Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard,
Coming down upon the edge of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
Coming down upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing—
Life forever.
Since you have, in obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.
—1 Peter 1:22
Let us pray once more.
Lord, in this last time that I have, we come to this matter of love. And so, dear Lord Jesus, we come to You because You are love.
Lord, we know that in these last days in which we live, the love of many will grow cold. And yet, Lord, we desire with a great desire that it would not be so with us, or that our love would be burning ever more brightly. Lord, even as days grow darker, may our love be waxing hotter and whiter and brighter.
Lord, we want You to do a wonderful work of building Your house, Your testimony, in these last days. Lord, in whatever little time is left to us, we want You to come and make Your dwelling place among us in the Spirit. Lord, it must be a house that is built in love.
Lord, would You open our eyes today and show us Yourself? Show us Your great heart, Lord. Show us Your ways, and cause us to know the truth and be set free into Your marvelous liberty. Lord, we will praise You and thank You forever. In Your precious name, amen.
Well, I think I began a few days ago by sharing with you that I had been before the Lord, meditating and waiting before Him. This Scripture in John 8 came to me, especially the Lord’s answer. But there was also the question of the Pharisees: “Who are You?” And the Lord’s answer: “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?”
As I considered that before the Lord, considering foundational things, I felt that perhaps the Lord would have us go back and take a look again—afresh, anew—at some foundational things. Rather than saying, “Oh yes, we know about that,” we need to see them afresh and anew, almost as if for the first time.
I came to these testimonies that the Lord has given us in perpetuity. Think of what would have happened to one of those saints at Pentecost on the first day of his salvation. He would have heard the gospel, believed, been baptized, and within probably a matter of hours partaken of the loaf and the cup at the table of the Lord Jesus.
So I considered the matter of baptism. The first time we spoke, I shared about how the building of the Lord is built: through the cross. Nothing can be built if it is not through the cross, because, brothers and sisters, if the cross is not operational in our lives and among us, we will bring in every sort of wrong thing along with right things.
We will end up with wood, hay, and straw in the house of God, ready for the great blaze when the fire comes and falls, both in our day and perhaps before the judgment seat of the Lord Jesus. We will bring in fleshly things, the ways of man. A small shrub will become a giant tree; there will be birds in the tree. Instead of the precious house of God, there will be the Tower of Babel, and we will not even know it.
But with the cross working—putting into death the things that have already gone into death—it is a wonderful thing. Our brother Paul declared, “We all have died with Christ,” and we all one day will pass away. But he said, “I die daily.”
This is the way for us: to be people in whom the cross of the Lord Jesus is operational, putting to death those things that the Lord has said are indeed dead—dead works—that we might bring living things into the house of God.
When we were born from above, not only did we receive the Holy Spirit, who caused us to become alive, but the Holy Spirit baptized us into Christ. We are a new creation. There is a new creation; we are new creatures in that creation, and we are part of this great one new man.
It is interesting about the one new man. In the first creation, the Lord created the heavens and earth and all sorts of habitat, and then at the end He created man. But in the new creation, He has done it exactly backwards.
We have not seen the new heaven and the new earth yet. With our physical eyes, where these physical bodies are, we simply look around and see the old creation. But the Lord has begun this new creation with the new man: Jesus Christ and all those who are in Him.
In the fullness of time, the Lord God will bring forth the habitat for this new creation. But right now, we have a habitat. It is an invisible habitat, but it is sure and certain and real—more real than the fact that we are in this building talking to one another today.
Our habitat is the house of the Lord. The same house that He is building, in which He dwells—a dwelling place of God in the Spirit—is also our habitat. It is not just some building that the Lord would build and that we would visit from time to time.
We are not only workmen in the Lord Jesus, living stones out of which the house is built, and members of the body being built up in love. We are also members of the household.
Those of us who are babes in Christ, those who are growing up, those who are young men, and those who are fathers—we are all members. We are all a family: the family of God. This house is our habitat.
It is not something that exists a few hours a week when we get together. The body of Christ is the body of Christ twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes it is assembled; sometimes it is not assembled. But this is our habitat, and we are one twenty-four hours a day—one Spirit. The Lord has made us one. We have all been made partakers of the one Spirit.
This bread at the Lord’s table, which we break every week and share among ourselves, is a testimony before the whole creation that we are partakers of Christ and that we are members of His body.
I often think of our fellowship. We come to the gathering, and there is a loaf on the table, and everyone can see it. Usually, we ask the day before, “Who will break it for us tomorrow?” We also ask, “Who will make it for us?” The Lord has to give us provision every time we come together.
Quite often, the one who breaks it says, “I will make it.” Sometimes he says, “Could someone else make it?” Then someone has to volunteer: “Let me make and bring this unleavened loaf and this juice.”
When we come together, there is a loaf that the Lord has prepared for us through a brother or sister, sitting on the table. At the right time, that brother stands up, blesses it, breaks it, and passes it out. We eat it, and then I often think, “Isn’t that interesting? I can no longer see it, but it is still in the room. It has gotten bigger.”
In the first century, it was just the Lord Jesus. He was in a body like this one; He went here and there, and He had followers, but it was just Him. But after the Lord Jesus went to the cross, went into death, came out in resurrection, ascended to His Father, and was glorified, that loaf became bigger.
On that first Pentecost, three thousand were added to the loaf, and the loaf has been growing daily. On the one hand, the loaf is our Lord Jesus, and we are partakers of Him. But when we become partakers of Christ, we are baptized into Christ.
So this is a testimony: yes, we are partakers of the Lord—He in us and we in Him—and this is our unity.
The Spirit of God that we have received is the second matter. The first time I shared, the house of God was built through the cross. The second time, how is the house of God built? By the Spirit. There is no other way the building can be done. It has to be the Spirit of God working in every brother and every sister.
Oh, how sickly the body is when only a few are giving a supply. The Lord has made His body in such a way that every joint, every member, has a supply of Christ to give. No one else can give you your part. In fact, if someone else tries to give you your part, probably they will be giving too much.
This is what has happened in Christendom today. You have many places where the body of Christ has become like one big mouth and one big ear: the spiritual class always speaking, doing, and ministering, and the laity always sitting and listening and listening and listening. There is no other function.
But this is a living body. If there is much function in the body, and it is all done by the Spirit of God who dwells in us, who is our life—remember, the Spirit is not merely a thing; the Spirit is a Person—then by the Spirit, the Lord Jesus Himself is expressed: Christ, my life; Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Then there is the third part of the testimony: the cup of the Lord’s table. This is a cup of mercy, a cup of forgiveness, a cup of which we have all partaken in reality—not merely something passed around on the Lord’s Day. It is a testimony of a reality that has happened to us and continues to happen, because the blood of Jesus ever speaks for us.
But I cannot think of anything that speaks more of the love of God than this cup. When I considered the cup and how the house is built through these fundamental things, the thing that came to my mind was this: in love. In love.
It is the last of these three things, but it is so important. I remember reading casually in 1 Corinthians. I got through chapter 12 and then started chapter 13, that wonderful passage on love. He begins by saying, “And yet I show you a still more excellent way.”
I thought to myself, “Now, this is interesting. Lord, if there is a more excellent way, why would we settle for a less excellent way?” The excellent way he had already been speaking of in the chapter before was the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I thought, “I am sure these are not unnecessary. What do You mean, Lord, ‘a more excellent way’?”
Then I saw the whole thing, not as a separate thing, but as an additional and necessary thing. It is like a transparency that, after you have all this functioning in the Spirit, the spiritual gifts, and all the supply that comes through the saints, is laid over the top of all of it.
There is this great transparency of love. If that transparency is not there, oh, the rest of it is just so much noise, so much business—perhaps even an imitation of Christ—because our Lord Jesus is love.
So today, as we speak about this building of the Lord, this house of God, this body of Christ, this bride who is making herself ready, all of this is built and accomplished in love.
I would like for you to begin in John 13. It is interesting how, in all our sharing, it is impossible for the brothers who have been sharing not to have shared things and Scriptures that one another were going to share.
Dana shared some things when he spoke about the parables in Matthew 13. That was the next place I was going. I looked at my watch that evening and thought, “I think I will put that on the table.” Then I looked at my watch again and said, “Not only does my watch tell me we have had enough, but the Spirit of God tells me we have had enough. This is enough. Let us stop.”
So I did not go there. The very next time, my brother shared those parables, and I said, “I am so glad I did not do that.” Otherwise, he would have felt me trotting around on his toes. It would have been terrible.
But this is impossible to avoid, because the Builder is the building. Not only is the Builder the building, but those who build with Him, in Him, are the builders and the building material. You are priests who build; you are living stones being built up; you are prayer warriors who do the warfare. The whole thing is Christ.
How can we talk about Christ without talking about Christ? Christ in you, Christ in me, the Lord Jesus on the throne, the Lord in our midst—glory.
I mentioned last time we were together—conference runs together, and I cannot remember when that was; it may have been yesterday—that on that last night the Lord spent with His disciples, He told them, as it were, everything that was on His heart. He gave them everything.
The Lord Jesus is God’s Son, but for thirty-three and a half years He was also a man. He is still a man, by the way—He is a man forever. He was found in the likeness of sinful flesh, as you and I are, and He had people whom He loved. Amazingly, He loved them. Miraculously, He loved them. He did not grow tired of them and their constant otherness from what He was.
That last night, He would never again spend another night with them in just that way. Even when we are all in the kingdom together, it will be different than it was that night. So He told them everything, and our brother John filled up almost a fourth of his Gospel with that last night.
In John 13, right after the Lord washed their feet, He says:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
—John 13:34-35
That seems so innocent and pleasant: “A new commandment I give unto you.” This is not like saying, “Well, here is another commandment. Moses gave many commandments, and here is another one to put on top. Maybe this is the best one.”
All those commandments that Moses gave were nailed to the cross. They were part of the old creation. But for those who are part of the new creation, there is a commandment, and this is it: that you love one another.
But He specifies it. “How, Lord?” “Just as I have loved you.” Now, that is amazing. Think about that for a moment.
The Lord Jesus laid His life down for us—yes, on Calvary—but He laid His life down His whole life for us, continually pouring Himself out for everyone around Him. He said, “I am here not as one who is served, but as One who came to serve,” pouring His life out continually.
I remember times when the disciples were so tired. Once they had been sent out with power, and when you have power, there is no sleep, because you have the answer and everybody has a problem. Everybody is coming with disease, sickness, a condition, or some binding of the evil one.
They came back, and Scripture says they had not even had a chance to eat. The Lord Jesus said, “Come away to a quiet place. We will have some rest and relaxation.” So they went, but the multitude watched where they were going, figured it out, and started running around the Lake of Galilee. When they arrived, the multitude was already there.
I do not know what the disciples were thinking. I probably do know what they were thinking, but it is not worth saying here. Something about a curse—more multitude. But the Lord Jesus looked at them, and they were like sheep without a shepherd. He loved them, and He went back into the blessing and serving again.
After they had been with Him all that time, He was concerned: “These have nothing to eat.” The disciples said, “Why do You not send them away? We are concerned for the multitude. Send them away. They need food, Lord. Remember our rest and relaxation.”
He said, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” You may as well ask the disciples to jump to the moon. “Lord, we have nothing here.”
His whole life, the Lord Jesus was pouring Himself out and loving others. Then, to crown it all, He loved them and all of us—the whole world—and went to the cross and delivered His life up.
Then He tells them, “Now, you need to love one another just as I have loved you.” Yet that very night, they were arguing about who was greatest. How are these disciples, always arguing over who is greatest and trying to get the place at the Lord’s right and at the Lord’s left, ever going to come to the place where they love one another like that?
If they do not, and if we do not find a way, there is no testimony. Why? “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples.”
It is not if you fill stadiums all over the world with crusades and win millions to Christ. Oh, that would be wonderful—would that it happened—but that is not the proof. It is not that you know the Scriptures and all the mysteries more than anyone who has come before. It is not that you work miracles, signs, and wonders twenty-four hours a day until the whole world realizes that you are Jesus’ disciples.
That is not the proof. The proof is that you love one another, just as I have loved you. And, by the way, this is His commandment.
This is a serious thing. It is almost like saying, “Well, I guess there is not going to be any testimony. I have two thousand years of church history that says you cannot do this.”
But I have an enthroned, living Lord Jesus dwelling in me who says, “You can.”
Then, as was read again in John 15, the Lord tells them for a second time:
This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
—John 15:12-13
“Oh, then we do not have to do it for our enemies.” Well, the Lord Jesus called Judas “friend.” So people may be our enemies, but we ought not to have any enemies. And we surely ought not to have any enemies who are brethren.
Sometimes it is possible to be treated in such a way that we look at someone who is the Lord’s, who may simply be in a bad way, and think of them as an enemy. Now, if they want a bigger enemy, you cannot help that. But the Lord calls us to love one another and lay our lives down for one another.
Then again, in John 15:17, He says, “This I command you, that ye love one another.” That is three times the Lord commanded it—three times. He said this would be the proof to all men that we are His disciples.
Three times in John 17, He prayed and asked the Father that His disciples, and all who believe on Him through their word—which includes all of us—would be one. He prayed, “Father, that they may be one, so that the world may know that You sent Me.”
Remember where we began: “Who are You?” That was in John 8. But there is also the question, “Who do men say that I am?” This whole conference has been about the testimony of Jesus: building this testimony, which is a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, which is one new man—Head and body joined—which is a bride making herself ready.
A testimony is something people can see. The house of God has much more to it, but I would like to give you a very bare-bones, engineered picture that you will remember. You should remember that if what you are building, or where you are, does not have at least what I am going to tell you, we are in trouble. We need to stop everything—not leave, but stop everything—and get what I am going to tell you.
Consider this: every house has a covering over it. The covering over the Lord’s house is the Lord Jesus Himself—His headship. The Lord is Head over all things to the church.
The Lord is Head over all things to the church in a practical way when the church is being led and controlled by the Lord. Otherwise, as I mentioned, you have spiritual Tourette syndrome: a spastic, headless body. I do not think we can point to that and say, “That is the Lord’s testimony.”
So you have this covering over the whole house of God, which is the headship of Christ—Christ Himself. Then you have two pillars.
In architecture, usually there is not one pillar. If there is one pillar, it is in a Greek garden somewhere, just an ornament. But to be structural, you need two pillars, so that the thing resting upon them rests on one and rests on the other.
You remember Samson, at the end of his life. They had put his eyes out, and he wanted to visit the judgment of God one last time on the Philistines. He was in the temple of Dagon, and someone was leading him around. He said, “Take me to the pillars of this temple.” He felt them and said, “Get out of the way.” Of course, he pushed the pillars down, and the whole house fell, because the pillars were load-bearing and held up the roof, the covering.
There are two things that the Lord Jesus said the world would recognize. The whole world will recognize that we are His disciples if we love one another. That is one pillar.
The other is this: “Father, I pray that they may be one, that the world may know that You sent Me.” That is the other pillar. The world recognizes these things.
The world is so sectarian. Is it not interesting that in these last days the enemy is trying to bring about an evil, false oneness? Yet the world is so sectarian. Men cannot get together; they cannot agree on anything. They are always dividing. This is human nature.
In the old days, there was always some conqueror trying to bring the world together. Alexander the Great would go out to conquer the world and make an empire. There would be a little glory, then it would fall into pieces. Then his generals would rule, it would be parceled out, and it would be fragmented again.
But when the world sees the unity of the Lord’s people, it sees a supernatural unity. It is not that we all agree on the same doctrinal thing. It is not that we all go to the same place. It is the unity that we have because we all have the same life.
It is the unity of the Spirit. We are all members of the same family. We have the same Father. We have been baptized by the same Spirit into the same Lord. It is an organic unity. It is not something we have to make. The Lord has already made it for us.
That is what Ephesians 4 says: not manufacture the unity of the Spirit, but maintain it—preserve what you already have, what the Lord has already given you. The unity of the Spirit of God is a pillar.
The other pillar is the love of God in the house of God. “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, just as I have loved you. By this all men will know that you are My disciples.”
The world looks at these two things and says, “No one can love like that.” There may be some woman somewhere who will give her life for her children, but other than that, nobody does this. There may be someone somewhere who would give his life for a good man—that is Scriptural—but there is no one anywhere who gives his life for his enemies.
What were we before the Lord called us to be His? Scripture says we were children of wrath and His enemies—children of wrath and His enemies. The Lord did not say, “Now, if you will come and clean yourself up, comb your hair, brush your teeth, and get right, then I will die for you.” The Lord died for us while we were still His enemies and, like all the rest, children of wrath.
When this love is present and active in the house of God among His people, the world sees it and does not understand. They say, “There is something of God here. These people are disciples of the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I had a friend from Nepal who went to be with the Lord a few years ago. He was one of the first Christians in Nepal, because Nepal was a Hindu kingdom and a closed kingdom—fifty percent Hindu and fifty percent Buddhist.
For years in Nepal, so that there would not be civil war all the time, they made a law: if you changed your religion, you went to prison for a year. If you preached the gospel, you went for three years. If you baptized someone, you went for seven years.
My friend had spent a total of twelve years in prison when I knew him. It was not the nice kind of prison like we have in Mexico or Turkey—and those are terrible prisons. In Nepal, it was terrible. I do not have time to tell you all about that.
But I asked him, “Brother Prem, in Nepal for years, you always had at least a hundred workers walking across that mountainous country—because there were no roads—from village to village preaching the gospel. What was your greatest method of evangelism?”
He said, “Well, it was not that at all. It was not workers going village to village preaching the gospel. It was the Christians. Their neighbors saw them loving one another, saw the love and the unity, and after a while they simply could not stand it anymore. They would say, ‘We want what you have.’”
Now, it was not that the neighbors had to spend a year in prison. They were simply liable for it; someone would have to turn them in. But many did, and many became prisoners.
Can you imagine? There was a rumor, while Prem was still alive, that the king was going to rescind the law about changing your religion, so that people would have more freedom of religion. He said, “This is not good for Nepal, because only people who are really interested in becoming Christians will become Christians. You do not have nominal Christians.”
I said, “Yes, brother, but enough time has gone by that now you have more generations coming. You have people born in Christian families, and so they are automatically Christians. They cannot change their religion or they go to prison. Maybe it is time for the law to change, so that you have people who choose to be in the Lord.”
Well, they did change the law and opened up the country. Every sort of—excuse me—Christian organization went in there with money and all sorts of programs. I think there is very little left today of what was there when it was a closed country, there was persecution, and people loved one another and were one.
There were no denominations in those days, because Prem said he never told them that outside Nepal there were all different kinds of Christians. He said, “There is only one kind of Christian.” They did not need to know otherwise. Of course, when the Christian world came in, they were ill-equipped to handle all of that. It is a very interesting situation.
Our love and our unity are the two pillars that hold up the Lord’s headship practically. The Lord is always the Head of the body, but we are speaking about whether the body is holding fast to Him or not.
He is the Head. If you are in Christ, He is your Head. You may be a lousy member of the body, but He is your Head. But we are speaking about a testimony: the Lord’s house as a testimony to the whole world, or in this locality or that locality, that the Father sent the Lord Jesus and that we are His disciples.
When men say, “Who is Jesus?” people should be able to say, “You should go there and talk to those people. They have a love for one another that is unexplainable and a unity that is indescribable.”
How are you going to love your brothers and sisters like that? Quite often, we are called to lay down our lives for one another in practical ways.
This happened to me the other day. I had car trouble, and I was going to be coming to Richmond. The fan in my car was not working. When I was a kid, they had fan belts. Well, they still have fan belts, but they do not pull fans anymore. Now they have electric motors. If those go out, your car begins to run hot, and you do not know why until you begin to look.
There is a dear brother in our assembly, and I said, “Give me some instructions. What do I do?” He said, “Let me come over and look at it.” It was his day off—a nice June day in Memphis, pretty hot. On his day off, he came to my house and spent five hours running down the problem, finding it, and fixing it for me.
I said, “What is your favorite restaurant? Where do you like to take your wife?” He said, “No way, José. No. I want to do this for you.” I was just so humbled and thought, “I am going to have to be kind to other people.”
No, this is one way he laid his life down for me. What a wonderful thing.
Once we master that—and I am not sure how common that is—once we master laying our lives down without grumbling, because the Lord delights in this love and delights in this display, then He says, “Let us see if they can love their enemies.”
Then He begins to bring someone into an assembly who causes some sort of difficulty, or who is a real pain, or a problem—use your imagination. There are all sorts of doors, side doors, subtle hints, and ways we can, if we want to, maybe be rid of such people.
Or we can love them. We can begin to lay our lives down for people, even people who are unlovely—people with personality difficulties, physical difficulties, addictions, and problems. My father used to say, “Troubled people are trouble.”
What are we going to do with them when we are the Lord’s and they are the Lord’s?
Sometimes I think all sorts of difficulties happen in the house of God for this purpose: so that the Lord can manifest to the powers and principalities, and everybody around, something of Himself.
On the one hand, you could say that the Greek widows were overlooked because of someone’s oversight—someone made a mistake. Or maybe the Lord allowed it to happen so that the saints could demonstrate how you do not become factions, how you do not choose up sides. The love of the Lord’s people must be expressed in these things.
When I began, I read that Scripture from 1 Peter 1:22:
Since you have, in obedience to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.
What does it mean to purify your soul? Do you sit before smoke in a sweat house? What does it mean to purify your soul for a sincere love of the brethren?
This soul of mine, when it is leaning on the Lord Jesus, when it has ceased its independent ways and its own works, and is done with its own ego, agenda, self-exaltation, pride, arrogance, and selfishness, becomes that which magnifies the Lord.
“My soul doth magnify the Lord.”
I do not merely have to figure out how to love brothers and sisters, whether they are lovely or unlovely. I have got to find a way to allow the Lover, who dwells in here, to get His love and His life out. In order to do that, I need to get out of the way.
I need to humble myself. If I listen to our brother Paul in Romans 12 and continually yield up my being, my body, my whole being, as a living sacrifice to the Lord, that is reasonable. That is rational. He gave everything for me.
If I were a living sacrifice to Him, and began to rest against Him like a weaned child rests against its mother, something would happen.
A child that is not weaned has a good reason to rest against its mother. Mother is the fountain of all good things. But a weaned child—one who is no longer a suckling—rests against its mother out of affection, in love, and out of a desire simply to be there with her.
Children have that wonderful way of loving their mothers. Oh, I want to spend time with my Lord like that—not from time to time, but all the time with Him like that.
Then, when He wants to do something through me, I do not get in the way. This mind, will, and emotion of mine can simply be a vehicle for His love to flow out.
So often, when it comes down to loving someone, you count the cost. “What cost?” Well, here is the cost: if you do not love them, there is no testimony. That is the cost. It is the other way around.
“Oh, this is going to put me out.” What did you have to do with your life anyway? We are here for a little while, waiting for our Lord Jesus to return. Between now and when He returns, we are actively seeking His face, seeking to be as purely as we can His testimony to the whole world: loving one another and giving Him a place in our midst to dwell in the Spirit.
This love is beyond me. I want to give you an example, and I will try not to take too long, of an unlikely person in Scripture who came to the place of the love that the Lord Jesus described to His disciples: “Just as I have loved you.”
I say “unlikely” because this person begins very unloving, very self-serving, and even bitter. I can identify with this person. The person in the Old Testament is the patriarch Judah.
Usually, in this story, everybody tells the story of Joseph. I cannot identify with Joseph too well. To identify with Joseph, I would have to have been the high school valedictorian, won the Medal of Honor, been an Eagle Scout, and written 1 John. That is beyond me.
But Judah—I think I can identify with this guy a little bit. Not only that, this whole thing with Jacob and his family reminds me of the church, reminds me of the Lord’s people, because it was such a mess.
Here you had twelve brothers—let us say eleven for our discussion, because Benjamin was the little guy for much of it—one father and many mothers. Because of the mothers, there was lots of dissension.
It should not be so with us. We have one Father, and Paul writes to the Galatians that we have one mother: the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem. She is our mother. That is technically true, but then we have a lot of stepmothers, okay? We have our backgrounds, doctrines, temperaments, and foibles—many mothers, stepmothers.
In Jacob’s family, Jacob never had it his way. He fell in love with Rachel and wanted to marry her. This is one of the great love stories of all time. He made a deal to work seven years for her hand, and those seven years seemed like only a few days because his love and desire for her were so great.
Here was a man with tunnel vision. There was only one thing he was looking forward to and reaching out to. Then you know what happened to him. He had it coming. They put Leah in with him, and he ended up marrying her before being given Rachel.
He never really loved Leah. Scripture says Leah had weak eyes, while Rachel was beautiful of face and form. You may draw your own conclusions. He loved Rachel. I do not think it was merely physical. I think they were just each other’s cup of tea.
All Leah could do was give him children, while all he wanted was for Rachel to have a child. Leah kept having children: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.
Jacob spent twenty years in Haran and Paddan-aram with Uncle Laban. The first seven years, he worked to get the women; the last thirteen years, he had children. After Leah had four, Rachel saw she was not having any. She took her maid Bilhah and said, “Take my maid and have offspring with her, and they will be mine.”
Perhaps she learned that from Sarah. Well, it did not work for Sarah, and it did not work for Rachel. Bilhah had children—Dan and Naphtali—but that only gave Rachel an unbearable relationship with the girl who had been her maid. Now Bilhah had children from Rachel’s husband, and Rachel had none. This was like Hannah, Peninnah, and Elkanah times four.
Then Leah stopped having children. She saw what Rachel had done, took her maid Zilpah, and gave her to Jacob. Zilpah had Gad and Asher. After that, the Lord opened Leah’s womb again, and she had two more: Zebulun and Issachar.
Finally, after all this, Rachel had a child toward the end of Jacob’s time there. When Rachel had that child, it was almost as if all the other children did not matter.
How can you tell? Remember when they left Uncle Laban and danger was approaching? Esau was coming with four hundred mounted men. First Jacob put all the flocks and everything he had and sent them ahead.
Then he took the two maids, Zilpah and Bilhah, and their children and put them second, at risk. Third, he took Leah and her six children and put them at risk. Finally, in the safest place at the back, were Rachel and Joseph in her arms.
At that time, Reuben would have been about thirteen, and Judah, the fourth son, would have been about ten. Do you think they did not see what their father did? They had grown up amid bickering between these women, all trying to put their children forward and vying for position—strife, division, and enmity. Eleven brothers, one father, many mothers.
Judah saw his father prefer Joseph. It does not surprise me that Joseph grew up as he did, because children tend to grow up to meet your expectations. Jacob probably began to pour his time and attention into that young man, Joseph, and I think the other boys were probably quite neglected.
After Reuben lost the birthright, let us turn for a moment to 1 Chronicles 5. We need to read this before continuing.
Now the sons of Reuben the first-born of Israel (for he was the first-born; but, because he defiled his father’s couch, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel; and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright.
For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him came the prince; but the birthright was Joseph’s).
—1 Chronicles 5:1-2
This is interesting, because it should make you wonder. I used to wonder, after reading Genesis and all about Joseph, why the throne, David’s descendants, and finally our Lord Jesus all came from Judah.
What is the explanation of this Scripture? How did Judah become the one from whom the leader came? How did he prevail over his brothers?
Quite often in the Bible, when it comes to one of the patriarchs or tribes, the tribe is called by the name of the patriarch, even though the patriarch may have long been dead. So you might think it was the tribe of Judah that prevailed over the other tribes.
But if Reuben personally committed this act of adultery and lost his birthright, and Joseph personally received the birthright, then I think it was also Judah, the individual, who prevailed over his brothers. From him came the leader—ultimately David and, gloriously, our Lord Jesus.
How did he get this distinction? By the time Joseph became seventeen years old, he was everybody’s dream child. He was already going around in a special tunic that his father had made for him, signaling him out.
Reuben had lost the birthright, and there was no doubt about whom Jacob the father had given it to. Joseph told the truth, was where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there, and had not only spiritual inclinations but insight and dealings with the Lord.
His brothers were exactly what you would expect neglected brothers to be. They were not just bumbling around. At Shechem, after what happened to their sister, Simeon and Levi went in and slaughtered the men of the whole village with their swords. These men were formidable.
Reuben was about twenty-nine or thirty years old. Jacob had sent the ten brothers to shepherd the flock at Shechem. If they had stayed there and done what Jacob said, perhaps everything would have been all right. But they were no longer young children; they did what they wanted and took the flock to Dothan.
Then Jacob sent Joseph to see about their welfare. Joseph had previously been with his older brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, and had come back with a bad report about them. Everybody knew Joseph as the informer. Everybody was angry. He wore that coat, he was the father’s favorite, and he was the youngest to boot. It was not acceptable.
Joseph went to Shechem and could not find them. Scripture says that a man found him wandering in the field and told him his brothers had gone to Dothan. I have always wondered whether that man was an angel, because Joseph had a destiny—a place to be at a certain time—and it would not be good.
For years his life would be bitter, and he would go through many dealings. The Lord made sure he was where he was supposed to be. So Joseph went to Dothan. The brothers looked up, saw him coming, and said, “Here comes this dreamer. Let us kill him.”
Then Reuben, the oldest, intervened. I think he had an ulterior motive, because ever since his indiscretion, he had become persona non grata with his father. He had no favor at all. Scripture simply says, “Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine: and Israel heard of it.”
Think of your own family. Think of your own heart. There is no way there was a good relationship between Reuben and Jacob. I think Reuben was always looking for some way to get back into his father’s good graces—perhaps even to get a greeting.
He saw a chance: “I can save this young man and give him back to my father.” So he said, “No, no, no. Let us put him down in one of these pits.” They did that. Then, for some reason, Reuben went away.
While he was away, Judah—who had a little, or perhaps a lot, of Jacob in him—looked up and saw a caravan coming, Ishmaelites and Midianites. He said, “Brothers, what profit is it for us to kill our brother, and his blood will be on our hands? We can sell him to this caravan. They will take him to Egypt. How long is a Hebrew going to last there? We will have the money, and everything will be just as we want.”
They said, “This is a great idea.” They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver. They would see him no more. They got the money, took his coat, dipped it in blood, and took it to their father.
They said, “Examine this, and see whether this is your son’s coat or not.” Jacob saw it and concluded that a wild beast had killed his son. He could not be consoled. They tried to console him.
What was Joseph to them? He was so much bother. But I think it was about the time Jacob began to grieve that the Holy Spirit began to work in these men. They saw their father brokenhearted and inconsolable, and they began to think, “What did we do?”
The amazing thing is that none of them broke ranks. Not Reuben, not any of them, told what had really happened. Jacob remained bereaved of his son.
You can see the Lord working in Judah in some special way, I believe, because right after that it says he departed from his brothers. I can imagine him looking at them every day and knowing the dark thing they had done together.
He thought, as many of us do, “I need a change of scenery. I blew it here, but I will leave these people and make a new life for myself.” He went down to his friend Hirah the Adullamite, got married, and began to have children.
Of course, when a man gets married and begins to establish his own house, his children know who they are. Judah knew his heritage. He knew about Abraham and what had happened. He knew Isaac personally; Isaac did not die until the year Joseph ascended to the throne in Egypt. They knew their grandfather. They knew their heritage.
Maybe Judah thought, “If I move to another place, perhaps the Lord will forget what happened over there.” He married and had three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. Then, while his sons were still quite young, he went out and got a wife for Er: Tamar.
The Lord began to deal with him through that whole situation, almost as He had dealt with Jacob. Er married, but Scripture says he was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord took his life. I imagine Judah thinking, “What am I, after what we did to our own flesh and blood? The Lord took my son. What am I?”
Then Judah gave Tamar to Onan and said, “Do the duty of a brother-in-law. Go in to your sister-in-law and raise up an inheritance for your dead brother.”
There was so little love and respect in Onan for his brother Er that he refused to do it. Oh, he went through the motions, but he was not willing to show enough love or charity toward his fallen brother to do what was required in those days.
Judah was looking at the fruit that had come from himself: men who did evil in the sight of the Lord and men who had no love or honor for their own brother.
Then he had one little child left, one boy left, and perhaps he felt as Jacob had felt about Joseph: “I cannot lose this boy. He is all I have left.” His wife died.
Then the whole thing happened with Tamar. Seeing that Judah was not going to give her Shelah and was not going to do what he had said, she pretended to be a prostitute, and he was lonely.
When he found out that she was with child, this must have been the coup de grâce. He said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.”
I guess you would want to do the same thing to a man who would kill his brother, would you not? But Tamar said, “Before you do, please examine these things.” She sent the staff, the signet ring, and the cord, saying, “Examine these things, to see whose they are.”
Those were almost the exact words Judah had said to his father with Joseph’s coat: “Examine this.” When those words came back to him, I believe he had one of those moments like David had with Nathan.
Nathan told David the story of the little ewe lamb and the rich man who took it and slew it to feed his friends because he was unwilling to use his own. David became incensed, and then Nathan said, “Thou art the man.” It was like a dagger going through Judah’s heart.
When the Lord called Abraham, He said, “I will make of thee a great nation.” He knew all Abraham’s descendants. Before Jacob was born, He knew Judah and his brothers.
How was the Lord going to bring forth Israel? If Israel is a picture, foreshadow, and type of the church—the house of God—how could it be brought forth out of a family with this kind of enmity, strife, division, and hatred among brothers?
How is the Lord going to do it with us? We are just like they were. We have the same human nature. This soul of mine is as proud, selfish, and independent as theirs. It is just as likely to take into account a wrong suffered.
The next scene is the brothers going back to Egypt. They do not know they have met their brother Joseph. He tells them, “Do not come back here unless you bring that other brother you mentioned.” He keeps Simeon, and they go back and tell Jacob.
Jacob values Benjamin so much that he is not even willing to send Benjamin back to Egypt to release Simeon. He says, “No, no, no. Never mind about that. I am not going to let Benjamin go anywhere.”
The brothers listened to their father put a value on Benjamin so much greater than he put on any of them—just as they had seen with Joseph.
In the house of God, there are all sorts of disappointments like that. If you are in fellowship with other Christians and are meeting in the name of the Lord Jesus and under His headship, you know what is going to happen: you are going to get passed over. You are going to be unappreciated.
All sorts of things will happen that, if you want to, you can take deep into your heart and hold as hurt. Or you can remember that love does not take into account a wrong suffered.
I think the Lord had been working in these brothers through all those years, because they were so changed. Reuben came to his father and said, “Give me the lad to take with us, and if I do not bring him back, you can kill my two sons.”
What sort of thing is that? There is something wrong with that. He did not quite get it.
Then Judah said, “Give the lad to me, and I will take him. If I do not bring him back, I will bear the blame before you forever.”
With that, Jacob said, “Take him. If I am bereaved of my sons, I am bereaved.” They got back to Egypt and did some business with Joseph. He sent them away and slipped the silver cup into Benjamin’s sack.
They were pursued, brought back, and searched. Joseph said, “You thief, you will be here as a slave before me forever.”
Judah said, “No. It would kill our father. Take me instead. Take me instead. My life for his.”
That is the way Judah prevailed over his brothers, and from him came the leader, the ruler. He out-loved them. He allowed the Lord to do the deepest work in his heart.
Oh, brothers and sisters, love is everything in the house of God. It must be built in love. I do not think the Lord could ever have brought forth this nation from these patriarchs if He had not brought them from what they were to what He called them to be—especially Judah.
In the centuries to come, David came forth from Judah. Oh, how David loved the Lord and the people of God. And then, finally, our Lord Jesus came forth.
“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, just as I have loved you.” Listen: every one of us is about as good at loving one another as Judah was. But every one of us can become the man Judah became if we allow the Lord to change us.
We must come to Him daily and continually: “Lord, here is my heart.” Continually offer yourself to Him, taking that place of repose, resting against His breast.
“Not I, Lord, but You; not myself, but Yourself. Lord, express Your life through me. I am not able to love and lay down my life for anyone, but the Lover of the universe is dwelling in me.”
He has a supply of love that is not only enough for the whole house of God, but enough for the whole world. Oh, that we would let Him out, express Himself, and be a testimony to all creation of the Lord of glory.
Let us pray.
Lord, You are love. Lord, we must have this thing. Lord, we must have Your life lived out in us. Lord, we must decrease, and You must increase.
Lord, we love Your kingdom. Lord, we love Your house. Lord, we love You. Lord, we want You to have a proper dwelling place. Lord, we want this body of Yours to grow up into fullness, into the full stature.
Lord, we want this glorious bride to make herself ready. Lord, do this in our hearts.
Lord, keep us cleaving to Yourself and still believing until Your hour of receiving her. We praise and honor You, Lord Jesus. Amen.