1.
“As to meeting in the name of Jesus,—the scriptural expression is gathered unto his name (Matt. 18:2020For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20)), which is a different thing. His name is thus the thing that gathers us. ‘The name of Jesus’ is the expression of what He is personally and officially. Being gathered to His name implies that this is the bond of connection between those so gathered. The allowance of false doctrine as to Him, would make such gathering impossible. But on the other hand, denominational bonds (being connected by other names) could not consist with it.”
“The promise ‘There am I,’ is only to those so ‘gathered.’ But I do not mean by this that the Holy Spirit does not dwell elsewhere. The house of God—the whole profession—is His dwelling place. The Spirit of God works therefore far and wide, but ‘There am I’ is the LORD’S presence, and gives His own sanction and authority to even two or three gathered to His name. The presence of the Spirit is not sanction, but the witness of the accomplished work of Christ, and the grace which flows out through this. In Matt. 18, the Lord’s presence in the midst plainly is given in this way, whatever more be implied in it.”
“There is no such expression any where as the Holy Ghost in the midst, nor can we say that the Lord is present by the Spirit merely. When He spoke of the Son of man who is in heaven, was He in heaven by the Spirit! In the same way after having gone up to heaven, can He not be with us on earth? Not bodily of course, but just as truly.”
2.
“I think the 22nd verse of John 17 is just the same in principle with all the chapter. The Son has become a man, and as man received all He had from eternity, and all He won in time, from the Father, that He might share it with His people. As the Giver of it all He must ever be supreme. If Sanctifier and sanctified; Redeemer and redeemed; Giver and receivers, are all of one’; all brought into the very same blessedness and share it together—they with Him; still as the One who has been all these and more, He must ever have His place even as man. He makes us all but divine! Yet the heart, while it knows this, is bumbled to the dust with the consciousness of what we are; so different from Him. To analyze these things and reduce them to lines admitting of definition would be but to reduce what is only known to faith down to the human understanding.
“Like the Person of the Son of God, we cannot understand how God has become a man: we know it by faith, and rejoice in it. He has a name ‘which no man knows but He himself,’ even when He comes forth with the armies of heaven. He was on earth the despised and rejected and suspected man; yet He can say in His lowliness, ‘no man knoweth the Son but the Father.’ The Person of Christ is inscrutable, yet faith is conscious that He is God and man. I have noticed that there are expressions at times in the Scriptures which tell us of some of the extremes of His lowly place in life, or in death, which the Holy Ghost seems to use with purposed wisdom, and which make the heart feel that He is more than man. There are many cases of this, which would take more than a letter to look at.”
“If we take verses 22, 23 of John 17 together, we shall see a great beauty in them: the latter being explanatory of the former. Perhaps too, a little help on the three unities of the chapter may be of use.”
“Verse 11 (where the apostles alone are before His mind, as I conceive; verse 20, afterward bringing others into their blessing as built upon their foundation), gives us—
1. Apostolic oneness in themselves, and their going out in the testimony of grace (Acts 2, etc).
2. Verse 21; the oneness of communion of disciples with them, brought in by the truth (Acts 2 end of, etc).
3. Verses 22, 23; oneness going out, by and by, in the testimony of perfection and glory.”
“Just as the 20th verse of chapter 14 gave us what is now; verse 23 of John 17 gives us what will be by and by. Now the Son is in the Father and the Lord’s people in the Son. So, by and by it will reverse itself, and turn outwards, so to say, like the breastplate of the high priest when he came out to bless, having had it turned into the Shekinah and glory thereon. Then it will be the Son in His people and the Father in the Son.”
“Like Men That Wait for Their Lord.” Luke 12:32-3832Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. 34For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 35Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; 36And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. 37Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. 38And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. (Luke 12:32‑38).
In this chapter the Lord is unfolding the principles which are to guide His people in an adverse world while He is away. The first great principle is, that “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
This is a very solemn truth—the world is walking in a vain show, and things are kept secret now; but a day is coming when everything shall be brought to light. I do not know how far our hearts like to think that everything will be brought to the light. If we shrink from the thought of kits being brought out there; if we dread the thought of all being revealed then, it proves either that our conscience has not been brought into the light yet, or that we are not walking in the light now. If that is the state of your soul your conscience is not practically right in the sight of God. If, as a sinner, your conscience is yet unpurged, there is nothing that can do so but the blood of Christ. But, as a Christian, when I stand in the light of God, I judge the evil in the light now, instead of its coming out afterward, when we shall all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ. As a sinner, you may be able to say, “I am a poor sinner, and the cross of Christ just suits me.” That will do very well. But can you say, “I am a poor sinner, and the judgment seat of Christ just suits me”) No, you say, that will not do. But when you have by faith passed the sentence of the day of judgment upon your own soul, and applied to yourself the truth, “There is none righteous, no not one,” and have seen that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God,” you then see what sin is before God now, as the judgment day will show it, and when you have learned the blessed truth that He who is to judge the quick and the dead has Himself come in to be the Saviour, and has borne your sins in His own body on the tree, before He becomes the Judge, you then know that when you are manifested before the judgment seat of Christ you are before Him who has Himself put all your sins away. The efficacy of redemption is the whole thing. The Judge has charged Himself with the sins, and as He is the Judge, He must deny Himself if He imputes them to you who have believed. The work which has put them away is done, and cannot be repeated. This is what gives, not hope, but “boldness in the day of judgment.” Some people have hope, and think it is more humble. If there is judgment at all there must be condemnation, but if I am justified there is no judgment for me, for how do I arrive before the judgment seat of Christ? He has said, “I will come again and receive you to myself.” He so loves me that He is coming Himself for me, and he shall change my vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, so when I go up before the judgment seat of Christ it will be in and like that Christ who has loved me and given Himself for me! —who has come Himself to take me to be with Him forever!
As to judgment, there is no such thing for the saint. We shall know even as we are known, when we shall be in glory, conformed to the image of the Son; when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. What is judgment if we are completely like the Judge, and He Himself our righteousness?
We see, in v. 32, how He goes on to encourage the disciples— “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” What a different atmosphere we have here! Do not be afraid, the Father has been thinking about you, but provide yourself with bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens which faileth not, for where your treasure is there will your heart be also. The heart follows the treasure.
“Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.” This is what gives the proper character to the Christian’s place while here below—Waiting for Christ! The one true proper hope of the saint is the coming of Christ to receive him to Himself. Death is not properly the Christian’s hope; death is not “my Lord.” The hope is “not that we should be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality should be swallowed up of life.” Mortality is not swallowed up of life when I am dead. We are then to be “like unto men that wait for their Lord.” You are to have your eye on Christ as coming to receive you; that is to be your character—waiting— so that when He cometh you may open to Him immediately.
In the twenty-fifth of Matthew you get the account of the virgins not watching. Wise and foolish—they all went to sleep; they did not watch. Two things characterize the true servant after the rejection of Christ— “loins girded” and “lights burning,” expectation of His return and service. There ought to be a full, distinct, unqualified profession in us, shining as God’s lights in the world. While we are here in this world we must have our loins girded. It is our place to serve. This is not the place for rest, but for watchfulness. We must watch over our every thought while here. But, what is Heaven? Heaven is where I can let my heart go! That is an immense comfort. Here I must have my loins always girded: here my condition is that my heart is kept in order by the Word of God: here I am waiting for Christ who has set Himself apart as the Heavenly Man in the glory that He may be the object before our hearts. I am waiting for one that loves me and coming Himself for me. He does not send for me: He comes! We are to have our hearts in order to receive Him. A man who has his hand on the handle of the door is ready the minute the knock comes to open it, and this is what we should be. This has nothing to do with prophecy. The coming of the Lord is the hope of the Christian for himself. Until the Lord comes our place is watching, and He says, “Blessed are these servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” He says to us, “You have had your hearts on the stretch, and you were right to have them on the stretch; but I bring you to a place where you are to sit down, and it will be my delight to minister to you.” I not only get the blessing of being in the Father’s House, but I get the blessed Son of God ministering its joys to me. What a picture of the love of Christ! Love delights to serve; and here this Blessed One says, “I will gird myself that I may serve you.” Christ took the form of a servant when He became man. Is He going to give up being man? Never. And He never gives up serving either. He took another service on ascending to heaven—to wash our feet. He has the first place in everything, and the first place in service too. He is not going to give it up; He is the servant forever! And we who serve and watch for Him here, during this little while of His rejection, will then find our reward in rest, and in the feast at which Jesus will gird Himself to serve us.
In the ninth of Luke you get the transfiguration, and mere you have a type of the kingdom. He appears in glory, and the disciples see it. Moses and Elias were there with Him. But there is something besides—the excellent glory—we might call it the Father’s house. When they departed from Him a cloud overshadowed Jesus, and with Him Peter, James, and John. The word “overshadow” is the same word which was used when God came to dwell in the Shechinah—the abode of God. This is more than the kingdom, this entrance of the saints into the excellent glory. Where they hear the revelation on God’s part of His affection for His Son, “This is my beloved Son,” “they feared as they entered into the cloud;” that is not the kingdom, it is the Father’s House. You never get God dwelling with man till redemption was accomplished. The instant He redeemed Israel out of Egypt even in an earthly way He could say, “I am the Lord their God that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them.” Redemption is the ground of God dwelling with us, and finally of our dwelling with Him. Our home is in the Father’s House, and where should I be so at home as in my Father’s House? Redemption is the accomplishment of God’s thought for us. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and they cast Him out, and that is the world we are in—painted over-varnished over it may be; colored so as to deceive. But all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. The world is that in which the flesh finds its sphere when the heart of man is not with God. God has set Christ before us, and He is the great central point that attracts us up there, and everything here is against Him, for the world is where He was cast out. Suppose it was only yesterday that Christ had been crucified in this town, would you be “hail-fellow well met” with all those who crucified Him! But no matter whether it was yesterday, or last year, or 1800 years ago, that is what the world is. It is the same world still; and if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Christ brings out the extreme wickedness of man’s heart. He did it on the Cross. Those that reproached God reproached Him. But all this coming out of evil never baffles the purpose of God. Did not the cross only open the floodgates of God’s love? and this is always the way. There may be the rising up of evil, but it is the accomplishment of God’s purposes.
If we are faithful to Christ, we may meet with much evil to oppose us. But if we suffer for Christ’s sake, let us be meek as Christ was meek, in the midst of it all. He causes the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrains the remainder. All man’s wrath against Him but brought out the full and blessed accomplishment of God’s own purpose. What do I see on His riding into Jerusalem? —that until you get peace in heaven you never will get peace on earth. In the present state of things we want the whole armor of God, for spiritual wickedness is in the heavenlies. May we each say with Paul—this one thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
If the Lord were to come this night, could we each say, “This is my Lord, I am waiting for Him?” Have you so known the virtue of Christ in redemption that you have nothing to fear at His coming; or are you allowing the spirit of the world to come in and hide your affection and devotion to Him? If He were to come, would the joy of your heart be to open to Him immediately? I have joy from Him till He comes; I have joy with Him when He comes again.