The Acceptable Year of the Lord
and other
Ministry by P. H. Hardwick
– Part Three

G.A.R.

Many will have noted in reading the gospel of Luke, how many persons who, on being served by the Lord, glorify God. Now that is Luke's secret, not just relieving our needs and leaving us there.

• Luke, and I might say, Paul, for undoubtedly Luke drew largely from Paul, believes in setting us up so that we can add something to the service of God. I believe it is a new day in our lives, and adds a ray of glory for our minds and hearts when we see that we are to be set up here to serve God.

• We need not look very far for illustrations of this, for Luke always provides his own, and there are none better. In Luke 4: 18 the Lord, speaking as the anointed Preacher, says,
  • "He has anointed me to preach glad tidings".

• It is a wonderful service in the Lord's hands, wider perhaps than some of us have thought, for it eventuates in God getting glory from the persons served. As the Lord finishes reading, and hands the book back, the eyes of all those that were in the synagogue were fastened upon Him. Not upon the book, nor upon the attendant who took the book, but upon Christ.

• That is really the secret of all successful ministry, that the eye is directed to Christ. In Him we find the verification of all the truth that is uttered, as here are foretold the lifting of every burden and the completing of every service.

• May that be in our minds, dear brethren, as we refer to these scriptures, that the eyes of all are fixed upon Him. And then the Lord adds another word,
  • "To-day this scripture is fulfilled in your ears".

• That is, that every scripture applies to the person who reads it when he reads it. It is not just historical. So the Lord takes Isaiah's prophecy of centuries earlier and reads it word for word saying
  • "To-day this scripture is fulfilled in your ears".

• Thus we can turn to any part of the scripture for it has a voice for us which applies at the present time.

Now, I would just refer to these persons. It says here,

• "He has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to preach to captives deliverance, and to the blind sight, to send forth the crushed delivered".

• Luke brings forward the well-known woman in chapter 7, to show how the Lord can serve and how He can relieve and establish, and especially how He can serve where there is love.

• I believe the Lord finds it very difficult to serve persons in whom there is no love. The woman loved before she was served. That explains the Lord's remark,
  • "which of them therefore will love him most?", Luke 7: 42.

    The answer is, "he to whom he forgave the most".

• That is to say, love is there before the actual service in detail begins. Thus we would challenge ourselves to see if there is really any love for Christ, for the more love there is for Him, the more ready He will be to serve.

• How are we to tell? By the indications which love so readily furnishes, movements towards the truth, towards the brethren, towards the practice of self-judgment. These are the signs. Nothing would stop this woman from reaching the Lord, because she had love. The needs, therefore, become, I might almost say, secondary, incidental.
  • The Lord says of her, "she loved much".

• I would suggest that perhaps some of our burdens have not yet been lifted because our love is so little, and therefore in the end we are not free to serve. This woman went out a rich woman, and it was not exactly that the Lord saved her.
  • He said, "Thy faith has saved thee";

    that is something operating in her.

    "Thy sins are forgiven … go in peace".

• What is essential is involved here: the matter of our sins and the matter of our love and of our faith. So, the woman may be regarded as set up in service. Morally, I believe she found her place among those in the next chapter – the women who ministered to Him of their substance.

• I believe that scriptures like this show that the substance came from those who loved Him, who were set free and who ministered to Him.

• Likewise, we today need to be set free, and I would speak thus to any here who are not free. It may be a matter of sins; it may be something that needs confessing, something that is weighing us down; the way of this woman will help us:
  • "A woman … knew that he was sitting at meat in the house of the Pharisee", Luke 7: 37, and she came in.

• She wanted the Lord and the Lord set her free; in principle now she has part in this great company of priests and ministers of our God. The broken hearted person is healed and set up to serve.

Then it says, "to preach to captives deliverance".

• The woman in the synagogue, in chapter 13, needed help. She was a woman who had been in and out of that synagogue I should say, for eighteen years. She was a kind of religious exhibit. I do not think they wanted to part with her at all.

• I do not think that the rulers of the synagogue ever wanted to see that woman healed. She seems to me to have been a cause of attraction, something eccentric, but which is really not of God at all.

• In fact, the Lord speaks of this woman as having been bound by Satan for eighteen years. Her head was bowed down and she could in no wise lift up herself. She had been bound like that for eighteen years by Satan – something governmental, perhaps.

• The Lord comes in, He was fulfilling this part of His ministry "to preach to captives deliverance". And He called to her; not called her to Him. No;
  • Jesus "called to her, and said to her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity", Luke 13: 12.

• He followed that up by putting both His hands upon her. The Lord does these wonderful things; He is not attending to two things at once, He put both His hands on her; she is the sole object of His gracious attention at that wonderful moment. And immediately her back was straightened, she stood upright and glorified God.

We may have to endure the withering indignation and criticism of such persons as these rulers of the synagogue, nominal religionists, as we may call them. But if we have had our backs straightened and are standing upright and praising God, we need not heed the indignation. We can leave that to the Lord, Who says "Hypocrites!"

• We may know it, but He says it. He calls their own attention to their own doings, and says of this woman that Satan had bound her, but He had loosed her. She was a daughter of Abraham, she was going forward in faith, taking part in the service of God – she glorified God.

• Luke presents a daughter of Abraham and a son of Abraham, persons who were marked by active faith, which expresses itself in every needed way, including the service of God. We need faith in taking part in the assembly; we may not be able to say much the first time, but we shall say more the next time. The service will increase.

• The Lord sets the woman entirely free and apparently the matter influences others, for it says that all the people rejoiced, and the adversaries were silenced in shame. And so the Lord Jesus acts in the fulness of His own personal service in order to set us free.

Next we find, giving "to the blind sight". Blind Bartimaeus comes to mind, sitting by the wayside, hearing that Jesus was passing by, and he called out.

• This is one of the outstanding incidents of Scripture, for there are very few persons in Scripture who are described as having their eyes opened. Some eyes are shut because of sleep, some because Satan has blinded them.

• Bartimaeus is a man who wants to see, and will not be put off. He cries. The Lord stood, and as Bartimaeus stood before Him, He said,
  • "What wilt thou that I shall do to thee?", Luke 18: 41.

• Have you ever heard the Lord say that? It is like the Lord giving us a blank cheque on the bank of heaven. You would like to see some of the dear brethren fill that cheque in.
  • "Lord, that I may see".

    He says, "See: thy faith has healed thee",

• and he glorified God and followed Jesus. This is the Lord's service in recovering sight to the blind.

• But, as stated, there are not very many people in scripture whose eyes are opened. It is surely for us take the matter seriously. But what a cheering one is this, coming under the service of grace, the Lord setting him up completely as one who can see and follow, and serve.

• The Lord help us to serve. His servants are going to see His face. Not that we shall not all see His face, but His servants are singled out
  • "they shall see his face", Revelation 22: 4.

• The bondmen shall see the One who Himself became a Bondman. He is more than a Bondman, but He has known what bondman's service is. How blessed to get your eyes opened now in view of that wonderful day, to see things spiritually now, literally then.

The last item mentioned is, "to send forth the crushed delivered". I think of those two souls in the last chapter of this book, full of dashed hopes, disappointments, false beliefs, and rumours,

• "We had hoped"

• they said to the Lord as He drew near to them. The Lord had said to them first of all,
  • "What discourses are these?", Luke 24: 17.

  • They said, "Thou sojournest alone in Jerusalem, and dost not know what has taken place in it?"

    Jesus said, "What things?"

• And they told Him partly what had happened, and partly what they trusted. How graciously the Lord served them, to take them out of the realm of uncertain things, and to have them fastened to the Person
  • He began: "O senseless and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?", Luke 24: 25-26.

• This reminds us that the Scriptures to guide us as to what is personal to Christ and to give us a certain expectation of what is to take place, and we have no right to expect anything different.

• As the Lord spoke to these two, He just warmed their hearts, and as they drew near home, He had secured them completely. He just gained them, so that they invited Him in; "Stay with us" they said.

• Wonderful service, dear brethren, that the Lord so gets hold of us, even when He has to rebuke us, that as He goes along, we feel we cannot do without Him any more. We must have Him in our houses; having had Him on our way, and give Him the chief place. He sat at the head of the table. He broke the bread. He was made known to them as He did it, then He vanished out of their sight.

• He had gone with them, now they were to go with Him. The crushed were sent forth delivered, and they brought the best possible contribution into the meeting that followed.
  • "And rising up the same hour, they returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven, and those with them, gathered together, saying, The Lord is indeed risen and has appeared to Simon", verses 33-34.

• Then they added their part, and what a part! How He had been with them and
  • "was made known to them in the breaking of bread".

• The choicest portion that came into that meeting came through the Lord's service to two who were bruised and crushed, but now sent forth, delivered. They are now in the meeting where the service is going on.

• So, we may be encouraged. The Lord is not ceasing to serve; we well understand that, though His formal place is on the throne, yet He draws near to us. In any case that needs serving now, the Lord would be nearby just to minister all that grace could furnish, so as to set us up completely for the service of God. That is the Lord's personal service.

The matter of the year is what is before us and how it is filled out.

• In Deuteronomy 24 we are reminded of the present time. The first verse refers to Israel, a man who had taken a wife and she had found no favour in his eyes, because he found some uncleanness in her.
  • "He shall write her a letter of divorce, and give it into her hand, and send her out of his house".

• What a description of Israel. God had taken on Israel, He would have been a husband to her.
  • He said, "I was a husband unto them", Jeremiah 31: 32.

• They disobeyed Him, they disregarded Him. He sent His messengers, His prophets, He rose up betimes, sending as it says, until there was no remedy. And Israel had to go. She was, as it were, sent out of His house.

• Verse 5 brings in the assembly in principle. The man has taken a new wife, and
  • "he shall not go out with the army, neither shall any kind of business be imposed upon him; he shall be free for his house one year, and shall gladden his wife whom he hath taken".

• What a remarkable prophetic statement in regard to the assembly. The Lord now having taken on the assembly, what an encouragement we see for our time, that the Lord is giving up the whole of this year,
  • "the acceptable year of the Lord",

• in order to pay attention, without let or hindrance, to the assembly regarded as His wife. He is not yet taking on the nations, it is not that they are completely forgotten, but He is not dealing with them actively, neither is He now dealing with Israel, although they are never out of His eye or His mind,
  • but He is dealing with the assembly. He is gladdening the heart of the assembly all the time.

• He has not yet taken up conflict, going to war, He has not yet had business imposed upon Him, the administration of the world to come, and so on. He is free to gladden the heart of the assembly. It is a question whether we are conscious of that, and understand how great and how eclipsing the assembly is to Christ.

Paul had the impression of the assembly, and its greatness to Jesus, as being shone upon from the glory. While quiet, separate and secluded for three days, I believe he got the full impression of this. The Lord said to him

• "Why dost thou persecute me", Acts 9: 4,

• and doubtless it came into Paul's mind that those disciples of the Lord were the "me". They were Himself, in this sense, and He was by them. He protected them completely, by striking down this great opposer.

• He did more than that, when He shut his eyes, as Jehovah shut the eyes of the Syrians in Elisha's time, it was only to flood his soul with grace. So Ananias came along to him saying brother, and I believe what happened in Paul's soul at that time was that he apprehended what the assembly meant to Christ, as a bride, as the new wife.

• So Paul went out into the gentile world to secure a bride for Christ. That was his mission. He says to the Corinthians
  • "I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ", 2 Corinthians 11: 2.

• That was the burden of his ministry. Does that underlie our ministry? As having an opportunity to speak, do we want the saints in marital link with Christ, and do we hold them thus in our minds?

• Paul caught the spirit of his Master, prophetically portrayed in this scripture, Christ having nothing else before Him for the whole year; that is, the whole of this time, this era, except to serve the assembly.

• I would say too, that unless we have the assembly before us, all that we do will be deficient.

• It is note-worthy that the assembly is married to Christ before He comes out in judgment, and in the administration of things here. Revelation 19. Thus we need to know the love of Christ in this marital setting before properly taking our part in assembly administration.

So also in Exodus 21, the bondman plainly declares his love for his wife before details of practical adjustment are taken up with others; the assembly must come first. This is the filling out of the year from love's point of view. How attractive, dear brethren.

• And if that is what is in the mind of the Lord Jesus, it may well be in our minds too. We may well come into it where there is the practical expression of the assembly enjoyably among the brethren.

And then God has a portion in this year. I speak now of our last passage. God has a land it says,

• "a land which Jehovah thy God careth for; the eyes of Jehovah thy God are constantly upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year".

• It is in a very interesting place, this verse, between the tenth and twelfth chapters of Deuteronomy.

• In chapter 10 Moses has been told to hew two tables of stone, like unto the first; that is the saints are now in mind as formed under the hand of the true Mediator. In chapter 12, God has a place where He has chosen to put His name and He wants us to know that too. And in this very chapter 11, Moses says,
  • "I speak not with your children who have not known … for your eyes have seen all the great work of Jehovah which he hath done", verses 2, 7.

• This should appeal to us as being intelligent persons who understand the ways of God, so that our eyes and our attention may be on the land of God's love, the land of His purpose.

• For us, I believe, it would be the land, so to speak, of the heavenly calling, where God will yet have us all, where every influence is heavenly, where it is not a question of Egyptian working, with the foot – which was hard work.

• It is a question of the heavenly heritage, and the heavenly rain, and the benign countenance of our blessed God shining upon this land from the beginning of the year to the end of it.

• If you should ask where the land is, I should have to say that strictly for us, we are waiting for it, it is heaven.

• But if you should ask for a foretaste of it I would point to the saints of the assembly, such as are here now. Such a gathering as this, where the water brooks are, the fresh flowing of the Spirit; where the hills are, the heights, the valleys, the depths; all kinds of moving streams in the plenitude of the earnest of the Spirit. All this kind of thing is to be found in the assembly.

• The assembly is the anteroom to heaven. You will find in it what you will find in heaven, a perfect foretaste in the Spirit of what we shall enjoy so soon.

Now it is God's land and He is not allowing anyone to spoil it. In another setting there are enemies that have to be turned out, but from this point of view God is looking after His land in love, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, His eye and His heart are always upon it.

• What beautiful things to go in for, dear brethren, to have a living connection with all this – the Lord's service – that there are persons equipped through the year, equipped to serve.

• And the assembly, that is the marvellous object of His own personal affections, is to be used as a vessel for the service of God eternally. This is the land where things grow, where the heavenly Father's plants grow up, where the sons are.

These things are to fill out the year and we would say to one another that the year is far spent. We know that the Lord's coming is to be before us.

• Christ being the Head, the saints being the body, what is moving in the Head is reflected in the body. It may not be in full intelligence as to some things, but what is moving there is to be known by us.

• And I believe you would find that this kind of feeling is moving now amongst the saints, which means that the year is nearly over and the Lord is quickly coming.

May we fill out the remaining moments of it gloriously to the pleasure of divine Persons!

The night-time will go on until the Lord comes, and this may probably not be very long because the day star has already arisen in the hearts of the saints. That is, the day is near at hand on the principle of hope.

Now starting with God in this great matter helps me to refer a little to the way God has revived the truth amongst us during our own time. The central verse for our consideration being,

• "Then the Lord awoke as one out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth aloud by reason of wine".

• It is a simile, of course; it does not mean that God was ever literally asleep. It does not mean that God was ever overcome with anything, even by the wickedness of Israel, or ourselves typically.

• It is a simile to enable us to understand that God changed His tactics, changed His approach, that He started some new thing.

• Moreover, the Psalm being Maschil of Asaph, leads us to ask ourselves a great many questions as to our moral bearings. Maschil meaning instruction, and Asaph being the man who always raises moral issues, and leads us into the sanctuary to get before God and to find the answers there.

• He himself had been misled, as he tells us. In Psalm 73 he tells us he had misunderstood things, that at one period he was well nigh carried away by the prosperity of the wicked, that his steps had well nigh slipped, and that he was as a brute beast before God. That is what he came to.

Asaph, one of the great Levites figuring prominently in the service of God, reminds us that even the most spiritual amongst us have to find their own level, and conduct themselves in their service on moral lines, as well as according to their gifts.

• So Asaph in this psalm writes about God's way with Israel, His gentle, careful, powerful ways, and also about their response, a matter very much applying to our day, God has been very gracious with His people.

• Difficulty after difficulty has arisen, even from the first century, for we read of John saying, in the first century,
  • "Even now there have come many antichrists", 1 John 2: 18.

• Think of it. Why should God go on with that? But he does. John says moreover,
  • "the whole world lies in the wicked one", 1 John 5: 19;

• and yet God has gone on. What a blessed God we have, to go on all this time. And I say these things to bring the parallel of Israel's history into our own time; for God has been very tender. It says, for instance,
  • "He made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock; And he led them safely, so that they were without fear", verses 52-53.

• This is our God, this is what He has done.

But then the other part of the story is the response. What have the saints, speaking generally, done by way of response to God?

• As we look at the history of the assembly, and read the Lord's seven addresses to the assemblies, and ponder what He has to say, beginning with
  • "I know thy works",

• we discover that the Lord has been scrutinising all the time.
  • "I have against thee;"

• that is a very gentle way of putting it, for He says what He can that is good; but the answer that the Lord gives after His scrutiny is a faithful one.

• And it is a history including downfall, and breakdown, until the end of the chapter, where the Lord is seen outside, standing, knocking on the door; the people are inside, as it were, saying they do not want Him.

Now in order that we may have the spirit of these things intelligently before us, I am using the history of Israel to indicate that God had great justification at the time when it says,

• "He forsook the tabernacle at Shiloh, the tent where he had dwelt among men, And gave his strength into captivity, and his glory into the hand of the oppressor".

• It refers to God giving up the ark, and allowing it to go into the hand of the Philistines, in Samuel's time.

• Samuel personally seems to be withdrawn in those chapters in the early part of the book; from chapter 4 onwards he is not prominent. God withdraws him, perhaps so as to allow the true state of the people to come out.

• Sometimes God does that; He withdraws His servants. He put Paul in prison; He put Peter in prison, and put John in limitations. He withdraws His servants so that the true state of things may come out.

So we find that God gave the ark into the hands of the Philistines. I suppose it corresponds largely in christendom with the time when there was no real outstanding ministry of Christ.

• For centuries there was nothing much that we can point to in the history of the assembly to enable us to see the full thoughts of God in Christ, or the service of God. He had, as it were, allowed things to lapse, outwardly.

• They had gone down to a very poor level; and the resulting confusion and wickedness, I believe, touches God's heart, that things should get into such a state, when He had such great thoughts in His own mind for Christ and His own, for Christ and the assembly.

• We may say, that He awoke like a man out of sleep, like a mighty man that shouteth aloud by reason of wine.

• Even in our own time He raised up a man more than a century ago to take the sword from end to end of christendom, to issue the challenge of God's word against everything that was wrong.

• It was like Moses' command to go in and out of the camp from gate to gate, and slay every man his brother. Exodus 32: 27.

Thus God has, in these last days, brought back a state of things like that of which the psalmist speaks, forsaking the old order, choosing something new.

• Bringing us into great things – Judah (praise) – Mount Zion (the assembly) – His sanctuary like the heights, and great high levels of the truth – and David, the Lord Jesus Christ in the character of the Beloved.

• That is the present time, dear brethren. I do not think I am departing from the meaning of the truth when I say that the revival at the beginning of the last century is the fulfilment in an anti-typical way, of God awaking out of sleep, and bringing the best before us, so that we can enjoy it in our time.

• As we read down the Psalm, we find that things are there which have a most excellent name. It is Mount Zion, and David, and the heights, and there is feeling and tenderness and skill. This is what is going on.

Now Asaph, whose name means a gatherer – a very suggestive name for our time, the assembly time – would rejoice in reporting this great and powerful revival which has brought the very best before us in relation to the person of Christ, and His love, and the assembly, and the high levels of the truth and the skill in feeding God's people.

• So we may well ask one another whether we have awakened to see the kind of time in which we are. The Lord Jesus said on one occasion, commenting on the people's ability to discern the face of the sky and the earth,
  • "How is it then that ye do not discern this time?", Luke 12: 56.

• This time! We would have to say, Do these things mean anything to us? Do we react in a living way? Are we having part in this great system of elevation and glory that God has brought in in the way of revival?

• This record is in the third book of Psalms, which gives us an outlook upon all the people of God. It begins,
  • "Truly God is good to Israel",

• – all the people of God. Surely under this type we can say everything is ours. Ours is the tribe of Levi; ours is the service; ours are the oracles. Everything belongs to us, but let us remember that it is all based on moral features.

• We cannot get anything spiritually lofty, unless we approach it through the moral avenues of Asaph and the sons of Korah, the great men in this book.

Now I speak of the Lord's awakening, and I turn to Mark's gospel for it, because there we have in a peculiar way the greatness of His Person.

• What is really in mind as to the Lord's awakening is that He is regarded as not actively intervening. He may awaken and intervene, but speaking in general, His intervention is not active for the moment, except on the part of those who belong to Him as being of His own.

• So I just bring this passage before you as suggestive of our own times. It is the evening time; it is the end of the day.
  • "And on that day, when evening was come, he says to them, Let us go over to the other side".

• It is the end of the day, when all the results are coming in, and there is not much time left. The Lord's supper itself suggests that; supper is the last meal of the day, when there is nothing to follow but rest and ease and comfort.

• That is what is in mind, and that is partly what is in mind in the Lord's supper; that there is nothing more to come, but what is peaceful and glorious, and heavenly, and eternal.

• Anyone who takes the Lord's supper, and sits with the brethren in sincerity, will tell you that that is in mind. That is through grace our experience; without our being taken off the earth, for we do not move literally from where we are.

• Christ comes to us, and as He comes to us He glorifies us, in living links with Himself, and we may at the end of the day, by way of His Supper, enjoy the most glorious outgoings of the evening.
  "The outgoings of the morning and evening"

• are spoken of in terms of rejoicing. Psalm 65: 8. We are in the time of the outgoings of the evening; and we are coming into the best.

• Not to partake of the Lord's supper is not only to miss the best, but to miss what I might call love's command, and the Lord does not appreciate that. He appreciates our response to the command of love, and He answers it by giving us the best, at the outgoings of the evening.

Now this matter we have read of is not exactly the privilege side of our tasting what is heavenly, although I would say it is included, in a sense.

• But it is a matter of travelling over to the other side, in the way of testimony, meaning that we are regarded here as being on a journey, not as settlers, but as heavenly pilgrims and strangers.

• We cannot be pilgrims unless we are strangers; the scripture says
  • "strangers and pilgrims".

• The pilgrim depends upon the stranger; the pilgrim is the one who is making a journey, and he has something in view, but he has not reached it yet. He is on the way, and what helps him to keep on the way is the fact that nothing detains him; he is a stranger here.

• Moses, as to time, was detained in Midian for forty years, but he was a pilgrim, and whenever he could, he moved towards the best. If he had a flock of sheep to look after, he took them to the mount of God. He had something good in his mind; he was on a pilgrimage; and what helped him was that he was a stranger, as he said
  • "a sojourner in a foreign land", Exodus 2: 22.

• If you are a stranger to the world, the world is a strange land to you. That is what it should be, and that helps us.

Now I refer to Mark 4, so that on this pilgrimage, as I might call it, we might be definite. We can say humbly that the Lord has directed it, and the Lord is with us. He may not appear, as in this incident He is asleep in the boat, but He is with us.

• There are many things that Satan raises, like the great, fluid, uncontrollable elements of wind and sea. He raises them to impede the progress of the ship of the testimony, and to overwhelm the occupants, including our Lord Jesus if such a thing were possible.

• The waves come into the ship; and if you read the three narratives in Matthew and Mark and Luke, you will be amazed to see the circumstances. It was evidently a very rough and stormy time. But the Lord was asleep in the stern, on a pillow, and we have to learn that; indeed it would not be of faith unless we did learn that.

• If the Lord were to appear publicly, as I might say, at every frequent interval to allay our fears, where would faith be? Faith is called for in activity, as Hebrews 11 shows; it is active faith; not just a definition of faith,
  • "the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen", verse 1.

• But faith is active! By it elders obtained a good report and the writer speaks to us about them; Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham.
  • "By faith Abraham, being called …", verse 8, answered and went out.

    "By faith Abraham, when tried …", verse 17, answered also to that.

• So it is active faith, and our faith is to be active, not just something spoken about amongst the brethren. It is to fasten itself on the goal, and according to the passage before us I might say that the goal is the other side, where divine Persons would have us arrive.

• We may not immediately see the reason, but we are to reach the place in mind. It is a question of our making for something in a definite way. That is, whether we are going to see through a matter of some truth; or whether we are going to see through our earthly pathway to heaven; or whether we are going to see through an exercise to the end.

• Whichever way you like to look at it, it is a question of our getting to the other side. And the Lord will be with us; but He may not be active, He may not intervene, but He will be there. Which of us here could not substantiate that?

• So our faith is tried, and the faith of these disciples, was tried in this matter. They took Jesus with them.
  • "They take him", that is the interesting thing, "as he was", it says, "in the ship".

• I do not pursue the narrative in detail. It will be filled out as you read it, and meditate upon it. But there came a time, when faith broke down; and that is a sad time in our histories, dear brethren.

• It does not mean that the Lord breaks down. It does not mean that He fails us and He will never be with us again.
  • "If we are unfaithful, he abides faithful, for he cannot deny himself", 2 Timothy 2: 13.

• A wonderful word, sobering but comforting! Faith broke down there, as I suppose it has broken down in all our histories. It has broken down in the history of the assembly publicly, and is still broken down, for people demand something visible, just as they asked Aaron to make gods to go before them. Faith is not sufficient.

In this incident they woke the Lord because there was no relief, no intervention, and the Lord says, Where is your faith?

• "Why are ye thus fearful?"

  "Awaking up he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Silence; be mute. And the wind fell, and there was a great calm".

• The rebuke was tender from the mouth of such a Person, no less than the Son of God, but underneath all the externals He would have them, and us, understand that He will go with us. There is no need to awaken Him; He will go with us. Could any floods have drowned the Son of God? No trial or testing diverts Him in His service to the saints.

• In a veiled way, see Him minister to Abraham under the figure of Melchisedec; see Him stand with the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, in Daniel's time; and now in the boat, and according to Matthew's account, on the water, coming to them.

• If He is with us, shall we not go through? Therefore cannot faith be active? That is the question that is left with us as the result of a narrative like this. We have to call upon ourselves, that faith may be here.
  • "When the Son of man comes, shall he indeed find faith on the earth?", Luke 18: 8.

• Each of us has to answer that.

Now I speak finally of ourselves and I just split the last reference up into two parts, in order to speak of two sides of the matter.

• I read from Judges, in connection with Samson in order to call attention to the time, the darkest hour, midnight, when, in the history of the assembly, energy was revived in the power of Nazariteship.

• We have a man here, Samson, a distinctive man. His name means something like that, a distinctive kind of man. He is here, as it were, hidden away under the burden of a great many Philistine weights laid upon him. Samson is indicative of the history of the saints, and in a declining day; the Judges being a book of declension.

• But there are some very bright parts in it, and this is one; very concentrated, very bright. We may look upon Samson as indicative of the manhood of the testimony and of the assembly, but being weakened by such undesirable, unclean associations as are suggested in this woman, who is, in principle, completely against God and playing into the hands of the enemy, with treacherous affections completely subverted.

• For the moment, it looks as if everything is going the way of the enemy, but at midnight God brought about a change.

I refer again to the revival in our own times, when the midnight hour came. It says,

• "He arose at midnight, and seized the doors of the gate of the city".

• Think of that. No ordinary gates were these! The gate speaks in scripture mostly of the administrative activity of a place. Here it is, so to speak, the gate of the harlot city, reminding us of the great, crushing influences that have been brought to bear upon the church, the Lord's assembly. All kinds of assumed authority and human ideas; these are the works of the Philistines, the great mind of man.

• The great havoc which has been wrought, for instance, with claims to grant absolution, the forgiveness of sins, the indulgences, every kind of wickedness allowed and provided for in the religious profession. Think of these weights which have been brought like bars and posts, all bound upon the man who, though so weak, was a Nazarite.

• But here God arranged that at a certain hour, this should all be shaken off, and it was so. Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight seized the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of the mountain, that is before Hebron.

• What a suggestive passage! God allowing the Nazarite, as it were, to bring all the counsel of hades into the presence of His own purpose, as typified in Hebron.
  • "Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt", Numbers 13: 22,

• we are told, and here is a man who exposes the great power of the harlot's city; in principle Babylon. He exposes all this machinery, the crushing machinery of the harlot's city, by exposing it to the pure light of the purpose of God, suggestively brought before us in the type of Hebron,
  • "the top of the mountain that is before Hebron".

Well, I believe, dear brethren, that as we think over this we shall find that, in a certain sense, the book of Revelation comes suggestively before us. The fall of Babylon then will be literal, and the shining of God's heavenly city will come into display.

• The fall of Babylon is not yet complete literally, but it is to be morally so with us and in us. It works by way of Nazariteship, by way of complete consecration to the Lord, separation to the Lord.
  • The "special vow of a Nazarite" in Numbers 6,

• is for man or woman. Let us note it; consecrated to the Lord, so that not only is there victory here at the darkest hour, but Nazariteship is the way to God's blessing brought in upon His people, as at the end of that chapter.

• You may say, Does Nazariteship exist today? It exists in persons who have presented their bodies to God, and so I have to ask myself, Am I a Nazarite, really or just in name? Have I really presented my body to God? That is the beginning of it.

• If I present my body without recall to God, then all the testimony that lies connected with that body will go through and God's end will be reached.

Now that is one side of what God has brought to pass, and the other side is the full awakening to the glory of Christ. So I have referred to these verses in Luke 9, at the moment of the transfiguration. It says,

• "And as he prayed the fashion of his countenance became different and his raiment white and effulgent.

  "And lo, two men talked with him, who were Moses and Elias, who, appearing in glory, spoke of his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.

  "But Peter and those with him" [that is James and John] "were oppressed with sleep: but having fully awoke up they saw his glory, and the two men who stood with him".

• This leads me now, dear brethren, just to leave with you, what I believe to be the prominent note in the ministry of the present time, which has returned to the Person of Christ, but with the assembly added.

• So it is suggestively said here, Jesus, and His glory, and the two men who stood with Him. The two men are more than two men; that is to say, they are the witness that the saints are going to appear in glory with Christ.

• It is just, I believe, the complete witness of the saints in their heavenly glory with Christ, and I believe that is the note that is in the ministry now. Not only are we to exercise ourselves as to Nazariteship, but we have this privilege on the principle of being fully awake. This is what we shall see as we are morally and spiritually awake.

• As awake, we may contribute a great deal as to this great matter of the glorious Person of Christ, and the part that the saints are to have with Him in glory. It does not say here that the Lord awoke them, they awoke, meaning that there is something moving, living and powerful now. May we not say that Paul has awakened us all with his heavenly ministry?
  • "Wherefore he says, Wake up, thou that sleepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee", Ephesians 5: 14.

• Here Christ is in all His glory, as in the Ephesian position, shining upon us. The expression "the Christ" sometimes embraces more than Jesus personally, including all His interests, all that is attached to Him in the glorious company of the saints. Hence the word "the Christ shall shine upon thee" prepares our hearts for His glorious surroundings in the assembly.

God has waited now nearly two thousand years to reach the great end, nearly two millennia; think of that! to bring in the great light of this ministry.

• t has appeared before, it appeared at the beginning, and then it started reappearing, according to the record in Matthew 25: 6,
  • "Behold, the bridegroom";

• it began to reappear, but not many understood it at first, nor shared it, just a few.

• If you had gone into those early meetings at Plymouth and Dublin, you would not have found great assemblies such as we know now, with many brethren taking part and speaking to the Lord intelligently about the assembly.

• God has waited, and now He is reaching His end. We are very near the end literally, and it is a matter of being fully awake and seeing God's end and His great thoughts. God has come back now finally to the greatest of His thoughts, embracing Christ and the assembly.

• The ministry bears the stamp of God's final operations, and as being fully awake, awaking out of sleep, we may be in it and enjoy it all, enjoy the best at the end.