Saints in the Perpetual Favour
OF THE
“FATHER OF COMPASSIONS AND GOD OF ALL ENCOURAGEMENT”
(2 Cor 1 – using the New Translation)
My subject to-night is encouragement, because I believe it is always God’s desire for us; a truly wonderful subject when we consider our own weakness and the power of the opposition which is arrayed against all that is of God in this world. I beg you to reflect that, however great may be their failure and feebleness (as to actual display), the saints are of God. “Ye are of God, children”, 1 John 4: 4 KJV. I think that a little encouragement often leads to a little self-judgment.
The encouragement which I speak of presupposes that the road has been entered upon, and that the end is in full view, see one in it, 1 Cor 9: 26. Encouragement will hardly fill our souls—divine and capable of doing so as it is—unless both these are true. I have learnt that there is no return to what I have left, and I am set for what is in front; and “compassion” (for me in my feebleness) along with His “encouragement” (of what He has been pleased to form in me, and to form me in) compass me about tonight as they compass about every saint of God.
I speak of encouragement and from God, because I am sure that when the apostles were on earth this was what they ministered. The saints of that day were greatly helped along this line. Is this remarkable? I think not. We should consider (perhaps more than we do) that saints are the persecuted, opposed, and rejected class down here. Is it surprising that God should desire to make Himself better known to them? Oh, no. Wherever you open your Bible, in New Testament pages, God will come before you as being for His people thus. He has to say much to them and of them, but no one will He commission to discourage them. Saints are His own workmanship, Eph 2: 10.
You may say, Well, what of the Corinthian and Galatian epistles—where is encouragement there? I should reply, In both—in their end. God is set on the encouragement of His saints, and nothing can by any means alter it. Oh, to be more in the deep and conscious certainty of this, as a truth in our souls. He will encourage. That is why I want (if I may) to get the thought of encouragement, and from God, once more afresh before your souls.
What more blessed word of encouragement have we than is contained in the fact that “Christ has set us free”? This we find in Galatians (see chap 5: 22-23), and in the liberty of it we are exhorted to “stand fast”. In love we are privileged to live a life here against which there is no law. And as to 1 and 2 Corinthians, they are full of encouragement. What have we in the first chapter of this second epistle? and in the words just quoted from it? Paul had been greatly encouraged of God. And everything (he says) had worked and was working but in one way. That way was for the encouragement of the saints. Think of this. All that an eminent servant of Christ like Paul is called to pass through, all for the encouragement of God’s people! How? That in the deliverances which he experienced from all the activities of Satan, either against himself or them, he might learn God, and so encourage them. To a Christian everything is encouraging. God is in it.
This is how he speaks of it, “whether we are in tribulation, it is for your encouragement and salvation, wrought in the endurance of the same sufferings which we also suffer (and our hope for you is sure); or whether we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement and salvation: knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so also of the encouragement”. No trust in himself or in others, but in God who raises the dead. Nothing alters the rest of heart that the saint finds in God, because it carries him to God, and that is beyond death, which is the terminus, as to things here, and the time must come sooner or later to all of us to find ourselves alone with God. The blessing is to find that He is enough, ah, how much more than enough now. It lies at the basis of all encouragement.
Beloved friends, nothing will frustrate the purpose of God. That purpose is as to Christ and hence as to His body now on earth—the saints—that is, to you and to me. Depend upon it that God will have His way, and I am sure of this, that God would have you take courage that this will be so, while you traverse your little history, spite of what you see in yourself and your surroundings. Everything is quietly moving on here below to the accomplishment of God’s purposes; not a hitch, not a defect, is in that line. The road is clear right up to the glory of Christ in full display, when He will present the church to Himself, “a glorious church” (Eph 5: 27), not having spot or blemish, or wrinkle, or any such thing. God’s purpose will all be accomplished in us as surely as God exists.
But not only am I greatly encouraged by what God is, there is another road by which encouragement also reaches us. It is by having the present light of God’s purposes ministered and then made good in the soul. I would now turn to another passage which brings this before us. It is Col 2: 2-3. Encouragement here is to be the outcome of the ministry of the truth as to the Head, in which every member is interested. And it is “to the end that their hearts may be encouraged, being united together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the full knowledge of the mystery of God, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge”, NT.
A point in this epistle is, “holding the head”, and the comfort to me is this, the feet are in ALL the good of whatever is in the Head. “Ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and authority”, Col 2: 10. I am not complete, nor are the saints, when looked at apart from Him. The apostle was an able minister of the new covenant, that is, of God’s present thoughts with regard to man, and the “ministry of the Spirit” (v 8) brought all the blessed liberty of it into the soul by his ministry of the truth. It was, and is, the ministry of righteousness, and the ministry of the Spirit. And having this, the eye quietly turns away from man, where all the discouragement exists, to the Lord and to what He is in Himself. “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed”, v 18 NT. If I want encouragement it is found in looking there. God’s present purpose for man is to conform him to Christ in glory. A ministry of wonderful import, for it changes the man while he is yet on earth.
We must all take the place of being far, very far behind the apostle, but are we on his line? What a blessing to the saints it is for any one to get the light of God’s present purpose (new covenant and new creation light) so into his own soul that this is what he ministers. Surely encouragement and nothing else lies in this line. “That we may present every man perfect in Christ” (Col 1: 28), was his desire in the ministry of this truth to the Colossians.
I am persuaded of this, the saints would get a vast deal more of encouragement than they do, if the ministers knew more of God’s present purpose (as displayed in Christ) and were more in the light of it themselves. It is as we “eat” that we “worship”, compare Deut 26 and Ps 22: 26 and 29. It is just in so far as we take in that we give out. It is an abiding principle in every man that “of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12: 34), and you will be sure to minister to others that which you are in the joy of (or the wretchedness of) yourself. It may be said that worship is not exactly ministry. I agree. But worship is very provocative. I know nothing more delightful on earth than to get into the company of an individual saint, or of a collected company, where worship is supreme and necessarily exclusive, because Christ is supreme there.
In heaven, when one voice begins, I have no doubt that all follow, see Rev 4: 9. ‘All the mind of heaven is one’, and it is just the same now, where that mind prevails amongst saints on earth. Others are led on. Oh, the blessed encouragement of God! He who knows it for himself ministers it to others. How little of this ministry, do you say? Then let us both begin at home and ask, ‘How much of it do the saints get from me?’
From Words of Encouragement—vol 4, 1898
