THE DEATH OF A WORSHIPPER

J. A. Gardiner

Genesis 47: 31 (last clause); 48: 21, 22; 49: 33; John 4: 23, 24

The death of any of God’s saints is precious in His sight. Scripture says, “Precious in the sight of Jehovah is the death of his saints”, Psalm.116: 15. Heaven is intensely interested in these occasions, the angels looking on to see the work of God, seeing what God has wrought.

The death of a worshipper is especially precious in the sight of heaven. Our brother was a worshipper, a worshipper of God, a true worshipper, who worshipped in spirit and truth. He worshipped God because he loved Him; he was known of God, because he loved God. The Scripture tells us that “if any one love God, he is known of him”, 1 Corinthians 8: 3. Our brother had his confidence in God. He was a man of experience in the ways of God, like Jacob here, and he shone in the features of fatherhood and godly influence. Like Jacob he could say, ‘Behold I die’. What a triumph that is!—Jacob, an old man, at the end of his days, saying, “Behold, I die”; facing the whole matter in confidence in God, not thinking about himself, but thinking about those he was leaving.

He says, “God will be with you”. What a comfort that is to our beloved sister. In one sense she needs nothing else. The Lord would say that—“God will be with you”. Whatever the days

ahead may be in sorrow and loneliness and weakness, “God will be with you”. How comforting that is! Our confidence is in Christ; we believe in the Lord as to a generation following in the footsteps of their father spiritually and morally. Our brother had no family, but he surely had a family morally and spiritually. I thank God that I have come under his influence in that way. “God will be with you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers”. Jacob is really saying to them, ‘All the promises are secured, secured in Christ’.

There is no vacillation with the Lord Jesus, everything is firm and fixed. He did not become yea and nay, “but yea is in him. For whatever promises of God there are, in him is the yea, and in him the amen, for glory to God by us”, 2 Corinthians 1: 19, 20.

Now Israel says, ‘I have taken something’—I will give you this tract of land which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow. Our brother has left us something, beloved brethren, that he acquired himself. He has handed things down. Our brother has handed down certain features to us, not features, I suppose, that the world would count of much value—he has handed down kindness, compassion, grace, and patience; such precious features as meekness, lowliness of mind, and humility. These are features that in the sight of heaven are of great price; that is what he has given to us; it is what a worshipper has handed on to us; what he has learned of God he has left with us to explore that inheritance.

How beautiful it is to see a man moving in the light of the knowledge of God. Jacob here was superior to Joseph. Joseph was a great man, over the whole land of Egypt, with the whole administrative position at his fingers; and yet he was not as

intelligent as Jacob. Jacob crossed his hands wittingly and it says it was evil in Joseph’s eyes.

How beautifully he adjusts Joseph, “I know, my son, I know” (Genesis 48: 19). He had been that way before; he had been through the whole thing. This section sets out moral and spiritual beauties and glories that belong to the worshipper, features of the kingdom coming to us, the younger subject to the elder, binding on humility one towards another. How beautifully it was found with Jacob. What a history he had, what experience he had, and he says this with the confidence of a heart that is filled with the knowledge of God—“Behold, I die; and God will be with you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers”—bring you into the full gain of His purpose and of all the promises.

So his heart is full in chapter 49; he is blessing his sons; he is blessing them in relation to the whole area of responsibility, telling them what is to come upon them, and that is blessing. If they submitted to it, they would come into the gain of that blessing. Finally it says that “when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered his feet into the bed”. The whole position rightly arranged under God, his pathway over, he gathered his feet into the bed. What feet they had been! What feet our brother’s feet have been! What feet they have been in testimony. The Lord has used him in testimony. Our brother has referred to his service in the glad tidings, and there are those here today who are the fruit of that service, God using him in the preaching, using our sister, too, in the conviction of souls. All that is present today, all that is the influence of a worshipper, the influence of heaven. These are features, beloved brethren, that those of us who are younger may very well emulate and seek to come into the gain of. So it says, “He gathered his feet into the bed,

and expired, and was gathered to his peoples”. What a triumph that is; how wonderful that is—God taking care of a worshipper.

In John 4 we are in this spiritual area, the tract of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph (John 4: 5). It is not a thing for the future; it is the present appeal of the love of Christ to us—“The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father ...”. Why does the Lord use that word “the true worshippers”? He uses this word ‘true’ in John at least three times—the true worshippers, the true vine, and the true God—because we are in the presence in this gospel of much that is pretentious, much that assumes things; in the presence of Jerusalem. The Lord’s activities in this gospel are largely around Jerusalem, the great area of religious pretension. He does everything Himself in this gospel. He does not accredit anything that is official, but He accredits the true worshippers. “The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth”. It is not a place of worship; it is not that company or this company of brethren; it is the true worshippers, worshipping the Father in spirit and truth. It is not that they belong to this or to that, but they belong to God. And so the Lord says, “God is a spirit; and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth”. What an appeal this is to our hearts, beloved brethren.

The Lord has set before us, by way of moral example, what we saw in excellence in the pathway of our beloved brother. That has been left to us that we may seek to grow and develop in it. What is here in testimony is to be added to, and the service of God is to be enriched, enriched in this

beautiful way by the extension of the features which are absolute in Christ in His humanity.

May it be so.

Words at the burial of Mr. James Addison, Cullen
11 November 1976