THE SPIRIT’S SEARCHING
D. J. Willetts
Genesis 44: 1–14; Luke 15: 8–10; 1 Corinthians 2: 9: 10
I wish to say a few words, beloved brethren, as to the searching of the Spirit. What led me to it is verse 12 of Genesis 44 where it says, “he searched carefully”. I think we are justified in taking the man over Joseph’s house as a type of the Spirit; it says Joseph “commanded him who was over his house”. John tells us that the Spirit is sent and what He hears He speaks (John 16: 7, 13). I think you can see that this man can be taken as a type of the Holy Spirit.
He is the one who filled the men’s sacks with food according to Joseph’s commandment. Joseph, of course, being a type of Christ in glory and honour. It is a wonderful thing that the Spirit was not sent here until Christ was in glory. He testifies, therefore, to that sphere of things. This is a wonderful section of Scripture as to Joseph’s dealings with his brethren, and the exercises they had to go through. Certain things had entered into the testimony with the rejection of Joseph, and every one of those things had to be met before Joseph could be fully at liberty to present his brethren as men who were capable of entering into the administration of the land. Pharaoh said, “if you know men of worth amongst them, set them over what I have” (Genesis 47: 6). Wonderful things were in view.
You will notice from these three scriptures that the searching of the Spirit has a positive end in view. None of us likes to be searched. We do not like our history exposed, even to ourselves and much less to the brethren, but it is what provides the moral foundation for liberty with Joseph. He says in an earlier chapter, “Ye shall not see my face, unless your brother be with you” (Genesis 43: 5), that was Benjamin. It is a wonderful and attractive section of Scripture, but the end in mind is seeing Joseph’s face. I wonder, beloved brethren, whether we want to behold the face of Christ. There is a moral way to it, and linked up with it is the question of the food supply. You will notice in chapter 43 that Judah says to his father, “Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live, and not die”, and then he adds, “both we and thou and our little ones” (Genesis 43: 8).
You will see the link with John’s ministry—“we and thou and our little ones”. Similarly Moses, as going out of Egypt, insisted on taking the old and the young, the little ones and the cattle; the whole of the divine purpose was in view and nothing was to be left behind. Judah catches the spirit of that in relation to life. The question of seeing Joseph’s face is in view; therefore the question of the search comes up. You see, they come, all ten of them, down to Joseph. They come with their sacks. I do not suppose they were all the same size. I suppose you could look round this company and see a variation in the size of the sack, the capacity to receive divine things. What sort of growth has there been? but also, what is in your sack?
They came down with their sacks empty; they come to Joseph, and you can guarantee that if they come to Joseph they will go away with as much as they can carry.
Joseph commands the man over his house to fill their sacks. Think of the Holy Spirit being under the command at the present time to fill the saints’ sacks. Would you like your sack full? Or would you like it empty? It is a question of our capacity. There is a verse in Leviticus 27 that affects me in relation to the vow, it says, “And
if it be from five years old even unto twenty years old, thy valuation of the male shall be twenty shekels, and for the female ten shekels. And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, thy valuation of the male shall be five shekels of silver; and for the female thy valuation shall be three shekels of silver. And if it be from sixty years old and above, if it be a male, thy valuation shall be fifteen shekels; and for the female ten shekels”. Then it says,
“And if he be poorer than thy valuation, he shall present himself before the priest, and the priest shall value him—according to his means that vowed shall the priest value him”
(Leviticus 27: 5–8). It is a question of spiritual value, of our devotion, and it says, “if he be poorer than thy valuation”. What exercise in that way to come before our Joseph with our sacks. He looks at us and He values us in priestly discernment. Is our valuation according to what is in the divine mind for us? Or are we poorer than that valuation? The Lord does not expect from the young what He expects from some of us who are older. It is a big challenge, what size of sack I have. How much have I received of all the wealth of food that He can supply?
They come down with their sacks in the first place, and they went back with food for their little ones and food for their asses on the way. They also find their money is in the mouth of their sacks. Have you not found, beloved young sister, young brother, older brother, older sister, that your money was in the mouth of your sack? Every penny that you spent for what is spiritual, and for Christ, you got back. Is He any man’s debtor? Beloved brethren, did you ever give up any time for the Lord that He did not give it to you back by way of wealth in your soul? Have you ever stood in the testimony, witnessing here for Christ, and it cost you something? Did you get a recompense in
your soul? Ah, it is a wonderful thing to open your sack and find your money is at the top; every bit you expended for Christ you got back. At the end of Genesis 43 Joseph eats by himself, the Egyptians by themselves, and his brethren by themselves. There were three settings; they had not yet arrived at what Joseph had in mind for them; there was a certain distance. Maybe we have not yet arrived at the full thought of what God has for us, that there is still a little way to go. Judah had not shone yet; he is about to come forward, but what was in Judah had not yet come to light. The man who takes responsibility had not yet come to light. There were still difficulties amongst them; they had not yet faced the totality of what was historical in relation to the way they had treated Joseph; they had spoken of it earlier, and Joseph knew, he knew without the interpreter what they said. The Lord knows; He looks at our localities, looks at our difficulties, and He knows every detail. But does that stop him feeding them? Joseph says, ‘They shall eat with me at noon’. Wonderful thing! Joseph was at home. Whatever the difficulties in our localities, you can come to Christ and He is at home. It is a wonderful thing that there is a normal environment in which Christ can find His rest.
So Joseph feeds his brethren and he gives Benjamin five times more than them all. Can I ask you, beloved brethren, can you take the five times more? I do not think the others could take the five times more because they had not faced the moral question. You see, Benjamin was the one who had not been part of the breakdown. You can trust the work of God in yourself; the work of God in you can always respond to take the five times more. Have you been prepared to be open with Christ in relation to all the history? You can imagine Benjamin being at home with Israel, can you not? “His life was bound up with his life” (Genesis 44: 30).
There was a beautiful bond there. He had not been part of the breakdown, but then he has to be the one through whom the recovery takes place. It was a wonderful thing when they came down with their asses, came with their sacks; they get fed, then they get their sacks filled, and they are sent home. They had not gone far before Joseph sends the man who was over his house after them. Joseph says, “Up! follow after the men; and when thou overtakest them, thou shalt say to them, Why have ye rewarded evil for good?”
You see what they did; they rewarded evil for good. What a way to treat Christ! They were still living under the cloud of the way they had treated Joseph. Did he hold it against them?
Far from it. He works in detail to bring them round, so he has his silver cup put in the mouth of Benjamin’s sack. At the end of the section it says, “And they hasted and laid down every man his sack on the ground, and opened every man his sack”. There you are, typically, in the presence of the Spirit and you have to open up your sack. What is in there? It is full to capacity, and the money back again. He put it there. Here they are; they have come all the way down to Egypt and now they are going back to their wives and their little ones. But, typically, the Spirit says. Now open up your sacks, let Me have a look! Imagine it, all these ten men opening up their sacks, and the man goes along—Simeon, Levi, Reuben, Naphtali, Dan, Issachar. The cup is not in their sacks. They would look along until he came to Benjamin—and there was Joseph’s cup. They would say straight away, ‘He has the cup; he is guilty’. Ah! a type of Christ; the One who was guiltless was made guilty on our behalf. Oh, the meeting of our difficulties, beloved brethren, has been at the cross by the One who was guiltless; Him who knew not sin was made sin for us. What an attractive
thing to know that Christ has met our every need in order that we might see His face.
So “Judah and his brethren came to Joseph’s house; and he was still there”. How attractive that is, the words of Scripture, so simple, and yet so full of meaning, “He was still there”. We may get away from Christ; we may have a sudden shock in the way the things in the testimony have turned, but you come back to Christ and He is still there, unchanged. Through all the vicissitudes of the testimony Christ is unchanged; He remains available to every one of us. What does it bring out? It brings out with Judah deep feelings. The ultimate end of it all is that Joseph comes into the ascendency. A wonderful thing that! You say, What a great calamity this is; these exercises coming upon us, having to come back again to Joseph when we were going to feed our little ones. What sort of calamity is it, beloved brethren, when what comes to light is some feature of Christ? What sort of calamity is it when what is found in Benjamin’s sack is the cup in which Joseph divines? The exercises He passes us through are ordered that we might know what satisfies the heart of Christ.
Is there a Benjamin in your meeting? Is there a Benjamin in my meeting—someone who can take the blame? There he is, Benjamin, the guiltless one, and yet he takes the blame. You can be sure of this, beloved brethren, that if the Lord takes us through exercises, and the Spirit begins His search, He will do it when you are well fed. So there is no refusal of the request of the Spirit. How subject we need to be to the present voice of the Spirit. Think of Him saying to each one of us, ‘Let down your sack and open it up’. Open yourself up to the Spirit and let Him have a look. What does David say? “Search me, O God, and know my heart; prove me, and know my thoughts; And see if
there be any grievous way in me”, Psalm 139: 23, 24. Are we prepared for these searchings, in order that we might come round to be able to be here totally for Joseph? What a wonderful thing it is that “he was still there”. Come back to the normality of things where Joseph is still there in complete dominance over the house where his rights are effected perfectly by the One who is over his house. Think of the Spirit’s present service as He acts according to the mind of Christ in glory.
Well, I would turn now to Luke 15, a well-known passage. It speaks of a woman and it is very affecting to think of the Spirit of God being depicted in this way. I think it involves feeling. A woman is prepared to go through travail because of developed affections. Think of the way the Spirit is prepared to labour. Do you ever think of that? The Spirit is prepared to labour throughout the dispensation in view of bringing to light persons who will be free in the house. So this piece of silver, this drachma, is lost in the house. It speaks of lighting a lamp and sweeping the house; the dust should not have been there. It refers to profession and is very sobering. I wonder if the Spirit is not now lighting a lamp. You read of the most terrible things being said by persons in high positions in churches; is not the Spirit, through persons who are real, lighting a lamp by testimony to the truth in view of this piece of silver coming to light? If there are difficulties in Christendom, the Spirit of God has in view bringing the piece of silver to light. The Lord is working in a wide area outside those we know. He is going to bring to light His own work. Are we on the look-out for it? Do we speak to souls?
The light that you have been entrusted with belongs to all. The light of the truth of the assembly, and all that has come down to us through the recovery, belongs to every one in the house, and
the Spirit is stirring up persons. Are we on the look-out for them? How far can you go with them? Separation is not isolation; I think I can say that carefully. There is a great need to be separate from the world, and separate from what is iniquitous, but how far can you go in speaking to persons, the Spirit being in what you may say to bring to light the true colour, the true shining, of these pieces of silver? I say that, beloved brethren, because the Spirit has not given up sweeping in this house.
But then maybe He is searching in your local meeting, just to apply it; maybe He is searching for you. Maybe you are hidden behind some of the furnishings, young brother, young sister.
Are you committed to the Lord’s interests in the local assembly? Or are you hidden, hidden behind what may itself be right—an older brother or sister perhaps? You say, There is no room for me. The Spirit would stir you up. Have you ever known the promptings of the Spirit in your heart to cause you to be active and thus in circulation in the house? Have you never had a sense that He has lit a lamp to find you? A certain feature of the truth is presented to you; are you going to remain under the dust, or are you going to shine and portray what the Spirit had in mind? It says the woman would “sweep the house and seek carefully”—“seek carefully” there is a link there with what we had in Genesis 44. It is very touching to think of the Spirit searching carefully. The Spirit is not haphazard in what He does; He stirs something in your affections to get a definite answer to the truth that He has presented.
Maybe He stirred someone in the previous occasion to answer more to the truth as to eternal life. Are you going to remain in the dust, or are you going to be found? There is no resistance on the part of this drachma. There was no resistance in the previous parable by the sheep that went away from the flock; weary with the way it had gone, weary with its own self-will, it was prepared to be put on the shoulders of the shepherd and brought back to the house.
Can you say that you have not the wherewithal to answer to the Spirit’s promptings? Think of those sacks; what wealth was put into them! Do you say, I am not equal to the light presented? How can we say that as having the gift of the Spirit? If you see a truth, if you see a need, seek the Spirit’s help in relation to it. Do not put it off and leave it to someone else in your locality. Be exercised as before the Lord in the power of the Spirit that you might fill the void that there may be. There are plenty of needs; just look round and you will find there is something for you to do; the Lord will give you something to do. You say, I shall stand out if I do. It may be you will be one in a thousand, but accept the challenge anyway. The Spirit of God is sweeping and He has set a light that He might find you and that you might be in the house as an active person who has been redeemed. Ah, redemption is a wonderful thing. A sense of the purchase price that has been paid stimulates you in order that you might answer to the light presented.
I pass on to 1 Corinthians 2. What a chapter it is! Things that are superlative are presented in it, “things which eye has not seen, and ear not heard, and which have not come into man’s heart, which God has prepared for them that love him”. Do you love Him? It is a wonderful thing to be a lover of God. Things have been prepared for us. What God has in mind for you is superlative; it is not ordinary. Christianity is not ordinary; man has sought to make it that by the introduction of his own ideas. What God has for you is not ordinary, and He wants you to take part in it. So it refers to the Spirit searching—“but God has revealed to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things”. Think of Him searching, searching your heart, searching mine, to find its needs, but then searching the depths of God.
What does it mean? It cannot mean God in His absolute and abstract Deity; I believe it means that the Spirit searches what has been revealed of God and the wealth of the divine resource, to bring that to bear on the present needs of the testimony. It says the Lord is rich towards all who call upon Him. Think of the richness of the Spirit’s service as He searches all things even the depths of God. Think of Him plumbing all the resources that have come to light through the work of Christ and the outshining of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Think of Him searching all those things to meet your present need, to meet the needs of the locality, to meet the needs of the testimony. Think of the Spirit’s present service. It says, “but God has revealed to us by his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things”. It is almost as if it is characteristic of Him, that He searches. In Romans He makes intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered in relation to what is needed by the saints, but here there is a counterpart to that, I think, in the way He would not only express the needs of the saints, but search the wealth of the divine treasury to bring to bear upon the testimony just that particular touch that is needed to satisfy present needs.
The needs of the testimony now are not exactly what they were in Mr. Darby’s time. Mr. Raven’s time or Mr. Taylor’s time, or even as they were in 1972; the needs of the testimony are unique to the present moment. The Spirit is equal to bringing out from these treasures the riches of God, so that the needs of the testimony might be met in a character and on—a level that is beyond anything you could imagine. That is the point of this scripture I think. Naturally it will never enter into your heart, the quality and the character of the things that God has prepared for us. Will the Spirit not bring some unique touch in your local meeting to meet a need? Who is He going to bring it through? Are you going to be a channel for the Spirit? 2 Kings 20 speaks of Hezekiah making an aqueduct to bring water into the city. Are you a channel through which the Spirit can bring wealth into the local assembly, that it might be enriched and that there might be a wealth and substance there that you have not known before? That little touch in the reading, a little touch in the service of God, gives it that sparkle and freshness that shows that the whole organism is in life. The Spirit of God, I believe, would search us at this present moment as to just how much liberty we have with Himself to know the “things which eye has not seen”. It is beyond what you can see, or hear, or even think of naturally; they are superlatives that God has prepared for the saints to enjoy now. We were speaking in the house this morning of the bride saying, Come. It is not going to be a fag end, it is the bride that is going to say, Come. There is going to be that virgin affection for Christ at the end, the Spirit and the bride saying, Come, in perfect unison of thought, intent and desire for that blessed Man.
How wonderful, beloved brethren, to allow the Spirit just to search us, because in each of these three scriptures what is in mind is a positive end. Perhaps we shrink from the searching character of things, because we do not appreciate enough the end in view. The end in view for every one of us is glory in a deeper and fuller knowledge of God. I long myself to have that. That the more you know of God the more you feel you have only just touched the edge of things. What is in mind in the Spirit’s service, as in Ezekiel 47, is not just waters to the ankles, or to the knees, or to the loins, but waters to swim in. That involves that we are wholly and energetically in things. If you swim, every muscle of your body is involved in it; every bit of your spiritual being has to be active in relation to the flow of the divine tide that is coming, so that you enter into things fully. How is the testimony going to finish? Is it going to go out enfeebled? I do not think so. If it is not going to go out enfeebled, if the testimony is to go out in power, the Spirit and the bride saying, Come, it means that you and I are to be in moral power. Are you prepared to accept the searching in view of these things? The reward is the sight of Christ. It says in Genesis, “and he was still there”. The whole issue was a matter of seeing Joseph’s face. Beloved brethren, the moment is very near when we are going to see His face—very near. I have said recently that if the dispensation is represented by two days (one day is as a thousand years), then we are in the last fifteen minutes. The clock has struck for the last time; we are in the last few minutes. Are you ready for the rapture? The Lord still has something to do in us and He is doing it by the Spirit; He is searching us out, and the Spirit is searching the depths of God to strengthen us, beloved brethren, in view of that moment when we shall be caught up. May He help us in these things, for His name’s sake.
Address at Redbridge
12 March 1988