CHAPTER 5: 15 - 24
CHAPTER 5: 15 - 24
FER There are several things brought together here: intelligence in the will of the Lord; being filled with the Spirit; giving thanks; and submitting yourselves one to another. The exhortations are all interwoven with the divine Persons — the Spirit, the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. They all answer to one another. “Light” is brought in as one of the characteristics of God, as love is. To walk in the light is the first principle of Christianity. It is “in the Lord” that we are light, not in ourselves. If anything comes in to obscure the Lord, you have not much light left in yourself. All the revelation of God is set forth in the Lord, and all administration centres there, too. The thought of light in Scripture all centres in the Lord. The necessary condition to Christ shining upon you is to be awake; the natural tendency is to go to sleep when it is dark. The influences of the world are so soporific, and even good men go to sleep: they succumb to the influence of the world, settle down to ease, and give up labour, devotedness, and vigilance. It is a very dangerous thing to retire from the activities of life: the tendency [p. 262] is to sleep. It is not that a man ceases to be a Christian, but Christ does not shine on him. A man should anticipate having more and more to do in the Lord’s things when he is free from things here. A man not in the light has lost freshness. When people are occupied with what has been brought out in the past, it is a clear sign that they are not getting much for themselves. When a man goes to sleep he is like the dead. If a man awakes, Christ would shine upon him — that is, he would get more into the light of what has been revealed in Christ.
Doctrine is given to produce an effect on our walk; “see then that ye walk circumspectly”. The standard is “as wise”; not as unwise, but as intelligent in the Lord’s will, and seizing opportunities.
“The days are evil” — it is the existing state of things; pressure without and great opposition to the truth. If it was so even then, it certainly applies to this moment, too. It needs great vigilance and diligence — loins girt about with truth, that there may be a full testimony, however limited, and a standard lifted up against the flood of rationalism and infidelity. It is a moment of the greatest importance to those who have light with regard to what the divine purpose as to the church is, and great responsibility attaches to such. I do not believe that many Christians understand it. The great point in regard to it is that the church is the vessel of testimony, not the preachers; it has been too much thought that it is the latter. Testimony was intended to be collective. In spite of all being broken up, do not give up the idea of collective testimony. This is Philadelphia. If you have got light — understanding in the will of the Lord, as in John 14 and 15 — you will not give up the idea. If preachers could get rid of the thought that they are the vessels of testimony, it would be a great point, because it would lead to great concern as to the state of the church. God’s house is the vessel of testimony.
[p. 263] Ques Do you not get the individual looked at as the vessel in 2 Corinthians 4?
FER I should confine that to the apostle. The apostles had a special place: they had the treasure in earthen vessels, but they really formed the house; and the house once built, it was the vessel of testimony. The thought of the house was that it should be radiant. God was to be known there. Ephesians 3 is the effulgence of God in the house, which we get spoken of at the close of the second chapter. The testimony of God was in the house. It was not what the assembly said, but what it was: every evangelist bore the light of the house into all that he did. Christ in the church — I believe that was the testimony. I think it was a far deeper kind of testimony than what you get in 2 Timothy 2; it was that nothing of God was lacking in the vessel. The servant that has the light of the house in all he does, works to bring into it. The apostle laboured till Christ was formed in the saints; that was the light of the house, the light and love of God presented in the testimony.
The church as a whole has ceased to be a candlestick. If the church does not give light, it is of no use for the end God intended. But the great thing is not to give up the divine idea. Philadelphia is this: I will not give it up; I shall stick to it through thick and thin! “Thou ... hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name”. In Philadelphia we get the revelation of what is according to the mind of the Lord, and, without assuming to be anything, I, at any rate, want to answer to it. In the darkest day in Israel faith erected an altar of twelve stones. It is a great offence to me to hear a man say, All is gone. Has the word gone? Has the Spirit gone? These are the questions I ask myself.
What I see today is that evangelists go forth perfectly independent of the assembly. They would be much more effective if they took into account the [p. 264] state of the vessel of testimony. All these flashes in the pan that you hear spoken of in evangelists’ work do not strike me much. It is not the day for it; it is not in keeping with the state of the church to go out with a flourish of trumpets. If the evangelist was in the mind of the Lord I think he would go to work very quietly. There is no pure evangelising in this country. You cannot go out heralding the gospel, as the apostles did, to people who had never heard it, for ninety-nine out of every hundred you preach to know the facts of the gospel as well as you do. With us our preaching has to be reasoning on the facts, and this is right. When the gospel was carried to the heathen it was accompanied by miracles, and this was needed.
“Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit” (verse 18). There is an exuberance, an exhilaration, connected with the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit corresponds to understanding what the will of the Lord is. Nothing could delight me more than to be filled with the knowledge of His will, to know the Lord’s thought as to the church at any given moment. To be in the light of the Lord is an immense mercy. In Revelation the Lord speaks to the angels of the seven churches, but at the end you get: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches”. Thus the Spirit answers to the will of the Lord. The will of the Lord is His mind for the moment. Very few Christians know what the will of the Lord is; they have their own will and mode of doing things. This is all individual, because it brings in the Lord and walk.
Verse 19 is the exuberance of the Spirit; but I do not expect a return to Pentecostal days. This passage shows, however, that there is an understanding of what the will of the Lord is — that is, His interests in connection with the church, and with the individual Christian as regards the work of the Lord, and the Spirit, and power to give thanks, too. The Lord has [p. 265] His own particular sphere, and He occupies Himself with that sphere, and with saints as regards that sphere. While He is seated at God’s right hand, the only sphere He occupies Himself about is God’s house, and He occupies Himself greatly about that: when Christ leaves the Father’s throne it changes everything; He will then occupy Himself very much about the earth.
“Giving thanks always for all things to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”; that is a test. My one absorbing thought is to be the interests of the Lord; it is not in my own name. We may get thwarted in things, but very likely it is the best thing for us; God uses it to put us in touch with Himself. Just see how the way of the Christian is bound up with divine Persons: He is to understand the will of the Lord: he is to be filled with the Spirit, and he is to give thanks to God and the Father. These things are tremendous tests. How far do we give thanks always for all things? It is having the sense that nothing can go wrong with you; this makes you to give thanks. It all depends on a person being in the full light of God. If a disappointment comes, depend upon it it is better for you than if you had got the thing. When all failed here outwardly, the Lord said, “I thank thee, O Father”. It but made way for greater and deeper things. It was the works of Christ giving place to Christianity, which was a greater miracle than all. The Son reveals the Father. I believe the Lord thought very little of miracles; they were important as leaving the people without excuse. His testimony was everything, but the reception of His testimony depended on a silent work underneath. John 3 and the parable of the Sower would prove this. It is an amazing thing to me that the Lord should be the Sower, and yet only one out of four yielded fruit; it only springs up where there is preparation underneath.
Now we come to the social circle, the natural [p. 266] relationships. He is the Preserver of the body. It is the natural body which is preserved. The point to be recognised is the pre-eminence of Christ; He is pre-eminent in every way. I look to Him in regard of everything. He is the Head, and besides that I look to Him for the ultimate salvation of my natural body. Christ has a special care for the body; it is Christ’s member; He saves it. The passage is interesting to me as showing the true idea of headship; it is as the husband is head of the wife. Christ is not Lord to the assembly, but Head; He is pre-eminent in affection. He has more love to the church than the church has for Him. He receives all for the church, the Spirit and all else; He received them “in Man” and then communicated them — that is Christ’s relation to the church (see Psalm 68: 18). It is the ascended Man in glory who does so.
Verse 24: The church receives everything from Christ. The recognition of His headship is the moral condition of the church — subjection to Him in all things. So the wife to her husband. If you get a wife setting up her will, in the long run it will not work well.