This morning, O our Father, as we think of what we were in ourselves before we trusted in Thy Son, we were but rebels, sinners, far, far away from Thee. And yet, through Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast drawn us to Thyself.
We are so near to Thee that it cannot be nearer, because we are accepted in Thy beloved Son. O, how we praise and thank Thee that today we are children of God. We are partakers of Thy divine nature.
O our Father, our hearts do bow very low before Thee in worship and in praise. Father, we ask Thee that this morning Thou wilt open our eyes once again, to have a deeper insight into Thyself, that we may learn how to love Thee and follow Thee.
May we be delivered from misunderstanding, from murmuring against Thee. O, that we may know how. We do commit this hour into Thy hands. We trust that Thy Spirit is working, without which nothing can be done.
O Lord, we ask Thee that Thou wilt give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation. Thou wilt open the eyes of our understanding, that we may know Him as we have never known before. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
I would like to draw your attention to a verse which is often overlooked. I do not know if you have ever read such a verse in the Bible. It is not a difficult place to find, but it is in the Old Testament.
Will you please turn to Jeremiah, chapter 48? Jeremiah 48, verse 11.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and he hath settled upon his lees,
and he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel,
neither hath he gone into captivity:
therefore his taste remaineth in him,
and his scent is not changed.—Jeremiah 48:11
Have you ever read this verse before? Let us repeat it.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and he hath settled upon his lees,
and he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel,
neither hath he gone into captivity:
therefore his taste remaineth in him,
and his scent is not changed.—Jeremiah 48:11
God often encloses His deepest truth in the simplest metaphor, and here you find one of them.
Before we go into this verse, I think we need to know a little bit about the background. We know that the prophet Jeremiah was called of God when he was very young. He prophesied to the nation of Judah during the closing period of that nation.
He had been very faithful in prophesying, in delivering the messages of God to his own people again and again and again. We know that he was one of those who went into Egypt after the captivity of the nation.
But towards the end of his prophecies, we find that he turned from the nation of Judah and Israel to the nations that surrounded Judah and Israel. He looked around and tried to see: What about these nations that surrounded the nation?
You know, he was puzzled. As a prophet to Judah, to the people of God, he had to deliver very strong messages to them. He told them, he forewarned them, that if they did not repent, they would enter into captivity.
And his prophecies came true. The nation entered into captivity, and what was left went into Egypt, and we know that they perished there.
So, after prophesying to the nation of Judah for such a long period, and after seeing what had happened to God’s people, when he turned around to look at the surrounding nations, he was deeply troubled.
Why was it that God’s people suffered so much, while these nations, which did not respect God, seemed to have a peaceful time? He could not understand.
So you find that in his prophecy concerning the surrounding nations, one of them being Moab, he was actually agonizing. He had a problem he could not solve. He was faced with a fact which he did not understand.
The fact was very simple: God’s people suffered greatly, while those nations which did not know God seemed to have a prosperous time. What was the explanation? How could you explain such a phenomenon?
The Spirit of God inspired the prophet. God gave him a parable, a figure of speech, and in that parable God revealed to the prophet Jeremiah the answer—the answer to his question, the solution to his problem.
We know that Moab came from Lot. Israel came from Abraham, the friend of God. But Moab came from Lot, and Moab was born as a result of sin.
The very word Moab means “from his father.” In other words, Moab was just the reproduction of his ancestor.
Moab, as a nation, lived east of Israel, on the other side of Jordan. Yet while Israel and Judah were in deep waters, Moab—the neighboring nation, a nation that did not respect God, a nation born out of sin—seemed to have a good time.
Even when Judah and Israel were in trouble, Moab stood by, joking and mocking. They seemed to get by all right. Why was that?
So here you find the prophecy: “Moab hath been at ease from his youth.”
The ease of Moab is a problem. He did not enjoy ease merely for a short period. The Bible says he enjoyed ease from his youth. Even when he was young, he had a good time, and he continued to have a good time for a long period.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, is that not something we look for? How we long that we may live a life at ease. How we hope that even from our very young days we would have a comfortable and easy life.
Some people have an easy life when they are young, but they have very difficult times when they are old. Some people say it is better to have a hard time when you are young and an easier time when you are old. I think there is a psychological reason for that.
But what we all look for is that from our very childhood, from our very youth, to the day of our old age, if only we may have a good time—an easy time. This certainly would be considered a blessing.
Many of God’s people today are still thinking that if they believe in the Lord Jesus, surely they will be blessed of the Lord. And being blessed of the Lord means that they can live at ease and in comfort.
To many of God’s people, God’s blessing is still something physical and material. If you believe in the Lord Jesus and you have a smooth time and prosperous days, everybody will say, “Well, you are blessed of the Lord.”
But suppose you believe in the Lord Jesus and you have very difficult days. You do not seem to have smooth sailing. You have problem after problem, trouble after trouble. Even if other people do not say it, probably you will say to yourself, “God must have cursed me. Otherwise, how can such things happen?”
You know, in our mentality, we always see being at ease as the blessing of the Lord. To have trouble certainly is not blessed. Humanly speaking, that is correct.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth. Do you think this is a good sign of life? It seems to be. Even the prophet Jeremiah was troubled.
But God explained it: “Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and hath settled upon his lees.”
God used the metaphor of wine making. You know, in the land of Palestine in the old days, wine and grain were the two main things of life.
You have grapes. You get the grapes from the vine, and you put all these grapes in the winepress. Now, in the old days, the winepress was probably made of stone, or perhaps it was simply a hole dug in the earth.
The grapes were gathered and thrown into the vat. People would step into the vat and tread the grapes with their feet. That was the old-fashioned way.
They trod the grapes until the grapes were crushed, and the juice began to flow. The juice would flow into a lower vat, perhaps a deeper vat, and all the juice would be collected there.
Sometimes it would be left in the vat to ferment. Sometimes they would draw off the juice and put it into jars, letting it ferment there. But after the juice was gathered, fermentation began.
In that kind of climate in Palestine, fermentation usually began on the very day. If you crushed the grapes in the morning, fermentation would start in the evening.
In the very beginning, you would see only a little foam on the surface of the juice. But then, gradually, fermentation would become vigorous and stronger. In about a week, the first fermentation was done.
You had to put this juice in a strong vessel. Why? Because if you put juice that was in the process of fermentation into a weak vessel, it would burst the vessel.
But after about a week of fermentation, usually they would pour the fermented juice into another jar, another vessel. The heaviest stuff, called the lees or the dregs, would remain behind.
Then, in the second jar, the secondary fermentation would begin—another fermentation. And after forty days, the wine was made. You got the wine.
Usually, again, they would pour the wine into wineskins for transportation or into jars for storage.
So here you find: Moab hath been at ease from his youth and hath settled upon his lees. Now, what does that mean?
It means that after Moab was crushed in the vat, instead of being poured into another jar for fermentation, it was simply left in the vat to ferment.
Secondly, after it had fermented, instead of emptying it into another jar for straining, it was still left in the vat. The first fermentation and the second fermentation went on in the same vat.
The dregs, the lees, were never taken out. They were left at the bottom of the vat. At the top, you had the pure juice, the wine; at the bottom, there were the dregs, there were the lees.
And it was just left there. It was never poured from vessel to vessel. It was just left in the original vat.
And you know what the result would be. Because the dregs were still there, they would gradually decay. It is very easy for the wine gradually to decay and become vinegar instead of wine.
Now, that was the story. Moab hath been at ease from his youth. From the very beginning, Moab just stayed there. He had a good time. He was in his original position. He just settled down on his lees.
When you looked at him, he looked like wine. But at the bottom were the dregs. The dregs and the wine were together, and continual deterioration, degeneration, and spoiling were going on.
The result was: “His taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed.” He remained as he was.
What does “his taste” mean? What does “his scent is not changed” mean? He was more vinegar than wine.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, does that explain something of God’s way? Is it not true that, as children of God, we are often puzzled by one question: Why is it that those who are nonbelievers, those people in the world, seem to have a good time?
It seems as if God is prospering them. Why do we, the children of God, often seem to pass through problems, difficulties, and troubles? Why cannot God give us days of ease and comfort?
May I put it in another way? Do you think that we, as believers, can afford to have the luxury of ease? Do you think that God will allow us to be at ease all the time?
Do you want to be Moab, or do you want to be Israel?
If you are Moab, God will not bother with you. He will allow you to settle upon your lees. He does not care whether you become vinegar or wine.
But if you are Israel, oh, He cares too much for you. He cannot allow you to settle upon your lees. He has to empty you from vessel to vessel. He has to change your taste and your scent. He has to do the work of transformation.
And the work of transformation is by emptying; it is by pouring from vessel to vessel. Which would you rather have?
Would you ever choose to live a life at ease? Do you know what it means? You are left alone by God.
Very often, in our desperation and in our misunderstanding, how often we murmur against God and say, “Leave me alone. Do not bother with me so much. Cannot You just leave me alone?”
If God should grant your prayer, woe to you, because you would be Moab instead of Israel.
Dear brothers and sisters, there is something in the Bible which is called the chastening of the Lord. This chastening of the Lord is a mystery, and yet it is a necessity.
Sometimes we think that to be at ease is a necessity, but God says it is a luxury, and you cannot afford to have it. If you do, you will settle down upon your lees. That is the truth.
While the chastening of the Lord is a necessity.
Since you have believed in the Lord Jesus, have you ever experienced this chastening of the Lord in the way of being poured from vessel to vessel?
You know, when wine is poured from vessel to vessel, it is purified. It is purified from its dregs. Yes, it is reduced, yet it is true: it becomes good wine, wine that can satisfy thirsty and hungry souls.
Do you know why, after you have believed in the Lord Jesus, you have to be dealt with? Do you know why God does not leave you alone? God does not allow you to settle down upon yourself—your natural life, your natural energy, your natural temperament.
What is of yourself must be poured out and purified. Do you understand why God does all these things? Do you know that He is aiming at good wine? Oh, if only you know that, what a difference it will make in your Christian life.
Look at a Christian. If he has believed in the Lord Jesus for ten years, and yet the Lord does not seem to have dealt with him once—oh, that is impossible.
If he is a child of God, certainly the heavenly Father will see to it that he receives his part of chastening.
“If ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” If you are a son, the Father surely will take care of you.
But suppose here is a Christian who has been a Christian for ten or twenty years, and it seems as if never once he was poured, never once he was chastened. Is it possible? Has the Father forgotten him?
Not at all. The Father has not forgotten him. But when the chastening of the Lord comes to him, he either rebels or he resists.
You remember these precious verses in Hebrews, chapter 12. Probably we should look at them. Hebrews 12, beginning with verse 5.
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons,
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.It is for chastening that ye endure;
God dealeth with you as with sons;
for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers,
then are ye bastards, and not sons.Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us,
and we gave them reverence:
shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them;
but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous;
yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby,
even the fruit of righteousness.—Hebrews 12:5–11
When the chastening of the Lord comes to us, very often we take a wrong attitude.
Sometimes we despise the chastening of the Lord. What do you mean by despising the chastening of the Lord? It means that you look down upon it.
You consider it just an accident, an incident. You think there is no meaning in it; it just happens. You neglect it. You just let it come and go. You do not go to the Lord and ask the Lord for your lesson.
This is despising chastening. Very often, even in earthly families, you find that parents are chastening their children, and some children just despise it. “You will beat me? What? What? I do not care. It does not matter.”
Now, when a child takes such an attitude, the whole meaning of chastening is lost. You despise the chastening; you will never learn the lesson.
Dear brothers and sisters, very often when God begins to chasten us—and He does, He always does; He will not give you the luxury of ease—you just despise it.
You know, by despising the chastening of God, you despise God. You do not take Him seriously. And in so doing, the chastening becomes meaningless.
You may be a Christian for ten or twenty years, and it seems as if there has never been any chastening. It is not because there has not been any, but because you have despised it. That is what happened.
And some people adopt the opposite attitude: they take it too hard.
When God begins to chasten you, you faint under the chastening. Oh, you cry out, “God, God, why are You so hard and harsh? Do You really love me? Do You want to put me to death?” You just faint under His chastening.
Well, if you do, of course God cannot chasten you further, because you make it impossible.
Dear brothers and sisters, these are the only two ways to escape the chastening of the Lord, so far as God’s children are concerned: one is to despise it, and the other is to faint under it.
If you are not God’s child, God will not bother about you. Moab hath been at ease from his youth. God lets him settle down upon his lees.
But if you are a child of God, He has to take care of you. He has to chasten you. He has to discipline you. He has to train you.
If you despise the chastening of the Lord, you escape it because it becomes meaningless. Or you faint every time, and that also hinders the chastening.
If you know God and His will, dear brothers and sisters, can you despise the chastening? Surely you will not faint under His chastening.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth. He hath settled upon his lees. He hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, as believers, as children of God, our life is a continual emptying; it is a continual pouring. God will never allow us to settle down upon our lees.
There are times God allows you to settle, but only temporarily. You have settled down, and the dregs are separated, because now it is time to be strained. You are then poured from vessel to vessel.
But you know how difficult it is. When God begins to pour us from vessel to vessel, we begin to quarrel with the vessels.
Oh, how we quarrel with our environment. How we quarrel with people. How we quarrel with events. How we quarrel with things.
Now remember: all these are vessels. They are nothing in themselves. God arranges everything. God arranges your environment. God provides for you the people. God orders the events.
Everything that comes to you and around you is just a vessel. They are God’s instruments. They are nothing in themselves. God is using these to purify you.
But when we are being poured from one vessel to another, we quarrel with the vessels. We become very unhappy with our environment. We fight against our circumstances. We begin to strive with people.
“Why do you treat me like this? Why do you have such a bad attitude toward me? Why do you say such a thing to me? Why, why, why?” And in quarreling with His vessels, we miss the whole point.
It is not the vessel; it is the Father who is pouring. The vessel has nothing to do with it.
I remember our brother Nee once used an illustration. If somebody comes and speaks against you, what will be your reaction?
Suppose a stranger comes, without any reason, out of the bushes. He comes to you and starts to beat you or scold you. What will your reaction be?
Your natural reaction will be to fight back. You will feel the whole thing is so unreasonable. You just cannot take it.
But suppose that person who comes to scold you and beat you is your father. If you are a child of the Father, you cannot answer him as you would answer a stranger.
“This is my father. He is chastening me.” You cannot just treat him as a stranger. The only thing you can do is submit—submit to Him.
Dear brothers and sisters, do you see that in our Christian life it is the heavenly Father who is ordering all our vessels? It is the heavenly Father who is pouring us from one vessel to another.
God does not allow you to stay in one environment all your life. God will change your environment from time to time.
God does not even allow you to have the same people all the time. God will change the people around you sometimes. God will not allow you to meet with the same events all the time. Events change.
When one vessel has done its work, God will pour you into another. Now, if that vessel has not done its work properly, you may have to stay there longer, until it has done its work. Then God will pour you into another vessel.
It is the heavenly Father who is pouring from vessel to vessel. If this is the case, can you quarrel with a vessel? There is nothing to quarrel about. All you can do is submit yourself to God.
There is a great difference between chastening and punishment.
You know, very often we think that God is punishing us. When you meet with some unpleasant events, when you have gone through some sad experience, naturally you think, “Now God is punishing me.”
This concept of punishment is very strong in us. We always think that God is punishing us. But the Bible does not say so.
There is a great difference between punishment and chastening. Punishment is just to punish you for your sins and your faults. It deals with the past and nothing more.
But chastening deals with your past with a view to a bright future. In other words, chastening has a purpose. It has a positive purpose.
Chastening has an educational value in it. Punishment has no educational value.
So far as the law of the land is concerned, if a man commits a crime, you punish him. You put him in jail, in prison; you punish him. But people begin to realize that there is no educational value in that—or, if there is, it may only make him worse.
But chastening has an educational value. The very word chastening means that God is training you, training you as a child to make you a son—a grown-up, a mature person.
There is a positive value in chastening, and this is what is going on.
Do you realize, dear brothers and sisters, that the heavenly Father is chastening you?
If you are not under the chastening of the Lord, you are in the most dangerous position. Why? Because you may never become sons, grown up in God. You remain merely children.
But if today you are still under the chastening hand of the Lord, you are really blessed. God believes in you. God believes that there is something that He can still make out of you. He believes that He can transform you into something good.
What should be our attitude when we are being chastened, when we are poured from vessel to vessel? Our attitude should be: do not resist, do not rebel, but learn to submit and humble yourself.
When the wine is poured from one vessel to another, what is the result? The result is transformation.
The original taste, the original scent, are all left behind with the dregs. And here comes a new wine, with a new flavor.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is what God is doing with us today. He is pouring us from vessel to vessel. He is chastening us. And in doing that, He purifies us from our original taste and scent, and transforms us into the savor of Christ.
Have you ever imagined meeting a Christian every ten years? What is the impression he gives you? The impression is: he has not changed. His taste remains the same. His scent is just the same.
Sometimes we hear people say, “I have not changed. I am still what I was.” You may say, “Good boy! Better boy!” But, oh, many Christians, after many years, are naturally the same.
Their outward appearance may change, their outward form may change, but their taste and scent remain. These are two things which are very difficult to cover.
You may change the color. You may change the appearance. But there is the taste. If people taste it, they know what it is. Or if they smell it, it is still the same scent.
You cannot hide your natural life or your natural energy. You may be very clever, and your cleverness remains. If you are stubborn, you remain stubborn. If you are strong-minded, you remain strong-minded.
What you were in yourself remains with you, and becomes the impression you give to people even after many years.
Oh, brothers and sisters, if this should happen, it proves that you have settled upon your lees. You have not been poured from vessel to vessel.
It shows that you lack the discipline of the Lord. Without the chastening of the Lord, you remain what you were. You taste the same; you smell the same.
How can all these things be changed? Only by the continual process of emptying and transformation.
After you are poured from vessel to vessel, the result is that the taste is Christ. This is what is meant by the Bible when it says that we are being made partakers of the divine nature.
This is what chastening brings us to: holiness. That is to say, we are set apart. It is God who incorporates Christ into us.
Dear brothers and sisters, do you want to be Moab? If you know God’s mind and God’s will, you would rather be Israel than Moab.
You would rather be one who is being emptied from vessel to vessel, because Christ will be seen and heard in you.
We apply this to us individually, and that is true. As individuals, we must be poured from vessel to vessel in order to become good wine, new wine.
But, you know, in this very verse it applies also corporately, because Moab here is not an individual. Moab here is a nation.
Brothers and sisters, not only individually does God have to chasten us and bring us from vessel to vessel in order to make us new wine, but corporately, in the church, God has to do that also.
Do you realize that in the making of the church there is this continual going from vessel to vessel?
How often we long to have a peaceful church. Oh, if we can just settle down, be contented, be happy with what God has already given us—if we could just go on in happy days like this, how good it would be.
But, dear brothers and sisters, God cannot afford to give us such a luxury. Do not think that being at ease, so far as the church is concerned, is a good thing. It is not.
The luxury of ease is not our portion. God has to bring the whole church into Christ. God has to empty the church from vessel to vessel.
God has to allow us to meet new people. God has to allow us to enter into new environments. God has to allow new events to come. God has to allow us to enter into all these things. For what purpose?
Because He is afraid that we will settle down. If we settle upon our lees, the taste and the scent will be ours, not Christ’s.
The church must give the taste of Christ. The church must be the testimony of Christ’s life. And the only way that this transformation may happen to the people of God is by pouring from vessel to vessel.
Sometimes we despise it. At other times, we faint. We fight. We do not know how to submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God and let God work.
Every vessel is needed. Every pouring is needed. It is to make the church new wine that can not only satisfy thirsty souls, but also satisfy the heart of God.
Brothers and sisters, does that explain a little of what God has allowed His people to go through?
Sometimes you admire a peaceful life. You admire that peaceful, restful church life. But God loves you too much to allow you to have such a luxury. He has to take us through again and again.
If we are not poured from that situation, if we settle upon our lees, what will be the result? Fermentation will continue beyond its proper time. The end result: we become vinegar, not wine.
Have you drunk vinegar? Have you tasted vinegar? Have you smelled vinegar? It is not sweet; it is sour.
How many Christians today, how many churches among God’s people, can become so sour. The reason is that they try to keep themselves instead of allowing God to pour them.
So may the Lord be merciful to us. May this metaphor be a warning to us.
Moab hath been at ease from his youth,
and he hath settled upon his lees,
and he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel,
neither hath he gone into captivity:
therefore his taste remaineth in him,
and his scent is not changed.—Jeremiah 48:11
O heavenly Father, we pray that Thou wilt show us Thy way. We ask that we may worship Thee in silence. We pray that we may understand what Thou hast done with us from the beginning and what Thou art doing with us now.
We pray that we may not admire that life of ease and peace to the extent that we will not allow Thee to work. But we pray that we may humble ourselves and invite Thy work in us.
O, we are being emptied. Take away from us our original taste and scent. Make us truly new wine.
We commit ourselves to Thee.