Three Results of the Death of Christ
and other
Ministry by A. M. Hayward

1. The first time is in connection with the securing of a generation;

2. the second in connection with divine energy;

3. and the third in connection with the covenant – that they might live.

• One would like to keep before the heart the death of Christ in these relations. If there was to be a generation that God could bless, then Christ must die. "Jehovah was angry with me on your account".

• I do not think any believer could read that without being moved in his affections. That is Jesus, the One who as seen in the figure in Moses, offered Himself a sacrifice for the people, and God accepted it.

• We were the objects of that sacrifice; not merely that we might be met on our side, but that there might be a generation that was capable of entering into the thoughts of the blessed God.

In the first chapter it says that God destroyed Sihon and Og. But in chapters 2 and 3 they are spoken of as coming into conflict with them and destroying them. How wonderful the working of God!

• Yet it needed that Christ must die in order to have a generation capable of appropriating the thoughts of God.

• Mr. Darby in the synopsis, referring to chapter 17 of Matthew's gospel where the Lord comes down from the mount to die and indicates that He must leave the "unbelieving and perverted generation", verse 17, calls attention to its not being 'evil in the world which puts an end to a particular intervention of God', page 102, by the Lord's departure through death from this scene but
  • 'another character of man's unbelief, that even of the believer – inability to make use of the power which is, so to say, at his disposal in the Lord', page 101.

• But a generation which can use the power is to be secured and thus Moses says, "Jehovah was angry with me on your account". Now that appeal, one would trust, as affecting one's own heart, would cause us to take account of the divine generation indicated in the words,
  • "And your little ones, of whom ye said, They shall be a prey, and your children, who this day know neither good nor evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it".

• Things are beyond us, people say. Nevertheless, it is those that were said to be a prey, "They shall go in", whilst all the men of war were destroyed in the wilderness.

There is nothing more dangerous than to enter into divine conflict on the wrong lines, but if we do so only according to the measure of the divine work in us, God will see us through.

• The great exercise in the experimental portion of the Roman epistle is to identify ourselves with the work of God. It begins by reckoning. You cannot do anything less than that.
  • "Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus", Romans 6: 11.

• That is one of the things we have to come to in the beginning of our soul history. There is one thing we can do, reckon ourselves alive to God in Christ Jesus. There is thus an entirely new state and condition.

• We have to be delivered from what naturally we are confused by. A good deal of this deliverance takes place in chapter 7.

• I believe a good deal of our weakness lies in the fact that we do not start with a divine reckoning. It is something which is arrived at in the mind. It takes definite shape. It is not floated into. There is no such thing as floating into it.
  • "Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus".

• There is no limit, if we start on our side with the understanding of what God has effected in the death and resurrection of Christ.

• The man in Romans 7 gets into confusion. We often try to apply what is of God, that which only could apply to a new generation, to flesh. The man in Romans 7 has to learn to distrust the flesh. Of flesh he says,
  • "It is no longer I",

• but he discovers there is an "I" which delights in the law of God. How wonderful that there is implanted in the heart that which delights in the law of God and gives place to the Spirit of God! To get the good of the death of Christ, in this respect I have to see that that is henceforth the "I" for me as well as for God.
  • "So then I myself with the mind serve God's law; but with the flesh sin's law".

    And again, "It is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me".

• There is an "I" that God is going to see right through. Christ died to secure that "I".

The generation is secured by the death of Christ and the work of the Spirit. But we have to distinguish in our minds between that which is connected with us after the flesh, and that which is the work of God.

• "But in this thing ye did not believe Jehovah your God".

• Very touching! As far as the children of Israel were concerned, even in Deuteronomy it says,
  • "Oh that there were such a heart in them", Deuteronomy 5: 29.

• There was not such a heart in them actually though in type we might assume it, but there is with the people of God now as having the Spirit. The smallest work in the heart is going to abide.

• What the Spirit would bring us to is a divine reckoning, that we need to take account of ourselves not as being in flesh, but in Spirit. I have a right to refuse what the death of Christ has removed, on the one hand, but then that means liberty on the other hand. The work of the Spirit of God would be the link between the person and what there is in Christ.

• Caleb is brought in, I suppose, as indicating that; he is the link between the generation that fell in the wilderness and what typically is the new generation. We are carried over from flesh to Spirit.

• I attach great importance to that – the complete severance between that which is, and which is not, to be continued; and then the complete identification of the person henceforth and forever with what is of the Spirit.

Now in the second and third chapters you get another thought introduced, the question of our overcoming.

• It is not what is effected in the death of Christ, every element has been dealt with in His death, thank God, from the divine side; but it is that they overcame Sihon and Og.

• This is the only scripture which calls attention to the great difficulty which marks the overcoming of Og. He had an iron bedstead, and a large one.

• It is as if the enemy would put us at rest, having arrived thus far – the work of Christ for us, and the blessedness of knowing we are no longer connected with flesh, no longer having upon us the demands of the system that is dominated by Satan – as if the enemy would at that point have us rest.
  • But it says, "Whom ye utterly destroyed", Joshua 2: 10.

• Before that they had sung to the well,
  • "Rise up, well! sing unto it: Well which princes digged, which the nobles of the people hollowed out at the word of the lawgiver, with their staves", Numbers 21: 17-18.

The word for "staves" there is not the same as that used for Moses' rod. Moses' rod, or staff, represented authority and the word used indicates that. The staves of the princes give more the thought of leadership. They helped, as the word in the Hebrew apparently indicates.

• Leadership is an immense help in promoting divine energy amongst the saints. One delights to see anyone lead. What a great thing to see a brother or sister who leads in making room for the Spirit! It is not only individual, I take it, but the exercise is to see every soul in the liberty and good of the Holy Spirit. Christ died that that might be so.

Again Moses says, "Jehovah was wroth with me on your account".

• I have thought sometimes of the woman who found that she was in debt. She was the widow of one of the sons of the prophets – a most extraordinary thing for such to be in debt! Elisha has to ask her,
  • "Tell me, what hast thou in the house?"

    She says, "Thy handmaid has not anything at all in the house but a pot of oil".

    Elisha then says, "Go, borrow for thyself vessels abroad from all thy neighbours, empty vessels; let it not be few", 2 Kings 4: 2-3.

• But then he would not let anything proceed until every vessel was filled with the oil. The door was to be shut; as if the Spirit would call attention to the importance of being concerned that every vessel available is made use of in a spiritual way amongst the people of God.

• I am sure one goes into many meetings and sees many vessels which are not used. One or two persons, it may be, carry on all the activities or exercises that belong to that particular place; and there is no wonder that a drought comes, and the creditor makes demands. "The creditor is come to take my two children to be bondmen", verse 1.

• Nothing creates greater drought than the neglect to see that every member of the body of Christ is in exercise, in service, in order that saints might get the benefit of what is of God in that place. The creditor is a disturbing influence which results from drought.

• The princes lead in this exercise, they were ready. They digged with their staves. They were leaders in setting free every available element for the Spirit of God.

• Christ died that it might be so. Christ died that there might be the moving forward in the energy of the Spirit of God of every one of the saints, and that every available vessel might be put into activity in relation to what is of God.

Og would operate to bring in a condition where there are but one or two carrying things, and the rest at ease.

• "Behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbah of the children of Ammon? its length was nine cubits, and its breadth four cubits, after the cubit of a man".

• This is one of the elements which work to exclude the people of God from the land.

Now in the third case there is another thing of great importance that comes before one's mind; and that is the covenant, not as that which was introduced that God might dwell amongst them as seen in Exodus, but the covenant as a kind of inheritance of the people of God.

• The point is that everything amongst the people of God henceforth is to be spiritual.
  • It says, "Ye heard the voice of the words, but ye saw no form; only ye heard a voice".

• The intensity of the love of God was brought to light in the death of Christ that we might have a place secured in divine holiness for His pleasure. So he emphasises,
  • "For ye saw no form on the day that Jehovah spoke to you in Horeb from the midst of the fire", verse 15.

• He goes on to recount how God gave them statutes and judgments, the covenant, and spoke with them. I thought that implied what one has seen the need of in different places; that is, the regulation of everything by what is spiritual amongst the people of God.

• They were not to make any image. There were to be no rules and regulations amongst the saints. You no sooner make a rule for the saints than you have to break it. It is not that things are not governed; but that all is governed spiritually.

• I was thinking in connection with the translation into the kingdom of the Son of His love, what a delight it is to be in relation to that. There is to be no god except God Himself with us – no other one in the heart.

• There is only one way to bring that about – not by rule, but by love; the heart captivated by the love of God in Christ. This will bring about a great nation. "Jehovah was angry with me on your account".

• The death of Christ is again called attention to in figure as that whereby all might be secured on a spiritual basis. There is not an element in the world not disclosed in the death of Christ. There is not an element in the signs and wonders in Exodus but what has its complete antitype there.

• The mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven. The holy love of God was told forth from the place of judgment. The holy love of the blessed God is declared to our hearts – all that is contrary disclosed and thus judged at the cross.

Now it says, "Keep the sabbath day to hallow it".

• I do not want to dwell on all the features of the covenant, but there is a good deal said about the sabbath in this fifth chapter. He wants us to keep the sabbath. "Keep the sabbath day to hallow it".

• He connects that with the giving of this covenant, the making known of God to our hearts, that we might be governed, not by law, but by what is of God Himself. This only is to be before us. If we are going to have man before us, let it be that blessed One, who is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation.

• In these days the enemy would seek to maintain a restlessness with us that we might not keep the sabbath. There is nothing that delights God more than to have us draw aside to sit before Him, to get His thoughts as to Christ and to enjoy His love.

• He wants us for Himself, and love delights to have us live in His company and there to get from our hearts what is precious to His heart, and to commune with us in regard to the One in whom He finds His delight.

• The fifth chapter ends with the thought of life – that we might live. We thus have in these chapters that

1. firstly Christ died to secure a generation capable of entering into His thoughts;

2. secondly Christ died to give us the spiritual power to go forward;

3. and thirdly Christ died to give to us a divine law and covenant in a spiritual way in which there is life.

One uses the term prosperity in connection with chapter 5 because it calls those marked by certain features "blessed". It is the way of prosperity.

• God is over His people for blessing, but the blessing comes on divinely assigned lines. It begins with
  • "Blessed are the poor in spirit".

• It is so contrary to nature to be poor in spirit. It comes out supremely in Christ. Think of the Lord here, of who He was! Think of the majesty of His Person, that He could claim to be equal with God, for He was God! – yet found in fashion as a Man, looking up to heaven and saying to Jehovah,
  • "my goodness extendeth not to thee; – To the saints that are on the earth, and to the excellent thou hast said, In them is all my delight", Psalm 16: 2-3.

• Think of that language! – language which we would not attribute to the Lord were it not in the Scriptures! The apostle says to the Corinthians,
  • "If any one think that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know it", 1 Corinthians 8: 2.

• That is the reverse of "poor in spirit". "Poor in spirit", is beautifully exemplified in the apostle, when he says,
  • "I do not count to have got possession myself", Philippians 3: 13.

• You might say, Paul, what is there you have not attained to? But he would not count himself to have got possession; he would forget the things behind, and stretch out towards the things before,
  • "towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus", verse 14.

• He was a man "poor in spirit", who said of a truth that he counted himself less than the least of all saints. I know of nothing more testing, nothing more exacting, than to measure oneself honestly thus.

• It was no poetic utterance of Paul's; no frenzy of excitement; it was a sober, considered judgment, that he was less than the least of all saints. With what dignity he must have clothed the saints! How great they were before his eyes! What an entire effacement of self it shows!

• He was a man who had seen Christ, and who could say of himself that he was crucified with Christ. He had seen such a display of himself in the crucifixion of Christ, that he was glad to disappear in that crucifixion.

• Crucifixion, one has said, is not so much to emphasise death, as exposure and shame. He had seen himself exposed in the cross of Christ. There was only one thing that Saul desired as becoming Paul – that is, little – and that was that Saul should never be seen again! He says henceforth,
  • "for me to live is Christ", Philippians 1: 21.

• It is the line of prosperity to be "poor in spirit;" always conscious of the vastness of the knowledge of God that lies beyond the extremely minute apprehension of the very greatest of us. Such is the man the Lord calls "blessed".

Then, "Blessed they that mourn". It is in the plural, but it has to be taken up individually. It is a feature of the holy nation.

• I wonder if we have mourned! You say, I lost my mother, and I mourned. Well, the Lord would be sympathetic with you in that, but that is not what He is speaking of here. It is those who feel in their spirits, and mourn over what is lacking Godward.

• They look at the meetings of God's people and, without being critical, they consider how small the measure of what is for God, and they mourn. They look at the prayer meeting; they look at the attendance on the Lord's day as compared with other times, and they mourn the lack; they feel it intensely. They feel for God.

• The Lord, as He passed through this scene, did so as One marked by sorrows, so that
  • "his visage was so marred more than any man", Isaiah 52: 14.

• He was characterised by mourning. He did not pass through this scene critically, but He felt for God. He could not look upon a cripple without feeling for God, for a cripple could not enter God's temple for praise. He had compassion on the cripple, but He felt for God. The man whose hand was withered could not serve God; the man who was deaf and dumb could not praise God.

• As He brought relief to such, His visage was marred by the intense reality of His sufferings as He felt these effects of sin. For thirty years God had watched Him; He had seen His spirit and His feelings; He had seen Him marked by intense sympathy manward and intense feeling Godward. No wonder God could commit Himself to Christ.
  • "All that he doeth prospereth", Psalm 1: 3.

• God opened the heavens upon Him, the Holy Spirit came down with complacency and abode upon Him. It is good to mourn; it is the way of prosperity.

• It is not good to complain, or to criticise, or to get habitually depressed. A discouraged and depressed person is useless in the assembly, for he is looking at himself.

• But it is right to mourn. What you mourn over, God will give you power to deal with, so that the things that are lacking may be made good. He would bless such a person, and blessing means prosperity.

• It is not, however, a mourning without hope, for those that mourn and carry things in their hearts before God will see results.

So the Lord says, "Blessed the meek". God will stand by a meek man.

• How He stood by Jesus, when assailed on every side by the scribes and Pharisees – able and powerful men who on every side laid snares in His path! But He trusted in God to deliver Him, He was characterised by meekness.

• What I understand by meekness is the reverse of pushing oneself. If a thing does not go, a meek man waits on God. He says something in a meeting and no one follows it up. He makes a proposal and it is turned down. He waits on God. That man will prosper; he will come through.

• The Lord, at every step of His way was opposed by men, but He prospered. He did not force the position. How easily He could have forced things! Instead of that, He says,
  • "I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight", Matthew 11: 25-26.

• He was triumphant over all that was externally against Him, and He praises. What a blessing it is to have God with us!
  • "What great nation is there that hath God near to them as Jehovah our God is in everything we call upon him for?", Deuteronomy 4: 7.

• What a nation! What a God!
  • "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes".

• We want these babes; they are the beginning of a new generation. It will be small, but if it is the beginning of a new generation, it is something God can work with and develop, on lines which ensure that the glory of the great King will be maintained, which is the great objective a holy nation has before it.

In chapter 6 we come to the law of petitions. I wonder sometimes that we get our petitions answered, they are often so lacking as to order.

• If a petition is taken to the courts of this world, and is not presented in the due order, it is non-suited, and you have had your trouble and expense for nothing.
  • The Lord says, "Thus therefore pray ye",

  • and He also says, "use not vain repetitions", verse 7.

• We do well to pay heed to that. If one brother has asked for a thing in so many terms, we do not want to repeat it. There may be something we can add to the requests by way of enlargement – but "use not vain repetitions".
  • But "Thus therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in the heavens, let thy name be sanctified".

• Whatever we are going to ask for, we begin with "Our Father who art in the heavens". The consideration of His name will greatly regulate our petitions. We want the Father's name to stand out as sanctified from all other names; we want to begin at the top.

• We should practise it at the prayer meetings. Is there nothing to ask of the Father in the heaven that His name might be sanctified? Think of the greatness of heaven, and then of the name Father. Think of the intensity of His interest in man; think of all His interests vested in the assembly here. We want that name made great.
  • Then follows, "Thy kingdom come".

• Every subject will be searched, if we think of "Thy kingdom come". How is it to come if not in us?
  • "Thy kingdom come, let thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth".

  It is a searching prayer – first, that the Father's name might be made great; and, secondly, that we might be in order, as subject under the hand of the Lord. If the prosperity of the kingdom is to be promoted, it must be promoted through His people.

• Think of the chariots of God, even thousands of angels, waiting on the blessed God! There is but the slightest word on His part, and these attendants carry out His bidding.
  • "His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men", Psalm 11: 4.

• That would bring about very tender feelings and sensitiveness as to the will of God –
  • "Thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth".

• How long earth and heaven have been divorced, and how the heart of God has grieved over it!

• Now there is a spot on earth where heaven and earth are brought together. It is in the assembly, which is the house of God, the gate of heaven; where the divorced conditions no longer exist, but where God and His pleasure hold sway.

"Give us today our needed bread". How simple the affairs of our life become after this! Could anyone who prayed on the lines of this prayer move out of relation to the assembly for his bread?

• Do you think God forgets His people, or that He will not satisfy them with bread? The enemy sought to turn the Lord on this point, but He had come here to do the will of God. He was forty days without anything. We have never been forty days without food.
  • "Afterwards he hungered", we read. Matthew 4: 2-4. "If thou be Son of God, speak, that these stones may become loaves of bread", said the tempter.

• He knew the Lord had but to speak; but His answer is,
  • "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which goes out through God's mouth".

• All the bread in the world would never keep us alive spiritually, and we become lawless apart from "every word which goes out through God's mouth". No word from God would take you away from the assembly.

• I am not speaking of what I have not experienced. If we will face these things in our youth, we shall know as we get older that "Give us today our needed bread" is all we need to pray in such matters.

• So that is the order – first, that the Father's name be sanctified; then for His kingdom; after that our matters, and then for forgiveness –
  • "forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors".

• That does not mean you forget your bills. Bills have to be paid, both to me and by me, but if we have been offended, let us forgive. We shall need forgiveness sooner or later if the Lord sees fit to leave us here
  • James says, "For we all often offend", James 3: 2.

• All of us come under this. We are inclined to say, It must be put right; but the must is, it must be forgiven. If I do not forgive my brother, the Lord will not forgive me.

Then, "lead us not into temptation, but save us from evil". That is an important part of our prayer.

• It comes right down to all the conditions of life – whether our business, or the children at school; whether it is a matter of going to this place or that; or whether it is taking up anything in relation to the Lord's interests.

• We still need this prayer, that we might be delivered from temptation, that we might not be put in a place too difficult for us. The Lord knows our spiritual stature, and our requests are to be in accord with the stature which He knows. He has put it there. It is beautiful to reach the stature of the psalmist, who says,
  • "Neither do I exercise myself … in things too wonderful for me. Surely I have restrained and composed my soul, like a weaned child with its mother", Psalm 131: 1-2.

• How often we try things too high for us in matters of the kingdom, it may be, as the holy nation, but only to disgrace the kingdom, for if what we do breaks down, it brings dishonour on the holy nation, and on the name of God.

Now in chapter 7 the Lord speaks of a very simple law of relationship. "Judge not, that ye may not be judged".

• It is not a case of wickedness here. Wickedness must be judged. There are plenty of scriptures to tell us that wickedness must be judged. This is our relationship with one another as walking together.
  • James says, "He that speaks against his brother, or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if thou judgest the law, thou art not doer of the law, but judge. One is the lawgiver and judge", James 4: 11-12, and that is God.

  • "Who art thou who judgest thy neighbour?", James 4: 12.

• That is to check the critical tendency with us. It would preserve from a lot of interfering with one another. If I can do a thing and you cannot, let me do it, and let you desist, and let us both give thanks to God.

• That is clearly laid out for us in Romans 14. A weak brother may not be able to do a certain thing; let him desist, and give God thanks. If one is stronger, he can do it, and does so, and he also is to give God thanks. So they go on together.

• It is a most important item in the law governing our relations with one another as brethren. No one carried it out like the Lord.
  • "Behold my servant … mine elect in whom my soul delighteth", Isaiah 42: 1.

• Better to go on with God, leaving things to Him, or, if need be, taking them to Him. It is His nation, and they His people; it is for Him to judge. There is one Judge, says James. If I begin to judge, I am putting myself in the place of God.

• It is an important scripture, and it must have full place with us. It needs liberty such as is proper to believers, for if I am legal I shall be inclined to judge my brother, and the sooner I get free of legality the better.

• The great remedy for legality is sonship, which lies behind the thought of the nation as indicated in Matthew's gospel. Sons have great liberty; they know what they may do.
  • "Ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus", Galatians 3: 26.

• We have to walk before God in the enjoyment of His thoughts. If there is wickedness, it has to be judged, and if we mourn, God will bring it to light. Nothing passes among His people that is unsuitable to Himself, without His taking account of it.

Then there is promotion, chapter 20. Every one in a nation looks for promotion.

• The idea of a nation is not that anybody sits down and takes what comes along, but that each in it performs an active part. It is a corporate body, having laws that regulate the privileges and the responsibilities of every individual. So that we have our part to do if we want to be promoted.

• There is nothing happier, nothing more delightful to the saints of God, than to see someone promoted, and the way of promotion is very simple spiritually, but very difficult according to the flesh. It involves coming to the consciousness in our souls that we are not even worth hiring! The labourers had stood in the market-place all day long, and no one wanted them, and they accepted it.

• The fact is, there is a great deal of reduction needed with each of us before we can serve as chosen ones. Our lot is cast in a peculiarly propitious time, at the end of a dispensation when things are in much weakness. Only in the sense of this can we rightly serve.

• But He delights to call, from time to time, those who feel in their own souls they are not worth hiring. One can understand how standing thus idle would bring each in his own spirit to acknowledge the fact that that is his proper valuation – that he is worthless! That is the kind of person the Lord promotes. Have you a desire to serve the Lord?
  • He says, "Go also ye into the vineyard and whatsoever may be just ye shall receive".

• When they come to be paid, they each receive the same amount, and those that were called at the last minute find themselves ranking with the first. They did not expect to find that.

• What an encouragement in these eleventh-hour days, when all is exceedingly weak, that God will take account of the conditions in which we have laboured! He knows how to measure us, and the conditions in which we are set, and He will render to all in accordance with His grace.

• I think that those who will submit themselves as under the hand of the Lord as worthless, but nevertheless available, will find that He will send them into His vineyard. He gives them something to do, for He delights to promote those that move downwards in their own esteem; they are such as He chooses.

• There should not be anyone in the assembly who has not anything to do. The assembly is a body of persons labouring to a definite issue, and every one should have something to do, whilst in our spirits we should feel ourselves worthless. Remember that every one of us has received grace from Christ.

Think of the greatness of Christ. He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men according to His wisdom. You have grace; the one sitting next to you has grace; we all have grace. The whole question is whether we will use it in the sense of our worthlessness, but as cast upon the grace of the Lord. There is no bargaining, but full confidence in the husbandman –

• "Whatsoever may be just ye shall receive".

• But when the day came for settlement, they found how gracious, how large the outlook of the husbandman, and how they were further promoted. They were found to rank with those who had laboured in the heat and burden of the day. He closes that example with what comes in twice in Matthew:
  • "many are called ones, but few chosen ones", verse 16.

• Would you not like to be one of the chosen ones? All christendom is outwardly in the position of being called. For they profess to be in the position of labourers. We certainly cannot do other than admit we are called – but few are chosen.

• Thus the heart of God comes out. He finds delight in a people who write themselves down as worthless, who are willing to serve in the vineyard; not those who say they cannot do anything, but those who are conscious of their worthlessness, but are nevertheless ready to serve the Lord.

• Every Lord's day we take the bread of which He says, "this is my body". Think of how in that body He served us! What can we do in return but serve, worthless though we may be? The Lord has served us, even unto death!

In Matthew 22 we have the habiliments of the nation. We are not to dress as we like.

• God was very particular about the dress of His people – even the tassels on the garment were specified, Numbers 15: 38-39.

• One looks round on the brethren and wonders a little sometimes, as to the habiliments – not that one would criticise, but there are things that pain.

• The great feature about the wedding garment is that we disappear and Christ appears. The movements, the deportment, the speech, the manner of life, even the material manner of dress, are all to be such as honour the King's Son. No other habiliments are accepted in the holy nation.

• Every one of us knows that the natural tendency of our hearts is to endeavour to leave with others a good impression of ourselves.
  • But let it be an impression of Christ, and not an impression of ourselves!

• Books are written on how to leave a good impression of oneself. The only impression left by those who are chosen persons, who have come to the marriage feast according to God, as having on the wedding garment, is that they have come to it with this understanding in their hearts, that there is only one Person to be made great whilst here on earth, and that is the King's Son.

• We wait the day when God will fill this scene with the glory and beauty of Christ, but our testimony now is to His excellence. Our deportment, our habiliments – in other words, the wedding garment – are to indicate that our concern is to make great the King's Son.

• Great detail is given in the New Testament as to actual dress. How we naturally love to adorn ourselves! If we put on anything that is not necessary for dress, it is adornment. See 1 Peter 3. It is calling attention to oneself instead of to Christ.

• The wedding garment would be the whole exterior as seen in our school, at our business, or in our home life, and in the assembly. Our one concern would be to make our Lord Jesus Christ great.

Christ's object here was to make nothing of Himself, but everything of God; whether it was in His contact with the Jews, or among His disciples. Whether it was amongst wicked men, or whether it was in His teachings and utterances, His one concern was to make God great.

• They challenged Him whether they should pay tribute to Caesar, and He brings them to the one great point.
  • He says, "Pay then what is Caesar's to Caesar, and what is God's to God", Matthew 22: 21.

• How that must have cut home! There is what is due to this one and that one, according to the government of God down here, but above all, to God – "Pay ... what is God's to God".

There was one man at the marriage without the wedding garment; he had no regard for that kind of thing. I trust there is no one here like that.

• He represents those who take a place in the profession of christianity, but have no interest in magnifying the King's Son. He was only thinking about himself. We may not go so far as to have no concern as to Christ, but do not let us be on that road. It leads to darkness.
  • "Bind him feet and hands, and take him away, and cast him out into the outer darkness".

How solemn to be bound in the presence of the light. It speaks of those who have professed christianity, and have handled christian things, but who disregard God's provision in Christ. We do not want to be tainted by any feature that calls for "outer darkness",

• for "there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth".

The great objective of the holy nation is the coming of the Lord in manifestation.

• Many are occupied with the rapture, but that is not exactly what the assembly waits for. We show forth His death "till he come" – I do not think that is the rapture. Every lover of Christ wants to see Him have His rights.

• The true rendering of Matthew 25: 6 is not 'the bridegroom cometh', but
  • "Behold, the bridegroom; go forth to meet him".

• Though going forth to meet Him involves His coming, attention is called to Himself. Our affections are to be cultivated and true to Christ, so that there might be a people here whose hearts long and wait for Him to have His rights.

• We are not to be like people of this world, looking for better days. Prosperous days do not help us to go forth.

• There is only one thing that will satisfy those who love Christ – the Bridegroom Himself! What a day that is for the heart of Christ, when He sees a soul stepping out thus to Him! The lamps are for Christ, to show the way, so to speak, for the Bridegroom.

• In the day of His power, He will find a willing people. He comes amongst those who are waiting for Him in affection. Our attitude is to be that of a people who wait to see Christ reigning here in glory, but by faith we see Him now as glorified.

• If anyone is asked, Why do you not take part in this or that? our answer should be, Christ has not taken part in it yet.

• What about recreation? Young people say, we must have our recreation. Well, I would reply, that day has not come yet. I am going to have a thousand years of recreation when Christ comes into the scene! The great day is dawning – the millennial day, when
  • "nation shall not lift up sword against nation … And they shall sit every one under his vine, and under his fig-tree", Micah 4: 3-4.

• How can we enjoy ourselves, while He waits the day of His rest? We want to recognise in our hearts today that this is not the day for ease, it is the day of labour, in order that the great issue may be brought about.

• The conditions of God's people are to be such that their lamps are burning, so that Christ may come in and enter into His glory. The virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. They are diligent to have everything in accord with Himself that He may come quickly.

So, to refer to chapter 26: 30: "And having sung a hymn, they went out to the mount of Olives".

• The mount of Olives suggests the known sphere of the Spirit, a sphere of holy elevation, but as still down here we can find support to carry out 'The Laws of the Kingdom'.

May the Lord help us, for His name's sake!

If a people professedly stand in relation to God, and God says He will be their God, it is a public matter and should be manifest that they are His people.

• It is like a man taking a woman as wife, and he is for her and she is for him. It is a publicly avowed position; and such is the position which God has been pleased to take in relation to His people.
  • It is, therefore, for us, individually and collectively, to consider how far God is seen as our God, in the place where we live.

• How far can men take account of us as being God's people in the place where we are found? – not merely that we profess something, but that they have to acknowledge that somehow or other that man or that woman gets through, and that not by human strength or ability, but because God is our God, and we are His people.

• I think it should touch every one of our hearts that God, having brought us out of Egypt, out of the bondage of the world, out of darkness, and from under the power of sin, has brought us into liberty. He has granted us rest of heart, and peace of soul, that He might say to us, I want you for Myself.

• The only way we can be for Him is upon the terms which are laid down for us in this scripture. We may be inclined to relegate this to what we speak of as the Old Testament period, but there are no headings 'Old Testament' or 'New Testament' in relation to the inspired writings – these are merely human titles.
  • All are "the scriptures". The Lord referred to them as such; the apostle Paul referred to them as "the scriptures". We do well to do so also.

• There is as much authority behind Deuteronomy, as the Revelation. Scripture stands as one. As the Lord says, if you break one item, you break the whole. They cannot be broken. As to the reading of them, we have to read them intelligently.

• Deuteronomy is a most interesting section. It is the book in which God would set before us how He will support us and bless us on certain conditions, as having received grace and blessing from Himself.

• It is spoken not from Sinai, though it does not set Sinai aside, but from Horeb. We do well to consider and bow down at the greatness and the terrors of the God of Sinai.
  • "Our God is a consuming fire", Hebrews 12: 29.

    Paul said; "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men", 2 Corinthians 5: 11.

• Grace and love have been presented to such excess, that we may almost forget the holiness, majesty, and terror of our God. That is connected with Sinai, and it stands. There is no alteration of Sinai as indicating God's greatness and majesty.

• God has not changed; God cannot change, though His approach to us in Christ provides, as in mount Zion, very different conditions.

Here we have Horeb, and a considerable difference is indicated there, typically, in the people, but not in God.

• There is an immense change in the people, which is brought about typically through the death of Christ and the work of the Spirit. Three times there is this touching expression between the first and fifth chapters of Deuteronomy:
  • "Jehovah was angry with me on your account".

• Christ had to bear the wrath, and to meet the majesty and holiness, and the righteous requirements of our God, who, as has been said, remains unchanged.

• When Moses says, "Jehovah was angry with me on your account", Deuteronomy 1: 37, there is no mention of his speaking unadvisedly with his lips. That is not under consideration in Deuteronomy.

• This book views the people that, in flesh, could never come into the blessing of God, but in order that they might do so, Christ, typified in Moses, had to die. This is presented in a threefold way.

First, that one generation might be removed and another of a different order brought about –

• "Ye … are alive every one of you this day", Deuteronomy 4: 4 – how delightful!

• It came about through the death of Christ. There could be none alive that is marked by movement, or affection for, or appreciation of, God, except for the death of Christ.

• It is after He has spoken of the judgment of one generation and that their children would come into the inheritance, that he says, "Jehovah was angry with me on your account".

• Secondly, the flesh was incapable of appreciating God or Christ, and that is met by the Spirit. The flesh is always to be met by the Spirit, not by altering it or suppressing it, but by the Spirit.

• There is no way of changing it. Trying to reckon yourself dead to yourself is useless. You reckon yourself "dead to sin", Romans 6: 11, that is, to the world's system practically.

• So, again, Moses says, after meeting Sihon and Og and overthrowing them – after they have secured territory, figuratively, in the power of the Holy Spirit, "Jehovah was wroth with me on your account", chapter 3: 26.

• Thirdly, in taking them up for Himself as His inheritance, Moses says again, "Jehovah was angry with me on your account", chapter 4: 21.

• Christ had to die that we might become an inheritance for God. God could not have an inheritance in dying men and women. He has an inheritance that was secured for Him by the death of Christ.

That is the setting – a people of a new generation.

• It is wonderful to think of it. "If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation", 2 Corinthians 5: 17.

• Are you in Christ? What cannot God do with a man in Christ? He took a man like that up to the third heaven: there is no limit to a man that is in Christ.

• The very first feature that marks him is entire liberty – liberty from the law of sin and death. If you have the Spirit of God, God has transferred you from Adam to Christ. You are in Christ. You are entitled so to take account of yourself.
  • "So also ye, reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus", Romans 6: 11.

• That is the great standpoint from which we can view with equanimity the proposals which God has to make to His people. The covenant is made at Horeb; "not ... with our fathers but with us".

We may look along the line of our origin in flesh, and deplore it, but God is not occupied with that. He says, I am speaking to you "who are alive". It comes to every one of us that is spiritually alive this day. We have heard God speak.

• We all ought to know what it is to hear God speak from the fire. Have you never trembled to hear God speak from the midst of the fire? Think of the intensity of the furnace of affliction in which Christ suffered on the cross! It is out of that that God spoke in His love, to declare His love to us in the death of His Son. He spoke from the furnace, from death!

• Think of the sufferings through which He had to pass! All that He had to take upon Himself in the condemnation of sin in the flesh, in order to bring about through the Spirit given, a new generation that could respond to the heart of God. He spoke out of the midst of the fire, and we begin to apprehend that we can face the righteous requirements of God – but not in ourselves.
  • Moses said, "I stood between Jehovah and you at that time".

• I believe God has great pleasure in our recognising Christ as appointed by Him, so that we look to Him in every distress, and as looking upon Him we can see all that the blessed God is.
  • On the one hand, we see all the holy requirements of God perfectly met in Him, and, on the other, we see Him as He perfectly sustains us in relation to God.

• If we were to come into the presence of God in conditions of sinful flesh and blood, there could be nothing for us but destruction, but we can be maintained in the grace of the Mediator. His power, as Mediator, is indicated in 2 Corinthians 3: 18. He is "the Lord the Spirit".

• He represents all the authority of God as Lord, and has the power to write upon us as the Spirit, the very requirements that are demanded by God. Hence we do well to look upon the Mediator.

The Lord has prepared fleshy tables in our hearts, corresponding to the stones Moses made, Exodus 34: 1, and has written on them.

• There never would have been fleshy tables in our hearts unless they had been prepared by Christ. You have never found them in your heart, except as the product of Christ.

• If there is anything impressed on your hearts by what is revealed in Christ, it has come about by the work of the Lord the Spirit. The One who represents, in full, God's authority, has also the power to exercise it; to bring us into accord with that which that authority demands.

• The writing is deepened as we give Christ, as Mediator, greater acceptance in our hearts. We go to Him with difficulty after difficulty, and prostrate ourselves at His feet. We find how great He is, and then, as we behold His glory, we take on His image. The result is we move on from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.

• It is having to do personally with Christ. It is not ministry exactly; it is not reading the Scriptures exactly; that will not effect it. It is not exactly prayer, though all these are necessary.

• It is occupation with Christ, who has the power to enable us to stand in the presence of all that God is, and, on the other hand, who is able to write upon us, so that we correspond to Him, as revealed.

So Moses is taking them up on that ground. You need not be afraid of that ground. He goes back to the beginning and reviews their history.

• Romans 5: 8 gives us the beginning of the covenant line. The apostle goes back to the beginning,
  • "we being still sinners, Christ has died for us".

• It is not what we preach exactly; it is what we teach. It is not addressed to sinners; it is to us who are alive this day.
  • "God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us".

• You can understand something of the meaning of the "waste" in Genesis 1: 2. What a waste it must have been as God looked upon our hearts! He falls back on His own resources in the Mediator. Christ died for us, and God in that commends His love to us. We do well to meditate upon the love of God thus expressed; it is so entirely unmerited.

I think that is the first thing He would bring to bear upon us. What could there be in sinners that would in any way move the heart of God? He would take us back to that, as the character of the love we have to do with. He commends such a love to us. Christ died for us.

• There is no need for anyone to be disappointed if they find they have not moved on the lines they thought they were going to do; or if they find they have failed; or that they have been untrue to the Christ that has died for them.

• Not that one would make little of it, but they need not be despondent. Disappointment means that, after all, we connected some merit with ourselves. There was a time when things were worse than that – "we being still sinners", and then He commended His love to us!

• But if that love is to be constantly enjoyed by us, the conditions must be maintained. That is the great value of the covenant teaching – that the conditions might be maintained so that the heart of God, as open to us in Christ, might have full flow.

• So far as He is concerned, it has had the most manifest outpouring in the death of Christ. The same chapter – Romans 5: 5 – tells us,
  • "hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit".

• We need not be afraid of tribulations even, for they lead into the love of God. If the love of God has been expressed in the midst of the fire – in the sufferings of Christ, we may depend upon it, it must be enjoyed on the line of suffering.

The apostle says, "we also boast in tribulations", verse 3.

• When you find that someone who owes you money is bankrupt, or there are difficulties in the family, do you boast in it? I do not say I boast in tribulation, though I think I can say I have learned to be thankful for it.

• The apostle says we boast in it because tribulation brings endurance, which is such an essential thing if we are going to learn the love of God. Endurance brings about experience. You begin to understand how things work, which is a great asset in a scene of complexity.
  • Experience results in hope – in buoyancy.

• As we get older, difficulties may become greater, but we should become more buoyant; we are not cast down. Experience has taught us to hope, and hope has a present recompense, filling the heart with the love of God,
  • for "hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us".

• That is all very blessed, and those are the conditions which, so to speak, God wants to further with us. As far as He is concerned, He has poured out His Spirit, and He wants each one of our hearts to be filled with Him.

• We read of a man filled with the Spirit, in Acts. It means that nothing else had any place in Stephen – nothing else had any claim, nothing else had priority – God stands out with him as the only God.

• This, in effect, is the first of the terms laid down by God for us –
  • "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".

• What about your business? What about your wife? What about your family? We get up in the morning. We say, I must get to business; and we are late, so perhaps we start with a hasty, or no, prayer, or reading.
  • That, if continued as a habit, means that God is not allowed His proper place; some part of the heart is screened from the love of God!

• It is essential that He has the supreme place. No man can serve two masters; he will love the one and hate the other. If there is anything else that has a claim upon me, there will be movement in that direction. If we make business, or our families, so important that what is of God must be set aside, we may depend upon it, it is a rival to God.

• We rush to business thinking we must start to do this at once, and we may take half a day to do what God would enable us to do in half an hour.
  • I believe this is a keystone to the enjoyment of the covenant, namely, that in all things God gets the first consideration.

• Perhaps some matter comes up that will affect one we are partial to, and we say, I could not think of supporting anything that adversely affects him. But the first thing is, how does it affect God?

• People may say things about us which are trying; though actually they can never say anything bad enough, if we only know ourselves in the flesh; but the real point is – has anything been said against God? Is there anything with us active against God as contrary to this item of the covenant?

The welling up of the whole heart is what God counts upon in His love. God, seeing the weakness of flesh, sent His Son as Ambassador of His love, to deal with the flesh.

• He sent Him forth after thirty years of secret life before Him, as His constant joy and delight. He sent Him forth to serve, and, in that service, to die! He sent His own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin and for sin, that He might condemn sin in the flesh.

• That does not mean that He might prove it wrong. We all know it is wrong. He came to end it – to condemn it,
  • "that the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled in us", Romans 8: 4,

• or, as we might say, that God might have the supreme place in our hearts.
  • "Thou shalt have no other gods before me".

• Do you think Christ was not satisfied here? Do you think He found satisfaction anywhere but in God? When He was a Babe He began with God. Instead of trusting in nature,
  • He said, "thou didst make me trust, upon my mother's breasts", Psalm 22: 9.

• When He was a Boy He trusted in God. He found His delight in His Father's business. It is put before us as the happiest, and the safest, and the most blessed path we can pursue.
  • We are not to give God a little place, and ourselves a large place; or even to give God a large place, and ourselves a little place. We are to give God the whole place.

• He is a jealous God. The apostle raises the question of jealousy with the Corinthians,
  • "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?", 1 Corinthians 10: 22.

• If God is in controversy with us, who is going to save us?
  • "Our God is a consuming fire", Hebrews 12: 29.

• That is not poetic language; it is a solemn fact. If we come into conflict with God, we shall find He is a consuming fire.

"Thou shalt not make thyself any graven image". There is to be no settling down to formal statements.

• People sometimes say, I have believed that for thirty years, and I am not going to change that belief now. They have made an image; facts have become stereotyped.

• Think of the living God – how great He is! Do you think you are not going to gain fresh light every year? Think of God showing this view of Himself; and that view of Himself! The creeds are graven images which have utterly failed; indeed, they belie God.

• Every Lord's day is the time for getting a fresh impression from the Mediator. I believe the Lord is exceedingly active as the Mediator at the Supper. When we come to the cup, He wants those fleshy tables at His disposal. He wants to write upon them some new impression of the love of God. That is not a hard commandment.

• None of the commandments are hard. They flow from the very nature of God.
  • "Oh that there were such a heart in them", God had to say.

• Thank God, there is such a heart in us. The apostle says,
  • "We give thanks to God always for you all … remembering unceasingly your work of faith, and labour of love, and enduring constancy of hope, of our Lord Jesus Christ", 1 Thessalonians 1: 2-3.

• That is a new generation, begun in Christ. My joy is that I can speak to the people of God with the consciousness that there is something to appeal to. If any one be in Christ, there is a "new creation", and even to the Corinthians he can say,
  • "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus", 1 Corinthians 1: 30.

• "In Christ Jesus" is the kind of spiritual material of which the saints are composed. That is not tables of stone, but involves fleshy tables of the heart. It is something God can write upon by the Spirit, so that the person becomes more and more brought into accord with the image of God.

• God speaks very solemnly in this passage, for though His covenant goes on, He nevertheless visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation". I do not think grace has altered this one iota.

• As surely as anyone pursues a pathway in controversy with God, it will bear fruit to the third and fourth generation. I have seen traits go through three generations – first the parents, then their children, and then their children's children.
  • If only someone would cry to the Mediator! He is there; He is available, so that the thing might be judged, and the course of God's government would be stopped.

• For His covenant is for us, and if a heart is moved under the love of God, it moves to Him and finds mercy. If God brings us to face any features of the flesh in our hearts in relation to His love, it is because of His mercy. He has the rights of mercy, and they form part of His covenant.
  • "Shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me", He says.

• You show you love Him by crying to Him through the Mediator. You hate the flesh like the man in Romans 7. He loathed it, but who could deliver him from the body of this flesh? This unholy corrupt element that is bound to myself, but is not part of myself, as in Christ. The answer comes,
  • "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord", Romans 7: 25.

• Immediately the Mediator puts out His hand and touches him, as indicated in,
  • "There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus", Romans 8: 1.

• That is not a statement, or a doctrine; it is an experience. If you read it as a statement, you will not understand it, even though you read it thousands of times. It is the experience of one who comes under the touch of the Mediator.

"Thou shalt not idly utter the name of Jehovah thy God". One seeks to remember that.

• Think of all the Lord said about God, yet when He was challenged as to who He was, He could say,
  • "Altogether that which I also say to you", John 8: 25.

• That was Christ. Do not let our language go beyond our experience. We take up the language of others; it may be unsuitable; it may not fit us. Ananias and Sapphira were the first who did it. They came in and made a great profession of being moved by the love of God, but they lied to the Spirit.

• If we give the impression to the saints that we are more with God than we are, we lie under the eye of God. Do not let us do it. If we want to grow, let our language be kept in accord with our experience.

"Keep the sabbath day to hallow it". There is nothing more precious than the sabbath day.

• There are six days in which to work. We have to pass through exercises; we are not always in rest. At every step, there is a fresh exercise. It means passing through experiences which in some way issue in our learning of death.

• We come at last to a point of rest, where we find everything really lies in the Mediator, and we submit ourselves to Him, and He writes in our hearts the love of God.

• The answer to every exercise is by death working in us, which involves the parting with something that stood in the way, and then, as putting ourselves unreservedly in the hands of the Mediator, He writes upon us the love of God, and there we can rest.

• It is lovely to see the saints of God in any place as Christ's epistle! In a wicked world where everything is getting worse, where they are plotting and planning against Christ, the character of God is manifested, and it is evident they rest in the God they know. That is the seventh day – the sabbath.
  • "Thou shalt not do any work".

• They make plain that all is God's work. What an influence it would have as we come into the understanding of the love of God! Think of the effect upon others!

"Honour thy father and thy mother". That is necessary for anyone. It is necessary for children, but I do not suppose that is the only reason for which it is written.

• Do you honour your father? Do you give profound respect to the light that God gives? We need to give profound respect to all that God gives in the way of light. We are not to say, I think differently. That is entering into controversy with God.

• I am not suggesting that all ministry is infallible. The "father" thought refers to light especially. Sometimes we are together, perhaps in assembly, or in the care meeting, and light is brought in. Do you honour it? Or do you pull it to pieces outside? I speak of what I have seen – alas, what I have done myself.

• It is light to direct our feet, like the counsel of a father, and it is to move us in a direction where the love of God may get a larger place with us. All these exercises are that God might be known as our God and we as His people.

• Then there is the "mother" side, the maternal exercises. Some think that is not so important. The maternal side is as important as the paternal. It is all-important in this day when all tends to independency.

• We need to give heed to the concern of our brethren. It does not mean that they are infallible. There may be times when you have to take a course that they question, and it may be according to God.

• But in the general run of cases, the maternal side is right. We do well to give heed to our brethren, for the Spirit of God dwells in them. This injunction will maintain us in the land. It will enlarge our inheritance. It will lengthen our days. It enlarges our capacity for the apprehension of the love of God.

"Thou shalt not kill". I need not say much about that. If I have a feeling against a brother or a sister, that is killing.

• John is absolute in handling things; he says, if you do not love, you hate. There is nothing in between. He that hates his brother is a murderer. You never find the Lord carrying a grudge. He looks upon them, and because of their hardness, He is angry.

• He has to tell the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians what they are; but He dies for them. He gave Himself a ransom for all. He died for them as much as for any others. He held nothing in His heart against them.

"Neither shalt thou steal". I think we slip into that.

• We sometimes put out things that we have got from someone else, as if they were our own. Something comes to our memory, and we put it out. If it is someone else's let us say so.

• Our memory gives us an appearance of greater stature. It is like walking on stilts. The question is how much can I bring that I have from God.

• Memory has its value, and we can bring in what others have given us; but let us seek to get it in such a way that, as cultivated, it becomes our own. You see what the teaching is, down to covetousness.

What a thing to be preserved from covetousness. We read,

• "piety with contentment is great gain", 1 Timothy 6: 6,

• because in such a case the love of God fills the heart, and there are no chambers which are a bar to the free flow of the Holy Spirit, and open to covetousness.

So Moses reviews all their history and the terms of the covenant, and the Lord would do the same with us from time to time, that we might have these experiences and be found in the free current of His love.

May God grant it to us for His name's sake!

1. first of all, from the feelings of Christ as begotten in us;

2. and secondly, from an appreciation of the saints as to what they are to God.

• The apostle speaks of the household of Stephanas as having
  • "devoted themselves to the saints for service", 1 Corinthians 16: 15.

• Now that is the practical spring, as you might say, of shepherd care – devotion to the saints for service. The tendency is to be devoted to the service, and to have a care secondly for the saints, but the order is otherwise.

• I think it is that which the apostle Paul appealed to the Ephesian elders about, when he spoke of the assembly which God had
  • "purchased with the blood of his own", Acts 20: 28.

• It was a strong appeal to the feelings of the elders at Ephesus, on the ground of the intense value which God set upon the saints. The idea of the assembly there is something which is valued, and which belongs to Another, and is to be cared for.

• Only Christ could speak of His sheep. No intelligent christian would speak of the people of God as his flock, although one hears of such expressions.

• The Lord only can speak of them as His sheep, and the apostle appeals to the elders at Ephesus on the ground that they are "the assembly of God", and that it has been purchased at the cost of "the blood of his own".

Now I want to point out certain features of shepherding. I am not going to occupy you with what is dispensational in John 10, but just to gather up certain features, to show what is His opinion of His own.

• "He that enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep".

1. Firstly, evidently a true shepherd must come in by the door. That is an important element to remember.

• You get a young sister wanting to help another young sister, and a young brother wanting to help another young brother, and it is very good. How are you going to help them? We may give them advice from our experiences, or we may bring moral force to bear upon them, but that is not "the door".

• You must enter by the door. It is of all importance, that I reach them through the Scriptures. I have no doubt myself that the door, viewed dispensationally – the door the Lord came in by – was the way indicated by the Scriptures.

• There could not be a flaw found in His manner of coming in. It was perfectly in accord with the Scriptures.

• If it were a question of where He was born, He was born, as the Scriptures said, in Bethlehem. He came from Nazareth, they thought, but He was born in Bethlehem.

• Every scripture as to the manner of His coming was fulfilled; and that is the first matter of importance, if we want to help one another. Let us be acquainted with the Scriptures; it is the Scriptures which give us entrance to the sheep.

The Spirit will always respond to the Scriptures. We may bring to bear what is perfectly right, and true, and serviceable, but unless supported by, and having the authority of, the Scriptures, we may doubt whether the Porter will open. It is the Porter who opens.

• There is nothing after all that we can effect in the hearts of one another; it depends upon the Spirit of God, as the Porter, opening. The Scriptures are a kind of pass-word; they have their own authority.

• We may advise certain things for help, but the credentials in support of that advice to any soul must be the Scriptures. To one coming thus, the Porter opens: he gets an entrance to souls by the door, and any so helped stand henceforth assured.

2. Secondly, the sheep "hear his voice". That is of great importance.

• If anyone hangs upon me as having received help, if a person gets attached to me because I have done something for him, I must have conducted the thing in a manner which is irregular. I have not done the service as a true shepherd.

• The effect should be, whilst I admit there will be affection and respect for any vessel used, the attachment is not to you, but to Christ. You want them to hang on Christ. They "hear his voice". The voice means that the Person is there in presence.

• What a lovely service, to be able to give someone, by way of the Scriptures, a touch so that they hear Christ's voice! That is prophecy.
  • "I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy ... your young men shall see visions", Joel 2: 28.

• The Lord delights in using the agility of young affections, that they may prophesy. The effect of prophesying is that, never mind what a person's state may be, they are brought consciously, for the time being at least, into the presence of God. This is invaluable.

• Some may pass on and the word is plucked away, but His own "hear His voice". The effect would be that a link is formed, or a new link established between the soul and Christ.

3. Thirdly, it says, "He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out".

• It is very difficult, but it is extremely important, as to whether we know the names of one another. You go around a meeting in mind, and can you say you know the name of each? We cannot do much with one another except as we know the names. I am not speaking about the names their parents gave them.

• I am speaking about their christian names, about what the Lord is doing with them, and the name He is forming in them.
  • Now "It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair", John 11: 2.

• That was her name. "The Mary". Before ever she did it, the Lord knew her name. He knew what she was to be brought to in her soul history. All His dealings with her are in regard of that name. He shepherds her. Think of His shepherding in that case!

• What intelligent affection, what unselfish affection would lead Him to stay away when her brother was dying; which would let him die, that she might be brought to the value of her name!

• It is important to ask ourselves our names. How can we fill out our part in the flock of Christ – which is John's way of speaking of the assembly, or the body of Christ – unless we know our names?

• Every touch of the Lord has in view the intelligent relation of the soul with Himself. That is of vast importance. We may be trying to build up something in a person's soul, the basis for which has never been formed.

• Simon was the name his parents gave him; Peter was the name the Lord gave him. He is given another name in relation to the assembly. It is of all importance to get so into contact with souls by spiritual dealings with them, that we understand the character of the touch they have with the Lord.

• You may forget their natural names amongst men, but you do not forget their spiritual names – the character of the link they have with the Lord, and it is on that you can build.

4. Fourthly, He "leads them out". His activities are to bring them into a sphere where that name can have full scope.

• How much He has to lead us out of! In the fold, you see, there was the idea of restraint. Well, that is right in a way. I daresay your parents have restrained you. What a mercy if they have! It preserves against the outbreaks of lawlessness, and the damaging effects of sin upon us, effects which may never be healed as long as we are here.

• But the object of the Lord is to bring us out. He wants to bring us into a sphere where our name is not only known to Him, or perhaps to one or two here, but where we are characterised by it in the whole of our deportment and activities, and in our environment.

• Think of Peter, think of the Lord's dealings with him! Simon, impetuous, unstable, ardent, easily diverted; but the Lord names him Peter, and He says,
  • "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst where thou desiredst; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and bring thee where thou dost not desire. But he said this signifying by what death he should glorify God", John 21: 18-19.

• You find Peter's history, indicated by the Lord, as closing in all the endurance and stability of a rock, in the presence of the violence of men. He once said impetuously he would die for the Lord, and at the end in all the stability of divine formation he does die for Him; but the Lord had much to lead him out of.

It is not by suppression or limitation that things will finally be held; it is by liberty.

• The Lord leads them out. That means He goes in front. That is another thing we must be concerned about in shepherding – going ahead. There is nothing that so much induces spiritual movement amongst others, as going ahead ourselves.

• Making straight paths for our feet, so that the lame are not turned aside, is a manner of shepherding. There is a deep-seated sense in the soul of one who goes ahead, that everything lies before.

• There are such vast fields that lie in the knowledge of God, that you cannot speak of attainment. Paul says,
  • "I do not count to have got possession myself; but … I pursue, looking towards the goal, for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus", Philippians 3: 13-14.

• At the end of his course, when you might say he had ripened and matured, you find Paul full of the sense of the vastness of what is before, "forgetting the things behind". How easily the things behind detain us! We think we have reached this goal and that.

• Thank God if we have reached any point in the varied chapters of our history! But he says,
  • "forgetting the things behind"

• – with the whole energy of his soul he is pressing forward.

The Lord led them. Leading involves suffering. Peter could tell you something of that.

• He says, "The elders which are among you I exhort, who am their fellow-elder", 1 Peter 5: 1,

• not that he was officially an elder, but a matured, older man, and one who had witnessed the sufferings of Christ.

• Peter is near the moment of stretching out his hands and being led where he would not. He had seen the sufferings of Christ, and they had made indelible marks on his heart, and he is prepared to go through anything as supported by the love of God, and in the light of the glory.
  • He says, I am a "witness of the sufferings of the Christ", 1 Peter 5: 1.

• These had made a profound impression upon Peter. But he adds,
  • "who also am partaker of the glory about to be revealed".

• He writes to elders as such. He would indicate to them that the way to profit the flock of God, is to go forward, as conscious in their spirits of the sufferings of Christ, and that this involves suffering for them.

• He says, It is better to suffer if the will of God be so; and "he that has suffered in the flesh has done with sin", 1 Peter 4: 1. But then, we may be partakers of the glory!

The sheep follow the Lord, for they know His voice. It is a great thing if anyone is exercised to hear.

• Do you know His voice? You may read ministry, or listen to it, but do you know His voice? When you hear something that is different, do you reject it? You say you hear this in one place, and that in another.

• Is there anything you hear that gives you the sense that the presence of Christ is there? It is the voice of the Lord! That is what moves the heart of the bride,
  • "The voice of my beloved", she says. Song of Songs 2: 8.

• Where was it? It was behind the wall; it was outside the lattice – things she had allowed to shut her in, so that she was not in liberty with her beloved. But she hears his voice, and he would lead her out. She would have his presence, and he would have her presence.

• If you find the presence of the Lord in any company, take your place there. It is where He is leading, where He is moving, and you will find it is there that He gives life. It is no longer a fold, but the power of life which preserves us.

• The great object and end of the Lord's dealings with us is that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. It is not obtained by rules and regulations, by a code of morals, or even by imitating Christ Himself; but in the power of life, that great vital element which God effects by the Holy Spirit, linking us up consciously with a Man in heaven.
  • "This allegory spoke Jesus to them, but they did not know what it was of which he spoke …". John 10: 6.

• Is that like you? That you do not understand His leading out?

Then He says, "I am the door: if any one enter in by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture".

• That is extremely attractive. It brings us back to the first point, that the whole object of shepherding is to bring the person consciously into contact with Christ.
  • "I am the door".

• The knowledge of the Lord as a living Person; as the One who has died to make the way out of the environment which otherwise would hold us, and entangle us, is a way of salvation.

• This would promote that holy liberty Godward, and towards one another, going in and out in the liberty of life which is proper to the flock.

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep".

• How good to appropriate the Lord on that line! That is not a question of your sins. The good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep. He is speaking to sheep – to persons who know Him.

• He has given His life, that there might be complete emancipation from every kind of bond, and that there might be holy liberty in the presence of God. No fold can preserve us, but the Lord proposes to preserve us by each being brought into the power of life.

Now I just want to refer to John 21 to draw attention to the working out of things in a detailed case.

• "There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael who was of Cana of Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples"

• – all good men; each one of them was a good man. Simon Peter – Simon brings in his responsible life; Peter is his spiritual name. God is dealing with him.

• There is Thomas – a delightful man is Thomas. When the Lord was going to Judaea to die, Thomas says,
  • "Let us also go, that we may die with him", chapter 11: 16.

• Nathanael, a man without guile; a man who was in entire simplicity of soul in relation to Christ. The two sons of Zebedee, and the two other disciples were there.
  • "Simon Peter says to them, I go to fish".

• I would suggest that indicates a person who is devoted to the service rather than to the saints. He had the light. The Lord had called him to be a fisher of men. He says, "I go to fish". That is, the service is before him. They go, and "that night took nothing".

• Then the Lord comes, and He says, "Children". The shepherd character of Christ is always so tender. He says,
  • "Children, have ye anything to eat? They answered him, No".

• He is really asking them how their service has worked out. Look over any bit of shepherding you have done and see how it has worked out. I have to look over my work of shepherding. Has it prospered? If not, there is something wrong. You may say, I have done it with the best intention. That is the service.

• The household of Stephanas devoted themselves to the saints, and then to the service. The Lord does not challenge the motive; He challenges the result. You look around over one and another you sought to help, over one company or another where you have sought to bring in something for God; how has it worked? Has it prospered?

Then the Lord said, "Cast the net at the right side of the ship and ye will find" – on the right side. That is where your heart is, if you are wise.

• "The heart of a wise man is at his right hand; but a fool's heart at his left", Ecclesiastes 10: 2.

• God's heart is at His right hand. He wants all the affections in relation to His beloved people in motion in the act of service. That would involve spiritual direction from Himself. He says, "ye will find".
  • "They cast therefore, and they could no longer draw it, from the multitude of fishes". It was a great success.

"That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It is the Lord".

• I believe it is very important to know how to recognise the Lord in any movement. Out of all those disciples there was only one that recognised the Lord, and it was not the leader. Peter was the leader. But Peter in this was not the leader, for he did not recognise the Lord. That was left for the disciple whom Jesus loved.

• When things go heavily, when they go wrong, we may consider whether the Lord is in it. When things run well, and what is done prospers, the Lord is there.
  • So John says, "It is the Lord".

• Peter now discovers he is naked; he has been exposing himself. That is always so, if service has not been in the Spirit of Christ. If any element comes in, however minute, as you may say, which the Lord cannot support, there will be some kind of evidence of self. It is one of the most important things to guard against.

• The more prominent the servant becomes, the greater the tendency to become naked, for the person comes into evidence, and may become important in his own eyes, and before the brethren.

The whole object of shepherding is that the sheep might hear His voice. John is a true shepherd here, he says, "It is the Lord".

• Yet Peter is not occupied with John. He puts on his overcoat, for he recognises he needs to be clothed; he needs to be hidden, and he casts himself into the sea.

• The affections are there, but they wanted adjusting and directing, and the Lord, in the grace of His heart, has adjusted them. Peter is not repelled, but, being attracted moves out to the Lord.

"When therefore they went out on the land, they see a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread".

• It is very humbling to find the Lord has been there long before us. Fish and bread and coals of fire! – persons who have been brought into accord with Himself by the apprehension of His death, and who have become available under His hand as food and spiritual support to others, whilst we have been wandering!
  • He says in John 10: 16, "I have other sheep which are not of this fold: those also I must bring".

• I can understand the Jewish brethren could hardly take that in – "other sheep". He says, I must bring them – there must be one flock, one shepherd. We are inclined sometimes to discredit other sheep. We may find that all we have been labouring for has gone amiss, yet the Lord has been securing His end; He has other sheep.

• Where we have got no food, He has food. Where we have had no success, He has had success, and He has done it without us; but now He says, You bring what you have. In the grace of His heart, the Lord delights, if only we will be submissive, to link us up with what He is doing:
  • "Bring of the fishes which ye have now taken".

• The net was not broken, not one was lost. There are very few crises we can come through and say, Not one was lost. The Lord comes through a tremendous crisis,
  • and He says "… those thou hast given me I have guarded, and not one of them has perished, but the son of perdition", John 17: 12.

"When therefore they had dined", brings in another important feature in shepherding.

• This shepherding we are now considering is more that of an overseer character. Shepherding is mostly feeding. Now there is this additional thought – of adjustment. It is a very difficult, very delicate, operation.

• You look at yourself and you say, Whom would I pretend to adjust? We do not want to be like the man who could see the mote in his brother's eye, and had a beam in his own. There is nothing more delicate than to seek to adjust someone else.
  • "When therefore they had dined",

• the Lord had satisfied their affections, filling them with good things; then He begins to adjust. We have to pass through this process, and we have to be prepared to exercise it with one another; but do not forget, it was when they had dined. We must always have food with us for such before we seek to adjust.

"Jesus says to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?"

• He knew his spiritual name and He also knew his responsible name. Responsibility lies with Simon. The Lord covers it with the thought of Peter; He credits him with the divine work in his soul. "Simon ... lovest thou me more than these?"

• Think of the spiritual discernment in that question! I suppose there are few who would not have started with Simon and said, Simon, you have denied the Lord. Perhaps some might go so far as to say, I cannot walk with you.

• The Lord does not actually say a word about it, though indeed He knew of his tears. You will not find his denial mentioned from the beginning to the end of this manifestation. That was only the fruit of the tree, but what about the root?

• In shepherding, it is of no use to deal with the fruit only; we must deal with the root.
  • "If all shall be offended in thee, I will never be offended", Matthew 26: 33

• – that was the root. It was his self-confidence in his own affection for Christ, as exceeding that of his brethren; that was the root. How easily we drop into it!

• We think our love, our energy, our zeal exceeds that of our brother, but alas! that will yield fruit that is not good. We have to deal with the root.
  • He answers, "thou knowest that I am attached to thee".

    Jesus says, "Feed my lambs".

• He gives him the service of elementary ministry.

• He tests him the second time. He says to him,
  • "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"

• This time He does not say "more than these".
  • Simon replies, "thou knowest that I am attached to thee".

    Jesus says, "Shepherd my sheep". He commits more to him.

Then the third time He tests him. "Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, Art thou attached to me? and said to him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I am attached to thee. Jesus says to him, Feed my sheep".

• The Lord's shepherding here is in the manner of overseeing or adjusting; but the Lord had first fed Simon. I want to call special attention to that – the Lord's manner of shepherding, so as to arrive at last at the adjustment.

• First, He feeds, which was essential, and He does not leave the matter until Peter speaks with a character and manner which demonstrates that he has now got to the bottom of himself.

• When Peter considered what his course had been, in the distress of his soul, he recognised that nobody but Christ could know that he loved Him. He casts himself at the feet of Christ. He goes to the very bottom, and now the Lord says, "Feed my sheep".

One just leaves these few thoughts with you. I do not speak as competent. I can only commend it to my brethren.

• If one looks at one's own activities in shepherding, one is ashamed; but we look at Christ, and we are delighted as we observe His way of doing it.

• He does not speak to us directly always. He speaks largely through the brethren, and if we do not hear His voice through the brethren, we may find ourselves on a course which does not prosper His sheep.

• The Lord reckons on our ear being ready, so that when He speaks to us – and it may be through the brethren – we may hear His voice. May the Lord help us!

EVE

There is much suggested in the very first type of the bride, that is Eve, in the fact that she is built. It does not suggest something that is suddenly brought into being, but a progressive, steady work. Provided you have the right material, you can build what will abide, and Eve suggests that character of vessel.

• The building is going on at the present time, and I trust we shall all be concerned about it. The building up in our hearts of that which is entirely out of Christ, every bit of which is the result of some apprehension of His death, and what was set forth in Himself in that death. It is a long process.

• Psalm 139: 15-16 delineates something of that process. It says,
  • "My bones were not hidden from thee when I was made in secret … Thine eyes did see my unformed substance".

  It is not what we generally speak of as "unformed". The vast vessel which is to display the excellencies of Christ is not yet completed; but every bit that is accomplished is in itself perfect, and all is carefully preordained in the mind of God.

  • "In thy book all my members were written; during many days were they fashioned, when as yet there was none of them", Psalm 139: 16.

• It is delightful to think of that. Think of the greatness of Christ! Think of what He must have been as here, so that John says that if all the things that He did were written, not even the world itself would contain the books written.

God is now producing living books, living members, preordained. One likes to fall back upon that. Where would we be if it were not for the blessed foreknowledge of God?

• So every feature of Christ is being reproduced in the power of the Spirit, according to the eternal plan, the fruition of which will be a complete expression of Himself in the assembly.

• You think of the millions and millions of men it takes to express fallen Adam! There are no two alike. Each has his own features, his own make-up, alas, true to the life of fallen Adam.

• God is producing millions and millions of living beings who are an expression of His Christ – every one different! Every one marked by some peculiar glory, some feature which is to illuminate the scene in that day when the bride will appear as
  • "the fulness of him who fills all in all", Ephesians 1: 23.

• It is a marvellous expression! People speak of talking too much about the assembly, but she is the fulness of the Man that fills all in all. What a vessel! We are let into the secret, so to speak, of God's own holy operations.

• There were no exercises with Eve; that is not the aspect of the figure which is taken up: no imperfection, no past history of sin! She begins with Adam, and ends with Adam; she is altogether of Adam.
  • It says, "Jehovah Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Man".

• I would commend that aspect of the death of Christ to your heart. It is good to contemplate the death of Christ from that standpoint, that in our thoughts there might be nothing transferred from the scene around, from what is natural.

• Let this conception of the bride be before us, let it be as in the purpose of God, itself perfect. Nothing that defiles was ever intended to come into the bride of Christ.
  • He caused "a deep sleep to fall upon Man".

• Apart from any question of sin, God indicates here that Christ would die, in order that there might be brought forth from Himself, outside of all that preceded, that which was to be His complement.

"Except the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it abides alone", John 12: 24.

• It is an immense thing to apprehend Christ coming into the scene as of an entirely new order; "the heavenly one". The divine thought is that there shall be "heavenly ones" – myriads of them, as heavenly in origin as Christ, as sure to go into heaven as was Christ.

• As bearing "the image of the heavenly one", 1 Corinthians 15: 49, they are of Him, and as He has gone to heaven, so they must go to heaven.

• It is important that we should lay hold of this aspect of the death of Christ for the assembly. It would help us as partaking of the Supper on the first day of the week. We look upon one another as of divine workmanship.

• Think of Christ as moved to give Himself for us! There is no need to add anything to it. It is for us.
  • "This is my body … for you", Luke 22: 19, He says.

• Think of the liberating effect as coming from various wilderness circumstances, to sit down and clothe one another with divine thoughts! We look upon the saints as members of His body, as a continuance of Himself, as all written in "thy book".

God took a rib out of Adam, and of it He built a woman. There could have been no true knowledge of God apart from the death of Christ. His death was essential.

• There could have been no full expression of His love apart from that death. As governed by the constraining power of His love, we judge that if He died for all, it was because all had died, and hence there is no possibility for any element of that order to be carried over.

• On the other hand, all that God is is seen in Christ for our heart's delight, and the effect of that is divine formation in our souls – God building a woman!

• Think of what it must be to the heart of Christ, to look into your heart and to see there what God has wrought as of Himself – not a bit of flesh of sin, or of the will of man has ever tainted it! It is of heaven, and it goes back to heaven, and it abides because it is of Himself, and He abides.
  • "Except the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it abides alone", John 12: 24.

• You cannot bring in the vicarious sacrificial thought there. That is not the thought in "the grain of wheat" dying. It indicates what is essential to bring forth fruit in continuance. We are privileged to take account of this origin of the assembly as out of Christ. It is what God has wrought.

I like to look upon the saints, and in my heart say with the apostle,

• "of him are ye in Christ Jesus!", 1 Corinthians 1: 30.

• It is dignified; it is magnificent! Of God are ye – God's work. Think of God's workmanship – "in Christ Jesus".

• In order that it might be brought about, Christ went into death. All the will of God came to light in Him, in His life, death, resurrection and ascension.

• The making known of the heart of God, the revelation of it, and that the Father would have those standing in suitable relation to His Son, and having part in all that is the Son's – was all secured through His death.

• The thoughts of Christ's own heart too, as desiring something upon which He could expend His affections, and which could respond adequately to Himself, came to light in His death.

I believe if we are prepared to abstract ourselves more frequently in relation to the production of what is for Christ, on this line, we shall find it is calculated to increase spirituality and heavenly-mindedness, as we grow in the apprehension of the love that has gone into death to secure this great end.

• Think of the eternal character of it! The Spirit says,
  • "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife".

• I have no question whatever that that is an allusion to the extraordinary fact that Christ remains a Man. It is an extraordinary thing to contemplate, and exceedingly essential to us. It is of the greatest possible importance.

• Think of the Son of God when the millennial rule is all over, when He has subjected everything to God, death having at last been put down, Himself being placed in subjection to God,
  • that "God may be all in all", 1 Corinthians 15: 28.

• He abides there, that we might share with Him through all eternity the blessedness of God as all in all! One would greatly desire to have one's affections quickened, and spiritual capacity increased, so that one might afford to the Lord more of this character of enjoyment.

• "This time", says Adam. There is much exercise through which we pass, and there are varied results, as indicated in green things springing up, and animals named by Adam; but he says, "This time", as referring to something peculiar which is arrived at,
  • "it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh".

• We might thank God we have been brought out of Egypt, and that we can sing the song of the Red Sea with holy delight. We might be filled with the sense of the goodness of God satisfying us with manna from heaven, and with water from the rock, and we might know what it is to sing to the well,
  • "Rise up, well", Numbers 21: 17,

• but what about "This time?" of the sobering and elevating effect it should have on you!

• Think of the power of it as you move through the world, where there is no thought of Christ – I have part in that which is altogether of Christ! The intense, unbounded interest of the One who gave Himself for us!

• Individually, there is a past history, closing in death, in trespasses and sins. We know that. Then there is this divine operation of God, who, when we were dead in sins,
  • "because of his great love wherewith he loved us, … has quickened us with the Christ", Ephesians 2: 4-5.

    Where from? Out of death.

    And He has "raised us up together, and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus", verse 6.

• A vessel that heaven is not ashamed of! Indeed, heaven will make room for her. She is the greatest created vessel in the universe. She has a place beside Christ, the Son of God, the One who can speak of Himself as equal with God,
  • and yet He has been pleased through incarnation, death, and resurrection and ascension, to take up this place in abiding relations with those who are secured by His love.

• As we understand the feelings of His heart we take form, so that there is spiritual intelligence to enjoy what He enjoys; to move in what He moves in; to take in with profound interest all that He has done, and is doing, and is about to do, and will yet do throughout eternity.

I think that is a very attractive presentation of the love of Christ, because it stands outside all question of sin, and it is a very attractive presentation of the assembly because she also is viewed in Him entirely apart from the question of sin, and as God's workmanship.

• What conversations Adam and Eve must have had together! What thoughts would pass through the mind of Eve as she apprehended she was altogether out of Adam! What entire understanding would be between them! What sympathetic feeling, what intelligence, what oneness of mind and heart!

• You could not apprehend anything more absolutely united than that man and the woman who was taken out of him.

REBECCA

Well, now we go on to Rebecca. Isaac had just returned from Beer-lahai-roi. He dwelt in the south country.

• This is another presentation of the results of the death of Christ, as He is here viewed as the heavenly man who died, in order that the living God might be made known.

• He died sacrificially; figuratively, Isaac was offered up in order that the living God might be made known, and now he is waiting on the results. The living God who reveals Himself – that is what is indicated by the name of the well.

• Meanwhile, he dwells in the south country; that is, everything is maintained as most favourable to us. Christ has accomplished all that is needful, so that everything may be favourable to our movements towards Him. He wants us to move towards Him.

• Rebecca had to be sought by Abraham's servant. Paul, in the power of the Spirit, was the first great servant corresponding to the type, who went out seeking a bride for Christ. He knew what kind of bride was needed – a heavenly bride, one of Christ's own order. Paul's ministry is calculated to move our hearts in that direction.

• How the Lord, like Isaac meditating in the field, must wait for a movement like Rebecca's! The servant is seen in our chapter as having been through the travail of his journey, and he is now bringing back with joy the results of his service. Alas, there is much service that will fall short of this.

• Rebecca is not the figure of one newly converted. There was much that was fine in her before she moved towards Isaac. That must necessarily be so. She was spiritually beautiful, through grace already received, when Abraham's servant found her. We might say, in antitype, she was found suitable to be for Christ.

• She had taken on the character of God. If there was a thing to be done, she would do it bountifully, like God. He asked for a drink, and she would give it to him, and for all his camels also. One great mark of the character of one who is ready for this step is the feature of bountifulness, doing whatever we put our hand to with all our heart.

• You never find God doing a thing with a restrained hand, unless it is judgment. He pours out His blessing, and He delights in those who act likewise in all the liberty of the bountifulness they have learnt from God.

• It would have been right enough when he asked for a drink to just give it, and pass on; but she said,
  • "Drink, my lord!", verse 18

• showing the respect she has for the servant.
  • Then adds, "I will draw water for thy camels also".

• Thus the Lord raises with us, after a time, questions calculated to move us out to Himself in bridal character. He has noted the appreciation in our hearts of the divine grace which has been shown towards us, as expressed in the well, where we can drink liberally, and thus learn to know God as presented to us in a living Christ.

• It is a marvellous thing that, while in a dead world, God can be made known to us livingly in Christ, at His right hand in heaven. It is at this point that the Spirit of God, in His servants, loves to raise a further question with us as to whether we are prepared to take a journey to Isaac?

• Has the love of Christ, in going into death to secure entirely favourable conditions for us, touched our hearts so as to make us want to be for Him as He has been for us?

It is a new challenge to our hearts when we thus apprehend the love of Christ. Think of what the Lord has been to us! He has given Himself for us. What other right answer can there be than that we yield ourselves up to Him, not in service exactly, but for His heart!

• Christendom is full of service, but how much of it is for His heart? Isaac lifts up his eyes and sees the camels approaching. What that must have meant to him! Rebecca was one who had had everything provided on her side, so that she was in every sense satisfied.

• She was provided for at home; she was beautiful; that is, instead of the sad traces of sin, there were the evidences of divine beauty there. She was marked by grace – grace learnt from the God who had revealed Himself, and yet she takes a journey which means the leaving behind of everything that naturally would hold her, so that she might comfort the heart of Christ.

• It is a question of comfort here. He has lost someone. Bereavement is always touching to contemplate. Think of Christ in all His liberty of heart towards Israel when He was here in flesh and blood conditions, and yet He died without securing response.

• His cry on the cross, "I thirst" was only answered by mockery. He has been waiting ever since by the well, so to speak, of the supplies of the Spirit, maintaining before us the God who reveals Himself – the living God who makes Himself known!

• What He waits for is that our hearts, being thus satisfied, might be prepared to embrace the thought of being a comfort to Him here on the earth, in the loss of Israel. During the time when every advance of the love of His heart, and kindness and mercy, has only been rebuffed by His people Israel. What it must have been to see this woman, with a veil upon her!

• She is exclusively for one man. She has moved out of all the surroundings that might have held her naturally, with good reason, and she has taken advantage of all the ministry that came to her through the servant, and has moved towards Christ, and she comes to Him as a veiled woman. She is exclusively for the love of His heart. And, we read,
  • "Isaac led her into his mother Sarah's tent".

Isaac "took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her".

• He appropriated her in the place of the one who was dead, and she was willing to accept it.

• If we will go over these features prayerfully, as connected with the death of Christ as the heavenly Man, I think we shall find what it is to have the consciousness in our hearts that He loves us. This is as being in the place of wife, to fill out the requirements of wife to so great a Person, in the grace and the power of the Spirit. This in a particular way draws forth His love.

RACHEL and LEAH

Now in chapter 29 I think we are entitled to look upon Jacob as a figure of Christ, though not in all his dealings.

• Rachel represents Israel, the earthly bride of the future; and Leah the gentile, the assembly.

Jacob fled from Esau, for his brother's heart was filled with murder. It is a figure of Christ as cast out by Israel, when the spirit of murder moved those who crucified Him. Hosea says, Jacob fled to Syria and

• "Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept sheep", Hosea 12: 12.

• It is beautiful to think of Christ serving to this end. Have you accepted this service of Christ? You think of all that Israel has missed, and all that we may be missing! How beautiful was the meeting of Rachel and Jacob! He kissed her, and he lifted up his voice and wept; but in the antitype there was no response.

• I am speaking now of the fact of Christ coming to Israel. With what love in His heart He approached, and how He wept over them! How He would have gathered them as a hen gathers her chickens, and they would not! He saluted Israel with a kiss, so to speak. That was the manner of His coming amongst them, but He was refused, and had to find refuge outside Israel.

• Jacob is told it was not the custom to give the younger before the elder. But God has a right to do things in accordance with His own will. So that, refused Rachel, Jacob receives Leah. She was tender-eyed.

• Rachel had been cultivated ceremonially, at least, for Jacob. Israel had been prepared by divine cultivation for the reception of Christ. She should have been ready, as the result of all God's ways with her, to have hailed the incoming of Christ with intelligence; whereas Leah was tender-eyed.

• The gentiles had no outlook in relation to Christ. But as the reward of His service unto death, Christ receives, not Rachel – that is Israel; but Leah – the assembly.

• Then we get certain painful exercises with Leah. We need not think of them with disparagement, but may look upon them as indicating the way by which God passes every one of us, that we might be competent to fill out our place here, whilst He waits for the day when Rachel shall be fruitful.

• He looks into our hearts and finds His satisfaction in the exercises that result in fruitfulness. Such exercises rendering us more suitable to Christ in the scene of His sorrows, in the world out of which He has died. How truly He might say with Jacob
  • "in the day the heat consumed me, and the frost by night", Genesis 31: 40.

• What it must have been for the heart of Christ to move through the scene where there was not the slightest response to God. It was a scene of drought to Him. He felt it all, and the more so because treasured in His heart for them were these great thoughts of God in relation to Israel.

• Leah's firstborn is named Reuben, which as we know means 'a son'. You start with sonship. There is nothing less than sonship for us. It is a great thing to begin where God begins. Being a son, means something for the heart of Christ, for He is bringing many sons to glory – and is serving still to that end.

• Jacob is not presented here as being near at hand to support her, as you might say. Christ is on high. The question is whether we are prepared to move in our affections after Him, without having Him manifestly with us. In His service to us He would bring us to know what He has passed through.

• The first result of Leah's exercise is a son. There is nothing more liberating, more calculated to bring in a sense of nearness, than the thought of 'a son'. It connects us immediately with all that is heavenly as in relation to the One who is absent. He is not here. He is in heaven. Sonship links us up at once with heaven, as liberating us from the earth. It does not belong to this scene!

• And yet as children, or heirs, we have a certain interest in the scene around. It belongs to Christ, and we can look around on it as ours, in that sense.
  • "Christ's joint heirs", Romans 8: 17,

• however, involves waiting for Christ. We could not take up the present scene until Christ does. Leah is passing through these exercises in the consciousness of His absence.

• It is very precious to see young people with a sense that they belong to heaven. Christ is not here; He has left this scene. He belongs to heaven, and they belong to heaven. Hence, though heirs of God, there is an aloofness with them in relation to all that is around, as arriving at the truth expressed in the name Reuben, a son.

"And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Because Jehovah has heard that I am hated, he has therefore given me this one also; and she called his name Simeon"

• Leah had the constant feeling of the spirit of hatred around her, and what is her resource? Simeon – the consciousness of being heard in prayer. Another definite chapter is arrived at in her history.

• It is right to pray, and to have stated times as with morning and evening prayers; but how often we may pass on unconscious of being heard.

• Leah typifies a person who has arrived at an understanding that she has been heard, and is conscious that she has the ear of Christ, in a scene where she is hated and tested in her affections.

"And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Now this time will my husband be united to me, for I have born him three sons; therefore was his name called Levi".

• That is a thing we have to learn – what it is to be united to Christ. We may expect Him to be joined to us, as apparently she did, but are we seeking to be joined to Him practically? What we have to learn is to go on and continue as Levites. The levitical spirit is marked by unwearied consideration for the Lord's interests.

• It says of Aaron he was the Levite. How pre-eminently this was seen in Christ, as He depicts Himself, journeying from Jerusalem to Jericho in Luke 10. He comes in no official garb, but as a Samaritan. He who was to be the High Priest, comes as a Samaritan, with all the levitical grace in His heart that knows how to serve. It is a great thing to come to the levitical outlook.

• Levi never considered for himself. The great point about him was the holy response to Moses' challenge – Who is for Jehovah? That marked Levi. He thus exhibits the Spirit of Christ. If there was anyone who served diligently, it was the Lord and His one consideration was what was due to the blessed God.

• He prayed that we might know what it is to be truly united, that we might be one, not on the lines of flesh, but on spiritual lines. He died to secure the conditions whereby henceforth we might know no man after the flesh.

Another aspect of the death of Christ was that He might secure our hearts for praise to the blessed God – to secure the praises of Israel. So Leah bears Judah, that is, 'praise'. All that matters to her now is praise to her God. I can understand that the heart of Christ would be held by that.

• You must not be diverted from the teaching by the apparently disparaging way in which Leah personally is presented in this scripture. She represents the gentile, who had no part in the promises or in Christ. The gentile is always brought in in that way in the Old Testament scriptures; and it should magnify to us the compassions of God. Romans 12: 1.

ASNATH

Joseph had two sons by Asnath. She presents another aspect of the assembly as for the heart of Christ.

• Think of the afflictions of Joseph as the iron entered into his soul. What he felt as he was driven forth from his family to be henceforth amongst the gentiles. Even there he was put in prison. He knew what it was to go down to the prison house as maligned. He would not be unfaithful, but preferred to be maligned for righteousness sake.

• The Lord had every opportunity presented to Him in His path to make Himself great – all the kingdoms of the world were offered to Him by Satan. But God has made Him Lord of all. Think of the wonderful period this is, when the true Joseph reigns supreme in relation to God.

• It is not that He has yet taken to Himself His kingly glory, or that Israel has yet been restored, but we are in the secret of the place He has before God. The whole scene is given into His hands!
  • "God has made him, this Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ", Acts 2: 36.

• Asnath, so to speak, stands in relation to Christ in this secret knowledge of His greatness, and brings forth fruit now to Him, so that His heart is cheered, and, as is indicated in the name of Manasseh, He forgets His toil.
  • "For God has made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house".

• Think of the toil of Christ! And the loss of Israel, his father's house. So the firstfruits of Asnath to Joseph are set forth in Manasseh, which speaks of what she is to his heart whilst in exile.

• There is one thing said about Joseph which fits in here, that is, that the blessing of God was to come upon him, as the one who was
  • "separated from his brethren", Genesis 49: 26.

• This refers to Joseph as being a Nazarite. See what the heart of Christ is for us; He takes this place of a Nazarite for us, and it involved the separation of death. Think of the Lord dying that He might separate Himself from everything here, so that in the gift of the Spirit we might have power to separate ourselves from everything here, and be altogether for God.

• Asnath shared the glory of Joseph. I can understand her thinking of God, and thinking what a God He must be to have given her such a place in relation to one who had such glory. His greatness would increase before her eyes every day.

• So, though all is yet in mystery, as we would say today, the Lord can say He has forgotten His toil and His father's house.

The Lord is contented with the assembly – and cannot we be contented with the Lord?

• You can understand that Asnath needed the Nazarite; she was a daughter of Potipherah, priest in On. We are surrounded by, and our very origin is in relation to, all that is unclean, especially as to what is religious. Hence, how we need Nazariteship!

• There was the special vow of the Nazarite. It is good to be prepared to enter into this, as we realise the love of Christ and the love of God.

• If a man or a woman – it is open to both – will make the Nazarite vow, they will indeed realise it is worth while to do without things here, though they may have every right to take them up, that they may be more for Christ. Thus He may forget His toil, and forget His father's house.

Ephraim is a kind of further result, and would indicate double fruitfulness – fruitfulness Godward and fruitfulness manward. Thus all that the Lord came for He would see carried out in the people He has taken for Himself in the time of His rejection. In this fruitfulness He would see the glad tidings going out, the kindness and love to man of God expressed. Titus 3: 4.

• Mercy and grace are manifested, and the loving of righteousness and hating of lawlessness – all according to His mind. On the other hand, there would be the true priestly element, and response to the God, who is His God, and our God, His Father, and our Father.

• The consideration of John 17 with Genesis 41 should prove fruitful, as we see the way in which the Lord wants us to enter into all He is taking up. This is in entire separation from this scene to which He has died, so that His heart might be gratified by His people.

• Thus He asks that we may be with Him and behold that peculiar glory the Father gives Him, for He says,
  • "thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world", verse 24.

• All that come in by Christ in blessing was determined by God, as looking forward to the coming of that blessed Man. Anticipating this, He was loved before the foundation of the world. May the Lord grant us greater affection for Himself for His name's sake!

Zipporah represents what Moses had for his heart during the time of his rejection. That is a great factor in itself to contemplate. How intensely Moses would feel the rejection of those that should have received him, while dwelling a stranger in a strange land.

• This is indicated by the name he gives his firstborn, Gershom – meaning, a sojourner there;
  • "for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land", Exodus 2: 22.

• These feelings have never left the heart of Christ. I believe we should be intensely sympathetic with the feelings of Christ in relation to His rejection, and particularly His rejection by Israel – His brethren after the flesh.

• Zipporah represents the consolation that the Lord has in the assembly during the present interval. Moses, as depicting the Lord here, is on his way to effect the judgment of this world. He is about to enter Egypt to bring judgment upon it. During that judgment, it is true, he will effect the deliverance of God's people Israel, but he will execute judgment upon Egypt and upon all its gods.

• At this point Zipporah comes to light in a remarkable circumstance. It says, Jehovah sought to slay Moses. We might draw from it that Moses, as a man, had been lax as to circumcision, but that is not what I desire to dwell on, but rather to use it as indicating what we shall lose if we do not accept in our hearts the circumcision of the Christ.

• I believe the point the Spirit would draw attention to, is that if He is to bring judgment on the world, there must be with His people the complete correspondence to this
  • "in the putting off of the body of the flesh", Colossians 2: 11.

• It is a great thing to consider. If God is to righteously enter into judgment with the world, how essential that those who are His should anticipate that judgment in themselves.

• It should touch our hearts – this matter of the circumcision of the Christ, the cutting off of Christ after the flesh – and enable us to accept practically the complete putting off of the body of the flesh.

• Now, it was a serious moment, and Zipporah saw that it was serious. Jehovah was about to slay her husband.
  • If you were to ask me what we lose by neglecting circumcision, I should say, the gain of Christ as Head.

• We lose the blessed living flow of ministry from Christ as Head;
  • "from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God", Colossians 2: 19.

• He would maintain us in responsive life to Himself; that is a serious thing to lose! Jehovah was about to slay Moses. That stirred Zipporah to the depths; the thing had to be faced. It is not an easy thing to face this question of circumcision
  • It is "the putting off of the body of the flesh".

• If you ask me how saints are to be together in the blessing and unity of the Spirit; how they are to have one mind, and come to a common judgment, so as to be found in the liberty of the light which God has granted us in Christ; I should say that on the negative side – yet it is most positive in effect – there must be this
  • "putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of the Christ".

• It is worth considering. The apostle, in writing to the Colossians, showed them how the flesh stood in their way.
  • If there is not the acceptance of the removal, in its entirety, of the man of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; there will be all kinds of differences of thoughts and judgments arising.

• There will be questions regarding meats and drinks, regarding holy days and new moons, and a thousand and one other minor things that the religious man holds on to.

• But Christ has been down into death that the whole man, in his entirety, might be removed.
  • It is a weakness with every one of us that we attempt to hold on to something of the man that has been removed in the death of Christ.

• It is found very close to every one of us; the reservation of some features, or some elements, of religious flesh may even engage our consciences.

• The result is we come under bondage, and the free flow from the headship of Christ is hindered. That is what he points out to the Colossians. Unless there is the maintenance of the full bearing of the death of Christ, there will not be the holding of the Head individually.

• Consequently there will not be the flow through the body from the Head, as the blessed Source of life, and light, and holy feelings from God; uniting the saints as one living organism, in response to the heart of God, and the heart of Christ.

It is a lesson refused by the mass of believers, and this seems to be indicated in Zipporah's unwillingness to come to it, and the lack of grace in the way in which she accepts it. But there is no greater blessing than the acceptance of the complete putting off of the whole body of the flesh in the death of Christ.

• We often find in matters that arise, how individual conscience tends to intrude itself in the assembly. I must keep an individual conscience before God, but in the assembly I must learn to merge with the saints. That cannot be unless one has accepted the complete removal in the death of Christ of all that constitutes man in the flesh.

• Thus we shall all see from one standpoint, and the result will be light from the Head. There is nothing more delightful than that; and Christ has suffered the most ignominious death on the cross, in order that He might bring that about practically for every one of us.

• If Christ after the flesh is gone, who is to remain before our eyes? As the apostle says, if Christ has died,
  • "we henceforth know no one according to flesh", 2 Corinthians 5: 16.

• Think of the delightful spiritual outlook which results from the simple and full acceptance, practically in our hearts, of the circumcision which has been effected in Christ. So that we are not occupied with the discrepancies which attach to the saints of God, nor with the features which may be pleasurable and attractive to us naturally, but only with that which is of God in them.
  • I do not refer to wickedness, which must ever be judged.

• The effect is there will be emancipation, and the free and holy flow of the blessing of Christ as Head, through the members of the body, which is what He desires.

The name Zipporah means 'a little bird'. I suppose we might attach something to that. Littleness is proper to the present day, but it suggests to the mind and heart something liberated in the heavens, something above the thoughts of men, and the matters of men, and able to rise to God and to Christ.