Now we have read of passages that refer to some of this power.

1. The first is the power of the Kingdom; then

2. the power of the Father, the support of the Father;

3. the support of the Spirit; and

4. the support of the Lord.

5. We might also refer to the support of the angels.

In these beatitudes, as they are called, there are two promises of present support and blessing.

1. The first is in regard to those who are poor in spirit and

2. the second is for those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

• In all the others there is a promise of future blessing, but in these two there is a promise of present support, and that is very encouraging.

• As the Lord begins to unfold His thoughts of blessing and the conditions necessary on our side that they should be received and enjoyed,
  • He refers, first of all, to our spirits – a very distinctive and necessary feature of the truth;

• and in these conditions that the Lord refers to we notice that they are inward matters, and can be taken on by both brothers and sisters and children too. The first being our spirits.
  • “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens”.

• What does it mean to be poor in spirit? It seems to me it is a reference to
  • the difference between the spirit that obtains with a true believer – one who loves the Lord and belongs to Him – and the spirit that obtains in the world.

• The latter is a spirit that would always desire to move upward, to gain as much as possible in regard to the things of this life;
  • a spirit of pride and self-importance and jealousy that works in the hearts of men, always in view of going up even if others have to go down in the process.

• This was not the spirit that manifested itself in the Lord Jesus when He came into this world. He says later on in this Gospel,
  • “I am meek and lowly in heart”.

• The heart of Christianity is the preservation of one’s spirit as the spirit of Jesus, and the Lord says
  • “learn from me”.

• It is not learn of Me or learn about Me, but learn from Me. If you want to learn from a person you must be in his presence.

• You can learn about a person by reading a book but if you are going to learn from him you must be in his presence.

Now it is remarkable, I suggest, that the Lord Jesus should only have said these two things about Himself.

• He might have said ‘I am obedient, subject, zealous, longsuffering’ – all these precious features shone in Jesus here, but He only calls attention to two;
  • “meek and lowly in heart”. Later on it says,

    “Behold thy King cometh to thee, meek and mounted upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass”.

• By way of contrast think of a man like Absolom who prepared horses and chariots and fifty men to run before him to call attention to himself;

• and we may think of those who have gained victories on the battlefields entering triumphantly in to cities they have conquered, but not so the coming in of Jesus at the beginning;
  • not so the movements of Jesus here, though He was and is the Lord of lords and King of kings.

• His movements were always in relation to going down and not going up and the appeal is,
  • “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”.

• It was a mind to go down, and so we read of Him in the second of Philippians in those downward steps – obedient unto death and that the death of the Cross – that was the last step down. What is said immediately after that?
  • “Wherefore, also God highly exalted Him and granted Him a Name that which is above every name”.

• When He had gone to the lowest point He was raised to the highest, and we are told to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and He will exalt us in due time.

• This is the Lord’s own teaching. We have referred to his words, “learn from me”.

• And so it says He went up to the mountain which suggests that he was removed from the plain, from man’s activities and man’s teaching, to a place of elevation far removed we might say, from the whole realm of man’s teaching; and He opened His mouth and taught them.

• It is not that He opened His mouth and said to them, but He taught them, and we have to learn from Him how to be meek and lowly in heart.
  • “And having opened His mouth He taught them”.

• You will notice how near they were to Him, not only to hear the words that came from Him; but to watch His countenance when He spoke of being poor in spirit.

• Well one might say, ‘If I am going to take on that spirit in a world of pride and self importance, where men forge ahead, I shall never be able to get through’; but what does the Lord say?

• All the resources of the Kingdom are at the disposal of one who moves on these lines.

• We may find abundant encouragement then, that the resources of the Kingdom, all the resources of the Kingdom are always at hand to preserve and protect a person who covets to have the spirit of Christ to go down in a world where man’s spirit is that of pride and going up.

Reference was made today to Paul’s sister’s son. You will remember the apostle Paul was in prison and it was proposed that he should be slain and that forty men had bound themselves by an oath that they would not eat or drink until Paul was slain.

• In the deliverance of the Lord’s servants previously, there had been an angel in chapter 12 in relation to Peter, an earthquake in chapter 16, and here the apostle in prison.
  • Is he going to be delivered? Certainly, for there were I resources in the Kingdom sufficient for it, and one lad was able under the hand of God to reach the governor of the prison, and what happened?

• He provided 470 soldiers to protect one man and he was saved from His enemies according to the will of God.

• There may not be at the present time such intervention as that of an angel or an earthquake, but there are resources in the Kingdom to preserve and comfort and to strengthen those who are minded to be as Jesus was.
  • “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”, Philippians 2: 5.

• Mr. Stoney once said that if the path of the Christian were a thousand times more difficult than it is, there are enough resources in the Kingdom to protect him if it is the will of God that he should remain here.

• So we need to have these things thoroughly established in our hearts so that we are not afraid to covet the spirit of Christ and to manifest it as occasion offers.

“Blessed are they that are persecuted on account of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens”.

• We may say, ‘If I am going to live in this world where there is so much unrighteousness in business and other spheres of men’s activities; if I am going to move on lines of righteousness exclusively, whatever it may cost, how shall I ever be able to get through?
  • ‘Shall I ever be able to do business in an unrighteous world if I am going to move on lines of righteousness?’

• What is the promise? “Theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens” – the kingdom of the Heavens referring to the influence that heaven has,
  • and the resources of the Kingdom that can be brought into play at any time according to the will of God, to preserve and protect those who take on the Lord’s own teaching and become like Him.

• It is said of Him prophetically that He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.
  • “Behold, I come … to do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight and thy law is within my heart”.

• And I believe at the present time, when things in the world will become increasingly difficult for the Christian who desires to be like his Master,
  • we need to be comforted with the assurance that the Kingdom and its resources are always at hand to carry us through according to the will of God.

• The three young men in Daniel’s day were able to speak thus of the God they knew. They said to the king,
  • “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of thy hand, O king”.

• They did not say that they would be saved out of the furnace, for even if they were burned in the furnace they would be forever delivered out of the king’s hand;

• and it is good for that to be established in all our souls and to be able to say and believe with all our heart that our God is able, and He will carry us through according to that which He has designed for us in the present period.

Now I would like to speak of the tender care of the Father – the care of the Father for His children.

• The Lord is encouraging His disciples not to be overburdened with what is necessary for life here, calling attention to the birds of the air and the flowers of the field – the lilies.

• Now I would suggest that when the Lord is referring to the birds of the air and their not sowing and reaping and not building granaries, He is referring more to what belongs to the man, or the brother.

• He has his responsibilities in life and he desires to prepare for his household – all well and good; but what is he thinking of in preparing what is necessary for his household?

• Is he thinking of building them up in regard to this world, or is he thinking of preserving them in relation to the world to come –
  • “the Kingdom of God and His righteousness”?

• The Lord says therefore, to them and to us
  • “look at the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, nor reap, nor gather into granaries”;

• they are not striving to lay up as much as possible of this world’s goods; they are provided for by God Himself for they are His creatures.
  • “Are ye not much more excellent than they?” the Lord says.

    Then He says, “observe with attention the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin”;

• but they have a glory about them that not even Solomon had. And how is that?

• You see Solomon’s glory was an outward glory that he could put on and put off, so to speak: indeed that faded away.

• There was no abiding inward glory with him, for his heart was like ours, and ours like his, which shone outwardly as it shines in God’s own creation;
  • but the beauty of the flower is that its beauty springs from what God has done within, and it shines without.

• May I suggest that that is more the exercise of the sisters. They should not think that external beauty or beautiful clothing has any spiritual influence on anybody. It has no spiritual influence at all.

• There is no influence for good in a beautiful garment:
  • “They toil not neither do they spin; but I say unto you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed as one of these”.

• When Peter is writing on the same subject he refers to outward adornment; the adornment that is in the world, and over against it he speaks of
  • “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price”.

• Can there be any value in the sight of God in a beautiful garment? No.

• Is there any value in the sight of God in a beautiful spirit? Yes, indeed, and not only that but it has influence over other persons.

When Peter and John went up to the temple to pray they saw the man that sat at the beautiful gate of the temple. What did that do for the lame man? Nothing at all.

• Day after day he sat by the side of external beauty which did nothing for him;

• but two men come on to the scene: two like the Lord: two men of a beautiful spirit working harmoniously for the same Master with an unjealous spirit, and loving each other. That is beauty.
  • “Silver and gold I have not; but what I have this I give to thee”. Later on Peter says,

    “Why do ye gaze on us as if we had by our own power or piety made him to walk?”

• It was in the Name of Jesus of Nazareth; faith in that Name that had given this man, as it says
  • “complete soundness in the presence of you all”.

• J.N.D. says in his French translation,
  • “has given this man the absolute control of all his limbs”.

• He had come under the power of the Name of Jesus as shining in two men of like passions with ourselves.

• That is a spirit – the spirit of Christ – that can accomplish more than all the external ornaments and attire that ever the world could provide: the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

• The Lord is calling attention to these things that we might be instructed by His teaching; that we might take it on whether we are brothers or sisters.

I sometimes refer to an experience of a sister as she passed it on to us. She and her natural sister each had a beautiful head of hair and they took a great deal of pains to make it even more attractive than it was naturally.

• She told us that she went into her room to prepare to go to remember the Lord, doing as she had always done; but her hands fell to her side as the Lord said to her,
  • ‘Are you going to make so much of the little glory you possess to go and remember Me, the Lord of glory, who gave it all up for your sake?’

    She said to herself ‘But whatever will my sister think if I am different from her, for we have never been unalike yet?’

• But the word of the Lord came to her again and she answered to it and did her hair in a simple comely way wondering whatever her sister would think when she saw her.

• They met outside different rooms, exactly alike. The Lord had spoken to each of them of what was precious in His sight: love for Himself that would part with every earthly glory to remember Him;
  • and we may be sure of this that the remembrance of the Lord on that occasion was more precious to Him than it had ever been before.

• So simple, but you see it sprang from the heart. That was where the ornament was. So Peter speaks of not being adorned outwardly but having the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. That is a sisters’ exercise.

A brother’s experience was passed on to me too. He had been a very prosperous business man in France, little known in the Lord’s service, very much occupied with his own matters and he had come to the end of his days.

• The one who passed on the words to me said he was visited right at the end, and these were nearly his last words:
  • ‘I feel I have filled my pockets with the sand of the desert and I have lost my crown’.

• Did you ever hear of a believer at the end of his days who said, ‘I have loved the Lord too much and I have served Him too well’? No; and you never will.

• There may be a good many of the other kind. The Lord says,
  • “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”.

• You will notice the Lord says that they will be added. They are not given in a lump sum.

• If they were given in totality there would not be the maintenance of faith – a daily matter.

• The woman who had the little meal in the barrel and the oil: she did not have those vessels filled up to the brim: that would have taken away her faith; but every day she went to those vessels, there was just enough for one day:
  • “all these things shall be added unto you”.

• When the widow cast in all her living into the treasury and had nothing left at all would she not go home, and in the spirit of it at least say,
  • “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread”?

• What was the Lord’s valuation of that effort? That it was worth more in the sight of God than the collection or putting together of all that the others had put in, bringing within the range of the youngest and the simplest what we may do as acceptable to God.

• That is the care of our Father. The Lord refers to God in regard to the birds and the lilies; but He is not the Father of the birds and is not the Father of the lilies; He is “your heavenly Father”:
  • “Your heavenly Father nourishes them. Are ye not more excellent than they?” and

    “if God so clothe the herbage of the field”.

• And so the Lord encourages us with these thoughts.

Now I would like to refer to the encouragement the Lord would give when we are tried and tested, finding ourselves in difficult situations where we just do not know what to do and what to say.

• The Lord has foreseen it all. He has foreseen what has taken place in the past two or three years before.

• How many have had to give an account of the hope that is in them! You will remember how we are called upon to do this,
  • “but with meekness and fear”. So it says

    “let your word be always with grace seasoned with salt”, Colossians 4: 6.

• Now the Lord foresees and forecasts that His disciples will be called upon to stand before those who had power to destroy them; the power to have them lashed and scourged; the power, as we might say, to put to them extremely difficult questions that they would never be able to answer.

• What is the encouragement of it? That they need not consider how or what they should speak;
  • “for it shall be given to you in that hour what ye shall speak, for ye are not the speakers but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you”.

• Why the Father? I believe it is the Spirit of grace which is always connected with the Father.

• It is not the spirit of revenge; it is not the spirit of criticism or rebuke; it is the spirit of grace that would answer in difficult circumstances;
  • so that no charge would ever be brought against the person that he was not like his Master, even in very difficult situations.

• How beautifully this is seen in the book of the Acts in the way the disciples answered when they were called upon so to do.

• Their answers were perfect; not because they emanated from themselves but the Spirit of their Father spoke in them.
  • How they were able to subdue even their fiercest attackers and those who would query their right to speak!

• It says, you will recall, of those who saw Peter and John, having brought them before them to condemn them, and the man who had been healed standing with them;
  • it is said when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and acknowledged them to be men without instruction, they had nothing to say and they had to let them go.

• When they saw their boldness and the answers that were given, it was their enemies that were subdued.

• And so we might go through the Acts, were there time, to see how the disciples comported themselves in relation to those who would have condemned them and crushed them.

• You will recall how one could say trembling as Paul spoke,
  • “in a little thou persuadest me to become a Christian”.

• He felt if he listened to any more words of grace, or any more appeals, he would give in and become a Christian;
  • and the Apostle could only express his desire that everybody who was listening to him that day would be in the enjoyment of what he enjoyed, “except these bonds”.

• He did not wish anyone of them to have the bonds and chains. He was prepared to have them all himself.

So the Lord says to them, as He would say to us, that they are not to be anxious how or what they shall speak. You will notice it says,

• “How or what ye shall speak”.

• It is very interesting to notice that the giving of the Spirit in the book of Acts is in each case connected with speaking – with prophesying;
  • and in chapter 14 of the first epistle to the Corinthians where we have the Spirit given for support in service, 25 times there is reference to speaking – speaking in the power of the Spirit.

Before I go to the end of the book I will refer to angelic care.

• I did not read the passage in Chapter 18 but the Lord is again speaking of “little ones” who might be crushed;

• who might be fearsome; who might feel that retaining the spirit of a little child would mean that they would be in danger from those who would hate them and do them harm; but what is the comfort the Lord gives?
  • “Their angels in the heavens continually behold the face of my Father who is in the heavens”.

• That is a reference to the “little ones” and what we owe to angelic care no one can ever say.

• One used to think at one time that the angels had a kind of roving commission to care for the people of God.

• It says that God is the preserver of all men, especially of those that believe, but I feel it is very helpful and instructive to notice that
  • every angelic service as recorded in the scripture is the result of a direct mission unto them. Every angel is sent out to a particular person on a particular mission.

    “Are they not all ministering spirits”, it is said, “sent out for service on account of those who shall inherit salvation?”

• And so may we say that if there are accidents or serious happenings to those whom we might think should be preserved, in the inscrutable ways of God, that no angel was sent in regard to the preservation, physically, of that person.

• Many of us will know that when the war first began and those terrible bombs were falling that there were some who thought that every true believer should be preserved. Some had said that no believer would ever go to heaven by means of a bomb.

• Of course not. In all these matters we are in the presence of the inscrutable ways of God. He works in the light.

• We are not always in the light of what God is doing and it is very comforting to one’s own soul to know that wherever preservation according to the will of God is to be accomplished, there will be an angel to do it, and all else will submit to Him and to His perfect will.

I might mention, however, one such incident that happened in London on the night when most of the centre of the city was burned, and 5,000,000 books were burned that night including many Bibles.

• One piece of a page of Bible was burned down to one verse and it was carried by the wind in Tottenham Court Road through an open window and fell on the desk of one of the biggest business men in London.

• He went to work the next morning and sat down at his desk, and there on his desk was one verse burned down to that portion from the page of a Bible. He looked at the words and read them.

• Who was he? He was a man brought up in a christian home in Scotland but turned his back on it to make fame and fortune in the south of England and he had done it. He sat before the words
  • “Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths where is the good way”, Jer. 6: 16.

• When his secretary came in she found him weeping. She asked what was the matter – was he ill? No.
  • ‘No’, he said, ‘I’m not ill but look at this verse. I am one who has left the old paths and God has used this terrible disaster to bring to my notice that I should stand in the ways and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way’.

• He was recovered in his soul in the inscrutable ways of God, for His ways are past finding out. He is good and He does good, and let us have it thoroughly and deeply built into all our souls. What He does no one can question.

Now I would come finally to the thought of the support of the Lord, not promised to every Christian and not promised to every company. We have a mountain again.

• Matthew’s Gospel is connected with mountains, suggesting elevation and security, and the disciples are told to go to a mountain that Jesus had appointed them. It is not named.

• If it were named and called Methodist or Baptist or Plymouth Brethren you would be able to get there without any exercise at all; but
  • you see they had to be near enough to the Lord to catch from His own lips where they had to go.

• They were obedient to His word; they recognised from Himself that there was one place of His choosing, and that He would be there to meet and greet His disciples.

• They had no option. They could not vary the conditions; they could not wish that it had been somewhere else;

• and the mountain suggests a journey, an exercise that had to be gone through to get there, and when the Lord came to them it says that
  • “Some did homage to him: but some doubted.” or some hesitated.

• In regard to any particular feature of the truth which is the truth, some are able to take it in and take it on very quickly, but others are in doubt and they hesitate;
  • but the Lord remains with them until nobody has a doubt and that is what He loves to do.

• If anyone is in doubt or perplexity about any feature of the truth, if you remain with the Lord without trying to solve the problem yourself and by intellectual effort to find a just solution;
  • if we give that all up and remain, as it were waiting patiently upon the Lord, He will certainly see to it that we have not got a shadow of a doubt about what is really the truth that He is bringing to us.

• These same disciples are to go out into the world – the cold hard world where the pride of man is – where they might not be able to find readily what was necessary for sustenance;

• where they would be questioned by persons who could by their intellectual ability put them into very sorrowful circumstances; where they would need angelic care; and what does the Lord say?
  • “All power has been given Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations”.

• They had no power in themselves but He had all power in heaven and on earth. The word “all” is to be noted in the passage. The Lord says:
  • “all power has been given Me”.

• They are to teach all the things that He has commanded, presenting the truth;
  • “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have enjoined you. And behold, I am with you all the days”.

• Does not that suggest that we should commit ourselves to the whole of the truth? not the greater part of it, but the whole of it. The Lord says,
  • “teaching them to observe all things” – not most of them but all things – “whatsoever I have enjoined you. And behold I am with you all the days until the completion of the age”.

• You will notice that the Lord does not say preach the Gospel. He says, “make disciples”. That goes far beyond the preaching of the Gospel.

• What it means is that they are not only to preach the Gospel and bring them the knowledge and the joy of the forgiveness of sins,
  • but those persons are to be instructed so that they take on the truth and taking on the truth they become disciples as the apostles were, and as they were, like their Master.

• So those who are converted and take on the truth will be like the disciples and they will be like their Master.

Now this is a very important matter because there are feelings and prejudices and natural tendencies all of which would divide the people of God.

The gospel of Matthew brings before us the Lord Jesus and the greatness and glory of His Person. He is the King indeed.

• When the mount of transfiguration is referred to, the Lord speaks of seeing the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. His face there shone as the sun and His raiment was as white as the light.

• And the disciples had the exceeding great privilege of seeing the King in His beauty upon the earth.

• Now it is perhaps remarkable, shall I say, certainly very encouraging, to notice that three disciples – Peter, James and John – had the privilege of being on the mount of transfiguration with the Lord.

• They were well acquainted with the way He had been treated up to that point and they were to know how He would be treated after the time of transfiguration.

• The Lord says that they should not taste death until they had seen the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. Now we only have the record of the end of these three disciples.
  • James was slain by the sword.

    Peter, as is generally accepted, was martyred.

    John also, on the Island of Patmos, no doubt died at the hands of men.

    Of the other disciples we know nothing.

• How good of the Lord to take these three, who were to suffer for His Name's sake, into the glory, that they might see the end of the path,
  • and that they might see the One who would suffer more than any one of them could ever suffer, and that they should see the King in His beauty!

• And so it is said that if we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him.

• So in Matthew we have the King moving here in smallness of circumstances, great and glorious in His Person but willingly accepting this smallness of circumstances
  • that He should be near unto men as the King, dispensing the blessings of the kingdom and that He should be attractive in His own Person.

• Eight times over in Matthew 2 the Spirit of God calls Jesus “the little Child”.

• Noticeable it is that Herod calls Him ‘the Child’. The Spirit of God says “the little Child”.

Now at the end of Matthew 17 the Lord links Peter with Himself and says “me and thee”. In that way the Lord is linking on with Himself those who are like Him.

• It is a question of Himself and the assembly and the kind of persons who form part of the assembly and are acceptable to the Lord as bearing His own features.

• In that hour therefore the disciples come to the Lord and ask Him about greatness, greatness in the kingdom.

• You see their hearts and minds are like ours – they gravitate to what is great and important in man's eyes. So men follow men and the greater the man generally the greater his following.

• The Lord had not come to make Himself great in men's eyes – though great and unchanged in the glory of His Person;
  • yet He willingly and in love accepted exceedingly small circumstances that He should be available from the beginning unto the end.

• But the disciples were thinking of greatness as men account greatness, which involves that one is greatest, therefore others must be less great.

• But before that He speaks of the entry into the kingdom; and how is that done?

• It is by leaving outside every feature of human greatness, in other words carrying over nothing but one's own personality and identity.

• As we have seen, the disciples would say, and we would say, that is impossible; but all things are possible with God.

• A true conversion comes by a very definite confession and committal to the Lord and involves that we are giving up all idea of our own importance or our own influence
  • so that we might find ourselves in the company of those of whom the Lord approved – and that is a little child.

• The Lord says therefore
  • “Unless ye become converted and become as little children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of the heavens”.

• Before the Lord tells about what obtains inside He tells us how to get inside – and that is by conversion.

• Might I say here that conversion really, in the essence of the word, involves a right-about turn.

• But those who are born in a christian home may be able to say through grace that they have never been conscious of a right-about turn in their history.

• Saul of Tarsus is an example of a converted man; he turned right-about; he gave up everything that he had been connected with and began all over again just like a little child. They led him by the hand into the city.

• Not so Timothy. It is said of Timothy that he had known the scriptures from a little child. Faith was in his mother and his grandmother;
  • so he never needed a time when he would turn right about face and abandon everything that he had ever heard or done.

• But, through the operations of the Spirit of God, and in answer to the faith of his parents, he arrived at a time when he definitely committed himself to the Lord and the truth.

• So that Paul, or Saul of Tarsus, and Timothy arrived at the same point by different ways. And that is a matter of God's sovereignty.

• But, if Timothy came to a point where he committed himself wholly to the Lord, that did not mean that he was carrying with him what would have dishonoured the Lord or any idea of his own greatness or importance.

• That would have disrupted the fellowship. He was as ready as Saul of Tarsus to give it all up for the Lord's sake.

So, as I have said, the children of christian parents normally do not need a right about turn.

• But they do need a right and definite understanding of the truth involved in conversion,

• so that they give themselves wholly to the Lord and His interests and His people. That is what the Lord speaks of as entry into the kingdom.

• And then the Lord speaks of those who are greatest – and who are they? You will notice that it is in the plural.
  • “Every one who, humbles himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens”,

• which means really that it is not a question of positional greatness but characteristic greatness.

• Man's idea of greatness always is to forge ahead and go to the top in which case others have to be left behind.

• But whoever will humble himself as a little child the same is the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens.

• This means that every believer in this room at this time, as humbling himself as a little child, constitutes himself, according to the words of the Lord, the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens.

We have already referred to the disciples speaking to the Lord about greatness, in another connection.

• The Lord does not say that it is impossible to aspire to be the first in the kingdom.

• What he says however is, that if anyone aspires to be great amongst the people of God, he immediately takes up the path of a servant.

• But if he aims higher than that and wants to be the very first of all, he has to go down lower than a servant and to be the slave of all. And the Lord says
  • “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many”.

• It is a question therefore of humbling oneself.

• The Lord needed not to be in conflict with anything that was within Him, He was altogether holy as we know.
  • Mr. Darby said that at His birth there was inherent excellence and His life was the development of the excellence that was there inherently at His birth.

• Not so with us, we have to be found in constant self judgment, constant humbling that our spirit should be the spirit the Master.

• Is it not noticeable in the beginning of the Proverbs where we get mention of the things that God hates.
  • The first is a proud look.

• We might not put that at the head of the list, for some terrible things are said after that, and do you know what the last one is?
  • He that sows discord among brethren.

    As if anyone with the spirit of pride or self importance or wanting to be the first will always bring discord among the brethren.

• But where every one has humbled himself, we are all little children together. We can all be taken up into the arms of the Lord and it says in the passage that we have read already,
  • “He lifted up his hands and blessed them abundantly”,

• and it is never said that they left that place under His own loving touch of abundant blessing.

• Everyone of us then can take on this feature. And we are called to do it.

• And the Lord immediately speaks of anyone then, that should receive a little child receives Him.

• You will notice it is “me and thee”; and if one receives a little child, one receives the Lord.

• He links Himself on with such, calling a little child to Him and setting it in the midst of them. The child does not say a word, but the Lord calls attention to it.

• We might say that what characterises a little child is simplicity, obedience and humility.

• These are qualities, dear brethren, that we need not only to covet ourselves – that we might be like the Master and be available in His service – but that
  • we should definitely set our faces to see that we do not maintain with us any other spirit but that.

• The scriptures say elsewhere
  • “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt you in due time”, 1 Peter 5: 6.

Now, when you come to Solomon you have one who is great in his own position, great according to the ways of God, and among men, upon the throne.

• But then you see when he places himself before God he feels very, very small.

• We do not want to place ourselves alongside of men and compare ourselves with them – as Paul says to the Corinthians – which is not wise.

• But if we get alongside of Christ really in love we shall never have high thoughts of ourselves.

• Now God says to Solomon
  • “Ask what I shall give thee”.

• Think of a young man being asked of God as to what He would like to receive! I wonder what you and I would have said!

• We are told what Solomon asked for, and we are told also what he did not ask for. God took notice of both of them.

• What does he ask for? He speaks of the people of God being His chosen people. They are great in number and they are distinguished as the people of God on earth – His chosen people.

• Solomon loved God and he loved His people and he wanted to be a servant to them.

• He asks therefore that he might have an understanding heart, to be able to judge the people, to be able to discern between good and bad, and he says I am but a little child, I know not how to go out or come in.

• How acceptable was that request! It says that the word Solomon had spoken pleased the Lord.

• Would we not like to please Him that we might have His approval and His support, in any little service that we might be able to do for Him? What shall we ask for then?

• Here are the people of God in extremely testing circumstances at the present time. Many are sorrowing in heart, broken in mind, and broken in body.

• Are we willing to do what we can to serve them, looking upon them as those whom the Lord has chosen, great indeed in number as we think of all the saints upon the earth, distinguished as being the result of divine operations?

• Can we say, as earnestly desiring to please the Lord and to serve His people, I am but a little child
  • “Give to thy servant an understanding heart to judge this thy so great people”.

• And the word that he had spoken had pleased God, and God took notice of what he did ask for.

• What might he have asked for? – even in regard to the Lord's service – a long life, riches, that he should be without distraction and anxiety as being a king, and the life of his enemies, that he should be free of them.

• Well, we might say those would be very good things to ask for, for one of the Lord's servants, long life to serve Him, to be without distraction in regard to material things and to be able to pursue one's path without a single enemy.

• God noticed that he did not ask for these things, but He gave them to him. But what pleased God was what he did ask Him for.

• I would leave that with my brethren, because it is a time when a very great deal of service is needed, and no one can count that he is so small, or knows so little that the Lord has no room for him in His service.

• You will remember what He said of the colt
  • “The Lord hath need of him”,

• and how often we find even very small children who love the Lord are able to undertake some little service, just that which they are capable of – not aspiring to be somebody great.

I sometimes refer to the brother who always sat with his little son six rows away from the table until one morning the little chap whispered: ‘Daddy, if the Lord wants you to break the bread, you would have a long way to walk’.

• This was enough; he picked up his son's hand and moved nearer the table. The lesson of listening to a small voice was learnt.

• We have two examples in the “little maid” 2 Kings 5 and the “little boy” by Andrew – John 6.

• The lowly spirit that goes down as low as possible, as the one invited to the wedding, who deliberately chose his lowest seat. The other guest went to the uppermost place and chose it for himself. That was his choice.

• The Host said to the one at the top “Go down”. And to the one at the bottom “go up”? No, “Friend go up higher”.

• The Lord finds his friends where He Himself had been. We can all be there if we love Him and want to go that way.

So here is a little maid in comparison with the greatness of her master – a great man, a successful man, an honourable man, a great captain, over against a little maid.

• In very great need was Naaman, where is he going to get help from? Is he going to get it from the King of Israel?
  • No, he is going to get it from the man of God, the prophet – and the instrument a little maid and captive at that.

• Now there are three things in a particular way that mark this little maid.

• The first is that she has great faith,
  • “Oh would that my Lord were before the prophet that is in Samaria, then he would cure him of his leprosy”.

• However did she know that? The Lord Jesus tells us there was never a leper cleansed in that day but one; so she had no precedent.

• She could not say that that man of God has cured scores of lepers and you would only be one more. Never was a leper cleansed but that one. These are the words of the Lord Jesus.

• What faith she had in regard to her master! She was a young woman of very great feeling and I would suggest that if we had more feeling and more faith we should be better able to serve the Lord.

• When Paul writes to Timothy in the second epistle he refers first to his feelings, to his tears and then to his faith and lastly to his gift. Feeling, and faith and then gift, available to us all.
  • “Oh would that my Lord were before the prophet that is in Samaria, then he would cure him of his leprosy!”

• And another thing is that she asks for nothing for herself; she does not want any liberation; she is not in any wise selfish,
  • provided her master in the greatness of his earthly position would come in touch with the man of God and be wholly cleansed and wholly converted,

• it would be worth while being a captive to the end of her days.

• She asks for nothing whatsoever for herself. But she shines in the circumstances in which she finds herself in the government of God, in the ordering of God.
  • What a word that is for us all!

• Many are in extremely difficult circumstances, circumstances that they never would have chosen for themselves and that they would feign avoid even now.
  • But can you glorify God in them?

• Ask for nothing for yourself but for the blessing of others, shine just where God has put you, and want nothing at all by way of change of circumstances, thinking that they would be easier and happier and bring more blessing to you.

So Naaman gets to hear that there is a possibility of healing.

• Off he goes with ten changes of raiment and it is estimated the value of the 6,000 talents of gold and silver was about £16,000 even in those days, which might be very much more in our day.

• What must that little maid have felt seeing her master go off with a fabulous sum of money to the man of God to receive blessing? I could imagine her praying as she saw him go, that he might become as a little child and receive “the Kingdom”.

• And he thought because of the greatness of his outward position that the man of God would come out and give a spectacular manifestation of his power. But what are the words?
  • “Go wash in the Jordan seven times”.

• It was a question of being obedient and he turned away in a rage.

• But he is going to get the blessing. As I have said, I have no doubt the little maid was praying for him, his wife having learned from the little maid.

• There were those who loved him and saw that the path of greatness that he was on, would never bring any blessing to him at all.
  • “My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing”,

• like the young man wanted to do something great to secure eternal life.
  • “If the prophet had bidden thee to do some great thing wouldst thou not have done it?” Of course he would!

  • “How much rather then when he said wash and be clean?”.

• I love the words of scripture that follow.
  • “Then he went down and plunged himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God”

• – wholly obedient, accepting the divine way, leaving all his greatness behind him in that sense and as we know it says that Naaman plunged himself seven times in the Jordan. It was never said that Naaman came up again.

• His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child and he was clean. Now you have a little maid and a little child and they would be very happy together,
  • for where two or three are gathered together unto the Lord's name, of such persons, He is in the midst of them.

• So we leave him as it were as being obedient to the divinely chosen way for his blessing, just like a little child.

• And if the little maid had prayed for him wondering what would happen when he went with his wealth to secure the blessing what a happy home that was when he returned with the blessing, and with the spirit of the little child!

Now just in closing I would refer to a little boy.

• Here is what we might speak of as a delicate and difficult situation. 5,000 persons to be fed.

• How are they to be fed? The Lord knew how it was going to be done.

• No one else knew what the Lord was going to do, but He tests Philip as to whether he thinks there is any way by which the multitude can be fed.

• And the Lord asks the question how many loaves should be bought and Philip answers that 200 denarii would not be enough for each one to have a little.

• He seemed to have the right idea, if the Lord was proposing to feed the multitude he did not want any one to be left out even if they only had a little.

• But they had not only a little, they had more than they could manage, more than they could eat and twelve hand baskets left over above what they had eaten.

• Andrew says, however, to the Lord there is a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two big fishes? No, two small fishes. A little boy.

• Five would speak of weakness or the human side which makes room for power on the Divine side, for strength is made perfect in weakness. These are to be brought to the Lord.

• Now I like the suggestion of Andrew to the Lord in this respect. He knew who was near by. He knew that there was a little boy and he knew just how much he had got on that particular day;
  • and what an encouragement that would be and should be to us, to be well acquainted with one another and with the substance that each one has even though it may be small!

• We sometimes refer to Saul of Tarsus and Ananias. When the Lord wants Ananias to bring Saul of Tarsus into fellowship as we speak, Ananias began to tell the Lord what a terrible man Saul had been in the past.

• But the Lord in effect says, but he is a changed man today. You go and see, how different he is today from what he was yesterday.

• And it is a good thing thus for us to be interested in one another and interested in one another's welfare, so that if any one asked us where a person stood today we should be able to say.

• It is all very well to say what they were ten years ago or five years ago, but have we been praying about it, because the Lord, with whom all things are possible, can do wonderful things in a very brief space of time as we know?

So Andrew was well acquainted with the fact that there was a little boy there and he knew exactly what he had.

• Possibly the lad had resolved to spend the day with the Lord, because it speaks of the crowds coming to him; and he started off from home with the desire to spend the day with the Lord.

• It does not say about any other little boys being there. It speaks of women and children I know, but no other boy is referred to.

• And the Lord takes what that little boy has provided, he takes it in hand Himself, and He blesses it abundantly so that it was sufficient for the whole multitude of people.

• They did eat, they were all satisfied and there was something left over and taken away to be used for others who did not have the privilege of being there.

• What a very happy meeting that was! And a very wonderful day for the boy.

• Can you not imagine him going home that day and telling those whom he knew that he had gone off at the beginning of the day to be with the Lord,
  • and the only person, in the audience of the thousands who were there, taken on by the Lord, was himself.

• He handed over the little that he had to the Lord, and the Lord made much of it.

And we may be very little and of little understanding but the Lord can make much of it, when he takes it on the principle of our sacrifice and blesses it abundantly in regard to His own people.

• There are little maids here and there are little boys here and we would like them to go home today and all of us, just like that little boy, having seen the Lord,
  • having understood that although he had very little, the Lord could make much out of it – if it is given to Him on the principle of sacrifice.

• And so the Lord has set us together to be helpers one of another and as we yield ourselves to Him, in spirit, soul and body,
  • there is no telling what He might do with us each in regard of the blessing and the comfort of His people.

• And we can only desire I am sure, especially for our brethren, brothers and sisters and some of our younger children, that their experience today might be so precious to them that
  • in the extent to which they are available to Him they shall know what the Lord can do with very, very little.

Blessed be His name. Amen.