Responsibility Born Of Love
Reading:
Exodus 32:31,32; 11-14; Numbers 14:11-20.
"Then
said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood
before Me, yet My mind would not be toward this
people" (Jer. 15:1).
God Seeking To Make A Man Utterly One
With Himself
"Though
Moses.... stood before Me." We have to get right
into the heart of this matter as quickly as we can, and
it seems to me that the best way of doing that is first
of all to look at this God who is presented in these
passages. What impression does it all make upon you when
you see a man, who himself is shown to be a man of
weaknesses and imperfections and human frailty, seeming
to exhibit more patience than the Lord with whom he is
dealing, and trying to persuade the Lord to be gracious,
to be merciful, not to be 'unChristian', not to be so
impatient, and not to be so revengeful, so swift and
utter in His judgments? How does that impress you? It
almost looks as though Moses is, in grace and character,
superior to God. It almost appears that Moses is trying
to bring God up to a higher standard. That is how it
looks. Taken just by themselves, lifted clean out of the
whole Bible and context, such passages of Scripture would
put God among the gods of the heathen - cruel, swift to
anger, needing to be appeased from His wrath, and
persuaded to be kind. But, of course, you all shrink from
such an ideal There arises in you, perhaps, something of
indignation that one should even say such a thing, but I
want to get into the heart of this thing as quickly as I
can, and I think that is the best way of doing it.
Is that
the Lord? Is that the true position? Is it really a fact
that Moses had more of those graces than God had, and had
to win God over to his side, to his point of view, to his
position? Was it true? No, not in the slightest, not for
a moment! Oh, but here it is! Here is God saying that He
is going to do something, He is going to blot them out
and destroy them, and Moses comes along and says: 'No,
don't, Lord! If You do that, You see what it means. First
of all, the Egyptians will hear about it and they will
say: "See the kind of God that they have! He is one
who starts on a thing and finds He cannot carry it
through, and so has to wipe it all out" - the God
whom we have declared the only true God above all! They
will say it just is not true, that is all. He is not the
only God, and He is not any better than any other god.'
Can you imagine for a moment, while Moses argues with the
Lord like that and presents the situation, the Lord
saying: 'I had not thought of that, Moses! That is a new
idea. Thank you for reminding Me! You have saved Me.' -
Moses saving the Lord from getting into trouble and
disgrace with the nations of the world! Do you accept
that? It looks like it, does it not? No, we cannot have
it. There must be some other explanation, for that is not
it. Then what is it? Well, it is just this. The Lord is
Himself taking that line deliberately in order to get
this man over to His side. The Lord had no intention of
blotting this people out, or disinheriting them. He said:
'Let me...', but Moses said: 'No, I will not let you' -
and that is the point. The Lord wanted to get this man to
the position where he was so truly one with the Lord's
deepest intention that he could not entertain the
slightest suggestion that God should not stand up to His
Name, His honour, and carry through His purpose. You will
notice all the way through the Bible that that sort of
thing is happening. What is He doing? He is out to make a
man so utterly one with Him as an absolute necessity for
the realization of His purpose.
You see,
MAN is involved in this. This is a great
heart principle of redemption. God could have dispensed
with all instrumentalities and mediators and intercessors
and go-betweens, and Himself, sovereignly from heaven,
acted directly and have done the whole thing. He could
have done it, but that is not the principle, and that is
not the way. The whole Bible comes in to show and to
prove that, man himself being involved in this, it
requires a Man to redeem man. We sing the hymn: "A
final Adam to the fight, and to the rescue came."
The Man Himself, Christ Jesus, the redeeming Kinsman, the
Mediator - that is the principle. Moses is called the
'mediator of the covenant'. Moses, the mediator, had to
be in that position where, on the one hand, he was so
truly one in heart with God's purpose, and, on the other
hand, so truly one in heart with the object of God's
purpose, that he brought the One who purposed and the
object of the purpose together in his own person. He took
the hand of God and the hand of man and brought them
together in his own person. That is the whole work of the
Lord Jesus, and the principle is here. God is testing
this man in the same way as Elijah tested Elisha:
"Tarry here... for the Lord hath sent me as far as
Bethel. And Elisha said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy
soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to
Bethel... And Elijah said to him, Tarry here... for the
Lord hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord
liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave
thee" (II Kings 2). Elijah was apparently trying to
shake this man off, but was really testing him because of
something tremendous in view. He had already cast his
mantle upon Elisha, who was to come into the good of that
mantle on Elijah's ascension and do greater works than
Elijah had done, but he is going to suffer a tremendous
testing. But he went on and refused to be put off.
God is
working on that principle with Moses. 'Let Me destroy
this people, disinherit them.' Supposing Moses had said:
'All right!', what sort of mediator would he have been?
And, mark you, the point is this - that God would have
lost the essential basis of His work and purpose, and the
essential basis was a man whose heart was so deeply and
terribly in this matter that he himself would rather
perish and lose all than that, on the one hand, God's
Name should be dishonoured and, on the other hand, God's
purpose should not be fulfilled.
That is
a ground of power with God - a tremendous thing! He is
saying: 'Oh, I acknowledge it, I perfectly agree and I
make no excuses for them. "This people have sinned a
great sin." It is quite true. "Yet now, if thou
wilt forgive their sin-".' He does not finish...
"And if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book
which thou hast written." Could anything be more
utter than that? 'You disinherit THEM and You
disinherit ME. I have nothing to live for. I do
not want to go on in life at all if you disinherit them.'
What a oneness! And that is the kind of thing that God
requires in order to do His great things. You notice that
God went on and did His great things because He had that
ground. That ground prevailed with God again and again.
And the Lord said: "I have pardoned
according to thy word." ... "And the
Lord repented of the evil which He said He would do unto
His people." That is only a way of putting it. God
said: 'All right, I will not do it - ACCORDING TO THY
WORD'.
Absolute Oneness With God's Purpose
Where do
we begin, then, with this? It begins here. Moses had
become, in heart, deeply one with God's purpose
concerning His people. God had indicated and intimated
what His purpose was concerning this people. Moses quotes
that to the Lord: 'Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,
and what You said.' He has become one with God in His
purpose concerning His people, he has seen what that
purpose was, his heart has espoused the Divine purpose
for the people of God, and he has involved himself in
that utterly and without a reservation. For him his
eternal destiny is bound up with that and he has nothing
else to look for, or hope for if that fails.
I expect
you are wondering what that has to do with us! How does
it apply to us? It is all very true about Moses, but I
think this indicates something to us of what the Lord's
will and desire is, and also it is a searching and
challenging word. If God, for the realization of His
purpose, must have an instrument or instruments (personal
or corporate) like this, because He has bound Himself to
this kind, and cannot get on with it without such
instruments, may it not explain why the coming of the
Lord's people to the inheritance, to the fullness of
Christ, the attainment of the Church unto the glorious
purpose of the ages in which it is called, is so retarded
and delayed, and why there is something wrong in this
respect? Dear friends, this, to me, is a most searching
thing. It has searched my heart tremendously as I have
dwelt upon it. It is not just some Bible teaching; this
is something which will search us very deeply. What are
we committed or devoted to?
God Needs Those Committed To His Purpose
In And Through The Church
Shall we go back a step before that and
say: are we committed? Are we devoted? Here is a company
of the Lord's people; not a large company but a
representative company, and sufficient to stand right
here before the Lord to meet this challenge and to hear
it said in the Name of the Lord that the Lord needs
people like this, constituted on this-wise, like Moses.
He absolutely needs them. He cannot get on with His work
until He has this at His command - people who stand in
this relationship to Him, to His purpose and to His
people, those who are the people of the eternal purpose.
God must have people like this, men and women who have
seen God's purpose concerning the Church and who know
what that purpose is.
It is not just a matter of doctrine,
teaching, or Bible study. God needs people who have seen
it in their hearts. And then He needs such people who,
having seen it, are committed up to the hilt to it
without any reservations. God is needing such people,
committed utterly to Him for His purpose in relation to
His people, the Church. Have you seen? What is it that
you are doing? This is where I think the thing is so
searching and challenging. There are many people of God
who are committed to the work. I am not asking you
if you are committed to Christian work or Christian
service. That is not what I am after at all. There are
any number of people who are up to their eyes in
Christian work. Let the work test them out, and they
will resign from the work. Let the conditions become too
hard, and they withdraw from the work, or they will
change their sphere of work, or the nature of their work
for the Lord. It is the work. The work has an appeal. Oh,
the appeal that is made for the work of the Lord, and how
appealing it is made to be! The romance of it all, the
fascination of it all, the idea of realizing something,
expressing yourself, of being in the work, is the force
of the appeal.
Moses is not there. Ask him about the
work! He would say: 'Oh, may the Lord have mercy upon me
and deliver me from the "work!"' Moses said he
was not able to bear the people (Deut. 1:9), and that is
the 'work'. Moses was not interested in, or concerned
with the 'work'; he was concerned with a people for the
realization of God's purpose. We can get this abstract
idea of the 'work' of the Lord. We do not stay to define
it, but, somehow or other, it is something we get into.
We come up against difficult people and we begin to
despise and criticize them. We think of them according to
their natural constitutions and put them into
'pigeonholes' - 'THIS is a worthwhile person, THIS is
not.' There is all this sort of thing - human judgments
about people. We have no room for certain people. All
that, however, is false to this principle. No people on
God's earth have ever been more difficult than Israel!
Yes, all that you can say about the Jews is true, and yet
look at this man! It is not the work; it is the people.
He loves the people and his heart is bound up with them.
Oh, what a people - and yet the marvel of this love for
them! Not the WORK, but the people, just as they were and
as bad as they were. He put his whole destiny at stake
for that people. Why? Because he saw that God's purpose
was bound up with the people and not with the work and
not with organization.
It is challenging! What am I committed to?
Is it a ministry, or a teaching? Am I interested in the
teaching of the Church, this teaching and that teaching,
this kind of work and that, and this kind of ministry and
that? The people may be another thing. Do you see the
point? You can divide between those two things. You can
be thoroughly in your work, in your ministry, in your
teaching, in your system of things - but the people!
There is something else when you really come to think
about it. How much pains are you going to take with the
people? How much are you going to give yourself to the
people, to THAT difficult one, and THAT difficult
one, and THAT awkward one, those who show so
little response to it all, those who turn upon you when
your heart is really burdened and say: "Who made you
a ruler?"? That is what they did. And when Moses
went to them in Egypt, they turned against him. We sing:
"From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral
strand" - all wanting you to come. If only you will
go to China they will all rush to you and be saved. Go
and see! They will begin to stone you.
Well now, what about the people? Moses met
that affront on the very first movement into Egypt to
bring out the people. God needs those amongst us who are
not interested in teaching, and orders, and Christian
work as such. It can all be so abstract and can all be a
fool's paradise when you come up against facts. God needs
those who are right in this thing for His purpose, and
who will meet the affront and the discouragement, and who
will not suffer the shock of disillusionment because they
have been building 'castles in the air' about the Lord's
work. Those who know that this is a life and death
matter, that it is going to cost everything, and they are
in it to that degree. They have no illusions. "I
know this people have sinned a great sin." You do
not make any excuses for them, but nevertheless your
purpose is bound up with this 'bad lot'. 'I am committed
to the purpose.' That is what the Lord was trying to get.
You can follow it through to His Son, the
inclusive, supreme example of this very thing. Oh, He has
given all, and He has been cast out by those for whom He
had given all and for whom He had left the glory. What is
the end? "Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do" (Luke 23:34). His heart still
yearns. He is not invoking Divine judgment upon them
because He is a disillusioned and disappointed man, and
they had not responded. His heart is in this.
Hear Paul! "I could wish that I
myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's
sake" (Rom. 9:3). That is the sort of thing. It is
that that has power with God. That is why Moses, to speak
after the manner of men, caused God to repent, changed
the mind of God. It is not true when you know the real
truth, but that is how it looked. He had that power with
God. God said: "According to thy word."
What are we committed to? Are we committed
to the interests of the Lord like that? Have we seen His
purpose concerning the Church? Are we in it? - and do
remember that the appeal is for servants of God. Two
great titles used more of Moses than of anyone else are
these: Moses, 'the man of God', and Moses, 'the servant
of God'. Outstandingly Moses carries those twin titles:
'The man of God', and 'Moses My servant'. The Lord is
wanting men of God, servants of the Lord.
But this is the nature of service. I do
not ask you to come and give yourself to the work of the
Lord, to go out and begin to organize Christian work here
and there, near and far, and to do this and that and
other things for the Lord. The appeal is: the Lord needs
people, not necessarily to go out in the romance of
missionary service, but just where they are to be
committed right up to the hilt to the Lord's own honour
as bound up with His purpose in the Church and through
the Church, and upon whose hearts in the first place is
the Church. I am very emphatic and careful in saying that
- in the first place, the Church. If only that were
recognized there would be a very great deal of difference
in the situation today. God's instrument of
evangelization is the Church. God's means of realizing
His purpose is the Church. The Church has been ignored,
and the thing has been attempted on a wide scale without
the Church. The result is, for one thing, a terrible
failure to accomplish the purpose, and you have to say
that in a large degree the Church has failed. And what
about the type of Christian that exists? A vast number of
converts do not go on very far. You cannot leave them
alone. You have to hold them up, support them, and put
them on crutches all the time. And so you find that,
whenever people try to organize an evangelistic campaign,
they have to start with getting the Church right. Very
often the whole thing resolves itself into a mission to
Christians first.
Israel was not an end in itself. If Israel
failed, if God let Israel fail, or let Israel go, the
nations would be lost. But by means of Israel being kept
and strengthened and built up, and moved on, the nations
will be compelled to confess that God is in the midst of
them and God is with them. That is Moses' argument: God
is amongst you, and this is the kind of God He is. That
is revealed by a people living in the good of Divine
fullness.
Responsibility Born Of Love
What does it amount to? It just amounts to
this: coming into a place of the responsibility born of
love. Not busy responsibility, nor official
responsibility, but the responsibility born of love. It
is the responsibility which a mother feels for a child, a
parent for a child, and a parent's sense of
responsibility for a child is not a business
responsibility, nor an official responsibility, but a
heart responsibility. The heart is bound up with this.
Will you not agree with me that the most terrible and
tragic thing of which we can conceive is a parent without
a sense of responsibility for his or her children? And
here the relationship between Moses and Israel was the
responsibility born of love. Something had been wrought
deep down in the soul of Moses, so that he and the people
were one in life, and one in destiny. It was a great
love.
"Christ... loved the Church, and gave
Himself up for it" (Eph. 5:25). There is a
relationship there which is the deepest, most sacred of
all the relationships God has ever created:
"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also
loved the Church." Moses loved Israel; Christ loved
the Church. And if you want to see all that summed up in
few words, you have only to look at Hebrews 11 and read:
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." That is the
first thing about Moses - he refused. "CHOOSING rather
to share ill treatment with the people of God, than to
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." Refusing
all the honour, reputation, status, resources, and
choosing, definitely choosing, to be evil-entreated with
the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of
sin for a season. "Accounting the reproach of Christ
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." ...
"By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
the king: for he endured, as seeing Him Who is
invisible." Just make a sum of those words: He
refused, he chose, he accounted, he forsook, he endured.
There is a heart in something. It is a HEART that
is the ground of power with God. That is the kind of
servant that the Lord needs, concerning whom He can say:
'If Moses stood before Me... Moses My servant'.