GOD IN MOVEMENT
[p. 216] GOD IN MOVEMENT
We are not enough accustomed to God in movement. His people in these Scriptures appeal to Him. Their desire was to see God in movement. This Psalm has never yet fully had its answer. Israel has not yet had a national answer as by and by when tested upon the earth. It will have its complete answer when God is in movement toward the nation. God will bless His people in what He sets forth in Israel. In Psalm 68 the appeal was in connection with the ark, i.e. to arise and scatter His enemies. Since the fall there have always been enemies and haters of God upon earth and they have ever been those who resist and oppose the purpose and will of God. Yet God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will”, and He will carry this out in spite of all that men may do in opposition. The sooner we accept the will of God the better. Sooner or later we shall have to bow to it. If God chooses to bring in or form the body of Christ before He again takes up Israel this is His will, and the sooner we bow to it the better. The point with God in connection with His earthly people was to bring them into the land. This was His fixed purpose, and in order to bring them in He cleared the land for them of all enemies. Even the sun had to stand still in order to serve this purpose of God. The movement of the Ark meant the movement of God, and when the Ark moved the people moved. Two great things the people were accustomed to, the movement of God and the voice of God. What marks the present time is that man is in movement, but God will soon be in movement and when the time arrives for Christ to arise from His right hand, God will make known His movement, and all down here of the enemy, i.e. all the haters of God’s will, will be broken [p. 217] in pieces, and God will bless His people! It is a wonderful thing that God’s way and will shall be known upon earth, and men will then own that God’s way is better than man’s way. All of man will end in disappointment. Man’s great object is self, so his way is bound by bringing about retroaction. Man’s way always brings confusion, but “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace”, for “God is love”, and it all proceeds from His heart. “His way shall be known upon earth, his saving health among all nations”. There will be most blessed unity upon earth, Israel and Judah will be bound together, and the testimony will be known among all nations. God will yet shake both heaven and earth, and the first shaking will be when the graves are opened to let His people come forth when Christ rises from the right hand of God, and then all the enemies and haters of God will be subdued to Christ. He came here once full of grace and truth with nothing but blessing for man, but still He has enemies to subdue! And what delays His coming? Ephesians 4 explains the delay. It is simply on account of the Church. It is not for the world. This is dissolving in its moral bonds, but the Church is before God. God Himself is to be the source of all good in the universe. Christ has received the kingdom in accordance with Luke 19, and now sits at God’s right hand having led captivity captive. We all here as Christians have been taken out of the captor’s hand and have been brought under the moral sway of Christ. The first thing to apprehend is that Christ has received a kingdom, and we are now brought into it. Next that He has given gifts and that they are all in connection with the Church. They are a divine provision for keeping the truth of God before the minds of the saints. In Old Testament times God provided prophets for this purpose, and He provides gifted men for the same purpose now. Christ went to the cross to make known God’s righteousness, and He arose to [p. 218] effect and make known the will of God. Ephesians 4: 13 is to be arrived at down here. The measure of every person’s faith is his apprehension of the mind of God. The secret of unity lies in faith. Why? Because faith brings in the mind of God. Unity is only possible by knowing the mind of God. Faith and unity are here put together. God is fully revealed in His Son and unity is from the knowledge of Him. And to “a perfect man”; and the perfect man is to be under the eye of God down here composed of a great many individuals. It is a moral idea: a perfect man (the Church) with nothing lacking. This was the mind of God to have set on the earth for Him. “The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. There is a work of grace going on in each to the same end, and this is the apprehension of God morally. He wants us in the presence of His love. Only Christ is the expression of God’s will. Only by knowing Him is to know this will. He has made Himself known that we may know this will, and He has made His Son known to form us in this will. Personally Christ has been put out of the world, but His body is here in order that His mind may be made known. The question is what are you bent upon? Is it your own will that brings in confusion, or as much as you can get down here of earth, and then His will? Depend upon it this will end in your own disaster. But if you gladly accept His will alone all will be blessing and light on your path even amid many difficulties, and you need fear nothing.