IT is the house of God which gives the character to both the Epistles of Timothy; and what is connected with the house of God is holiness. "Holiness becometh Thy house, O Lord forever." In God's house God is master, and we have got to conform to the rules of His house. That is what you find -all the way through the epistle. Everything is for the maintenance of practical holiness. In the next epistle you will find how the whole thing has failed, and there people have to walk individually apart from those things which God had instituted in order to maintain holiness, such as elders, etc. Elders were for the maintenance of godliness. It is a great thought, God's house. It is a very striking thing you find in the history of Jacob with regard to that. When Jacob goes back to the land you find that God, as we know, has to take him into His own hands in order to humble him, that he might not fall into the hands of Esau his brother. God meets him there-fore and wrestles with him, puts his thigh out of joint. He can then do nothing, then blesses him, he has power over the angel and prevails just as he has got no power. That is how we prevail with God. It is our impotence that makes us feel what His resources are, and gives ability to draw from them. God meets him therefore and wrestles with him. Jacob asks to know God's name, but he cannot learn it yet. He is blessed, but God says, " wherefore is it that thou dolt ask after my name? And He blessed him there." Well, Jacob has reached that point. He has learned the lesson of his own weakness, he halts on his thigh.
After this he has got the perpetual reminder of that weakness, to keep him humble, and he has learned that God is his God, and he learns it directly by actually being delivered from Esau-Esau's heart being changed and turned toward him.
The next thing we find is, he builds an altar and he calls it " El-elohe-Israel," " God the God of Israel," i. e. God: his own God. Now that is a very happy thing, to know that God is our God, but still he has not arrived at the point at which he can really know what God's name is; he has not got to Bethel, and Bethel is a sort of key-word to Jacob's history. It was there that God appeared to him when he fled out of the land. It is to Bethel he has to return. Instead of going up to Bethel he takes this knowledge of God to settle down and buy a parcel of a field where he ought to have been a pilgrim and a stranger, and it is, so far, Antinomianism, that sort of Antinomianism where we learn God's grace and His goodness, and use God's love to take things easily-just as we might use a lightning rod to keep the lightning off our house, but with no further practical effect. The consequence is that Jacob gets into worse trouble than he ever had before. After he has known God as the God of his salvation he is in worse trouble than ever he had been, and God comes to him then in the thick of his trouble and says: " Go up to Bethel, where I appeared to thee." That is Gods own house and that is what Jacob had to learn-that God had not delivered him in order to take the blessings of God's salvation to settle down with it apart from all question of God's will and God's thoughts, but that in order to have the blessing, the blessing that God spoke of when He met him and wrestled-with him and crippled him-in order to have that blessing, he must go to Bethel and learn the secret of God's own house. God. has a house of His own, and he must be conformed to the rules of it. At Bethel he learns what God is, and then- he calls the altar that he raises El-Beth-el, i. e., "God of His own house."
There are many that are just in that condition. They have learned salvation; they have learned that God is their God-and that is a blessed knowledge-but they have not yet learned that God is the God of His own house, and if they do not conform to the rules of His house, they may get into deeper trouble than ever before. It is there, too, that we find the name Of Israel given again, as if he had not yet received it. And it is only there, in the place of real subjection, that we know properly what it is to be a prince of God.
It is the same thing in a certain way that you find in the book of Exodus, where, in the first place, as We know, we have the deliverance from Pharaoh, and in the second part of the book, from the 19th chapter on, we have God establishing His own dwelling place in the midst, and giving them His law. That is what is necessary in order to have the deliverance properly. We must serve somebody. If we do not serve God practically, we shall be serving the devil or serving ourselves, and we could not have a worse master. Nobody could have a worse master under the sun than himself. Therefore, in order for real freedom there must be subjection. God must have His place with 'us, and we ours, in connection with Him, and subject to Him. We are redeemed to God, that is, God has redeemed us to Himself that He may have us to Himself, not in the misery of our own ways and thoughts any longer.
Well, it is just what Satan has been trying to upset as to the practical manifestation of it, all the way through the history of Christendom. Christ has got one body, the church, and men have been making many bodies. God has got His house, His holy house, and men have been bringing in unholiness, and that is where we are now. We are in the midst of the profession which practically disowns the oneness of the body, and in the midst of the ruin, in that sense, of the house, where the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, His lordship, is cast off. People think they may do their own will as long as they do not transgress certain moral bounds-they have not got out of the fold yet. Christianity is not a fold-Judaism was that; it put a line around you and said you must not step out of that circle; within it you may do our own will. That is the thought of many; they are doing their own will within certain bounds, Christ conies into the fold to gather His sheep around Himself, and He leads them out of the fold. They are at liberty, but at liberty to follow Him. It is not any question of roving about within narrow limits, but of following Him, and we find the blessed result to be, we have perfect liberty, perfect protection-nobody can pluck us out of His hands-and perfect provision, green pastures-but it is following Him with perfect guidance, too. It is not a code; it is not keeping certain commandments; it is not measuring things by mere right or wrong; it is He, a living leader, and one who is always going before us, so that it is a constant thing every moment. I am never left to myself. He has always got a will for me. He has always got some thought about me, as to where I should be, etc, ... because He is always interested in me. He never withdraws His eye from me, and He has got a path which His own wisdom has planned, and where i I its own power keeps, and where infinite love provides for me at all times. Do you count it hard to follow always another's will? Nay I never please myself but I find it a hard thing. It is a blessed reality, that because we are too blind to the way ourselves, and because we need therefore a guide continually, God Himself has given us the Guide. God Himself got the path for us. God Himself has, in that way provided for us, and we shall find that His ways are always ways of pleasantness, and always peace. If we know what we are, we would not do our own will for a moment. It would be only getting out of God s path and out of blessing.
That is the line of things with which these Epistles are connected.
Q. Why is it incorrect to speak of the Christian fold?
A. A fold is circumference without a center; Christianity gives us a center without a circumference. A. fold says you must keep within certain limits; you must not transgress those limits. There is no such thing now as such marked out limits; not because we are free to do moral evil, but because we cannot measure things by right or wrong merely. A thing being right is not enough for me. After all, it might be right for me and wrong for you; or right for you and wrong for me. If God has got some other path for us, there is where the right or the wrong lies. It is a totally different thing from putting a line around us and saying, you must not go beyond that; you must keep in that. Judaism is a restraint, a checked will. Christianity is a changed will. Judaism, in practical life, was conformity to a moral code of laws. Christianity is following a safe and infallible Leader.
They are different things. It is like Israel in the wilderness. In the wilderness there was no way when they got to Edom, they evidently liked the thought that there was a king's highway there, and that they could get on the king's highway. In the wilderness they could only go when the Lord led them. They failed in that, when Moses says to Hobab, go with us and be as eyes to us (in the 10th chap. of the book of Numbers). And we find as soon as Moses says that to his brother-in-law, the ark of the Lord, whose place was in the midst of the camp. with so many tribes before it, and after it, etc., moves out of its place and goes three days journey before them to show them the way. God will not have any-leader but Himself. They were dependent upon God in that way every moment. The cloud might rise at any time and set forward. When it rose and moved, they would have to move at once. There was no way and there was no certain measure of progress, in that way. They were always dependent upon the will of an infallible Leader, and ready to go day or night. The cloud was always the opposite of nature -the opposite of the world. It was brightness at night; it was a cloud by day; and that rendered them independent of all their circumstances; they could go by day or by night. By night they were lighted, and by day the cloud shaded them. They went by day or by night. We like the king's highway a good deal better than divine guidance. We like to see our path; it makes us independent of spirituality, and that is the very thing that God will not have us independent of. God's rule is, "he that it spiritual discerneth all things." You have got divine principles in the word, but you have got no rules laid down that will guide you infallibly, i. c. apart from the application by the Spirit of God, etc. God has given you His mind. The rule is, that if your eye be single your whole body shall be full of light. He that is, spiritual discerneth all things. We are to be guided by His eye, but then, I must have my eye on Him, and that is very close work; you have got to pay attention. Wry blessed that we should be near enough to Him to gather what He means in that sort of way, but then we want attention.
You have God maintaining here, in Timothy, everything that is decorous in nature-" Rebuke not an elder but entreat him as slather; and the younger no n as brethren" (vers. 1). People, might say: " Well, it is " spirituality now, and we do not know anything about "fathers, or anything of that sort. It just depends "upon God's thoughts; whatever men say, he should " be rebuked if he needs it," and so on. But God maintains the order of things here. As long as the things last He maintains the order which was established in the creation-man the head of the woman, etc. So here, not to rebuke an elder, etc. It was not the thing exactly to rebuke an old man in that way.
Verse 5. Then the church was to manifest God's character for the widow, for the one who is really that, that is, " desolate," and without any means of support. The church was to manifest what was in God's heart toward such. If a widow had children or grand children, etc., they were not widows in that sense, and God is help for the helpless and cares for the uncared for. That is the thought in it. You find what the effect is there with regard to the widow; the effects which God designs in bringing us into straits. " She that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day." Faith grows by difficulties. grows by exercise. You find that constantly our straits did not bring us to God continually, faith would be very languid indeed. Nothing like exercise for it.
All are practical rules here for the maintenance of what is godly and good.
Q. The " number " referred to in the 9th verse-is that the number that the church is to look after?
A. It was the number of those who were supported regularly-cared for in that way, etc.
Q. What is the meaning of verse 8-" infidel"?
A. It means worse than an unbeliever, and not an infidel in the way we speak now. He is worse than an unbeliever, because he is denying what is right According to common conscience, which even a man of the world would respect. F. W. G.