VESSELS SERVICEABLE TO THE MASTER
R. Taylor
Romans 9: 22–24; 2 Timothy 2: 19–23; Ezra 8: 31–34; Nehemiah 12: 31–41, 43
I seek the Lord’s help on this occasion to say something about being serviceable to the Master. I believe the Lord would say today to every believer, The Lord has need of you. He would leave a sense of that on our spirits from this occasion. That is why He went to the cross; to remove the liability of our sins; He took them all away because He has need of us.
To the very youngest we would say, He needs you. You may say, What can I do? The Lord would address that word to each of us at this moment. The cost was so great because He has wonderful things in mind for you. He has need of you to swell the great praise of glory and response to God, and He has need of you too in the testimony.
In the first scripture he speaks of us as “vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory”. A great wealth has gone into your history. You may think you have just been born on such a day, you have lived so many years, but there is a lot more than that in God’s thoughts about you. It says here, “that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory”. What a sense to get into your soul that God has prepared you for glory. He has not prepared you for adorning this scene and all that man speaks of as glory. You notice that word between the commas, “us”; it means you and me. He has prepared us for glory. You say, Where is it? The God who has put so much thought into the preparation is not going to stop short of reaching His end. It speaks also of Him bringing many sons to glory. You may wonder when you look abroad and see the weakness and the confusion that exists, but God is bringing many sons to glory. O, how it would lift our thoughts and our sights at this time! It says, “that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy”. What a treasure there is in these vessels! There was nothing in them to warrant it, but there they are, the precious products of His love.
I trust every one of us in this room has some sense that God has called us. He has called us from the circumstances in which we were so that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy. He wants to fill these vessels; He is filling them, and He has prepared them for glory. He has called them not only from among the Jews but also from among the nations. In previous times it was just the Jews who were called, but now through the great work of Christ in redemption, what has been effectuated in the shedding of His blood. His resurrection and going into heaven, God has come out in all the wealth of His love with His hands outstretched to bless. The call is going out universally, for persons to come into the wealth and blessedness of what God is securing in these vessels, preparing them for glory. He is not going to fall short, He is not going to be robbed of His thoughts, and that is why 2 Timothy 2 comes in.
Paul had written in 1 Timothy about the normal relations of God dwelling with His people in His house, but in 2 Timothy he does not speak like that exactly. There has been great confusion but, as soon as it came in, God provided and showed a way through it that vessels may still be serviceable to the Master. The vessels in Ezra and Nehemiah were carried away into captivity, and they awaited the time when God would bring them out of it, and He did bring them out of it as we shall see.
Here, immediately the breakdown came in, God showed in His grace, that He had not changed His thoughts about these vessels of mercy being prepared for glory, and He showed us a way that the vessels may still be serviceable, “he shall be a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master”. O that I could stir in all our hearts afresh today a desire to be serviceable to the Master! The Lord has need of you. Is He not worthy of our response, of our service? We cannot plead the breakdown for being unserviceable when He has shown us a way through it, but He would appeal to our hearts that we may be serviceable in the midst of it. We cannot get out of it completely, but He has shown us a way through it, however dark a day it may be, and however great the confusion, and that way, beloved, is going forth to Him without the camp bearing His reproach.
How sad the breakdown of Christendom is. I suppose we feel those sorrows every day; the sorrows of what there is in the public profession; the sorrows of what men say of Christ and yet profess His name. Yet God would have us serviceable to the Master. One great feature is that we might come to love the Master. What a Master He is who has bought us! He would command our affections; that would be the first great feature of being serviceable, that we love the Master. How beautifully these words, uttered in the last dispensation, have run through this dispensation, “I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go free”, Exodus 21: 5. We hear them often, referring typically to Christ, the true Hebrew bondman, who took the position of being serviceable to His Master. What service He rendered and renders still in all His priestly grace. He has gone into heaven, and He is engaged in service there, sustaining us in His grace and love, that we may, in our measure be serviceable to our Master. He has shown us the way, a way of suffering for Him as He took His place in the likeness of men, in these circumstances that we are in. Satan tried to take Him out of them.
Think of Jesus in the temptations as He says, “Man shall not live by bread alone”, Matthew 4: 4. When Satan proposed the glory without the suffering in the way He spoke to the
Lord, there He is meeting Satan with the word of God. He would undertake the pathway of suffering to be serviceable.
What a model for us as we come to these times that we are in. It says, “Yet the firm foundation of God stands”, that will never break down. The foundation is in Christ; it is in the counsels of God’s love and whatever comes into the dispensation today or in the future, the firm foundation of God stands. Then it says, “The Lord knows those that are his”. You can rest on that for all believers. Our sorrow is that we do not know them all. If things were normal we should know every believer in the towns we live in, but things are not normal, yet the Lord knows. We have to leave that and I trust we speak to Him in prayer like that about certain that we know, He knows. Their ways may have become wayward, they may have turned into their own way, but “The Lord knows those that are his”. It is a comfort for our souls that we can leave persons with the Lord. We may over-estimate some of them at times, we cannot just take persons for granted, but the Lord knows.
The word to us is, “Let every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”. It is the way to be serviceable. So many try, and are alas still trying, staying in those conditions to help others there, but that is not the way the Lord seems to dictate, because this section is a command. It is a warranty too for being serviceable to the Master—“Let every one who names the name of the Lord withdraw from iniquity”. Well, we cannot name the name of the Lord and abide in the confusion. But as naming it, sometimes they will put you out, and that is salvation too. The man in John 9, in some sense named the name of the Lord and they put him out; that had to do with his salvation. You cannot have the name of the Lord and iniquity, these things hinder us being serviceable; but it has happened and is still happening; there are vessels of mercy who are the Lord’s, but they have become unserviceable through remaining in iniquitous surroundings. So if we are going to be serviceable it requires that we separate.
There is a great system that professes the name of Christ, and yet persons in the hierarchy deny the deity of Christ. That is systematised error, and it is iniquitous. How I long that persons who are real believers in these systems, when they hear such things would leave them. It is the only way, but there they are, drawn in and held trying to help others. But that is not the way to be serviceable. It says here the way to be serviceable is to “withdraw from iniquity”. Then it says, “If therefore one shall have purified himself from these, in separating himself from them”. How can I live in those circumstances where Christ is denied and keep myself pure? We can see that in these systems they take on language that is no longer suited to vessels of mercy; they begin to adorn themselves, and promote man in the house of God.
So the only way to be clear of it is, as it says here, “in separating himself ... he shall be a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master”. O, would you not like to be serviceable to the Master? It applies to my daily pathway. Am I prepared, in affection for the Master, to keep myself serviceable?
The Lord has need of you. He has some wonderful things in mind for these vessels. How can a vessel that is ensnared in the systems of men be a testimony to His love and grace? How can a vessel that the Lord would employ in praise to His God and Father be ensnared? How could it be serviceable to Him if ensnared in these things that have come into the profession?
He would have us to be sanctified, serviceable for every good work. We have to do this individually. For most of us, our fathers went through the sorrows and pressures in the deep exercises of these things. Others have laboured and we have entered into their labours (John 4: 38). There are men who went before us whom we would speak of with great affection, who showed us the way through the confusion. There were persons who clearly interpreted some of these things for us, and took on themselves the sufferings and reproach. I know an old lady who, when she was a girl of seventeen, left the established church, and her parents put her out of the house. Others have laboured and we have entered into their labours.
The ground is open to you, dear brother, dear sister, it has not been easily won. You say there is a great deal of reproach on us, but others have shown us the way to come into assembly circumstances, and to know assembly relations. For them it involved a great deal of suffering and reproach, but there is still reproach to be taken on, in our daily path and in our exercises, in separating ourselves so as to be vessels, “serviceable to the Master”. Then it says, “with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart”. The persons who are going to be serviceable to the Master identify themselves by calling upon the Lord out of a pure heart. What a door He opens for us as we call upon Him out of a pure heart.
So earlier in the chapter it speaks about the soldier seeking to please Him that has enlisted him. The Lord has enlisted and called you in saying He has need of you. He has shown us the way through the confusion, and now He would call upon us to please Him who has enlisted us. That is the way through these exercises that we may be serviceable to the Master. There are certain places that are out of bounds to soldiers, certain places they cannot go into, as Paul says, “No one going as a soldier entangles himself with the affairs of life” (2 Timothy 2: 4).
A soldier is a very definite calling, he does not entangle himself with politics, and other things, in order that “he may please him who has enlisted him”. He has enlisted us, dear brethren. He has called us as vessels of mercy into this great realm before prepared for glory.
He would have us to be free in it and to enter into the blessedness of the way through the confusion to be serviceable to the Master. There is the way to be serviceable in testimony, and there is also the way that He would employ us as serviceable in His praise.
The vessels in Ezra had been led away into captivity through their unfaithfulness; that is how the breakdown has come in in our time too through our unfaithfulness. Whereas in Ezra God waited some time to show them the way back, in our day God has shown us immediately a way through the breakdown. I read these verses to show the glory of what comes back. It says, “the vessels were weighed ... the whole by number and by weight; and all the weight was written down at that time”. How pleasing that must have been to heaven. What did it mean? I think it meant there were none missing. You say, What toll the breakdown has taken!
What toll the captivity must have taken, but in the process of coming back it says they came to Jerusalem. That is where the separation of 2 Timothy brings us; it leads us on to assembly ground, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. It brings us into an area of singing, an area of blessing. What sorrow they must have known in the captivity, and what journeys they must have taken, it says here, “we came to Jerusalem, and abode there three days”. I think of their spirits rising as they came to that beloved city. What history attached to that city, all the time they had been in captivity they were thinking of Jerusalem.
Think of them coming through the breakdown, separating themselves, going through these exercises, and as they came to Jerusalem their hearts would be filled with God’s thoughts about Jerusalem. Here they are, in principle, “with those that call on the Lord”; they come to this area of divine purpose and blessing. God had said about it that it would be the joy of the whole earth, and there it was, it had been in ruins. But the vessels are brought through, “the gold and the vessels were weighed in the house of our God”. What a weight attached to them, not only that they were numbered, but they were weighed. I think they became more precious as coming through the breakdown. As taking up these exercises in Timothy, the vessels take on weight and capacity that they never had before. In the saints who have gone through those deep exercises and sorrows, you see vessels of weight; they are no longer only numbered. Maybe you are numbered among the saints; thank God for it, it is a fine thing. But they were not only numbered, they were weighed. What joy there must have been as these vessels were put on the scales. Maybe in Babylon they had been abused, but they still retained their glory and all the weight was written down. They represent persons of substance secured for the house of God, vessels of mercy prepared for glory.
What a time it was in Nehemiah when he brought up these two great choirs. We did not read the earlier verses which show the way they came, from the plain of the Jordan and from Beth-Gilgal (Nehemiah 12: 28, 29). They came through these exercises we have spoken of in separating themselves from them, typically, to see that the death of Christ could not allow them to remain in confused circumstances. They came from Beth-Gilgal, and out of the fields of Geba, and they began to sing. They had hung their harps upon the willows earlier. We know these exercises in ourselves. There was a time when they could not sing because of the pressure and sorrows, but as vessels of mercy, coming into Jerusalem they were beginning to sing. So it says that Nehemiah “brought up the princes of Judah”. See how they are taking on royalty now instead of being spoiled in man’s systems. Here they are taking on dignity, “the princes of Judah upon the wall ... two great choirs”. There is wonderful detail and wealth in these scriptures of the ways that the choirs went, typifying the exercises they had gone through, in having to rebuild things, the exercises involved in the dung-gate, the sheep-gate, and the prison-gate. All these things speak volumes as we allow the Spirit to open them up to us.
What I had in mind is that they come here with the musical instruments of David the man of God. These had not become damaged; they are there, great instruments of music. David spoke about the instruments of music which he had made. I suppose most of them were stringed instruments, and the strings had been tightened as they came that way by the Jordan and by Gilgal. In our day, as we come by 2 Timothy 2, the strings are tightened, and how sweet the note becomes.
That is true, dear brethren, among the saints of God today. Have you not heard it? As you hear someone who has gone through these sorrows speaking to the Father of His love and grace, how sweet the note! It is not here singing from the hymn book or prayer book, it is the musical instruments of David, the man of God. I say in passing it is the only reference to David being a man of God; he is a man of God for his music, not because he slew Goliath, great thing as that was. The great point of Christ and His service is that there may be these instruments to sing the praises of God. May we, dear brethren, be serviceable to the Master, with our strings tightened so that the praises and the music may ascend in all their sweetness and glory. Then it says, “they went up by the stairs of the city of David”.
One thing that strikes you about these recoveries is that they did not try to put new names to things, they kept to the names that were there before. Today they are bringing new names into things, saying, That is only Paul we do not need to go by that. But these persons in the recovery they went by the principles that God had laid down. Then too it says, “they stood still in the prison-gate”. What thoughts must have been in their minds as they stood still in the prison-gate. Maybe they would be thinking of those they had left, still in prison. Christ went that way, the way of the prison, to open the way so that musical instruments may be formed, and that they may be responsive to His touch. So it says, “both choirs stood in the house of God”. That is the great end, the house of God. In 2 Timothy 2 there is the great house, a place of confusion, but here it is back to the original principle, they “stood in the house of God”. It says, “also the women and the children rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off”.
They appointed singers and door-keepers; they were watchful that the breakdown should not intrude. It is very striking that the singers were first. I think it is the singers who are the door-keepers. If you do not know how to sing you will never know how to keep the door, because you let in the wrong notes. The singers and the door-keepers are there to serve in the great system of praise that we have been called to, and in which we are to be serviceable to the Master. Now may we have a clear view, dear brethren, that being serviceable to the Master truly involves the separation we speak of in 2 Timothy 2, but the great end in view is that we may be available as instruments of music so that the praise of God may be secured in the house of God. Soon it will be in His own environment in heaven above, but now it is that the character and features of the house of God are here at the present time, and that God is praised by these instruments. May it be so increasingly with each one of us, as serviceable to the Master for His praise.
Address at Brechin
8 March 1997