The Present Provision Of God
The Present Provision of God
This I believe is joy and comfort by “the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ”, see Phil 1: 8, 19. He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that in which He lived as man down here, and if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of Him. As to the apostle, his comfort in Christ (chap 2: 1) abounded, and his joy in the Lord was always. He wishes the Philippians to be fulfillers (that is, completers) of this his joy, by being “like-minded”. His comfort in Christ abounded at the very moment when lawlessness had shut him up in the prison at Rome and when all the saints in Asia had deserted him!
I think this is an unvarying principle with God. We see the Spirit of Christ in Noah, Joseph, Moses and David. God meets desertion and lawlessness always by the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and thus the darkest days become the brightest. They become days when occasion is furnished for the display of His mind! Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. The Lord as man proves the point. In His joy and comfort His people only act in His Spirit and only wait for Him “as Saviour”.
It is by the supply and display of the Holy Spirit in that character, that in which Christ walked as man down here, that God meets the present defection and lawlessness. Luke presents the Lord as Son of man. In this gospel the anointed Man is seen in Him, and in the Acts Luke gives the same man in the same Spirit, seen now in men on earth. They are the persecuted “me” of chap 9: 4, and this is where we come in and live, if we come into the gain of the present moment. In Luke we have reached the “time of incense”, the second Man is before God, and Luke only therefore speaks of “the days of the Son of man”. These are present now, and the Spirit of the Son in evidence. We know “in the land” the “days of heaven upon the earth”, Deut 11: 21. They began with Christ the anointed Man and continue to the rapture, Rev 12: 5.
From Mutual Comfort—vol 9, 1916
“The Second Man”
Oh words of grace! Again let them be spoken,
He gave ‘Himself’ for me8.
Himself—the second Man—eternal token,
None greater could there be.
We walk down here, the wilderness our pathway,
His Spirit—UNITY,
Midst trackless wastes we have no ‘King’s own
highway’.
CHRIST, our sufficiency.
Joy, beyond words! with ceaseless circumspection
He ‘carries us up hence’.
Seats us in His—the second Man’s—perfection,
And bids us ‘Look from thence’.
We see God’s universe from “heavenly places”,
CHRIST9, over all, as HEAD,
Thou art the Son! where angels veil their faces,
Blest Firstborn from the dead!
Our “former things have passed away”, in distance,
The second MAN is nigh,
Lord Jesus Christ! In Thee is our acceptance,
We live, since Thou didst die.
Note—“My assembly” is the assembly down here of the second Man, and the house of the living God.
From Mutual Comfort—vol 9, 1916
The Moment the Pressure Began
the Relief Began
(Song of Songs 1: 7. 8; John 20: 17)
The bride and the flock are identical in the Old Testament and in the New, but in the Old Testament it is the earthly bride and in the New Testament the heavenly.
The bride turns to her beloved for relief! It is noontide, when in this extreme heat of the sun she demands, and seeks, and gets (SofS 2: 3) the shade. The shadow is His own portion down here. It is well, beloved brethren, to be clear about this, and the Lord shews us in this passage it is so beyond all doubt. He goes on high, and the church is left in the place of testing down here, but with the same provision as He Himself had in it. “My Father, your Father; my God, your God”. He has secured it, and He hastens to declare it, giving also the Spirit that the relief may not only be known but also enjoyed. What is the provision and relief? It is the known relation into which He has now entered as Man (but in which He lived as Man when on earth), now further enhanced by having entered into His glory and having sent down the Spirit to be in us the power of its apprehension and enjoyment! “He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you”, John 16: 15.
Beloved brethren, this is the present state of things—the every-day state of things. May the Lord keep us thereby not under the sense of the pressure but in the joy of the relief. His own portion as Man down here, and as Man up there, all ours!
Exeter
August 1916
From Mutual Comfort—vol 9, 1916