Men are dealt with in Scripture as God sees them to be-circumstances detailed as they are. God and realities are identified on the one hand, vanity and the creature on the other. Sin has hidden from man the reality of his condition, and, ignorant of his disease, he cannot find out the remedy. With uncertain data, it is vain to expect positive conclusions. Things as they are and the wherefore is unfolded in the Word, God's judgment and remedy revealed. How early in Genesis (6:5) do we read "every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually." An evil heart, an evil life (ver. 12). How early in our Lord's mission is the announcement, " Ye must be born again" (John 3) The "flesh profiteth nothing!" How the testimony of patriarchs and prophets corroborates the truth. "Few and evil have been the days of my life," the language of Jacob (Gen. 47:99And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. (Genesis 47:9)). " Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you," the testimony of Moses (Deut. 24:1919When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. (Deuteronomy 24:19)). "Born in sin and shapen in iniquity," the confession of David (Psa. 51). This desperate condition behold in reality, there is but one remedy. Sin as it is, and sinners as we are, God only can remove the former and save the latter. Things as they are, can only be met by God as he is revealed to us in Christ. Realities find their answer in God. The very basis of communion with God is reality. Our need of God's grace is real, and the grace of God for that need is real also. Christ died the just for the unjust to bring us to God. Grace had its existence in the object for which it exists. "The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." "He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Individually, then, our comfort arises from honest-hearted dealing with God in Christ, in the confidence of the grace which is revealed there. " In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God" (Phil. 4:66Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6)). "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:55If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1:5)). Having been led into acquaintance with ourselves, and taught our utter emptiness, and this knowledge accompanied by the revelation as to where our help lies; responsibility is imposed upon us to seek it. Our very need is our recommendation, the more we want the more is revealed of the bounty of Him who bestows. We exist for grace to be displayed; and grace is manifested in our existence. Communion with God at the outset of our career is based upon our helplessness, and the fact of His grace to meet all our need out of his riches in Christ. To forget the former is to lose the enjoyment of the latter.
As was before affirmed, realities find their answer in God. Now this truth, in individual operation, cannot be gainsaid. The word of God asserts it, and the word of God confirms the assertion. The children of God bear testimony to it, and the lives of the children of God confirm their testimony. The latter end of Job was better than the beginning (Job 42:1212So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. (Job 42:12)); but he had traveled farther in the way of self-loathing, and lost by the way no little of self-importance. In his own words, "Behold I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. And it was so (verses 7-10). And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." The lower he got the more he had, "for before honor is humility."
Things as they are, seen and acknowledged, is a primary element in our individual dealings with God. This is doubly true in our collective assemblies. Saints gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus, have to do with realities. In His presence everything is exposed, naked and bare is everything before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. It is one thing to have got into our place, to have learned the true whereabouts of believers, viz., as gathered together in the name of Jesus, " He is there in the midst of them," and it is another to learn what is befitting the place; in other words, how to behave in it. Realities, not pretensions, have their answer. in God. Now in our day, we have had too little reality, and too much pretension. We have thought the recovery of place to be the recovery of power, and looked for what once was as now to be realized, and reading how others were exercised, decided on imitating them. But realities find their answer in God. The knowledge of where Saints ought to be is understood, something of what the Church ought to be is apprehended; but alas, in our folly, we have overlooked what Saints are. The fact of the existence of gifts in the Church is recorded, the source of them revealed, but our ability to exercise them may be overrated.
The purpose of God, to bless His people for Christ's sake, is undoubted. God has a people, and the Head of that people He cannot, He will not forget. He ever lives before God, to receive and give down torus the blessings He receives for us. This is undoubted reality. He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself! But on our part too there is a condition, the precursor of blessing. In the history of God's ancient people, as in Judges, how often they turned aside from following Him, how often they hewed to themselves cisterns which could hold no water. In His mercy He visited them, exposed to them their condition, brought them to acknowledge it and to feel it, and then He brought their deliverance. As then, so it must be now. Believers need to see and acknowledge their nakedness, abandon their folly, and in humility own things as they are, not pretending to what they have not, but mourning over the little they have; waiting on God in His grace, to supply them with more. The presence of the Holy Ghost is a reality, and surely leads to acknowledgment of our real condition, But, alas, how slow we are to learn; how far from apprehending, how backward to take the low place, though the grace in the remedy imperatively requires it. The need felt is very power! How sweet is humility, how happy confession! Poverty is no crime in the kingdom of grace, unfitness no sin-but the presumption of place where the power to occupy does not exist-and how wretched the feeling! In the world men have their places and their occupations. To be consistent in them is their distinction, to pretend to any other their discredit. In station, rightly to occupy the one God has placed us in, is an honor; to pretend to another, shows fully.
The very world has such in derision, who through weakness of character and the feeling of pride, would pass themselves for other than they are. Truly before God, then, His people should be candid. When disguise is impossible, confession is true wisdom, and far more when everything is to be gained by acknowledgment of weakness as it exists, and "things as they are;" to pretend to anything else, is to put the blessing far from us. The work of God by His Spirit to-day, is not to place men on an elevated position favorable for discovering the errors of others; but where they can have a better survey of their own. The existence of ministry by human arrangement is to be deplored; sectarianism is palpably wrong; and the assumption of power where it does not exist, is equally bad. But let none imagine that these difficulties justify the intrusion of self-will in the worship of God; but rather let saints seek from the Lord a ministry of the Word, in full accordance with the Truth and the Spirit.
But God is all-sufficient for the need of His people. Humility will characterize those who realize His presence. True ministry will seek to bring about communion; and in the reality of the intercourse with God, is the antidote to the evil. Every truth has its counterfeit. Liberty of ministry does not convey power, but allows the exercise where it exists. Deprivation of true ministry is to be deplored; but the lack of it cannot be supplied by pretension.
Many have left efficient ministry in system, in obedience to the Word as to the gathering of saints, and the sovereignty of the Spirit; it is hardly to be expected they, should be satisfied with worse, however patient under the deprivation of any. There is then ministry, and that of the Word, and all are not gifted for it. If it is confined to few, when we may be safely entrusted with more we shall have it. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest."
But, meanwhile, let it be understood distinctly, we are not bound to do without what we have, because some will say we are only, like others, leaning upon ministry; neither are we, by pretension to what we have not, to render our position false, and endanger the testimony, in obedience to which we have experienced edification and blessing. God works by instrumentality; and where He is using such, ours is to support them by prayer. The chiefest of Apostles needed this in the zenith of his power; how much more our feeble helps in these days of the " Church's weakness"! The position is of God, and must be abided by. Our weakness in it is most palpable to others; let us not hide the condition from ourselves. Things as they are, our God in Christ is all-sufficient; to confess them, is to find Him. Things as they are, and acknowledged as such, command the regard of those who are without. There is respect due to the faith which enters a path where difficulties must be encountered; but pretension to power where there is little but weakness, would only provoke derision and censure. But, still, things as they are, and God's help sought in them, and we are far better off than if we had things as we should like them, and His presence denied.