Let Us Hold Fast
Ministry by W. J. Pearce
– Part Two

Of old God took a people out of Egypt; He found them groaning helplessly beneath the taskmaster's lash, and presented Himself to them as Saviour, through His servant Moses.

• He brought them out from under their bondage, on the ground of the bloodshedding of the lamb, which typified the sacrifice of Christ,

• and led them towards the good land of His purpose, in faithful love, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

But we read that with the most of them God was not pleased.

• Though they had proved Him and seen His works in so marvellous a way, yet they rebelled against His word and refused to hearken to His voice.

• We are told that they despised the pleasant land, and in heart turned back to Egypt, even suggesting to make for themselves a captain to return there.

• The consequence was that God swore in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest, and their carcases fell in the wilderness.

In Hebrews 3 and 4 the writer applies all this to those from among the Jews who had professedly embraced the Christian faith.

• Outwardly they had embraced Christ as their Saviour and Lord, and had set out for the heavenly country which the gospel presents to faith.

• But many were now in danger of being like their fathers of old – slipping away from the position which they had taken up,
  • giving up the Christian faith, giving up Christ and returning to the Judaism in which the gospel had found them.

• Hence the serious words of warning addressed to them:
  • "See, brethren, lest there be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief, in turning away from the living God", Heb. 3: 12.

Does not this word bear also upon us in this our day? Have there not been many, alas, who have taken up their place outwardly among the people of God,

• but who have fallen away, giving up even the very foundations of the faith that they professed to hold?
• Would not the Holy Spirit direct this word to our hearts, and say,
  • "See, brethren, lest there be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief, in turning away from the living God".

We may plead that if we are true believers in our Saviour we are eternally His, and what we read of in these chapters can never befall us.

• This is true: but it is equally true that the proof that we are true believers is that we do not turn aside, but "hold the beginning of the assurance firm to the end", Heb. 3: 14.

• It is only as we hold fast to the living word of the living God that we are safe.

By nature all our hearts are unbelieving, and therefore wicked.

• It is well to face this, and also to face the fact that unbelief is wickedness.

• The world will not call it so: the world will applaud the type of mind which refuses to be governed by the word of God,
  • but God calls it wickedness, and our salvation is to judge it in the light of God's judgment of it.

If we have faith, it is because God has given it to us: let us prize it! We are told that it is not the portion of all, 1 Thess. 3: 2.

• There are those in whose hearts God's word has never really found an entrance;
  • but if, through God's mercy, His word has found its way in living power and conviction into our hearts, how we need to value it, and to cling to it!

• The world scoffs at faith. 'Where is the proof of what you hold?' they say.

• But in the heart that has been wrought upon by God, the word of God carries its own proof, and no other is needed.

• It carries with it the inward conviction that it is indeed the very word of God; so that whether or not we can prove the truth of it to others, we know that God has spoken.

• God is not dependent upon humanly-accepted 'proofs'; He can make men hear His voice, and He can make men know that it is in truth His voice.

• If the word has thus come to us, let us hold it fast. Let us not be ashamed of it; let us thank God that He has given it to us,
  • and let us boldly confess it, and "hold fast the confession", Heb. 4: 14.

It is important, too, to judge the beginnings of apostasy or "turning away".

• The beginning will probably not be the denial of the fundamental truths of Christianity; but the turning away from any feature of divine speaking has the character of apostasy:

• it is the beginning of the road that leads to darkness, and, if continued in, to hopeless ruin – "… that no one may fall after the same example of not hearkening to the word", Heb. 4: 11.

• God is a living God, and He is constantly speaking – in mercy, in goodness, in blessing, if we will but so regard it.

• Let us not harden our hearts against His speaking! Let us pray, like Solomon, "Give … to thy servant a heart that hears", 1 Kings 3: 9 (footnote).

• If we are simple and humble, and willing to know God's mind, we shall hear Jesus has said so.
  • "If any one desire to practise His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is of God", John 7: 17.

• How terrible to harden one's heart against the voice of the living God! The very psalm quoted in these chapters says,
  • "We are … the sheep of His hand" and then adds, "Today if ye hear His voice, harden not your heart", Psalm 95: 7-8; Hebrews 3: 7-8.

The word that comes to us from God is the word that we need. God Himself comes to us in the word, as the end of chapter 4 shows:

• He is the God before whose eyes all things are naked and laid bare – and what a mercy for us that it is so!
• With His perfect knowledge of us, He sees exactly the need of our souls at every moment, and knows how to direct His word to us for our salvation.

• It may come to us in many ways: in the reading of the Holy Scriptures, or in ministry. But in whatever way it may come, it is the word of God, and it our salvation to receive it.
  • "Accept with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls", James 1: 21.

• It is living and operative, not only in disclosing what we need to judge, but in building us up inwardly for the glorious and blessed place to which God is bringing us.

"My rest" implies a scene where, it may reverently be said, the blessed God has nothing to do but to rest,

• His nature reposing with delight in all that has been established for His pleasure in Christ.
• Christ Himself is the Centre of it – Jesus, the Son of God; it is, however, not only Christ personally,

• but the whole vast range of God's thoughts immutably established in Him, and embracing in its blessedness every family in heaven and earth. And God's rest is our rest!

• If we are strangers here, it is because our home is there, as "companions of the Christ", to share His place and His glory, and to share His joy in what He has secured for the eternal delight of God.

He has Himself gone in. He has "confessed the good confession", He has finished His course of suffering faithfulness, and has now passed through the heavens.

• We see Him in His glory there, our Object and our Goal. Yet He is active now in priestly grace for us.

• He knows all about the pressure here, all about the "contradiction of sinners"; knows how hard it is at times for us to hold fast.

• But His strength is there, His priestly grace that never fails,
  • "I have prayed for thee", He says, "that thy faith fail not", Luke 22: 32.

  • "My grace is sufficient for thee", 2 Corinthians 12: 9.

Of the seed of Abraham – that is, of believers – we read that "He takes hold", Heb. 2: 16.

• As we simply and humbly cast ourselves upon Him, we ever find that His strength is made perfect in our weakness; we are encouraged in the knowledge of Him, and in the knowledge of God's grace expressed in Him;
  • we can "approach … with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help", Heb. 4: 16.

• Each season brings it owns test, its own difficulties, but the help is there, awaiting our approach. Let us then hold fast.

A great point in the ministry of John is the belief, and the confession, that Jesus is the Son of God. This is indeed a very important part of what may be called the Christian confession.

• There is the confession that Jesus is Lord the recognition of the place and power and authority that God has conferred upon Him.

• John also refers to "every one that believes that Jesus is the Christ", which views Him as the Man approved of God and anointed to fill out every official position in the universe.

• But the title "Son of God" speaks rather of what He is in His personal glory yet as Man.

• If we think of the Lord Jesus before He came into Manhood, it can only be as God.

• We cannot in that connection think of Him as God's Son, for He is God Himself.

• Son of God refers to Him as having become Man; yet only One who was Himself God could take such a place.

• There could be no other upon whom the heavens could open and as to whom the Father's voice could declare, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I have found My delight".

And what delight did God always find in Him as He trod His wonderful pathway here!

• Never before had there been such a Man upon earth; One who answered to what God was in nature and character, because He was Himself God;
  • and who at the same time, as Man, presented to God in the utmost perfection all that God could desire in man for His pleasure.

• In Him was seen "the word of life" – the manifestation of all that God counts to be life in man.

• The world through which He passed was exposed by His presence in it, was manifested in all its hostility to God, and therefore to Him, God's blessed Son.

• Yet He passed through it unsullied, undiverted, feeling with the intensity of divine perfection the character of all that was around Him, but unmoved in His entire devotion to God and to His will.

And yet He died! We may well ask, Why did He die? We may indeed ask how He could die, of whom it is said, "In Him was life".

• No man did or could take His life from Him, but He laid it down of Himself; John 10: 18.

• He laid it down, as we are told, that He might take it again; but that He might take it in such a way that a countless host of men might have part with Him in it,
  • thus forming a glorious spiritual system of which He Himself is the Head and Centre.

• Through His death and resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit, He has brought to pass a vast living system,
  • filled out with all the perfection that marked Him as Man, and with all the blessedness that surrounds Him as Man;

  • a system in which both the heart of man and the heart of God can find perfect satisfaction.

He came, we read, by water and blood. 1 John 5.

• The water speaks of His death as removing from God's sight all that was offensive to Him,
  • including all that we are in our natural state as sinful men, abhorrent to God.

• The blood speaks of His death as completely satisfying all God's rights in respect of us,
  • and gives us boldness to stand before God in the place of favour in which He delights to have us.

• And then the Holy Spirit, who has come forth from Christ risen and ascended, links our souls with Him in a living way, so that we are brought consciously into the system of which He is Head,
  • and have the present joy and gain of life in Him. "God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in His Son", 1 John 5: 11.

• We have thus a portion in Him in which there is fulness of joy for us, and in which God finds what fully satisfies the desire of His own heart of infinite love.

So to one who found himself cast out from everything here, the Lord's question is, "Thou, dost thou believe on the Son of God?"

• One world, the only world that he had known had closed upon him, but in the light of the Son of God another world, God's world, was opening to him.

• If we are the subjects of the work of God and all who have any appreciation of Christ are subjects of the work of God
  • and if we are honest, and faithful to the light that we have been given, we shall find that the world will close upon us.

• But if, for the truth's sake, we are outcasts here, the Lord will not fail to find us, even as He found this man,
  • and He will light up our souls with the knowledge of Himself as the Son of God.

This wonderful light introduces us into the new world, as we may term it, in which the believer's true life is found.

• Though everything else may be gone, he has the Son – wonderful thought! – and "He that has the Son has life", 1 John 5: 12.

• It is not a matter of mere mental belief: no doubt in a certain sense many of us have from infancy believed that Jesus is the Son of God.

• But it is a question of the soul being filled with the light of the glorious Person who presents Himself to us, so that He becomes everything to us, the choicest possession of our hearts.

• Not only did the man say, "Lord, I believe", but he worshipped Him.

• He became affectionately and worshipfully attached to the One who, in the greatness and blessedness of His Person, transcended the whole Jewish system and was the Centre of the world in which he would thereafter find his life.

In 1 John 4: 15 we read: "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God".

• This wonderful statement sets forth what Christianity really means, and anything short of it is not really Christianity at all.

• It gives us a place where Christ is; and where as Man He ever was – unless indeed when He was abandoned for us upon the cross!

• He abides in God. His dwelling-place is God, who shines upon Him with infinite complacency.

• Yet we are in Him: our life is hid with Christ in God. We have part with Him in the place where He dwells in the complacent love of God.

• It is our spirits' present home ' [ No. 56 1932 Hymn Book ].

There is also the other side: that God abides in us. This must, of course, depend upon the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

• Yet the indwelling of the Spirit is the indwelling of God, for the Spirit is God.

• Through the indwelling of the Spirit, God comes into the believer, taking up His abode there in love, and coming into expression in the activities of love, as He did in Jesus when here.

• Not, of course, that we can ever have part in Deity itself; but the true activities of the believer are the activities of Christ, his joys are the joys of Christ, his dwelling-place the dwelling-place of Christ.

• In a word Christ is his life. Needless to say, we all feel how very far short we come of the full practical good and gain of these great matters,
  • yet the Holy Spirit would help us to arrive at it with increasing reality, in the appreciation of the Son of God, and of all that centres in Him.

In 1 John 5: 5 we have the word: "Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?".

• The world is ever near to us, and it lies in the wicked one. 1 John 5: 19.

• Satan would use it to overcome us, either by its seductive influence or its active opposition, or maybe by using circumstances connected with it to depress our spirits.

• We need to be entirely delivered from it in every way, and the way of deliverance is in the faith of Jesus as the Son of God. He could say, "I have overcome the world", John 16: 33.

• He trod through it His way of love and holiness, undiverted by its allurements or by its opposition, His spirit ever ready to rise up to God, in whom He dwelt.

• May our eyes be set upon Him and may we ever carry in our souls the light of who He is,
  • the glorious Centre of the realm of divine love, in which, through the Spirit, the believer has his present living part!

• As our souls abide in the light and reality of this, the world loses its power over us and we are enabled, as abiding in Him, to walk as He walked.

In the epistle to the Colossians we have two prayers: the prayer of the apostle Paul in chapter 1 and the prayer of Epaphras "the bondman of Christ Jesus" in chapter 4.

• Both of these surely point to what we may well seek from God with the greatest earnestness, for ourselves and for all the saints.

• Paul prayed that the brethren at Colosse might be "filled with the full knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding";

• while of Epaphras it says, "always combating earnestly for you in prayers, to the end that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God".

We are told that "all the will of God" is literally "every will of God"; so that the expression embraces every detail that God has in mind for His people.

• There are many believers today who think that a sort of general unity of thought as to certain features of the mind of God and usually what is connected with the blessing of man is all that we need be concerned about.

• But not so Epaphras, who was always combating earnestly that the saints might stand "perfect and complete in all the will of God".

We live in days when God has fully made known His mind.

• The word of God was completed by the apostle Paul, Colossians 1: 25 – the whole counsel of God declared, His mind made fully known;

• and further, the whole mind of God – the whole truth – has been substantiated here through the presence in the saints of the Holy Spirit, who is Himself "the truth", 1 John 5: 6.

• What departure has come in since the days of the apostles we well know, but the Spirit has never departed; He has never left the assembly,
  • which is His dwelling here on earth even to this very day, so that, despite all the departure, the truth is here, and in the Spirit it is available to us.

From time to time the Spirit moves in a particular way so as to call attention to specific features of the truth.

• Every feature of thetruth as thus presented to us by the Spirit calls for an answer on our side, and is thus a matter of the will of God.

When this is recognised, we see at once the seriousness of any divergence of thought as to the truth.

• In the world men hold diverse opinions on practically every subject, and nobody considers it a matter of any consequence.
  • Indeed, many think it good that it should be so, and find pleasure in arguing their views against those who see things differently.

• But when we come to the things of God, it is a matter of the will of God; so that the real question is not merely, 'Is this opinion right or wrong?' but, 'Is this, or is this not, the will of God?'.

The assembly of God is the pillar and base of the truth. 1 Tim. 3: 15.

• Every feature of the truth is to find its expression and its answer there. In the coming day, in the heavenly city, this will be perfectly so.

• But it has pleased God to maintain even in this day a witness to the truth in that which, though marked by outward smallness and weakness, has assembly character.

• The will of God requires that each one of us should be having part in this, standing in what has assembly character, and answering fully to every feature of the truth to "all the will of God".

It may be said that this at the present time is unattainable: but it can none the less be pursued.

• Epaphras did not say it was unattainable, but ardently pursued it;

• and we may be assured that God has had much pleasure in those who in our own times have set their faces in this direction – seeking to answer fully to the will of God themselves
  • and labouring that others also should stand with them "perfect and complete" in it.

• May we also be found following in the same path!

We are told that the word "complete" in this verse should quite probably be "fully assured";

• and it is plain that if we are to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God we need the full assurance of what that will is.
• This formed the subject of Paul's own prayer for the saints in the first chapter – "that ye may be filled with the full knowledge of His will".
  • This leaves no room for the policy of 'agreeing to differ', which may be good enough in the things of men.

• Nor is there any reason why we should have to agree to differ, for the Spirit the Unction brings with Him to our souls the knowledge of "all things", 1 John 2: 20.

• Perfect assurance, and hence perfect unity, as to the will of God will flow from giving full place to the Spirit, and no place at all to our own wills: and how subtle our own wills are!

• In this connection we have the word of the Lord Himself, "If any one desire to practise His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is of God", John 7: 17.

• We have ample means of knowing: we have the Holy Scriptures, we have the indwelling Spirit, we have a divinely provided system of help and teaching in the gifts from the ascended Christ,
  • and we can see the truth set forth in others who have manifestly learned of God.

• What is needed is this desire to practise the will of God.

Notice that it does not say, 'If any one desire to know the truth'.

• One might desire to know the truth merely for the sake of the self-satisfaction that comes from the possession of knowledge –
  • which if held in that way can only puff up; 1 Corinthians 8.

  • But the word is, "If any one desire to practise His will".

• As knowing and loving the blessed God, may it be our constant and earnest desire to be filled with the full knowledge of His will and to be found here devoted to Him, standing perfect and complete in all the will of God.

Needless to say, this is bound to mean sacrifice and suffering; and not least, it may be, in

• the relinquishing of long-cherished thoughts, and the breaking, for righteousness' sake, of intimate links.
• We may even find ourselves called upon to imitate Levi, Jehovah's "godly one", who for righteousness' sake "acknowledged not his brethren, and knew not his own children", Deuteronomy 33: 8-9.

• But we can turn our eyes to the One who said, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness", Matthew 3: 15.

• No suffering, no reproach, could turn Him aside from the path of God's will. He hid not His face from shame and spitting; Isaiah 50: 6.

• As all the horror of Calvary came upon His spirit He could say, "Not my will, but Thine be done", Luke 22: 42.
  • Shall we, who owe everything to His unreserved devotion to God's holy will, have reservations?

• Let us remember that if He bore our sins in His own body upon the tree, it was that we might "live to righteousness", 1 Peter 2: 24,
  • wholly committed to the "the good and acceptable and perfect will of God" in all its details. Romans 12: 2.

• May His grace make it more and more attractive to us, and sustain us in it, for His name's sake!

The early part of this chapter is perhaps one of the most magnificent sections of Scripture, setting out typically the people of God rejoicing in the great victory which has been secured through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

• God has indeed triumphed gloriously!
• By bringing up Christ from the dead, He has triumphed over everything that stood in the way of the accomplishment of His thoughts of blessing for His people,
  • and to the vision of faith the way lies open into the land of His purpose.

It does not please God, however, immediately to bring His people in and plant them in the mountain of His inheritance.

• Before they are ready for this, there is need not only of a work done for them, but of a work done in them; and hence the wilderness experiences are necessary.

• The people of God need to come under His own gracious teaching, so that they may fully learn Him in their souls.

• At the Red Sea they did indeed have a wonderful experience of His power, but they were now to learn Him in a deeper and fuller way in all the varied experiences which, in His wisdom, he caused the wilderness to provide.

Broadly speaking, the wilderness experience teaches us, on the one hand, what we are in ourselves, and on the other, what God is.

• In Deuteronomy 8: 2 God says: "Thou shalt remember all the way which Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or not".
  • How humbling, and yet how necessary, is this aspect of God's dealing with us!

• God has no need to prove us so that He should know what is in our hearts, but it is highly needful that we should come to know it;

• so the wilderness experiences are ordered for us, in perfect, divine wisdom, that God may prove to us what we really are, and thus bring us into line with His own judgment of us, expressed in the cross.

There is, however, the more blessed side, that while God proves us, we also prove Him.

• Over against all our failure and perversity, there shines out the unfailing grace and patience and goodness of God, which we could never have learned in any other way.

• Our wilderness experiences are all planned out for us with infinite wisdom and skill, so that we should learn just what is needed for the moment, and thus move on from step to step in the knowledge of the blessed God.

So here we find the people, as moving under their divinely-appointed leader, coming to Marah.

• They were feeling their need of water, for they had gone three days without finding any, but it says that, when they came to Marah, they "could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter".

• These waters, we are told, were really part of the waters of the Red Sea – the waters of death.

• In chapter 14: 29 we read that when the people passed through the Red Sea, "the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left".
  • There was no murmuring about the waters then, for they were glad of the protection that they afforded.

• So we are glad to avail ourselves of the death of Christ in its protective character, the means of our salvation from our sad position as under the bondage of Satan.

• But when we are faced with the bitter circumstances of the wilderness, are we ready to accept the will of God, though it means death to us?

For death is what marks the whole of the wilderness way; death to sin, death to the whole principle of self will, of self-pleasing.

• It may not be actual death, but it is death in principle, death to something – perhaps to much, even all – that means life to us naturally.

• God knows exactly what particular circumstance to face us with, and in His infinite tenderness and skill He will not suffer any of us to be tempted beyond what we are able to bear by His grace;

• but whatever be the circumstance, the underlying principle is the same – the unmurmuring acceptance of the will of God, and of death to my own will.

The doctrine of this is brought out by Paul in Roman 6: 11, where we are exhorted to reckon ourselves "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus".

• This is to give character to the whole of our life down here.
• But while we may fully accept this as a matter of doctrine, we doubtless all find ourselves gravely tested by the acceptance of the practical bearing of it in connection with the bitter circumstances of the wilderness.

So here, the people murmur – and no wonder, for they were actually a people in the flesh, and the flesh can never accept death.

• And we, though we may have the Spirit, have to find how incapable we are, in the power of nature, of accepting the will of God,

• involving, as it often does, death to all our cherished desires, our hopes and our natural feelings.

But Moses, we read, cried to Jehovah. The murmuring of the people was doubtless bitter as Marah to him; indeed, an added bitterness, for he would himself have to drink the bitter waters.

• But he had already learned God in a remarkable way, and so he cried to Him; and we can cry to Him too, for He is our God also. "And Jehovah showed him wood".
  • Wood is frequently referred to in Scripture as symbolising humanity; and the wood that God will show to us is the blessed and holy humanity of Christ.

• There was no murmuring there: the language of His heart ever was: "To do Thy good pleasure, My God, is My delight", Psalm 40: 8.

• What a humanity was His, a truly unique humanity! Though as to His Person ever God, He came into human condition – sin apart –
  • and into the human position down here, to live to God and to do His will, with unmurmuring purpose of heart.

"And he cast it into the waters". How affecting it is to our hearts to think of the blessed Lord as cast into the waters!

• How bitter was the experience through which He passed, in His devotedness to God's holy will, reaching even to the bitterness of Calvary!

• What that bitterness was to Him none of us can ever fully know, nor could we ever follow Him there!

• Yet what the Lord tasted of bitterness in His holy path includes all that we are called upon to taste as we follow His steps in the path of the will of God.

There was no murmuring, no complaining, in the pathway of Jesus. He could say: "I was not rebellious; I turned not away back", Isaiah 50: 5.

• This is the One who is to be the pattern for us. "Christ, then, having suffered for us in the flesh, do ye also arm yourselves with the same mind", 1 Peter 4: 1.

• His holy mind to suffer is to be the armour to preserve us from all that the flesh is prone to, from all its murmurings and complainings.

• The Spirit of God delights to set Christ before us in the perfection of His submissiveness and devotedness, and as having Him thus before us, the waters become sweet.
  • They are sweet because He has been that way.

• What could be a greater privilege than to be here as He has been here, led by His Spirit, following in His steps, armed with His mind?

We have always to remember that it is only in the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling us that we can go this way.

• Peter had this lesson to learn, as we see at the end of John 13. He was like the one who earlier had said, "I will follow Thee wheresoever Thou goest, Lord".
  • But the Lord's word to Peter was, "Where I go thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me after", John 13: 36.

• Thank God, we live in the time of the "after" – the day of the Spirit, when the very power by which Jesus was led in the wilderness is available to us also.
  • In His power, the way through the wilderness can be made a march of triumph; Psalm 68: 7.

• We are tested, proved and humbled; yet, while we learn what we ourselves are, we learn what God is: we learn His grace, His patience and His power;

• we learn the sufficiency of Christ and of the Spirit; and God is glorified in a people who can happily accept death, as they are led to it in the way of His good and acceptable and perfect will.

"But David strengthened himself in Jehovah his God", 1 Sam. 30: 6.

• These words refer to what was perhaps one of the darkest days in the history of David, a time when outwardly he seemed to have lost all, and when the people whom he had loved and led spoke of stoning him.

• In this time of greatest pressure David shines as a model for us in that he turned to God, to the One who could be said to be his God, and found in Him the encouragement and strength that he so sorely needed.

Many of the people of God today are finding the times to be times of pressure, but we can say, "This God is our God".

• Not only may we say that David's God is our God, but we have heard the Lord Jesus say, "My God and your God".

• We are set in relation to God as He was known to Jesus, the God who has been fully declared by the Son of His love.

• By the Holy Spirit given to us, we are enabled to enter into the blessedness of the revelation, and of the wonderful place we have with the God so revealed,
  • and thus to know that our God is Christ's God, our never-failing Resource.

God delights that we should thus enjoy this precious knowledge of Himself, and that in every moment of trial and pressure we should turn to Him.

• Indeed, it is for this purpose that pressure is allowed to come.
• Often we turn in other directions. We may perhaps turn to our brethren, and in one way that is right, for a brother is born for adversity, and what comfort is to be found in the holy circle of the saints!
  • The Spirit of God is there; God, we may say, is there, and the comfort of God is found amongst them.

  Yet God would have us go beyond them to Himself, for it is He Himself who is the great comforter of His people,

  • and it is in having to do with God Himself that true comfort and strength come to us.

In Psalm 146: 5 we read, "Blessed – i.e., 'Happy' – is he who hath the God of Jacob for his help".

• The title "God of Jacob" always brings God very near to us, for we all often feel how akin we are to the one who is sometimes addressed as "thou worm Jacob".

• We think of all that we are according to the flesh, all the crookedness that marks us according to nature; yet God is not ashamed to be called the God of Jacob.

• Despite what Jacob was according to the flesh, God took him up for blessing, and, as He promised in Genesis 28, did not leave him till He had done what He had spoken to him of.

• It meant a long path of discipline, but in the end God's thought was reached, and Jacob spoke with true appreciation of "the God that shepherded me all my life long to this day", Genesis 48: 15.

• And so, we too, can count upon the God of Jacob to effect for us what He has spoken to us of; and how great and blessed that is!

• There will be discipline and there will be pressure, but there will be help in the pressure, and enlargement will flow from it;
  • and divine enlargement always means happiness, the true happiness that flows from the knowledge of the blessed God.

• How blessed God is! How rich His mercy! How gracious His throne!
  • "Let us approach therefore with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help", Hebrews 4: 16.

The whole of the psalm is full of encouragement. What a comfort it is for us, as in a scene of need, to know that

• our God is the God "who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is therein"!
• What infinite resource there is with God! And then, too, to know Him as our God "who keepeth truth for ever"!

• How perfectly reliable God is! Earthly friends, even our brethren, may fail us; and if we put them in the place that God should have, they will fail us.

• But in God we have One who is always absolutely to be relied on, the One who is always true; true to Himself, and therefore true to those who put their trust in Him.

"Who executeth judgment for the oppressed, who giveth bread to the hungry".

• Perhaps there are some of God's people among the oppressed today, perhaps some are hungry, in other lands if not in this.

• But God sees all, and His almighty love is over all, and we can wait His time and be restful in the waiting.

• Some may be in need of liberation, some of enlightenment, some are bowed down by sorrows.

• The answer to all these conditions is in the blessed God Himself, who "loveth the righteous".

• The righteous are those who seek to do what is right; to be here for the will of God, and to depend upon Him.
  • "Jehovah loveth the righteous": He looks down upon them with delight, singling them out with His approving eye, despite the reproach that may attach to them in the eyes of men.

  • They are but strangers here, but "Jehovah preserveth the strangers; He lifteth up the fatherless and the widow".

• And He shall reign for ever, "even thy God, O Zion, from generation to generation".

• God will triumph, and He will bring through in triumph those who rely upon Him and make Him their resource.

Finally, when the time of pressure is past for ever, God will remain as the eternal portion of His people.

• In Revelation 21 we are carried, in the prophet's vision, into the eternal day.

• No pressure is there: the tabernacle of God is with men, and he is tabernacling with them;
  • "and God Himself shall be with them, their God. And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall not exist any more, nor grief, nor cry, nor distress shall exist any more, for the former things have passed away".

• Then it says, "He that overcomes shall inherit these things". "He that overcomes" has been carried victoriously through the scene of pressure by the help that has come from God,
  • and now he is in the scene where there is no pressure, but where God is all in all.

"He that overcomes shall inherit these things"; but there is what is greater than the things, there is God Himself!

• "I will be to him God, and he shall be to Me son".
• God Himself is the eternal portion of the soul, and God as He is to be known by sons.

• It does not here say, 'I will be to him Father', though the blessedness of knowing God as Father is surely included in it.

• That God should be known as Father is perhaps the crowning feature of His blessedness, yet there is more than Fatherhood here: "I will be to him God".

• It is what God is as God, the full blessedness of the wondrous Being who fills eternity, the One of whom and through whom and for whom are all things, the glorious Triune God.
  • "This God is our God" – Psalm 48: 14  – Father, Son and Spirit the present stay and comfort of our souls, and our portion for ever. Blessed be His name!

May we all be encouraged to have more to do with God Himself!

• It is precious to have to do with the Lord Jesus, but we must remember that Christ suffered for us to bring us to God.

• Jesus is indeed Himself God, but His great desire is that we should know and love and enjoy the presence of
  • that blessed and glorious Being whom He has declared, and to whom, through Him and by the Holy Spirit, we have access.

The Scriptures have much to say to us in the way of instruction and admonition as to our speaking: our mouths, our lips, our tongues, our words.

• In the passage cited above we have the solemn warning from the Lord Himself that by our words shall we be justified, and by our words shall we be condemned.

It is the Lord who is the great Model for us in this, as in all else.

• As we trace His path through the gospels, we see continually how the "good treasure" of His blessed heart found expression in the words of grace that fell from His lips.

• This marked the beginning of His ministry, as He stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth, and it marked the close of His pathway too, as upon the cross itself He prayed for His murderers.

• Even as risen and ascended, what grace came into expression in His words to Paul on the Damascus road;
  • and surely we may each one of say, 'What grace has come into expression as He has spoken to me!'

The saints of the present time, as the bride and counterpart of Christ, are fully to correspond with Him in this, as in every grace.

• If we can so rightly say of Him, "His mouth is most sweet", it is to be said of the assembly, "Thy lips, my spouse, drop as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under thy tongue", Canticles 4: 11.

• Indeed, He is to say this, as taking account with divine delight of what has been wrought in His own.

What a contrast this is to what marks us all by nature! "They sharpen their tongues like a serpent; adder's poison is under their lips".

• That is what marks us by nature, and it well for us to recognize it, and to cast ourselves upon the help of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us to bring us in every respect into accord with Christ.

In Isaiah 6 we see one whose lips are cleansed. He was a prophet, one who used his lips in God's service, and used them to say right things, too.

• Yet when he found himself in the holy presence of God and heard the speaking that brought home to his soul the deep sense of the majesty and holiness of God, he was constrained to cry,
  • "Woe unto me! for I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips".

• How good it is for us to draw night to God. With Isaiah it was a special experience – a vision;
  • but today we who believe, even the youngest and the simplest, have the privilege at all times of entering the holiest, the immediate presence of God, in virtue of the blood of Jesus. This is what the altar speaks of.

• It is in the sufferings and the death of Jesus that we learn fully how God hates sin and the features of the flesh, but we also learn that God has dealt with them completely and removed them from His sight.

• The glowing coal from off the altar speaks to us of a fresh application in divine power of the bearing of the death of Christ, which cleanses the lips so that they can be rightly used, even to carry divine messages;
  • for God delights to use those who have been men of unclean lips to speak for Him in this way.

There is, however, a more positive side suggested in Matthew 12, where the mouth is viewed as giving expression to what is treasured in the heart.

• This at once raises the question with each one of us, What am I treasuring in my heart?
  • "The good man out of the good treasure brings forth good things; and the wicked man out of the wicked treasure brings forth wicked things".

• How solemn to have a wicked treasure – to treasure wickedness; but what do I bring forth, what is the tenor of my conversation, what do I commonly speak of?

• How ready we are at times to treasure evil things – evil which perhaps we may meet with even amongst the people of God – and for such things to be the topic of our conversation.

• We may certainly have sorrowfully to take account of what is evil among believers, but if so, love would surely seek to cover it. "Love covers a multitude of sins".

• It is not that sins are to be glossed over, but love would be concerned that they should be judged before God by those responsible, so that they might be covered in a righteous way, even as God covers them, remembering them no more, as covered by the death of Jesus.

• Love would never treasure or delight in rehearsing it.

But there is good treasure. What a wealth of good treasure there is in Christ, in whom, we read, "dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily", Colossians 2: 9.

• If this precious treasure is filling our hearts, our speaking will show it. "Honey and milk are under thy tongue".
  • Honey and milk are the products of "the land", and that is really Christ.

• Our land is God's land, our inheritance God's inheritance; and what fills God's inheritance is Christ.

• He it is who is to fill all things, and as our souls feed upon Him there will be the accumulation of the good treasure which will come into expression through our lips, in profitable communication to others and also in thanksgiving to God.

Good treasure is also to be found amongst the people of God.

• "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are amiable, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if any praise, think on these things", Philippians 4: 8.
• Where are these things to be found? Among the saints! Paul himself found these things there, and delighted to enlarge upon them whenever he could do so, despite whatever he had to say in the way of correction.

• If Paul found these things amongst the saints in his day, surely we can find them there in our day.

• It is delightful to go round the circle of those we know an to take account in each of the features of the work of God.

• If anyone has the Spirit of Christ, there must be some feature of Christ to be found there.
  • Love would seek to discover it, to think upon it, to treasure it and to speak of it.

• We are formed inwardly as, by the Spirit, we are occupied with Christ; not only Christ personally, but also Christ as coming into expression amongst the saints: "Christ in you", Colossians 1: 27.

• May He be increasingly the subject of our occupation and of our conversation, for His name's sake.

These three wonderful passages set forth something of the blessedness; of the portion that God has provided for His people, both now and eternally.

• The first applies specially to us in the circumstances of this present time, the time of suffering and opposition.

• Typically it answers to the inheritance that Moses allotted to the children of Israel "on this side Jordan eastward", which, although it was not the full thought of God for His people, was nevertheless divinely-given territory;
  • and as we move forward in true allegiance of heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Moses, we shall come into the blessedness and triumph of what these verses in Romans 8 set forth.

While we have each to be brought to this individually, it is good to take it up also in a collective way.

• It is a wonderful triumph for God that down here, in the scene where there is every kind of pressure brought to bear against the people of God, we should pass through in this victorious and glorious way.

• The true glory of His people is seen in this, that they can face all the opposition and say, "If God be for us, who against us?"

• The inward spring of it all is the action of the Holy Spirit, who sheds abroad God's love in our hearts.

• In the face of the opposition we can look away to the God "who has not spared His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all", and who with Him will freely give us all things.

"For us all" – the very youngest and simplest believer is included.

• How comforting it is to be able to say, and to be assured of it by the Holy Spirit, that God gave up His own Son for me!
  • But then I can view every other believer in the light of that same love, so that we stand together in it.

• We stand together in the opposition of the enemy, but we also stand together in the love God.

"It is God who justifies: who is he that condemns?" The apostle, by the Holy Spirit, carries our thoughts back to God.

• Then he continues, "It is Christ who has died" – who could be greater than He?

• A Man indeed, yet a Man who was in Person God, and who had come into manhood in order that He might die, and die for us,
  • that every question as to our sins and as to our state might have a perfect answer according to God's own glory, and that we might know God's love through the doing of that mighty work.

• "It is Christ who has died; but rather has been also raised up" – raised up as the witness of the satisfaction that God has in the wonderful work that Christ has done for God and for us;
  • and as the expression of God's absolute victory over every force that stood against the accomplishment of the thoughts of His love towards us.

• "Who is also at the right hand of God" – enthroned in the place of power, a power which He ever exercises for us for whom He died.

• "Who also intercedes for us" – His heart is ever actively engaged with us who are in the scene of conflict here below.

Well may we indeed take up the triumphant challenge: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

• Tribulation, distress and the like there certainly will be, but in all these things we more than conquer through Him that has loved us.

• And then at the end of the chapter the apostle passes from the love of Christ to the love of God –
  • the great ocean of divine love, embracing all that we may know of Father, Son and Holy Spirit – God Himself fully known and triumphed in, despite all the opposition.

• How glorious this position is! "The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord".

• It is as coming under the Lordship of Christ that we experience the suffering: but as we come into the suffering we are brought to know the love and to triumph in it, to God's glory.

In Ephesians 1 we have a very different scene: we have what has been well spoken of as love in its own home – which we, through wonderful grace, may also call our home.

• We have here our proper and eternal place, as blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.

• This is what will abide when all the circumstances of Romans 8 have passed away.

• The love will not have passed away, it will be eternally the same love, but as delighting to have us in a scene that is entirely in accordance with itself.

"The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" – this brings before us all that God was to Christ as Man down here –

• and all that He is to Him as Man up there, too! "My Father and your Father, My God and your God".
• How wonderful that One of the Godhead should have come into manhood so that we should be associated with Him in this wondrous and blessed place; that we should indeed be "in" Him!
  • Yet such is our portion, through the sovereign choice of God.

• "According as He has chosen us in Him before the world's foundation, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love". We can never ponder these words too much.

• "Before Him": it is not that we should do anything, or be anything, but just that we should be there. God would have us in His presence, holy and blameless, and "in love".

• Love is to fill that blessed, eternal scene. The love of God will flow forth upon us, and we shall be filled with it, and shall reciprocate it, and God will find His own eternal delight in it.

Yet this is not to be relegated entirely to the future, for the Holy Spirit, with whom we have been sealed, is the earnest of the inheritance.

• Not only the hope, but the very substance of this glorious matter is by the Spirit brought into our hearts even now, in conscious realization.

• God would draw us to Himself now, that we in spirit might be before Him now, our souls bathed in the love that is the source and spring of all these wondrous thoughts.

But not only are we to know the blessedness of being before God in love;

• we are to be there also in the consciousness of sonship, and of the love in which God has adopted us to Himself through Jesus Christ,
  • bringing us to Himself in the most dignified and most intimate relationship that man can have with God – the relationship which Christ as Man has with Him.

• And all this is "according to the good pleasure of His will".

• It is in these marvellous activities of love that God finds His pleasure. What an infinitely blessed God He is!

Verse 6 adds that "He has taken us into favour in the Beloved".

• It is not here "our Beloved", or "God's Beloved", though He is both,
  • but "the Beloved", the One upon whom all love must ever centre.

• It is His precious blood that has been shed in order that our offences might be forgiven, and we be before God in His own place of favour.

• Well may the Spirit add, "according to the riches of His grace"!

Such is our special and eternal place, the "inheritance of the saints in light", Colossians 1: 12.

• Individually we may by the Spirit touch the blessedness of it, yet it is collective in character, for love in us would have all the saints there, even as God in His love would have all there.

• In Ephesians 2: 6 Paul delights in seeing the whole company at the full height of divine purpose, sitting down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

But in Revelation 21 we have what is wider than our own special portion, for we have the whole vast scene of new creation: "Behold, I make all things new".

• The assembly is a new creation now, but here we have a whole universe, fresh and stainless from the hand of God, never to be touched by sin, and death existing no more;
  • and yet that scene peopled by myriads who have been secured from the scene where sin and death had reigned.

• What will this mean for the heart of God! This is God's own eternal portion, the eternal rest of His love.
  • "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall tabernacle with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, their God".

• The assembly has indeed its own distinctive place, "the holy city, new Jerusalem … prepared as a bride adorned for her husband". The assembly will ever have its special place, both in relation to God and to Christ.

• But there is the wider thought of God and men – men brought into the condition and relationship for which man had been created,
  • and God finding His eternal pleasure and His eternal rest in a universe which fully answers to His own blessed nature.

• "He that overcomes shall inherit these things". We are made heirs of God. We shall enter into His rest.

• Our delight will be in God's delight, indeed in the God Himself who shall fill that glorious scene.

• What a prospect is this for the overcomer – for one who in a day such as ours would seek to be true to the Lord and to keep His word! "I will be to him God, and he shall be to Me son".

• All who are the fruit of God's love will be there, yet the promise is brought down to the individual, as if for the comfort of each one who has sought to be faithful to Christ in the day of His rejection;
  • and the joy of it is to be known now in the power of the indwelling Spirit, who shall be with us for ever where God shall be all in all.

In Luke 15 the father says to the elder son, "Child, thou art ever with me, and all that is mine is thine".

• This was said to one who had no sympathy with his father's heart;
• but God will fill His eternal abode with myriads of sons whose hearts are perfectly attuned to His own,
  • sons who will delight in Him and share with Him in His delight in all the fruit of the counsels of His love.

• Blessed be His glorious name for ever!

In these days, when the faithlessness of man and the instability of all that depends on man, are coming more and more into evidence, it is good to be reminded of the immutable faithfulness of God.

• In Psalm 105: 8 we read that "He is ever mindful of His covenant the word which He commanded to a thousand generations".

• A covenant is a bond, a definite commitment to which one has pledged oneself;
  • and how wonderful it is that the blessed God should have irrevocably committed Himself to believers of the present day!

Yet Scripture makes it perfectly plain that this is so.

• We are told in Hebrews 6 that God not only made promises to Abraham, but swore by Himself saying, "Surely blessing I will bless thee";

• and we are further told that this definite commitment on the part of God was in order that the unchangeableness of God's purpose might be more abundantly shown to the heirs of the promise –that is, to believers –
  • in order that "we might have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us".

• Primarily, no doubt, this passage has in view believers who were by nature descended from Abraham, but Romans 4: 16 tells us that
  • Abraham is the "father of us all"; not to Jews only, but to those of the nations who "walk in the steps of the faith … of our father Abraham", verse 12.

• So also in Galatians 3 we are taught that the blessing of Abraham has come to the nations in Christ Jesus; that they who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham;
  • that "there is no Jew nor Greek … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus: but if ye are of Christ, then ye are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise".

• If therefore we are true believers, we may appropriate to ourselves the full comfort and assurance and blessedness of God's covenant to Abraham: "Surely blessing I will bless thee".

It is a wonderful stay to the soul to be assured of God's settled disposition to bless us!

• It is entirely independent of any conditions on our side.

• Indeed, through what He has wrought in Christ, God has Himself supplied such conditions that He is able freely and fully to bless us in perfect accord with His own righteousness and holiness.

• Christ, coming in from God's side, has taken upon Himself all the liabilities that we were involved in, and upon the cross He has fully settled every question, to God's complete glory,
  • so that now God can be absolutely for us, to justify and to bless us, as He delights to do.

• We stand before God in Christ's place, and God's disposition towards us is His disposition towards Christ. His love is shining upon us, and His power and wisdom are all available to us.

• Circumstances may often seem to be adverse, but no circumstance can be really adverse, because everything is ordered for us in perfect wisdom and perfect love.

• All God's ways with us are in complete accord with His settled disposition to bless us.

Further, we can also say that we are "blessed … with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ", Ephesians 1: 3.

• All that is set forth in the glorified Christ in God's presence is ours.
• He is the true Isaac, the true Heir, but we are blessed by God with all that is seen in Him; and soon to be with Him and like Him in the very place where He is.
  • What a hope! Well may the apostle speak of it as a "better hope", Hebrews 7: 19.

• Is it not worth while fleeing for refuge to lay hold of it – fleeing for refuge from this poor, wretched world which is ripening for God's judgment, so that we may lay hold of Christ and of all that is set forth in Him?

• Which hope "we have as anchor of the soul, both secure and firm, and entering into that within the veil, where Jesus is entered as forerunner for us";

• this takes us into the immediate presence of God, where we so soon shall be in actuality, conformed to Christ's image, and where we may spiritually enter even now, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We read in the Scriptures of the "old covenant" and the "new covenant". These are the commitments into which God entered with Israel.

• The first was conditional upon the obedience of the people, and therefore ended in failure.

• The new covenant will yet be established with the house of Israel and the house of Judah on the basis of the sufferings and death of its great Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore can never break down.

• We Gentiles have never been under the old covenant, nor are we strictly under the new covenant either.

• But all that Israel will enjoy presently under the new covenant is made ours now in a spiritual way in Christianity: God is our God, and we are His people.
  • He teaches us to know Him in forgiving love; and He writes upon our hearts, in the power of the Spirit, not exactly the law, but Christ, who is the living embodiment and expression of every thought of God.

• And indeed we have much more; for, as has already been said, God has committed Himself to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ –
  • blessing which Israel will never know. And the spirit of it all is divine love.

• As we partake of the Supper week by week the cup of blessing presents to us the blood of Christ, the basis of all blessing, whether Israel's or our own;
  • and the great expression, too, of the mighty love of God which is the spring and source of all.

We also read much in Scripture as to the ark of the covenant. This is typical of Christ, who – ever God as to His person –

• has come into manhood to give effect to all the thoughts of divine love, and to express the depth and fulness of that love in doing so.
• In the language of Scripture, we may say that the ark is now "in rest", 1 Chronicles 6: 31. We see Christ within the veil.

• But in Numbers 10 we see the ark going before God's people in their journeyings through the wilderness "to search out a resting-place for them".

• This has its counterpart today: for, while Christ has actually set Himself down in the glorious place above, yet His own know Him as going before them throughout the wilderness way to search out a resting-place for them.

• We might also truly say that God is leading His people, just as God was leading Israel in the wilderness; but it is God in Christ,
  • and Christ as the true Ark of the Covenant, cherishing in His heart every one of God's thoughts of love and blessing.

• He is carrying out God's thought to provide a resting-place for us.

• He has indeed provided a resting-place for God, where God shall eternally rest in His own love; but He is going before us to provide a resting-place for us.
  • Can we murmur at the pathway in the light of this?

• The journeyings may often mean much exercise, and indeed conflict, but it is Christ who is going before us, leading us from encampment to encampment –
  • resting-places where the blessedness of God's presence may be known amongst us. We can rely on His faithful love.

In Joshua 3 the people have come to the Jordan.

• The inheritance lies before them, "the land of the possession of Jehovah", Joshua 22: 19,
  • but Jordan rolls between, overflowing all its banks.

• The ark of the covenant of Jehovah moves on before them; and, as the feet of the priests that bear it go down into Jordan, the waters are cut off from before it, in order that all the people may pass over.

And so with us: Christ has gone down into death, meeting it in all its force, in order that a way may be made for us to pass over into what is on the other side of death,

• the heavenly realm where our proper and distinctive blessing lies.
• Soon we shall pass over in actuality, but even now in the Spirit's power we may pass over in a spiritual way,
  • and our souls may find their living part in the realm of life which centres in Christ where He now is.

• God has made the way for us in His faithful love; and He has made it in Christ, the true Ark of His Covenant.

• So the word for us is the word that was given to Israel: "When ye see the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God … then remove from your place, and go after it", Joshua 3: 3.

"Remove from your place"! Our place on the wilderness side of Jordan may be very blessed in itself, as we enjoy the sense of God's favour towards us in our actual circumstances down here.

• But our hearts need to be attracted after the Person of Christ Himself, with increasing desire to apprehend the thoughts of His own love,
  • and thus to pass, in mind and spirit, into the sphere of heavenly life where the fulness of the blessing of God is to be enjoyed.

The gospel is full of what God in His grace has called us to.

• He has called us to inherit the most wondrous blessing here and now, and the most wondrous blessing eternally; called us as Peter says, "to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus", 1 Peter 5: 10.

• But in 1 Corinthians 1: 9 we also read, "God is faithful, by whom ye have been called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord";
  • which means that He has called us into a collective position of testimony down here, in which we stand identified with the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

• Every Christian should stand individually identified with that precious name;
  • but many who are clear as to that side of the truth have little understanding of the collective position that God would have each one of us take up.

This position is one of the greatest privilege, for all the wealth of Christianity is shared there.

• The very word translated 'fellowship' means 'a sharing together'.
• The precious things of God are intended to be thus happily shared by those who have responded to His grace: we are never intended to be mere isolated units.

• But the position is also one which involves responsibility to answer to the glorious Name which rests upon the fellowship,

• and every true-hearted believer would be seriously concerned that everything about him,whether in his individual walk or in his collective relations, should be in accord with that Name.
  • In a word, he would be concerned to be faithful.

This is no optional matter, for God has called us into it. His will is that we should take it up in sincerity and reality.

• It may be avoided by some, because it will certainly involve some measure of reproach, suffering and loss.

• But what is reproach or suffering or loss in the light of the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord?

• We read in Acts 5 of some who rejoiced to be "counted worthy to be dishonoured for the name". Not only did they suffer, but they rejoiced to suffer.
  • How delightful that must have been to God!

• Shall we shirk any little bit of suffering that we may be privileged to bear?

• And "God is faithful!" His eye is ever upon those who seek to be true to Christ, and His almighty power is available to support us, and to maintain us "to the end" – 1 Corinthians 1: 8 –
  • in accord with the Name that He has made precious to us, and called us to bear.

How precious that Name is to Him! "This is My beloved Son" was the declaration from heaven which distinguished Him from every other man that had ever trodden the earth.

• The blessed Person who was loved of the Father before the foundation of the world, was loved in His spotless Manhood here – His holy Manhood –
  • and how infinitely He is loved now, since redemption's mighty work has been completed, and all God's thoughts have been eternally and gloriously secured in Him.

• How precious, then, to the blessed God are those who seek in all things to be true to the Name of such an One, as taking up their place in the fellowship that bears that Name.

• How completely, how restfully we can count upon the faithfulness of God to adjust us if we may be allowing anything that is out of keeping with the fellowship.

• This involves a constant testing, a constant refining, which may often be painful to us, and call for sacrifice and surrender on our part.

• Let us remember that behind this lies the faithfulness of God who, though infinitely tender and long-suffering, will not allow us to go on indefinitely with what is unworthy of the Name so dear to Him, and to us.

• The tests may at times be severe, and Satan is not slow to seize upon them in his constant efforts to cause us to abandon the position; but 1 Corinthians 10: 13 reminds us that
  • "God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make the issue also, so that ye should be able to bear it".

So when God in His faithfulness brings truth, which we had not understood before, to bear upon us in a testing way, let us remember that that same faithfulness is able to make us answer to it.

• We may feel that the testing is more than we can bear, but it is not really so. Were it so, God would not have allowed it to come upon us.

• In our own strength, of course, any test would be too much for us; but in regard to what God allows to come upon us, we can always say with Paul, humbly and dependently, "I have strength for all things in Him that gives me power", Philippians 4: 13.
  • With the temptation, God makes the 'issue' – the 'way out' – and the way out is to Himself.

• As we flee away to Him we find fresh impressions of Himself, His faithfulness, His all-sufficient grace, which will enable us to answer to every test that He may bring before us.

Further, we have "a merciful and faithful High Priest" – Hebrews 2: 17 – who is able to sympathise with our infirmities;

• One who was Himself tempted in all things in like manner as ourselves, sin apart.
• And now He lives to serve us, to encourage us to come boldly to the throne of grace, "that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable help", Hebrews 4: 15-16.

• He is a merciful and faithful High Priest. There may sometimes be a tendency to think that mercy and faithfulness are opposed to one another, but in our great High Priest they perfectly blend.

• He is always merciful, yet always faithful: fully able to take account of us in all our weakness, yet ever faithful in relation to what is for the glory and pleasure of God – His God and ours.
  • "We have such a one High priest"; delightful to God, and delightful to us.

All this challenges us as to our faithfulness. In Revelation 2: 10 we have the word, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give to thee the crown of life".

• In the phase of church history which Smyrna represents, faithfulness often involved actual martyrdom.

• Today it may not be that, though even that may yet come; but faithfulness – faithful answering to the light divinely-given – may involve the loss of what to men makes life.
  • Where this is so, the promise is sure: "I will give to thee the crown of life".

• In the gospels we have the word, "He that loves his life shall lose it, and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal", John 12: 25.

• The crown of life in Revelation 2 is no doubt actually future, but life eternal is what is to be known now;
  • life according to God, in the knowledge of Himself, involving fulness of joy to us, and delight to the heart of God.

  The way to the practical realisation and enjoyment of it is by the path of faithfulness, full acceptance of the will of the ever-faithful One who has trodden the path before us and who is now the Centre of the realm of life.

• The moral glory of it is to shine out in those who have been ready to lose their lives in this world for His sake. May we all be found among them!

He was a remarkable young man to whom Jesus thus spoke, a lovable young man, for it says that "Jesus looking upon him loved him".

• He had answered to tests under which many of us come short, for as to the commandments which the Lord cited, and which he well knew, he could say, and apparently with truth, "All these things have I kept from my youth".

• The way in which he approached the Lord would seem to indicate at least some appreciation of who was there. But Jesus says to him, "One thing lackest thou".

It may be that the Lord would thus speak to someone who reads these lines. It may be that the Lord is confronting you with a test which you have not heretofore had to meet.

• We are all tested, some in one way, some in another, but here was this man's test: "Go, sell whatever thou hast and give to the poor".

• The young man might have said, 'But it is not wrong to have this world's goods: they are not ill-gotten gains: they have come to me in the merciful ordering of God, and are indeed a mark of His favour'.

• But it was the God who had given him all who was now calling upon him to surrender all, and it was just that one thing that was his test.

• There was the promise of recompense: "Thou shalt have treasure in heaven".

• Is treasure in heaven treasure to us? Do we value it more highly than the earthly things to which our hearts cling?

• Alas, this young man did not. Despite all his lovable features, it was the things of earth that held his heart, and kept him from answering to the word of Jesus.

How touching is the appeal that the Lord adds: "And come, follow me".

• In verse 17, where this incident opens, we read that the Lord Jesus had gone forth "into the way".

• And what a way it was! A way of suffering, truly, a way of uncompromising submission to God's holy will;
  • yet a glorious way, the way of love, the "way of more surpassing excellence".

• The Lord would invite this young man into it; and as loving us, He would invite us into it.

• He would say to each one of us, Come, follow Me, taking up the cross.

• The Lord would not conceal from us the fact that the cross is there, but the end of the path is glory.

• Am I going to make a complete surrender to Him, whatever the test may be? "Go, sell whatever thou hast … and come, follow Me".

• It is not to get something for myself – though I shall get a wonderful portion for myself – but to respond to the love that wants me with Him and would give me this peculiar privilege of following Him in His way.

"But he, sad at the word, went away grieved": and if he was grieved, was not the Saviour saddened too? Was He not grieved?

• We may say, as often we do say, "This word is hard; who can hear it?", John 6: 60; and the Lord says, "With men it is impossible".
  • But He adds, "But not with God; for all things are possible with God".

• At the end of the chapter we have one who did follow Jesus "in the way". He was one who had nothing to get rid of.

• But in verse 28 we have one who could say, "Behold, we have left all things and have followed Thee".
  • The thing has been done, and is being done by God's power: shall I go away grieved?

"Jesus answering said … There is no one who has left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the sake of the gospel,

• "that shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time: houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the coming age life eternal".
• We, as following in the way of Jesus, may know eternal life now!

• The one who "went away grieved" went away from the One in whom it is; 1 John 5: 11. Death has long since parted him from all that his heart clung to.

• Let us not go away grieved, sad at the word that tests us; but may we be like the one who left all, rose up, and followed Him; Luke 5: 28.