PLACES OF DIVINE SPEAKING
[p. 496] PLACES OF DIVINE SPEAKING
Job 38: 1 - 3; Exodus 12: 1 - 3; Numbers 1: 1 - 3; Leviticus 1: 1 - 3
These scriptures record or treat of positions taken up in divine speaking. They by no means exhaust the scriptures that speak on this point. Scripture usually affords ample room for ministry aiding the minister so that he usually can make choice of passages from which to set out his thought or thoughts in any given service. God is always liberal in this respect, furnishing indeed but a tithe of what could be written, yet enough to afford the minister plenty to choose from in the way of scriptural authority for what he may have to say. So these four scriptures seem to fit in with what is in mind now. First, divine speaking in relation to discipline, and then divine speaking in the world typified in Egypt as that through which Satan holds many of the people of God, not all but many, in bondage. Then, as in Numbers, divine speaking in the wilderness, not Egypt, but the wilderness; that is, the world viewed as a contrary and harrowing scene tending to cause dissatisfaction and complaint. Then finally, divine speaking in the house of God, speaking of the exigencies of His own holy nature. He is concerned in this fourth scripture with what is due to Himself in His own house, a place of love, that He might have from us what He can accept and enjoy.
Now the first scripture will have to do directly with any persons here who are especially under discipline, who are affected by external circumstances in that discipline, external circumstances becoming the instruments of the discipline. Therefore, the position of the speaking is in the whirlwind which is audible and distinct, not as in the house where there is perfect quiet and restfulness, but the whirlwind [p. 497] denotes certain divine feelings that the person under discipline needs to take account of and understand, that God is speaking to him or to us — for who is not under discipline in some sense — speaking to us with premeditation. There are times and seasons and circumstances in which God speaks suddenly as He did to Aaron and Miriam; but there are circumstances in which God shows great patience in waiting, but nevertheless if it is in His mind to say something to someone or to persons, to say it in circumstances which tend to uneasiness. He is in the whirlwind. Who else could be there and speak with any measure of order and distinctness? Very few of us know much, if anything, about whirlwinds. They are bad enough. Elijah experienced a great and strong wind in mount Horeb. God was not in it. But Elijah was to feel the power of the wind. God was not in that. He had great respect for Elijah, perhaps as much as for any of His servants. He was a man that could change public circumstances by prayer, making them unfavourable and then making them favourable, yet he wearied of his service, and grew fearful, and would determine the end of his own life, which is not within one’s province. God alone should decide the termination of lives, and the duration of them. He asked Jehovah to take away his life. God did not do that. He had something very great in His mind for this servant, namely, that he should never lose his life, that he should never die. Hence we learn the great thoughts that God has for His servants, those who serve Him well. Woe be to those who speak ill of Him or them! God caused him to experience something of the great wind; it was a wind without God, who let it do its worst, yet no ill befell the servant. Other terrible things happened too, and then the still small voice speaks to him saying, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19: 13.
[p. 498] Well, now Job is not treated so respectfully. The position is in the whirlwind, and Job is to face what it was. It was a divine arrangement. Was God ever in one before? Did anyone ever see Him in a whirlwind before? We cannot say. It was in existence, but God was in this one. The whirlwind is one of the agencies in God’s hands. The mind focuses on the believer who is being disciplined. There is nothing to fear really, because the whirlwind will do him no harm, but it is intended to affect him. It does not evidently cause such commotion or such a noise as to hinder the divine voice penetrating and reaching the ear of the disciplined believer. What a moment for him! He had to do with his three friends. They were not really friendly, but none of them spoke out of the whirlwind. None of them could. Nor did Elihu speak out of the whirlwind. He had no thought at all of causing fear in the heart of Job. He said, “Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid”, Job 33: 7. He represents human sympathy, speaking on God’s behalf. But now God is taking on the finishing process. The result is to be reached and He begins most drastically in the position He takes up. Can Job get away from the force of it? He does not attempt to. The idea is that one is to be held whatever the cause or necessity of the speaking and forced to listen to it. If there is a disciplined person here such as Job, one specifically disciplined, and most of us, if not all, experience it, do not turn a deaf ear. God is saying, There are other things, other instrumentalities I have. He is armed with the whirlwind. It belongs to God. He would have Job to be as a disciplined person, not as a self-vindicated person. How eloquent we become in self-vindication! I do not think Job was so eloquent in any of his speeches as he was when he talked about what a great man he was, but now the words of Job are ended because all such words have an ending. God has His way and He says to Job, “Gird up now thy loins like a man”, Job 38: 3. That is the word. That is, you are not like a child in your waywardness, your wilfulness and your disobedience. Use manly feelings and listen to God. Answer Me. He says. God is not shutting him up by any means, not formally. He is giving him full scope to answer, but he does not. He answers according to chapter 40, verse 3, but God pays no attention to his answer. I do not want to be like that, that God should pay no attention to what I am saying to Him. Jehovah went on. We are told in the second discourse that He was still in the whirlwind and He was successful. If we are in the place of discipline, or in need of it, let us afford God the satisfaction of overcoming us. We may as well, you know. “That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, be clear when thou judgest”, Psalm 51: 4. It is His right. God looks for that, but He has pleasure in it. He has reached His object.
Well, now, the second scripture treats of Egypt. There is a certain order in these scriptures as I have read them, for in truth, if we turn away through self-will or worldliness or sin, such as the world is full of, there has to be a new beginning, as the nazarite had to begin over again. We have to go back to the beginning and begin over again. That is the point in this second scripture, as you have often doubtless observed. “Jehovah spoke to Moses and Aaron”, for now it is a question of the mediatorial position; there was none with Job; out-and-out discipline is a question of God and the person: “but now mine eye seeth thee”, Job 42: 5. No one else but God, but God has taken up a mediatorial position, to serve us so that we might in our measure begin over again. After all that long weary discourse-making with Job, he really had to go back to the beginning of the book where God was speaking so nicely of him. My servant, He called him; “my servant Job”. Let me go back again to chapter 1 and begin all over again with God; not indeed the awful miseries of the discipline; let us pass over chapters 3 to 38, as it were. Let me begin over again with God. We cannot afford to miss the instruction even although it may have been through the whirlwind. Job began over again and that is the point in the recovery of a sinful person. And so it is with Moses and Aaron. The people said to Moses, “Speak thou to us”. God does not care for that, but He would say, ‘If you want Moses, you can have Moses. I have the fullest confidence that Moses will be faithful to Me in dealing with you, and Aaron too’; our Moses is Christ and our Aaron is Christ. So the word is, “Jehovah spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak unto all the assembly of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month let them take themselves each a lamb, for a father’s house, a lamb for a house. And if the household be too small for a lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls”, Exodus 12: 1 - 4.
Now we are having to do with Moses and Aaron and with a lamb, and in your own house. The Lord said to Zacchaeus, whom He would have to begin spiritually — there was some beginning with him before undoubtedly. He wanted to see Jesus who He was. He did not get that impression in the school, nor in the play-house. He got it elsewhere. He got it from God. He could not have told you that, but he did. He wanted to see Jesus who He was. What a Person He must be! he says to himself. The Lord says, “Today I must remain in thy house”, Luke 19: 5. He is to have Jesus in his own house. That is, God in his own house. Well, that is the position here, but it is in Egypt where you have been [p. 501] at home. There are some here, perhaps, from some external or natural influence, waiting for the meeting to be over. God is speaking to us through these scriptures. It is a question of Moses and Aaron, men known to you; they are your own people. God speaks of a lamb, a yearling. He looks for something in principle of manhood in us; a year old. A yearling lamb is really a sheep, but it is called a lamb, and it is to be in the house. It is a household matter. It is not the whirlwind, but outside it is Egypt. Many a young Israelite in the land of Egypt that night would be questioning in his own mind, ‘Why cannot I go out tonight?’ The answer would be, ‘No, you cannot go out tonight’. Happy it is that some night has come when you are debarred from your own will. It is pointed out to you that you must not, and the danger is too great. The house is the place, but what a house! These communications came through Moses and Aaron to every father in Israel in the land of Egypt. It is all a young people’s matter, and Moses comes to deliver the message directly to the people. He epitomises it. He reduces it to six or seven verses and stresses the little ones.
Well now, it is a new history. How many of you young people here have had a new history since you were born. Each of us usually has his birthday. It is a great idea. I wonder how the Israelites kept their birthdays, because the passover was a movable feast. It was governed by the moon. God does not act automatically. God is God. He made the days and He is the first to use the days. He used the first day. This new day, this new month is to be the beginning henceforth. It does not refer to God. It refers to the believer. That is my second point. Egypt has such a place in our hearts and its calendars and its associations and its leeks and its garlic, whatever they may be. We are going to leave all; we are going to start again; another history, a new calendar,
[p. 502] new days, new months, new years. Finally time will cease altogether in an eternal day. The day of eternity; think of what a day that is! That is a scriptural term.
Well, now, the next thought is in the first chapter of Numbers. We have done with the whirlwind situation; the discipline has done its work and Job becomes a priest, and really comes on to a new history, a new calendar altogether. We have often spoken of it. God takes away the first to establish the second. Egypt is the first altogether. The only history for the believer is this new history, and it is regulated by the moon as we have had. Well, as I work that out I might make something of the assembly. The moon here has reference to the assembly. How we do speak so lightly about the brethren, and what they say and what they do; so difficult to get on with them. But the moon would have reference to the assembly. It has a place in relation to the sun. It is dependent on the sun. Of course, the assembly is dependent on Christ. As the assembly is dependent on Him, so the moon is dependent on the sun. The moon represents the assembly; the assembly has authority. If a man does not hear the assembly, what about him? “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican”. You say, I am a listener to Christ; I want to hear about the Lord. Do not forget the assembly. The Lord will not hear you if you do not respect the assembly.
Now it is the second year of this era. “Jehovah spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting, on the first of the second month, in the second year after their departure from the land of Egypt”, Numbers 1: 1. They were in the wilderness for one year and one month. How did they like it? A good question determining what the world has become to the real believer in Christ who understands [p. 503] the passover; the lamb slain. He is long enough in the house for you to have known Him well. You become endeared to Him because He died for you. Have you accepted baptism to go forth to Him without the camp? “As many as have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, have been baptised unto his death. We have been buried therefore with him by baptism unto death, in order that, even as Christ has been raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life”, Romans 6: 3, 4. Do you like that? That is christianity. That is the christian path. This is a year and a month, the first month of the second year; all that year in the wilderness. Do you want to go back again to the world? The devil seems to get great advantage sometimes. There is commotion abroad in the world. “Many ... went away back”, we are told by John, and he has his own way of telling everything. He would say to us in it, ‘How can you turn away from Jesus?’ Why should you turn away from such love as Jesus’ love? “Many of his disciples went away back and walked no more with him”. So it was in the wilderness they wanted to go away back. They told Moses and they told each other of the wonderful times they had. Things were not nearly so good as they were saying they were. They were telling lies to each other. When we get away from the Lord, things become exaggerated in our minds, and we are not truthful. A low state of soul is never a truthful state of soul. We cover up our mistakes by lies or partial lies. God says, You have been here for a year and a month in this new life, new associations, and now I am taking account of your troubles. I am taking account of the contrariety of the wilderness. I am speaking to you in the wilderness, but I am in My house. God’s house is not in heaven; it is here, in a contrary scene. When we sit down to the Lord’s supper [p. 504] on the first day of the week, we sit down in an externally contrary scene, but all is peaceful within. God is saying to you, I know what the wilderness is. I know you had trouble with your children before you left. I know you may have had to work on Sunday, but you have overcome it, and you have sacrificed double pay to get here. Numbers contemplates persons who are worth numbering. God is saying, I am speaking to you in the contrary scene, but I am speaking to you in the place of love; that is, in the tabernacle, and I am saying to you that you are to be numbered. God says to Moses, “Take the sum of the whole assembly of the children of Israel, after their families, according to their fathers’ houses, by the number of the names, every male, according to their polls; from twenty years and upward, all that go forth to military service in Israel” (verses 2, 3).
Now, dear brethren, this is a most touching matter. As standing against evil here we are worthy of heaven’s recognition, and God is saying that He is taking account of you. He has books. He knows your father and grandfather. He has your pedigree. He is saying to you, ‘I know your history’. This type refers not to those who draw back but those who go forward. Numbers will not tolerate going back at all, no more than a soldier’s defection is tolerated in the army. Death penalty goes for that. You are reckoned as a real person — twenty years old. We have been speaking today of full growth. God is saying, I know all your history, I remember when the wind blew in like a hurricane; it blows where it lists. It is very often gentle, especially southerly winds which are not like a hurricane. “The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its voice, but knowest not whence it comes and where it goes: thus is every one that is born of the Spirit”, John 3: 8. God says, I know that, and I have been with [p. 505] you in that; I know your history, because pedigree is the point here. You have distinction in heaven. That is what is meant in Numbers. What good is distinction on earth after all — medals and the like, what good are they? We have to face matters. It is only what counts in heaven that matters. God is taking account of twenty-year-old people, but real ones, full-grown persons, full-grown men. God says, I know all about your pedigree and I have a place for you. I am depending on you for a certain position. You are a necessity for Me. Six hundred thousand of them. I want every one of you. I am speaking to you. I know exactly where you are. That is the idea. He spoke in the wilderness but in the tabernacle. He had spoken in the wilderness before without the tabernacle, but now it has been built. That is to say, the assembly is the place of affection. God says, I am making the thing attractive to you. So one is greatly concerned about young men and young women who come to the meetings. God is speaking to you in your business, at the office, or on the battlefield. Nothing can hinder God’s speaking to you. But He chooses at certain times to have you in the assembly, where you will find out how great you are. What a pedigree you have! What a designation you have! God says, I have you down in My book and I know all about you — your history, your pedigree, your forefathers. Is it not attractive? I think it is. Christianity is really becoming effective to us as we come together where the Holy Spirit is operating, where divine love is operating through the Lord, and through the Spirit in one another. It is the place of love, the residence of what God has down here. How can I afford to be absent when I can be there?
The next scripture is in Leviticus written by the same person, that is. Moses. “And Jehovah called to Moses and spoke to him out of the tent of [p. 506] meeting, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, When any man of you presenteth an offering to Jehovah, ye shall present your offering of the cattle, of the herd and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt-offering of the herd, he shall present it a male without blemish”, Leviticus 1: 1 - 3. God is saying to us just now that He regards us as people that have some wealth. He says, I know what you have, but “I seek not yours, but you”. It is a spiritual matter. The book does not begin with poverty. It begins with wealth and why should we not be wealthy? Numbers contemplates the age of twenty which means that one has the Holy Spirit; that I am indwelt by the Spirit of God, a full-grown person. I am not a babe any more. We are not to be babes. We are to remain as short a time as possible in that state. Not that God does not take account of babes. The Lord Jesus said, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them to babes”, Matthew 11: 25. Matthew contemplates more than that. He contemplates the assembly formed of men, not of babes. God is thinking that we have something. If we are in fellowship we shall soon be tested as to what we have. God knows exactly what we have and He is saying, I know what you have and I want what you have. He is not merely wanting our money, but He does say in this respect, “I seek not yours, but you”. It is what we are spiritually, that God has in mind. As in the fellowship we shall soon be tested as to what we will be able to give. So that, dear brethren, God is speaking out of the tabernacle — He is not speaking in the wilderness here — that is Numbers — He is saying in Numbers, I know what you are suffering but I value you all the same; your suffering and contrariety do not detract from your personality. You belong to the [p. 507] assembly of the first-born ones registered in heaven. That is what Numbers is teaching you. But in Leviticus God is saying that He is in a house; it is the tabernacle according to all that it is spiritually, and God is saying that He wants us there, and He knows we have what belongs to this place where He is. He wants you to enrich it. He says, I am telling Moses about you. I am regarding you as a well-to-do person. I am not dealing with the poor, I am dealing with you. Persons who are well off. God takes account of what you have. God says, I want that. I can use that. It is pleasurable to Me.
Are we going to deny Him that — the best we have, given from the heart? It all refers to formation in us. God is just saying a word to us from these four portions that He might have results out of these meetings and finally that He might have what you have for Himself. He says, I want you for heaven but I want you now where I am, and that you should bring up the best you have. He tells you how to come and what to do when you come. He has the priests ready there to assist you, so that you might bring everything to God, and that He might be everything to you, and that you might be a lover of God and bring forth fruit unto God. He wants you to come not in a mere formal perfunctory way, but to come feelingly as a wealthy person with something you have by the Spirit of God that God likes and would have according to His own way and etiquette in His own house.