THE HIGH WAY THROUGH THIS WORLD
Deuteronomy 2:26-29; Genesis 41:37-43 (to ‘knee’);
Our brother said on Friday that he was thinking about the things that would please the Lord. What would be a way to move through the world that would please the Lord? That is why I read this scripture in Deuteronomy. Moses was talking to the people who were on the brink of going into the land; they were on the brink of the inheritance. That is where we are, dear friends, we are able to enter into our inheritance, and soon we will actually be taken to heaven. Deuteronomy is instruction for living in the land, and while Moses is doing that, he reviews the way they had come. One of the things he reminds them of is the way that they had set themselves to go through the territories across which they had passed. I would encourage each one of us today to set ourselves to pass through this world without settling down in it, because then we will be strong. We need to be aware of what this world is, and aware of how God would help us pass through it. What the people did, as you can see here, is that they set themselves for it.
Moses sent the messengers and he said in effect ‘Here is the proposal, this is how we are going to pass through’. Have you thought about how you are going to pass through this world? We know how godless it is, and we have to pass through it. We have to find a way and we need to think and pray about how we are to do that, and about how God would have us move through it. Do you find it a struggle? Have you prayed about it, have you asked God for help, asked Him for guidance? Moses said “Let me pass through”. That is one thing that will help us, to realise that we are just passing through. You are not here to settle down; you are not here to find a place, to make a name. You are only passing through. The Lord Jesus said “I do not demand that thou shouldest take them out of the world”, John 17:15. He has left us here for a purpose, we are only passing through. Moses says, “by the high-way alone will I go”. That is a noble proposal, “by the high-way”, and that is what I want to encourage you to do today, to set yourself to go through this world, but to go through it not as going down to its level, not as coming down to its standards, because they are sliding all the time, but to go through by the highway. So Moses says “by the high-way alone will I go”. That is a fine thing to say. It is referred to in another scripture as the king’s road (Num.20:17). We are to go on the king’s road, to set ourselves for the heavenly side of the truth. There is an elevated aspect to God’s truth that is worth standing for, and that is seen in the high-way. Moses says “I will neither turn to the right hand nor to the left”. The devil is trying to get us to turn aside all the time, to take our eyes off Christ, to turn to the left or to the right and it leads downwards. As an example, if you go along the motorway through Birmingham, it is lifted up on pillars, and you go on the high-way above the city down below. Moses says, “Thou shalt sell me food for money that I may eat; and thou shalt give me water for money that I may drink”. We do not become debtors to the world; we have to fulfil righteousness, before God, but it is only that we may have food and drink that we may live. Moses did not demand anything great, he only wanted to live, he was just passing through.
That is a good way to think of your life here in the world; you are just passing through. Moses said “I will only pass through on my feet” and then he says, “until I shall pass over the Jordan into the land which Jehovah our God giveth us”. It is a very noble proposition. In actual fact, the proposal of Moses and the people was rejected by the king, and there was war. Nevertheless, Moses had a plan and I would ask you, do you have a plan? I think we should pray about the world that we pass through, and ask ourselves whether we are going to set ourselves as Moses did, to go on the high-way, to set ourselves for what is heavenly. When Nehemiah was building the wall, Sanballat and Tobijah said “Come, let us meet together in the villages in the plain of Ono”, Neh.6:2. They said ‘come down here’; they thought that they would distract him from his work. Nehemiah says “Why should the work cease, whilst I leave it and come down to you?” Neh.6:3. Do not get ensnared in the world, do not give in to the pull of lower standards in the world that we live in. We are not immune from this pull downwards. The devil will distract us completely from the path if he can, but if he cannot do that he will be happy just to drag us down, to lower the standard a bit. I would encourage us all to set ourselves to take a higher path. Our brother said that the room in which they gathered in Acts 20 was above the level of the street. That is the idea; the level of the street is going down, and down. There is something better, there is something higher. There are things that we have been engaged with in these meetings today and yesterday evening, things that are worth setting ourselves for, heavenly things which God wants for us.
We were reading during the week in Manchester about the people of Israel going over the Jordan. You remember that there were the two and a half tribes and they said in effect, We are not going to go over, we are going to settle for something less, we are going to settle on this side of the Jordan, we are going to settle for something that is of a lower standard. But when the tribes went over, they took stones out of the Jordan, and set them up in the land, and there were twelve of them. That is what God wanted for them all, and that is what God wants for you. He wants the best for you, and it is something worth hanging on to, the top stone of the truth, which bring us to Genesis 41.
I want to mention two things which are calculated to help us to raise the level, help us to have our eyes upward and not downward. I want to speak about Christ in glory. This is the top stone, Christ where He is, not where He was. I am not at all setting aside His sufferings, or all He did and was when He was here. But we need to go on the high-way and fill our hearts with the joy of what Christ is and where He is, and all of His accumulated glories, and to have our minds and hearts filled with Him in the place where He reigns. The world that we are in fills our minds and our hearts with everything down here. Paul says “have your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth”, Col.3:2. What is going to help you go on the high-way, on the king’s road, are thoughts of Christ Himself.
You could think of Pharaoh here as God who has exalted Christ in heaven. He said “Shall we find one as this”. Can you find anyone like Christ? Can you find one like Jesus? It is almost as though Pharaoh said ‘there is no need to look any further’. There is nothing more calculated to keep us on the high-way than occupation with Jesus, and I challenge myself about whether I am occupied enough with Him in the place where He is. What do we know about it? What do we know about the glory? Our brother spoke to us about the One who has passed through the heavens, leaving His imprint on every one. Joseph was exalted in Egypt. Jesus has been given a name, “that which is above every name”, Phil.2:9. It is the glory of Jesus where He is, and God has given Him every distinction that it is possible to give.
So Pharaoh says “only concerning the throne will I be greater than thou”. That is what God has done, He has given Christ every distinction He can. The Lord Jesus takes up that holy relationship in perfection; He subjects Himself to the Father because He is the Son. Yet it is the glory of deity, divine glory that is shining in heaven now for us as believers as we go along the road. As we resist the temptation of going down to the world’s level, it is divine glory that shines in heaven. The Lord Jesus said, “glorify me, thou Father, along with thyself, with the glory which I had along with thee before the world was”, John 17:5. The glory of God shines in the face of Jesus. What more does the believer need? What would he want with the world? What would we want with anything less? Can you find One as this?
And then it says that Pharaoh “arrayed him”. Think of that! Think of God arraying Christ, think of His joy in doing it. You get the glory of the great High Priest in heaven coming out. Have you thought of Christ like that? What an object, what a resource He is for the believer as we go along the high-way, a great High Priest established in heaven, of whom Hebrews goes on to speak about as the One who is “a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec”, Heb.5:6. When we read about Melchisedec in Genesis, we do not know anything about him. It says that he was “without father, without mother, without genealogy” (Heb.7:3), it cannot be traced, “having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but assimilated to the Son of God”. He is the One who “has the priesthood unchangeable”, Heb.7:24. God has found a Priest, such a Priest, that He will never relinquish. In the old days, there was priest after priest, and I suppose some of them were better than others, but now Jesus is there for you, He is established there forever, not just having the priesthood unchanging, but unchangeable. How great is the glory of Christ!
So Pharaoh arrayed Joseph in clothes of byssus, “And he caused him to ride in the second chariot that he had”. I like to think of that. I like to think that even in a meeting like this, God is causing Christ to be glorified before us. Think of the joy of God, the joy of the Father in displaying Christ, displaying His greatness, His glory, His worth. Not now Jesus hanging there on the cross – how precious – but now He is free from all that. What shines out is His glory and His worth and His blessedness. So Pharaoh says “Shall we find one as this”. What are you going to occupy your mind with? Can you find anything better? Can you find One as this? Shall we vote in the general election? Shall we look at the candidates and compare them, find out about them, find out what they have done, what their ideas are? Shall we? Or shall we just lay them aside and say ‘We are going to go on the one high-way, we have found someone better, we have found Someone who is incomparable’. Jesus becomes incomparable to us and occupation with Him will keep us on the high-way.
It was said in the reading that in the end everyone will say that God was right to exalt Jesus. That is worth repeating. Our King is reigning already, our Man is in power, and in the end everyone will say that God was right to exalt Jesus. The believer goes on the King’s road with the secret of that in his heart already.
In Ephesians 4 you find that you are not alone. You may think it is going to be hard to set yourself for a higher level of things, to set yourself for the heavenly side of the truth, to set yourself to fill your heart with Christ where He is up there. The great thing is that there are others with you. They are not finding it easy either, but they have the same objective, they are going on the King’s road too. You come into contact with them; this verse in Ephesians 4 tells us that we are “fitted together”. It is a picture of the body of Christ. How blessed it is if God gives me one I can walk with on the same basis, who has the same objective as me. We feel the smallness sometimes; perhaps we are only three, or six, or twenty, or whatever it might be. How blessed it is to have one. I think that is how we should think. How blessed it is to find one, or two, or ten, or one hundred, however many it might be, going on the King’s road. Let us set ourselves for what is heavenly and let us enjoy the atmosphere of it, as we have done together this weekend. There is not anything like it in the world.
On Monday, when we go back to school or to work or wherever we are, you feel the crash down to a lower level, do you not? We have that feeling, and we do not like it. But what that tells you is that you have been somewhere else, you have been on another level of things altogether, you have been with those who have set themselves to enjoy something better. I think if we feel the crash down, that is a good thing, because it gives us the proof that we have been somewhere higher.
So it is that “we may grow up to him in all things, who is the head, the Christ: from whom the whole body, fitted together, and connected by every joint of supply”. How does it all work? How does it fit together? This scripture is very interesting because as you walk along the high-way you are brought alongside your brother and your sister, and fitted in to work with them. That is a great thing. It creates a bond between us, we are working away at the same objective. There is a reference to “every joint of supply”; the note says ‘a known supply from Christ’. Now there is the key; the key is Christ as Head in everything. Everything flows from Him, and my effectiveness and my part in the assembly, in the local meeting, depend on my connection with Him. That is what brings you and me in connection with each other.
I will give you a picture of it. We went to Portsmouth recently and saw on the old ships a capstan wheel. It is a big wheel, and the sailors stood around it, each with a long bar. They put their bars into the wheel, and then they pushed together on their bars and turned the capstan wheel and made it pull up the anchor chain. It is an interesting picture, because they were joined together in the work, working alongside each other. But they were not joined exactly sailor to sailor, their link together was through the wheel in the middle, and I think that is the way it works. I am joined to Christ and the supply is coming from Him. I have my bar locked into the centre, it is firmly in there and I am able to work alongside my brother and my sister, whatever there is to do. There is a power in it, if it is done in unison, which is truly amazing. One link of the chain was so heavy that you could not lift it, but the power that was in the capstan wheel when it was working properly could move the whole chain. Is it working properly in your place? Have you got your bar locked in? Are your relations with Christ right? That is how it works, the supply is coming from Him, “from whom the whole body, fitted together”.
It is a blessed thing to work away at the heavenly side of the truth with our brothers and sisters. The main part of that is in our local places and is something to be greatly valued. Even if there are only one or two, it does not mean that what we are working at is not the greatest thing on earth. It is the assembly, it is Christ’s body on the earth.
I want to finish with a scripture in Philippians, because as we go along the high road, just passing through, the other thing that we are doing is that we are waiting. Philippians 3 verse 20 is a scripture that you can keep in your minds; “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens”. You may be here on the earth in a literal way, but in spirit you are somewhere else altogether, living there already. Then it says “from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour”. That is the situation. We are passing through the world, but we are waiting. The most important thing in our lives now is that there is going to be a move made from heaven. The Lord Jesus is going to come. How could you put anything above that? So in one way we are walking along the road, there is progress to be made, there is work to be done; but in another way all that we are doing is waiting, “from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour”.
It occurred to me that if you are at a train station waiting for the train to come, and it is a long time before the train is due, people will be doing all sorts of different things as they arrive and wait for the train. Some of the passengers might not even be at the station at all, but as the time comes nearer for the train to come, they are all gathering or talking or whatever they are doing. But the closer the train comes, the less people are doing that, other activities and even talking subside, until the moment before the train comes, all they are doing is waiting. The Lord is about to come. This glorious Person is about to come, the moment is almost here. What is there to do but wait for Him?
I trust these things might help us to have our eyes lifted. Let us be looking up, dear brethren, for His name’s sake.
Address at Grimsby
13 March 2013
G. McKay