HOW WE MAY BE KNOWN OF GOD
R. Taylor
1 Corinthians 8: 1–3; Exodus 3: 3–8; Psalm 89: 20, 21; 132: 1–6; Daniel 9: 20–23
I seek grace for this occasion to speak about being known of God. It may seem a strange thing to speak about because does not God know us all? It says, “there is not a creature unapparent before him ... with whom we have to do”, Hebrews 4: 13. He knows about us all, and yet the scripture speaks here about a class of persons that are known of God. I would like to encourage our hearts to be among them. Men aspire to be known in their own circles, but God has His circle. Many, alas, profess to know Him. The Lord says that many will come and say, You have taught in our streets. In principle they had sat under the gospel, living in a Christian country, but the Lord will say to them, “I do not know you”, Luke 13: 27. What a solemn word to persons who have been under the influence of grace, who have heard the appeals of His love, and He has to say, “I do not know you”. They claimed to know Him.
Another time they said to Him, “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren seek thee without”. It says He looked around in a circuit and said, “whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and sister, and mother”, Mark 3: 35. He knew them by their features, and that is how God knows the persons we are speaking about now, as doing the will of God, prompted, indeed, because they love Him. It says here, “if any one love God, he is known of him”. How many profess to love Him, but does that love for Him find an expression in a tangible way?
The Lord said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments”, John 14: 15.
We have read of some persons whom God knew, and we may be helped in looking at them to see the features that God appreciates. Perhaps the first time God notices us, in the way I am speaking of it, is when we
come to Him in repentance. What joy that gives God as He sees persons coming to acknowledge their state and condition, and to lay hold in faith of a Saviour’s love and grace.
He knew those houses in Egypt that were sheltered under the blood, He knew them every one of them. Think of the angel coming that night and passing through the land. Some houses were known because they were under the shelter of the blood of the lamb. What a fine beginning, to come under the shelter of the precious blood of Christ. As God would look on such persons, He can say, I know they are forgiven, the question of their guilt is settled. God has acted in His grace and love to free us from liabilities and bondage that we may grow in a knowledge of Himself, so that the love that is begotten in our hearts may come into some tangible expression and God may say, I know him. It reminds me of that house in Luke 7.
There was a Pharisee who professed to know, and on the other hand there was a woman who was known of God. Maybe we would over estimate our love for God, over estimate our growth; it says, “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies”. Of that woman, it says, “she loved much”. The Lord knew her as her love came into evidence. Simon went far beyond what was intelligent, he was puffed up, he took himself out of the place of the creature almost, saying, If this Man knew. Think of speaking of the Lord of glory critically like that. But the woman loved much and she was known of God. The Lord says, “Seest thou this woman?” He is looking to see features that He can call attention to, features in the believer that He commends.
Now God saw that Moses turned aside and was interested. Such persons are known in heaven as interested in what God is doing. Here is a man who had been brought up in all the knowledge of Egypt; all the best education that could be obtained, I suppose, was available to him, and here he is interested in what God is doing, “Jehovah saw that he turned aside”. God is looking for interested persons today. Have you been
interested, my friend, in what God is doing? He is doing wonderful things. He is doing a wonderful thing here, something that caught Moses’ attention. I suppose every thorn bush, as the fire came to it, was very readily consumed, but Moses sees one here, and it was not being consumed. It is an allusion to how God is operating, as He says to Moses, “I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them”. God would arouse our interest today in what He is doing, in how He has intervened, in what is proceeding from Himself. He would let us into the secrets of what He is doing.
I have read of Moses and David and Daniel, but they were not yet great men in the sections I have read. I would like to apply it to the beginning of their spiritual history that they become interested in what God was doing. It says that God saw that he turned aside. I wonder if you have ever turned aside? You may be affected by the precious blood of Christ and what He has done for you in redeeming love; but have you ever turned aside to see why He intervened in Christ, why He came into the circumstances that men were in to effect deliverance? It says,
“God called to him ... and said, Moses. Moses!” Maybe He has called you. That is how God would speak, to interest you individually, personally. God would call us by name to draw us into something of the wealth and blessedness of what He is doing. I think this is how Moses became great; he became interested in the fact that God had intervened in His power in a remarkable way to effect deliverance. What a God He is that He should take up such a matter.
He says, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. He is the God who had made promises to Abraham, calling him out from idolatrous circumstances. Here He is unfolding something of His plan to a man who was interested. O, how Moses endeared himself to God, becoming known as a man to whom God could confide His secrets. I think God is looking for such persons today, persons that can be trusted. I wonder just how does He know you and
me. Are we persons who can be trusted with some of His secrets? Do we understand what He is doing and the way He is doing it? Or are we persons who have put our faith and trust in the Saviour, but are, perhaps, too engrossed in our own things to be interested in knowing something of the secrets of what God is doing? How God would appeal to us afresh today to be interested, to see the grandeur and glory and greatness of what He is doing.
Now here is Moses, a lone man, a fugitive from Egypt, in the desert; God is seeing that he has an ear and a heart for what God is doing. It says of him later, “the man Moses was very meek”, Numbers 12: 3. That is how God knew him, a man to whom He had entrusted His secrets, but a man who developed in another character. I think that is what God would expect in us, the development of another kind of character. He says, “Mouth to mouth do I speak to him openly”, Numbers 12: 8. That is how He knew Moses, it says He spoke with him “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend”, Exodus 33: 11. Does God know you like that? He has room in His heart and in His ways, and He has time to speak to you face to face as you are interested. Paul, alas, says that we are in a day when “all seek their own things, not the things of Jesus Christ”, Philippians 2: 21. But here is a man interested enough, in a typical sense, to seek something of the things of Jesus Christ.
This is the beginning of God speaking to Moses, but He did not stop. God continued speaking to Moses. There are very fine touches in these books of God speaking to Moses, “face to face”. Maybe we need someone else to tell us things at times, and that has its place. But God is looking for persons whom He knows, that He can speak to in the directness of His love, and unfold to them something of the secrets of His heart. God was not only coming down to bring the people out; He was telling Moses how He was going to bring the people into a good land. Moses could never have
envisaged this. We were speaking earlier today of “Things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2: 9), and here is God saying that to Moses. O, how God would love to tell you some of His thoughts far ahead. He has already done that. What a vessel He had in Paul to speak concerning Christ and the assembly. He had in Paul, one who was interested enough to spend time to hear what God would say about Christ and the assembly. God says, I know such persons.
He could not have said this to many in this day in Exodus 3, but here is one man who has turned aside, and He speaks to him about bringing the people up into a good and spacious land. It is very beautiful to think of how the affection for that land grew in the heart of Moses.
In Deuteronomy, you see there a man whose heart had expanded about this great and spacious land flowing with milk and honey. You say, He never saw it. Ah, God told him something about it. How else could he speak as he does in those closing chapters of Deuteronomy. It says God showed him the whole land, Gilead to Dan, with all the tribes in it.
Moses’ heart loved to dwell on these thoughts of God, and God delighted to tell him about that great and spacious land; all because one day he turned aside, and was interested enough to listen to what God had to say. May I make an appeal, in the time when there are so many voices and so much that would command our attention, to turn aside. It means your own closet, it means your own personal links with God. This was the beginning of Moses’
spiritual history, and he was given light as to this spacious land, “a land flowing with milk and honey”.
Now in applying it to our time, it is God confiding to you something of His choicest thoughts of Christ and the assembly, because that is what it would lead on to. It is a view of the people in the land where they are no longer troubled; He is giving a view beyond the
breakdown, beyond the confusion, a land where they could dwell peacefully. Moses loved to describe it. I do not know how he knew so much about it save as God had told him. He says it was a “land of water-brooks, of springs, and of deep waters, that gush forth in the valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey”, Deuteronomy 8: 7, 8. O how the hearts of the Israelites must have been awakened as they heard Moses speaking about the land. They would say, Have you been there? Why had he been there and they had not been there? It was because he had been interested. In that wilderness with all the desert sand, with all their murmurings, with all their sorrows, he had been interested enough to turn aside and listen to God’s thoughts about that land.
God is appealing today for interested persons whom He knows will cherish the thoughts and purposes of His love concerning Christ and the assembly. He will not give it to everybody, “if anyone love God, he is known of him”. He is giving it to His confidantes. He is placing the light where it will be cherished. God does not cast His pearls before swine, but He is disclosing the secrets of His love and His purposes to persons who are interested, and who are prepared to spend time to know something of the greatness of the things that God has prepared for those that love Him. What a stay it was, amidst all the sorrows and pressures that Moses was to bear, that God had told him of the purposes of His love and His affection for the people. That is why Moses was able to bear with them. That is why Paul was able to bear with the Corinthians. God had told him what those persons meant to Him. The Lord said, “I have much people in this city”, Acts 18: 10. Was he not tried by them? Did they not criticise him? Did they not bring every device to seek to undermine him? But Paul continued there in the sense of divine thoughts about the saints. Paul wrote back to those maligning him and said, “the assembly of God which is in Corinth”. There
was a man who had been spending time with God, and was able to see things beyond the actual circumstances; he could see them from God’s side, because, I say again, he turned aside.
God says about David, long before he came to the throne, I have found him, as if He was looking for such persons. And that is what He is looking for today. He says, “I have found David my servant”. Where did He find him? It tells us in Psalm 78 where He found him, it says that He found him in the sheepfolds. He was not in the theatres of this world; he was not there where men were finding their pleasures. It says, “he chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds”, Psalm 78: 70. What a fine thing that God should choose a man like that. The people chose Saul, but God did not choose Saul, indeed He says that He had rejected him. Was there not a lot that commended Saul? There was much that commended Saul to the people. But “he chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds—From following the suckling-ewes”. I think it means he kept among the brethren, to put it simply in our language. He kept himself where the sheep were being fed, where they were being shepherded. He had love for the brethren. You would not find Saul there. You do not find David’s brothers there either. Eliab and the others were not in the sheepfolds, they were following Saul, they were going with the crowds, they were racing for the battle. Here David is, a man in the sheepfolds, and God chose him. He saw there someone who had love for Him. What a choice He made. The man who was following the sheep, nourishing his soul in thoughts of God and His love, and God says He took him from there to feed His people. Then in Psalm 89 He says, “I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him”.
O what a day it must have been for David when he was anointed, a shepherd boy who loved the brethren, and God says, I will anoint you, I will have you for Myself, I will pour my holy oil upon you. He marked him out as known of Him. He passed over the
other brothers in his family; He did not know them in that sense, but here He knows the man that had been among the sheepfolds.
Then in Psalm 132 we see how God was justified in His choice, because of David’s love, not only for the brethren, but his love for the ark in a time when few troubled themselves about the ark. It says here, “Behold, we heard of it at Ephratah, we found it in the fields of the wood”. The footnote would seem to suggest it was the time when the ark was at Kirjath-jearim, it was in a house where it was largely forgotten. If you spoke to Israelites about it they would tell you where it was, but how few cared to visit it, may I say. When it was in that house, the Spirit of God says about it, “the time was long” (1 Samuel 7: 2), it was almost forgotten. It is like the day we are in, when the Saviour who shed His blood for us, who suffered on the cross for your sins and mine, is publicly largely forgotten. How does He stand in your affections? Here is a man speaking about that with a great deal of sorrow, grieving that the Saviour who did so much for us finds very little in the way of response to His own heart of love. Is that what He would have to say about you? May His voice come into your heart today, All this have I done for you, what have you done for Me? Well David said, I am going to do something about it. He says, “we heard of it at Ephratah”. Would the friends that you have today be interested to hear about Christ? I speak to you young people, the persons you keep company with, are they interested to hear about a rejected Christ? Are they interested to hear about the way He spent Himself in suffering love, and to hear of your feelings that there is very little response to that love? David said, Let us do something about it. He says, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes”. Here is a committed young man, not only an interested man, but a committed man. He says, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids”. It became the consuming object in his life that Christ, as typified in the ark, may find a place where He
could rest. O how God could say about David, I know him. What delight He had in anointing him! What delight He had in setting him on the throne!
Here he is typical of a young believer committing himself. You say, We have to sleep, we have to work, we have pressures, all kinds of things. But David says, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes”. He says in a later psalm, “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill ... let my tongue cleave to my palate; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy”, Psalm 137: 5, 6. He not only loved Christ but he loved to see Him enshrined in the affections of the saints. O what pleasure God had in a man who was interested when all others were careless; because that is the kind of day David was in. Persons were careless as to the Person of Christ, they were careless as to the place He had among His people, and David commits himself so that things should be changed. That committal involved sacrifice, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes”; it involves giving up some time from things you may think have priority.
But David got his priorities right, “I will not give sleep to mine eyes ... Until I find out a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob”. Then he says, “Let us go into his habitations”, let us see what is suited to the habitations of God. Think of David gathering up in his affections, and in his affliction too, gathering up through sacrifice that there may be a place where God could find His rest. Well He found it. It was the height of Israel’s history, the days of David and Solomon, all because a man was interested and committed, in affection for Christ and His people, in a day when persons were careless. Well if there was a man known in Israel it was David, as known of God.
When we come to Daniel the Jerusalem that David knew was broken down. Things had changed, and here in these circumstances is another young man, and what does he see? He seeks things broken. He was carried away in the captivity, but here he is a man who still had
Jerusalem in his heart. Very few cared about it. You wonder why he knew so much about it.
Well, it says earlier in the chapter, “I Daniel understood by the books”. He was interested to read something of what Jeremiah had written, a very sober prophecy. For us that would be the Scriptures, and the ministry too. Jerusalem at that time was in ruins. He was in captivity, but think of him reading about the Jerusalem of the time of David and Solomon, and the Jerusalem of which Isaiah speaks. I think of Daniel reading those books, and saying, Things are not like that today. No, but he embraced the promises. He understood that the God who had promised was faithful to bring about His promises. What a place it was going to be, a place to dwell in. He is far away from it in the captivity, but he embraced the thought of it in his heart, and God gave him light about it. It is like the day we are in, dear brethren, a day when things are in a broken state. Let us understand through what the Spirit has been saying in this dispensation, and what He is saying today as to God’s thoughts about Christ and the assembly. Let us have our heart opened to see that God’s promises involve another day, although being worked out in the breakdown today.
It says at the close of this book, “Go thy way, Daniel”, a very fine finish. As you read through the book of Daniel, the kings and empires change, as the hymn-writer says, ‘Though empires should crumble, though nations should fall’ (Hymn 27). Daniel saw all that. The only thing that went through the book was Daniel in his knowledge of God. It says at the end, “go thy way until the end; and thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days”, Daniel 12: 13. What a fine word that is amidst all the confusion. It says that he understood by the books, but then too he was praying. God heard those prayers. Gabriel says, “At the beginning of thy supplications the word went forth, and I am come to declare it”. Here is a man going into his closet and speaking to God. He might say, You see the
troublous times that we are in, the small meetings, and the tests that have befallen us. That is how he might be speaking about the breakdown and feeling his part in it. God says, I will tell you about something else. This is not the end.
How many have thought it was the end, the breakdown is all around us, they thought everything was broken. Here is a man who went into his closet and prayed to God, and God says, That is not the end. He says, “I am now come forth to make thee skilful of understanding”. So he goes his way and stands in his lot at the end of the days, a man who was known of God. He says, “Daniel ... thou art one greatly beloved”. More than once in the book that is how he is addressed. Can God address you and me like that? Can He address us as persons who are greatly beloved, persons who have made themselves known to God? You can make yourself known to God through being interested in His word, through committing yourself in love for Christ and for His people, and through understanding by the books and your prayers. It is to such persons that God makes Himself known in the confidence of His love.
May He awaken and encourage our hearts, to be known in those circles, despised here below but known there, as Paul says, “as unknown, and well known” (2 Corinthians 6: 9); unknown in the circles of man’s society, but well known to heaven, with a name placed there before God. “If any one love God”, that is the spring of it all. It is the spring of our interest, the spring of our devotions, “If anyone love God, he is known of him”. May it be from today that He knows all of us better, as more trustworthy, as committed to Christ and to His interests, until the day come when all will be changed and the promises and thoughts of His love will shine there in their own glory. Daniel had read about them, and God says, You go your way, you will share in them at the end of the days. Daniel rested in the knowledge that the God who had purposed would bring all to pass,
and He would bring him through to see it then in its fulness. In the meantime He gives us the Spirit. He gives us strengthening by His grace, that we may be maintained in the thoughts and purposes of His love until He calls us to be with Himself. May it be so, for His name’s sake.
Address at Manchester, 16 March 1996
THE HEAVENLY ONE
A. J. Gaskin
“Such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Corinthians 15: 48. When the apostle speaks of the heavenly One he has in mind in “such” a different order of man from the one made of dust. Of the latter order it was said very early in the history of mankind that
“Jehovah repented that he had made Man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart”, Genesis 6: 6. How frail and ephemeral is the one made of dust, as James says, “what is your life? It is even a vapour” (James 4: 14). What a difference to turn to the heavenly One and the order of man patterned after Him. Yet as being the heavenly Man, how real was His manhood. Simeon received that Babe into his arms, and said of Him, “mine eyes have seen thy salvation”, Luke 2: 30. As a tender sapling He grew up before God, a root out of dry ground. As the heavenly One He was not concerned with the things of this world, but with His Father’s business, yet a business that was concerned about the needs of mankind—“For I am come down from heaven, not that I should do my will, but the will of him that has sent me”, John 6: 38. He was the true bread out of heaven, the bread of life and the living bread; it is what He was in Himself—“the bread withal which I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”, John 6: 51. It was the extent to which He was prepared to give, as He said, “he
also who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. When challenged Peter says,
“Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”, John 6: 68, 69. To the unbelieving Jews, who were constantly opposing Him, He spoke plainly and asserted the heavenly character of His words.
So He spoke openly saying, “I am from above ... I am not of this world” (John 8: 23), a plain declaration of His being the heavenly One, and that was brought out so clearly by His holy humanity.
Isaac in Genesis was a beautiful type of the heavenly Man who, when first introduced, endured the mocking of Ishmael, as the One who when reviled, reviled not again, who was meekly submissive as being offered up on the altar. It says in Hebrews, Abraham “offered up his only begotten son ... counting that God was able to raise him even from among the dead, whence also he received him in a figure”, (Hebrews 11: 18, 19). It was the father’s desire that Isaac should have a suited companion, a wife, a helpmate his like. How faithfully the Holy Spirit has carried out the mission of securing the assembly that the heavenly Man should have His affections so fully satisfied.
In the tabernacle system in the wilderness, within the tent, the various colours there displayed all bore witness to the glories of Christ, but through all the heavenly colour was there. The high priest himself was clothed in the cloak of the ephod which was “all of blue”, distinguishing him as typical of the heavenly Man. When the camp set forward in their journeyings in the wilderness, whereas the other items of furniture were protected by a covering of badger skins, the ark itself had a covering “wholly of blue”, as representative of the heavenly Man. As the Lord Himself went forward on His journey down here, the evidences of the heavenly Man were always there. And the heavenly One is associated with the heavenly ones, for it says we shall bear the
image of the heavenly One. The day is coming when our body of humiliation shall be transformed into conformity to His body of glory. For this we await, when the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first and we the living shall be changed. So shall we be for ever with the Lord.
EXTRACT
What we have here typically is what the New Testament speaks of as the purification of the heavenly things (Hebrews 9: 23, 24). It is most important for us to understand this, for the whole character of our blessing and approach to God hangs upon it, and it also determines the place which we take up in relation to religious things on earth. I suppose all Christians have the conviction that if they went to heaven they would find themselves in a place where there was no sin, and where all the conditions were suitable to God, and therefore where there was no cloud or sense of distance! But how many Christians have taken into consideration that there is a system of heavenly things into which we can come now, and in the blessedness of which we can approach God—a system so divinely purified by the blood of the Sin-offering that there is not a trace of sin in it? But this is what the epistle to the Hebrews opens up to us.
We learn there that God has spoken to us in the Person of the Son, and He would have us to approach Him in the light of all that He has spoken. He has provided in the Sin-offering for the removal of everything that would have hindered this. The Son has “made by himself the purification of sins”, Hebrews 1: 3. That means not merely that they are removed from the sinner, but they are removed from before God. They are no longer in His presence to defile His tabernacle.
C. A. Coates (‘An Outline of Leviticus’, p.194)
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