THE VESSEL

Filled unto all the fulness of God with all saints

When the Holy Spirit fills the soul then there is its part and no lack. All that rises there is of God. It bubbles up, and up, and up, and the vessel cannot contain the expansion! It goes beyond the vessel. The ministry to that soul is of “fulness”, which neither all heaven nor all earth could contain (for then the vessel would be greater than what it contained).

We have to contemplate other factors when we think of what “his fulness” is—“And of his fulness have all we received”. We have to think of the new creation, in Christ and of eternity. Hence the soul today must overflow. I think the overflow is in two directions in the time history of the soul. It is God-ward—that is, worship; and it is man-ward—that is, in rivers of living water! Oh, the blessedness of God’s provision for us! His answer, in your soul, to all the dearth that you find everywhere else! “In him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life”, John 4: 14 NT. A fountain—God’s outpouring there of His supply. Lord, give me of this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.

 

From Helps for the Poor of the Flock—vol 13, 1908

MAN IN DOMINION; GOD AT REST

‘MAN in dominion, and then God at rest’... In type it is seen in the first thirty-four verses of the Bible. Blessed solution in view of Rev 21 2, 3, 4! The substance of all God's ways in the first thirty-four verses of Genesis—a small compass! The man of purpose and counsel is seen in Christ, and in His body, the church (so long “hid in God” (Eph 3: 9)).

 

From Helps for the Poor of the Flock—vol 15, 1910

The World System and the Father’s System

“If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him”, 1 John 2: 15. This passage shews that there are two vast systems, with one or the other of which every man is connected. We form, I suppose, part of that system with which we are connected. The base of the one is lust and of the other love.

There is “the god of this world”, 2 Cor 4: 4. Covertly and mystically now he is worshipped already by his votaries. Soon he will be openly adored, see Rev 13: 4. What a comfort it is that if we see the wilfulness and the weakness of man thus today, there is this other system revealed. “The Father seeketh such to worship him”, John 4: 23. The Father’s world is seen in man, He seeks it in man in relation to the Son. Worship is its privilege and its desideratum.

As to this, the Father’s system: He is known and it is the association together now of all those who are translated “into the kingdom of the Son of his love”, Col 1: 13 NT. It is higher than that of angels. The Son is there. And unto which of the angels said He at any time, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee”, Heb 1: 5? “Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak”, Heb 2: 5. In the midst of this system on earth the Son now sings praises to the Father.

As to the world-system, it has its praise and its prince and its god. It is that man-debased system described (morally) here as “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world”, 1 John 2: 16.

The Son reveals the Father, and the Father seeks worshippers. “The Father loveth the Son”. He has established an everlasting system for us in relation to the Son. All the rest shall perish, but not this. “Thou remainest” (Heb 1: 11) is said to the Son, and said of that system, too, in connection with the Father, which is established in Him. This brings to light how we are brought in. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but [here it is] he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever”, 1 John 2: 17. I think everybody and everything stands connected with the one or the other of these two systems.

And presently He will join the company, whom He will then lead as Man for ever, 1 Thess 4. “And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words”.

The word Father conveys to us the thought of origin. He has originated that system which is according to His own mind and will. The wicked one opposes, and this opposes, and this opposition develops the anti-christian system. When this system shall be fully developed in the best and false prophet, he will publicly assume in them the place of God and of Christ, Rev 19: 19-21. John speaks plainly of this anti-christian system. But he speaks of both. “We know that we [Christians] are of God, and the whole world [that system] lies in the wicked one”, 1 John 5: 19 NT. This is what we know, and we know it since “the Son of God is come” and hath given us the “understanding” of it.

He who is before the Father now and as Man is THE SON! The order of God is that the man develops the system. The order of the world system is that the system develops the man. With God the man is greater of necessity than the system that he develops. God begins with the Son. He has given “all things into his hand”, John 3: 35. We come into blessing as part of the one system which the Son forms, and forms from the outset, wholly according to the Father’s will. We are in this system which, for the Father’s will, will all take its character from the Son! Blessed thought for all the children, see 1 John 3: 1!

There are two things found within this system. They are relationship and affection. In one word “love” characterises it, see 1 Cor 13. In the world system there is found neither relationship nor affection. That is, in one word, “love” is not found in it. There is found in it only lust. “The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life”, “which are not of the Father but of the world”. Lust allowed must and does develop into lawlessness.

Hence the world system exists and is growing, and so likewise is the Father’s system. But the man to go to the top of the world system presently will be the developed man—the “man of sin”. The best that in its opinion the world system will produce as its fruit is that man, 2 Thess 2: 3, 4! What an awful delusion, and comment on what is all around us.

The Father’s system, on the other hand, has begun, and has begun with perfection. For this we can thank God. It has begun for the Father and for us with the Man at the top. Then the Holy Ghost comes down, and comes down “from the Father” to form us all after that Model. John 14: 2 and Eph 4: 13 may be compared, and so the work advances towards its completion, which must now be very near.

It was not so in Genesis 1. There the head came in last and he (Adam) ruined it all. Here the Head is first, and He, the last Adam, begins before us God’s purpose and counsel. In Genesis 1 Adam was not the man. “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual”, 1 Cor 15: 46. We have come to “that which is spiritual”, I think, that is, to God’s original purpose and counsel and the new order. “Thou hast kept the good wine until now” was addressed to the last Adam. We hereby see the folly of evolution.

We find in the Old Testament the origin of the ‘world system’. In the New Testament we have, in the coming into manhood of the Son, the first public introduction of “heavenly things”—that is, of the Father’s system, John 3: 12. A faith calling in view of this and outside of the world system had always existed.

But that which is heavenly and “of the Father” is introduced on earth by the Son. It could not be here until the Son was here. It exists and triumphs in the power of the Spirit in the midst of the prevalent world system, since “greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world”, 1 John 4: 4.

What does this mean? It means that our new associations are all to be henceforth with the Son! It means that slowly but surely the old order of things even as to God is to give place to the new. The new order has come in, in the Son, in order to bring man into sonship, Gal 4: 4, 5.

The Son, having brought in “heavenly things”, maintains them in the saints, and (as to authority) He is the appointed judge of all contrary to the Father, that is of this ‘world system’! The Father judges no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man. It is most interesting to note how the dawn of “heavenly things” clears our spiritual vision. The piety of the Old Testament day, to which we are so prone to go back and with which we vainly attempt to accredit ourselves, will never effect this. The Son has come into manhood in order that man, that we, may be brought into the conscious good and blessing of sonship, and if we have not touched this we can scarcely assume to be in “heavenly things” nor in the good of them.

I think it will be found that this word of the Lord, “heavenly things”, runs throughout and characterises all John’s gospel. He has taken up in connection with the maintenance of heavenly things in the saints what I call a present ‘official position’ as Man. This is set forth in John 20: 17, and it has two aspects for us—in relation to the Father and to God: “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God”. He is here seen first as the officiating priest but as Man and as the Son with the Father—“an high priest over the house of God” (Heb 10: 21, 22)—but He is also seen in the passage as Son over God’s house down here, “whose house are we”. The “spiritual house” is thus the worshipping company associated with Him, so that there is the triumph now down here in the church of the “heavenly things”, and the man is set in the present good of them therein—that is, “in sonship”.

 

Kingston-on-Thames

From Mutual Comfort—vol 3, 1910

“The Friend of God”

We only read of one man, I think, in all the Old Testament who got this name. It was Abraham, see Isa 41: 8; James 2: 23. It characterised him. God had no reserve from Abraham as to what He was doing in Abraham’s day. And so it should be with us. There are many in the New Testament day to whom the term belongs. I do not think that it characterises all the saints now, for it did not characterise Lot. (For the many which I speak of see John 15: 14, 15.) It belongs to all the saints, but it does not characterise all. What gave Abraham this title, “the friend of God”? Faith did, and nothing else—faith in God, that is all. James tells us this, chap 2.

Sight spoils. Abram believed—it was counted—and he was called “the friend of God”. Now faith and sight are opposites. Faith said, God! This was enough for Abraham. Lot said, the world! The well-watered plains were present, and Sodom had its attractions for Lot. Faith says, ‘God IS’, and then, ‘The world is not’. Sight says, ‘The world is’ and then adds, ‘GOD is not’. They cannot go on together. It is for us either God or the world. I should like in the midst of my daily calling to be known as a “friend of God” down here! That is, as one from whom God has no secrets with respect to what He is doing now.

 

From The Believer’s Friend—vol 2, 1910