EB 4:11-16{EB 10:19-23{LAST evening we had what is the Christian's portion, because of association with Christ; " the great supper;" and a new place is what characterizes the great supper. " Your life is hid with Christ."
This is a day when there is plenty of phraseology abroad about occupation with Christ. It is everything, if true; but there is often only occupation with Christ for the relief of the conscience, and if so, where does it stop? It stops when the relief is met. But if He is an object to the heart, you will never be satisfied but in association with Him where He is. There is often the use of language without its real meaning being known; but if there is simple occupation with Christ, you cannot enjoy it but in association with Him where He is, and in communion with Him about things here. In Psa. 23 there is lying down first, and then I come forth refreshed for the struggle of life here, and to walk in " the paths of righteousness." I " fear no evil." Our subject to-night is, what Christ is for us down here; but I must first know Him where He is; if I do not know Him where He is, I shall never find Him with me down here. True, He accomplished everything down here, but you never get settled rest in your soul till you know that God has glorified Him' up there. You never find a truly settled soul who does not raise the question, Where is He? Mary Magdalene says, " They have taken away my Lord." The two disciples in John 1 ask, " Where dwellest thou?" It is a remarkable question; the heart is set on the discovery of where He is. It is vain for a man to tell me his heart is on a person, if he is indifferent to where that person is. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth." That is what my heart wants.
Many a person is looking for Christ's sympathy down here in a sordid way. That is not the way to reach Him. I know Him as the One who has accomplished everything, and relieved my heart by giving me the consciousness that I am before God in acceptance, and that God's heart is at liberty to unfold to me by the Spirit the things prepared for them that love Him. Isaiah says, I do not see them; the folding-doors were not thrown open then. Grace originates in the mind of the person who confers it. My want is never the measure of it, though the grace covers my need.
In Heb. 10 we have right to enter into the holiest. The apostle is not putting Heb. 10 as an advance on chapter iv., but showing us the history by which we have reached the point we have gained—God. We have got the right of access, and now we are going on to God's rest-to heaven. The mistake of Christendom is that priesthood is to get me into heaven. That is false. The sacrifice has got me in. I enter into heaven; I go to this great supper. Who brought me there? The good Shepherd.
In Luke 15 there are three parables, which are all occupied about one person. The Father could not have embraced the prodigal if the good Shepherd had not gone after the lost sheep; and if light had not worked in the heart of the prodigal he never would have returned to his Father: it was light that discovered the lost piece of money. Grace begins it, grace accomplishes it. I stand on simple grace. I am entitled to nothing, but I count on what is in the Father's heart for me. When I come to discover what is in that heart for me, that is grace. It is an unspeakable comfort to my heart to say, I know He will do something, though what He will do I know not. I would not venture to dictate to Him what He should do, but I know my Father's heart.
In Heb. 10 I have the right of entrance, and I am sustained in that bright place, not by anything of myself, but by that blessed Person who, now is there. I have a right to go into the Father's house, and I have the extreme joy of being there in that scene.
Now chapter iv. is the character of Christ's support to me down here on earth. It is no question of sin. Priesthood is for me as a poor feeble person down here. We are going on to the rest, and how are we to get on by the way? Chapter 4 tells us how Christ supplies us as we pass on through this world. The first thing is the word of God; the second, the sympathy of Christ. I could not be sustained here where Christ is not, save by the glace of Christ. I have His sympathy.
In John 11 I find two believers, sisters, suffering from the same affliction, a very terrible bereavement; they both are suffering, but in very different states of soul, and we see how the Lord meets and deals with each. When a soul goes wrong, it is not priesthood that sets him right; it is advocacy; the advocate has to do with sin.
In John 13 the disciples have to learn that their feet are to be washed. The Lord rises from supper-the figure of the accomplished work of Christ's death. Christ has done one work perfectly, but then He says, I will introduce you to another work; and this is now going on. Peter did not understand this, and the Lord says, " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." There is nothing so easily lost as communion.
I might lose it in looking at a picture. I have not lost my salvation, but I have lost simple concert with Christ's mind for the moment.
When the Lord rose to wash their feet, it was as though He said: I am going to introduce you to a new work which is not yet completed; and this work you can help me in. Christ separates us from the defilement we contract along the road, and we can help one another by separating one another from this defilement too. We can have no concert with the Lord without this.
Am I in concert with the Lord's mind? That is communion. I never lose life, or the benefits of Christ's work, but I do continually lose concert with Christ. He says, I wash your feet when you are defiled by things here; I will detach you from that which has detached you from me. That is the action of Christ's word, to separate us from that which has separated us from Him.
A very little thing separates the soul from Him. One who is in the habit of walking with the Lord feels, when he has lost Him, like the dog which has lost the scent of his master. A faithful dog goes round and round till he finds it. If I do not know intimacy with the Lord, I never know when it is disturbed. If I know the light and joy of His presence, I feel at once when I lose it. It is with the person I am most intimate, that I the most quickly understand the least shade of reserve; so, the more I understand what it is to be intimate with the Lord in any measure, the more I feel when a cloud comes between, when there is reserve, as we see in the Canticles.
But the Lord says, If you come to me, you will find my word working on you to remove the shade of reserve that has come between you and me; the first great desire of my heart is that there shall be nothing between you and me. I will make it my business that there shall be no break in the intimacy. He wiped their feet after He had washed them; the towel is to give the soul the sense that there is nothing between, nothing of the defilement left.
There are three actions of the word:
1. When the soul is going astray to recover it.
2. When I am going right it finds me out; I am read by it, as in Heb. 4; the word discovers the contrariety that is in me by nature.
To lead me on in communion. I am led along in company with the Lord Himself as the delight of my heart.
If I am not subject to the word, I do not get the Lord's sympathy. See the difference between His way with Martha and with Mary, though both were suffering, and He loved them both; but one was subject to Him, the other was not. Martha had no sympathy. She was not subject. He does not go a step along with her; He stayed " in that place where Martha met him." He did not advance at all. But when Mary comes to Him, we see His sympathy. He comes alongside of her, as it were. He groans in His spirit. He is feeling what death is. He says to her, I have a deeper sense of death than you have. They were right to feel the death of their brother, but they were to be subject to the Lord in it.
Sympathy is that I feel what you feel. A great characteristic of Christ's sympathy is that He always presents Himself in the character that suits the person with whom He sympathizes. Trial does not soften people; sympathy does. This terrible bereavement was used by the Lord as an opportunity to acquaint Mary with the heart she would never lose, with all the depth and the tenderness of the love that could never be taken from her; so that " out of the eater came forth meat."
Weakness is not sinfulness. If a thing is wrong, Christ does not sympathize with us in it; nevertheless His love never ceases: He says, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." But He does not shew sympathy to a person who is perverse; the word must deal with that person. I often ask myself, Does the Lord sympathize with me in this? The first ministry of His grace brings the soul to understand, " I have considered for you." Is the Lord thinking about me? Yes. What I want is the Lord's grace. I know Him, I belong to Him, I feed on the manna, Christ on earth.
Something may present itself and you may ask Him, Have you some way for me to act in this? Yes, He says, I have. He has some particular way for me to act in every circumstance. Look at the disciples in the storm. If they had faith in the Lord now, they would be all asleep as He is. When He rises up, He puts them to sleep: " There was a great calm." He walks beside Mary, He educates her in this: You are come to a throne of grace. Lazarus is alive again. He had given her a wonderful disclosure; He had acquainted her with His heart.
Jonathan gives all his things to David, but Ruth, a poor woman, outstrips him. Many would give up honors to a great conqueror, but Ruth follows Naomi when she is nothing at all. She says, I have learned a friend in my sorrow, and that friend shall be mine, though she herself has nothing; I will follow her unto death. In Mary we find the same thing. In John 12 she is in concert with the Lord, She says: The most precious thing I have shall go down to the tomb with Him. A friend in sorrow who has known sorrow, is the greatest friend of all. It is very interesting to see that Mary's suffering was not relieved by meeting with the Lord. (Chapter 11) She discovered what was in the Lord.
The moment I begin to walk in this path I find out all my contrarieties. For the right road there are ninety-nine roads wrong, and the heart is ever inclined to go up one of those roads. When it does, the Lord says, I will send my word after you and draw you out of it, but I cannot go with you myself; I cannot sympathize with you in it. The washing of my feet sets me free from the wrong road, and, the moment I get in the right one, I have the confirmed sense from the Lord Himself, I am with you, I bear you company.
In John 21 He deals with Peter in order to reach communion. If I have not the sense that the Lord sympathizes with me, that He is looking after my concerns, I cannot turn round and think of His affairs. If you can, " the God of peace shall be with you," and " whatsoever things are true.... think on these things." I am not going in company with the Lord, I am worried about my own affairs; but if I have the sympathy of Christ I shall not be worried, I know that He is thinking about my affairs, and I leave them all to Him.
Peter was the first of the apostles the Lord met after His resurrection; he was forgiven, but he was not in communion. Then at the sea of Tiberias, the Lord says, I will show you I am thinking of you; and when they came to shore they found everything ready; " a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread." And He says to them, Come and dine. But there was more than this to be done to restore communion. Peter had no fear of the Lord, yet he was not in communion, until he entered into the full effect of the word touching the Toot from which the failure sprang.
That is the real effect of the word; it is not mere forgiveness, it is much more. The question, thrice repeated; "Lovest thou me?" touches his self-confidence, which is the fruitful source of all our failure and departure from the Lord; and where we least think we should fail, that is the very point where we do fail. If I had been self-distrusting, I should not have brought myself there. Where there is self-distrust the eye of faith rests upon Him who was down here, and who glorified God here, through all that bright pathway from infancy to the throne.
The Lord grant that each of us may know better His sympathy as we walk through this evil world. Amen, (J. B. S.)