Herod feels the instability of his own place as the king, for it says that he was troubled; in his rage he would bring in all the sorrow upon Rachel and her children.

• We have to face this principle in the world to-day; its intent has always been to stamp out, if possible, the name and rights of the Christ, the testimony of whom is deposited in the assembly according to 1 Corinthians 1.

• I mention this on account of the severity of the con­ditions in Matthew, chapter 27.

• In the gospel of Luke there are conditions which originate in heaven; these are the opposite to those in the early chapters of Matthew.
  • Gabriel comes to Mary and he speaks of Elizabeth, one who is sympathetic in all that is proceeding.

  • We have the shepherds in chapter 2, in affinity with the angel that speaks to them;

  • next the outburst of the heavenly host in relation to Christ;

  • Simeon and Anna are brought in as though the Spirit would say, “Whilst there are murderous conditions on the one hand, there are sym­pathetic conditions on the other; there are persons available in whom the thoughts of God are cherished”.

• As we approach the accounts in Matthew, chapter 27 and Luke, chapter 23, we shall see how the Spirit balances up these two sides of the truth. Is that understandable?

A.P.B. I think that gives great help as to the setting of the two accounts.

J.S.E. As was said in prayer, it is a soul matter, we are all here as persons who freely and thankfully acknow­ledge Jesus as our Saviour,

• the One who has met the question of our guilt and our state, and settled it for ever for divine glory,

• but there is something more, inasmuch as we are the subjects of the blessing connected with His service and place, as we have sung:
  • “Thy cross, Thy work, Thy word”,

• there is something called for from us here in the very scene, as it is said in Revelation 11: 8,
  • “Where also their Lord was crucified”,

• and it is with that in mind that we should go soberly and reverently over some of the points in Matthew, chapter 27 and the early part of chapter 28 before proceeding to Luke.

A.P.B. Is the attack of the enemy’s agents then, as now, against the dominical rights of Christ?

J.S.E. That is marked throughout Matthew, with one or two exceptions.

• Brethren will recall an address of Mr. Taylor’s on the rights of God, emphasising govern­ment in connection with Matthew, and it was linked with Isaiah 9,
  • “the government shall be upon his shoulder”;

• it is something our younger men and women need, their being in the assembly in relation to all that is due to Christ dominically.

• He is not presented in the gospel as going to heaven. He is with us here in the testimony; when He commissions the eleven there is no word about preaching,
  • it is a question of baptising persons to the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that such persons might be in the testimony here, sound in the teaching, and carrying forward in themselves, as committed to Christ, all that is due to Him.

• Hence there is the allusion to Pilate as ‘the governor’. Jesus is referred to as the leader or governor by the very persons in Jerusalem, who in chapter 27 are leading in the crucifixion.

• They could quote Micah in relation to the birth of Christ, but Matthew seems to bring into relief this feature of the governor at the point that we are speaking of.

• The number of times Pilate is referred to as the governor in the chapter is significant to show that the political powers, whilst we have every respect for them, can give no lead rightly in relation to what is due to Christ dominically, and we should accept that, brethren, very simply and very thoroughly.
  • “Jesus stood before the governor”.

J.McK. Would it be in confirmation that the judgment­ seat is mentioned formally in verse 19,

• “As he was sitting on the judgment-seat”?

• I thought perhaps it corresponded with what you were saying as to the governor.

J.S.E. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. Do you mean in that setting?

J.McK. I thought that Pilate was set there on the judgment-seat, and that that is the setting of the chapter, is it not, “the governor”?

J.S.E. Quite so.

W.D. Why is it that the governor appears to be influenced?

J.S.E. Why is it the same today? Is not the weak­ness of modern government largely explained by religious pressure upon it?

W.D. I thought in spite of the expression “gover­nor”, and the vaunted prowess of the Roman Empire, that Pilate seems to be influenced and turned round from what he thinks in his own soul to be right.

J.S.E. That is often the case, and the challenge is as to who is coming through. Matthew presents the matter to us in a way to show that scarcely anybody comes through,

• but there is someone who comes through, and that is seen in the women in the opening of chapter 28.

• It is to help us feel the determination both in the political and religious spheres to destroy Jesus, to render all that belongs to Him null and void, and have it for themselves.

• It is seen in the parable of the vineyard; it brings into relief the way that man has arrogated to himself what rightly belongs to Jesus.

A.M. Will you say why in Matthew the Lord says nothing at all publicly except when adjured by the high priest?

J.S.E. It is to keep before us the necessity for moving, in the testimonial sphere, in a suffering spirit.

T.B.C. So, while we often thank God for the over­ruling in relation to government, at bottom there is really no sympathy for the testimouy.

J.S.E. I would not say no sympathy, but rather no intelligence;

• in a certain way our presence here today is a witness to a measure of sympathy, but I would not say it is a witness to a measure of intelligence.

• I would say there is neither sympathy nor intelligence with what the chief priests and scribes represent.

A.M. I was thinking of the severe expression the Lord uses,

• “Nor cast your pearls before the swine”, Matthew 7: 6,

• and whether there is not that aspect of things. The expression “the swine”, whether it is too severe or whether it is right.

J.S.E. We have to keep the two things together – ­dogs and swine, because it says

• “Give not that which is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls before the swine”,

• and one wonders sometimes whether we do not get a little too eager on the line of endeavour to help the natural man before we see the evidence of a moral work In a person.

A.G.B. Following your reference to the governor and the judgment-seat, is it of note that the dream of Pilate’s wife is brought in here, the dream of the day­time, and the statement,

• “Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man”?

J.S.E. The political powers have had their oppor­tunity over the centuries, the circumstances in this chapter

• – first of all a suicide, then this dream, and then the influence of the chief priests on the crowd that they should beg for Barabbas and destroy Jesus –

• are in­tended to bring pressure to bear upon us so as to con­sider where we really are in the testimony of our Lord. It is really the closing word of Paul as to the testimony,
  • “The testimony of our Lord”, 2 Timothy 1: 8.

P.H.H. Are we stabilised at all by, for instance, the scripture in Micah.

• It says, “Out of thee shall he come forth unto me”, Micah 5: 2.

• Does the light of that help us in the midst of all these murderous conditions?

J.S.E. I am glad you mentioned it, because there is not a complete quotation on the part of the usurping element, is there?

P.H.H. No, except that it says, “My people” which I suppose does in a way gather it up.

J.S.E. Yes. The glory of the Person does not seem to have been with the religious people in Matthew 2.

T.J.G. You mean that they omit “whose goings forth are from eternity”?

J.S.E. Those linked with Christ in the testimony can only be stable in it as they are in the gain of what Micah is helped to put forward,

• “Whose goings forth are from of old, from the days of eternity”.

• This is most essential for us, in Romans 9 Christ is brought forward in relation to the fathers, and it says,
  • “Of whom, as according to flesh, is the Christ”, then it immediately says, “Who is over all, God blessed for ever”.

• That is one of the stabilising features connected with the testimony.

P.L. So that, “They shall call his name Emmanuel, God with us” – and “Behold I am with you all the days” – does that bring in the anchorage in the storms of the testimony?

J.S.E. Quite so; and both the references come from other quarters than the chief priests and Herod’s retinue.

• Jesus is with certain persons under certain conditions; in chapter 28 those persons are in affinity with what the women represent at the beginning of the chapter.

• We are not only to be persons who believe, but persons who are sympathetically and intelligently allied with the testimony of Christ.

• Gabriel brings something special to Daniel in chapter 9 of that book. He speaks of Messiah being cut off and having nothing.

• There is need for some emphasis on that, and Matthew, in the severity of his presentation is concerned to have us understand; he alone, in the whole of the New Testa­ment refers to Daniel once, in chapter 24: 15.

• We stopped at verse 44 that we might get something in our souls as to what has really been done by men, both from the political standpoint, as giving way, and the religious leaders as the arbiters, so that Jesus should be destroyed.

T.B.C. Is that an element which, in your mind, enters into the testimony to-day; that He is cut off and has nothing? Would you say a little more about that?

J.S.E. It says, “Shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing”.

• Matthew keeps close up to that; except for Simon of Cyrene, every element in these verses is in combination for the cutting off of Messiah.

T.B.C. You mean to deny Him any scrap of His rights?

J.S.E. Yes. I have concern that we should face our whereabouts as on the earth where there is this opposition to Christ. That is how we can move efficiently together in the testimony. What do you say?

T.B.C. Yes, I feel the importance of that. I was wondering also whether the fact that Judas apparently had access to the shrine might enter into this position. He cast the money down in the temple, or in the shrine. Does that give a kind of secret of what is working underneath in the religious bodies?

J.S.E. And it may raise something a little more critical with us; Judas had been numbered with the twelve, and was accustomed, I should judge, to being near Christ, because it says in chapter 26,

• “And im­mediately coming to Jesus … covered him with kisses”, an extraordinary thing!

L.T.R. I was going to ask in connection with this point as to Christ being cut off and having nothing, whether we have the privilege at the supper to register our stand as to that matter.

J.S.E. I am inclined to think of our stand as con­nected with responsibility; sometimes we have been a little too emphatic as to the privilege of partaking of the supper;

• in these last days there is need of a little more emphasis on obligation.

L.T.R. I felt it would be a moment when we could demonstrate our judgment of what took place here.

J.S.E. You demonstrate your judgment in respon­sibility. We use the word loyalty a great deal, and it is right. It is a military word.

• There is not much privilege in military service. You have to stand when the circumstances are against you, and that the Spirit is emphasising in this chapter.
  • The vicarious side of the matter comes in later, and we have purposely not read it,

• but the urgency of the moment calls for persons who are prepared to stand whatever happens, and the details in chapter 28 show how heaven delights to assert itself in relation to such persons. They may be weak, but there they are.

A.G.B. Does not Matthew have that kind of per­sonnel in his mind in Joseph at the outset as the son of David, one to whom could be entrusted the care of what was so precious to heaven, and he did not fail in what was entrusted to him?

J.S.E. Yes. He was a righteous man. Things were difficult for him; we are often tested.

• Something may come about that will call for a special touch in the ministry, to steady the saints as they move forward in righteousness – we need not to be looking either to the governor or to what the priests and the other elements suggest.
  • We keep our eyes, as we said yesterday, looking stedfastly on Jesus.

• We are glad of their service under the hand of God – I am speaking now of the governor – so that we pray on behalf of such persons, that the saints may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all piety and gravity. We could not pray for the other elements.

J.McK. So that “the completion of the age” are the last words of the book – what would you say about that?

J.S.E. It is the age of the testimony in these difficult circumstances.

J.McK. But the whole age would be a completed matter, bringing out the lustre of the testimony and the power of it.

J.S.E. Quite so.

A.P.B. Is that why in Matthew the assembly is spoken of in terms that would suggest that it is a fortress?

J.S.E. Quite so.

A.P.B. Were you going to say any more about Judas? You did not develop why you thought it was extra­ordinary the near position that Judas had.

J.S.E. Matthew records all this detail of his remorse and his suicide, and one wonders whether there is not something for us in it, to bring home to us

• the danger of being in a position of nearness without the affections and the loyalty that belong to it.

P.L. Is the contrast made by Peter in his allusions to Judas in quotations from the Psalms, and then the allusion made to the two who had been there all the time that the Lord went in and went out?

• Is the second the vital thought encouragingly and the first the formal treacherously?

J.S.E. Yes.

P.H.H. In Hebrews 6 it speaks of those once en­lightened,

• “who have tasted of the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, and the works of power of the age to come, and have fallen away”.

• Is what you are saying about Judas and its application now to warn us about a mere outward part? That is, even the ex­pression “partakers of the Holy Spirit” is not the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is it?

J.S.E. Partakers of what happens where He is, I take it.

P.H.H. Like being present at the meetings?

J.S.E. Yes. Later we have the word as to Esau,

• “Watching … lest there by any fornicator, or profane person like Esau”.

• I have to take that to myself, and then it says of him,
  • “For he found no place for repen­tance”, Hebrews 12: 17.

• Judas found no place for repen­tance. It says that he was filled with remorse and he ended his life – it is to impress us with the solemnity of anything that is merely outward with no root internally.

T.J.G. Do we see the same thing in principle in Acts 20: 30,

• “And from among your own selves shall rise up men speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them”?

J.S.E. Yes. This has come right down and those who move in and out among the brethren have to be constantly guarded about these thirty pieces of silver; lest they are caught in the spirit of time-serving.

P.L. Did not Mr. Stoney say that many a servant of the Lord had sold Christ for money?

J.S.E. A serious thing.

H.A.F. Does not Peter put it very plainly when he said in Acts 1: 17,

• “For he was numbered amongst us, and had received a part in this service”?

J.S.E. It shows how closely it comes home.

H.J.M. Then in Psalm 55: 12,

• “For it is not an enemy that hath reproached me – then could I have borne it; neither is it he that hateth me that hath magnified himself against me – then would I have hidden myself from him, but it was thou, a man mine equal, mine intimate, my familiar friend”, and then a hiatus.

  “We who held sweet intercourse together. To the house of God we walked amid the throng”.

• Later, it says in verse 19 of that Psalm,
  • “God will hear, and afflict them, he that is seated of old (Selah) … because there is no change in them, and they fear not God”.

• Would that all come into it?

J.S.E. Yes. And it is all a voice to us, as we near the end there is nothing that the Spirit will support but reality.

• There is so much going on now with young people – and I do not say this without tender feelings, some feature connected with what is alien attracts them.

• It may be a little extra education, a better post, or some association, a young woman with a young man, or a young man with a young woman, and the position is surrendered.

T.J.G. What is the antidote?

J.S.E. More sober application, in the contemplation of Christ, to the word of the cross.

E.A.E. Is that why “the angel answering said to the woman, Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus the crucified one”.

J.S.E. Quite so.

P.H.H. Would Simon the Cyrenian give us a little help on this line of reality though he was compelled into it?

J.S.E. Yes. I am glad you say this; Matthew puts Simon in the least positive setting; he does not ignore him, and I think the reason is that he is concerned to have us lay hold of the severity of the situation, so that whilst Simon is there he is presented as “compelled”.

P.H.H. Yes. “And as they went forth they found a man of Cyrene” – he is not now coming up out of the field –

• “Simon by name; him they compelled to go with them that he might bear the cross”.

P.L. He has two sons in Mark. Does it mean that as the severity is accepted by parents a posterity in the testimony will be assured.

J.S.E. Yes. I thought that we might get to that this afternoon. It is very attractive and there is much in Mark, which is implemented by John to show us another view,

• here we have the soldiers and the scarlet cloak, which suggests the insult to royalty.

• In Mark and John there is the imperial setting which is a reminder to us that the universe is at stake, not a mere country, and that is the view we are being helped to get of Christ. The universal character of His dominion.

Hy.W. Is this side of the truth you are presenting in the mind of the Spirit, when through Paul He says,

• “Ye announce the death of the Lord”?

J.S.E. Just so.

P.L. Would you get the side of royalty in God’s answer in Psalm 2,

• “I have anointed my king upon Zion”?

• Would you connect that with royalty, and Psalm 8 with the purple, the universal dominion of the Lord?

J.S.E. Yes, but I think that Zion is universal. With the sovereignty of divine purpose we see the fullest thing in the mind of God, so that the thought of Zion in these chapters does not appear.

A.P.B. I would like to ask whether, in seeking to be as you say, loyal to the rights of Christ as Lord, we do not have to definitely name and judge all the elements that usurp His place?

J.S.E. Is not that the very thing the Spirit is empha­sising among us?

• We cannot go over the last two decades in the history of the ministry without seeing what precious touches the Spirit has brought forward as to the service of God, the relations of the assembly to Christ, dominically and in abiding companionship;
  • how can we be livingly in these things if there are not loyal persons on the earth in whom He can have them brought into evidence?

• This is all bound up with the word of the cross.

R.C. Does it really involve just where we are prac­tically in the fellowship of God’s Son?

J.S.E. I think that is where it stands; all are called into it. You could say that to any believer that he is called into it. Has he responded to the call.

P.H.H. Is that why it begins immediately after the supper chapter by saying

• “But concerning spiritual manifestations, brethren, I do not wish you to be ignorant”, then –

  “No one, speaking in the power of the Spirit of God says, Curse on Jesus; and no one can say, Lord Jesus, unless in the power of the Holy Spirit”, 1 Corinthians 12: 31

• Is that over against the treacherous behaviour which might come into the dominical side?

J.S.E. Yes; before the Lord made His disclosures in John 14 to 17, it says that Judas went out,

• “And it was night”;

• all that is outside loyal affection for Christ is marked by this feature of night.

• Following Pilate’s wife, and Simon the Cyrenian, we have this word from the passers-by,
  • “If thou art Son of God, descend from the cross”, and others, “Let him descend now from the cross, and we will believe on him”.

• There is a notion in the world of believing in a Christ apart from the cross, hence all the confusion.

Rem. There is no reproach on that line.

J.S.E. No, and if there is no reproach there is no en­joyment of privilege.

P.L. And it is to attach Christ to sin, if we can have Him apart from His cross and death.

J.S.E. Quite so.

A.P.B. Could we have some words on Luke?

J.S.E. We might first look at the word about the “robbers”. It says,

• “And the robbers also who had been crucified with him cast the same reproaches on him”.

• Two persons who were to be crucified, casting the same reproaches on Jesus now on the cross as did the soldiers and what they represent, the power of Rome, the monarchy, and the chief priests and soforth.

• Here are two persons about to be executed for their crimes and they found no time for anything but to cast the same reproaches on Jesus! Robbers involve robbery; are we allowing anything that would rob us of our loyalty, anything which would bring in compromise?

• Assembly meetings have taken place in cities and places over the last two years, and we might say it is alarming; it is because the Spirit is emphasising that, at all costs, the rights of Christ must not be interfered with by robbery.

• The robbers may cast the same reproaches on Him, but they have to be crucified, and that is where the Spirit leaves the whole matter from the testimonial standpoint.

• The darkness, and the whole experience of those three hours suggest another feature of the truth which is not in mind to consider now. The termina­tion of this section as to the robbers should be a word to us, that we are not in any sense in fellowship with robbers.

T.J.G. You mean that if we are, we are taking sides with the world in its verdict as to Christ?

J.S.E. Yes, quite so.

J.C.E. Does Malachi say, “Will a man rob God”?

J.S.E. And he puts the thing on the people, does he not, in their responsibility? “But ye rob me” – you have done it.

Rem. “And me ye rob, even this whole nation”, he goes on to say.

J.S.E. That is the people ostensibly in relation with Him.

P.H.H. Would the robbers here end up by robbing God in that way in His service? Would trustworthiness in fellowship and testimony and trustworthiness in the service of God go together?

J.S.E. Yes; it is the former here. They would rob Christ of His rights in the testimony.

If we may carry this with us as we approach Luke’s gospel we shall get another precious view even amid the same public surroundings; Herod comes in where we began.

• Men might say He is a patron, a wretched thing, he wished to see Jesus and to see something done by Him; then with his troops he mocked Him.

• Luke, whilst he brings in some mitigating features, does not allow us any avenue for compromise.

E.C. Would Paul’s word to Timothy in the last chapter of the 1st epistle,

• “I enjoin thee before God who preserves all things in life, and Christ Jesus who wit­nessed before Pontius Pilate the good confession, that thou keep the commandment spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ”,

• have a bearing on what you are saying?

J.S.E. Quite; the whole of that epistle is dominical in its bearing, showing that Paul would go out in his martyrdom with a triumphant note to his beloved child in relation to the lordly rights of Christ. .

W.B.H. So that that is the idea of combat?

J.S.E. Quite so; in the second epistle we have this statement,

• “Remember Jesus Christ raised from among the dead, of the seed of David”, 2 Timothy 2: 8.

• That is, in His resurrection He carries His royal prestige forward, and we are to remember that. His royal prestige has not gone into the grave, it is carried forward in His resurrection.

J.McK. Would that be confirmed in the word of the angels,

• “Come see the place where the Lord lay”, Matthew 28: 6.

• I wondered whether it would link on with the numerous times Paul refers to the Lord in that absolute character. It is not so much one of sympathy but rather His ability to carry the testimony and the age through to completion?

J.S.E. That is right, and I am glad you have men­tioned it because that is just what was in one’s mind in reading these two or three verses.

J.McK. I wondered too, whether, when you come to Luke – you were referring to the differences in the settings – it is not the Lord, but

• “the body of the Lord Jesus”.

• Is that in mind?

J.S.E. Yes. In Luke we see mitigating circumstances introduced.

• There are women who are weeping, show­ing that while they may not be exactly intelligent they are sympathetic at this point,

• of Simon it says, “they laid hold on … Simon, coming from the field, and put the cross upon him to bear it behind Jesus”; that is a mitigating circumstance which is in keeping with Luke!
  • “To bear it behind Jesus”.

• I would like the brethren to notice that, because in my own affections and thoughts it has a powerful link with the malefactor who went into paradise. To bear the cross behind Jesus at once indi­cates that there is a following somewhere and by some­one;

• Luke would say to Theophilus, Look, here is that someone in Simon and here is an opportunity for you. This is the only formal allusion to the cross in this chapter.

• Luke emphasises mitigation; he desires Theophilus to understand that the great objective in all testimonial loyalty is the entrance into the sphere of privilege and at-homedness in the presence of God.

• Jesus then utters this extraordinary prayer,
  • “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.

• This is another mitigating circumstance, the malefactor shines in his understanding of the Matthew position and so he refers to the kingdom. He refers to his settled con­viction that the dominical position will go through and Jesus will come in the kingdom that Matthew is so strenuous about.

H.J.M. And does not the throne of grace come out in Luke?

J.S.E. You mean generally throughout the gospel?

H.J.M. Yes – the ministry as to it, the throne of grace shining. I was thinking of it in the way of supplies to bring us through.

J.S.E. Just so. And then, we might ask the question, What is the objective in the throne of grace? If we find mercy for seasonable help, what is it for?

H.J.M. Is it to provide for the maintenance of things in relation to God and His service, and to minister to the heart of the One whose moral right it is to have the throne and rule in the service?

J.S.E. Quite so. So that the word

• “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”

• is a testimony that at this critical juncture there is something on the testimonial line in the most adverse circumstances, but it is there.

• This man had no time to really live in the testimony, apart from that short period, but Jesus would say, Well, there is something for you which does not belong to time.

• It is a very affecting thing that before the darkness palls the earth, according to Luke, we should get these remarks by the malefactor and by Jesus.

R.C. Would you say that the malefactor had wit­nessed divine perfection in a Man in all these outrageous circumstances?

J.S.E. Quite so. Is not that just why Luke gives us the memorial at the breaking of bread?

R.C. What do you mean by that?

J.S.E. Oould you have a memorial apart from divine perfection in a Man?

T.J.G. Do you mean that Luke mentions the idea of memorial at the supper – “In remembrance of me”. Is that what you are referring to?

J.S.E. Yes. I thought that when the Lord says,

• “This is my body which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me”

• – or for the calling of me to mind – it is to show that He is accrediting the apostles with an understanding of the divine perfection as in Him,

• and I just mentioned it in pursuance of what Mr. C said that divine perfection in a Man was discerned by this male­factor in this word,
  • “This man has done nothing amiss”.

P.H.H. So that in the condition which the Lord calls “the dry” in contrast to “the green tree”, the testi­mony remains in all the blessedness of a memorial for this Person?

J.S.E. Yes; that is where the greenness is.

P.H.H. And these men like Simon and the male­factor show the golden chain of persons?

J.S.E. I think so.

H.J.M. Whilst speaking of the mitigating circum­stances and what comes to light in the women, would you say that the Lord on the other hand gives a word to guard or warn them that they cannot be in these things merely emotionally?

J.S.E. That is right – not merely sympathetically­ they must be in them intelligently,

• and I feel a peculiar need of being intelligent as to what we are doing, because as we put our hands to the loaf we are committing our­selves to the Lord for weal or woe.

• That is, whatever happens to Him I am with Him and for Him in it.

H.J.M. Ittai the Gittite in David’s day is an illustration of it.

J.S.E. Quite so.

P.L. So the priestly intelligence of the dying thief has been likened to the priest spreading a purple cloth upon the brazen altar? He was the most intelligent person in one sense on earth at that moment.

J.S.E. Very good. At that moment, yes. That is the whole point.

These verses, first of all verse 50 –

• “And all left him and fled”.

• Then the incident of this young man with a linen cloth cast about his naked body might serve as a wholesome lesson for us; but, over against that, this precious allusion to the two sons of Simon – Alexander and Rufus – I take the liberty of thinking of them as young men.

• The Spirit in the midst of these extra­ordinary circumstances of testing, and, we might say, desertion publicly, introduces to us the principle of succession in the testimony, so that what is connected with the word of the cross goes through.

• The young man clothed in a white robe, in chapter 16, may make some appeal to us.

I thought that we might touch upon these things before proceeding to John’s account.

T.J.G. Would you say what you have in mind as to this young man, the linen cloth cast about his naked body, and leaving that linen cloth behind and fleeing from them naked?

J.S.E. The cloth represents the principle of taking matters on loosely, and in an unformed way, and going so far with them. It may be that some have had to prove this and be humbled by it.

• With those who are older, there is a holy concern that the young men, and the young women too, of whom there are many, might not have things loosely about them;

• but that as they move through this world where the crucifixion of Christ is still a stain upon it, they may do so in the purity and the holiness that the linen suggests.

J.McK. Does Paul in his epistle to Timothy “his true child” stress how things are to be taken on in quality? Mark’s own defection in Acts 13 making way for Silas and Timotheus? Is that not a solemn word to us?

J.S.E. Yes; and he actually speaks of all deserting him –

• “All who are in Asia … have turned away from me”, 2 Timothy 1: 15.

• It seems that Mark is rightly selected to give us this incident in the course of events connected with the cross, and he would give it feelingly as one, like many, who perhaps had things lightly about him.

W.B.H. Would the reference in Psalm 45 to garments confirm what you are saying as to the kind of garments – “Myrrh and aloes, cassia, are all thy garments”?

J.S.E. Those are the garments of the king; we cannot wear them. We need to see this allusion to the young man in chapter 16 as the positive example for us. It says that he was

• “clothed in a white robe”.

A.M. David knew the right use of the linen garment and was honoured in it, having previously been humbled, do you think by his former experience?

J.S.E. You have 1 Chronicles 15 in mind?

A.M. I was thinking of the account in Samuel, the first bringing up of the ark was a humiliating experience, but in the second he was greatly honoured and in this particular kind of garment for which Michal dishonours him.

J.S.E. Yes.

H.W. This young man who fled naked would stand out in contrast to the certain women who stood by the cross?

J.S.E. Quite so.

P.H.H. Is the thought of the linen cloth cast about his naked body in contrast to what scripture speaks of as girding? For instance, Peter speaks of the loins of our minds being girded as if things were not only proper garments but suitably knit together?

J.S.E. With all his love for David, the root cause of Jonathan missing his way, was that he stripped himself even to his girdle; what you say as to being girded is important and Mark is emphatic about that in relation to John the baptist.

P.L. And the loins girt about with truth in the great conflict.

J.S.E. Yes; quite so.

T.J.G. And this young man seems to show some evidence of devotedness. “And all left him and fled” but this young man begins to follow.

J.S.E. I would not like to address myself in any way to our young men and women unless I happily credited them with a measure of devotion, and I am sure that nobody here who seeks to serve the saints would do anything else;

• we regard them with paternal affection as representing the line of continuity in the testimony, the circumstances of which are becoming more and more restricted.

R.C. “And [the young men] seize him” – those words appear to be put in; but are they significant in this case, would you say?

J.S.E. It represents an overpowering influence in the wrong direction. They would appropriate him for their own affairs.

P.L. Would the double allusion to his nakedness bear a little on the fact that he may not have offered his body a living sacrifice; he had not come up into the Levitical setting which Mark suggests by way of the Roman priestly offering of the body?

J.S.E. Quite so. As we look back most have to confess that there has been something of this with us – we cannot say with all – and there comes a point when one is stripped and has to flee. It is a humbling matter.

H.A.F. Does not Samuel have a good beginning? A boy girded with a linen ephod, and then he had a good mother.

J.S.E. Yes; and I suppose that it is safe to say that even though he lay down in the temple where the ark was he never took it off.

P.H.H. This would be in your mind a girding for the testimony, would it? I was thinking of girding in many settings, an inside setting too with the Lord and the priests, but you are thinking now of the danger of taking on the truth loosely as standing in the testimony?

J.S.E. Yes.

P.L. Would “Cutting in a straight line the word of truth” stand in contrast to “cast lightly”?

J.S.E. Yes.

H.J.M. And then it stresses his naked body twice. The matter of inner garments is important, is it not? In what was carried forward in the testimony of old there were under-coverings?

J.S.E. Quite so.

P.H.H. What would you say about the verse in 2 Timothy 3, which says

• “Leading captive silly women, laden with sins, led by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”?

• I was wondering if that would have a bearing on an outward appearance and attendance and yet some basic thing missing?

J.S.E. That is all in keeping, but I particularly em­phasise the term “the young man”, our young men do not assume to lead, they are committed persons; they are to be developed, in the features that are so urgently necessary now for the support of the testimony.

T.J.G. My concern about that is, how is it to be done? Is more emphasis to be laid on the local meeting and its readings or on the elder brethren deliberately taking on and helping instructionally the younger men?

J.S.E. There is plenty of scope in London, also where I live; but the matter is placed here as it is, and what we are shown in the two or three verses is that the linen cloth was cast about his naked body and he lost it.

J.McK. You were speaking earlier about the em­bracing of Paul’s teaching. Does it involve what Paul had to say to Timothy,

• “But thou” [emphatic] “hast been thoroughly acquainted with my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, endurance, persecu­tions, sufferings …”, 2 Timothy 3: 10.

• If we are to have the teaching of Paul must we not also have the conduct and the persecutions and the sufferings, but all these tend to bind the linen cloth, to hold it, and indeed to clothe the person.

J.S.E. Yes, we must keep the positive in our minds as illustrated in the young man of chapter 16.

• Referring to Mr. G's enquiry, the answer to all these deficiencies lies in the word of the cross, there is need for more reality and faith, it says,
  • “To them that perish foolishness, but to us that are saved …” 1 Corinthians 1: 18;

• this young man was not characteristically among “the saved”.

R.C. Would the words in 1 Timothy apply in this case –

• “Occupy thyself with these things; be wholly in them, that thy progress may be manifest to all. Give heed to thyself and to the teaching; continue in them; for, doing this, thou shalt save both thyself and those that hear thee”, 1 Timothy 4: 15-16.

• Does that verify the line of salvation?

J.S.E. Quite so; Timothy in the first epistle is Paul’s true child; in the second he is his beloved child; none of Paul’s children would have a linen cloth cast about their naked body; they would be clothed and girded;

• the word ‘child’ that he employs in several ways with Timothy, and once in relation to Titus and once in relation to Onesimus – shows that his children take character from their father, as Alexander and Rufus would from Simon.

• Paul is select in naming his children. He may say “My children” in a general way in Galatians, but his nomination of persons is very interesting and the way he speaks of them in that paternal way.

T.J.G. So that Mark is recovered on Paul’s ground via 2 Timothy?

J.S.E. Quite so. So are we. “The word of the cross”, as we are recovered to Paul’s teaching, must have a greater place in our affections, our thoughts and our movements, this emphasises the necessity of being girded.

A.G.B. Are you linking what you have to say with the servant character of this gospel?

• I was thinking of the way Timothy comes into view in Acts 16, where it speaks of him as a certain disciple and names him, and then says,
  • “Who had a good testimony of the brethren … him would Paul have to go forth with him”.

J.S.E. That is all very good, and I think the sequel shows that Timothy had things in a properly fitting manner about him, but Mark went so far with Paul and Barnabas.

• It is good to go so far but then we need to be preserved – and again I emphasise this in relation to our younger men and women – we need to be preserved right through.

• It is not enough to go so far, and then find yourself escaping in a naked way; the urgency is to go on.

P.L. We have “Paul and his company” – and then that Mark goes?

• Is it the distinctive character of the Pauline ministry that becomes sooner or later the challenge to the young, and all?

J.S.E. Yes, and I think that is why we have this gospel which in many respects runs parallel with Matthew, but, in others, has its own distinctiveness connected with one who was recovered to Paul.

P.H.H. The word used about Mark in Acts 15: 38 is,

• “Him who had abandoned them … going back … and had not gone with them”.

• On his part you might say he was morally forced to flee?

J.S.E. I thought that was the bearing of this word and why the Spirit selects Mark to pen it.

P.H.H. May I ask along this line the bearing of the term “man of God” in the first epistle to Timothy?

• I am thinking of the fact that clearly Paul was a man of God, perhaps we might say pre-eminently the man of God at the time, but he does address Timothy, still a young man, as “Thou, O man of God”. Can you make anything of that in line with what you have in mind?

J.S.E. I make a lot of it in this setting, that Timothy is the only person to whom Paul speaks thus. He speaks of Titus as his own child, he speaks of Onesimus as “My child”, but he never refers to either of them in that same way,

• so it shows that Timothy must have had peculiar formation in the truth as a young person.

• The word “Thou, O man of God” would awaken exercises with him as to going forward in relation to all that was due to God in the assembly.

J.McK. It is interesting that it is to Timothy that Paul speaks about the delineation?

J.S.E. “Of the whole long-suffering”? Quite so.

J.McK. So that he had confidence that the matter would be taken on by Timothy.

J.S.E. Yes. Referring to Mr. H’s remark as to the word “O man of God” do you not think it might be a characteristic form of expression rather than a desig­nation like “the” man of God?

P.H.H. I was wondering that very thing because later in the second epistle it speaks about the scriptures, and then says

• “That the man of God may be com­plete”, 2 Timothy 3: 17.

J.S.E. Yes; whoever it is. Quite so. In verse five of chapter 15, it says “Pilate marveiled”. The Spirit, in the environs of the crucifixion, speaks much of Pilate – we shall see it more in John’s gospel;

• I wonder whether the Lord’s supper should not stand more in our minds in relation to the crucifixion than perhaps it does.

• Allusion was made on Tuesday to the princes of this age; this may be a particular re­ference to the secular powers. As we approach the supper, we are arranging ourselves against the whole course of this age, the princes of which crucified the Lord of glory.

P.H.H. Would that be confirmed in 1 Corinthians 11 where it speaks so specifically of “the Lord”?

J.S.E. Yes. I was thinking of that.

• “The night in which he was delivered up”

• has a backward bearing on this line of teaching, and shows the need for being girded, not having things cast about us.

P.L. Would these names, the first Greek and the second Roman, suggest that in the energy of these young men, the Gentile world would be invaded in the light of the Pauline ministry?

J.S.E. Just so. And the greatest results secured in the Roman world. I think we ought to understand that.

H.W. Do we have any support for connecting this Rufus with the brother whose name and whose mother are mentioned in Romans 16? I wondered whether there was any ground for our thinking of it because of the apostle’s affection for both Rufus and his mother. They seem to stand out in a special way before him.

J.S.E. There is certainly a moral link in the usage of the name because I do not know whether it is used any­where else. If we are standing devotedly, in our generation, we bear in mind that we have had fathers who have gone before us; supremely, Paul himself.

G.B. Could I ask about the way the Lord answers Pilate? He says, “Thou [emphatic] sayest”. I have noticed that He answers also the priests when they make some statement of the truth in the same way.

J.S.E. Yes, but to them He says a little more. When the priests bring things up to Him He speaks a little of His glory,

• whereas to Pilate, who was a political person, Jesus gives the greatest possible deference and speaks to him in few words, that is in the synoptic gospels;

• to the religious leaders, who ought to know, He says a little more, which only serves to bring out their hatred of Him, and determination to have Him crucified.

G.B. I was wondering whether the Lord is confirming the truth that was in Pilate’s mouth as to His being King of the Jews.

J.S.E. We shall come to that in John.

A.G.B. Have you any thought as to the expression used as to Simon, “A certain passer-by”, almost seeming to suggest this casualness that we have been speaking of and yet he does not fail, does he, in relation to the matter of carrying His cross?

J.S.E. No. “A certain passer-by” is no outstanding personality in this world, which is an advantage; Paul develops that in his letter to the Corinthians,

• “For consider your calling, brethren”, chapter 1: 26,

• after he had spoken of the word of the cross, so that it fits into our own times – “A certain passer-by”.

T.H. Would the reference to his coming from the field have a bearing at all on his occupation? I wondered whether he was an agricultural man. It is only an enquiry.

J.S.E. Well, we are not told. He certainly was a father, and that is something.

T.H. I thought that; the experience of that and the sons getting the gain of it.

P.H.H. Do you think that the Lord would have us keep our eyes open for those – to use your expression ­– who are in the succession?

J.S.E. I am sure of it.

P.H.H. They are not always in Scripture named at the beginning, at least they are not known to every­body, but by their bearing and consistency in relation to the truth they begin to show themselves, would you say?

J.S.E. Is not that verified in the one hundred and twenty in the upper room in Acts in that some are named but not all, but they were all in it?

P.H.H. Yes, and I was thinking how they obtrude upon the attention even of unspiritual men, like king Saul, for instance, having to pay attention to David and enquire his name, and so on.

P.L. “Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, de­parted not from within the tent”, Exodus 33: 11.

• Is he coming under spiritual observation in the succession of the testimony?

P.H.H. So that while Alexander and Rufus are possibly not on the scene yet, or only just, they were apparently well known when Mark wrote his gospel.

J.S.E. Yes; they were in the succession in a living way, and that is why Mark is prepared to mention their names.

A.M. Would the carrying of the cross by Simon, I mean the cross used as the actual instrument of the Lord’s death, however unwilling he was, be intended to have a certain effect upon him as upon us, that we have a certain instrumentality in that sense in connection with the death of the Lord?

J.S.E. When you say’ instrumentality’ you mean in a testimonal way?

A.M. Outwardly he would seem to have a certain responsibility in carrying the cross. I wondered whether it would be to induce self-judgment in facing up to that, that we have a part in it.

J.S.E. You mean it is not a light matter, it is in contrast to the linen cloth about a naked body. The matter is there, it is there in substance. The word “carry” is to be noted.

A.M. Yes. It is a weighty matter.

J.S.E. The young man in chapter 16, provides a touch of completion to all this. He represents the clarity of perspective amid all that has transpired, in the fact that he is “sitting on the right”;

• that suggests the blessedness of coming through these exercises, not merely in a preserved way, but in an implemented way, so that he is said to be clothed in a white robe and sitting on the right, and he is there ava

• lable to these persons who, though sympathetic, are in need of help in their intelligences.

P.L. His vigour and his posture and his raiment so pure underlying all his testimony? What Paul really enjoins on Timothy.

J.S.E. Quite so. And Mark would get the gain of that; he no doubt saw the letter Paul wrote to Timothy, especially the second one.

T.J.G. And the way he speaks of the Lord,

• “Ye seek Jesus, the Nazarene, the crucified one”.

R.C. Would the thought of entering into the sepulchre be a development of carrying his cross, do you think?

J.S.E. The young man, clothed in a white robe sitting on the right, is there to minister something to these women which would quicken, not only their affections, but their intelligence, crucifixion, while it represents the acme of man’s hatred and malice, is not the end; he says to them,

• “He is risen”, then he speaks of the “place where they had put him”.

• This, in contrast to Matthew which says
  • “Where the Lord lay”.

• The great point in Matthew is the kingly side of the matter, but here it says “Where they had put him”, as though they could even go to that extent, but no further. He says, “He is risen”.

P.H.H. Would the mention of the first day of the week in verse 2, after the sabbath in verse 1, be in line with that thought,

• the first day of the week suggesting a new order of things beyond any limit to which man could go, however religious?

• Does the young man sitting on the right, clothed with a white robe, have some link with that, does he have some link with the new order and the new world?

J.S.E. I am sure that is so.

P.L. And would it suggest that the testimony has moved on and this servant is serving fully in the current of the testimony?

J.S.E. Yes; and that is what is in mind for the young men and for the young women, that they are helped by the Lord and by the Spirit to keep pace with the move­ments in the testimony, and the more they seek help on that line, the less affected and influenced will they be by what is around.

Hy.W. Do these features that are recorded as marking this young man show that he is in moral accord with the fact that the sun has risen?

J.S.E. Very good. Just so.

A.G.B. Do you think that Mark using the word ‘understanding’ frequently, and the Lord challenging His own as to understanding, having called them to be with Him, this young man represents someone now who has arrived at a true understanding of what is in the Lord’s mind in the call?

J.S.E. I think so. We may view him as embodying the value of all the teaching in the gospel, he is pre­sented at this juncture as in the value of it and available to help others.

• That is what we are intended to be, a means of help to one another, and we can only be that as we are moving in a girded way in the testimony here.

• When we come to the end of the gospel, it is not teach­ing, but preaching, involving the creation; this is the distinction between Matthew and Mark, at the end – although there are many features in common as you go through the narratives –
  • that Matthew is insistent on teaching baptised persons, making disciples,

  • but Mark insistent on preaching and believing.

• These features, while distinct, are not to be divorced but kept side by side.

J.McK. Would the preaching especially make way for the operations of the Spirit?

• “And they, going forth preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs following upon it”.

• Do you think that we have to learn how in the preaching the word may come in and be confirmed? I was thinking of the reference in Acts 10: 44,
  • “The Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were hearing the word”.

J.S.E. Yes.

P.H.H. And is there a connection specially in this gospel between the young man on the right and the Lord Jesus, who

• “Sat at the right hand of God”?

• And then He works with them. It is a sympathetic note, would you say among other things, because it is not an angel in the sepulchre as elsewhere, but a man?

J.S.E. A young man. Yes.

A.M. In that connection I was wondering whether you could possibly link him up with Paul’s expression,

• “We have the mind of Christ”, 1 Corinthians 2: 16,

• not Paul only, but others. He seems to have a peculiar know­ledge of the Lord and of His mind, he gives them a clear direction as to where the Lord was and what they were to do.

J.S.E. Yes. Quite so.

H.J.M. And had you in mind that it bears on the maintenance and continuance of the testimony?

• One has been reminded of an incident that is told of Mr. Stoney being heard speaking to the Lord, and referring to Mr. Raven, said “Lord, he will do, he has another Man before him”.

• This young man speaks of Jesus the Nazarene – the crucified one risen.

J.S.E. Yes. In John, chapter 19, Pilate comes under personal attention from the Lord, so that he is left without excuse for delivering Christ up to be crucified.

• The peculiar allusion to the purple robe here involves further teaching. In Matthew the scarlet cloak and in Mark the purple robe are taken off before Simon is intro­duced; in John we read;
  • “Jesus therefore went forth without, wearing … the purple robe”, and then it says “bearing his cross”, verse 17;

• from this stand­point, we have the support of Christ Himself, as having control of the circumstances, so that we need have no fear;

• there is something about the women, suggested in this word “stood”, indicating dignity in arranging themselves by the cross of Jesus, the Jesus who went forth wearing the purple robe;

• if we realized this, there would be no hesitation with us as being linked in the testimony, there would be a stedfastness and a dignity as we went on our way.

P.L. Would the four women here suggest the sub­jective state universally in the number four? Mr. Darby points out that there are four women here, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the sister of his mother, and then Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala.

• Would it be the way subjectively the testimony would spread universally, do you think, in the acceptance of death and reproach here but in the light of who this glorious Person is who is wearing the purple?

J.S.E. Yes, I am sure that is how the matter stands. I had not thought of the four women, but I am glad to be reminded about it.

• I wondered if these women and the disciple whom Jesus loved provide a portrait of the holy results that come about through loyalty in the testimonial position.

• The allusion to the disciple whom He loved and his own home, is to show that as we merge together, as Mr. L says, with a universal outlook, we stand in relation to the whole;

• as we are so, we are the subjects of a divine pledge that we shall have access into the realm of privilege and the intimacy of affections that belong to it.

T.J.G. What do you mean in relation to a home?

J.S.E. It says, “From that hour the disciple took her to his own home”. That is what I had in mind.

• I thought it suggested the sphere where the intimacy of holy relations and affections is experienced, a suited answer to what is suggested in the four women who stood by the cross of Jesus.

H.W. Intimacy taken up in the light of the cross? You were speaking about the holy intimacy there into which John took the mother – that would be all in the light of the cross?

J.S.E. It would be all the outcome of it; but the intimacy suggested in the home, would be beyond the cross; the cross has limits, it belongs to time, but the intimacy remains.

T.B.C. Would it be essential that we take up this public position of exposure? It is an exposed public position – standing by the cross?

J.S.E. We can afford to do it as we have an under­standing that Jesus is wearing the purple, that is how John comes in for our help at the close and shows us that in spite of all that has happened on the public side, this wonderful Person, Jesus, has the initiative.

P.L. So that is He wearing the purple to the Phila­delphians, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, right down along the line, and are they held in testimony against the usurpation of the purple in Revelation?

J.S.E. I am sure that is right. The universal rights of Christ are emphasised in Philippians 2, and cherished in Philadelphia;

• as they are cherished in our localities, do we not link on with the universal position and have our part in the joy of love’s intimacies as the Lord promises the overcomer?

P.H.H. It is a very touching matter, is it not, that the Lord should administer in regard of certain things at that time?

• Is that to be a help to us so that nothing in our matters is dealt with in a slip-shod way, and we can always count on the Lord, as you are saying, to help in the initiative? He keeps the initiative right through.

H.J.M. Is there some link too in 2 Timothy 1? In writing to Timothy

• Paul says, “Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but suffer evil along with the glad tidings, according to the power of God”,

  and then he goes on to the greatness of

  the “appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who has annulled death, and brought to light life and incorruptibility by the glad tidings; to which I have been appointed a herald and apostle and teacher of the nations”.

• I wondered if the purple really comes into expression there?

J.S.E. Yes. And still there is more than the purple in John 19; Paul does not take us any further than the purple in the second epistle to Timothy.

• It is interesting to see how that works out; this allusion to the disciple whom Jesus loved and his own home is really beyond what the purple suggests,
  • the Spirit will not allow us to have any part in the enjoyment of love’s surroundings in the intimacy suggested in the home, save as we are standing by the cross of Jesus in relation to the purple.

• That is, as we stand, in the midst of public reproach, by all that is due to Christ in universal dominion, we are in a fair way to enter into something greater.

P.L. So that greater than all the glory are the rela­tions of the heart with Jesus and the Father.

J.S.E. Yes; when we come to chapter 20, where reference is made to the first day of the week, it says

• “When therefore it was evening on that day”

• as though the whole of that day has been spent in the develop­ment of affections and feelings which are beyond the purple;

• Jesus was attracted to them in those circum­stances, for it says, “Jesus came”. He was drawn to them; He was restfully with them and they with Him.

P.L. In love which will abide eternally, when the call for the purple testimonially is over!

J.S.E. Quite. I wondered if we could go over the four narratives now.

• It is “His accusation” in Matthew which is in keeping with the severity of that gospel;

  “the superscription” in Mark shows that there is something over and above all that is passing in the minds of men;

  “the inscription” in Luke;

  but here in John the words “a title” are powerful and attractive.

• Perhaps Mr. D will say what he has in mind about it.

W.D. I wondered whether it was remarkable in spite of the Jews wishing this title to be obliterated, par­ticularly the thought of the King, that Pilate, the governor, insists that the title stands and there it is publicly, in letters written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin – verse 20.

J.S.E. The title belongs to the Person, who is wearing the purple; these persons who stood by the cross, did so in the light of the title – the confirmed title –

• “What I have written, I have written”,

• and in the appreciation of the glory of the Person wearing the purple, they virtually say, “We have no room for anybody else”.

A.G.B. Normally, we might have expected, having made reference to the masculine so much, that it would have been men that would have stood there.

• Has John some particular significance in his mind in that the sisterly, feminine side comes to the front here as underlying the public and masculine?

J.S.E. Yes, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is a term connected with state.

• In chapter 20 we see the same thing in Mary; while she needs instruction her sympathies are so bound up with her Lord who has been crucified that she stood at the tomb weeping, and the Lord comes to her.

• In chapter 19, the allusion to the Marys, and the mother, and the disciple whom Jesus loved is to emphasise state.

H.W. Did you say in an earlier reading that this is an element that goes through?

J.S.E. That is right; the Spirit allies Himself with state.

A.M. Does not John use the word ‘Woman’ very carefully and in a dignified way?

J.S.E. Yes, and only once, as far as I know, re­bukingly.

J.H.E. Could we add to the names of the women mentioned which speak of state – Lydia the seller of purple, the one whom Paul met when he first entered Europe?

J.S.E. Almost immediately it says “Whose heart the Lord opened” – surely that is an indication of state.

P.H.H. Do you take it that the word ‘woman’ used in John is the Spirit’s way through him of bringing out the full womanly thought as being the counterpart of Christ? It comes again and I think finally in chapter 20.

J.S.E. That is right. It is used five times in the gospel.

P.H.H. Not so much would you say from the point of view of Christ and the assembly in an official way, but more the racial thought, that is, the woman being given such a privileged place in the race.

J.S.E. Quite so; when the mother of Jesus is rebuked in chapter 2, she immediately is adjusted, she says

• “Whatever he may say to you, do”.

• What we have in the way the Lord addresses her now as “Woman” fills out, in an attractive way, what you say.

P.H.H. You mean in chapter 19?

J.S.E. I am referring to chapter 19 when He says to his mother, “Woman”. In chapter 2 it is reprovingly when He says,

• “What have I to do with thee, woman?”

E.C. The woman in Revelation 17 is clothed in purple and sitting on a scarlet beast. Would you say a word about that?

J.S.E. She is clothed in purple in arrogance, and this grates upon the sensibilities of a lover of Christ.

• There is nothing so repulsive, so that we are glad to arrive at chapter 18 where it says that she has fallen,
  • and come to chapter 19 where it says that the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready.

As we read John, we discern the glory of Christ, speaking reverently, in carrying all before Him even to the cross,

• He bears His cross,

  He wears the purple robe.

  He has the matter in hand while He is on the cross.

• It suggests that the more decisive we are in fealty to Him where He was crucified, the more likely we are to enter into the enjoyment of love’s intimate relationships as suggested in the disciple’s home.

A.P.B. You think that at the very end of the dis­pensation we have this great matter that the Lord is equal to seeing everything through to the glory of God, to carry through the service of God?

J.S.E. Yes. We are proving it, the service of God can only be entered upon as in the joy of these holy and intimate relationships. In chapter 20 we have the precious words

• “My Father and your Father”,

  “My God and your God”.

E.B.I. I would like to ask with regard to the expres­sion by Pilate in chapter 19,

• “Behold the man”,

• and then “Woman” in chapter 20 – would she be brought into correspondence with the man?

J.S.E. That is the Man to be crucified. The corres­pondence in chapter 20 is with the Man that has ascended, it is the same Man but the condition is different.

Anyone familiar with the language of scripture will know how angels stand; they will know how animals stand; and how birds and fishes stand in the wisdom of divine ways, but,

• when you come to the threshold of what we call eternity, everything relates to God and men.

• That is the way it speaks, and we must be governed by the way the Spirit speaks in the Scriptures.
  • “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.

• How many? We are not told. Angels are not mentioned; animals, birds and fishes are finished with – they are but creatures of time –
  • everything finds its focus in men, as I say, God and men in the happiest relationships.

We may say simply, that whilst we are here we are enroute for that glorious consummation, and the fact that we are here in mixed conditions calls for certain arrangements, and the adoption of certain attitudes on our part,

• with the end in view that while we are still here we might in the liberty, joy and power of the Spirit touch something of what is heavenly and glorious.

• That is why I put these four passages of scripture together, I am not raising any point as to whether we are the Lord’s, but would say this,
  • that, if there is anyone who does not fall into that class, we can leave you now to the sovereign hand and the sovereign power that has operated with the rest of us, and brought us to know and to love, and desire to serve the Lord Jesus, because of what He Himself is, and what He has done, and what He is going to do.

• I speak to those who love Him because I am concerned, with many others, that we may become more substantial in our part and our movements in the testimony whilst we are here.

First of all, I want to speak of what is practical, and that brings up the question of our baptism.

• This tenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is prefaced by an allusion to the ancient people,
  • “our fathers” as Paul says, “all were baptised unto Moses”.

• That is, they were com­mitted to Moses in view of applying themselves to some­thing entirely different from what they were acquainted with in Egypt, that is a very practical matter, we are to understand that;
  • think of idolatry, that goes on in Egypt, and in the continent to which Egypt belongs, up to this very day; fornication – it abounds with it.

• These things are foreign to the teaching of baptism, and yet they all provide the element of temptation to us.

• Not that any person in these so-called Christianised countries would bow themselves down to idols – and yet I do not know, there is a good deal of it with the images in the Western hierarchy, and the ikons in the Eastern­, they are all forms of idolatry;
  • that is, God and Christ are displaced in the thoughts and affections of men by something that is material.

• Well, we are not to fall into this, we are not to be idolaters. We are not to commit fornication, and so on.

In the face of all this, we have the word,

• “No temp­tation has taken you, but such as is according to man’s nature”.

• A thing that is common to man’s nature – and we may as well face it for we still have it within us – is to fall under one of these various influences. It would be a poor thing if we were left there, so the word comes,
  • “God is faithful”.

• What a word that is! May I empha­sise it for the benefit of our younger men and women who are committed “to the testimony of the Christ” – an expression which is found early in this epistle.

• God has His eye on you, and He wants to carry you through. He does not want to carry you through and bring you to the end just as He started with you. Oh no! That is not God’s thought.

• God’s thought is en­largement, development of features that are attractive to Him, and that is where His faithfulness shines.
  • “God is faithful”, and then it says, “who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear”.

• It is a good thing to come back to the faithfulness of God, because that is an encouragement to us to face our practical responsibility.

Then it says, “But will with the temptation make the issue also”.

• That is an extraordinary word – “make the issue”. We might say, Where is it to be found?

• And he immediately comes to this matter of the cup of blessing which we bless, and the bread which we break.

• I do not know, of course, but it may be that all here are within the category of those breaking bread.
  • “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Christ?”

• I want you to notice this, “the blood of the Christ”; it is an allusion to the way in which the value of the blood of the Christ has been put at our disposal.

• The blood of the Christ is a term which involves His sacrificial work, and on the practical line, the Spirit is pressing upon us the need of facing this question.
  • “The communion of the blood of the Christ”;

• that is, we share something together, in common, by way of that blood.

• We may speak of it, of course, as poured out for us, but think of the great sacrificial undertaking of the Christ, and the practical bearing of it in these questions, so that we are here as entirely in agreement with all the power connected with that blood to deal with these abnormal things.

There is a scripture which says,

• “The blood of the Christ who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God, purify your conscience”, Hebrews 9: 14.

• That is the blood of the Christ. “The cup … which we bless”, is it not the communion of that very same blood, of Christ? It is an allusion to the sacrificial side of the death of Christ, and we are to be in keeping with it.

• And I raise this question, especially with our younger people, as they move in and out in circumstances in which idolatry and fornication, and all these elements, abound, and men delight in them.

• I believe that as we can provide the moral answer to these questions, we shall see how God has provided the issue. He has pro­vided it in Christ by way of His blood and His body.

So, as he goes on, he says, “Because we, being many, are one loaf, one body”.

• It helps us to a practical realisation and application to this great matter of the word ‘body’, so that if there is anything that I am unable to do, it is a strange thing if you are able to do it!

• If there is anything that you judge, as an intelligent person, to be incongruous to this communion, how can I in­dulge in it?
  • “Because we, being many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of that one loaf”.

• There is many an enquiry in our minds as to whether we can do certain things unknown to the brethren, and it is a witness to the absence of intelligence as to the truth of one body.
  • “We being many, are one loaf, one body, for we all partake of that one loaf”.

• That is a remark­able word, perhaps a little stronger than the word ‘com­munion’. That is, we all share in a common partner­ship.

• This is the mode of approach to the settlement of questionable matters as they arise. Do they comport in their scope and detail with what is normal to the one body?

• If we faced them in this way we should have to say, We cannot go on with them. It is much better to approach every questionable element by way of this truth as to one body, one loaf.

A little further down we get an allusion to the Lord.

• “Ye cannot drink the Lord’s cup, and the cup of demons”.

• Do you not see the terseness of the manner in which the Holy Spirit has put the cup of the Lord over against the cup of demons? It does not say, ‘the cup of the Insurance company’, or some other associa­tion.

• A remark was made in one of the readings about the history in this very city, some one hundred and seven years ago, when a blot on the testimony of .the Christ was brought in through the introduction of the neutral course, and that is why the Spirit is so terse about this.

• The very idea of the cup means that you indulge in the enjoyment of what is connected with the Lord, and you cannot indulge on the line of enjoyment in anything outside of it. There are certain things we have to do.

• We have to earn our living. We have to provide things honestly, but they do not involve a cup, and that is why the Spirit has put this distinction so tersely, the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.

And then he says, “Ye cannot partake of the Lord’s table, and of the table of demons”.

• This word ‘table’ is very interesting; it may involve somewhere where you sit to do business, or where you sit to eat a meal, and the Spirit would say, You cannot partake on two lines, you must always be on the one, and in the refusal of the other, or you will collapse to the other and miss the one!

• The Lord Himself brought the same principle forward when He said,
  • “Ye cannot serve God and mammon”.

• Matters come up, and we are all tested as they arise, whether we are with the Lord in the matter, or whether we are considering for something or some­one else. I think that that is the practical application of these words, and I would commend it to the brethren, especially to the younger men and women.

In coming to chapter 11, I want to say something about what is ceremonial, because there is a setting in which we can rightly use the word, and the Lord’s supper is, to say nothing else at the moment, a cere­mony.

• It is an arrangement prescribed. by the Lord where He is, and He has deposited it in the only safe setting on the earth, and that is in the assembly.

• That is why, just before this, we have the allusion to coming together in assembly, so as to help us to under­stand that there, and there alone, is the safe depository of this distinctive ceremony of the present dispensation.

• What has happened, in a general way throughout Christendom, is the appropriation of the ceremony without the practical approach to it, and the net result is that it has become a caricature.

• From the greatest of the hierarchies down to the most menial dissentient body, without exception, the ceremony is approached without the practical application necessary to it, and I am concerned, dear brethren, for myself that, as sitting down to have part in the ceremony,

• I should do so as one person at least who is free on the practical line, and as we are free on the practical line, so we shall have liberty and buoyancy, and I might say power, in the handling of the ceremony.

In Corinth we see that the handling of the ceremony, apart from the practical approach to it, involved many of the brethren in a sick-bed, and some in their coffins.

• These are solemn things to think of, dear brethren, but it is a fact that the government of God, in its judicial character, operates on this line, and it is no use trying to spiritualise the sickness and the death; it is actual.
  • “On this account many among you are weak and infirm, and a good many are fallen asleep”,

• and the call is to judge ourselves, to rightly arrange ourselves by means of the practical approach, so that the cere­mony is taken up in a holy, dignified way; and what is due to the Lord, the lordly One, is discharged in a way that leaves no room for misgivings as to the outcome.

• I plead with the brethren, particularly with those who have a sense of care among the saints, never to allow themselves to be caught by the mere urgency of desire for the ceremony without diligent search as to the practical approach to it.

• I have heard it said, “Well, they will learn better when they are inside”. I do not think so! I have heard, and witnessed, persons who, while desiring the ceremony, have refused the practical approach to it in the matter of baptism, for one thing;
  • and where that has been allowed, there has been a drag on the assembly movements, and, instead of being an asset in the ceremony, they become a weight.

• The need is reality, and reality lies in the application of chapter 10 as the means of approach to the ceremony. We then have no misgivings as to the lordly rights of Jesus, we have no wishful thinking as to the betterment of the world.

• From the standpoint, and I say this advisedly, of these verses in chapter 11 the sooner the world goes under judgment, the sooner will the lordly One have the place that is rightly His.

That is a stern statement, but it is one worth think­ing of. Any who are familiar with Matthew’s gospel will recall how the disciples spoke to the Lord on the mount of Olives about the buildings of the temple, and He said,

• “Do ye not see all these things? Verily I say to you, Not a stone shall be left upon a stone which shall not be thrown down”, Matthew 24: 2.

• Do not let us have any misgivings, these things can have no place when this rejected lordly One comes into His dominical possessions. They will all have disappeared for ever.

• Can we arrange ourselves by way of the ceremony in relation to this? No, dear brethren, we cannot if we do not approach it from the practical standpoint of chapter 10, do not make any mistake about it.
  • And if I am fraternising with any element that goes along with this, I am in that way deficient when it comes to the cere­mony.

• That is why, in the whole of this section of chapter 11, the keyword is “the Lord”, the supreme rights of Christ are not only to come into evidence in the millennium, but to be over the saints of the assembly now.

That is how we stand. So the word is,

• “For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye an­nounce”

• – What a word that is, involving the principle of thoroughness in what we do even if we are not rightly arranged in the way we feel –
  • “the death of the Lord until he come”.

• We tell plainly in what we do that we resent in the fullest way the manner in which the lordly One has been treated here.

• The hour will come when the lordly One takes the reins in hand, and we shall be with Him; the place that we shall have in that regime will be determined by our fealty to Him in these present circumstances.

Now I want to come on to chapter 12 and speak of what is spiritual.

• In chapters 10 and 11 we can see that both the practical side of the truth, and the ceremonial side of the supper, stand in moral surroundings; that is, in the presence of evil.

• We do what is good, and that is a moral exercise. In the presence of the guilt of the world, we display the loyalty of love. What an opportunity! But let it be the loyalty of love, and not the formality of mere religion.

• But there is something more! So this first verse speaks of what is spiritual; it is in contradistinction to what is natural. Yes, we are tested when we come up against this. So it says in verse 12,
  • “For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ”.

• You see, as we come on to what is spiritual, no interrogation marks! No questions need be asked in the spiritual realm, everything is shaped accord­ing to divine pleasure and liberty; it says,
  • “So also is the Christ”.

• It is an allusion, I believe, to the assembly in formation in the city or the town, whatever it may be; it is the anointed entity in that place, and if it is that, it is capable of moving with the richest feelings in the realm of what is spiritual,

• and the power for that does not lie in the ceremony; it does not lie in the application of chapter 10; it lies in the Spirit.
  • “In the power of one Spirit we have all been baptised into one body”

• – that is a factual and settled matter, that baptism has taken place once for all;
  • “In the power of one Spirit we have all been baptised into one body … and have all been given”

• – that is, the opportunities are offered to us now in our own circumstances –
  • “to drink of [or out of] one Spirit”.

• Think of that! The Spirit – the adequate supply wherever the saints are, for power in relation to what is spiritual. We cannot have what is spiritual without the Spirit.

• We may have ceremonialism without Him, and there is abundance of it about, and that is why I see the emphasis in chapter 11 from where we have read, on the word “the Lord”, and the emphasis in chapter 10 from where we read first of all, on “the Christ”.

• Now the emphasis is on the Spirit, because what is spiritual is in focus, and oh! what need there is, dear brethren, for spirituality amongst us, so that as we come at the ceremony by way of what is practical, and deal with it rightly and feelingly,
  • we are able to make use of the Spirit on this principle of drinking, so that we expand in liberty and joy in the spiritual realm.

• The Lord help us to be good drinkers on this line! We can drink as much as we wish, dear brethren!

Now, that is why I believe in the arrangement of words in chapter 11 in connection with the cup; you get this word from the lips of Jesus up there as to what He said down here.

• Paul never heard Him say it down here, but he received it from Him up there,
  • “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, this do, as often as ye shall drink it”.

• You do not find that anywhere else in that form, and I believe that there is a very powerful link between the drinking the cup as the completion of the ceremony, and the drinking out of one Spirit as suggestive of the power by which we enter into the joy of what is spiritual.

I hope I have made myself clear, because I desire to go further, and to speak of glory.

• We cannot exactly enter glory by what is ceremonial. The brethren at Corinth were going on with the ceremony.

• It might, of course, technically have been all in order, but there were those who were drinking unworthily; there were those who were dying; there were those who were guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. A terrible thing to think of!

• How could those persons be spiritual? And if they were not spiritual, how could they have part in the realm of glory?

• The Spirit has been very careful to set these things in their holy arrangement, and yet, withal, in their holy simplicity, that we might be at home in the realm of the glory, under the control and in the liberty of the Spirit.
  • “The Lord is the Spirit” it says.

• That is, the Spirit is in control, and He is ready to hold us in the most complete way in at-homedness and liberty, so that we can look with un­veiled face.

• I believe that that is the only word of its kind in the Scriptures, and it involves the principle of reflection in the persons who are thus engaged. Does not all this make the teaching attractive to us? “We all”.

• Paul would say, I had to chide you as to the ceremony, but I am in this. “We all”. He could not afford to leave himself out of it.
  • “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are trans­formed”.

• Transformed as the result of engagement­ that is the idea, engagement in the power of the Spirit with glory, may I say glory in a Man. He says,
  • “We … are transformed according to the same image”.

• Think of all this! So that what is seen in the Lord in fulness is depicted in the lookers in its features. “According to the same image”.

Then he does not say ‘from ceremony to ceremony’, but,

• “from glory to glory”.

• Who will put a limit on it? When we drink out of one Spirit we drink out of a limitless source of supply, and when we are in the realm of glory, we are in the realm of what is limitless, and if there are any limitations they are with us; so it says,
  • “Even as by the Lord the Spirit”.

I am not proceeding any further, but I felt somewhat pressed for the necessity of bringing this forward be­cause I feel that, as the days go on,

• if we are not guarded and freely marked by the readiness of application to the truth of fellowship,

• we shall slip into the rut of formula by itself, and land ourselves in a quagmire without any spiritual liberty and any at-homedness in glory, and that would be a catastrophe.

May the Lord enrich our thoughts, and may the Spirit have greater sway over us that these things may be verified in the places where we live.

May the Lord bless His word to us, for His name’s sake.

I wish to make a remark first of all about chapter 1, and the usage of this precious term, "The Word", so that none of us may get astray in our thoughts as we speak of Christ. I refer to the first verse of the chapter,

• "the Word was God",

• feeling it is essential that that should be carried with us at every turn in the narrative. Then the fourteenth verse says,
  • "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us . full of grace and truth".

• This term "the Word", is peculiarly connected with the circle of lovers. I think I am right in saying that Luke and John refer to it peculiarly as appreciating the preciousness of Christ as coming into circumstances where He could dwell among certain persons in a certain way.
  • "Dwelt among us" – the "us" is the circle of the lovers.

• There are other terms used by persons outside this circle: I might refer to the questions of the synoptic gospels – Matthew 13: 35,
  • "Is not this the son of the carpenter?" – a term of belittlement, with no love behind it.

  • Mark 6: 3, "Is not this the carpenter?";

  • and Luke 4: 22 "Is not this the son of Joseph?"

• They are all interrogations of belittlement, outside the circle of the lovers.

• One is concerned that we may all consciously locate ourselves within this circle, so that we have no need to say, "Is not this"-but we may link on with those who said,
  • "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us&$8230; full of grace and truth".

In chapter 2, there is no respect paid to Him – scarcely patronage. Chapter 3 brings in a certain element of patronage, but little outside that.

• We come now to this woman to whom reference has been made, but in relation to whom one desires to say something, in order that Christ in the tenderness of His ways in wooing grace would lay hold of her in a suitable way, that she might be numbered among the lovers, for that is the end in view, and I would suggest that this is a beginning at the bottom.

• Many of us I believe have been guilty of an endeavour to begin at the top. God alone can do that – as He must do, for if we are to be secured He must come down, come down to where we are, and this He has done in Jesus.

• So this dialogue proceeds, and what comes to light is most affecting; that the Lord Jesus, He who is earlier said by the lovers to be the Word – the Word was God – He is found here in quest of this person, content to accept the appellation "a Jew" – a very limited term for anybody, but how much more so for One so glorious as He.

• He did not contradict the woman when she brought the name forward. Neither when she brought in the terms "mountain" and "Jerusalem" did He assume in His language to be anything outside the name she had accorded Him. This is an important matter, a matter that was enquired into this morning.

• There is a scripture which speaks of Him, that "If … he were upon earth, he would not even be a priest".
  • "For it is clear that our Lord has sprung out of Juda, as to which tribe Moses spake nothing as to priests."

• That explains to me why the Lord Jesus, great and glorious as He is, was free to come to the level of this woman's word "worship". Had He employed the other word, it would have betrayed something outside the tribe of Juda.

• The Lord did not in His circumstances here ever assume to what belonged to the sacerdotal circle. But oh, how much else comes into view, dear brethren; so that He in the presentation of matters to the woman is not exactly emphasising a system. He says,
  • "The hour is coming when ye shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father".

• Why does He say that? For our sakes: as the writer says at the end of the book,
  • "these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in his name".

• These things are written for us, and this particular term is to emphasise to us the fundamental necessity of known relationship before we can intelligently enter into matters pertaining to a system.

• I believe that is why John in this gospel does not refer formally to the assembly, but constantly urges the blessedness of relationships which are essential to its operations.

• This term, the Father, is one that the woman had never heard before in that mountain, and probably it was never heard in Jerusalem. The Lord takes her right away from both and touches something as to the elevated character of relationship in this word, the Father.
  • "The hour is coming when ye shall neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father".

  • He then says, "Ye worship ye know not what; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews".

• He keeps to her own language in order to attract her outside a system, false in its character of course, and to make her heart move in the direction of relationship.

• I believe, dear brethren (and I say this particularly for those who are growing up amongst us – youths and maidens and young men and young women – for with the modern course of schooling it becomes naturally easy to adopt terms) the basic essential is known and enjoyed relationship.

• If I may say it reverently, no one could ever be moving here below like Jesus moved in the undimmed joy and satisfaction of His own relationship with the Father, and He is just making this suggestion to this woman at the bottom in order that she might be attracted in this direction.

• He goes further, and He says, "the hour is coming and now is"; as much as to say, you can begin at once. What a word that is. If anyone has not begun at this point, the Lord would say to you, as He said to her,
  • "The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth".

• Thank God for the thousands of them that are doing it day by day. Yes, day by day, because worship in this sense is a daily matter. Would that we knew more about it – an attitude of reverential character to the Father day by day. Oh, how attractive it is.

• The Lord says, And now is. Would you not like to come into this? Would not you like to have a beginning right here at the very bottom? This word "worship" is largely connected with the bottom. It is a word suggested, I believe, in one of the hymns we sang this afternoon – prostration of an inferior in the presence of a superior.

• Think of the greatness, the supremacy of the Father, and then the Lord suggests the supremacy of God, and lays it open that we might have a beginning there on these lines in spirit and in truth. Notice the words He uses.
  • "The hour is coming and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for also the Father seeks such as his worshippers. God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth".

• I am safe in saying, that a beginning on this line, at the bottom, would save us from many a pitfall in the mere use of technique and formula.

• What does the woman do? Does she speak about a system? No, she speaks about a Man – the evidence, I believe, that the truth in so far as it was presented to her had laid hold of her, and she delights to trace it to the Man who brought up before her in powerful measure the whole course of her long history, and she had it out in His presence and she had nothing more to say to it.

• This is the Man, she says, for me.
  • "Is not he the Christ?"

• I have a feeling that this is rightly the bottom for all of us. Thank God for those who have begun there, and for those who have emphasised to us, as they have sought to serve us in the ministry, the great necessity of a beginning there.

But, as I said, expansion is in mind, and I come to chapter 20, and one is concerned that what is said about it may be suggestive in this direction.

• Oh, how Mary felt the loss of her Lord. One might say, she felt His absence. Do we feel it? Do we really feel, dear brethren, the way that Christ has gone out? She missed Him, and yet she needed teaching.

• If one may say so, the key-word in chapter 4 is connected with what is prophetic, because it has largely to do with the conscience.

• Chapter 20 is linked with teaching, and involves the affections and the mind. We must never divorce these – never. There is a danger sometimes of doing this.

• The woman, when she is finished with the angels – they do not seem to be able to help her – makes a partial turn and she sees Jesus, but does not know it is He. The Lord was pleased with that movement, even though it was not full.

• Teaching is a gradual matter; learning, alas, with most of us is exceedingly slow, but I am not prepared to say it was slow with Mary, for she learned a tremendous amount in the course of one day. It is a problem sometimes as to whether some of us learn anything. She says to Him,
  • "Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away".

• Now, I say brethren, the Lord was pleased with that remark, because it showed she was prepared to move, and He says, Mary. Now she turns right round – we might say with her back even upon angels – and her face (I say this reverently) looking straight into the face of Jesus. And what could she see, but this inexpressible love which pervades the circle of the lovers.

• Why does the Spirit say, Mary said to Him in Hebrew? There was another person who used this term, but it does not say he used it in Hebrew. My own impression is that it links on with this principle of expansion. It suggests the language of one who is prepared to move further. Yes, prepared to move further, and still needing help to do it. Who is to give it to her if it is not the Object of her affections?

• See how expanding all this is – you might say compressed into a very few verses – but it suggests to us that if we are ready for teaching, if we are ready for expansion, it is the easiest thing in the world to have it. Many deplore the fact that they find themselves cramped, and there is no reason for it, no reason at all.

The Lord says, in effect, it does not come this way … Mary. You must let Me alone, you must not touch Me, but you must go to the circle of the lovers, for they need expansion as well as you, and you will get more as you find your place amongst them. He then gives her this message as we had it this afternoon,

• "Go to my brethren".

• That is a remarkable statement. Many are in danger of analysing these expressions, "My God and your God", without embracing in the holiest of affections and subjection, the grandeur of the statement, "My brethren".

• Jesus claims us at the level of His own kindred, so that in a certain way all that is His is ours. I say, in a certain way; there are things which are His and not ours, but He is asserting here that what is His in the blessedness of these wonderful relationships is to be ours; it is ours.
  • "I ascend to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God."

• If we were expanded in relation to this, could we afford to reduce Him to the level of a creature, and never think of Him in His Own essential relationship and position? The thought is foreign to any lover of Christ. We need expansion in this direction, for it is love that is asserting itself in relation to His kindred.

• Think of ourselves here, every one who loves Christ; He would claim us and own us as His own kindred, in view of our sharing and enjoying with Him as far as is possible what He has Himself. Does not that make matters attractive to us? This is not the bottom, dear brethren, oh no!

• There is no time in the shortness of the period allowed for a meeting like this to deal with the stages. You might say that the Lord Jesus is about to go to the top, and as He is doing that He is asserting this great matter. It is the answer I believe to the teaching of the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying, but not now in a figure but in love's assertion.

• I wonder sometimes if we really receive it. We need the Spirit to enjoy it; do not let us overlook that. Nevertheless the assertion is made by Jesus Himself, and it stands, whether I enjoy it or not. Thank God the Spirit has taken His abode in us in order that we may enjoy it. As we make use of the Spirit in relation to the enjoyment of this precious setting, we shall find it very easy to fit ourselves into the service of the system connected with Christ in glory,

• for once our Lord terminates the condition of flesh and blood, He takes up His place as the great Priest who has passed through the heavens, and the whole matter of system service then begins to develop. I say again, our part in service in that way, in its liberty and freshness, is dependent on the measure of our joy in our normal relationships in this holy circle of love.

I come now to this touch in Revelation. The Lord is addressing the assembly in Philadelphia at the level of love – not correction. The more we enjoy our place in love's circle, the more we shall appreciate the matter of expansion, and so the Lord speaks, as He does, to the overcomer in Philadelphia of this very principle.

• He had never said anything like this before. It comes into expression here with those who are enjoying love's circle and are to be expanded in it, because of what is to accrue to God, for our association with Christ, while it goes right through and abides eternally, has in view something distinctly for God Himself.

• Because these brethren were in the joy of this association, they were empowered to keep His word and not deny His Name. Now He says,
  • "He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God".

• This word temple is the shrine. In the days of His flesh, our Lord kept His place, and is not referred to as in the shrine at any time, but as having gone up; everything is open to the saints. When He speaks of the shrine in the days of His flesh it refers to the temple of His body – the greatest mystery to the Jews, the religious people, but not to His lovers.
  • "He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God"

• This word pillar not only suggests stability, but ornamentation, and it just seems to indicate that expansion involves ornamentation in the service of God. We use the word refinement, and that enters into it. Then He says,
  • "I will write upon him the name of my God".

• He is directing them on the principle of expansion, towards finality with all that it involves – to "Go no more at all out". How wonderful it is!
  • "And the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven, from my God".

• How delighted the Lord must have been with an assembly from this viewpoint to present such matters. This is within our reach. The great end in view is God Himself. The Lord says, "My God", and we are to understand that this was always before Him.

Now He says, "He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies";

• as much as to say, this is to circulate amongst all the saints. It is to find a place in Edinburgh, where we are tonight, and by way of our being here, into all the places where we come from and where we move in relation to the truth.

• It would be a poor thing if we left these meetings with no sense of expansion. It would be a waste of time, a waste of money, and may I say a waste of the Spirit's service to us here.

• Expansion does not belong to any but creatures, and it is peculiarly essential in the department of creation to which we belong. We need to encourage one another, and this is what the Lord, the Holy and the True, is seeking to do as He addresses Himself in this way to the overcomer in the circle of enjoyed affection and relationship. The more we enjoy the circle and the relationships that are proper to us, the more we shall be ready for expansion.

I want to observe now this last passage. We might say, Who is the speaker? The allusion is to Him that sat upon the throne, and several allusions in the chapters find certain creatures addressing Him who sat on the throne as,

• "Our Lord and our God" (4: 11):

• "To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb."

• The chapters are extremely interesting, as the living creatures burst forth in chapter 4 at the marvel of God's pleasure in creation; in chapter 5 –
  • "Thou art worthy . because thou hast been slain, and hast redeemed to God" (a wonderful circle of persons, yes), "made them to our God kings and priests; and they shall reign over the earth".

• There is yet another circle whose ascription is completely to the Lamb, and still a wider one whose ascription is to Him that sits upon the throne and to the Lamb. Oh, how wonderful, dear brethren, the thoughts of God are.

These circles widen out. The greatest expansion is in the inner one, and that is the one to which we belong, because we have been redeemed to God by the blood of the Lamb.

• I wonder if we really treasure that? Do we really treasure the matter of our being brought back to God, and what is the reason? That we might serve Him in this intimate way – priests to our God.

• I venture to suggest that He who sits upon the throne is a back allusion on that line, and now He is speaking. And to whom does He speak? He first of all speaks in a general way, and then He speaks in a personal way to him that overcomes. The allusion to Him who sits upon the throne is to help us to see the necessity, whilst we are still here, to overcome, even though we have the knowledge of what the end will be.

• The present time is not only the time for expansion, but it is the time for overcoming. So far as I understand, expansion is very closely allied to overcoming. I say that with a certain amount of care, but I believe it is right.
  • "He that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new." And He says, "to me . Write, for these words are true and faithful . I will give to him that thirsts of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be to him God, and he shall be to me son".

• I feel this allusion to thirsting and the fountain of the water of life freely is to help us to see that the power for expansion and overcoming for us lies in the Spirit. And the final touch –
  • "I will be to him God".

• What are we to say about it? Are we to say it is something else, or, simply accept the veracity of the Spirit's language,
  • "I will be to him God, and he shall be to me son."

• That is now, dear brethren, in the joy of expansion. These things can be touched, and I believe the Spirit's primary urge with us at the present time is in this connection. Let us understand we can never rightly touch the zenith of the matter if we are not prepared to face the moral issues of the gospel and have our beginnings as suggested in the 4th of John.

I trust what has been said may be of some encouragement to all our hearts, and a stimulus to us to set ourselves, with the Lord's help and the Spirit's help, in this positive direction