Attachment to Christ
and other
Ministry by J. B. Catterall

Apart from our being lovers of Christ there would be no reason for God committing anything to us in regard to His interests.

• I am reminded at this juncture of a very sweet word from our Lord when dealing with his disciples here; you will find it in John 16: 27. He calls their attention to the fact that the Father's love to them was because of their love for Himself:
  • "The Father himself has affection for you, because ye have had affection for me".

• It is not there the sovereign love of the Father finding its reasons only in its own satisfaction, and in the preciousness and glory of the Person of the Son;
  • it is rather that aspect of the love of the Father that finds its motive, as it were, in the fact that the disciples were attached to Christ;

• and out of that love to the Lord there arose all the sweet commitments in regard of divine interest and service.

• I would connect with it also the fact that the Lord, when about to leave them, personally breathed into them, saying,
  • "Receive the Holy Spirit", John 20: 22.

• Not only do we see in that an indication of the necessity of the gift of the indwelling Spirit, but we see it coupled, in the action of the Lord Himself, with those wonderful sensibilities and feelings in regard of divine service that were found present with Him as the Sent One.

• The breathing into them of Holy Spirit was the communication of those sensibilities to them. Doubtless these same sensibilities are connected with the divine nature, as may be seen from John's epistles
  • and as set forth in the Person of Christ we see them moving along the line of devotedness in regard of the will of God

• So in breathing into them, as He did, you see not only His own act as the last Adam, a quickening Spirit, in its authority, but in the quality of His act you see involved the sensibilities of His own love, as the One who was here for the will of the Father.

• I would enlarge on this, as the Lord may help me, and I trust it may appeal to all our hearts, especially to the hearts of the young.

The guarantee of all our attachment to divine interests is based on our attachment to Christ.

• It is the outcome of the love of God, and it centres sweetly in the Person of the One who laid down His life that we might be secured for the pleasure of the blessed God.

• I wish to speak in all simplicity on the matter, and I have turned your attention to the gospel of Mark because of the feature that shines out so preciously in that gospel – the glory of the Lord Jesus Himself, and His prominence as the great Levite.

• Now, if we take the course that the Spirit presents to us, we follow the Lord in affection of heart, as it were, to the holy mountain apart, and we look afresh upon Him as He is there presented to us.

• I think you will agree that every instinct of the heart that centres in the Person of the Lord Jesus rises with delight to contemplate Him. He is the object of the Father's pleasure!

• If you ask me where we would get an impression of the holiest, I think I may say that in the three gospels that record the incident we would get it on the mount of transfiguration. We find on that mount the disclosure of the Father's pleasure, and the shining out of the glory of the Lord Jesus.

• We find that every other glory is surpassed there; it is the glory of God. So it becomes the joy of the heart to contemplate the Lord as He is there presented.

Now I wish to make to you this suggestion: it was the Lord who inaugurated the movements that led to this ministry to the disciples.

• It was not in answer to an enquiry from them that they beheld this glory; it was His own movement. There is sovereignty in the Lord's care of His disciples, just as there is the apparent sovereignty in His choice of those disciples.

• It was in His interest in regard of their preparation for Levitical service that He judged it necessary for them to witness His glory, and the good pleasure of God in Himself.

• He took the three disciples to a high mountain by themselves apart, where no disturbing element could come. There they were removed from the surroundings customary to them in the world of men.

I think I may here express the thought, that while in a certain sense service takes its commencement from the side of the congregation, and has God for its object along the line upon which it moves,

• there is another aspect of that selfsame service which takes its character from the fact that the precious motives are found in the holiest.
  • It is from the holiest it proceeds.

• And in this gospel we see it is so in the Lord Himself. Now, if that be the character of the Lord's own ministry, how sweet to consider that it is the character of His ministry to, and through, His own. He would appeal to us graciously in regard of this power in ministry.

• He took His disciples to the mount of transfiguration, where, in the peace of the holiest, as it were, the glory that had shone into their souls might be viewed according to God; there they saw His glory; it was but for a brief moment, but surely, as we think of the ministry, the results were imperishable.

• They were privileged on that occasion to have blotted out from their vision even what the Lord was in His humiliation here, and to see Him in His glory. The luminous character of His glory, as mentioned in Mark's gospel, shone out:
  • "His garments became shining, exceeding white as snow, such as fuller on earth could not whiten them".

We were reminded this afternoon, and in a way that I think should touch the heart of even the youngest who loves the Lord Jesus, that

• when anything that is committed to us of God falls in our handling from its proper relation to the Lord, it becomes little better than a religion.

• The whitening of the fuller goes on all around us; may God preserve us from it! At best the fuller depraves the things of God.

• The purity that holds divine things in their right setting and value, and in their sweetness and power over the saints, as also in their preciousness for God, is the purity that comes from the holiest.

• Where Christ is, we are safe. If it be a question of the strife of tongues – and that is one of the accompaniments of the present religious position – it is not heard on the mount. The psalmist, in his exercises, takes account of the need for preservation from such strife; he says:
  • "Thou hidest them in a pavilion from the strife of tongues", Psalm 31: 20.

We need to be taken away from things that mark the public position at times, to the presence of God, where our souls may absorb, in the power of the Spirit of God, the truth as it is in Jesus, so that we may retain it.

• Ah! it is no passing glimpse that we need of the transfiguration glory. Passing glimpses, and impressions for the moment, may be given to us, but we want what leaves a mark.

• We need what will be productive of results; and results arrived at from the truth as it is in Jesus go to the bottom of our exercises, and produce fruit for God. Fruit springs up from what is most deeply rooted in our souls.

• One thing I have learned: no illustrations are required to make divine things simple. It is we who require to be made simple; divine things always are! What could be more simple in its expression, yet more profound, than this scene of the Lord's transfiguration?

• How completely above all man's adornment, how completely clear of all the thoughts of man, his will, and his ways. How searching to us, yet how comforting is this presentation of the glory, of the Lord; it goes to the heart!

The disciples saw others beside Jesus, and with Him; everything comes out with the most touching significance possible in Mark's gospel:

• "There appeared to them Elias with Moses".

• They were together; one of them was used at the commencement of a dispensation, to introduce it, and the other appears almost at the close of that dispensation.

• Moses was used by God to give what was initial, wonderful in its character and administration, and Elias came in when the people had lamentably failed, and, in regard of God, led in faithfulness to God.

• To see them together on the mount of transfiguration is to see much; how good to see the full value of their ministry as it centred in Christ.

• I have been told, at times – and alas I have, I think, contributed to it – by some, that they would not have the ministry of certain brethren in their bookcases, but they would have that of others.
  • It matters comparatively little what we have in our bookcases, it is what is in our souls that is important; that is what counts.

• Whether it be what the Lord has given us in the past, or in the present, all has come to us through much sorrow, heart-searching, labour and sacrifice. It might be said that what was given in the past served the need of those times – it served more, it served the need of the souls of the saints, it serves God's end; it is one ministry.

• If we hear the certain sounds of the Lord's present ministry to the saints, may we carry the gain of it in our souls; it is one ministry; Elias and Moses were together, and they talked with Jesus.

• What they talked of specially was that wondrous decease that He should accomplish at Jerusalem; the manner of His going out; I might speak of it as the supreme act. The supreme sacrifice in His service was the laying down of His life.

• His present service is, blessed be God, the extension of all that was formed as a basis when He laid down His life. His love will never again be tested as it was tested there, and His fidelity will never again be subjected to the test to which it was subjected there.

• Who will venture to describe the sufferings of the Lord! We cannot describe them, but we may seek grace from God that what we know of them may be enshrined in our souls as centring in the Person of Christ Himself.

His present service of ministry to His own, and support for His own, goes on.

• His service will sustain all in the world to come, for God. His authority will sustain all in blessing for man.

• When the world to come in its glory has given place to the eternal day, He will be Head for ever. He remains a Servant for ever; He will support all in His service as the One who is subject to God throughout eternity.
  • "But when all things shall have been brought into subjection to him, then the Son also himself shall be placed in subjection to him who put all things in subjection to him, that God may be all in all", 1 Corinthians 15: 28.

• All there will be based on that supreme act when He laid down His life; all has been brought to pass through it. He laid down His life! May our souls cherish that in its sweetness and power. It is the basis of our attachment to the interests of God, and of our Lord Jesus. Our interests in the gospel, our affection to one another, everything must rest on that.

• They saw His glory, they heard the conversation. It is indicated here that they heard what passed between Moses and Elias and the Lord, and it seems as if Peter felt he must speak, as if he were under an obligation to add his quota to the whole, hence he speaks as he does. But he had to hear the oracle.

• The oracle was in the holiest, and until we hear the oracle we cannot speak aright. Ah, let us hear God speak about Christ! We can afford to be silent when God is speaking. How often our hearts are not silent, and there is no room for response. Here God speaks, and He says:
  • "This is my beloved Son: hear him".

• They were on the mountain top, and if it were only the mountain top we were to consider, we would say our souls will rest here, it is good for us to be here. It would almost seem as if Peter felt that the building site had been shown them by God, and so he says,
  • "Rabbi, it is good that we should be here; and let us make three tabernacles; for thee one, and for Moses one, and for Elias one".

• Three tabernacles would have meant three tents of service, three tents of meeting, but no, there must be one tabernacle where the glory of the Lord is resting and where our souls adore.

• It might be thought if you take this line in regard of the Lord personally, you will undervalue your brethren as brethren, their service, their care, and all the other ways in which they have to be regarded.

• I cannot see it; but the thoughts of Peter, James and John, in regard to one another, must have been enhanced when they saw His glory, and heard God's thoughts about His Son.

• They must have looked upon their relative services and valued them in a more distinct way when they looked upon the One who was the centre and the supporter of all service, and saw His glory who was the pleasure of God.

But, they had to come down, and you know it is the coming down that tests us; the moving about in the camp, and the everyday exercises, and the cares, test us often in such a searching way – in such an unseen way.

• They prove us in regard of our fidelity to Christ, our love of the truth and our valuation of divine interests.

• When they came down, the Lord found His disciples in perplexity at the foot of the mount, and they were being subjected to criticism. There is a touch of exceeding beauty in this gospel in the way in which the Lord defends His own. It is very sweet to see how He comes in between His own and the opposer.

• They were in weakness, as we have often been found when questions of great moment have arisen, and the necessary wisdom, spiritual power, and grace to meet them have been lacking, and the Lord has been toward us.

• The Lord finds in regard of this case of peculiar need that the scribes are contending with the disciples, and He comes between them and the opposers and says,
  • "What do ye question with them about?"

• How sweet is the grace of the Lord! Where would we be but for the way in which the Lord covers us in regard of His interests together. He becomes their defender publicly, but in private He puts before them the needs on their side.

• Viewing the possibility of our unwittingly injuring or neglecting what belongs to the Lord in regard to His own, we would feel how we need His word.

Our attention has already been called to the case of one engaged in the service of cutting down wood, whose axe-head flew off and injured his neighbour so that he died, though he hated him not in time past.

• There is no need of having a dry axe handle where there is so much of the grace of the Spirit. It proves that service can only be maintained rightly as with the Lord.

• You will remember too the case of the son of the prophet who went to cut down wood; he had an axe which was borrowed. He was engaged in building, and was felling a beam, when the head of the axe fell into the water. He was powerless in his service, and he calls to the man of God, feeling the gravity of the circumstance.

• The exercise points again to the very place of the loss. Had it not been for the power with the man of God, the axe-head would have been irrecoverable; he made the iron to swim, he cast in the stick, which speaks of Christ. The axe was borrowed, and borrowed things are seldom rightly cared for.

• What we have in our souls in relation to the Lord is watered by the Holy Spirit, and kept fresh and pure and holy, having power in service for God.

I call your attention to these things, because here we see the Lord as the defender and the instructor of His own.

• This difficulty was of the kind that goes out by nothing but prayer and fasting. It was the result of what might have been passed by in the history of divine things.

• May I speak a word to my brethren; I am speaking to you who are older than myself – grey hairs are honourable if they are found in the way of righteousness. There is nothing so appalling as grey hairs in a path of sin.
  • "The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it is found in the way of righteousness", Proverbs 16: 31,

• but, with the sense in my spirit of how much farther many may have gone in experience than I have, it behoves us, everyone, to remember the younger generation. Let us remember and pray for them. Brethren, if the Lord does not come they will be needed. When the opening is made for them it may be found there are deficiencies in them to which we may have been contributors.

• Shall I relate to you this incident – it is far from here that it happened. After a gospel meeting in which the Lord had helped in speaking of the rapture of the saints and the Lord's appearing, a lad, son of parents in that company, confessed to his blessing, but brought out the fact that until then he had not known of the rapture. Tell me, what would be the result of a defect of that sort in a little while?

• But, we say, there is the present ministry. Indeed there is! If I sound at all as if I do not love it, before the Lord I say I do. But when you come to consider the young among us, I say all truth is necessary. May the Lord help us to think more of the coming generation.

• I know the Lord is thinking of them, I see it coming out in the ministry, and I rejoice in it. He is thinking of them; their whole history has ever been before His heart. I speak to ourselves – the Lord would help us to care for the coming generation, so that it may be for the service of God, and the glory of the Lord, if He does not come awhile.

• You will agree with me that when we would appeal to the hearts of those that are young, it must be on the simple ground of their attachment to God's things, and the interests of our Lord Jesus Christ.

• The heart that centres in the Lord for His own worth is a heart that God will entrust with His interests. In this we stand together, from the least to the greatest.

I read those other scriptures because I want to show in what way the necessity may arise for prayer and fasting.

• Prayer brings God in, fasting shuts man out.

• I do not think, speaking generally, that we would be much pressed in upon by certain exercises and snares, if there were more prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting involve our definite decision as to things in the light of divine pleasure.

• The snare to Barnabas was not wrong things, it was natural ties, and earthly things; they came between him and the work. The retention of these brings in reproach in connection with the testimony.

• So that the power which is connected with the "going over" stands above nature, and earthly links, because as the result of the constraining love of Christ we thus judge that if one died for all then were all dead.

• I think that many of the needs which arise are the outcome of not going over, and thus lacking the attachment to, and support of, God's ordering there. The ark of God was only on one side of the Jordan, only on one side was the heap of stones representing all the tribes.

• The twelve stones in the river where the ark had stood represented all the tribes – but there were also the twelve set up in Gilgal. There was only one Gilgal and that was on the same side of the Jordan as the ark.

• Those two and a half tribes on the other side of the Jordan were in divine territory, but their hearts had not gone over. God gave them cities of refuge to provide for their practical needs, and to prepare their hearts to go over to the other side. They were all set eastward toward the sunrising.

• But the meaning of the names of the cities on the other side is interesting. The first was holy; yes, the holy city was there; the next one is a shoulder, speaking of power; and the third one speaks of affection or victory. Holiness, power, affection and victory; are the names of the three cities on the other side of Jordan.

• On which side are our hearts found? The three cities on the wilderness side of Jordan were separated by Moses and assigned by Joshua. But only the three on the other side were hallowed.

Barnabas, son of consolation, had been serving with the brethren, but there came a testing time.

• Do we think at the outset that there will come a time of testing for us? In regard of prayer and fasting that must come, I mean in individual history. Barnabas was the son of consolation; he had sold all his possessions, and laid all at the apostles' feet, and yet the day came when it was found that he had another holding in regard of which he apparently had not prayed and fasted.

• You may say, that is over the heads of the young. I think not. The young in the nature of their affection and the character of their exercises sometimes pray and fast more than would appear.

• However, there was a lack in Barnabas, upon which I will not enlarge. I speak simply, it was not in pursuing essentially wrong things he failed, but in regard of earthly things he was turned aside from the path of the testimony, and what was for the glory of the Lord.

• There was Mark; he was related to Barnabas, who was a vessel for influence and control; but his influence and lead to Mark were not directed according to the movement of the ark, or the holiest. Mark's education for future service in a fuller way, in the things of God, was hindered for the moment;
  • what had happened in his case, as we have it stated in Acts, was this; at the time when prayer and fasting, as at Pamphylia, marked the service, he forsook the work of God.

• Now Paul says to Barnabas, as it were, Mark has a lesson to learn, and I want him to learn that lesson. In my affection I would take him into the city of refuge. He asserted the gravity of the case; he did not want to be severe upon him, but he wanted him to learn that it is the glory of the Lord that governs the service.

• You say, that makes little of us. Indeed it does; but not only so, it makes much of us according to God. Anything else would only make little of us. God has been pleased to take us up in the infinitude of His mercy, to be vessels of His glory, and service.

• It is too wonderful almost to attempt to speak of it further, but there it is, in its blessedness in Christ. God has done it; the treasure is in your soul, and – I speak to the young – the reality is present with you in the work of God. Its consciousness is with you in the power of the Spirit.

May the Lord encourage you to go on. When the heart is centred on the glory of the Lord, we need the help of the Lord.

• At the very time when the apostle Paul, in the power of the Holy Spirit presenting the truth, made Agrippa tremble he most sweetly acknowledged that he had obtained help of God to continue to that day.

• Pride and the precious light of the glory of the Lord are never found in company. We constantly carry the tendency to pride with us, but it is not in us when our hearts are taken up with the glory of the Lord.

Mark was tested, Barnabas took him, and sailed away to Cyprus. That was an action not directed by the Lord! There were things that were good in the sight of man at Cyprus, the human side of things.

• Then see this: Silas takes the place of Barnabas, and Timothy the place of Mark.

• Now I wish to mention what, I believe in the line of individual history, is a sweet and tender expression of the goodness of God, and the love of a brother. I allude to Paul's reference to Mark, in his second epistle to Timothy he says,
  • "Take Mark, and bring him with thyself, for he is serviceable to me for ministry", 2 Timothy 4: 11.

• It may be that we sometimes see a brother step into the place of another who may have turned aside, but it is not so often that we see a brother recovered by the one who has taken his place. If Mark was displaced, he was only displaced because he had first gone out of his place.

• But if Timothy stepped into the place in the Lord's sovereignty, he was in it in the love of a brother; in a brotherly, levitical, and priestly way; he had Mark with him; and Paul says, bring him.

• I should think one of the things sweetest to the heart of Timothy was to bring, as it were, in his embrace, Mark back to Paul, a chastened Levite, a recovered brother. Timothy brought him back as one who had known what it was to have turned aside from the way of the Lord Himself.

I have been thinking about this point, and you will bear with me in referring to it.

• If in our history in regard of the Lord's things we have been turned aside, and the Lord has graciously touched us, it is that we might be recovered to the fellowship of the brethren and take up things in the light of the glory of the Lord.

• A brother recovered is one of the sweetest joys to the hearts of the saints; but, on the other hand, when a brother is recovered, do not say to him, 'Here is the old thing that you were doing, this is where you left off'.

• If you give him anything, give him what is of God. Recovery is to the Lord, and by the Lord, and for the Lord, and for all else, because for Him. True recovery supposes real power in regard of the one who had turned aside.

May the Lord give us patience and grace, and consideration of what has been before us, and encouragement together, so that we may be more serviceable to Him from the least to the greatest.

It was the plain speaking and inquiry of the love of Christ that tested the spirit of Peter so intensely.

• Even in the ways of the Lord with ourselves, and I touch on it with all affection, we may find the Lord speaking very plainly to us. We may be, for various reasons, inclined to interpret His speaking to us thus more on the line of His lordship, than of His affection and care for us.

• Often times the Lord may speak plainly to us, and it is of all moment to us that we should hear. But there is danger lest we might too readily interpret the Lord's plain speaking as only bearing on matters that would show our contrariety to His mind, and the fact that they were out of line with His own pleasure and rights as Lord.

• But there are times when the Lord speaks with intense plainness, when, if we knew the truth, we should know it was not so much that He was drawing attention to existing wrongs, as to the fact that even on the line of rectitude, there may be a lack of intensity and warmth of affection to Himself.

It is insufferable to the heart of Christ that there should be remoteness – distance – on our part.

• We may incline to it, but the longer we remain there, the more accustomed to it we become, and the more disinclined to leave it, but the love of Christ will not endure distance.

• The institution of the Supper, the service of feet-washing, the service and care of the Lord immediately on His resurrection, in regard of Mary Magdalene particularly, and the dealings of the Lord with Peter at the close of His pathway here, are the plain speaking of the love of Christ that will not endure remoteness.

• I know of nothing that one becomes so accustomed to, with all one's knowledge of the truth, as the tendency to live in heart at a distance from the Lord.

• To know the things that are His pleasure and interest, to know the things that are changelessly dear to Himself, and yet, as to our personal links with Him, to be remote, could never satisfy His heart.

I should like to go over with you, as the Lord may help us, the movements of the love of Christ, as indicated in the scriptures referred to.

• As the Lord drew near to the close of His pathway, with His own outlook before Him – death, and what death meant to Him – and to the great end that was to be the final and culminating testimony of His love to the Father, and His love to, and interest in, His own –
  • one is deeply impressed with the way in which the Lord moved as to the passover and the Supper.

• I do not know that I should be justified in taking for granted that every soul here distinguishes between these, but I think it might suffice if I say this in passing, that while we need the passover and the Supper, and each has its place, nevertheless, when we have distinguished between the two,
  • we might lack the consideration of exercised affection for the Lord, that looks into the matter to see what bearing one has on the other.

• When we come together on the first day of the week, to answer to the Lord's desire as the One who laid down His life for us, we would surely, if ordered aright, come together in moral conditions that have been produced by the keeping of the feast together.

• Is there in our hearts a sufficient recognition of the fact, that when we come together to answer to the Lord in the Supper, we do not come together to create conditions, but to answer to the Lord in the power of conditions present with us?

• In whatever way we may order or regard the occasion, we may rest assured of this, that there is that in the Supper which touches our spirits in a peculiarly tender, and searching way.

• In many ways we have been tested, when we have come to take the Supper, and have been made to feel, more than in any other way, how searching was the scrutiny of the love of Christ.

• But it was not instituted that we might be searched, or made to feel the remissness of our affection for the Lord.
  • It was instituted that what is due to the Lord Himself, in response to His great and precious love, might be presented to Himself, the worthy Object of it all.

I draw your attention for a moment to the necessity with the saints at Corinth, that the apostle should recall their attention particularly to the passover at the outset of his epistle.

• He says, "our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed", 1 Corinthians 5: 7.

• Was there ever such a Passover? Paul does not bring it to bear upon them simply to make a distinction between it and the Supper, but in order that their hearts might be freshly exercised as to the bearing of the feast on themselves.
  • He says, "So that let us celebrate the feast … with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth", verse 8.

• Whether in respect of the Lord Himself, or in respect of one another, as bound up together with the Lord and His interests,
  • may we be exercised that in all our goings, in all our thoughts of the saints in secret, or when together, and in our prayers for those who are precious to the Lord,

• that all might be maintained with us in sincerity and truth, for there is nothing that so leads souls astray from the line that pleases the Lord as the lack of these.

• Individuals, even souls together, may make mistakes or be diverted, but the Lord places great value on sincerity of heart.

Sincerity, in its simple meaning is this, that if I say I am going a certain way, then I go that way. If I say I am seeking certain things – the Lord sees my heart – then I seek these things.

• The Lord knows I may slip and fail in my footsteps, but sincerity and truth imply that what the lips say, the heart really knows to be true. It is not a matter of saying we love the Lord more than we do, or the brethren more than we do.

• Sincerity and truth are that we love them more than we can tell. May we keep the feast together! What will hold us together will be sincerity and truth.

I believe that when we come together to the Supper to answer to the Lord, even though there may be a sense of the need of the Lord's present grace, in regard of temporal things and needs,

• yet He, blessed be His name, gives the grace not only to rise above that, but also that an answer may be provided in simple response to His precious love.

• One wishes to speak simply of the Supper as that which marks the great love of the heart of Christ.

• What a serious thing it would be for our hearts if ever there came a time with us, when the Supper became common! Every heart can answer for itself whether there be any such tendency with it.

• It should ever have in our hearts the greatness of the place that the love of Christ has given it.

• Not a place as an ecclesiastical centre, not a thing which is the centre of one ecclesiastical setting, or another, but that which is the most precious and most searching of all things. For it raises a constant question with us as to whether our hearts are right with the Lord, as His heart is with ours.

• The question raised by the love of Christ is; where our hearts are. You may remember the Old Testament incident to which I refer.
  • "Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?", 2 Kings 10: 15.

• This question was asked by one who was not omniscient, but who would fain know how he was regarded by another.

The Lord knows our hearts omnisciently, nevertheless in the Supper there is a constant appeal to our affections, and the nature of the appeal is this,

• Is your heart right, as my heart is with yours?

• There will never be any change in the heart of Christ; His love is the same as when He laid down His life for us.

• Well-known ground as the subject is, I trust that no heart here has the impression that it has become at all common ground. It never will be that to the heart of Christ, and may He grant it may never become so to us.

• If it become common to us, the thing that the Lord most sought in the institution of it will be that which we lack – a clear, simple, true, and affectionate answer to the Lord Himself, for His own sake. He instituted the Supper, it was His own movement.

The hour of the passover had drawn near, and there is an inquiry on the part of the disciples as to the keeping of it,

• but the institution of the Supper came in distinctly outside the inquiry of the disciples, it came from the Lord Himself. It was not their request, or desire, that initiated it.

• Who could have taken them off the ground of the passover, bound up with their affections as it was, but the Lord Himself? Sweetly, the Lord served them in taking their hearts outside of Judaism and all connected with it. The truth as we know it will make us free.
  • "If therefore the Son shall set you free, ye shall be really free", John 8: 36.

• The Lord knew what those disciples needed in regard of Judaism, and He took their hearts with Himself on to new ground in the institution of the Supper.

• I connect the two morally. What the Lord used for the institution of the Supper was provided for the commemoration of the passover – the bread and the wine.

• The bread and the cup speak to us of the body and blood of Christ. The cup speaks of the love of God.

• But I am speaking on this occasion of the Supper, not only as the Lord's provision, but of the conditions which the Lord would have on our side in fidelity to Him.

If we have affection, what is the character of it? Is it that which stands in the power of its knowledge?

• For a moment I would attempt to make this distinction, that the Lord's appeal is not best answered to by those who know most, but by those who love most.

• Then, you say at once, that must mean of course by those who have been a long time on the way. No, it does not mean that, but it is really given by hearts to whom the Lord in His own Person is more than anything else, any one else, time, place, or circumstance.

• It is hearts that love the Lord for His own sake, and respond to Him out of the sense of His own love, that please the Lord best in the Supper.

You may say any one might presume out of their knowledge. There is nothing like love for keeping people quiet. I do not know if you have tried it.

• I may be thinking of restless people, but there is nothing like love for keeping people quiet, for there is nothing like love so simple and easy to understand. In the presence of the love of Christ, when it lays hold of your soul and impresses your spirit, how much do you want to say?

• If you were speaking to my soul, which might be a little empty, I could understand your feeling much and saying it too.

• But in the presence of the love of Christ there oftentimes comes to us a sense that the most we can say may be said in the fewest words. We have nothing to tell the Lord about the Supper.

• Infinite has been the patience of the Lord in what He has told us about it, and in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, touching our hearts and bringing before us the great, precious, changeless, love of Christ, and the love of God the Father.

The more the love of Christ settles upon our spirits individually, or when together, the deeper is the sense our hearts have of the peace, the rest, of the love of Christ.

• Then we do not say things to the Lord on the line of description, but our hearts move only on the line of response, and thus we respond with a deep sense of the way we are indebted to the love of Christ.

• He instituted the Supper from His own side; it was not the suggestion of the disciples; the Lord knew they could not be without it.

• As one goes on, one feels more and more thankful that the time between the occasions of breaking bread, are just what they are and no more.

• I do not speak as if the Supper was a place of refuge; for the more we taste of the love of Christ as it is conveyed to us then, the more thankful our hearts become that the space between one occasion and the next is no longer than it is.

I come now to the service of feet-washing, as connected with the love of Christ. It was not done by the desire of His disciples.

• It stands on the same ground as the Supper in this respect, that it was the Lord's institution, and as much above the understanding of the disciples, on their side, as above their desire.

• We know much about it. Were I to make a slip tonight and seem to confuse between the Lord's feet-washing service, and His advocacy, I can understand even a young soul saying, 'You are confusing these things'.

• Though I saw the distinction many years ago, I did not learn till long after, what the preciousness of the love of Christ was in this particular form of service. We want the things themselves.

• Here we see the love of Christ moving – the same love that instituted the Supper. I would not say we come to the Supper to get our feet washed.
  • But I believe that often and often, when we have come there we have proved in a most blessed way the manner in which the Lord touched our spirits and washed our feet –

• removing from our souls, not only defilement, but the sense of encumbrances and weights, and thus enabling our souls to move freely to the Lord, with a fresh touch of the love of Christ that did it.

• Many things might press upon us – the care of the household, physical conditions, weariness of body, the effect of surroundings; these things might be on the spirit in coming together.

• God in His great wisdom made man a creature of peculiar sensitivity. Before he sinned, I believe his sensibilities were keen, but they became blunted by distance from God and by sin. They may again become sensitive however, as a consequence of grace having reached us.

• Even when we are coming together to meet the Lord, we may pass by surroundings, and places, and conditions, that touch our spirits and fain would leave a shadow. You may say, Need I be so? Would it not be better if I did not feel them? No, it would not be better if you did not feel them.

• But it would be better if, feeling them, you knew the intensity of the grace, and the love of Christ, that would serve you in regard of them. Do not get away from the feeling, it might mean more insensibility than piety.

I wish now to say a word to the young, that has been impressed on my spirit by reason of certain experiences of the last few days.

• Possibly you pass places you have been accustomed to enter, that you could not enter now, because you love the Lord and belong to Him. But you pass the place and you look at it and say, I am glad I do not go there: I know better now.

• But is that safety? Is your preservation from the things you used to serve and follow, wrapped up in your knowledge? No, it is not.
  • Your safeguard is in the fidelity of the love of Christ.

• You are not safe, unless these things touch your spirit with a sense of pain, which turns you to the Lord, for you are depending then on the ministry of the Lord's grace to your spirit.

The Lord instituted the service of feet-washing, knowing that His hour was come to depart out of the world, knowing too that He was come from God and went to God, and that the Father had given all things into His hand.

• The widest possible outlook as to the divine dispensation was before the Lord, and He knew it all. All the inward certainty, and peace, and steadfastness of the Lord's own Spirit – if I may speak of it in that way – was in God the Father, and in the great desire and interest of His own love, He turns to His own circle, and institutes the service of feet-washing.

• What were His brethren to Him? A sort of second-best? Just something given Him, because He had lost Israel? No, that is not the love of Christ. His is a love that holds the assembly as the first, and sweetest, and best thing – the treasure that is meet for His own heart and the answer to His own affection, and the gift, too, of the Father.
  • "They were thine, and thou gavest them me", John 17: 6,

• and of all of them I have not lost even one. How He holds His own! He holds the best thing first; that which the Father would have for the Son, what the heart of the blessed God would give to Christ – I speak of it reverently – the best thing first. He has given Him the assembly.

With that upon His heart, the Lord instituted the service of feet-washing. He inaugurated it above the desire, above the findings of the disciples' feelings. He presented it to them in its desirability, and in its dignity.

• Actually it was the service of the slave of the house, a menial service in man's ordering.

• What is its dignity? The dignity of it is that the Son of the Father, the Son of God, the Lover of His own has instituted it. He did the service first.

• Will that ever become common to us, brethren? Shall we satisfy our hearts with the understanding of the doctrine, or do we value it in its own value as the thing Christ did first? He did it first, and as He did it must be its character to the end.

He laid aside His garments. It was His own act, done in His own dignity and in the peculiar greatness of His own Person.

• Then He took a linen towel and girded Himself. It speaks of the righteousness, lowliness, tenderness, and fidelity of His own affection. He took water, poured it into a basin, and began to wash the feet of His disciples.

• He commenced to do it – notice the word. That was its inauguration. We cannot go into details now, though the more we ponder them the more precious they will become to our hearts.

• Look at the circle! I do not know how far round in the circle Peter was, but, in due course, the Lord came to him, and when He came to him, Peter spoke. He had had ample opportunity to consider the matter, but even when the Lord came to him he had not overcome his difficulty about it.

Those who do not know what feet-washing is, seldom continue. You say, What do you mean?

• Well, the sweetest thing that comes to us amongst the saints is the outcome of the understanding of the love of divine Persons. When you get the sense that a thing that has come to you from another is for the sake of Christ, it washes your feet.

• You neither misunderstand the motive of the person who may be the instrument of it, nor do you misunderstand it on any false line of your deserving it or otherwise. But if the impression conveyed to your spirit, is the impression of the love of Christ, your feet are washed.

How the things that are temporal drop away in the presence of the love of Christ.

• Preference for persons, difference of circumstances, and many other things, how they all drop out in the presence of the activities of the love of Christ, in the circle of His own.

• You get a touch from a brother. You may think at times, Well, I wonder if I should be much profited by knowing that brother; perhaps he does not look attractive externally.
  • How often we are surprised by the fact that, from a vessel that on its exterior does not promise much, there may have been much in it to wash our feet – it was there for Christ's sake.

• Our difficulty may have been rather this, that what was there was not only for our sake, but for His. Brethren, what washes our feet is first and most precious of all, for Christ's sake. It must be so if He is above all others.

• Everything that makes much of Christ, washes the saints' feet. Peace and comfort flow from it.

May I say a word as to Peter, in regard of continuance?

• What Peter trusted in was his own strength. In the things of God? Yes, he trusted himself. He said, Though all should be offended, yet will not I.

• He found himself out of touch with the Lord in feet-washing. If Peter had taken to heart the fact that the Lord had to expose to him that his own feeling was out of accord with Himself; if he had borne on his spirit that tender word of the Lord in regard of feet-washing; might he not have been spared the rest?

• If I am not minded to accept feet-washing, am I on a line on which I can have the Lord's support?

This is the first touch in John's gospel that shows us that Peter was not in accord with the Lord's feelings, and a peculiarly serious one it is;

• as if the Lord said to him, Peter, the thing that matters most to Me is the thing you do not understand.

• If he had taken to heart the Lord's word, may we not legitimately suggest he might have been saved the rest? Howbeit, he reached by discipline what the Lord would have brought him into by feet-washing. Such is the fidelity of the love of Christ.

• I speak from experience, which has taught me this. There are many things I may have reached by discipline, that I might have reached by feet-washing, but it is the fidelity of the love of Christ that has brought me there in the end.

In regard of the Supper, our gatherings from time to time are so variable, in what I might call their spiritual quality, that we often raise a question as to conditions from the moral point of view, but may I suggest this?

• If we washed one another's feet more, our answer to the Lord in the Supper might be more decided and sweet than it is, and I believe too that our power to worship would be greatly enlarged in us.

In regard of Mary, we see the unchangeableness and faithfulness of the love of Christ.

• I see the Lord, not only in the sense of His suffering, and superior to it in the greatness of His love, but I see the Lord again, the living One out of death, alive for evermore, having the keys of death and hades – as He speaks in Revelation 1: 17-18,
  • "I am … the living one: and I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages".

• Ah, you say, that is a great guarantee of the fact that He will unlock the situation at the rapture. It is a sweet guarantee of the fact, brethren, that He can unlock it now.

• He took the affections of Mary on to entirely new ground; rapture affections, in the principle of them, are affections that are engaged with the Lord in an entirely new place. He said to Mary,
  • "Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God", John 20: 17.

• Before the affections of Mary were in touch with the brethren, in the power of the Lord's word, they travelled to a new place. It was the power of the ministry of the Lord to Mary, that took her affections from earthly hopes, even in Himself, and anticipatively carried them to the place with which the declaration was connected:
  • "My Father and your Father, and to my God and your God".

Now He says, "Go to my brethren". She went and told them.

• It was the fidelity of the love of Christ, securing a heart in the power of affection, connected not only with the lordship of Christ, but sweetly and divinely connected with the Lord Himself – the Object of the Father's pleasure

• The Firstborn amongst many brethren, yea, I think we might say, as the Head of the assembly, His body,
  • "the fulness of him who fills all in all", Ephesians 1: 23.

• Her affections went to the new place, and they went there to stay there.

I do not wish to be mystical, but I think no one can give you so much practical help in your difficulties, as a person who is connected with heaven.

• God solves time's difficulties for eternity. The person whose heart is where Christ is, is not necessarily an impractical sort of person.

• You will find far more help in your difficulties from a man whose heart is in heaven, because he brings in the light of God's presence on them, and not the accumulated knowledge of man.

I close with one word more. The Lord spoke thrice to Peter. It was in the presence of the brethren He spoke.

• I would draw your attention to this, because it may touch our spirits without leaving any undue shadow on our minds, that the reason for His plain speaking these three times to Peter was to draw out in tender expression to Himself the character and the quality of the love of Peter.

• He did not ask Peter if he believed. Look at the tender movement of priestly care and shepherding that reached Peter! That must have been a tender proof to the heart of Peter of how much the Lord loved him. Nevertheless, three times He spoke,
  • "Lovest thou me?"

• At last Peter was grieved because the Lord said to him the third time, "Lovest thou me?" and he said,
  • "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee".

• Brethren, that is what the Lord is seeking.
  • Then He says to Peter, "Feed my sheep".

The object of the Lord's plain speaking to our hearts at this time may be, that as we are helped to answer to Himself in simple and deep feeling, He may entrust to us in a deeper way than before, the things that are most precious to His heart. May we covet these things.

At this juncture I shall refer to a very peculiar and sweet word employed by the psalmist at a time of very great pressure, through the attitude of men in their wickedness towards him.

• Speaking in the Spirit of Christ, and as a type of Him, he appeals to Jehovah and says,
  • "The assembly of the violent seek after my soul".

    Then he lifts up his heart to Jehovah and says,

  • "Shew me a token for good, that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed", Psalm 86: 14, 17.

• I would impress upon our hearts that in the path of following Christ, we are God's token for good to Christ.

• We have been given by God to Him, not only that we may be associated with Him in that scene into which He has entered, but that we might come out in the spirit and character of Christ here. So that in that sense we have been given by God as a token for good to Christ.

• If we view for a moment the light that has come to us in these broken days of departure from the truth, it is of very great moment to realise that we have been given it for Christ's sake, not because of faithfulness in us.

• We have been given it in the faithfulness of God, that we might come out as God's token for good to Christ, that His enemies might be ashamed.

Now that precious thought is presented in the gospels as applying to us.

• In Matthew, in connection with the kingdom;

• in Mark, as connected with the holiness and service of God;

• in Luke, in regard to the testimony of divine grace;

• and in John, as connected with the fellowship of God according to the truth.

• In every case we come out as God's token for good to Christ, that His enemies might be ashamed.

I desire to raise the question in our souls as to the truth as it is known in Christ personally.

• The very knowledge of the truth that we possess, if we be unwatchful, may come between our hearts and the person of Christ, who is the expression of it. We may become accustomed to what exists in the company of those with whom we walk.

• What is clear and concise in the knowledge of the truth is our very heritage, but there is the possibility and the danger of dissociating it from the person of Christ, in receiving whom we have received all.

• Every one of us is being formed in soul history in relation to God. I do not speak of our public and known history amongst the people of God, but of soul history in regard to God's things.

• Let me ask you how far in regard to your apprehension of the Supper, has there been consecutive steps in soul history with God?
  • How easy it is to regard our comings together as that which has to be formally sustained, comings together that may stand upon custom, rather than upon affection!

• So one would raise the inquiry as to how far, as we gather together from time to time, from the least to the greatest of us, are we working out our true soul history in regard of the things of God, and spiritually and livingly following Christ.

The connection that scriptures in Luke's gospel have with the thought of following Christ, may not be immediately apparent to you, but in various aspects it opens out with the view that is seen of the glory of Christ on the mount of transfiguration.

I read these scriptures so that we might dwell a little upon the love of Christ, the sufferings of Christ, and the way in which the Lord delights to take account of conditions amongst His people.

• It is interesting to consider how graciously God expresses Himself to His people in the Old Testament, when giving them communications, and how pleasurable it was in His sight that there should be response from them to Himself.

It is a very searching word for each of us – that we have to beware that we do not present ourselves empty before God.

• We may be greatly concerned as to the importance of doing right things, and that our conduct should be blameless, without flaw, and yet we may appear before the Lord empty. I venture to say that
  • the heart that loves Christ will never be found empty.

• Some may think that it is our want of intelligence that is the root of the trouble. Instruction is provided for us, if we need that, but what lies at the root is that we are spiritually deficient.

• But the more the heart resides in the presence of the glory of Christ, the more do we grow in the appreciation of Himself, and we shall not then be empty.

In referring to these three feasts, one would desire to consider the way in which they are brought before us in these two scriptures.

• For the sake of the young, I would say that it is not with us a literal appearing before God three times in the year. Nor is it a matter of keeping actual feasts, whether the passover, the feast of weeks, or the feast of tabernacles.
  • But it is a question of spiritual response.

• I want, therefore, in a simple way, to bring before you how there can be with us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, what answers to these feasts.

1. The first, the passover, presents what is moral;

2. the second, the feast of weeks, what is spiritual;

3. and the third, the feast of tabernacles, what is divine.

THE PASSOVER

The Holy Spirit has furnished for our spiritual instruction these definite lines of divine teaching, so that we might increase spiritually. As I said, it is not a matter of keeping actual feasts. In 1 Corinthians 5: 7-8, we read,

• "For also our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth".

• If we are careless, or indifferent, in respect of the passover, it will result in our going back in spirit to what is in Egypt.

• The passover is kept in the wilderness. It was to be the means of preserving God's people. He would have the sense of what was connected with the passover ever kept before them. During the whole course of the year, He would have them in continual remembrance of the month "Abib".

• We often say, I think it is time we got beyond that point; but I should pity the soul that gets beyond the passover. It was observed in the wilderness, and was God's means of preservation for the people from what was Egyptian and hostile to God.

• But it also had to be observed in the land. They were always to be solemnised in their spirits by the fact that their place in the land was entirely due to their having been covered in the passover.

In the epistle to the Colossians, the apostle presents to the saints at Colosse the wonderful outlook, presented on the heavenly side as risen with Christ.

• In doing so he reminds them of the fact that they had been
  • reconciled to God "in the body of his flesh through death; to present you holy and unblameable and irreproachable before it", Colossians 1: 22.

• That is the way the position was brought to bear upon the Colossians; it was presenting to their affections the sphere of things on the other side of the Jordan.

• He encourages them to pass over, but they could not be there on the line of the flesh, but as secured by the offering of the body of Christ.

It is very easy to get occupied with what is Egyptian. Often our associations, which are perhaps full of apparent value to us, are the hindrance.

• We feel we have not the power to free ourselves from them. That should be a most serious consideration for us.

• If we are desirous of being free from what is Egyptian, are our hearts tied or held by what is contrary to God's rest? When Moses, the leader of God's people, recounts the passage of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, he says
  • they "removed from Rameses", Numbers 33: 5.

• Moses had the opportunity of being the greatest Ramesian that Egypt had. If he, that chosen vessel of God, had made his position in the opposite direction to that which he did, he could have been the greatest head that Egypt ever had.

• Rameses denotes all that is great on the Egyptian line: and Moses measures their pathway from that point – the place where the Egyptians buried their dead.

Many a heart has gone out of Egypt at the start, in the enthusiasm of evangelical conditions, and afterwards it has begun to feel that in leaving Egypt, it had left what was living instead of what is dead.

• Egypt is a giant burying-place; their occupation that of burying their dead. What a solemn sight in the eyes of Moses, was the thought of his heart in bringing it afresh before the people of God at the close of Deuteronomy!

• How have we left Egypt? Have we left it with regrets, with any lingerings in respect of its things? You will recall the incident of the children of Israel murmuring in Numbers 11: 4-6. They said,
  • "Who will give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; and now our soul is dried up: there is nothing at all but the manna before our eyes".

• The Spirit of God challenges them as to whether there had ever been any time that they had been in trouble when He had not come in for them.

How solemn to forget "Abib", the beginning of months! Moses makes express mention of this in Deuteronomy 16: 1-3, he says,

• "Keep the month of Abib, and celebrate the passover to Jehovah thy God; for in the month of Abib Jehovah thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. And thou shalt sacrifice the passover to Jehovah thy God, of the flock and of the herd, in the place which Jehovah will choose to cause his name to dwell there. Thou shalt eat no leavened bread along with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread with it, bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste, – that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt, all the days of thy life".

• How well might they and we remember the month "Abib". It is to be held in spiritual recollection. We must not always abide by the forgiveness of sins, we must make spiritual progress.

• But is it spiritual progress to forget the month Abib? Is it spiritual progress to go back to the things from which God has freed us? If we do forget it, we shall begin to long for something of Egypt.

• We need never be empty, we need never be spiritually deficient, or feel the slightest need of turning to the world. No heart ever found a void filled by turning to the world!

• We may have been disappointed because we have had a feeling that we have not been loved or cared for enough, or that others have not been sufficiently interested in us. If this has been so, there is need to get to the Lord, for Him to come in for us.
  • There is enough in Him to satisfy our hearts; but unless God be our object, disappointed we must be

• One has heard of those who had a little feeling that they were not loved enough. But let me assure you, there is warmth enough in the christian circle. There are comfort, sympathy, and tenderness, to be found there if we are prepared to keep near enough to feel it.

When God took the people out of Egypt, He thought of them as one man, as was predicated of them by the Holy Spirit through the prophet Hosea,

• "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son", Hosea 11: 1.

• They came out in that one identity, as one under God's eye, both in discipline, and as to blessing. As they had been similar in trials and testings, so they were to be similar in the purpose of God, in that great end to which He was bringing them –
  • "What hath God wrought?", Numbers 23: 23.

• And what possibilities there are when God puts out His hand in divine blessing and touches the soul. It is the breaking forth of the green leaf!

• What does God intend to do? To bless us in His own way, as those in whom He has wrought, and to establish us by the discipline and trials through which we may be called to pass.

• But we must be free of Egypt; there must be no entanglements; we must not forget the gain of discipline and the end God has in view in allowing us to go through it.

Much of God's discipline is exercised to get us free of entanglements. He brings us out in the power of His blessings, and sets us up richly supplied for ever.

• We may not get the sense at the outset, that every step of our way is a matter of divine interest. But there is not a step of our goings that God is not interested in – not only at the beginning and the end, but also right through the whole journey.

You say, My pathway has been so vacillating. But if I told you mine, you would be amazed. That is not the point really.

• What is God's view? The end will be,
  • "What hath God wrought?"

• I do not know anything about you, or what your path has been, but if you have got blessing from God, how comforting it is to know that from the first moment you got blessing, God was interested in you in regard of every step of your entire pathway.

The passover is connected with what is moral. We keep the feast together.

• What is our mind? We are here in the world where there are many objects before men, but God's object in bringing His people out of Egypt was that He might set them free from bondage.

• He did not do so by dealing with the character of things in Egypt; He did not bring down the political and human greatness, but He broke its power, that He might let His people go free.

• He has brought us out of the world of human greatness, and pride, by the power and grace of the Lord Jesus, His Son, come down from heaven. The greatest thing in our hearts is the grace of Christ.

• Is there anything then in the world that appeals to us? The greatest thing that has ever been seen in the universe has been the down-stooping of the Son of God.
  • "Who, subsisting in the form of God, did not esteem it an object of rapine to be on an equality with God; but emptied himself, taking a bondman's form, taking his place in the likeness of men; and having been found in figure as a man, humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross", Philippians 2: 6-8.

• That is how we came out.

It was the blessedness of God Himself, that drew Moses' heart away from human greatness, and Egyptian pride.

• What has brought your heart out of the world? Has it been because you found certain troubles attached to things that are seen? The power of the plagues did not bring His people out of Egypt, but the knowledge of Himself did.

• What filled the heart of Moses when he came out of Egypt? It was by faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood.

• What moved the heart of Moses in connection with the deliverance of God's people were the keeping of the passover, and the sprinkling of the blood.
  • For us, dear friends, to be detached from the One who has loved us so much should be intolerable to our hearts.

• If you had spoken to Paul of the many great things in the world, and asked him if he would not have been a much greater man in Egypt, he would have no doubt agreed as far as the things of the world are concerned. But as a spiritual man he reckoned it all as dung and dross.

• The greatness that had captivated his heart was the grace of Christ. What is the humanity that God is occupied with now? It is before His face – the Man Christ Jesus! Jesus glorified as Man!
  • The apostle says, "I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows;) such a one caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man, (whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows;) that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable things said which it is not allowed to man to utter", 2 Corinthians 12: 2-4.

• What a vision was his, to be caught up to such a place! Higher than Rameses and the Sphinx of Egypt! and enough for his heart

• Oh, that one had seen earlier that God's first touch had in view that ever afterwards we should be in the knowledge of His interest, instead of only seeing oneself as a sinner saved by grace, and the interim left insecure.

But you will tell me that on the Lord's day morning we do not come together to be occupied with the passover.

• That may be, but we come together in a state that has been secured by the passover. We come together in moral conditions that have been produced in that way. The passover is one type of the death of Christ.
  • The apostle said, "Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus", 2 Corinthians 4: 10.

• That was the moral obligation of the death of Christ. It is the great divine negative, applied to all that is fleshly, and that would interfere with the operations of the Holy Spirit.
  • "Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our body; for we who live are always delivered unto death on account of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh", 2 Corinthians 4: 10-11.

• The great moral power of the death of Christ, applied to the path of the believer, makes room for what is spiritual. May we keep in mind the month Abib! so that nothing that is Egyptian may have any hold upon us.

THE FEAST OF WEEKS

Now let us come to what is spiritual. The antitype of the feast of Pentecost – the feast of weeks – was to begin with a wonderful message to the nations of the Holy Spirit.

• Why should such a place be given to the operations of the Holy Spirit?

• Because the issues are so tremendous. The end with God is so great and glorious! What a place has been allotted to the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit!
  • "Seven weeks shalt thou count: from the beginning of putting the sickle into the corn".

• That is the bringing to pass in the power of the Spirit, in the souls of the saints, what Christ died to secure, and what He suffered to bring about – the glory of God.

• He suffered in respect of everything that was offensive to God. He endured and felt it all. How can we speak of it? But the Lord would have us to consider it – His atoning sacrifice; Him who knew not sin was made sin for us.

• One feels how little we have understood it! How easy it has been to say it; how often quoted; and how often preached from! What marvellous words!
  • "Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us", 2 Corinthians 5: 21.

• Never had He had the slightest touch with it! When the Spirit of God speaks of His sinlessness, He is speaking of His perfect, holy Person – Him who knew not sin. Oh, the depth of it! And it was
  • "that we might become God's righteousness in him".

The Spirit of God has come to us in virtue of Jesus being in the presence of God – He has come from the glory.

• He was in the divine majesty of Godhead glory – Deity, before ever the world was!

• But the glory that the Spirit of God has come from, is the glory of God, where Christ is. Stephen saw it; and he saw the blessed Person.
  • "Lo, I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God", Acts 7: 56.

• The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. He has come that He might be with us, to dwell in us, and to be with us as comfort and power.

• Also He is a Teacher to lead us into all the things that pertain to that sphere that has been brought into being through the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus as Man.

• So in the feast of weeks we find the great reality of not only what is moral, but of what is spiritual. What is spiritual rests on what is according to God. The Spirit has come to us. What are our links? They are spiritual. What a sphere of divine comfort and blessing is ours!

• The Spirit of God has come to us, as the apostle says in Ephesians 1: 13,
  • "In whom ye also have trusted, having heard the word of the truth, the glad tidings of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise".

• He has come to us believers, not only to deliver us from what is contrary to God, but that He might form us in features that correspond to Christ. The Spirit of God fills out the whole interim, after Jesus went on high.

The truth as to the Spirit is illustrated in that incident of divine beauty in Rebecca being brought to Isaac by the servant.

• When she inquired who is the man? He answered her, That is my master. She sprang off the camel and meets Isaac; and then we find the account that the servant Eliezer renders of his service.
  • "The servant told Isaac all things that he had done", Genesis 24: 66.

• What a rendering at the end of all the service of the Holy Spirit!

• We are in the feast of weeks – the Spirit's day; but we must not forget the month Abib. Let us never forget that Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.

• If we have forgotten the month Abib, and lost the fresh sense of the sufferings of Christ and their import, may the Lord recover it to us! The apostle says in 2 Corinthians 4: 5-7,
  • "For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus Lord, and ourselves your bondmen for Jesus' sake. Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God, and not from us".

    And again in Philippians 3: 20-21,

  • "For our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to his body of glory, according to the working of the power which he has even to subdue all things to himself".

• May we give room to the Spirit! Every discipline is intended to make room for the Spirit. No discipline ever fully yields its fruit until what is spiritual has been built into our souls.

THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES

Now I come to the feast of tabernacles. In considering what the import of that is, we must not think only of certain occasions of coming together.

• Sometimes in getting clear as to different ideas, we are in danger of putting them into little pigeon-holes of divine truth. The truth of God will help us to distinguish one truth from another.

• This feast is not a matter of occasions – three times in the year. The Lord is caring for us every step of the journey.

• Do we touch what is divine? If we touch what is spiritual, we must touch what is divine. How often is it so when we come together? The Lord would have us then in the inside place with Himself.

• Blessed be God, there have been times when we have touched divine realities! It does not satisfy the heart of God that we pass along the outside, so to speak. He would have us within with Him. There is a great difference between what is inside and what is outside.

• This feast of tabernacles is the type of God's rest. We are hastening on to it, but we who believe do enter into God's rest. There is a rest remaining for the people of God – remaining in all its entirety and greatness. We are moving on to that end.

• And the Spirit of God is moving. The proof of it is that the Spirit of God has been bringing to bear upon the hearts of the saints what would make them spiritually ready – the power of the grace of the ministry of Christ – what really answers to Christ.

• And how tenderly the Lord comforts us! God comforts all those who are cast down. But besides comforting us, He would give us spiritual confidence that what is divine is being built into our souls never to be removed.

The feast of tabernacles is at the end of their year's labours – harvest labours – and they dwell together.

• "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", Revelation 21: 3.

• Oh, what a blessed end to be arrived at! And God is building the assembly to that end now! May the Lord help us!

• I would seek to encourage my own heart and yours, to remember that everything that has come to us is heavenly – forgiveness of sins has come from heaven. My justification is from heaven.

• The Holy Spirit who has come to us, has come from above where Christ is. Everything is heavenly for us, before we reach God's end. He is building the heavenly into our souls.

• John shows you what is abiding, and says,
  • "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world", 1 John 4: 4.

  • And, "For all that has been begotten of God gets the victory over the world; and this is the victory which has gotten the victory over the world, our faith. Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?", 1 John 5: 4-5.

• The apostle is not here applying the passover to those to whom he is writing, but the faith of Jesus as the Son of God.
  • May the Lord in His grace help us in the consideration of these few thoughts together, for His name's sake!