A SPIRITUAL believer and a worldly one are like oil and water, which may be together in the same vessel, yet do not make a mixture—far less a diffusion. The spiritual and the carnal may be together in the same outward fellowship, yet there s no inward communion. They do not have the same common elements before their souls, hence their spiritual communion is impossible. This is the secret of broken fellowship, and heaviness in worship. The instrument of praise has many strings out of tune, and hence discord arises. Saints who meet in the same assembly are not on speaking terms with each other spiritually. When they meet they have nothing to say to each other on spiritual things. They are not in the same spiritual condition, and their consciousness of the incompatibility shuts them up from each other in silence. And if they have nothing in common for spiritual converse, how can they have anything in common in prayer and worship? The one part of an assembly have Christ and the things above before their souls: the other part are in very broad and constant contact with the world: the consequence is the tone and spirit of the assembly are dragged down; and it may take a whole hour before the saints are brought up to a worshipping spirit: and very frequently there is no consciousness of Worshipping in one body at all.
In saints being so generally mixed up with the world, and not separate from it and with the Lord in spirit outside of it in a new world, is the explanation of the moral deadness of assemblies and their incapacity for worship. That the world acts to lower the moral tone and to put saints out of living fellowship with one another, Scripture affords abundance of sorrowful illustration. Is it not remarkable, too, how strikingly the more prominent instances go in pairs? The mere statement of a few examples will show this:—
1. Abraham, the man of faith, had his Lot, who ultimately left him and went to Sodom.
2. Moses, the man of God, had his Aaron who, when he was on the mount with God, went into idolatry to please the people.
3. David, had his Jonathan, who, though he loved him as he laved his own soul, yet left his fellowship in the outside place to return to his seat at the king's table. His heart was with David, and his fellowship with Saul! Alas! how many saints are like him.
4. Elijah had his Obadiah, who professed great respect for Elijah, yet, having been in fellowship with wicked Ahab, he felt that there was no communion between the separate "man of God" and himself when he met him. How small Obadiah felt to be looking after sustenance for Ahab's horses and mules when he met the faithful man of God who had been in the outside place, entirely hidden and sustained by God at the time when he had been figuring as chamberlain in the king's household.
5. Elisha had his Gehazi, who went after Naaman, and by his worldliness spoiled the prophet's testimony to the grace of the God of Israel.
6. Micaiah had his Jehoshaphat, who went with King Ahab to Ramoth-Gilead, and nearly perished in battle, while Micaiah went to prison for his fidelity to the word of Jehovah testifying against the expedition.
7. Paul had his Peter, who went into dissimulation, and carried others with him—even Barnabas, and was rebuked by Paul before them all for not walking uprightly, led into it by his tenderness to those who represented religious worldliness. His old savoring of the things that be of men led him astray.
Of our Lord Jesus it is said that all His disciples forsook Him, and left Him alone. Paul says, “No man stood with me but all forsook me, notwithstanding the Lord stood with me." An unworldly Jesus and an unworldly Paul were in communion with no moral distance between. What an honor and comfort to have the Lord standing with him when all the saints failed to do so. In evil days and seasons of moral crisis it must be the Lord and the witness though all forsake us. Those who do not deny themselves for Christ save their life, but lose it. It is very striking to see such pairs as we have mentioned in outward contact in the Word, but of different inward tone and spiritual decision of character. Such there are still in the Church of God, and hence difficulty arises There would be no difficulty were it only dissimilarity in knowledge, attainment, or growth, for babes, young men and fathers may be in the happiest spiritual fellowship as long as they are fresh and spiritual, but when there is lack of sanctification to a heavenly Christ and a willing cleaving to the world, there is an effectual hindrance to spiritual fellowship and to united worship, as well as to profiting by the ministry of the word. Two saints in the same earthly position, having like knowledge of the Word and walking professedly in the same path of separation from evil when thrown for a time alone into each others' company, feel that they have nothing to say to one another. Neither ventures to make a spiritual remark. They cannot: they dare not: for there is a secret sense of more restraint; so, instead of speaking of Christ and Christianity, they speak of the weather, or the war, or the latest catastrophe. How do you account for this? How was it that Elisha needed a minstrel before he could speak? (2 Kings 3:15). It was because of the king of Israel in company with Jehoshaphat. So is it with saints who are spiritually sensitive and walking in the Spirit, when others who profess to be separate from sinners, and are not, are present. They are on different moral elevations, and in dissimilar spiritual 'conditions. The one is mixed up with evil, and is secretly seeking to make the best of both worlds: his more spiritual brother feels in his presence as if he would require the " minstrel " (the elevating converse of a Christ-enjoying saint) before he could utter a sentence on spiritual things. If the other speak, through a feeling of the necessity of saying something, he will likely feel the necessity for giving himself a character for conversions or good works like Obadiah (1 Kings 18) for having fed the spared prophets in the cave in the time of famine while living as chief administrator in the house of Ahab, while Elijah was in solitary separation with Jehovah at the brook Cherith; and, notwithstanding Obadiah's good deeds, the Lord's prophet was in the wrong place in the house of the wicked king, on whose account the judgment of famine had been sent: and when he met Elijah, good deeds and all, there was no fellowship, and Elijah let him know as much. Too many are Obadiahs!
This worldly element in saints is the bar to fellowship and the cause of the ruin of assemblies. It is amazing the rapidity with which an assembly of God's saints may be run down in its spirituality by the influx of the spirit of allowed worldliness. It may be in the full flow of spirituality, and in a year or two it has become languid and lifeless, the conscious enjoyment cf happy spiritual fellowship has ceased, and even when all continue to come together for prayer, worship, and breaking of bread as before, the spring, power, freedom, joy and brightness have gone, and the saints sit under the shadow of death. In such a condition of things it is also remarkable the suddenness with which the truth of the mystery of God and the place, character and calling of the saints as united to Christ in heavenly glory may be given up and practically surrendered by the mass. Fellowship in the conscious, living power of the Spirit being gone: the fine spiritual machinery of the Church having become deranged, the living power of the Word and the refreshing flow of the worship come to a dead stop, and there is no possibility of having it otherwise: for what use is it to turn the hands of a watch when the mainspring is broken? The conscious presence and power of the Spirit in better times revealing Christ and shedding abroad God's love in the heart served for truth to many, and they felt strengthened, happy and united; but the Spirit being grieved and quenched, the divine power that held together being relaxed, or quiescent, the low worldly condition that has been secretly growing as spirituality declined, becomes manifest and increases with such rapidity that it cannot be arrested, for there seems to be no longer power in any to overcome it however much it may be tried by the few who feel it and mourn over it, for it is corporate declension, and will likely go on until things are brought to a dead-lock, and the demoralization is complete. Those who still walk in the Spirit feel the moral relaxation as well as the terrible barrenness and deadness, and bemoan their helplessness; and, the atmosphere being loaded with impurities, they themselves are liable to become injured, even when they long and strive to have it otherwise. The truth becomes powerless; growth becomes impaired, and freshness languisheth; the prayers and thanksgiving are the dry repetition of verses of Scripture or the formal review of the whole field of revealed truth in which there is nothing revealed to the soul, and the truth of God, not being in the Spirit, has no real power of cementing divine unity of an inner sort, and hence the bonds of Church fellowship become loosened and broken: for the vessel having ceased practically to be the witness of God's love and goodness, and of the grace and glory of Christ, fellowship with the Father and the Son is not enjoyed, and, as a consequence, there is no longer conscious fellowship one with another; and we are in reality, back to the hollow formalism out of which we had come intensified in its baleful influence by this that it is practiced on the true ground of God for His Church. But continued faith in the Son of God and walking in the Spirit are essential to hold divine ground; otherwise both it and the truth may be allowed to slip away from us. When the Spirit is grieved and not acting in spiritual energy in binding souls in one, the truth for the hour is weakened, and bit by bit given up: fellowship in the Spirit is unrealized: united worship is an impossibility; and, instead of being exercised in soul by the sad things that are transpiring, and also by the things which affect injuriously the Lord's name, the mass are so greatly benumbed by the frosts of the ecclesiastical winter that they cannot be roused from their moral torpidity, and be made to address themselves to a genuine and penitent confession of their evil state, or to active efforts at practical separation from evil ways: but for the sake of ease and peace they prefer to assume towards all persons and causes the attitude of a benevolent neutrality! (Read Jude 20-25; 1 John 2:15-17; 2 Peter; James 4; Titus 2:11-15; 3:1-9; 2 Tim. 3; 1 Tim. 6; Col. 2, 3; Phil. 3; Eph. 4:17-32; 5:1-21; 6:10-20; Gal. 5, 6; John 17).