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THE RICHES OF HIS GLORY

Andrew Burr

I would like to begin what I have to say by sharing with you all an impression that I was given in the interval as to the hymn we ended the reading with:

All things new our eyes look upward (Hymn 37)

A sister remarked to me that we should also look around us, not just upward, but around us. Things are new around us, that is among the fellow citizens of the saints; there is something new around us and it is in that that our fellowship together subsists. Paul says, “the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new: and all things are of the God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ”, 2 Cor 5: 17,18. It is not just that heaven seems like a new place to people who have grown up on earth but there is something here among the people of God that has that new and heavenly character.

I am reminded of a brother, who is now with the Lord, who in the sorrows and divisions we have passed through was left for a time as the only brother in the meeting. In the Lord’s grace and through our brother’s faithfulness others were added to the meeting. Temperamentally he found it very difficult to get on with them and eventually he left. When he had come back he passed the comment to me that it does not really matter that there are only a few of us, the blessed thing is that we have anybody to walk with. What a triumph the Lord had won in that brother, there was a triumph over the old man in him. It was not the vices but the infirmities of the old man and the triumph was won, not only by an impression, but an experience of fellow-citizenship of the saints.

Things like this make me wonder, and I ask you to wonder as well, whether we truly value Christian fellowship as we should, and whether it really is among our principal objectives to enrich our experience of Christian fellowship, with those who are available and with others. Of course we have to be true to the principles of Christian fellowship or we shall impoverish our experience of it, but what a wonderful thing it would be if some of these things the holy scriptures say about Christian fellowship were to be fulfilled among us. In saying this I do not make any claim for a particular company; I say very simply, we cannot afford to make claims, and there are several reasons for that. If anyone heard us making claims they would be entitled to ask us about some of the problems and difficulties that we have. They would be entitled to ask us also why it is that we seem to become preoccupied with these difficulties, why we become diverted by them. Why do they dominate our conversation and our correspondence to the extent that they do when we have before us in the holy scriptures that we are “no longer strangers and foreigners, but ye are fellow-citizens of the saints, and of the household of God”, Eph 2: 19? I do not feel that I can give any kind of lead in relation to a fuller experience of these things, but I would like to share an exercise that the enrichment of the experience of fellowship should become one of our principal occupations and exercises.

I did not intend to have another meeting about fellowship because, as was remarked in the reading, there is something else that fellowship leads on to. Along with an exercise that we should be concerned about how fulfilling our fellowship is, both for us and for God, there is another question about whether we might apply ourselves, with the Spirit’s help, to the enrichment of the service of praise. We might feel that the service of praise is a very exalted thing and all of us are very small in the presence of God. We say what we can and we give out the hymns we can remember and so on, and we are thankful for the way that something fresh and moving always seems to come in to the service of praise. But, is it not something about which we should be in sustained exercise before God that that occasion should be richer and fuller for Him?

I would like to say a simple word that I trust would further that end. One of the things that would enrich the service of praise is a greater appreciation of the wonder of what God has done. We should not be confined in our thoughts by what God has done, but all those things should lead us to the God who did them and especially that we might be more sustained in worship. I was arrested by Paul’s prayer that we read from. He shares his prayers with the saints in Ephesus in this chapter and there are a number of things which he goes over, some of which we have had before us, as to the union of believers in the one body. He dwells upon the mystery and upon the glad tidings and he makes what he has to say rest upon the glad tidings perhaps to an extent that we have not noticed. What he calls “the glad tidings of the unsearchable riches of the Christ” (v 8) goes beyond meeting our need but links with what we said in the reading that the gospel has allowed God to go on with His purpose. He speaks about the assembly and he speaks about the families and so on, and then he says, “I bow my knees to the Father”. You might say, what is Paul going to ask for? Paul might measure his prayer by his own capacity and his own sense of limitation, whatever it might be; he might measure his prayer by what he thought the saints were able for. He might say to God, I think we ought to look for something incremental among the brethren, some gradual advance and progression in divine things. That is, after all, the way we tend to approach things, that we are looking for something incremental; we are trying to build by little bits, word upon word, line upon line, precept upon precept, gradually to increase our knowledge and appreciation of divine things. That is how we have to approach them, because they are so great. Paul gets down on his knees in the cell in Rome and he asks God that He would give the Ephesians, “according to the riches of his glory”. Think of that! I have to say to myself, I have never prayed for my local brethren like that; perhaps I do not have the measure to do it, but God does, that they might receive from God “according to the riches of his glory”. It takes us back to the gospels and the way the gospel is presented in Romans. We all, “have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. That is the first man that we have been speaking of, he comes short. We spoke of man as intended to be in God’s image and likeness: if he had been God’s glory would have been seen. After all, without seeking to make a comparison, if we look at the life of Jesus, what was of God was fully seen, in fact there was a revelation of God in the Person and life of Jesus. He was, “the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation” (Col 1: 15). God’s glory was seen, “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have completed the work which thou gavest me that I should do it”, John 17: 4. When God has to look at everybody else, when He looks at me, when He looks at us, He looks at sinners who come short of the glory of God. It is not a position that we can recover because it is a consequence of what we are and we come short of God’s glory. He is not well represented in the old man. The world system is a testimony to what man away from God is, a whole creation groans under a man who is falling short of the glory of God. God has come in to answer all that in the glad tidings. The glad tidings are not seeking to reinstate or improve, not seeking to make good or repair; but as we have been speaking of in the reading, to announce something entirely new that can replace what is old, because what is old has been removed in divine judgment. God has created something new, and by faith in the glad tidings He has given us to have part in it, wonderful that that is! It says of Abraham, he “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”, Romans 4: 3. Abraham was justified in the presence of God. People all around would not have known that Abraham was reckoned righteous in the presence of God, it did not appear in relation to Abraham’s position in the world that God had justified him. That lies behind what has been said in ministry that he was justified for another world, but he had believed God and “it was reckoned to him as righteousness”. It pleased God to regard Abraham as a righteous person because he believed Him.

So it is with us, the gospel is presented for the obedience of faith and God is pleased to reckon those who believe in the glad tidings to be righteous. Then He has found in the work and the death of the Lord Jesus a way to confer unsearchable riches. Where His glory has been dishonoured in the lives of men and women, it is possible to pray that He will give you according to the riches of His glory. I am not going to attempt to amplify that or put it in other words or in a different way, but just think about that. There is Paul in a damp draughty Roman prison cell thinking about brethren he has not seen for several years and knows he will never see again, and he is exercised to pray about them. So he asks God in those unpropitious surroundings that He would give them “according to the riches of his glory”. I think that is a very wonderful thing: if God is making gifts like that are we receptive? There are two sides to a gift. A lot of things have been given to us but could we necessarily say we have received them, and the gift of the Spirit is like that. The emphasis in references to the possession of the Spirit in scripture is on His reception, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 19: 2). The Spirit has been given, but has He been received? That requires that room is made for Him and the room is made in the heart, the Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts. He can shed it only into space that has been provided for Him. Could I have a clear-out to make room for the riches of God’s glory? How much would I be prepared to let go if I really had some impression of what it is to be a recipient of the riches of God’s glory?

I do not go into the detail of this passage but what it goes on to is that there is an answer that is according to God’s glory in the service of praise. I wonder about what God has done and what God has given and the things that we have received, to what extent do they bring us to the God whose things they are and to what extent is there, as the consummate expression of our fellowship together, “glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus”? I suppose the whole assembly needs to be engaged for that to be really realised, but is it something that marks the fellowship we have together? We say we walk in the light of the assembly, and maybe we think of that as almost an administrative thing, but if we really walked in the light of the assembly would there not be glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus?. All of us are limited and our companies are small and we would be very thankful if there were others with whom we could share these things together, but those who are available are those to whom the riches of God’s glory have been given; and it is from them that there is to be an answer in the service of praise.

I read in Colossians because it goes into a little more detail. It speaks of putting on the features of the new man, as we have been speaking of them, and it refers to the way that Christ has forgiven us. Think of the woman in Luke 7. It says, “for she loved much” (v 47), because she had been forgiven much, it made her responsive, it made her want to serve Him and to serve Him in a spirit of adoration and worship. These are features of the new man, and he says, “And to all these add love, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of Christ preside in your hearts … and be thankful”. My desire is that we should not just appreciate the blessedness of the things we are able to speak about together. We should not just be those who appreciate our privileges, but we should be moved in thankfulness by those privileges, however feebly they may be presented to us, to responsiveness in the service of praise. So he says, “Let the word of the Christ dwell in you richly”, that means that the thing is possessed: it is not simply that it is in your ears but it dwells in you, and then he says, “in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God”. I just had a simple word as to that. We think of a psalm, and there are a lot in the scripture. I do not think it is exactly right to say that the psalm is the fruit of experience because we have to be frank and say we have had a lot experiences that are not readily convertible into a psalm. In fact there are occasions in the Psalms where David admits that he had been complaining. The thing that turns an experience into a psalm is to take the experience into the presence of God and to see in the experience what God has done. You might say, that was just something that happened to me, I got upset. It was a sorrow, I seemed to have lost something or it seemed hard or difficult, but what was God doing? We take a meeting like this and the opportunity to be here and the privilege of fellowship with one another. In spite of so much discord that has come in even among brethren we remain sharers together of these precious things. It does not make anything of us whatsoever. God has done all these things and if we were to bring what God has done into His presence then I think we would emerge from His presence with a psalm. That is that there would be some outcome for His praise from what has brought us into His presence. I was interested that in Ephesians, Paul makes passing references to things that God has done; he says, “to enlighten all with the knowledge of what is the administration of the mystery hidden throughout the ages in God, who has created all things” (ch. 3: 9). The creation is what God has done, He created all things. The same God who has created all things has, “shone in our hearts”, “the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts”, 2 Cor 4: 6. He has shone there that something should be formed substantially that should come into expression. Those expressions should not only be something that the brethren can share together and enjoy with one another, but it should be firstly for God. It is interesting that the psalms are followed by hymns. There is clearly a difference between a psalm and a hymn and I think we are entitled to think that the special focus of the hymn is in worship to God Himself. It is the soul taken up with an appreciation of a Person, God, and with the way that He has revealed Himself. There is a certain detachment from circumstance, and what we are, and from our blessings and from things we have received, and a focus, a concentration, almost an abstraction from everything else except the giver and the doer and the soul taken up with the worship of God.

We were speaking at Easter about the way that redemption is intended to lead to worship and we referred to a number of people. The woman in John 4 spoke about her circumstances and all that entered into them. What a sorrowful dead end her life had become: the Lord says, “the Father seeks such as his worshippers”, John 4: 23. That would require that that woman be taken out of her circumstances altogether. That woman had three needs and we tend to be occupied with two of them; she needed a man, and she needed some water, but the greatest lack in her life was that she worshipped she knew not what. What a sad state to be in. How can you worship what you do not know? All the things that we pass through are intended to make us knowledgeable of God, intended to impart what He has imparted in the revelation of Himself so that we become worshippers. I recall that when Israel was given the news about the Exodus from Egypt it says they worshipped (see Exod 4: 31). For a moment they found respite from the bricks and from the bondage and for a moment their hearts were filled with the God who had come down to deliver and it says, when they heard that God had come down to deliver His people they worshipped. In the time of recovery it says about Israel that they gathered to hear the reading of the law and when they had heard it they worshipped (see Neh. 8: 6), they found that God from whom they had departed had remained always the same, His word had not changed, He had not changed, and they had been recovered to God, and their hearts went out in worship. I was thinking too of the occasion before the Lord Jesus was betrayed. It says in relation to Him and His own that they sang a hymn (see Matt. 26: 30). I have heard it said that that was a psalm, but it cannot have been because there is obviously a difference between a psalm and a hymn. I like what Mr. Taylor said that the Lord composed it for the occasion. How did they know how to sing it? The thing about worship is that the impression that God would give of Himself itself imports the capacity to respond to it. So in a sense there is nothing particularly surprising that His own have the liberty to participate in answer to it.

Then it says, “spiritual songs” – I think they are more contemplative. We have some compositions in our hymnbook that I would call spiritual songs. They are not exactly addressed to God but they are about Him. We sing some of them on Lord’s Day morning, they enter into the service of praise, spiritual songs, singing about the arrangements that God has secured for His own pleasure and the place we have in them. We need to enter into those things if we are going to sing about them. They are not things you can sing about unless you know about them. I was impressed that in whatever way we look at things we look firstly at the way we have come to know God in what He has done and then we come to Him as to what He is, and then we think about the arrangements that He has made and the things that we enter into in the way of spiritual blessings. Paul says, “who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ”, Eph 1: 3. Does every spiritual blessing we have received have its counterpart in a spiritual song? A spiritual blessing and a spiritual song, these are things that I believe the Lord Jesus by the Spirit would promote among us, “singing with grace in your hearts to God … do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father by him”.

I feel exercised by this. We have the opportunity on occasions like this to speak of wonderful privileges. We have the opportunity in small measure to introduce ourselves to some very great and eternal things. When I say eternal I mean they were conceived before the ages of time and they will never end, and they relate to God Himself. They relate to a purpose that could be fulfilled only in Christ but they include us and we are brought in as an integral part of God’s purpose. God’s purpose would not be complete if we were not there. In order that we might be there He would give us, “according to the riches of his glory”. What He is creating, what He is building for His pleasure, is a sphere in which the service of praise will be conducted; and to the extent to which we enter into those things now I believe His service should be enriched. The connection I make with what we already had is that that service of praise is something for which we need one another to enter into. It is, I think, such a precious aspect of our fellowship together. Not only is it expressed publicly in the taking of the Lord’s Supper but also it is in our liberty to continue, from the Lord’s Supper into the service of praise. I like the word in Romans, “that we may with one accord, with one mouth, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. You might say naturally that we are together by accident, we did not choose each other’s company. From a natural point of view, it is a bit of a coincidence. But we have been called into something in which there is to be one heart and one mouth glorifying the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do not say any of this correctively: because the service of God, in my experience, is something that is fulfilling and something that I anticipate, but surely God would have it enriched. Surely there should be more for God through all that He has done and all that He has given to us, and especially some answer to the revelation of Himself.

May He bless the word.

London

20 November 2004

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