The Coming of the Lord
and other
Ministry by P. H. Hardwick
– Part Four

G.A.R.

The Lord seems to bring one feature of the expanse in at His first mention of the assembly, as if to show that there would have to be the balance in our minds between the assembly and the gates of hades. He says,

• "I will build my assembly, and hades' gates shall not prevail against it", Matthew 16: 18.

• No doubt, to any thoughtful person, that would have been something to ponder deeply, that the Lord should mention the gates of hades in the same sentence as the assembly. Whether Peter understood it then or not, we understand it.

• We understand that there is designed against the assembly a great body of wicked politics, described in several ways, for instance as the
  • "authority of darkness", Colossians 1: 13,

    and its personnel, its cabinet, as

    "the universal lords of this darkness", Ephesians 6: 12.

• The position of it is of wicked spirits in heavenly places, and the outgoings of it politically are described as "hades gates", that is its administration. I mention that, dear brethren, to show that it is a very positive matter.

• Darkness is not just the absence of light. It is a great realm which is ruled over by Satan, and in which he propagates things.

• He has spiritual propaganda of darkness, full of accusation, and I would say that everyone here who is a believer, and especially an exercised believer, understanding his place in the assembly, would be, at some time or other, the object of some satanic attack.

Now in choosing these scriptures I did not wish to be exhaustive about them, but just to give an impression.

• In the first we have a man who is being tested as to his circumstances and his family, as well as to what there is in his own soul. It brings the matter down to each one of us individually.

• Moreover, the great matter depicted in this book, especially in the early part of it, is set on by God who described Job as an upright man, eschewing evil. "My servant" He says. So we have to bow in the presence of that. God has every right to test and challenge His own work and His own people and He will do it with us all.

• But He first of all draws Satan's attention to this, knowing that Satan would attack and would accuse. His name is Satan, "the adversary", not 'an adversary', and so the early conversation here shows just what I have said that Satan is really accusing God, and alongside of his accusation of God he is accusing Job.

• He implies that God arranged Job's circumstances in such a way that nobody could get at him. The divine answer means that God is willing to test that. He allows Satan to affect all his circumstances, not to touch him personally. Satan does so, but all under God's control, of course.

These animals that were ploughing, the oxen and the asses, were smitten, and of the servants only one escaped to tell Job the story.

• "While he was yet speaking", there came another servant to say that the sheep were smitten, and while he was yet speaking, there came a servant to say that the camels were gone.

• This is very striking, I suppose, as we consider other narratives in the Scriptures about camels. For if man has a camel he can get out of his distressing circumstances, but when God allows Satan to take the camels as well, then he must remain where he is.

• Finally Job's family is stricken. How touching this narrative is of what happened to an upright man, God's servant, eschewing evil, serving his family, offering up burnt-offerings every morning for them.

• Think of God allowing Satan to handle that. How would we come out of such an experience? Job came out of it in victory. We are told he
  • "sinned not, nor ascribed anything unseemly to God", Job 1: 22, a marvellous result!

Then there is the second chapter of this drastic discipline, where God hands to Satan Job's body, except that he is not to take his life, with the resulting circumstances, illness, the botch, terrible disease.

• See Job in this terrible condition, sitting in a heap of ashes, in torment, and the woman, his wife, his companion adding to his troubles. "Curse God and die", she says. There is something in all this for us, that we might understand where we are with God, in our circumstances and in our very bodies.

• God gives some of us troubles in our bodies which we are not able to get rid of. We can send them off a little, but we can never get rid of them. Some here would know that. God does it, I believe, to keep us humble, to keep us near Him, to test our links with Himself and to test the links of other people.

• How do our wives and husbands take these things? This wife said "Curse God and die", Job 2: 9. But God was testing His work and Job comes out in the first case with a note of worship. He says there that he came out naked from his mother's womb, he brought nothing into the world, he could take nothing out and he worships God.
  • "Jehovah gave", he said, "Jehovah hath taken away; blessed be the name of Jehovah", Job 1: 21

• What a man! I wonder whether our spirituality would go as far as that? And at the second onslaught in regard of his body, he said
  • "We have also received good from God, and should we not receive evil?", Job 2: 10.

• Wonderful thing.

Now I would like just to say a word as to how it was all met. There was weakness in Job, you see, and we have all to humble ourselves here, finding moral weaknesses in our souls.

• The weakness with Job was that, underneath it all, he was justifying himself and blaming God. His words were one thing and himself was another, and so, when his friends came, these three friends, they found a very ready material in a way for all their speeches, a good ear. They flattered Job and even Job at the end became disgusted with it, he says,
  • "Grievous comforters are ye all", Job 16: 2.

• Grievous comforters, a devastating word to us, if we are trying to comfort a person in sorrow, without reality ourselves; we must be real to bring in comfort.

• In the end Elihu, the young spiritual brother, standing by respectfully waiting till his elder brethren had ceased, now speaks. I have a feeling that Elihu wrote the book of Job, or at any rate a part of it. Read what Elihu has to say as he heard Job justifying himself.

Now, Elihu said, I have waited, and now I can speak, a man just like themselves, but in his speech he brought God in, and he had much knowledge of God to bring in.

• He says, "I am full of matter", Job 32: 18.

• The others might think it, but he was it. "I am full of matter".
  • He says, "Why dost thou strive against him?"

• – against God. For He giveth not account of any of His matters. We must not demand of God to explain Himself. He does not have to give an account of what He is doing.

• What a start, you see, to connect a suffering person with a God who can do as He likes, and raise the challenge as to whether after all, we are not striving against Him. And so he goes on.

• I do not pursue this, but it is the matter of the satanic attack, being met by God Himself, but by way of ministry, the ministry of the truth through a servant. So we want to be in the presence of the ministry, and of spiritual brethren all the time, or as often as we can.

• Here is a sick man, Job, but he was in the presence of one who was bringing God in in an intelligent way, for Elihu means 'Whose God is He'. Job was brought through really by the utterances, the ministerial utterances of Elihu, who brought him into the presence of God.

It is a remarkable thing that God used Elihu's ministry to come in Himself.

• I believe that would be the true test of ministry, whether God could link Himself on with it. One might give a word, but would God link Himself on with it.

• God linked Himself on with Elihu's word and I would like Him to link Himself on with my word now. That would be an honour indeed, but would be what was proper and right in connection with ministry. So presently God comes in, as if to say, 'I can follow up what Elihu said'.

• He answered Job out of the whirlwind and when He had finished there was not much of Job left. He did not have another word to say. He put his hand on his mouth he repented, he abhorred himself in dust and ashes, he was a recovered man and the satanic attack had failed utterly, for Job was fully recovered, reinstated now as a man going on with God.

• It is a wonderful thing, dear brethren, that an attack like that should fail as being met along these lines. It may be that in our own way somebody here may find that there is something going on of that kind. The truth of it is that God is going to reach His end in the matter.

• James speaks about the endurance of Job, and about the end of the Lord with him. That is the full victory reached and Job is brought to correspond with God's end. Job is set up again, reinstated, full of substance, a wonderful monument to moral victory, in the presence of all this attack.

Now I would speak of David for a moment, because David here in 1 Chronicles is where we all are; he is being recorded in a history which speaks of recovery.

• This is not in the books of Samuel or Kings. Chronicles speaks of days of recovery, the narrative being written after the people had not only been taken away, but brought back. It is the narrative gone over with a priestly hand in the days when the captivity had been turned, and that is where we are now.

• The history of the saints, the history of the testimony, the truth of the present time, is being recorded as we may say by priestly hands, with the accuracy of the scribe, and with all the priestly feelings which belong to the full recovery of God's people under His hand.

• So we are entitled to speak of David now in a very delightful set of circumstances, right in the midst of the glory of the recovery. The ark is in its place, Christ come back into His glory, with the service of God fully set on and added to, in refinement and spiritually delicate feeling, in the music.

• And here in the midst of it all Satan rises up and sets on an attack through the one who had been the instrument of all the recovery, namely David.

No man cared for the service of God like David, no man cared for the person of the Lord, typified in the ark, like David.

• There was no shepherd like him, no worshipper like him, no warrior like him, or psalmist, or lover. David is wonderful as a model before our eyes and yet here he is the tool of Satan. What a sobering thing!
  • "Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel".

• What lay beneath it was the clerical principle. David saying, as it were, 'This is my people. Let me see how great they are'. That kind of thing – oh let us beware of it.

• It does not take much to see through it; I may blind myself, but even the unspiritual can see through it, for Joab could see through it, even Joab, wicked man as he was. It does not need a spiritual man to see through it.

• Gehazi could see certain things that needed attention, Joab saw certain things which needed attention and so we need to beware doubly lest in some kind of pride we attach things to ourselves amongst the people of God. We know the thoughts of pride which would come into our hearts.

And so the people are numbered, and God now comes into it and offers David this solemn set of alternatives, three years, as it says, of famine; or three months fleeing before his enemies; or three days of pestilence and the divine sword.

• Now David is here having to do with God. Satan, you may say, set it on, yes, but David was the tool, for this is the record, the divine record in these otherwise bright days, and the truth is out.

• Well now, without going into detail again, how is it to be met? We find that there is still something which God can use for meeting such things. Amongst other things he uses our power to calculate rightly. That is a good thing, never to lose our power of calculation, soberly turning things over, in the presence of God and weighing things up without panic. So he said to the seer Gad,
  • "I am in a great strait: let me fall, I pray thee, into the hand of Jehovah, for his mercies are very great; but let me not fall into the hand of man", verse 13.

• He has power to calculate, even when it is a question of a penalty. May we never lose that, dear brethren, for it means that the Spirit is still there and while He may be grieved, He is not quenched.

• And so the penalty comes, the three days' pestilence and sword, and David is there too with the elders, in sackcloth. They are feeling it; they are not stoics; they feel it until the climax comes when David's priestly spirit is again in evidence as he sees the angel hovering over Jerusalem and he speaks to God, bowing down and speaking to God, he says, It was I who did this.
  • "Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? It is I that have sinned and done evil; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, Jehovah my God, be on me and on my father's house; but not on thy people, that they should be smitten", verse 17.

• How touching! That brings the end, a glorious end really, as it will always be, dear brethren, no matter what the attack. It will always be glorious as we judge ourselves in church matters, not merely in individual matters.

• David took to himself what belonged primarily to himself, but there were others ready to feel it with him, and the elders with him also took it on. Is it not a beautiful thing to find a brother or a sister to share such a thing with us?

The story goes to its end, Ornan the Jebusite was there. If David had neglected the people of God, carelessly, Ornan had not neglected them.

• He was threshing wheat and he had the oxen and the implements of wood and offered them all to David, for there was to be an altar there. That is morally the only place for an altar, where people judge themselves. What is the good of an altar which has no moral foundations?

• So David is recovered; he reached an end as God reached it, at this threshing floor and the threshing floor means that you refuse the evil and choose the good, and go on with the good. And that is what David did, for he was able to say at this particular point,
  • "This is the house of Jehovah Elohim, and this is the altar of burnt-offering for Israel", 1 Chronicles 22: 1.

• This really means that all Solomon's beautiful house of glory was built upon the moral base of David's exercise. The foundation was laid at the place where David came to the victorious end of his searching time.
  • He said "This is the house", and Solomon built it there,

    he said "this is the altar", and Solomon placed it there.

• Solomon's foundation in glory is laid upon David's moral foundation at the threshing floor. How marvellous it all is. Think of the gentile coming in, Ornan the Jebusite.

• Our minds of course at once go to Paul, and the nations, and the mystery, and the house, and the service. It all lies there you might say in embryo, a marvellous story.

• Satan is defeated, for things are laid here on a moral foundation which was later to receive a superstructure in untarnishable glory.

Now I just speak of Zechariah, for he helps us again in this matter of remnant days.

• What is in mind here is the service, and the people who are to have part in it. We are introduced in the early part of Zechariah's prophecy to positive things. We may be in days of weakness and days of attack, scattering and comparative fewness of numbers, but we are not in days of defeat, we are in days of what is positive.

• So in the end of chapter 1, God shows four craftsmen; God is going to construct something. It is like the positive features in the darkness of Jude's day, when we read of building ourselves up on our most holy faith, keeping ourselves in the love of God, praying in the Holy Spirit, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

• These are positive features in a poor day, bringing in the operations of divine Persons, in the economy of grace. And God has more to say too. Presently, there was a man with a measuring line and the question is, in chapter 2: 2,
  • "And I" [that is, Zechariah] "said, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof".

• There is something to measure, dear brethren. There is something to measure in all our localities where the assembly is represented and the service goes on. In fact when it comes to our system, the heavenly system, if it is the heavenly city in Revelation there are three dimensions.

• If it is the great realm in Ephesians, there are four dimensions. There is much more to measure in our time than there was in Zechariah's time. But whatever it be, it is positive, and God is going on like that.

Then again, it says the Lord will be a wall of fire round about Jerusalem.

• In the midst of all Satan's attacks, and all that he might use men to do, God, so to speak, says, Where there is a positive thing worth measuring I will surround it with a wall of fire and nobody shall touch it, and the place shall be more and more populated; it will be full of people.

• These are the things that characterise this moment, and now here is the man that stands for the service of God, Joshua, the High Priest. We are not told the reason, but Joshua the High Priest is represented in filthy garments, meaning to say that things are not yet what they should be and Satan is standing there to resist.

• The word 'resist' contains the same root idea as the word 'Satan', so it is a double attack, Satan himself personally and all his resisting powers, a terrible thing.

• This kind of thing may even affect us in the service of God. We may have good readings on the service of God, on our heavenly relationships as brethren of Christ, as the assembly, and as the sons of God, and as worshippers, but then be diverted or discouraged in the actual expression of the service and its joys.

• We may even give up in despair as feeling we are not up to it. Let us beware we do not surrender the position to Satan, so constantly is he ready to attack. Satan is the one who accuses and resists, he knows nothing of love, the truth is not in him, he is a liar and the father of it, as the Lord said.

Now what is there to meet all this? God will meet it, for a positive thing is in God's mind. He says,

• "Take away the filthy garments from off him. And unto him he said, See, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I clothe thee with festival-robes".

• God has done that. It has cost Him much, all the sorrows and the travail we sang of in our hymn, the suffering, death and sin-bearing of Jesus. Somebody has to take the place of the person who should wear the filthy robes, and Jesus has done it. God has done it in Jesus.

• Now the other side is that God has given the Spirit and these festival-robes are, we might say, spiritual and heavenly. Zechariah then continues,
  • "And I said," [have you noted that] "Let them set a pure turban upon his head. And they set the pure turban upon his head, and clothed him with garments; and the Angel of Jehovah stood by".

• Zechariah, the prophet, is fully in line with God so it can be recorded, in scripture, at least I judge that is what it means; it can be recorded that Zechariah said this as adding to the divine word. He was in keeping with God, he knew what would finish the apparel so that the person should be furnished for the full service of God. That is a marvellous thing, and Satan is defeated.

Now, what is the bearing of all this upon ourselves? Clearly it is a matter particularly affecting our minds.

• The turban is on the head, and it is a matter of our minds beginning to take on what is glorious, to think the great thoughts of glory about the saints in relation to the service of God.

• Thus the satanic attack is finished and God has His servants full of dependence, but full of glory. That is where we are today, I would judge, dependent but glorious, and our minds and hearts affected, particularly our minds, in relation to the service of God.

I just read the last passage to show how sympathetically the Lord is in this matter; at this very time when there was so much confronting Him, at the introduction of His supper, there was a traitor's hand on the table with Him.

• It is like the hand of people going on with wrong things, really traitors, partaking of the Lord's supper and going on with their own affairs. That is the idea of a traitor, a word belonging to the kingdom of darkness. How the Lord feels it!
  • "The hand of him that delivers me up is with me on the table", Luke 22: 21.

• In christendom we are in the presence of many an organised system of indulgences, allowing almost anything, whereas our very bodies are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, clean, pure, holy, and our companionships likewise, true and faithful and honouring to the Lord, not the associations of treachery.

Well may we challenge ourselves by saying, "Is it I?"

• On the side of unspeakable grace the Lord could say,
  • "ye are they who have persevered with me in my temptations", verse 28.

• What a gracious word, that the Lord should say that. Have we persevered very much? How touching! And then to Simon He says,
  • "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you," [all of you, not merely thee] "to sift you as wheat; but I have besought for thee", verses 31-32.

• Just think of that, dear brethren; Satan demanding to have us all for sifting
  • "but I have besought for thee".

• The individual is coming under the power and grace and the priestly service of Christ, none of us is forgotten. All of us and each of us are on the breastplate of the High Priest and the testing down here is matched by the love there where the Lord is, for all are on His shoulder and on His heart:
  • "I have besought for thee".

• The Lord is making intercession for us, speaking to God about us, always; that is what intercession means. The Lord Jesus, our great Priest is always freely speaking to God about the saints, because He loves them and supports them and feels for them in their testings; even when they are faint. He said
  • "I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not; and thou, when once thou hast been restored, confirm thy brethren".

Peter says in effect, like many of us, perhaps, 'Lord, you have misjudged me, I am strong Lord, I'll never leave'.

• We are indeed strengthened when we are with the brethren; then we are safe, but when we are alone, then we need the word,
  • "I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not".

    And the Lord continued to the end:

    "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow today before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me", verse 34.

• How unthinkable these things are and yet they are true. Now how is it met? It is met on high by the advocacy and priesthood of Christ, and it is met below by repentance, and the inward feature of bitterness.
  • "Peter, going forth without, wept bitterly", verse 62.

• It is the feature of Marah, real soul searching in genuineness and that is the way back, and now the thing is over. Satan is defeated; he demanded to have you but the sifting is over and the wheat is left, and the wheat means that there are persons there just like Christ.

• He is the corn of wheat and the saints are the much fruit. So the attacks may come, will come, but along these lines they are met and defeated and God is glorified, Christ is magnified, the truth is maintained, and so we shall go on humbled, but in victory to the end.

Many thoughts come into your mind as you think of this.

• The Lord in the epistle to the Hebrews is spoken of as the Mediator of a new covenant; it speaks of what is new, not merely different from everything that has gone before, but abidingly fresh.

• In our links with God we are to be kept fresh, and we never weary of them and God is ever new to us, because the Mediator is always new in His service – fresh and beautiful!

• This is one of the integral parts of the system, the mount Zion system to which we have come, beginning with mount Zion and Jerusalem; we have come to the assembly, and to God, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.

• The Lord Jesus is on high, never weary, there we might say, the keeper of Israel, Psalm 121: 4, and always ministering night and day fresh thoughts in regard of God.

Then one could speak of the assembly too. The persons of the assembly may become weary and some of us do, but the assembly as such has a power which will shine one day in all the great spirit of renewal, a thousand years of reign with Christ not wearying her in the least, nor tarnishing her glory. She is described at the end of it;

• "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband", Revelation 21: 2.

• The thousand years are but the introduction of what shall be eternally true, she will never tarnish, she shall abide. How much that means for Christ, that His bride, His wife, should never weary, should be eternally fresh!

• These are the things we have part in, dear brethren, and the present desire is that we might be reminded of this feature which belongs to us. It is to take hold of us individually and no circumstances are to make any difference; circumstances of limitation and pressure are to make no difference to this because of the Holy Spirit poured out.

• How wonderful those words are, the washing of regeneration; that is to say there is a new kind of age and epoch in view, and we in the light of it, and then as having the Spirit poured out lavishly upon us, we are to be renewed every day. The spirit of this renewal permeates our scriptures.

In Genesis 40 we have men in circumstances of pressure, of limitation, and while our circumstances may not involve very drastic limitation, yet such it is.

• It is described here as a prison and God has in a sense put all His people in it, for we cannot do what we like nowadays! We are not in this prison on account of bad behaviour. I am not thinking of that, but of the way God has of putting His people under limitation.

• Because He has a purpose in it, and according to the narrative and the type, we can say that the Lord Jesus draws near to us in it, with sympathetic purpose in view. Joseph came and looked upon these prisoners and they were sad, and he asked them the reason and he elicited from them that each had had a dream.

• That is, I believe, God had given each man in those circumstances an impression. These dreams are from God. The dreams of Genesis, especially in connection with Joseph, are to be understood and interpreted according to divine impressions. And as Joseph enquires of the butler he finds he is pondering his dream; he says:
  • "Behold, a vine was before me". Christ was before him.

It is perhaps a healthy question for us to ask whether during the several years now of limitation of various kinds, doors not opening where they used to, and the lack of liberty to do what we like;

• it may perhaps be asked, Have we received any impression from God in the matter?

• Think of having a vine in a prison! An unheard of thing! But there it was, and not only so but it expands and grows, it develops, meaning to say that it is not merely some impression of Christ, but full fruit will come from it. So this man speaks of the buds and the blossoms and the fruit and the clusters of ripe grapes.

• And now see what an impression God would give this man. He says,
  • "And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand".

• There would not be anything more wonderfully fresh than that, that the grapes should yield at once something for the pleasure of God. For I doubt not that Pharaoh here represents God, and here is the man being reminded that even out of these circumstances God is going to be served, and served through what Christ brings in in impressions of His own Person as the Vine.

Now, I have no need to elaborate that, save to ask for our pondering whether we have considered that, whether in our circumstances of pressure, of tightening controls, we have got some impression of Christ.

• If so that is hopeful, for it means that we shall begin now to have some part in ministering to God's pleasure. May I appeal to us all, dear brethren, as to this, for there are some who take no active part in the service of God. May I just appeal that the result may be something for God on the principle of freshness.

• There was no time here for the ordinary processes of wine, maturing and so on; the indications are of rapid growth and early full development; God is to get something at once and in the very circumstances where we are.

• The cup-bearer was free for God in the prison, and when Joseph interpreted the dream, he understood it. He understood that it was going to be a reality, and not just merely an idle tale, for in three days he was returned to Pharaoh and he did hand the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

• But one important thing he forgot, that was about Joseph. We also are likely to forget Christ it may be – a sobering matter indeed – but he did not fail to have his part in that blessed service.

Now we are led to enquire the difference between the butler and the baker.

• The baker says, seeing this was going so well, "I also was in my dream". How well we recognise this feature! I am in my dream, I can understand that God does not get anything!

• A man may be the centre of his dream, in his greatness or in his smallness, but if a man is in his own dream, then God gets nothing. The baker provided nothing and he lost his life. He lost spiritually.

• We may say the cup-bearer represents the heart man, the baker the head man. There is a word there for us, dear brethren, in relation to reviving spiritually so that we may give God what He has in mind.

• The idea of the cup goes right through into the Lord's supper and is a great thought. It means that persons are satisfied. It is called the cup of the Lord in the Lord's supper and it is, amongst other things, to bring in this great feature of satisfaction, so that being engaged with such a portion we want nothing else. What we partake of in the liberty and joy of the love of Christ completely satisfies us.

Now, this is but one portion of what belongs to this great subject. Some need recovery, and I am thinking of people who need recovery out of wrong links, wrong associations; I think of Ephraim.

If you read through a certain part of the prophecy of Hosea you would say at one point, Ephraim is beyond recovery, for God said,
• "Ephraim is joined to idols: leave him alone", Hosea 4: 17.

• And it has to be said of some, that they are not recoverable; they are lost. Paul says that. He says,
  • "If also our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are lost", 2 Corinthians 4: 3.

• Very solemn word! But happily we find that Ephraim is not as far gone as that; it is as if the heart of God could not really leave him alone. So He speaks again in the last chapter of the prophecy, saying to His people,
  • "Take with you words", verse 2.

• I expect that is the difficulty with some, they cannot find the words that belong to repentance and recovery. "Take with you words". They do it and they have finished with idols. They are not now going to bring literal calves to offer to idols, but calves of their lips to God. Ephraim is a recovered man.

• Is there anyone here who needs recovering in a special way? Take with you words, acceptable words, to God, and bring the calves of your lips,
  • "the fruit of the lips confessing his name", Hebrews 13: 15.

• What a marvellous recovery it is. Ephraim says,
  • "What have I to do any more with idols?"

• That is it. Ephraim is a recovered man when he says that. God says "I answer him, and I will observe him". God is not finished with him.
  • "I answer him, and I will observe him".

• It is going on, for God does not take things for granted. God says "I will observe him". I will look at him. I will watch how he is getting on. Then Ephraim speaks again.
  • "I am like a green fir-tree".

• Beautiful that, is it not? "A green fir-tree", in all the reality of revival in life before God, there surely. Then God has the last word:
  • "From me is thy fruit found!", Hosea 14: 8.

• Not from idols, but from Me. Do we want help in regard of coming out of wrong associations? As long as we remain in them, whatever they are, there will be no fruit for God, but as we leave them and act for God, He says, "from me", as if God would say, 'Now I can help you'.

• The green fir-tree is there reminding us of the greenness and freshness of manhood in a recovered person, and there is nothing like it. They tell us that a broken bone, set properly and healed is stronger than ever it was.

• What a word for a recovered person, to forsake his idol, to "Take with you words" and come to God. He is possibly the freshest person in a locality, a mighty encouragement indeed.

Now I turn to Judges, because in our chapter in the principle of it, we have to do with the ministry.

• In chapter 15 the story of Samson is meant to provide us with distinctiveness in manhood, that is the bearing of his name. He is an outstanding man, who grows up in his own place, one whom the Spirit of God can use and move. It says,
  • "the child grew, and Jehovah blessed him. And the Spirit of Jehovah began to move him at Mahaneh-Dan, between Zoreah and Eshtaol", Judges 13: 24-25.

• That was where he lived; that means in your own locality. Samson could go here and there and serve, but he begins in power in his own locality. It says of him that he grew and Jehovah was with him and the Spirit moved him in his own regions, and we are to be similarly helped, dear brethren.

• We are to be growing and accompanied by God, we are not to forfeit His presence, or bring anything in which drives Him away and we are to be moved by the Spirit in our own place.

Now in this part of Samson's life he has to do with the Philistines. We translate this into terms of what belongs to ourselves; that is, he is dealing with the great mind of man, fleshly mental activity intruding among the people of God, and how is this going to be met?

• How do we meet it in our localities? It is not a question of thinking up a sermon, it is a question of what you can find that is fresh. Oh, what an exercise that is! Not that one cannot use the same scriptures, they will bear repeating indeed, but oh, the fresh power which must attach to the ministry. There is the fresh jawbone, and Samson finds it.

• The Lord Jesus found the place where it was written. He found the scripture suitable for that particular occasion, and Samson found the fresh jawbone of an ass. That is as being with God and under a touch of the Spirit, we are to find something in freshness from God, and how successful that is and that alone. No ordinary methods would have done for all these Philistines, "a heap, two heaps", he says,
  • "With the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men".

• Think of it literally, dear brethren, one man and one jawbone and a thousand men laid low. Think of the victory of the word of God as ministered in this fresh power. A jawbone is interesting, the jaw is for mastication as well as for speaking; and that means in principle that we have taken in something before we speak, as David says,
  • "The Spirit of Jehovah spoke by me", 2 Samuel 23: 2.

    Then he says "spoke to me", verse 3.

    First of all by me and then to me.

• As we come to the priestly section of the book of Deuteronomy in chapter 18, we find that the jawbones belonged to the priest. The shoulder, and the jawbones, and the maw – that is the stomach – meaning to say that the mastication, and then the assimilation are necessary to any power in the service.

• So here it is, and the service is successful, whether it be an address or a contribution in a reading, or whether it be in the ministry meeting. You see how needful it is there, that there should be something fresh, as Paul says,
  • "If there be a revelation to another sitting there", 1 Corinthians 14: 30.

• That is the fresh jawbone, and if that is so it is to take precedence over everything else. The first speaker is to be quiet so that this great matter may come out into expression, the choicest part of the meeting. It is what we wait for and hope for, that there may be this choice thing.

Samson provides this in principle in this experience. But then, like every other servant, having finished his service he gets weary and he needs reviving; his mind, affections and his very being need reviving, so he cries to Jehovah and Jehovah revives him by, I would say, a touch of

• "the renewal of the Holy Spirit".

• That is, He cleaves the rock in Lehi and causes the water to flow and Samson assuages his thirst; he is a new man again, and so we go on, dear brethren, and that is the secret of it. You wonder how some of our dear brethren who serve us so constantly go on, but the secret of it is that
  • "with what measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you", Mark 4: 24.

• It comes out and God gives more. The ministry is over and the servant is thirsty and Jehovah ministers to him. What an encouragement!

• Now why should not you begin to have a part in that? Why not let us all have a part in it? The fresh jawbone is there, for the finding, and the abundant touch of the renewal of the Holy Spirit, as opening up to us the mind of God alongside of the Scriptures, and so things are helped along.

• We may say as a result of ministry like this that the brethren have rest. It says after that,
  • "And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years",

• meaning to say that the spirit of such a man dominated the position. They all came into the benefit of what he was.

In Kings we come into the more collective setting of the saints in the house. As some of us know, the house in first Kings is a peculiarly attractive place.

• For what is really in the mind of the Spirit in speaking of the house in 1 Kings is not so much the processes by which we move into the truth, but the joy and liberty of dwelling in it.

• It is, we might say, more heavenly than Chronicles in this particular section, not in every section, but in this one.

• I said we are not so much engaged here with processes, and this is one of the things that the one who is called upon to minister must watch, that he is not always occupying the saints with moral processes. There are times when it is right and important to do so, but at other times the blessedness of things should be just placed before us, for our enjoyment, something like the opening verses of Ephesians 1.

• We should open our hearts to it and enjoy it, and say: 'This is our God, this is what He has done, this is what He had in mind; this is what He will arrive at and nothing shall stop Him, and the persons include us'. Let us say these things; let us open our hearts and enjoy the truth.

This section of 1 Kings is something like that. There is no great mention of the altar;

• that is, we are not being probed as to how we get into this great place, we are not being tested as to our understanding of the sacrifice of Christ.

• He came by way of the altar, and an understanding of that and what it involved is good and leaves us free to enjoy what is before us.

• Some people will always say, 'Very good; but are we up to it?' That, of course, will always be true, but God has His way of bringing a different setting before us if He wants us to enjoy it.

There is no veil here either. For it is not now a question of things being separated one from another.

• It is more the idea of liberty and openness and getting into the fulness of things at once. Something like a very good time in the assembly, God dwelling with us, God enjoying His holy part along with the saints, and the saints reverently, worshipfully, enjoying their part along with God. That is the idea, and that is the kind of thing that is in mind in 1 Kings.

• So in the two short sections I read there is dignity; for the cedar speaks of the saints in their dignity.

• But then there is freshness in the cypress-wood, for it is an evergreen, there is freshness there on the floor, meaning that your footsteps do not flag. It is not a wearying thing to come along to the assemblings of God's people, there is freshness there. You greet the brethren gladly,
  • "I rejoiced when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of Jehovah. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem", Psalm 122: 1-2.

• It is the freshness which is relative to the footsteps of the brethren, and the footsteps of the priests as they come out of their cells, preparing themselves to serve. It is good to come out not only of our houses but of our priestly cells, ready to serve, as Paul says,
  • "When ye come together in assembly", 1 Corinthians 11: 18.

• "In assembly", means that you are ready to serve, and serve with fragrance and renewal. That is the word tonight, renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Then again, there is this second matter that I speak of, connected with the house, and its various wonderful chambers and cells.

• The very oracle itself is wonderful, where God speaks, where He speaks His mind, relative to Christ and the assembly, where He comes out with His most intimate thoughts.

• God cannot morally have an oracle except where there is separation and where there is spirituality, for the doors of the oracle are of olive-wood, meaning that there is spirituality there. If separation be not recognised and the Spirit not given room, how can God speak?

• He may speak in a fire, or in an earthquake, or in a tempest, but that is not what we are speaking of.

• We are speaking of God in His oracle in the assembly. I have no doubt that is referred to in Ephesians 3: 17,
  • "that the Christ may dwell, through faith, in your hearts".

• That is the Ark brought into the oracle, and we understand it now, that it is Christ in His own place according to the full mind of God.

• And then as I read in the last verses of this chapter, it is the posts of the temple. That is the very entrance of it.

We were talking about the entry into the oracle in verse 31,

• "he made doors of olive-wood",

  and then in verse 33 "he also made for the doorway of the temple posts of olive-wood, of the fourth part of the breadth of the house".

• That is, we come in freshly and brightly into the temple gatherings of the saints. We might say, borrowing another scripture, that our entrance into the meetings is always by the gate whose prospect is towards the east.

• It is the way of hope, the way of looking for Christ in His glory, and if Christ in His glory does not light up our meetings then we may doubt whether it is very much of a meeting.

• But it is a beautiful thing to come into the gatherings of the saints by that gate, the gate whose prospect is toward the east. It is spoken of in Ezekiel, and Ezekiel returns to it as if it is a gate too good to miss, and that means, dear brethren, that the assembly is filled with the spirit of freshness, the times of refreshment. They are known to us now as we gather together in assembly.

• I would like to leave that with the brethren, that the thing may be worked out with us individually in our souls, in our circumstances, and likewise in our ministry.

• This would include the sisters of course. They are in it all and are to consider soberly this matter of the holy interchange of prophetic thought.

• How it would work out is a matter of wisdom and I suppose many of the sisters are waiting on God about it. If they pray, they can prophesy, that is what is in the mind of God at the present time. It is one of the furnishings of the assembly, and if the assembly began with it, why should it not be here at the end?

• Then also this great collective matter of being in freshness in our links with the people of God, and in the service, and coming in in freshness by the door whose prospect is towards the east. The Lord bless these things to us.