Remnant Times: Illustrated History of Enoch, David, and Daniel
Walter Thomas Turpin
Table of Contents
Introduction
These addresses, similar in character to Our Pilgrimage and His Rest, are sent forth with the humble desire and earnest prayer of the author that God may be pleased, in His sovereign grace, to overlook their many defects, and to use them for His own glory, and the blessing of His beloved people.
W. T. Turpin
Brighton, November, 1876
Chapter 1: The Christian’s Pathway and Hope
Genesis 5:18-24; Hebrews 11:1-6
The principles of the times to which the Old Testament primarily relates are very different from the principles of God’s ways and dealings with His people now. If however you look at the OT worthies, saints of God in those days, particularly those that are enumerated in Heb. 11, it is very interesting to see how God raised up for Himself independent witnesses to the great principle which was to obtain as soon as ever His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, had finished the work that God gave Him to do, and had gone into heaven. What I mean is this, that the principle of Judaism was one that acted upon the sight and senses of men just as they were. All this had its time, had its day, had its object, and God worked through it for purposes of His own; but in the midst of it, whilst it was in its full force and vigor, the blessed God had, as I have observed, independent witnesses for Himself out of that very nation, who were the people of sight, with reference to what was to come out, and what has come out in our days, that is, the simple principle of faith.
Now, at this present moment, such is the position of a Christian, that if I am governed by anything that I see, I have left the path of faith. I know that it is a very searching thing for one’s heart but, I repeat, the moment I am governed by anything that I see around me, or if I act with reference to it as a motive or object, or look to it for guidance, or direction, or understanding as to my path, I have left this simple, blessed, pathway of faith which God has marked out for His own. You may say that when you look around amongst the saints of God, you see a thousand instances, where the act is with reference to what is seen; but then it is all important, beloved friends, whilst confessing the failure, not to act as if making a principle out of our failure. There is oftentimes a great tendency to do that in our hearts, to make a principle out of that which is really nothing more nor less than a breakdown with us as to the blessed and wonderful ground God has called us out unto. What He has really called us out to be a witness unto, is the blessed fact that we have an invisible God; and faith acts with reference to Him as an object that is not seen by any power of human ken or understanding. This was the wonderful thing in Moses (though I only refer to it in passing). You find the Spirit of God saying of him in Heb. 11, that he “endured, as seeing the invisible.”
You see, the two things that characterize a Christian are these, he has an invisible object in the heavens, that is, Christ glorified at God’s right hand, and an invisible power in him here—the Holy Ghost that dwells in a believer’s body. So that we have an object entirely outside everything that is seen here in this world, and a power dwelling in our bodies (for my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost), and that power that dwells in my body acts on me and in me with reference to that object, and gives me motives and strength and everything from that object. The more we descend from that, we are inconsistent with our calling—it is not faith, not the principle that looks beyond everything else to God, sees God, and acts with reference simply to God, and receives power from God. I believe half of our difficulties, individually and collectively, at this present moment, arise because we have not simply acted upon that principle. Most of the difficulties that saints of God experience in their individual path would be obviated, if they simply walked by faith.
Let me say this, and I say it humbly, I believe the difficulties we have collectively are created because of our low state individually; that is, there is a lack of individual faithfulness, there is some want, some feebleness, individually. A good corporate state is the result of a close individual walk with God. You never have corporate power apart from individual faithfulness. And what I believe is this—I often think it over, and pray about it—the reason of our corporate weakness just now is, that we have overlooked indivdua1 state before God. The individual state of our souls before God tells immensely upon the corporate relationships that we have to sustain as members of the body of Christ.
Suppose I am not walking with God as one in the relationship of a child of God, as an heir of God, and fellow-heir with Christ, how can I ever comport myself as a member of the body of Christ? It is impossible; and you may rest assured of it, where a person is deficient as a member of the family of God, he is sure to bring trouble into the church of God. The one thing tells upon the other. This it is which is on my heart in taking up this subject a little tonight. One reason why the Old Testament is so exceedingly beautiful is this, there is brought out in it, the intense individuality of our place with God. You find individual godliness, individual piety, individual walk with God, though, of course, it is after the measure and order of those times. The walk with God must be up to the revelation of God for the time being. This it is of vital importance to maintain. It would not be “walking with God” now for a person simply to live up to the measure of what Enoch knew. It was “walking with God” for Enoch at that time: but there is now, for God’s people, a revelation of God, and a communication of His mind, far beyond what Enoch knew. And therefore, to know this walk with God, I must individually be before God according to the revelation of His mind to me by His Spirit, as He has been pleased to bring it out in His word.
But I will point out to you where, in my mind, there appears to be a very interesting analogy between the time of Enoch and the times we are passing through. If you reflect for a moment on the times in which we find Enoch, and compare them with those in which our lot, by God’s mercy, is cast, you will find a very close analogy between the two. People have often said, “It is all very well to talk about Enoch ‘walking with God,’ but he had not half the trials, half the difficulties, that saints of God have in these days”; but that, beloved friends, is a very superficial view of the history of Enoch’s times, as God has given it to us in His word. If you remember, the times of Enoch were simply these—he was surrounded by, and going through the midst of, a system of things that Satan has improved upon at the present moment; it was nothing less than Cain’s world. Enoch lived in the midst of the world as Cain made it. I say Cain’s world, and remember this, we ought, when we speak of things, to speak of them as they are. God never made the world as we see it. He made the earth, but He never made the world, or ‘age,’ as it really means. No one supposes that the ordered system of things round about us is the production of God’s hand. Satan is the god and prince and head of that. God made the literal earth of course, but this ordered system of things that is round about us, where we see such terrible departure from God—God never made that, He is not the author of that. Satan has manufactured the ordered system of things that is around us, out of the total revolt of man. That is exactly what Cain’s world was, in principle, in Enoch’s days. Now there were two things that entered into the constitution of it. I will only just touch on them. There was a religion, and a city. Those were the two great constituent parts of that system of things in which Enoch lived.
There is a great fact embraced in those two things. Cain was the founder of a religion that disowned the claims of God in righteousness, seeing that man had fallen from God. He also overlooked the fact of the curse that had come in through that fall. A few words may not be out of place as to Cain’s sacrifice. He brought to God of the fruit of the ground. It was not that he lacked in energy, or that he wanted in earnestness, or that the man was unruly. Cain toiled on the earth, and, though cursed, it yielded its fruit to him, and he brought the fruit of the earth that was cursed, as if there had been no curse at all, and offered it to God. Observe, beloved friends, and there is a great principle involved in this—the moment that the fall exists as a fact, as well as the utter departure of man from God in nature and in practice, we can bring nothing acceptably to God except through the death of Christ; and the moment that we attempt such a thing, it may be unwittingly, we have fallen under the power of Cain’s religion in principle. That which characterized and marked what I call the religion of which Cain was the inventor and founder, was bringing to God an offering, and doing it so as to deny the great principle, “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” You can trace it in the history for yourselves.
Then, if you look at the city, it is exactly what we have all round us at the present moment. There was manufacture, there was the art of man cultivated to its greatest possible extent, ingenuity taxed beyond all conception, to produce something which would make the world, out of which God had been rejected, bearable to man. This was Cain’s world. Herein lay its religious, political, and moral aspects.
Well now, it is a very blessed thing to find God calling out a man in the midst of a scene like this, surrounded as he was on all hands by that which disowned God; and it is a comforting thing, too, to our hearts, to find the Spirit of God giving us a record, such as you have in those verses in Genesis. With that state of things on every hand, right and left, here is a man that is called forth as a witness to the power of God, so far at least as it was known then, being kept in the midst of all that, and as it says, “walking with God.” Beloved friends, it is exactly what you and I are called to in these days; we are called to “walk with God.” I will tell you what very much struck me lately. I heard a beloved servant of God say that when he left this country, and went abroad, he came across many of God’s people who had gone out from England to settle there, and he asked them how it was they came out there. He got one reply from one, and another from another, but not a word that indicated to him in the least that there was anything like an exercise of soul before God as to His pleasure in the matter. And he said to one something like this—“Well, but I read in scripture that ‘Enoch walked with God,’ and I also read in scripture that God says, ‘I will guide thee with mine eye.’ What do you know of that?” Well, the only reply he got from several to whom he spoke after that fashion was simply an evasion of this direct appeal to their conscience. Now, beloved friends, all that is very serious; and here is the solemn part of it, these very people were not unintelligent people, they had a very good knowledge of dispensational truth; they understood the scripture, as God has given it to us, outwardly at least; they could tell you the bearing of certain parts of scripture, and so forth; but when it came to this practical question of individually “walking with God,” and communion with God, and guidance by God’s eye, and this principle of faith, which carries beyond circumstances to that blessed One who is up there in glory, they were completely, as is often said, at sea. I say that is very solemn, and I think that you and I have to be on the lookout. We have to take care, beloved friends, that our outward intelligence is not in advance of our personal communion with God. Be assured of it, the moment it comes to be so, Satan has got materials at hand with which he will make terrible havoc. The outward understanding of the things of God apart from this blessed question of personal “walking with God,” is a weapon in the devil’s hands by which he will sow all sorts of seed, producing terrible results by-and-by, if we are not on our guard.
Well now, let us look at this blessed character, “walking with God.” What does it involve? The first thing that must be clear in our souls is, as to whether our relationships with God are understood in our consciences. May I ask you now, Are the relationships which God has been pleased to bring His people into, as Christianity reveals them, are they understood by you in your souls? Is it all right, may I ask, between you and God, as to these relationships? Is there any cloud on these relationships, as between you and God, any unsettled question between you and God in any of these relationships? You perceive it is impossible to “walk with God” if this is not clear. It is no use speaking of “walk with God” if the relationships between me and God which He has been pleased both to form and to reveal, are not clearly entered into, and understood, and enjoyed. Or, supposing there is unjudged sin upon my conscience, how can I “walk with God”? It is folly to talk of it. Look at the bearing of that for a moment. Suppose a person with unjudged sin upon his conscience, takes his or her place in the assembly, that person is a member of the church of God, and walks in the outward expression of it; but look at the trouble that person brings in, and the weakness, and the difficulty. I do not believe we think enough of these things, and I believe you will find that they account to a great extent for the immense amount of feebleness and weakness that one finds amongst God’s people. You see, the Lord puts it very clearly before us; He says, “Let a man so examine himself.” You could not have anything more intensely individual than that. He says further, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep,” that is, many die. Unjudged sin—sin tolerated in the assembly—was the thing that brought in trouble at Corinth. Of course that was a special instance, but the principle is the same; and if you come to the assembly of God now, if any of those comprising it have not got the joy, and the peace, and the satisfaction of their individual relationship with God, if that relationship is not clear and distinct, and further, if there is any evil unjudged or tolerated, there is sure to be weakness, and difficulty.
It is a wonderful thing to find how few there are who know that we are in relationship with God, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The utmost that many get to as to this question of relationship—it may appear strange to say so, but it is true—the utmost that a large number of Christians get to is, that they are pardoned criminals. That is the extent of it—pardoned criminals. I say it is a terribly solemn thing. How can I “walk with God” as His child, if I do not know my relationship? How can I “walk” with Him as a member of the body of Christ, if I do not know that relationship? and if all that pertains to the responsibility of that relationship is not maintained? All this enters into this question of “walking with God.” The relationships in which my soul stands to God must be without anything that compromises them on my side. If this is not so, then there is trouble and difficulty.
Well now, there is another thing in connection with this “walking with God,” which is exceedingly blessed. We see it in Enoch. He had but one object. I will say a word about that, because it is most important. He had one object before him. Now you will always find that where there is this simple walking with God, there is this one object. There is the relationship enjoyed, there is the soul in the sense of this relationship, but besides this, there is an object. You will find it brought out most beautifully in Heb. 11 in the end of that fifth verse. “Before his translation,” (I will speak of that presently) “he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” That was the one thing that was before him. Beloved friends, may I ask you affectionately, is that the one thing before you? Take everything in your life, take every circumstance in your history as a Christian, take everything that your hands are engaged in, your business relationships, your home relationships, your church relationships; is that the one thing that is simply before your heart? Is it this, that you want “to please God”? This is very searching. “He had this testimony,” that is the most lovely communication that we can possibly conceive of, that before ever he left the world of Cain, with all the hindrances, all the attractions, that were in it, “he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” You see, the eye was entirely off everything but God; there was the one thing that commanded him and controlled every movement of the man, the intense desire “to please God.”
You will notice a contrast, and a very beautiful one, between this and what is said of Abel. There you find that God testified “of his gifts” (Heb. 11:4). It was there a question of the acceptance of an offering. Abel is an accepted man, and he brings the blood and the fat as an offering to God, recognizing the claims of a holy God, and the ruin in which Adam had involved the world. He brings and places the lamb between him and God in righteousness, a victim chargeable, so to speak, with all that pertained to the judgment; but there was the excellency of the sacrifice as well, for there was the fat. He brought the fat and the blood, and God bore witness to him of his gifts. But where it is a question of a man walking with God, the testimony was, “You have pleased me.” It is a wonderful thing to have that testimony for myself, to have that divine secret between God and my own soul, that secret that nobody knows anything about but God.
But mark this, with a soul that has God before it, a soul that acts with reference to God, you may be always sure of this, there will always be the most thorough, complete, self-abandonment in everything. It is no good for persons to be saying they have God before them, when it is manifest that they have got self before them, in whatever form it may be. If I have God before me, if I am acting with reference to Him, if I see the One who is invisible, if I am thinking of pleasing Him, I have the testimony in my conscience that I please Him, and that keeps me up; it is a secret spring of satisfaction and joy in my heart that none else knows anything about. It is a blessed and wonderful thing, because it separates the affections of your soul from the ten thousand motives and influences that would act upon you, and puts before you just the One who should be the center of your thoughts.
So that you see, “walking with God” at any time, in Enoch’s day or now, whichever you take, embraces this blessed motive-power as the spring and source of everything—“I have now to please but One.” My eye is on that One; I consider what would be suitable to that One; I think only of that One. It is not a question of myself, or of what people would say about me; it is this one simple, blessed, wonderful thing, that I have God to please. “I have now to please but One”!
Look at all this in the path of the perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ, upon this earth. In Psa. 16, where we see Him as a dependent man, we find Him saying, “I have set Jehovah always before me.” What a thing for your heart and mine, if we set the Lord always before us! Think of what subduing power there would be in it! What a satisfying object! What a sanctifying influence it would have upon us, if there were just the simple reference to that blessed unseen object—the seeking Him out, “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him out.”
The meaning of it is, that He is set before the soul as an object for consideration before all others; that is the thought of the Spirit of God, “seek Him out.” You place Him before your eye, and the affection of your heart beyond and above all others; and “He is the rewarder.” What is the reward? Just this—the blessed consciousness that He gives your heart, as between Him and you, that you have pleased Him. The Lord give us, beloved friends, to know more of what it is to study His pleasure, to please Him! And while that will secure divine energy, it will also secure divine subduedness and restlessness; and this we need. There is enough of energy in all of us for service, but there is not restfulness for communion. That is a solemn point. There is energy enough to carry one hither and thither in service, but for communion there must be rest and repose; the result of which blessed, passive, quiet condition of soul is having to do with that blessed One who is in heaven, and my heart, kept and sustained by the fact that I have studied His pleasure, pleased Him.
Well, now, with reference to this “walk with God,” this that characterized Enoch, this to which you and I are called now, what does it contemplate? I do want to say a little word, strongly and decidedly, yet affectionately, about this. What does it contemplate? This “walk with God” contemplates something as to the present, and something as to the future. What is it as to the present? Mark this—suffering, loss, shame, degradation, every step of the way! That is what is contemplated in a person who walks with God in an evil day: because it is not walking with God when the rule of everything is godliness, it is walking with God when everything is in revolt from Him. That is the character of the time, such as it was in Enoch’s day. Therefore it is suffering, and I will tell you more than that, beloved friends, it is self-abandonment. Believe me, if there were a little more self-abandonment amongst us, many of our difficulties would vanish. Self-abandonment is God’s way through difficulties. Look at the difficulties we have around us on every hand. Where do they come from? No doubt from the very contrary to self-abandonment. If it is a simple question of God, His claims, His pleasure, His interests, His thoughts, why the difficulties are overcome at once! And if God’s will is sweetest to me, even though it triumphs at my cost, look how well out of the difficulty I am! We know the doctrine, I was going to say, beloved friends, too well. You understand what I mean. I do honestly think it in my own soul, that many of us have never really thought of these things out on our knees before God. We are becoming educated, it is true, but it is the most deplorable thing in the world to imagine a set of people educated up to certain things. The tendency of the time is to have everything easy. You have everything now, as it were, chopped up for you, broken up so easily for you, and, worse than that, positively an attempt made to garnish and make attractive the things of God to the natural ken, and we are reaping the sorrow of it; because, instead of the truth having gone like an arrow into our consciences, right through our very souls, and ploughed us up, so to speak, so that we are overcome with a sense of the greatness, the wonderful greatness, of this truth of God, and are brought into the presence of God, feeling the very gravity of it—each thing has been accepted, as if there was nothing involved in it. That is simply what it is. People take things, and accept them, as if there were nothing involved in them. Just like a piece of history that is recorded for you in a clever book; you accept it, and believe it, it may be, but it puts you under no sense of responsibility.
Whatever is the tendency of the day is the danger of the church of God; whatever is the character of the time is a temptation to the saints of God. Well, the character of this time is to make everything as easy, and as smooth, and as possible for man as can be, to save him trouble, so that he may have everything with the least possible anxiety or care. But there is no royal road to learning in the school of God. The moment I enter that, there is no way for me to be schooled except through my conscience. If my conscience is not reached by these things (and if it is not a question of my conscience before God, it is terrible work), there is no “walking with God,” there is no divine sense of the greatness of these things. That is what you and I ought to have in our souls, and God has got but one avenue to reach the heart of fallen man, and that is through his conscience, and if the thing does not reach my heart through my conscience, I am not reached at all divinely. This is solemn indeed.
Now, just let me explain to you what I mean by “walking with God” now; and I shall address a word or two to those who are young in the things of the Lord tonight. I do not mean young in the sense of youth merely, but in the sense that recently only they have known the Lord, or taken His things as theirs. Alas! how little we have the sense of what the acceptance of divine realities will entail upon us. You cannot but observe, as a general rule, that the tendency is, in dealing with the truth of God, to make something of people, instead of making nothing of them. It is all wrong. There is some deficiency in the soul, and some lack in the heart, where that is the object put forward. The moment divine truth lays hold of me, the effect of it is to make nothing of me—not a little, but nothing; and not only so, but it brings home to me this fact, that I must suffer here in the midst of this world. I do not want to depress any one, or make any of you morbid, but I ask you seriously, did you ever entertain this question yourself, with reference to the wonderful place you are occupying, to which God has called you out? If I walk with Christ in that place, must it not somehow entail surrender? Have you ever so regarded it, beloved friends? I say it with all reverence, I desire not to cherish one irreverent thought in my soul, but, looking at the pathway of the Lord Jesus as a man here, was He successful as a man? Was it not shame, scorn, contempt, reproach, loss, all the way from the holy mount to Calvary? Was it not downward with Him every step? Was it not surrender with Him: surrender, too, of what belonged to Him in right and title? He was very different from us. You and I have no right to claim, everything is pure grace with us: but with Him it was the abandonment and surrender of everything that belonged to Him, from the throne of God to the cross. Is that the pathway that you and I are called into? You see how little we weigh these things. I doubt, beloved friends, whether the oldest of us has ever sufficiently weighed them. There was a time, at the commencement of this blessed revival of God’s truth, when men suffered for the reception and maintenance of it. That time has passed, and there is corresponding weakness and feebleness, because there is not the sense of the gravity of what the reception and maintenance of this truth entails upon the saint.
If I set out to follow One who had not a place where to lay His head, I cannot go on with this principle—trying to make the best of everything around; on the contrary, I seek to have as little as I possibly can in it; this I cannot help, if I am truly “walking with God.” Here, then, is what this path entails now, and I feel it important for me to state it this evening. I should not be the messenger of God to you if I did not state what is the conviction of my own conscience solemnly before God. If I set out to “walk with God” in these days, according to the revelation of His mind as He has given it to me in Christianity and in His book, I make up my mind for this—this is the one thing that is before me—“It is enough for the servant to be as his master.” I would rather see people shrink back; I would rather a person looked at it, and said, “This involves certain things in it; this brings certain claims with it; give me a little time, let me think of it, let me weigh it over before God, do not let me run rashly.” I would rather see people like that, I would rather see them looking the thing, as it were, in the face, because I know when they do that, when they do bring the thing before God, in quiet waiting upon Him, He will, to a genuine, true, and honest soul, make known His mind; and, further than this, He compensates such an one first. That is what He does; He compensates. Do you mean to tell me that the sense that I have pleased Him is not a compensation? If I have that, I am compensated at once, even before I suffer, and God delights to do so when He sees the heart true and exercised before Him.
Oh, I feel that the gravity of these things is not sufficiently before our hearts in these days. It is not a small thing to step out of everything around me, that I may simply answer to the mind of Him who is up there. It is not a small thing, or a trifling thing, be assured. May God keep any of you from thinking it a light thing! May God keep your hearts from ever attempting to bring down the immense solemnity of a divine position to the poor, miserable, wretched, contemptible level of things down here, taking away all pith and reality out of it! It is the tendency of these times: I believe we are not outside the danger of it. I know we are seriously in danger of overlooking state of soul. There is the danger of working upon the mere outward intelligence, instead of God working upon the soul through the conscience. May the Lord deliver us from this; it is most dangerous!
Well, now, there is one other thing. What is to be the issue of this “walking with God?” I have spoken a little about the present, what the present is connected with. It is, as I said, loss and suffering. I might speak of the other side of it, of the blessed reality of Christ’s presence, of the sustainment of His love—how He cheers us on, how He walks the road with us, of the joy of being where He is: but I would rather leave the gravity of the thing on your heart. I do not think it any loss that you should have a sense of the solemnity of it.
What, then, is the end of it? It is this—just the very opposite to everything contemplated by a Jew in OT times. A Jew looked for everything prosperous here, basket and store in abundance; he looked for everything being made straight to his hand as to the present. It was with him plenty, it was the increase of everything, plenty of corn and wine, plenty of everything this earth could afford—wealth, dignity, honor, ease. That was all perfectly well in its time; and was what a Jew looked for; it was his birthright, his inheritance here, and there was never a thought of being out of it—length of days, long life, was that which was before the Jew. But when I, as a Christian, look at this “walk with God,” what is the issue of it? Look at it in Enoch. It is just this—to be taken out of the world—it may be tonight! Do you believe that? Do you believe that the very next moment may be the cloud of glory? It is a subject that is common amongst us, this blessed hope of the Lord’s coming, the blessed expectation of our returning Lord. Think how little the reality of it is before us? I remember the time when I first of all “saw” the coming of the Lord, as the expression is—when I first of all believed in the second advent—what a wondrous brightness, and freshness, and vividness, there was about it. May I ask you, how is it now with you? What about today? Is the freshness with which it came to your heart, twenty, thirty, forty, or any number of years ago, that which is welling up in your soul now? Do you calculate just minute by minute with reference to that? Is that the next thing before your soul? Is that the expectation of your heart, that you should be translated, that you should not see death, like Enoch?
He was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him.
There was a power of life in him that completely overcame the power of death, such a power of life as set aside death completely, the common lot of man since the fall.
Nothing shows me what the power of the redemption- work of the Lord Jesus Christ is like this—that there will be a people alive in the world who will not pass through death. So completely has His death been the answer to everything, that, in right of His prerogative, there will be a people alive when He comes who will not go through death. Do you believe, beloved, that tonight you might be caught up to the cloud of glory, “to meet the Lord in the air”?
The way that these blessed facts of God have become stale with us is this—because we have received them as doctrines, the doctrines of a well-framed creed. There is a solemn part of it—it has become our creed. We are in danger, and no one, I trust, will feel hurt or grieved with me for saying this; I say it affectionately, I am in danger of it as much as you, I am in exactly the same position as you are yourselves, and therefore you need not be angry with me for saying it—we are just as much in danger of having our creed, and our “Thirty-nine Articles,” {of the Church of England} as anybody else. Do not be deceived about it; the instant that the divine freshness and living reality of these blessed truths of God pass away from our souls, so that all we can say of them is,” That is my doctrine, that is what I hold,” instead of their having a practical, operative, power upon us, searching us each moment—I say the instant that is the case, we go down, we have lost our standing, we have really dropped from the blessed, wonderful, divine power of these things, just to be, as somebody has expressed it, “as clear as the moon, and as cold as the moon.” What a mournful picture that is! The Lord keep us from it.
I have spoken to-night as I feel He would have me do, though feebly I know. I believe, if there is one thing we need in these times, it is “walking with God” individually. If you and I were walking individually with God, understanding what is entailed upon us now, and what we look for as the ultimate issue of it—to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and be with Him—we should banish the idea of trying to get on in the world, trying to surround ourselves with anything that would make us comfortable. How foreign the whole thing would be!
The Lord help us to look at ourselves in the light of His presence and His truth; that we may take it with us tonight; that our hearts may take these things right home, and in the secret of His presence, in the solitariness and quietness of His company, go over the thing with Him, our hearts before Him, with this thought upon them—“Lord, really, is it I?”
May the Lord command His blessing; may He use His word to stir up our hearts to more personal, individual, walk and fellowship with Himself, in the blessed hope of being taken out of this world, at any moment, to see Him, and be with Him for ever!
Chapter 2: The Christian’s Dwelling Place
Psalm 27:4-6
I take these verses, beloved friends, simply as the expression of the life of God in the soul. There is one thing that I think we do not sufficiently ponder over, and that is, that (if we are Christians) we have got a divine principle in us. I do not think that fact rests or dwells sufficiently in our souls. It is a marvelous thing to think that I have the life of Jesus. Do ever you think of that? The apostle says, in 2 Cor. 4. (I quote this in order to show you the scriptural nature of the expression), we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
That is a wonderful thing! It is a wonderful thing to know that, as a Christian, not only is my conscience cleared and set at rest in God’s presence, and that I have an uncondemning conscience, but that I have life, the life of {Christ} Jesus in me. And I may say that it is a most solemnly momentous subject for all of us (and I merely throw it out now that it may rest upon our consciences and our hearts, mine as well as yours) as to how far that life is operating in you and me, how far that is the life that is seen. I do not want to turn the eye inward, but, beloved friends, it is necessary to think of this in these days, when depth and reality are little thought of and when there is very little sense at all of the dignity, the blessedness, the greatness, of being a vessel in which this blessed life is deposited. Therefore, I simply throw that question out now in passing, as a matter of exercise for your conscience and mine. Take for instance, to-day: because we have to do with plain things and homely things. How much has that life been seen and manifested in the details of your life to-day? It is a very searching thing to think of it. How much do you live in the power of that life in the things you pass through, or how much proceeds merely from the energy of your own nature? I feel it good for us to be called up. Oftentimes, when I think of it myself, I am arrested by its solemnity, it calls me up, and I have to go to God about it.
I take these verses, then, simply for this reason, that here we get brought out the normal character of the life of God in us—this blessed, divine principle that is in us. Here is the simple, normal character of it.
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
That, I say, is the simple, normal position of a Christian, of a person that has this life in him.
Now, of course, I suppose, and take for granted that your souls are thoroughly at rest, and completely established as to the great foundation facts and resting-place of Christianity. As long as ever there are unsettled questions between your heart and conscience and God, it is out of the question to talk about these things. If your conscience is not at rest, and if your soul is not settled on the grand foundation that God puts under His children’s feet, of course there is no use in talking about this—you are not in a position to entertain it. And that is what one finds every day. It is wonderful how few there are whose consciences and souls are established, really and thoroughly, upon the blessed groundwork of Christianity. I do not mean to say that people have not got thus far, that they know that if they were to die, it would be all right with them; but that is a very poor thing. It would be a very great thing, a wonderful thing, if it were all that God had given; but if it is only the very beginning of what God has done for us, then I say it is a miserable subterfuge of Satan when he comes and takes a thing that is preliminary, and makes everything of it. That is really what goes to make up the history of things about us at the present moment, that the very simplest starting-point of Christianity, the commencement of all, should be made everything of, and that the center of the circle around which my thoughts, and affections, and feelings, and desires, should revolve, from one end of the year to the other, should be myself. That is what is really the case. You may think it seems a little strong to say it, but it is the truth. The truth that people all round about us never get beyond themselves, never.
Now I take it for granted then—the Lord grant it may be so in truth and reality—that such is not the case here. Surely one ought not to expect it in a place like this. You ought, at any rate, to know what it is to be brought to God. Is that too much to expect in this place? It is not merely that certain things have been brought to you, that is not the question; but that you are brought to God, and introduced into the relationship which God delights to bring His children into in the Son of His love before Him, setting them down in the acceptance, and perfectness, and fulness, of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His own presence. I do not think it is taking too much for granted (it ought not to be) that your souls know what that is. Let us, then, go from that point. I take it that all that is an established fact, and I go from that.
Now all this being the case, what goes to make up my life here? You see there are two things that are connected with it. The first is what we have in v. 4, and that is, that I have one simple absorbing and commanding object before my affections. “One thing.” It is the simple expression of a heart that has but one motive, one object; in other words, it is what the Lord refers to when He speaks of “a single eye.” “Let thine eye be single,” that is, an eye taking in but one object. I have but one object, one commanding object before me, and what is it? Mark this, “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life”—that I may dwell there. Of course I pass over the fact that this is a Jewish figure, such as would necessarily be found in the Psalms. We find there all that which was connected with the Jew, the tabernacle, the temple, the place of God’s own immediate presence, where the Shekinah was, and so on. I pass over that; and I take it simply as an illustration, a most beautiful and exquisite instance, of how the life of God, this divine principle in a soul, whether we find it in the OT or the New, returns to its source. I do not care what the time may be, this blessed principle, this divine principle that is in us, this new life, always, where the soul is simple, such as you have unfolded here, returns to its source.
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
May I ask you, Is that the desire uppermost in your heart? How much does it operate in your affections? What is the one thing that you desire and seek after? We have to speak to one another personally, beloved friends, about these things. What then, is the one thing that you desire and seek after? Well, you say, I seek after salvation, and I seek after safety, and I seek after deliverance from wrath and judgment, and I seek after the things of God. But is this the thing that is in your heart, the thing that you seek after, is it the continuous abiding, and dwelling, in the house of the Lord? Because, you see, it is this which alone gives character. You may depend upon it, the place where you live is the place that gives you character.
We often hear the expression “heavenly.” Well, no person can be “heavenly” unless he lives in heaven. The fact is, we all of us have too much the tendency to put off heaven until we die. We think of it as the place where God is, and where Christ is, and it is the resource for us when we leave this world, when we leave our bodies behind us. When we cannot live any longer here, we go to heaven. Or, it may be, if you advance a little upon that, when a person has everything blighted and ruined down here, and there is not a single thing left, then he turns to heaven. It is like a person taking refuge from the storm, and when the storm is over, coming out again to enjoy the things around. Is that the case with you and of me, beloved friends? That is the natural tendency and feeling of our hearts. We have, very poorly, if at all in our souls, the thought of continuously abiding in that wonderful place, where God is free to express Himself in all the infinite fulness of His love to us. He does not express Himself to us here. He gives us His care, His sympathy, His help, His cheer, His solace; He takes us by the hand, and leads us along the way, every step of the journey: but He does not express Himself to us here. He does there, that is the difference. That is what I feel, beloved friends, that we want, every one of us in these days, a more habitual dwelling in the house of the Lord. You may depend upon it, we should be a different kind of people altogether if we dwelt there. It is not visiting there, it is not running there for shelter out of the storm, but I will tell you what it is, it is knowing it as home, with all the joys of home. Do you know what they are? Home! It is not being driven there through sheer necessity, but it is the attractiveness of it that draws us there. What do you know of the attractions of that blessed One who is up there? You see, it is not a doctrine, nor a theory, but it is a divine, living, adorable, blessed, transcendent Person for our affections. It is a Person who has an attractiveness peculiar to Himself, and one who throws this attractiveness, and blessedness, and beauty, connected with Himself, around the affections of my heart. It is not, as I said, that I am driven by mere necessity from all the things that are round about me here, but I am attracted by the beauties and blessedness and glories of that scene where Christ is everything to God, and where God delights to express Himself in all His fulness. There is the spot I long more to dwell in, to live in, to abide in; that is the place I desire to know as my home, and that is the “one thing” the psalmist speaks of here. To me it is a beautiful instance of the expression of this divine life in a person, the life of God—“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”
Now I see all this in its perfection in Christ as a man. We get it in that beautiful passage, “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, the Son of man”—who was in heaven. Is that it? No. “Who is in heaven.” Take Him as a man (He was the mighty God, the Creator and Preserver of all things, as well) as the perfect man, He who walked that magnificent, blessed, shining pathway, that we have tracked out for us in the gospels, and which, by the Holy Ghost, we can read and think over, and delight in. Was it not this continuous, blessed, wonderful communion, intercourse with all that belonged to that blessed place from whence He came, that so marked His way? As He said, “I know whence I came, and whither I go.” There was all that blessed distinctiveness and separateness about His walk here. Is there in our measure that about us? In walking along every day, are we like people who know whence we come and whither we go? Is that the thing which day by day is telling itself out in your business, in your home, in your intercourse one with another, in your families? What I am speaking of is a practical thing. It goes down into the most minute circumstances of our daily life. There is to be this blessed testimony stamped upon it, that I “dwell in the house of the Lord,” that “I know whence I came and whither I go.” What a thing that would be in our souls! What sort of people should we be if there were that distinctiveness, and divine power, about us, and divine life, and divine satisfaction and rest!
Look at the Lord Jesus Christ again, as a man. It was not that there were not all the genuine feelings of a man, and, as to His Father, perfect obedience, perfect dependence, but at the same time there was perfect rest, in all the fulness and blessedness of a perfect man going through this world. Everything was met in that way. So you find it in a most exquisite and beauteous passage in Matt. 11 where, as you know, every single thing was against Him. Everything had failed that pertained to Him as a man. John doubted Him, the cities where His mightiest works were done had rejected Him. There was not a single bright spot, not a solitary thing that could meet His heart as a man. What does He say? “I praise thee, bearing witness to thee, O Father.” Such is the true rendering of that beautiful v. 24, and there we see the blessed, wonderful perfection of this blessed man down here in this world, surrounded by everything that was adverse to Him, and a distinctiveness that pertained to the place whence He came and whither He went. He was the Son of man who is in heaven, but there was the manifestation of all that down here.
Well, beloved friends, we are called to the same thing, and where this divine life is operative in our souls, we find just what we get here, “One thing have I desired, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”
The Lord awaken the sense of that in your souls! We need all of us to have the sense of it created, formed, quickened, in our souls. What a wonderful thing it would be if you and I here this evening had the stamp of it more upon us! What a power, a silent, blessed power, we should be in this world! It would be said of us, “They are a people that are living in the midst of the sorrows of earth, in all its pressures, and difficulties, and troubles, but all these things only serve to bring but this blessed life of Jesus in their mortal bodies. They dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of their life.”
Well, that is the first thing, the habitual, abiding, resting-place of the heart. I ask you and myself again—the Lord help us to look at it seriously—how much have our minds been there to-day? That is the question. How much have our hearts been there to-day? How searching it is! How it challenges one’s heart! People often say, “Thank God, I am outside the whole thing through which I am moving.” Exactly. “Outside of it,” but how? In your body, it may be, but is your spirit in it, are your thoughts in it? Ah, that is another question. You see, many a person is outside the world in that way, as a matter of profession; but if my spirit is entangled with it, or my thoughts engrossed in it, or my affections centered in it, I am not dwelling in the house of the Lord. I may be able to say, “I do not go into this or that,” but are my thoughts in any way in it? It is a very searching thing. You see nothing can possibly keep your heart separate unless you are sustained at the spring and source from whence your life comes. That life, if it is not sustained at its source, and gratified at its source, and attracted to its source, is a sickly, feeble thing. I do not mean the thing itself is sickly, but there are hindrances of all sorts that prevent the manifestation of it.
I am very much struck with that expression in 2 Cor. 4, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” I have no doubt there is an intended analogy here to what we read about Gideon’s army. There were two things there, first, the light was put into a pitcher, and secondly, the pitchers were broken. It was not merely the breaking of the pitcher, but the light was put into it to shine out brightly when the pitcher was broken. It is a wonderful thing that God puts this treasure into an earthen pitcher, such a breakable article. He does place a light in it; but then observe the other thing: He breaks the pitcher, and when the pitcher is broken, the light shines out. Now, I have not to break the pitcher, blessed be God for that. That is God’s part; but when He breaks the pitcher—and be assured of it He will do so—if you are walking with God, you are certain to be in His mind when He breaks the pitcher, and take care that you do not place something else in the way, to prevent the shining of the light. That is where the hindrance is to be feared.
But that which would give me power and freshness in all these things would be this—dwelling in the house of the Lord. Dwelling there; there I am sustained, qualified, fitted for Him. I have divine ability, divine power, divine rest, divine freshness. I can face the storms here. What is the effect of these storms? They only bring out the power of this rest, the rest that we have in the place where God delights to manifest Himself to us. That is heaven now, not heaven only when I die. It is heaven now; and, beloved friends, I ask you, would you not like to know a little more of Him before you die? Would you not like to be a little more acquainted with that Jesus with whom you are going to spend eternity? Would you not like to say, “I live with Him now, from day to day, in the midst of all the difficulties and trials that belong to this poor world, and through them, I am better acquainted with Him, I know Him, I know and I have communion with Him, and joy in Him, in that wonderful place where He is free to come out and receive me, and where I am free to go in? God can come out in the perfection of His love, and I can go in in the perfection of His righteousness. God dwells there, and I dwell there. Just think of it, that He does not consider anything commensurate with the expression of His own heart in the redemption wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ; He regards nothing sufficiently large to express what He thinks of that redemption, except this, that I am to dwell in the house of the Lord! The Lord help us to dwell there, to know it as our home, the resting-place of our souls, our “sweet retreat”; where we have true and real communion!
That, then, is the first thing. Now look at the other for a moment. For what purpose are we to dwell there? To get out of the storm? No. Out of difficulties? No. Out of the exercises and trials that we are in here? Not a word about it. What is it, then? Just this, “to behold the beauty of the Lord.” Just think of what that is, I go there to behold His beauty. One object fills the vision of my soul there, attracts the affections of my heart there, “His beauty.” I love to think of that, beloved friends, for this reason, it is like God to give me a motive in Himself, outside of all the wretched, miserable, selfish things that obtain round about me here. I behold Him, in the place where I dwell.
Now just think what a wonderful thing it is “to behold the beauty of the Lord.” It is not merely to escape from the difficulties that are here, the troubles, and exercises, but to go there for His own sake. There is a beauty, there is an excellency, a virtue, an attractiveness, a glory, connected with that place, which I behold, and I never really know what it is until by faith I see it. Beloved friends, a little bit of that would distance all here in the world! A little beholding of the beauty of the blessed One in those wondrous regions would turn the brightest scene on this earth into a poor and contemptible thing to our hearts. You see, we learn everything by contrast. A person who knows what it is to see Christ where He is, is the one who thinks very little of earth. He can turn his back upon it; there is nothing in it that is suitable or congenial to him. He can say, The very scene where God Himself is, is the place where I desire to abide, and where I long to gratify myself.
I ask you this question to-night: Suppose an angel were to come down into this world; do not you think he would move through it in a different way from what you and I do? Do not you think (if you could conceive such a thing), that a messenger from God, one of those blessed created intelligences that stand before God, coming down into this world, would move through it (though he might have something to do for God, and from God, in it) as one who was entirely apart from its principles, its maxims, its habits, its ways, its attractions? You know he would. Now, beloved friends, an angel is not what you and I are. An angel is not a member of that body of which Jesus glorified is the Head. An angel is not a son of God, an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ. An angel could not say, “He loved me, and gave himself for me.” An angel does not belong to that which Jesus esteems His body and His bride, that which will be with Him to behold His glory. Is there nothing that touches your heart in all that? To think that God passed angels by, and that He came into this smallest of all worlds, and took out of it a contemptible, miserable, wretched people, to exhibit in them the principles of His grace, and the life of His Son; that He has taken us up in grace and made us positively members of Christ, uniting us to Him in glory, thus separating us from this scene altogether, and then as it were sends us back into it, to exhibit the maxims and principles of the place to which we belong! It is wondrous!
Do we act like this? Do we touch things like people from another country? Do we move through things like people from another place? Do we impart the savor of that place to all whom we meet? I feel how little, beloved friends, there is of that place about us, and how much there is of the world allowed in us. I am humbled when I think, as I do constantly, how many things there are about us all from day to day which savor of that which we profess to be entirely taken out of; and how little manifestation there is of this blessed new principle, new place, new home, new rest, new delights, which God has brought us into. Look at the young, for instance—look at the state many of the young are in, many of the children of God’s people—attracted by the most contemptible, miserable things that are to be found here in this poor world. If there had only been the smallest taste, the feeblest taste, of the joys, and beauties, and blessedness, and glory of that scene where Christ is, it would make them despise, as beneath their notice, the counterfeits, and miserable, wretched, vanishing things that the devil hangs out here as his wares to attract.
I feel it is a solemn thing, and what I especially feel is this, that those of us who are older are not able practically to display a better picture ourselves. That is indeed most solemn! It is all very well to say, “Look at the young”; but what do we show them? Can you and I say to them, “Look on me, and as I do, so do you?” I know you will suffer a word from me, beloved friends. God knows how I have gone through all this in my own heart, and I am taking my place with you to-night about these things. I feel how little, deep down in one’s soul, one has got the sense of living up there where He is. If you are not from him, and of Him, you will never be for Him. We are, blessed be His name, of Him, and from Him. The Lord, by His Spirit, write the sense of that in your heart this evening.
Now, if Christ rebukes me by His word, it always puts me into company with Himself. You and I might rebuke one another, and the effect would be to separate us, but not so with Him. If He touches my conscience, it brings me into His presence, and attracts me to Himself. May it be thus with all of us this evening!
I dwell, then, in the house of the Lord, and I behold His beauty. There is another thing in that verse, “to inquire in his temple.” Now, without the slightest pretension to scholarship, I may say that the strict meaning of the Hebrew words is, “to meditate with joy in his temple.” That is, I believe, the literal force of those words in the original language. “To meditate with joy.”
One thing have I desired, to dwell, to behold, and to meditate with joy.
This latter is greatly on my heart; for I do not believe that with any of us there is sufficient meditation. We read, that is quite true; and a great many people (I hope none will misunderstand me) satisfy their consciences, when the first of the month comes round, if they read all the periodicals. I am saying what I know to be true. But I am assured that this kind of thing is most damaging; and nothing will contribute to lower the tone of things amongst us more than this, if our hearts lose the sense of the intrinsic, blessed, wonderful nature of that book that is in your hand and mine at this moment—I mean the word of God. There is nothing that has impoverished the souls of God’s saints more than when the effect of all the blessed things that God has given has been blunted by the bringing in of man’s work. I believe that Satan has been especially watchful in this way. Those who walk with God know it well. The way by which he seeks to turn aside the edge, and shaft, and power of the word of God is by a sort of wile. It is not by throwing any open contempt upon the scripture. It is not done in that way; but if he can get our thoughts or affections absorbed and occupied with anything else, though it may relate to, or bear upon, the word of God, he has thoroughly succeeded, and he has ensnared us in the wile. Why, you know that the very best thing that any servant of God, or saint of God, could communicate to God’s people concerning that blessed book must be as nothing compared with the words that are spoken in it; and therefore, you may depend upon it, that you and I suffer in our souls if we do not learn what it is to meditate on God’s revelation and communications, and if we know nothing of that blessed Person who is the subject, object, theme, and delight of God, whose name, and person, and excellencies, run, like a golden thread, through all this wonderful revelation of God. How can we go on without it? If you and I do not learn what it is to “meditate with joy,” and to dwell upon all that God has been pleased to unfold to us about Christ then what we suffer from is, that, though we may have our heads thoroughly well-informed about doctrines, we are almost like pieces of lifeless clay. We may be a people of outward intelligence, of doctrine, of understanding as to certain things, with a well-arranged creed, and all that, but not one single sign of living freshness, power, or energy from God. The Lord enable us by His Spirit, to get more alone with Himself!
If there are any I feel for more than others, it is those of God’s people who are engrossed in business, and who have to spend their time in the midst of all the bustle, and excitement, and turmoil of business life, with little leisure from it. We do not feel enough for one another as to this, beloved friends. It is wonderful how little we care for one another in this way—how little we feel for one another. We are becoming so intensely individual, so isolated, as it were. “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others,” is the scripture thought about it; but how much do you and I? How often do we pray for one another? How much do we carry one another upon our hearts before God? There are many of God’s people that are engaged in business, and with all our hearts we should feel for them, seek to help, strengthen, and sustain them in the tremendous rush and confusion that they go through every day; because there must be a loss, a positive loss, to the soul of any one who has not time to enjoy solitariness, and meditation, and communion with God. I cannot see how it is possible to get on without it. The Lord help us to understand the meaning of that word, “To meditate with joy in his temple!”
I desire to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate with joy in his temple.
Such is the simple, normal exercise of the life of a Christian.
Just one word on what comes afterwards. Observe, now you get to “trouble”—“for in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion.” Now you know, beloved friend, we should have put all that has gone before in connection with the “trouble.” We should naturally say, “How beautiful it is to dwell in the house of the Lord, to behold His beauty, and to inquire in His temple, when everything is withered all around.” But that is not the way God puts it. He puts all that before us as the natural normal exercise of the life of God in us. Then what about trouble? Ah, we need not disturb ourselves about that! “In the time of trouble he will hide me in his pavilion.” If my continual desire is to dwell in the house of the Lord, then in trouble I rest, “He hides me.” That is exquisite, every word of it! “In the time of trouble he will hide me in his pavilion.” What could you have better than that? “In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me.” When trouble or difficulty comes, I am not running about to see how I can get out of it, but there I am, resting and quiescent, and God is active. He hides me, He upholds me, He undertakes for me in the time of trouble. He hides me, and sets my feet upon a rock.
And mark that there is not as yet deliverance in this verse. It is not “in time of trouble God will come in, and take me out of it,” but “he will hide me.” It is not “he will quiet the winds and waters”—not a word about it. It is not generally His way, beloved friends. It was His way always with Israel. Jesus showed Himself to be perfect man when He slept upon the pillow while the waves were roaring around Him, and showed Himself to be God when He commanded those waves to subside. God opened the rock to supply His people with water, He sent down manna from heaven to feed them, He divided the waters for them to pass over, but that is not His way now, not the rule of His action now. It was the rule of His action once; that is, He operated upon the elements for His people of old; but He does not do that now, He carries us in His power. He hides us. It is not that He removes the difficulty but He gives me superiority to it, His own power carries me through it. He hides me in His pavilion. Think of that for a moment! Do you think the person is to be pitied who is in trouble, if Jehovah hides him in His pavilion? It is worth the trouble to be hidden of God, to be hidden in His pavilion, in the secret of His presence.
Now we come to deliverance, and that is the last thing. All that I have been speaking of is not deliverance, but now we have it. “And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me; therefore will I offer in his tabernacle, sacrifices of joy.” Mark that the believer is never out of the dwelling-place of God. He dwells there, that is where the life of God, this blessed principle in us, abides. You must work it all out more fully for yourselves; I have only just given you the outline of it.
You will find all this portrayed to perfection in the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect man, who manifested all the perfections of a man before God in this world as He walked through it. If you take His life, you will find to perfection those things that are unfolded here. He was “the Son of man who is in heaven.” In trouble in this world, in difficulties, He hid Himself behind the will and pleasure of His Father. “I thank thee, and I bear witness to thee,” as we have already had this evening; and farther on, after He had gone through that terrible judgment upon the cross, then He praises! “In the midst of the congregation will I sing praises unto thee.” It is exactly the same thing in principle, and in our measure, to which we are called. It is the same life, the same dwelling-place, the same God! I know nothing more wonderful than the way God can sustain a man who has this blessed life in him, when everything is against him, as it is with you and me as Christians in this world. There is not a single thing connected with this scene that is not a hindrance. It is a blessed thing to find that out, and to find out, too, that our only secret of safety is in dwelling in the house of the Lord.
I was much interested the other day in reading Ex. 16 and 17. There you see that two things went to make up the history of the people through the wilderness—feeding and resisting. There was the manna that came down from heaven to keep them, and there was the resistance. That is exactly what makes up the life of a Christian. Christ sustains us; He is the bread of our souls, sustaining this new life that is in us, and we dwell with Him in that blessed place where He is, beholding His beauty, our eye satisfied with the delights of that place. Thus I can resist the pressure of things around. What do I care for all the beauty here if I can be satisfied with Him? If I behold His beauty, do you think I am allured by the beauty here? And, further, if I “meditate with joy in his temple,” I am hidden when trouble comes, and I praise Him. The Lord instruct us by His Spirit! May He be pleased to use the simple things I have spoken to make you read the word of God more for yourselves. That is the true object of ministry, to bring hearts back to the word of God, with a fresh appetite for it. May God grant that we may have that appetite created, where it is not existing already, and strengthened where it is now, it may be, feeble and drooping; so that we may indeed be able to say,
I have esteemed the words of thy mouth more than my necessary food!
Chapter 3: Separation, Dependence, Suffering
Daniel 1; 2:13-23; 3:12-30
I have one definite object, beloved brethren, in my mind, in referring to these scriptures this evening. I am not going to touch the history itself, nor the circumstances connected with it, but I simply want to bring out the great principles which are connected with the history of this remnant of God’s people—which they were in their day—principles which, I submit, have passed down to us as being the very principles by which God would characterize His people in these days. It is very interesting when you find certain great principles of God running through His word at all times. Of course the peculiar circumstances of Christianity in which our lot is cast, and the new and blessed position that we have been brought out into, in connection with Christ glorified at God’s right hand, intensify these principles, but they themselves remain the same; and I take a history like this in the book of Daniel, because I think it serves as an illustration suitable to us all, and especially to those who are younger (for I have them much on my mind to-night), to bring out the grand, and blessed, and wonderful position, privilege, and power, that is ours by grace, in order that we may be for Christ in these days.
Now, first of all, you will notice this, that there is an immense analogy between the times of Daniel and those we are in. There is a verse in Isa. 39 I would just refer to for a moment. It contains a prediction of the fact that we get here, namely, that the days were to come when the nation of Israel itself would be prostrate, which was exactly the case in the days of Daniel, and referred to in this history. The nation was to be, as it were, at the feet of a foreign power, and the very pick of Israel, the very flower of the nation, were to be eunuchs, and serving in the palace of the king of Babylon. That was the prediction of the prophet Isaiah long before these times—God’s warning voice to the nation. In Dan. 11 you will find it word for word accomplished. The nation of Israel was paralyzed, it was broken up, so to speak—thoroughly prostrated. Jehovah had retired from directly dealing with the earth, and every single thing was in the power of the king of Babylon.
This is exactly what you will find in principle as to the times we are in just now. What has taken place? Simply this—that which God set up here to be a witness for Himself on this earth, out of which His own Son has been rejected, has gone to pieces in the responsibility of man’s hand. That is what is meant by the ruin and confusion that is all round about is. It is a complete wreck. If you look at the thing that God set up here in the earth to be for Him, what is it? What has it become? I am not speaking now, remember, of that which belongs to Christ—belongs to God—which nobody can touch; that is genuine and true: but I am speaking of that which was committed to the responsibility of man; and if you have never yet seen the difference between that which the Holy Ghost builds, the true, and real, and genuine thing for God, and that which was committed to man in responsibility as a builder, you have got a great deal to learn. There is that which God builds, and there is that which man builds. Well now, when I look out all around me, I see that which was entrusted to the responsibility of man to build, and the consequence is that, like everything else that man has had in responsibility, it has gone to pieces.
And that is the difficulty with souls to-day. You see really inquiring, anxious, intelligent, true minds, finding an immense difficulty when they look out, and see the confusion that is all around; and, let me say this, sometimes I fear we do not help them. For are we not very prone to be forgetful of the fact that we have our share in the ruin which has been perpetrated by man as a builder? We give them, I fear, the idea that we are reconstructing something that is to take the place of the confusion. I am sure that if you have got that in your soul you will always be feeble as to the maintenance of the truth of God. It is an immense thing to understand clearly and distinctly what things have become in man’s hand, and what God’s principles for His people in such a day are. Now I want to speak as simply about that as I can, and to point out to you this evening what these principles are, simply and plainly.
Now the first thing that marks a feeble remnant who are a witness for God in days of confusion, and ruin, and wretchedness all round about, is exactly what you find in the character of these “children,” as they are called here in this Dan. 1. And what is that? Just this—intense distinctness and separateness for God. That is the first thing. Here are a few, a feeble few, a little handful, so to speak—less than a handful; here are three or four men, poor, weak things, but there is the distinctness of their Nazariteship and separation to God wholly acting in their hearts. Nothing will induce them to break that separation.
Now, beloved friends, let me say to you this evening, that kind of thing has become very feeble with us. Is our Nazariteship kept intact? Is our separateness to God preserved? Have we refused what the world offers? You can fill up the details for yourselves. I ask earnestly, have you refused to “pollute” yourselves? Have you refused to compromise, not only God and Christ, but the truth of God? Have you refused, at loss and cost to yourselves, to compromise the truth of God, and the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ, in days like these? That is the question. I believe the great question that God is raising amongst us is the question of our Nazariteship. Are we separate? And never forget that inward separateness of spirit produces outward separateness of walk and testimony. That is the very first question for each one—Am I inwardly separate? It is an individual question, though, of course, it passes into what is collective. You cannot raise the collective state unless the individual state is right first. The reason of our weakness corporately is our weakness individually, because it is the individuals that go to make up the corporate thing.
I ask you tonight, beloved friends, does each individual here who is a member of Christ’s body, each one who, by faith in that blood which cleanseth from all sin, belongs to Christ—I ask, have we the sense of the distinctness which pertains to us as being set apart by that blood unto God, as those who are “elect according to the knowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ?” Is there among you the sense of what it is to be a member of Christ? It is not a question of being saved. People say, “I am not afraid to die: I am not afraid of going to hell: I expect to go to heaven when I die.” Ah, but there is a great deal more than that, if you are a Christian. Let me tell you this evening, if you are a Christian, you are a member of Christ, united to that blessed One in heaven, that glorified Man at God’s right hand, by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. I say it is a wonderful thing to know I am a member of Christ. Just think of it for a moment! Why it separates me at once, the moment that it gets hold of my soul. Think of being united to Christ in glory! Beloved friends, the measure of His separation in us must be the measure of those who are one with Him. There can be no contradiction as to this. If I am united to that blessed One who is at God’s right hand in the heavens, if I am a part of Christ, I belong to that which is the complement of Christ. You see I pass now from the individual to the collective; if I belong to that which the Spirit of God speaks of as “the fulness of him who filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:23), I have my separation marked out for me at once. It is not, “May I do this, or may I do the other?” but I have the distinctiveness of my position, and my separateness, marked out at once for me; there can be no mistake as to it.
You know very well what the separateness of Christ was here. Look at His path as a man down here in this world of sin and sorrow. Look at that beautiful, wonderful, isolated, separated pathway through this world. Trace it from the manger, where He was ignominiously laid at His birth, because “there was no room for him in the inn,” down to the cross. Look at the separateness of it, the holiness of it, with Him the divinity of it! But mark what He says—“As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world.”
Think of that! You see, we have not the sense of these things. I feel it in my own soul, I am often compelled to say, Blessed God, is it true that I am not only united to the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, but I have as distinct a mission on this earth as He had from Thee! Oh, it is wonderful! I do believe in my soul, and I speak what I believe tonight, that it is in this question of Nazariteship that we are feeble. I believe that is the point of our departure; there is not this distinctness, there is not this divine, thorough, complete separateness to God. Look at Daniel. He “would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat.” He would not touch it. But what people say is this—“Ah, that was a wonderful thing, but the Providence of God so ordered that Daniel was in those circumstances.” Just exactly as they say about Moses: “The Providence of God so ordered it that Moses grew up to be the reputed son of Pharaoh’s daughter. There never was a more distinct case of providence than that.” I do not deny it for a moment; but, beloved friends, do you think I touch that? Do you think I say one word against that? God forbid. But I am speaking of a thing that does not relate to the Providence of God at all.
The Providence of God is always blessed; but when I come to a principle that is to actuate me on my side, that is not Providence—it is faith, another thing altogether. And it was on that principle that this man Moses acted; as soon as he came to years, as soon as he passed out of childhood into the maturity of years, that divine principle of faith asserted itself in him. “He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,” and he chose to suffer affliction with the people of God. That is exactly the very principle manifested here in the case of Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It is beautiful to look at them. Their names were changed; the king called them by other names, to obliterate from their hearts, if he could, all remembrance of the land of Israel, and the Jehovah of Israel. Every sort of thing that could be brought to bear upon them was tried, to efface, if possible, any little lingering trace of their connection with the people of God, and the Jehovah of Israel.
For myself, when I look at it, beloved friends, all this is most blessed. Here is this first principle, this blessed principle, living and dwelling in the heart of Daniel and of his three friends: “He would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat,” and he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
Now it would be entirely outside my present purpose, and I will say quite unsuitable for me to refer to the details of this great principle as it applies to you. We, beloved friends, are better able to do that than we would fain persuade ourselves. People are fond of saying, “Well, how does that apply to me?” and so forth; and they feel all the time that it applies to them more closely than they like: all the while conscience is wincing under the application of it. So that I do not mean to go into details, but I simply press this first great principle as an individual principle, applicable to everyone of us in our individual character before God, and applicable to us in our corporate relationships as well. This is the first thing for each of us—have we kept and preserved, and are we keeping our Nazariteship intact? Have I refused to pollute myself with the portion of the king’s meat? That is the first thing.
Observe what comes after that. It is exceedingly blessed for us to remember it in these days, as an encouragement and comfort to our hearts. That which follows the preservation of their separation to God is this—God marks His appreciation of it by giving these men wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge. That is the way He marks it. And, beloved friends, let me say this to-night—there is not one who can contradict it, it is impossible to gainsay the fact—that what at first characterized the feeble few (that is the only way I would speak of them) to whom God was pleased to make known His mind in these last times, and who have escaped, through mercy, out of the corruptions of Christendom all around, to know the simplicity of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the holiness of that name, was understanding and knowledge of God’s mind, in a word, divine intelligence. Does that characterize them now? That is the question. It was not work that characterized them in former days. I hope nobody will be offended with me for saying this—it was not activity which made them remarkable. There is where our danger is; there is where we are feeble, beloved friends. We have practically lost our separateness, and we have correspondingly practically lost the premium that God puts upon it, and we are obliged to make up for it by a sort of pretentious display of activity before men. You know perfectly well that is the tendency, and that is what catches the young especially. They are caught by it; it has a certain amount of attractiveness about it, and I will tell you why. A round of continued activity, a series of perpetual evolutions of that kind, is a sort of quietus to the exercise of the soul. There is no time for thought, no time for heart-searching, little time for meditation or prayer. It is a most wonderful thing and I repeat it again, I do not in the least feel that I am going over old ground—I say it is sorrowful how little we pray; it is sorrowful how little people read the word of God, how little they meditate. I am sure our prayer-meetings are humbling at times. Why is it so, beloved friends? What is the reason of that? Why is it that there is so little real waiting of soul upon God? Why so little dependence upon Him? Why is it one finds so few hearts that are burdened?
Now let us ask you this as a practical question. How much today have you prayed for the church of God? How much have you prayed for the saints of God? and how much do you pray every day of your life? How much is it upon your heart as a burden, because it relates to the interests of Christ and the glory of Christ? How much do you seek solitude with God, and retirement with Him and long to be at home with God, to shut the world out, and yourself in, that you may be there with God about those wonderful interests of Christ, because you have got communion with His mind about that which is so dear to Him on this earth? I tell you the lack of all this is simply the result of the want of separation; and it is not merely a person being separated outwardly. It is possible for saints to satisfy themselves if they have outwardly escaped from the wreck and the corruption that is all around. They say, “Oh, well I have escaped from the corruption that is outside; my body is not in it.” But the question is, is your heart outside the world, and is your spirit separated from it as much as your body? Do you think, if I may speak strongly (though I do not apologize, for I speak before God, I trust) do you think that what the blessed God wants is a number of individuals brought together into a place before Him, but whose hearts are far away elsewhere? Do you think it is a mere question of what is outside and seen? Beloved friends, what He is looking for is the affection of a heart, and the earnestness of a soul that has found His own Son in heaven! If it is merely a question of your bodily presence, while your heart and affections are outside, what I say is, and I say it with all gentleness tonight, “My son, give me thine heart!”
This is where the feebleness is; it is this want of separation. Inward separateness would lead to outward separateness; but outward separateness will never produce inward separateness. If your heart and affections, your intelligence, your inner man, are separated to God, then your body, as a vessel, will soon follow that which controls it.
Now look at this in Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Take that second chapter {Dan. 2}. I will just say a little more about prayer. As soon as ever that decree of Nebuchadnezzar goes out to slay the wise men of Babylon, because they could not make known the dream—not the interpretation, but the dream; the dream itself had passed out of Nebuchadnezzar’s recollection, and the interpretation, of course, was gone—what was the first thing that Daniel and his companions did? They took the thing to God, beloved friends. What is the first thing you would do? I would bring it down to homely, every-day, circumstances. When difficulties come, what is the first thing you do? Do you go to God? Let us be honest now before the Lord tonight. When you have a difficulty, is not the first thought in your mind whether there is anybody that has wisdom enough to give you direction about it? And if you knew of any wise man, or any man of skill, if he was in the very farthest end of the city, would you not find him out, and get all you could out of him? Exactly. And is not that the very thing that is creeping into the church of God? Take, for instance, any difficulty coming into the company of saints. Do they go down on their knees, and humble themselves before God, first, because there is a difficulty, and next, because they have not understanding enough to meet it? Does the thing really burden them at all? Is not the first thought that comes into their mind just this—if they could get some person of ability or skill, some great man that has a name, to settle the difficulty! I am speaking of practical things tonight, beloved friends, and you and I know that what I have been saying is exactly what takes place.
Now look at Daniel. The moment that his life was at stake, the instant this difficulty was presented to him and his companions, he says, “Give me time.” For what? That they might make supplication to the God of heaven! They are dependent, they go to God about it. Now I will tell you what all around reminds me of. We ought to feel it. Our conduct is far too like Jacob, who skillfully made all his arrangements, and then went and prayed! He made every arrangement with all the consummate skill of a tactician, made himself perfectly safe first of all, as he thought, and then went and prayed! That is exactly what we do. But here I find, in this simple representation of the remnant of God’s people in those days, they come and make supplication to the God of heaven, in the dependence of hearts that knew what it was to be cast upon Him, Jehovah their resource, their help, their only stay, but at the same time their all-sufficient stay.
I often think, beloved friends, and oftener find myself saying, and often hear others say too, “We have no one but God to go to; we have no one but the Lord”; as if He were not enough. Our very expressions, I feel in my heart, show exactly where we have dropped. “We have no one but the Lord.” Do you think we are the worse for that? Are not we well off for that? Nay, are we not ten thousand times better off that we have no one but God? Do we want anybody else? Is He amongst His people? Is He sufficient? Is He equal to every emergency? Has Christ forgotten that which is so dear to Him? Do you think the Head in heaven is indifferent to the necessities of the members on earth? Do you think the ear of the blessed God is not interested by the cries of His people?
But, alas! so poor is our testimony to the blessedness of prayer, that you would never think that there was an ear up there that was waiting to be interested with prayer. You would never think that there were hearts down here that felt the burden of things around. You would never think that there was a blessed, wonder-working God, who stoops to hear the whisper of a poor heart that has nothing but wants to spread before Him. That is what He looks and waits for. Look how blessed it is here in this history. What is the result of this waiting upon God? Of course the result of it was that the thing was made known at once to Daniel. There was a way out of the difficulty at once, of course there was. I often think of that passage in Hebrews about Abraham: “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself,” and, says the Holy Ghost, commenting upon it, “so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.”
Do you think that anyone ever waited upon God in sincerity and reality, in true earnestness of heart, without finding that God came in and marked His sense of it?
You may depend upon it, in proportion as we have the sense that we are interesting God’s ear, there will be real earnestness, though my soul may be burdened with but one thing. It is most blessed oftentimes to see a person whose spirit is burdened with one thing, and who, in the simplicity of a full heart, can tell that one thing out into God’s ear. The Lord give us more true dependence, and real prayer! I do feel we are not people of dependence and prayer as we might be, and I feel that in our difficulties, and exercises, and straits, we run hither and thither, looking for help from every quarter but God. Let me say this, that the result of that is simply going down to Egypt. That is the full-blown result of taking the eye off God, and looking to an arm of flesh, whatever that arm may be. We cannot avoid it. It is simply the story of Abram going down to Egypt repeating itself.
Well, now, the last thing I notice in connection with this remnant in Babylon, as also being characteristic of what should be found amongst the people of God in these days, is suffering. That is the last thing I will speak of thus evening.
You see here the king tests the fidelity of these men, as to whether they will give up the worship of the true God, and their allegiance and adherence to the true God, and bow down to the great image that Nebuchadnezzar set up. There is a little word here that is to me exceedingly interesting. It occurred to me as I was reading the passage this evening. It comes in in connection with another passage of scripture I was speaking of elsewhere last evening—that passage in Philippians, where the apostle speaks of Christ being magnified in his body (Phil. 1:20). The one desire he had, the ruling desire of his soul was, that Christ should be magnified in his body, “whether by life or by death”; that is to say, that which originally was the platform whereon Satan displayed his power, man’s body, that wherein he manifested all his hatred and all his malignity against God and Christ. God says, “I am going to take up that same vessel, and make it the platform on which I will display the power of Christ”; and the apostle says in Phil. 1—it is wonderful to think of it—“I have full communion with what God is doing.” That is the meaning of the words,” My earnest expectation and my hope.” He had full fellowship with the thoughts of God. It is a wonderful thing to have fellowship with the purposes of God concerning Christ: and here, in Daniel, are people who have this same thought before them, according to what was then known, and hence we find that the king is obliged to own (Phil. 3:28), “They have yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god except their own God.”
You see these men thrown into the fire, bound hand and foot, the emblem of weakness, cast into a furnace heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated; that is, the perfection of malignant power to destroy them. Was not God magnified in their bodies? And what is the result? They come up out of the furnace, not even the smell of fire upon them, not a hair of their head singed. And, more than that, there was companionship. “I see four men walking, and the form of the fourth is like the son of God.” There was most blessed company. They were cast down bound into the midst of this burning, fiery, furnace, and there is not a word of complaint. They were not careful. Think of that. “We are not careful to answer thee in this matter.” They were not disconcerted, not “put out,” as we say, but yielded themselves entirely into the hands of God, in patient meekness. They are prepared to suffer at any cost. God is their stay and strength, and God comes in, and intervenes for them, and they are the exhibition, under the circumstances in which they were, of that blessed power of God by which He can in magnify Himself in bodies like yours and mine.
Now just look how little Christ is magnified in our bodies! Alas! there is a great deal of the magnifying of the world in our bodies, and of self, and of the flesh, but how little there is of the magnifying of Christ! It is humbling when you think of it. If you look around, and see the bodies of God’s people, and look at what they are, what are they an exhibition of? The power of the flesh too often, and the power of the world, and the power of nature, but very little of the power of Christ. “That Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death,” was Paul’s desire. Oh, may it be ours likewise! Well, now, I believe those principles that come out of these three chapters of Daniel, namely, first, separation to God at every cost; secondly, thorough dependence upon Him in difficulties; and thirdly, patience in suffering for His name, are the three great characteristic principles that ought to mark the people of God today. I am not speaking now at all of what relates to us in our church position, but of that which would bear upon our church position, of that which enters into it, of that which would give a wonderful vitality and wonderful power, and wonderful freshness, to our church position.
May I say one word on another remnant that you find in the OT, comparing it with a remnant in the NT? Just turn with me to Mal. 3:16. “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.”
You see what characterized the remnant in the closing days of OT history—the fear of God, and communion one with another. Does that characterize us, beloved friends? Is there anything like that amongst us? I say it is a good thing that we should see where our dangers are. Is there anybody here tonight satisfied with the state of things as it is? Are you satisfied to see things as they are? Well, I should think a person who is satisfied with things as they are must be very far from God. Any person who could sit down in self-complacency, and say, “Oh, well, I think it is not so afflicting after all. We are not so bad as all that. That is an extreme view of it; that is a very hard thing to say”; I say such a person has no sense whatever of what is befitting the testimony of the Lord.
Beloved friends, all I say is this, the nearer we are practically to God, and the closer we walk with Him, and the more the thoughts of God are controlling our minds and affections, the more we shall feel how lacking we are, and how infected we are by that very spirit of self-complacency which characterized Laodicea, which said of itself, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing”; not knowing that it, of all others (such is the force of the expression), was wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
But looking at that blessed characteristic of the remnant at the close of the OT, “They that feared the Lord spake often one to another”—Do you get that now? Where is that now? Where is there “fearing the Lord, and speaking often one to another,” beloved friends? But think of God hearkening to, and noting that! Think of that having an interest for the ear of the blessed God! “The Lord hearkened, and heard it.” And think of Him writing that in a book of remembrance! He thinks it worth His while to record in a book of remembrance before Himself, this expression of “fear,” and communion, and fellowship.
Well now, the same thing we find in the remnant when the Lord Jesus Christ came. In the New Testament, what do you find about Simeon and Anna? Turn to the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, where you find the remnant, in principle just as you did at the close of the OT. What do you find about it? Do you find any great thing marking it, any activity or display of wonderful deeds distinguishing it? Nothing of the kind. It is simply this, that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” and the Holy Ghost on him, and a revelation to him that he should not die until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And when he went into the temple, and saw the child Jesus, as soon as ever he got that blessed One in his arms—the salvation of God in the person of Jesus—he said, My cup is full, and I can die now. “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
It was the same with Anna. She did not depart from the temple, and her one thought was, “Him.” She “spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” Just as in the Old Testament remnant I was speaking of, “they feared the Lord, and spake often one to another,” so her one thought and subject of conversation, the thing that occupied her, was “Him.” “She spake of him” to all them that were of like hope, and expectation, and affection, with herself.
Beloved friends, I feel it is a good thing for us to look at these traits of character marking the people of God, in times when there was general departure, and declension, and feebleness around, because such are the times we are in now. We are in a time of the most exceeding departure from God. I believe Satan’s great object at the present moment is to get us to take up with something—it may not be wrong in itself. I do not think that is the temptation now—but something other than the one thing that God would have His people occupied with. It may be activity for God towards man, or anything with which he can get your heart engrossed and occupied, except this—the simple maintenance of “the testimony of our Lord.” As the apostle says in 2 Tim. 1:8, “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner; but be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God.”
Observe that the great thing that is the regulating power for days like these is to know one’s position. It is Christ who marks that position for me. Where is He? He is at God’s right hand in heaven. Then, I say, I am a heavenly person. As regards this earth, He is rejected out of it. That separates me clearly and distinctly from it. The acceptance of Christ in glory gives me a heavenly character, if I am one with Him, and the rejection of Christ on the earth puts me into an outside place, if I have devotedness and affection for Him.
The Lord stir up our hearts, beloved friends, by His Spirit, in these last times, that we may not be unmindful of what Satan is doing, that we may discern the counterfeit that he is spreading before the people of God. You may depend upon it, it is a counterfeit, it is a wile; if he can get our hearts off Christ, and fix them on anything else than the testimony of our Lord, that which I have feebly endeavored to set forth this evening, though it may be something that appears to be for God, then he has succeeded in his object.
The Lord, by His Spirit, give us to keep our Nazariteship, to be a separate people. What a wonderful thing to be separate! The Lord, give us to know, too, that He is sufficient for us! The Lord save us from looking to man, and teach to look simply to Him, to have our resources in Him, to have our hearts confident that He cares for His own, and that He is amongst us! Blessed it is to think of that! Look how little we have the sense of that—that He is amongst us!
The Lord bring these things before our hearts this evening by His own Spirit, and quicken us, and give us a sense of what is due to His own name, that we may be more distinctly for Him in these times, to the praise of the glory of His grace, through Jesus Christ!