just now in keeping alive His beloved people. He has us here on earth, and He watches over us, and not only would He keep us well in body, but keep us alive in the true sense of the word, so that we are walking about this earth as a living people.
J. Taylor (Vol. 63, pp.324, 325)
Acting collectively as in 2 Timothy 2: 22 is not sectarian—it is manifestly right. It is no question of taking public assembly ground, nor is Matthew 18: 20 taking public assembly ground. The assembly is, however, in our hearts as we are gathered together according to that verse. Otherwise how could we partake of the Lord’s supper?
Any individual ground we take that robs us of 1 Corinthians or Scripture generally is not of God. That we should avoid taking a public assembly position, seeing only a fragment of those who are nominal Christians in a given town are available and thus that remnant conditions exist, is surely morally right, facts supporting it; but nevertheless, in our hearts and in actual fact in the observance of assembly order, those following righteousness do humbly take collective ground and God honours it; He is with them. Philadelphia is owned by the Lord.
Revelation 3: 7–13, in a collective sense. It is a question of what is in our minds and hearts in a humble, unpretentious attitude and what is also in the Lord’s mind according to the written inspired page.
J. Taylor (‘Letters’ Vol. 2, p.318)
The parents brought the children to Jesus, and the disciples rebuked them, but the Lord said
“Suffer the little children to come”. These are the things you would expect. The children ought to begin young, and if they can learn ordinary things from a youthful book, why not learn the things of God in that way? Why not learn the truth of the Lord’s supper in that way?
It is something they can take in, that the Lord has made a request that they should do this for the calling of Him to mind.
J. Taylor (Vol. 64, p.322)
The arm that sustains you when you learn to swim will one day be removed, and you must go alone, yet not alone, but by faith in the Lord of Glory.
Enoch walked by faith for 300 years, but he walked with God, and God took him. For faith there is no break—the spirit goes to God who gave it—the walk has reached its goal, its prize. Faith has become rapture—presence—with me where I am”.
J. B. Stoney
Now one word as to life. I think life practically is the enjoyment of the relationships in which it has pleased God to place us. In one sense, it is the power to enjoy the relationships; in another sense, it may be spoken of as the enjoyment of the relationships. If I speak of business life, I mean the associations and connections of business. Family life is in the affections and associations and connections of the family. And so in divine things. Life according to God is the enjoyment of the relationships and associations in which it has pleased God to place us—not the natural relationships, but the spiritual ones; and if we are to enter into the enjoyment of these spiritual relationships there must of necessity be the fellowship of the death of Christ. If we are not prepared to accept that, we are greatly hindered in the enjoyment of the relationships of life.
Now it is a great thing to be in the enjoyment of eternal things. We have a great deal to do with temporal things, but they are all transient; the great point is to be living in the relationships with which life according to God is connected. There is no single relationship of earth but what is dominated by death, but the relationships which God has been pleased to establish are all connected with a living God.
F. E. Raven (Vol. 14, p.113)
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