I trust that it will not be weariness to the friends who were with us earlier if I go right through those passages of the Word which we had as our foundation. It seems necessary, in view of there being quite a number here who have not been with us earlier.
In any case, we must have a good foundation in the Word. I think that, in bringing these portions together, they themselves constitute a vision of God’s thought.
So we will get on with it. First of all, a fragment in the prophecies of Jeremiah, Chapter 17, verse 12:
A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.
Then, in the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 1, verse 8:
Of the Son He saith,
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
And the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom.
The Second Psalm:
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
The Book of Acts, Chapter 1, verse 8:
Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you:
And ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Back to Jeremiah, Chapter 1:
The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,
And before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee;
I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.
Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child.
But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child:
For to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go,
And whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak.
Be not afraid because of them;
For I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.
Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth;
And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth:
See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,
To pluck up and to break down,
And to destroy and to overthrow,
To build and to plant.
Finally, the letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 1, part of verse 4:
He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
Verse 9:
Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him
Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ,
The things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him.
This afternoon, we are going to move from the wider circumference to the more inward application.
What is before us, we believe, by the Lord’s appointing, is this great, one little truth and reality: that the call which has come to us and to the people of God contains a very great purpose.
It would not be surprising if a failure to know and to apprehend the great purpose of God through salvation resulted in a number of disappointing conditions.
Because, as I think we shall see as we go on, the real fullness of the meaning of Christ to the believer lies right there—in the purpose for which He has brought them into fellowship with Himself.
It does not lie merely in the initial, elementary phases of salvation. This is not, of course, minimizing or undervaluing salvation in those phases, but it does not all lie there—only potentially and intentionally.
You know, perhaps very well—perhaps too well—that you can be saved and stay there for the rest of your life. You can be in the fact of salvation, knowing painfully little of all the great inheritance that is in Christ.
That ignorance, resulting in that limitation in life, is due not to ignorance of the way of salvation, but to ignorance as to the purpose of salvation—the purpose now, as well as in the ages to come.
So the emphasis at this time is upon that for which we are saved, unto which we have been called, in Christ Jesus.
And although it will be said again and again, let us say it here now: that purpose is not only to have, and not only to be, but it is to fulfill a vocation. All the having and all the being are unto a great service to the Lord.
We spent the whole morning on that, and sorry as we may be for those who did not get it, we have to go on. We want to get, as I have said, right on the inside of this matter this afternoon, as the Lord will help us.
You will probably have been aware that so much of what we read in the other places is very much, if not altogether, of a piece with what we have read in Jeremiah.
There you have the throne on high from the beginning—a glorious throne. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” Of the Son He said it: the throne.
Then there is something relating to the nations, the uttermost parts of the earth. Jeremiah was told that he was appointed a prophet unto the nations—for the nations, not only to the nations.
The fulfillment of his tremendous ministry and vocation—tremendous in range and tremendous in cost—was only possible with that throne in view as his place of refuge, appeal, and resource.
To the Lord Jesus, the Father is heard saying:
Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me,
And I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
That Son later said to the nucleus of the church, with the whole church in view:
Ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.
In other words, you are related to the Father’s intention to give the Son the nations for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. That is your business. That is your commission. That is your vocation.
Having made known unto us the mystery—the secret—of His will, to sum up all things in Christ: He has made that known to us. Why? Because He had chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.
In piecing it all together, it makes one picture and comes right up to this: the purpose for which we have been brought into fellowship with God’s Son. It is, to repeat the phrase we have used many times, a vocational fellowship with God’s Son.
Now then, to come to this matter and to allow Jeremiah, in his experience and in his function, to interpret for us—for it is all one thing. Whether it is Old Testament or New Testament, it is one purpose and one way of God.
Jeremiah can help us a lot as a focus of all that we have said. We take up, then, these things which we see right at the beginning of his life and work.
We are in the presence of God acting sovereignly in relation to His purpose.
What a tremendous thing this book of Jeremiah discloses as to the sovereign activities of God. It is God acting in His own right; God acting on His own initiative; God Himself, the Originator and Projector of everything.
It is God taking things in hand personally and bringing them out of His own counsel—the counsel of His own will. This book of Jeremiah is full of that fact.
Now look at the features of this sovereign movement and action of God in relation to the events. The language may sound technical, even theological. The very word sovereignty has been taken up and made a point of tremendous controversy.
But if you can get through the words and the phrases to the truth that lies behind, you have an impregnable rock—an unshakable rock of confidence.
The Lord is many times in the Scriptures called “the Rock.” To the Psalmist, that is a favorite title for the Lord. We need something rock-like upon which to stand and rest.
Jeremiah needed a rock under his feet. I do not know how many of you are familiar with the prophecies of Jeremiah. Perhaps you have not studied them very much. Perhaps you think that they are not particularly interesting or inspiring—perhaps a bit depressing.
But those of you who know, know this: that if ever a man needed a rock under his feet, Jeremiah did. Oh, the forces that he encountered, that broke upon him!
Jeremiah would not have survived at all, let alone at last triumphed with his ministry, but for a rock under his feet.
And that which was of the nature of his rock was this. It is all in one word, repeated how many times. Underline it in your Bible: “I.”
Before I formed thee, I knew thee.
I have made thee a prophet unto the nations.
I have put My words in thy mouth.
“I formed thee. I appointed thee. I equipped thee. I put My word in thy mouth.” If Jeremiah had started this business, he would not have got very far.
If someone else had put him into it, he would have had good reason for controversy with them, and to retire very early in life. He went through forty or forty-five years of unceasing and ever-growing antagonism and hostility.
He went through suffering that few men have known. I believe that it was because underneath him and behind him was this which remained: “I did not put myself into this. I did not take this work on. This was not my idea for my life.”
“I really had nothing to do with it. Indeed, if I could have escaped it, I would. But I came under a divine compulsion. I am where I am. I am doing what I am doing. I am what I am because God said, ‘I formed thee, I appointed thee, I sent thee.’”
The divine sovereignty in action.
You say, “That is all right—quite obvious. Jeremiah, we expect it for him.” Now, does the letter to the Ephesians apply only to the Apostle Paul, or to some special servants of the Lord, or is it a message to the church?
If it is a message to the church, as it surely is, it almost begins with this: “He chose us. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.”
I wonder how you define and explain your conversion. How have you put it when you refer to your coming to the Lord, your coming to know the Lord?
“I was saved on such-and-such a date. I came to know the Lord on such-and-such a date. I was born again.” Oh, we have many ways of putting it. I wonder how you put it.
Do you know, dear friend, that the true way—all these, of course, are true in their way—but the truly adequate way to explain it is this: right back in eternity past, before this world was, a hand reached into my lifetime and took hold of me.
And in so doing, it brought me right into something that was in the mind of God before the world was created. That is the meaning of our salvation.
It is not just something that happens some day in our lifetime. There is concentrated into every true new birth from above all the meaning and intention of God’s great purpose concerning His Son.
He shall give to His Son the nations for His inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. That is in our being Christians, in our being the Lord’s.
And if all who are born again, or saved—however you may put it—could only get something of that into their hearts and into their understanding early on, at the beginning, do you not think that their spiritual progress would be much more practical and their measure as Christians much greater?
There it is. Saved so long ago, and today not much more than when it happened. Why? For this very reason: an insufficient apprehension of the greatness of the purpose bound up with salvation.
Our being here this afternoon, in this room, as born-from-above children of God, has wrapped up in it no less a meaning than this: that we have been reached unto from eternity, to be brought into that fellowship with God’s Son for the ultimate possession of the nations and the regathering of all things into Him.
Now, of course, we must ever keep in view the relative factor in this. Obviously, all that cannot be gathered into any one individual, or into any number of individuals as separate individuals.
We are a part of a great whole. It is the church that is the elect, the chosen vessel, for that purpose. But, having said that, we can go on.
There are a number of things—a large number of things, and great things—that go with that.
To these we have no right, and to these we can make no claim, only as we get right into line with God’s purpose concerning His Son, His fullness, and stay there.
What do we mean? Well, look again at Jeremiah as an instance of this. When God becomes possessed of a vessel, an instrument, for this purpose of His heart—this counsel of His will, this secret, this mystery—among the nations, when God gets hold of a people in line with that, to that vessel and instrument He commits Himself.
That is the next thing. God acts, and then, getting the response to His sovereign action, He commits Himself to that vessel, to that instrument.
Jeremiah is a wonderful example: an instrument, or a vessel, to which God committed Himself.
Go away and read through again. I am sure you will not want to, but you will have to. Read through again and see how many times it looked as though Jeremiah was finished.
Finished by the designs, the cruelty, the hostility, and the wickedness of men. Finished by the weariness—the utter weariness—of his own hard way. Finished by the drooping of his own soul: “I will not speak.”
Again and again, for reasons within himself and outside of himself, it looked as though Jeremiah was finished.
At last, you reach that terrible time when human fury against him had taken him and dropped him down into a deep, dark, muddy pit, where he sank up to his arms, to be left to starve and die.
Finished. “He is finished now.” Who could survive all this accumulation of things? But he survived.
He came up out of the pit and went on for quite a long time in his work. Even when his prophecies were being fulfilled, when they came and destroyed Jerusalem and carried away all who had opposed him, the very king himself who was doing it all marked out Jeremiah to be saved.
He set him free and told him that he could go where he liked.
God, in committing Himself to this vessel, saw to it that he continued as long as He wanted him to continue. Let all the forces of men and devils, and all the human weakness and readiness to give up, seem to say, “It is impossible to go on. You will never get through.”
When God commits Himself, there is continuance until God’s purpose is accomplished.
That is what it means. Oh, it is a tremendous thing, dear friends, to be right in line with God. God will commit Himself to that vessel, and there will be continuance until God writes “finished” on that story.
That is the sovereign continuance of God.
You have that so much in the Bible, in many ways. That is the explanation of that symbol in the life of Moses: the bush that burned and was not consumed.
The Lord knew what He was doing when He made that the medium of His call and commission to Moses. If ever a man found within himself, and in those about him, reasons to again and again give it all up, it was Moses.
He could say, “I just cannot go on any more.” Indeed, he did cry out sometimes, “O Lord, I cannot bear these people. I cannot.”
But he did, until God buried him. God fixed the date when he was going. He went through all the weariness and all the trouble because God was in the bush—had committed Himself—the unquenchable fire until God’s work was done.
I dare not take you through the Bible along that line, but you can see it. There it is.
What am I saying? I am saying to you that if you come right into line with God’s purpose concerning His Son, and keep there, you will go through.
You may have all that Jeremiah had—if not literally, spiritually—you will go through. It is a wonderful, wonderful story: the continuance of a vessel to which God has committed Himself.
Get out of line with God’s full purpose onto some subsidiary line, some bypath, some other track, some alternative, and this will not obtain. It will not obtain.
Here is God’s sovereignty, then, seen in Jeremiah in the matter of his continuance and in the matter of many particular deliverances.
Again and again, God stepped right into the critical moment and cut short that which was threatening the life of this man.
Then, when all was done, came the final vindication of Jeremiah.
It has been made—and it is a gloomy thing, so none of us likes to contemplate it much—the fact that Jeremiah was called to a ministry that was never going to succeed. He was called to bring the people of God back to Him, and it was destined to failure.
They never did come back. Things looked as though he had given his whole life to a lost cause.
Well, for the time being, that is how it appeared. Perhaps that is how it was. But do not forget: the return of the remnant from the judgment and captivity was definitely put on record.
It is written in the chronicles of the history of Israel, most probably by a man who was himself in it—Ezra, the scribe.
It was put there right at the beginning of the chronicles of Israel’s history:
That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled,
The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia.
Oh, Cyrus! A pagan king—great, good, noble, but ignorant of God. “I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me.”
One day he found himself strangely moved to think about these people whom he had in his dominions—these Hebrews—and to look into their history and their case.
He could not just let this thing drag on. He began to wonder whether something ought not to be done about it. This came upon him. He could not get away from it. Perhaps it became almost an obsession.
Day and night, this matter was disturbing his rest, engaging his attention, and causing him to look into it.
The Spirit of God was doing what? Taking up the ministry of Jeremiah and making Cyrus fulfill it—vindicating Jeremiah.
You want to know what lies behind that remnant coming back, and the rebuilding of the house and of the walls—all those final activities of recovery? The answer is Jeremiah. Jeremiah!
Is not this sovereignty? Jeremiah was not on the scene here on earth to see it. I do not know whether he was watching it all from heaven or not, but he will know all about it: that his labor was not in vain in the Lord.
God was committed to him, and there was an ultimate vindication of Jeremiah.
Well, it may be a good deal of adversity, maybe a lot of time taken, maybe much suffering and cost; but a vessel that is right in line with God’s purpose concerning His Son will stand vindicated at last.
At last vindicated! God Almighty has committed Himself to that and will see to it. Is not that a rock to stand upon? There is the sovereignty of God—committed.
What is the essential basis of this whole thing, this position? You see, it is just this: fellowship with God in a purpose much larger than just a personal ministry or a personal bit of work for God.
It is to see everything in the light of the whole, and to be committed, as Jeremiah was, without consideration of what is personal—committed to what God wants, to what is nearest to the heart of God.
It is fellowship with God in that which He has projected, is pursuing, and is set upon realizing—fellowship with God.
Silly, silly little Christian interests! How foolish, paltry, so much of it all is. You look at people strutting about, calling themselves by important names—and well, I had better stop—playing at church. It is all silly.
Get some conception of the greatness of what God is after. All that is so small and little. Our bit is only, at most, a fragment.
Step right in for the whole thing—right into the whole thing. First of all, fellowship with the purpose of God.
Then, fellowship with the burden and suffering of God.
The sufferings of Jeremiah seem to be very personal, very much because of himself. But they were the sufferings of God.
It was like that with the prophets, was it not? They had been baptized into the passion of God concerning His great purpose in the nation. Oh, how they were baptized into that passion.
So many of their experiences, the happenings in their lives, were sovereignly brought about—call them tragedies, if you like—brought about in order to be vivid illustrations of what God was.
A week or so ago, we spent an evening here on the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas bargained with the high priests for the life of the Lord Jesus.
We allowed that to take us back to the Old Testament, where, in three places, thirty pieces of silver are mentioned. One of them is in the prophecies of Hosea.
Let me recount this in order to make this point particularly. Hosea, a young man, married a young, beautiful woman.
They set up home. They lived together happily and in fellowship—blessed fellowship. He went about his work, and she kept the home.
But after a time, she tired of that life. She tired of him, for some reason. Perhaps, if we said it, she got tired of his ministry—his kind of ministry. It was not very popular. It did not bring many friends. Indeed, it alienated quite a lot of people.
For some reason or reasons, she tired of him. In doing so, she became open to other approaches, to which she succumbed.
Other lovers came her way. She yielded and left the home, and left Hosea.
How long she was away, we do not know—but long enough to have her whole life wrecked and ruined, leaving this broken-hearted man behind alone.
One day he went out, sad and heavy-hearted. Perhaps for some business, he took with him a bag with some meal in it.
He went through the city. He had to pass the place where slaves were bought and sold, and a sale of slaves was going on.
He heard the noise, the bidding, and the asking. He looked up. He saw someone being offered for sale—a woman.
Something about her made him look again. And as he looked, it was his former wife, emaciated almost out of recognition—shame and degradation.
Was it revulsion that welled up in his soul? No. The old love—the old love—came up and overcame everything.
He asked, “What price are you asking for?” They said, “Thirty pieces of silver.”
He looked in his wallet and only had fifteen. He gave them the fifteen. He said, “Here is fifteen pieces of silver, and here is fifteen worth of meal. Will that do to make up the thirty pieces?”
They said, “All right, we will accept that.” He took her home, restored her to her old place, honor, respect, and love, and cherished her again.
Why must that come into a prophet’s life? Sovereignty of God.
You say, “Cruel hardship.” But, you see, a vessel committed to the purpose of God has got to enter into the very heart-feelings of God, because the prophet had to become the embodiment of his message.
The message of the prophet was this:
Israel, whom I betrothed unto Me.
I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth,
The love of thine espousals,
When thou wentest after Me.
Israel, betrothed to the Lord, married to the Lord—His people had forsaken Him, gone after other lovers, and been wrecked and ruined.
In the market, at the price of a harlot.
And God comes out to an Israel like that with a new embrace, bringing that which is wrong back, and loving as before; restoring to honor as before; passing it over in great forgiveness as though it had never been.
That is the grace of God. And the messenger had to embody that message in his own experience.
That is a very, very intense instance, but it is sufficient to carry this point, I am sure.
Ours is not a work and a ministry that is something objective. We are not just tape recorders, to reproduce something mechanically. The thing has to be wrought into us and come right out of the brokenness of our own soul, with a share in the passion of God’s heart.
Jeremiah—are you going to turn your back on that and say, “No, that is not for me”?
But, dear friend, if only we could get a glimpse, I feel, of what that grace will result in.
Or here in this letter to the Ephesians, you know: “That we should be unto the praise of His glory”—the glory of His grace.
That grace will issue in glory, probably more than compensating for all the cost.
I have only got halfway through my message for this afternoon. It is so full, this matter of being in fellowship with God.
This last emphasis is upon the constituting of a vessel. Note the constituting of it.
Jeremiah might well have complained along one line. Perhaps you have; I have. “I was never made for this. No, no. My whole constitutional makeup is such that another kind is necessary for this job, for this work.”
Have you ever said that? Well, I have quarreled with the Lord on that many times. “Lord, You have got the wrong man. You have got the wrong kind. It is another type that You need for this job.”
“I am out of my place. I could do a lot of things very much better naturally than I can do this. Lord, You have made a mistake.”
Jeremiah might well have said that. He might have said it not only about his constitution, but about much in his early history.
We pointed out, you see, that he was a member of a priesthood that had been entirely set aside.
His ancestor, the high priest Abiathar, had been caught in complicity with the conspiracy of Adonijah to take the throne from Solomon.
When Solomon was established on the throne, he banished Abiathar, the high priest, to Anathoth—miles from Jerusalem. It was a priesthood banished, under a ban, and never restored.
Jeremiah belonged to that ancestry, to that altogether vanished line. He might have quarreled with God over that.
The advantages of earthly ancestry and heredity seemed all against him. “Now, if You really wanted the right kind of man, Lord, You ought to have got somebody who had better standing than I have.”
And yet, in the sovereignty of God, this was the man who was chosen. It says definitely, “I formed thee.”
Mystery—God’s ways. But it becomes quite clear as you go on through his life that, difficult as it was for him naturally, he was the man. He was the man.
God could write in this man His own heart. God could come through this man, though He might not have been able to come through many others.
The point is: the man was constituted, not as he thought he ought to be, but as God chose that he should be. Being constituted by God, he fulfilled his ministry because God was behind it. God was in it.
Dear friends, if you and I are really in line with God and in the hands of God, with everything against us in ourselves and outside of ourselves—as we think it, as we interpret it—the thing is done sovereignly. The thing is done spontaneously.
Put it this way: if you and I were to assume a position, to take it on ourselves, and to do it out from ourselves, by our own makeup and our own natural equipment—if we get into a position that God has not Himself sovereignly put us into—the whole thing becomes artificial, unreal.
The evidence to all is, “God is not in that. God did not do that. That did not come from God. That is the man himself. He has taken that position. He is trying to carry that through.” The Lord is not supporting him. It is patent to everybody.
But when we are in that for which God has called us, and Himself, in all the mystery of it, constituted us, the thing is, in the right sense, quite natural. It just goes on. It just happens.
You do not have to put on anything. You do not have to believe anything. You do not have to adopt a special kind of voice, or dress, or anything else. It just spontaneously flows—perfectly natural. It just happens.
You are, in a right sense, yourself—not aping someone else. God made you for that. He knew what He was doing. You need not worry. Just get on with it with Him.
I wonder if that helps you. As you know, there is a lot of unnecessary struggle to ourselves and to other people by our getting into something for which the Lord has neither called us nor fitted us—not according to our ideas of fitness, but His own.
Moses said, when he argued, “I cannot speak. I am not eloquent.” And the Lord said, “Who made man’s mouth? Did you make your tongue, or did I?”
Jeremiah said, “I am a child. I cannot speak.” The Lord said, “Say not, I am a child. Thou shalt go to all that I send thee, and say all that I tell thee to say.”
Finally, if we are with God, God takes the responsibility to see us through.
I did not intend, as I have had to, to break off and not continue and finish this. I bid you to go to this book again and see if you can mark these evidences of God sovereignly at work.
There are many of them. But particularly note the tremendous divine resources that are available when we really are wholly in line with God’s purpose.
All the resources—the resources of God—are so hopelessly inexhaustible.