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WHAT SMALL THINGS BECOME

C.C.lkin

Daniel 2: 34,35; Revelation 11: 19 (1st half); John 1: 32; 2 Corinthians 11: 33;

It may not be clear how these scriptures relate to one another, but in each of them what is intensely small becomes immensely great; indeed so great that, in certain aspects, such become infinite. One feels that at a time like this we need to think of what small things become. We live in "the day of small things" (Zech 4: 10) and the word there is that it is not to be despised. So these scriptures all refer to what is very small.

How small this planet earth in which we live is! Within three days it is possible to go right round it by air. And if we would go up into the heavens we would see this small orb as one of the smallest of the planets. Then from it we can look into the heavens and see the stars in the far distance. It takes eight minutes for the light of the sun to reach us, but from these distant stars it has been assessed that it may take millions of light years to reach us. And what is this little earth in the presence of this great universe? And God has indeed made it a beautiful world. Those who go up above the atmospheric heavens say that the beauty of the earth is indescribable, that it is a beautiful blue. This earth God made in every single detail; whether it is vegetation or life, God, "who is over all, and through all, and in us all" (Eph 4: 6), is sustaining life on this orb which He has created. And yet as we look up to the sky we look into infinity; we do not know what is beyond the furthest star. This is infinity; it is a reality, just as eternity is a reality. Infinity is truly a reality, and God alone is connected with infinity, yet this small earth is the place where He is working out His purposes of love and power and glory.

In Daniel it is a stone; not a rock but a stone. It is small, and this stone is set over against the tremendous powers that are in the world: the power of politics, the power of religion, spiritual powers of tremendous force. Over against them is a stone. It is remarkable that Mr Darby says that, after personal salvation, the two great matters that God has in mind are His government and His purpose (see C.W. Vol.11, p.229). How long God has been waiting in working out His government on this earth! He is the Governor of the universe and He allows empires to function; this was particularly seen with Nebuchadnezzar who was the head of gold in the image which he saw in his dream. Men around us are forming their great combinations in relation to the nations, but these nations are in God's eyes as "a drop in the bucket", Isa 40: 15. God has in mind to bring into His universe what relates to a stone as a type of Christ. Think of Jesus here in the presence of the great authorities, in the presence of Herod when He did not speak a word, and then in the presence of Pilate, the representative of Rome, the civil power that was on the earth at that time. Pilate enquires: "Thou are then a king?", and in answer Jesus says "Thou sayest", John 18: 37. And Pilate feared: he might well fear, and the nations around us might well fear because very, very soon Christ is coming to take control of the earth. These nations of the earth, whether represented by the gold or silver or brass or iron, will all be removed as Christ comes in His kingdom. That kingdom will be universal; it will go right through from the east to the west, from north to south, a great, all-powerful kingdom. God has in mind to withdraw His own government of the earth which He now exercises, and when He withdraws this government of the earth the most terrible disasters will happen in it. We are praying, and the prayers of the thousands of persons who know God are holding back the powers that would take complete control. Why is it we have the great eastern block of communism? Why is it we have the combination of nations in the west? Why is it we have Islam, with the combination of Arabic Edomite powers? They cannot move because God is answering our prayers and the whole matter is being held in control until the Lord comes. He is coming as a stone "... cut out without hands" which will smite the image and will itself become "a great mountain" and fill "the whole earth".

Now in the book of Revelation we get another view of Christ. The verse read opens up the second half of the book of Revelation and what we see is the ark in heaven, in the temple. The ark is a most wonderful type of Christ as man. Let us contemplate the humanity of Jesus. It says "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us", John 1: 14. Think of Him, as a babe in the arms of Simeon; think of what Simeon says of Him; "a light for revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel", Luke 2: 32. Simeon had Christ in his hands, the Ark, so small, a Babe, and yet God manifest in flesh. He was here in the smallest condition in which He could be found, coming within our range. Young people, Jesus has come within your range to be laid hold of by you. He has come within my range. Marvellous fact! Jesus has been here, and the fact that He has been here means that He is coming again. He has gone into heaven where He is now, and His second coming will be correlative to His first coming. In the first the issues as to sin were resolved; in the second He comes, apart from the question of sin, for salvation (see Heb 9: 28). How wonderful to think of the ark as typical of Him!

Then we see Jesus confining Himself to a small area the size of Wales. He would not go beyond that area; the One who is going to fill the earth with blessing thus confined Himself to one small area of territory. What was worked out there was to be infinite. The world, John says, could not contain the books of the things that Jesus did (see John 21: 25). Then also although that scripture refers to what He did in the days of His flesh, every one of us is the work now of His doing, and myriads, ten thousand times ten thousand, will be written on, who have been the subject of the work of Jesus. What He did was so great that only a small part of His works was recorded by the gospel writers. They depict Jesus as man, who was so insignificant to men; He was so small in the eyes of men that He was able to pass through the crowd and no one detected Him. How great was all that was found in Him as man, a Man here amongst men.

At the end of that wonderful pathway Jesus delivered Himself up, and then was seen the greatness of what was effected in His death. What a reality in God's universe was "the death of the Lord", 1 Cor 11: 26! Everything centres in "the death of the Lord". It is like the ark of the Lord of all the earth going into the Jordan. How marvellous to be a contemplator of it and to see what He is doing. And the glory of it is this, that He is opening up another world. The ark originated in the wilderness, but it is seen here in the temple and that suggests Solomon, because the ark in his temple was at the highest point reached in the history of the children of Israel. "And the ark... was seen in his temple". Stephen saw Jesus in heaven; it just baffled everyone because he could look into heaven and could see Jesus there, antitype of the ark, the One whom I love as my Saviour, the One who has come into my range to be appropriated, the One who, we might say, most feelingly as Man has gone through the weakness of flesh and blood condition, sin apart, and who has gone into death. "If therefore ye seek me, let these go away", John 18: 8. That is how the love of Christ affects me in His death. I want to go that way myself; in figure I am going over the bed of the Jordan and He is staying there in death until I go over. How touching it is! Jesus in His death worked out the will of God so that I might live; not die but live. The way into life is through death. It is a wonderful day when I die with Christ. Have I died with Christ? I may be tested tomorrow in relation to saying this, but nevertheless it is a great matter for the saints to realise that they have died with Christ and their "life is hid with the Christ in God", Col 3: 3. There He is majestically shining out from the glory scene; it is the glory of the Lord. Surely objective ministry is most important. Without objective ministry, a ministry of Christ shining from heaven, where should we be? An objective ministry gives us the truth, gives us facts, quite outside of any work within us to appropriate it. But there it is, and it is to be seen in the shining out of the gospel. Paul speaks of it as "the radiancy of the glad tidings of the glory of the Christ", 2 Cor 4: 4. That is the present moment. Christ is there, and we know He is there, we see Him there. And the ark was "seen in his temple". How important that we should keep to the facts, the wonderful matters that God has established in the purposes of His love! As we were saying, the first thing after personal salvation is the government of God and the purpose of God. The purpose of God is that Christ, One of the Persons of the Godhead, should be found on this little earth to attract thousands upon thousands of persons to Himself who will be like Him and have their part in the eternal day. And the ark, typifying what is infinite, wonderfully so, had a margin of gold round about, so small. What is it? - two and a half cubits, four feet long, a little chest we might say, and it went a thousand yards, two thousand cubits, into the Jordan, and that two thousand cubits implies faith in those who would follow. Could we see a chest of four feet long, more than half a mile away? It is our privilege now to be in faith conditions, our going into death, Christ going into death, a reality indeed, because through His death has opened up a scene of life in which we are going to be with Him for ever.

How important it is to have preachers! Paul was a preacher. He was one who set the light, and the shining of the light we might say, upon persons; he illuminated and liberated them. Here we are in the last days of the gospel and that gospel is being preached. Along with the gospel is the ministry of the new covenant; that is, God is towards us in love. Surely we need objective ministry and persons who can say what they have seen and know in order that you might see and know and I might see and know. How wonderful it is just to see that that little ark was the centre of the tabernacle! The tabernacle system is a figure of the universe and the universe is going to be filled with that Man, with Christ. It is indeed marvellous to see Him in an objective way, and it is not connected with our realisation of it all. God is going to have His way. This objective is seen in the first three verses of Hebrews, how God spoke in His Son. It says "having made by himself the purification of sins, set himself down on the right hand of the greatness on high". We had no part in that great matter; it was entirely of God.

Now in John's gospel we have the Spirit as a dove. One of the small birds is the dove, and yet the Spirit was wholly there on the Person of Jesus as Man; that is there was that there upon which the Spirit could abide. But the wonderful thing about the Spirit is, that through the great work of redemption and Christ going into heaven, the Spirit would come upon persons and in persons. The anointing of the Spirit and the sealing of the Spirit is in and upon persons. You can see them. You look round this room; you see the aged sisters, not only is the peace of God upon them but the anointing of the Spirit; you can see it. You can see the Spirit. Then there is the internal work of the Spirit: "he abides with you, and shall be in you", John 14: 17. They were few at Pentecost; certainly there are more here today than there were at Pentecost. There were a hundred and twenty persons; each one had faith, each had been called, each was there on the principle of obedience. They were awaiting the Spirit from heaven and the Spirit came. It was upon them as tongues of fire. When the Spirit comes upon men and women who are like ourselves, it needs to be as tongues of fire. The flesh in me has to be burned up. It is no different now at my age from what it was when I was twenty, no different at all. The flesh is there all the time. Thank God He has dealt with the flesh. When Jesus was made sin for us, the One who knew not sin, He entered into what flesh meant. There is the flesh there is the world, there is the devil, but the exercise I have here are intense sometimes, as to whether I am in spiritual liberty, because I can very easily not be. It is a great reality that the Spirit came in without measure. There were a hundred and twenty persons, but think of three thousand being added on Peter's preaching; three thousand more persons having the Spirit. Think of Cornelius, the Spirit coming upon him and those with him. He had already come, it was not a fresh dispensation of the Spirit from heaven. He was here in Peter, and what was in the sheet, all those creatures in the sheet, was going into heaven, and Cornelius was going into heaven. It says that while Peter was preaching the word the Holy Spirit fell, as if it was His affectionate embrace of the Gentiles. As we said earlier, Simeon said "a light for revelation of the Gentiles". How was it that Simeon could look ahead to Paul's ministry? Paul opened up in spiritual power for God what was in the nations. How was it Simeon knew the prophets so well in their reference to the restoration of Israel which is only just about going to take place? Simeon saw it as he took Jesus into his arms. So the blessed Spirit is here, and He is here universally without measure. Surely we need to think more of the greatness of what is here. God is here, He is here in His house, He is known in His house. The blessed Spirit is here and as a consequence God is here. What follows is the importance of subjective ministry. We must have subjective ministry, we must have that which forms us according to Christ, that which, we might say, gets right down in our moral beings. What God is doing here and what He is doing there is a reality, because I am being formed as in Romans, and I am being formed to go into Corinthians and I am being formed in relation to the eternal day. So subjective ministry is essential. I find that in my flesh good does not dwell and I need subjective ministry. Objective ministry may need to be stressed, but subjective ministry is the formation of Christ here, its object being that "as he is, we also are in this world", 1 John 4: 17. So subjective ministry is not to be despised. In the ages gone by, three centuries ago, there was a clash between objective ministry and subjective ministry; and now the Lord would help us to see that both ministries go along side by side, and the servants of the Lord are being very greatly helped. Along with that is the subjective working so that there is substance in the soul. My links with the Lord and with the Spirit are intensely practical and real. We need practical ministry, what will help us in our everyday lives practically. It is remarkable that in the Collected Writings of Mr Darby we have what is Expository and what is Critical and what is Evangelical, but also what is Practical. Practical ministry is that I love my brother, and the great point in this kind of ministry is that things become real. If I just dwell upon objective ministry I am a happy man:

'Thus joyful, bright and free,

I take the heav'nly road;

My soul vibrates with melody,

My song is ever - God!' (Hymn 228)

But joy can turn to misery overnight. We do not measure matters by our joy. Objective ministry will give us joy; we have no part in it, God has done it all. But the wonderful thing about subjective ministry is that it forms something here, and it will go through. What is subjective is formed and will go through any kind of test. And to put this matter into practical expression, I pass from death to life because I love the brethren (1 John 3: 14); and, "which thing is true in him and in you", 1 John 2: 8. It is very remarkable that the servants who have been here in recent months have nearly always turned to John's ministry. And John's ministry is to get us saturated with the love of divine Persons. Think of the Son saying that he that keeps My word, His Father would love him and that both the Father and the Son would come to him permanently (see John 14: 23). I do not want anything else but this. To get myself out of my own mind is one of the greatest practical difficulties I know. The great thing is that Christ is our life, Christ inwardly. What was formed at Colosse was inward formation; what went into Ephesians was inward formation, and ability to go into God in power. So objective ministry is essential - the gospel; and subjective ministry is essential - the mystery. Paul had both the gospel and the mystery, yet he had such a small estimate of himself that, in the verse read in Corinthians, he could speak of being lowered in a basket. I would love to have been at Ephesus with Paul serving there. He would not be on the objective line too much. He speaks of the preaching of the glad tidings of the grace of God; he speaks of the preaching of the kingdom and that involves power, it involves something being formed in the saints. Then he went down to their households one by one, and we would say, Paul what are you doing? Why are you in tears about a matter? - "with tears", he says "night and day", Acts 20: 31. Such is the effect of the blessed Spirit working through ministry.

Now the final scripture in Jeremiah is concerning Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem here, is a small city compared with other capital cities of the world, it is perhaps one of the smallest. It would be possible to go up one of the mountains round Jerusalem and take a photograph of the whole city. It is so small, so insignificant in men's minds, that it rarely appears in the press. Thank God it does not appear in the press. Why does not Jerusalem appear in the press? Is it our prayers that are holding back the great conflicts that are going to take place on the earth around Jerusalem? Is it, we may say, that the blessed Spirit of God would say, the time for the fulfilment of prophecy is not yet? It is now the time of the Spirit, the time of the gospel, the time of securing men and women for the assembly, for the holy city which is above. And the earthly Jerusalem becomes a great city, thirty-eight miles round its walls according to Ezekiel. This great city Jerusalem, that is right in the centre of three continents, obviously must be the administrative centre of the world. One of the scriptures that I have particularly thought about recently is "and the cities of the nations fell", Rev 16: 19. All the anxiety there is in government is that there may not be electronic warfare that, with an explosion in say Westminster, the whole city would be razed to the ground. God is holding it back. The beloved servant in 1945, when those two cities in the east went up in flames, just said two words: Fear not. Tomorrow Jerusalem is coming into mind, but it will not be until the church is gone. The time of the church's entry into heaven is imminent; she is going up substantially, going up in power, going up with the Spirit who has taken us all the way through the history of the assembly. The assembly goes up to heaven in power. It is something to be thought about - meeting the Lord in the air.

Now coming again to this matter of the city, I believe it is something that we need to think more about. There is only one city, it is the Jerusalem which is above "which is our mother", Gal 4: 26: "Jerusalem above": who says that? It is a fact that the city is there, ready for heaven, substantially real. Objective ministry has brought the sunshine, the life and enjoyment of what God has done. There are thirteen references to Jerusalem in the Old Testament. Every Jew would know that the earthly Jerusalem is the great ultimate to which things are to finish up. As soon as we have gone, Jerusalem will be in the press. It makes us very, very sensitive and sober that, as the Lord comes, the assembly goes into heaven. What is left here will be the cities of the nations which fall.

So we look at the holy city; it is a cube, a great entity, but it is finite. It belongs to eternity and in it are the great ministries that have taken place from the beginning of time. Angelic ministry? Yes, the angels are mentioned in Revelation 21. The law was given by angels; it was their ministry. What was unfolded to Abraham will be there; what God had in mind as to Israel will be there, I think; but one thing is certain, that the assembly is there in this great, this holy city. It is not called a great city; it is the holy city, the new Jerusalem which comes down from heaven. If we look at it from any angle it is the same. If we look at it objectively, it is the same, or subjectively, it is the same. If viewed from north, south, east or west, it is the same; it is this wonderful city, which is in its size the cubic measure of the moon, it is so great. It is only a figure, it is only a type, it is only a symbol. In Ezekiel they are not symbols, they are actual measurements regarding the city, but in Revelation we see this wonderful vessel. We are in it and we are in it now. Why cannot we all be consciously in it? We have to get delivered from petty matters; petty matters hold us up. A matter that is petty can become a mountain and it is good for faith to say, "Be thou... cast into the sea", Mark 11: 23. Faith would do that - even a mountain. God knows what we have to pass through; Satan knows too, He knows the problems. And problems are not issues. An issue may result in disintegration or it may involve schism and cleavage. We think of 1847, and we think of 1908, and we think of 1970. All these things bear upon us and make us humble. But what is before God is to be before us and we are to have the holy city, our mother, before us. It is greater than any of the other cities, greater than Corinth, greater than Ephesus, greater than Philippi, greater than Thessalonica; "the holy city... coming down... from God, having the glory of God", Rev 21: 10. Well, beloved brethren, are we in the enjoyment of this wonderful matter, the city coming down from heaven? May God bless us and help us in this, for His Name's sake.

LONDON

16 January 1982

THE CHILDREN'S QUESTIONS

God expects young people to be interested in His ways. He wanted the Hebrew children to ask about the Passover. You will remember that a lamb was slain and its blood sprinkled on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the house. For the Christian this is a sign of the shedding of the precious blood of Jesus as of a lamb without blemish or spot. This has been done once for all and by it the believer is sheltered from judgment and redeemed to God.

After the Israelites crossed the river Jordan and came into the land that God had provided for them, they set up twelve great stones on the river bank. The children were expected to ask two questions about these. One question was "What mean ye by these stones?" and the other was "What mean these stones?" The answer to the first question was that the water of the river was stopped a long way upstream whilst the ark passed into and over the Jordan on dry land. For the Christian this means that death had to yield when Jesus died and rose again. The answer to the other question was that the people themselves had also crossed the river on dry land. For us this means that believers have been attracted after the Lord and are standing like those great stones in the homeland of God's purpose.

I believe that the first teenage question in the Bible was asked by a boy and the second by a girl. The boy enquired about the worship of God and the girl asked if she could help her brother. The boy was Isaac and the sheep for an offering that he asked about represented the Lord Jesus who was in life and death so fully pleasing to God. The girl, Miriam, was at the right place at the right time to be used of God. She sought to be of help to her baby brother. We do not know what his earlier name was but he became called Moses and was later one of God's greatest servants.

A little question can lead to much blessing. There is a very touching story from the old coaching days of a little girl hardly five years old. By asking in her childish way 'Do you love God?' she led to the conversion of a fellow-traveller. He was a man who even dared to question the existence of an almighty Creator and had influenced many for evil. He had been charmed by the pretty ways of the little child, but her question, repeated, 'Do you love God' left him a convicted man when he got off the coach. This led to his conversion. After some years he was able to trace the home of the child's mother only to find that the Lord had taken to Himself that dear child. He told the mother that he was a monument of God's mercy through the influence of her little daughter. Are you ready if the Lord should come now or should call you away?

J.C.Evershed

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