1 Samuel 1: 8-11, 25-28
Joshua 24: 15
1 Corinthians 16: 15, 16
WSC We are considering the subject of the structure, or the pillars, on which the pious believer’s household is built. For this reading I suggest that we look at the matter of committal and faithfulness. These are two features that in the world are generally lost, and the loss of such features may creep in among us - especially the matter of committal. The first scripture that we read, while it is an Old Testament scripture - and we use these Old Testament scriptures to advantage by the Spirit - shows that committal is of vital importance in the things of God; and for us first of all it is in relation to the Lord’s supper.
The scripture in Ecclesiastes goes on to consider the possibility that a person would be better off not to commit himself, than to commit himself and not fulfil his vow. That will need to be taken in its context; as we read, it says, “for he hath no pleasure in fools”. The Lord asks us to remember Him, “this do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22: 19); and that is central to the Christian life and experience. I know there are many churches that do not observe that, that do not think that it is needed; we are not speaking about them, but for the true believer, any hint from the Lord is enough to make him do it for the rest of his life because of love.
The second scripture is about this woman Hannah. She was concerned about the state in Israel - every man was doing what was right in his own eyes. Is that the state among us? That was then; the book of Ruth comes in at that time, and then we come on to Samuel. Here is a woman who realises that what is needed in Israel is a man, and she prays her heart out that the she might have a man child, because she knew that that was what was needed. Her husband did not catch on. I do not think it was that he did not love her, because later he says, ’You do whatever you think is right’; but he certainly was not leading! Hannah was a faithful woman.
Joshua makes his statement about his house; and then Paul exhorts us to look at the house of Stephanas that have devoted themselves to the saints for service. Look at that house and model yourselves after it, “I beseech you, brethren, … that ye should also be subject to such”. I think that there are households like that that can be modelled after; they can be models for us as devoting themselves to service, a faithful household. We read of the house of Stephanas in the first chapter as well, a faithful household.
I think first of all we have to come to this matter of committal. Will you commit yourself or do you want to keep things open and keep your options open between one thing and another? We call people like that ’fence-sitters‘. The Lord takes not pleasure in that kind of a person. He wants you to commit yourself. That is what we need today, committed persons, committed young people, young brothers and sisters, those who commit themselves.
APD In relation to your earlier remark, if a Nazarite forfeited his vow (Num 6: 9-12), he could reconsecrate himself. We may think we will perhaps fail, but provision is made for us to adjust ourselves in relation to what is right and reconsecrate ourselves.
WSC That is right. The Nazarite is an excellent suggestion because there was no requirement that a person be a Nazarite; there was no law that said everyone must become a Nazarite. It was a voluntary thing; it was out of his appreciation of God and His things that the Nazarite would commit himself. It was not an easy thing; it was difficult. There is a lot in the law, and it is good to read it and think about it. There are circumstances or things that may happen that will cause him to forfeit his vow, but God has made provision for him to begin again. The scripture does not indicate that he would not start over; he would start over again.
APD It is an encouragement to us that if we say maybe I will not commit myself because I might fail, provision is made for us so that we can reconsecrate ourselves.
WSC That is good.
JAH Proverbs says “Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be well-ordered”, chap 4: 26. There is also a footnote in chapter 2 that the pathways are not always straight and easy, they are sometimes circuitous and difficult, and so there needs to be a committal in the pathway, no matter where it is, verse 9, footnote ‘i’.
WSC I think that raises an important matter - that we do not commit ourselves exactly to the brethren: we commit ourselves first to the Lord; then wherever the path leads us we can stay the course. If we are committed to the Lord, no matter what happens locally or universally we are committed to the Lord. He should be our first love.
JAH That is interesting because in Proverbs 2 it says, “Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgment and equity: every good path”. That is, in following the Lord we will find that. The footnote says, ”It is properly a ‘path going round,’ and hence used for the ‘entrenchment’ of a war camp, as ‘wagon-defence’”. That is, it is not always an easy path; there is conflict sometimes.
WSC That is true. There is conflict, and difficulty, we may have problems that are not our own. The Lord leads us through them, but if the Lord is the centre of our committal, if we have vowed to Him, then we will be maintained personally as well as in our household.
GDR The Lord speaks of the danger of lukewarmness, “I would thou wert cold or hot”, Rev 3: 16. Revelation brings it in as to an assembly where there was a lack of true affection for Christ. They seemed to go along in a lackadaisical kind of way.
WSC That is very good, because we live in Laodicean days. Laodicea is here and the Lord is looking for committed persons, persons who have taken a vow. I think we are heading down the wrong path with casualness. I believe that, and the young people will probably not appreciate this comment, but to be casual about these things is lukewarmness. The whole position will be destroyed, although of course the Lord is able to maintain what He will. To be casual, and not hallowing our meetings as we come together, such as this meeting and, especially the Lord’s supper, is lukewarmness, which is the spirit of Laodicea. It must be hallowed in your mind; this must be special. We have a hymn and a prayer which sets this out in a formal way.
DH It was not a question of works - the work of our hands. As to God it says, “fear God”, Eccl 5: 7. If we do not take heed to the very thing we are speaking about, then what follows that is defilement.
WSC The tendency around us in the world is casualness. You see it in every facet of life, but God wants committed persons.
JB Could you say some more as to the Lord’s supper? We commit ourselves to Him, but we are also committed to His death. That is the termination of everything that is not in keeping with Him.
WSC That is what, in my mind, is the vow of all vows - the Lord’s supper. When you take the Lord’s supper you make a vow to Him. We can get loose and casual and forget what we vowed, but scripture says, ’Do not fail to pay that vow’. That would cause me to always be at the Lord’s supper - obviously there are reasons when we cannot be, but I should be there.
SWD Consecration is what we have in the law of the Nazarite, which is the opposite to casualness, and it is followed at the end of that chapter with a blessing, Num 6: 24-27. It is seeing blessedness in Him.
WSC That is good, because the vow of the Nazarite was for God and there was no law that a person had to vow that vow; he took it voluntarily, he took it out of his love for God. What else would he do it for? It took seven days, and yet you come to the book of Jeremiah and there was a family who generation after generation had honoured their forefather’s committal, which was basically the vow of the Nazarite, Jer 35: 2-18. I think it is occurring today, and we are thankful to see generations coming on and following that. We need to be encouraged in it.
HJG The Lord is there to help us: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments…”, Rev 3: 18. He is the Provider for that.
WSC That is right; He is faithful. The scripture in Deuteronomy 7: 9 says, “And thou shalt know that Jehovah thy God, he is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and mercy to a thousand generations with them that love him and keep his commandments”. I think a generation is generally thought to be twenty years; that works out at about two thousand years. What He is meaning is that it is forever; God keeps His covenants forever. The Lord is the faithful "Repairer of the breaches", Isa. 58: 12.
KAK Does it help to see what the Lord says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments”, John 14: 15. We began with the pillar of the household being love; will our love for the Lord Jesus motivate us to keep the Supper?
WSC My exercise is that this kind of faithfulness, the same level of faithfulness (to some extent) comes out in our households. We know that in our marriages we made vows, and a vow that is taken in marriage should be honoured. It is no different: it is a vow, and you should pay that vow.
JB Would you link spiritual instinct with the vow? When they were sitting by the rivers of Babylon they were asked to sing a song, but they said, ’we cannot do it because we are on foreign soil’, but then they never lost sight of Jerusalem their chief joy, “If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to my palate”, Ps 137: 6. You were saying earlier, as to Ecclesiastes, that you may as well not vow as vow and not pay. “If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy”. If we keep the greatness of Christ and the assembly before us, our spiritual instincts will help us in discernment, what to do and what not to do involving the path of separation.
WSC It certainly does. That is an interesting Scripture. For the believer there should be those instincts, the unction that John speaks about. You do not need anyone to tell you not do this or that; if you have the Spirit, the Spirit will be saying to you, ’Are you really going to do this?’. That is a very simple explanation, but I think it is correct.
JB When we come to the meetings we learn by observation; we see and hear what the brethren do. The young people should follow what they learn to be rightly established.
WSC That is why I read the last scripture because here is the house of Stephanas: look at it, study it, model after it because they had devoted themselves to service. You could have easily looked at Aquilla and Priscilla as well; they staked their neck. These are households of value, and well worth modelling after.
CWW As to the importance of being attracted to Christ; I was thinking of where it says, “Jesus therefore said to the twelve, Will ye also go away? Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal”, John 6: 67, 68. We can seek to make all kinds of commitments, but unless we have that personal attraction to Christ guiding us, it is not going to amount to much.
WSC This has happened in my own experience; persons were committed to the brethren and then something went wrong; there were personal feelings, something happened in a locality, whatever it was, and then they just gave up because they were not committed to anything stable. They were not committed to the One they should have been committed to, the Lord; He is the One who is going through.
CWW In order to commit to Him we have to know Him. I do not mean just knowing Him as our Saviour, but actually spend time with Him on a regular basis and get to know who He is and His pathway here, and what He has done and what He is doing.
WSC For young people it may be difficult because we are naturally so much governed by what is physical that we think that things have to happen physically to be believable, whereas faith is spiritual. One of the important things about the Nazarite was that he had to keep at it, day after day. Every morning when he woke up he would remember that he had taken the Nazarite’s vow, and every night when he went to bed he would remember that for the whole period of time that he was consecrating himself, because it was to God. Israel may have been in a terrible state at the same time; all kinds of troubles might be going on, but he was committed to God. He took that vow. I want to encourage the young people; it may not seem like much when you may say, ’I will try doing devotions every day, I am going to get up a little earlier each day’. That is a most wonderful thing in the Lord’s eyes that you could do. Maybe you do not follow through with it too well or you forget, or some morning you are too tired, and so on, but the Lord is looking at that desire to be committed and He is pleased with that. You will find that over time you draw closer and closer to Him and you will understand what He desires.
SWD Mr Darby says, ’Absolute consecration to Jesus is the strongest bond between human hearts’, Synopsis, Matthew to John p402.
WSC It is the most wonderful thing to have a solid and firm link with Him. Then, no matter what happens when the winds blow and the waves come, and there are some times when it seems that the Lord is sleeping, you still have that comfort to know that He controls the winds and the waves. ”Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”, Mark 4: 41.
PH As to what has been said about keeping at it, the example is borne out in Hannah. She brings a coat every year; she kept at it and then the results of her committal comes forward in that God gave her more children, 1 Sam 2: 19, 21.
WSC Hannah is a wonderful example. When the tabernacle system was set up there was no stool prescribed, no seat prescribed in the tabernacle; the priests stood to do their service. But, here was an old man failing in the priesthood, failing in his own family, not controlling his own family. He sees her praying and he cannot even recognise prayer; he thought she was drunk. But Hannah kept at it and at it. That is faithfulness, and after Samuel is born she brings a little coat every year for him. That brings up an interesting question about our young people. She brought a coat that fitted him every year because she knew how much he would have grown. It is a wonderful thing to see how a mother reacted; she lent him to Jehovah. She did not want him for the world, she did not want him for the university, she did not want him for corporate management and ascendancy in the corporate world and so on; what she wanted was a man child for Israel and she got him.
JAH She made the coat to fit him, which was a lot smaller than an adult coat, but she understood his growth as well.
WSC Elisha did that; he got small enough to fit on that boy, 2 Kings 4: 34.
JAH His eyes on his eyes and mouth on his mouth.
WSC He would not fit otherwise. An adult and a child would not fit, his hands on his hands, but he made himself small and we need to get close to our young people.
JAH There is no one stands so high as he who stoops to help a child.
WSC I remember a brother here said to me that you have to be down on your knees to pray. That is an excellent suggestion; you might not always be down on your knees physically but the principle is there.
JRB That word, “lent” - “I have lent him to Jehovah” - is very meaningful because it means that she was not abdicating her responsibility. She was going to see the thing through.
WSC That is very good. In one sense our children are lent to us by God. But she did not have any great aspirations for him in this world; she wanted him for Jehovah. So she brings him with the bullock to the priest and says, “I have lent him to Jehovah”. He stays there with Eli. Can you imagine leaving your child there? And the effect is that the boy worshipped. It says, “And he worshipped Jehovah there”.
GDR There is something that precedes all this, and I am sure you know something about it personally - she wept. I wonder about that feeling side, caring for what is due to the Lord. I know you have our dear young people on your heart and we all do, but as to this matter of whether the fruit from the spiritual exercise is going to be realised, we have to be down on our knees in prayer, and weeping is involved in that.
WSC We know the history of Hannah. We know how that household worked; it was rather a dysfunctional household, but Hannah had real feelings. It was not an intellectual thing; she did not say that she knew by the books as Daniel did. Hers were real solid feelings about what God wanted, and maybe those of us that are older need a word about that; about really going to the Lord for our young people and asking him to answer any turn that they make toward Him. The Lord is faithful and He will do it.
RG I was thinking of Timothy as we were speaking of Samuel as a boy. Timothy came along the lines of his grandmother and his mother; obviously these were women who cared about the Lord’s interests and he was the product of that despite the fact that his father was a Greek. He obviously had made progress and that laid the basis for Paul to lay hold of him when he was needed in the service.
WSC Timothy is called to act as “a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Tim 2: 3), and he is also called “man of God”, 1 Tim 6: 11. I think Timothy is a wonderful example and a very great challenge to us because he knew what the great apostle was thinking, he understood his mind; but it was not just that: Timothy knew the Lord. The apostle said, “For I have no one like-minded”, Phil 2: 20. He was a great example, and yet he was a young man.
RG And he had "a good testimony of the brethren", Acts 16: 2.
WSC You draw attention to the history; his mother and his grandmother are both in line with Hannah, both faithful women that influenced his life. He was apparently amenable to it.
MJK I was thinking of what you brought out as to the children, that it starts in the parents. I was thinking of Moses; we might say that he had been committed as it were to the Person of Christ by his mother, but then he chose: “Choosing rather to suffer affliction along with the people of God”, Heb 11: 25. With Samuel it was the exercise of his mother; she actually committed him to the Nazarite vow prior to him committing himself, but with Moses it was his own choice.
WSC I feel very much as you do on that subject, that it is vitally important that the parents are sure, as sure as you can be, that their child is saved - has come under the shelter of the blood. You may not be able to tell for sure that they have the Spirit but that, too, would be very important, depending on the age of the child of course. I think that if we are not sure of these things the child is in danger, our household is in danger. That should be one of the first things when it comes to children, that they know the Lord.
MJK I think it was Mr Coates that said that the children will take on that which is influenced by the instructors, who are the parents, vol 26 p120.
WSC That is good. It should be the parents. That is their job. That is the thing we are speaking about; the head of the house, that is his job. Generally it is the mother who spends the most time with them, but she would be guided by his headship.
JAH What about grandparents; does a righteous man consider his children’s children? “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children”, Prov 13: 22.
WSC Psalm 145: 4 says, “One generation shall laud thy works to another”. I think grandparents do have a great responsibility. There are some things that grandparents should not get involved with; they have to regard the responsibility of the parents, but I do think that grandparents are very important.
SWD When you read Hannah’s prayer, it is instructive the way that she addresses God? She says, “O Jehovah of hosts”. What uprising she had in her knowledge of God.
WSC That is beautiful, the way she speaks to God, “Jehovah of hosts”; she is referring to God’s people. Not too long before this Balaam had prophesied of Israel, “How goodly are thy tents, Jacob, and thy tabernacles, Israel!”, Num 24: 5. He saw what God saw. Someone said that if he had seen inside the tents it would have been a completely different story, but he saw God’s view of it. I think that is the view that Hannah had, that same view of God’s people.
APD Would you say something about committal to the fellowship? We have spoken of our committal to the Lord, but it seems to me that there is a great need currently to be committed to the principles of the fellowship.
WSC That is the next step in a sense. It is called in Corinthians, “the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”, 1 Cor 1: 9. That is the fellowship and we need to be committed to that.
APD Chapter 10 is committal to the fellowship of His death. I think you also get the matter of the fellowship of the Spirit (Phil 2: 1), but these are wonderful things and are protective and we need to be concerned to be faithful to them.
WSC That is the truth. We need to know what the fellowship involves. I think it is a very important thing that we understand that we are not meeting as a sect, or as an organised church, but we are meeting in the light and in view of the assembly of God. We must keep that in our mind. It should just be a principle with us.
APD It involves a partnership. What you do involves me, and what I do involves you. Is that right?
WSC Exactly, and it is the same way in a household. There is partnership there; there is husband and wife, that is what our main enquiry is about. These things underlie that; they are foundational to that, our committal to the Lord, to the fellowship. This committal underlies our committal to the Lord, to our wives and then to our brethren and so on.
DJK Does the call precede the vow, “called us with a holy calling”, 2 Tim 1: 9? It seems to link with the fact that there is the vow taken, but the call would precede that. Persons should commit themselves in every respect.
WSC I think that is the appreciation of our place before God; we come to the point where we realise that we have been called: “these also he has called; and whom he has called, these also he has justified; but whom he has justified, these also he has glorified”, Rom 8: 30. Glorification involves the gift of the Spirit. That is all involved in this; it underlies the whole thing.
NSB It is very interesting to me to notice how the Spirit seems to be emphasising this in various meetings. We have the commandment to rehearse from generation to generation. Paul says, “to write the same things to you, to me is not irksome, and for you safe”, Phil 3: 1. The fact that the Spirit is emphasising that currently seems to me to be indicative of two things: one, that we may have lapsed, and two, that in divine grace we are being recalled to first principles.
WSC The Lord is emphasising that more lately and by the Spirit. The need then is for the head of the household to give direction. That is where it begins, in the household, the head setting the course of the ship, on that compass heading, and saying that this is the way that this house will be set. That is what we get in Joshua. He says, ’All these things have happened and everybody has all kinds of ideas’; there was a lot of weakness in the latter days of Joshua’s time. But he says, “as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”. I think that is beautiful! If each head of the house could say that, “as for me and my house”; ’this is what we are going to do’.
JB Taking the vow would involve accepting the principles that governed the fellowship, and that should produce consistency, should it not?
WSC Yes. We have the rules right here in this Book and we have the Spirit, and we do not need anything else.
JB If we are under the guidance of the Spirit, “the Spirit of truth, he shall guide you into all the truth” (John 16: 13), we all will arrive at the same thing.
WSC That is why we began with a scripture about the vow. I think if a person is so much in love with the Lord and he commits himself to the Lord, then he will want to do everything - not only what the Lord commands us, “this do in remembrance of me” - but be alert to every desire of His heart. It says of David, “And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me to drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem”, 2 Sam 23: 15. Immediately three men went and got it. That is the kind of people we want to be, men and women - all the Lord needs to do is to indicate His desire and I am at it. They went at the risk of their own lives.
JAH If we do pursue enquiry about these things, from time to time, we should be very dependent on the Spirit. It is not enough to have a series of meetings instead of a set of rules. We need to work in a very supportive way that gets households wanting to understand first principles.
WSC I think so; we want the principles of it; and the affection of it. That will cause us to move in the right direction and be true to the fellowship.
DH Mr Raven taught that fellowship is a bond of association which in its very nature separates those in it from the course and current of things around them, vol 1 p64. He said that ’There will be no such thing as fellowship in the world to come when Christ comes out and has His rights, but it is a contrary scene and there are those who are held together by fidelity to the Lord’, vol 15 p446.
WSC That has been the problem with Christianity ever since the beginning, and people could not realise that we are outside the fold. They wanted a fold, a sheepfold; that would separate the flock outwardly. Mere profession might even imagine that we would not even need to have love for the Lord; we would not need to know anything of Him. But Christianity is not the fold. You are left with your own link with the Centre. I think that is something that also needs to be said, that today is the day of personal faithfulness. You do not answer to me for your faithfulness, you are faithful to the Lord on your own; I am faithful to the Lord on my own. Of course, we involve each other because of the fellowship.
HJG Joshua tells us what committal is. He did not say, ‘I am not going to serve the gods on the other side of the river and the gods of Egypt’; he did not say, ‘I am not going to do that’; he said, “as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah”. He is holding fast to the covenant relationship.
WSC The positive line is what I would like to get across in this meeting, that when it comes to faithfulness, that is the point. We focus on Him upon whom we should focus and nothing else. We often look at brethren; we say look at this one or that one, look at this locality, look at that: let us focus on Him.
AGM I was going to refer to 2 Timothy, a time when things are broken, especially in Ephesus. Paul writes to Timothy and says, “but thou”, emphasis is on “thou”, but what he says is, “But thou hast been thoroughly acquainted with my teaching ...”, 2 Tim 3: 10. Paul’s teaching refers to a Man in heaven, and everything flows out from that.
WSC We have to get thoroughly acquainted with Paul’s teaching then. Thankfully we have it, and we can be thoroughly acquainted with it as Timothy was. That is the word - “but thou” - and that is for us today, each one of us.
DAH In regard to that, could you speak about the house of Stephanas because it must have been a very difficult position that they were in? How did they act in that difficult situation?
WSC They were a faithful house. It says, “I baptised also the house of Stephanas”, 1 Cor 1: 16. There was a history there with Paul in regard of that house. It does not say he baptised Stephanas, it says, “the house of Stephanas”. I think that is a very interesting thing; this house was a house committed to the saints for service. They were not among the kings in Corinth. Corinth had some prominent brothers who were running things. We used to think that was great to have brothers running things. If you have a brother setting down all the laws it is easy because all you need to know is his law. But this was linked with Paul in the Spirit and wanting to follow the work of Paul. This is very much like Hannah, because Corinth was a difficult place to be in, and yet it was “the assembly of God which is in Corinth”, 1 Cor 1: 2. There were no other Christian churches there. I do not know what else we can say about it, but this house is marked out as to how they were and what they were.
DAH The footnote is interesting; they devoted themselves, even in spite of the difficult conditions as you say; they obviously still saw that and were prepared to devote themselves in service even with very difficult things going on.
WSC It requires a lot of grace, a lot of forgiveness, to go on in a situation like that. Yet that was their aim and the apostle could see that and he could speak about it. He speaks about others as well, “The Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, for he has often refreshed me, and hast not been ashamed of my chain”, 2 Tim 1: 16. He himself was probably put into prison, perhaps killed, martyred over it; but the apostle asked for the Lord’s blessing on his house.
RG I would like to refer to the footnote - that this is a parenthesis. It is the Spirit’s comment, “they have devoted themselves to the saints for service” - the note says they had ‘appointed themselves ... given themselves up‘. He introduces that by the Spirit, calling attention to that household.
WSC Yes, that gives an additional insight to the matter.
GWF I was thinking about "the unity of the Spirit" (Eph 4: 3) in that it exists but it is up to us to keep it. Does that link with your thought on committal?
WSC That is very good. That is something that we are given to keep. It exists, the unity of the Spirit is there, the Spirit is One. He is not many spirits, and yet it is our job to measure up to it, to be actually actively pursuing that, the unity of the Spirit. That involves this matter of fellowship which has been raised, that our fellowship is the fellowship of Jesus Christ, our Lord. That is our fellowship, not Plymouth brethren, not something else.
JAH The tabernacle had connecting bars that helped hold it together, and that is like this parenthesis about the house of Stephanas. God says, ’You devoted yourselves while the kings were arguing and the others were upsetting things’; here comes a family caring for the brethren. They were there as the supply system.
WSC They were doing it within the structure of the fellowship.
StWD After the parenthesis it says, “that ye should also be subject to such”. That word subject is very important for us in our households. It is not something that just happens; we have to work at it; we have to work towards that and subject ourselves to it.
WSC Yes, if you had lived in Corinth, the thing you would have wanted to do is to help the house of Stephanas; you would have wanted to be supportive of them. It is not a special friendship, but you would want to further anything that was positive and that is what we need to do in our localities.
GDR Timothy was exhorted to “keep the entrusted deposit”, 1 Tim 6: 20. That is a vital thing. Maybe persons get a touch, and you are thankful for the touch, but it is a question of keeping, it involves true exercise of soul.
WSC The idea of keeping the unity of the Spirit, how that is worked out, is our problem generally. I have one opinion, you have another opinion, and then, where do we go from here? What is the unity of the Spirit? Where is the Lord and where is the Spirit in a matter? We tend to hold to ’I am a good soldier for Jesus Christ and I am going to drive this point home‘. That is not what we need.
DH So, "the unity of the faith" (Eph 4: 13) goes along with "the unity of the Spirit".
WSC Yes it does. “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith”, Eph 4: 3-4.
KAK Lydia says, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord” (Acts 16: 15), that is the starting point; and the next step is “come into my house and abide there”. The invitation is for Paul and his ministry and everything he stood for to be taken into that household. Faithfulness is first to the Lord, and then the next step is to bring Paul’s ministry into the household circumstance.
WSC When Paul and Silas were let out of that prison after the jailor’s household had been blessed, where did they go? Back to Lydia’s house; it was a sanctuary for them. That is a wonderful thing to think of, as we have often traced Paul’s travels; that is really the first entrance of the gospel into Europe and into the western world.
KAK In the believer’s household, the evidence of faithfulness to the Lord is the acceptance of the totality of Paul’s ministry?
WSC Exactly, we cannot emphasise that enough. We have the scriptures. If they are made to look old, if Paul does not speak about things in a current style, that does not make it wrong. Scripture is the truth. This is what you go by.
DH Is it noticeable in that way that Paul sent Timothy into Corinth, “who shall put you in mind of my ways as they are in Christ, according as I teach everywhere in every assembly”, 1 Cor 4: 17.
WSC Timothy was to do that. The whole thought of service was that Timothy was commissioned by the apostle to do certain things and to say certain things. When a young person is working with older persons, he should be respectful, but he should not say, ‘I cannot say anything because persons here are older than me’. Timothy was not to do that; he was to show himself approved, 1 Tim 2: 15.
DH In the Acts Paul says, “these hands have ministered to my wants, and to those who were with me”, Acts 20: 34. Helping older brethren get into the meeting would be Paul’s ways as they are in Christ, showing affection to older brethren.
JRB I have been thinking of this matter of faithfulness. This is the principle on which things have been handed down to me. Naboth appreciated that his vineyard had come down to him; he had not had to enter into that conflict himself; but he became a martyr because of holding it in faithfulness, 1 Kings 20: 3, 13. I was thinking of the principle by which things have come down to us and the principle by which things are to be continued: “these entrust to faithful men”, 2 Tim 2: 2. Am I numbered among them? Or, when issues come up, do I just let things slide by? Am I faithful?
WSC Very good; I think that is a very good help. There are new households which will be set up - will they be faithful? Will they carry on the torch? Will they carry on the testimony of the Lord? The Lord will have His testimony, whether we are there or not, and that is an impressive thing to consider, but what about me: do I want my household to be a bulwark in the local assembly? A house that is devoted to the saints for service? A house that is committed to praying for what is needed in my locality? Do I want that? Do I want the Lord’s approbation in that? Or am I going to hear Him say, ’You are not a faithful servant’? I do not think we understand enough the Lord’s feelings and what it might be to have Him disappointed in you’. When we stand at the judgment seat and we look back, with Him, we will stand alongside the Lord then, and He will show us all the way back, and He will say, ’This was your house, and that was not my mind, it was not what I wanted’. I think in a way that will be a wonderful time because at that moment we will see everything the way He wanted it. We will understand fully about that time that I spoke roughly to that brother or sister, and the way that I thought about that person, the way I handled certain matters, and the way I guided my household. What about all the time I spent on entertainment? - it was not a big deal to do that. Is that the way the Lord wants you to conduct your house? I appreciate you bringing us back to that because that is what faithfulness is. Faithfulness involves the approbation of the Lord Jesus. What a moment that will be to be with Him and to hear Him say, "Well done, good and faithful servant", Matt 25: 23 AV. ’You did well on this, you did well on that’; that is what He may say.
JRB I remember Mr John W Devenish snr speaking in Vancouver about the judgment seat of Christ, looking back with Him on all the way; he said, who would have it otherwise? We welcome that! To have His judgment about everything that has entered into our history. I look forward to it.
WSC The judgment seat of Christ is not the great white throne. The great white throne is the judgment of the unsaved, but I think the judgement seat of Christ is a wonderful thing to contemplate.
RG We will be in bodies of glory.
WSC Yes, we will.
KDD As to Lydia, “If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there”; that is the committal and helping of one another. You do not leave, you abide there!
WSC That is good. We want Paul to abide in our house, we want him to stay there and that can be so today; Paul can be invited into our house to stay.
Calgary
2nd July 2011