Jude v 20, 21
2 Timothy 4: 7
1 Timothy 6: 20 (“deposit”)
Ephesians 4: 3
Revelation 3: 8 - 11
I thought, beloved brethren, to pursue the thought of what is kept. We have remarked on the desire divine Persons have to keep us in relation to their things. “Behold, he that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep”, Ps 121: 4. We have been occupied in the reading with the great sphere of practical salvation in which we can find safekeeping; where the Lord is supreme and where things are ordered for our preservation, our feeding, our encouragement and our growth, and how we can be part of that. We are seeking to help one another, to keep one another, to be concerned about one another.
These scriptures bring this matter down to an individual level. Jude exhorts us to keep ourselves in the love of God. Now this is an exercise for all of us. It is our responsibility. Jude puts it that way. He says, “ye, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God”. The note says to ‘be in that state’. We certainly have the responsibility, beloved, as individuals, to keep ourselves where we can obtain this wonderful help that comes from the divine realm. What is involved in the love of God? The whole of God’s purpose and pleasure centred in Christ. It is what God is: “keep yourselves in the love of God”. What God is is brought within our range in the Person of the Lord Jesus. It contains every thought of blessing and help that He has for the creature, the greatest thoughts of God. God has come out to man to secure man for Himself, to have him for His pleasure. Some of us were remarking in the morning reading that we are “become nigh by the blood of the Christ”, Eph 2: 13; not just brought nigh, but “become nigh“. God has put us in that position, we have “become nigh”. In that sense, you cannot slip away. But then there is the side of responsibility, and we are to keep ourselves in the love of God. Life is very busy and very full, but this exhortation still comes to us all, to keep ourselves in the love of God. Let our hearts resort to where Christ lives as we get opportunity, at the beginning of the day, the end of the day, or at night when we cannot sleep. Let us make time in the day to keep ourselves practically in the love of God. It is a wonderful antidote to everything that is here, the cares and burdens of life, the struggles that are often with us, circumstances that cause us pain and exercise. “Keep yourselves in the love of God”. Keep yourself in it! Do not get away from it! The younger son in Luke 15 got away from it. He got a long way away from it and we can, once we start going that way, get a long way away, but Jude says, “keep yourselves in the love of God”.
Our individual responsibility to keep things, to keep things pure, to keep things holy, to keep things alive among the people of God, stems from this, keeping ourselves in the love of God. That is where every impulse in the Christian’s life should come from, in the love of God. Enoch was a man who was in that love. He “walked with God“, Gen 5: 24. We can think of him as a man who kept himself in the love of God. For him to be translated made no difference to this, “he was not”. Every day in his spirit he had walked with God and enjoyed the presence of God. We have known men and women like that, and we see it often in an aged saint. We see that they have kept themselves in the love of God, and the enemy cannot rob them of that. He can rob them of their health, their mental abilities, but he cannot rob them of their experience of the love of God. I think it is very wonderful seeing an aged saint passing through physical weakness and pain, and seeing that God has preserved what really matters, and He gives them a sense of His love and of being kept in that love. I think we need to cultivate that, all of us. It will be our preservation if we keep ourselves there, everything will be seen from the divine perspective. This is not exactly something that is done for us. Of course, we have the Lord’s help and we have the Spirit’s help, but Jude here puts it firmly on our responsibility to keep ourselves in the love of God. If we deliberately take ourselves out of it we are prey to the enemy; if we keep ourselves in the love of God, we will be kept in the appreciation and enjoyment of it. One of the things greatly stressed in present ministry is that it is not enough to have the light of these things. We need the joy and experience of them and that comes by keeping ourselves in the love of God.
Paul wanted the saints to be kept in the love of God. He saw things coming in; he saw things breaking up. These men we have read of, John and Paul, saw things disintegrate. You might have thought the Lord in His goodness would have allowed them to see things in their lifetime going through in power and in freshness and vitality. No, these men saw things break up. John saw the break up in Revelation. Paul saw all in Asia turn away from him, 2 Tim 1: 15. But Paul had kept himself, John had kept himself, Peter had kept himself in the love of God, and that preserved them to the end. Nothing else would have done that. Paul finished up in prison, unable to visit or see the brethren. I love to think that the Lord gave Paul some sense that his letters were going to be of such use to the testimony. If Paul had not been in prison there are at least five epistles that we might not have had. How useful they have been! They have become part of the word of God. I do not want to be fanciful but I think the Lord gave Paul some sense that his work in prison and his writings were going to be of great benefit to the saints. But Paul kept himself in the love of God, in that restfulness. He said, “the Lord stood with me”, 2 Tim 4: 17. Now, that is the love of God; the Lord standing with you.
Our hearts resort to where Thou liv’st
In heav’n’s unclouded rays.
(Hymn 25)
That is what heaven is. When I was quite young, I remember a brother asking in the gospel, ‘What is heaven? Can anyone here describe what heaven is?’ He gave the answer, 'Heaven is where Jesus is'. It is because Jesus is there that it is heaven. The Person makes the place, not the other way round. Heaven is what it is because Jesus is there.
In 2 Timothy 4 Paul says he had “kept the faith”. I think that implies, beloved brethren, that he was conscious that he had kept the totality of what the Lord had committed to him. “The faith”, not part of it, not just the bit he particularly enjoyed. He kept the whole faith. He had delivered to the saints what the Lord had delivered to him. Part of it, in the second epistle to Timothy, is a very wonderful exhortation about how a believer was to live in a day of breakdown. “The faith”, as we are told elsewhere, “once delivered to the saints”, Jude v 3: Paul had kept it. I wonder whether any of us could say that we have “kept the faith”. It is something to aspire to, that we seek to maintain the wonderful truth that has been delivered to us in a full and balanced sense. In a sense the truth does not need to be balanced, but what I mean is that we keep the faith in a rounded way. Some of us like some bits rather than others. Christendom is full of persons who have grasped and make much of a certain part of the truth at the expense of other parts. I think that it is important for us to take on responsibility for the whole truth. Paul speaks of “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20: 27) that he had announced to the saints in Ephesus. He said, “for I have not shrunk from announcing to you all the counsel of God”. He says, ‘I have kept it’. The faith had not deteriorated in Paul’s hands. From the time it was given to him to the time he passed it on to Timothy and asked him to entrust it “to faithful men such as shall be competent to instruct others also” (2 Tim 2: 2), what Paul passed on was “the faith”.
I wonder whether the faith will suffer by being in my hands, that bits of it could be watered down, or bits of it forgotten? That is what happened in Christendom, and it happened very quickly. If you read the history of the early church in the years from 100 AD onwards, within a matter of decades there had been so much departure. Things had been given up. Hierarchies had grown up. Politics had come into the church. What Paul had laboured for had been undermined by the enemy. Powerful truths were carried through in the mercy of God, the golden line of the Spirit’s presence holding the truth. Paul did not have the ultimate custody of the faith. No, that has continued. It has continued in the Spirit and there has been that line of faithfulness. That golden thread never snapped. It never could because the Spirit is here. But publicly profession became undermined. Some got to land one way, some another, but the prow of the boat was stuck fast and the boat broke up, Acts 27: 41. Paul had that sense that he had kept the faith even in the midst of the breakdown. I would like to exhort us all that we set ourselves to keep the whole truth, “as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph 4: 21); and have desires in our hearts that it might not be damaged in our hands.
That is a real exercise to me. As you get older and see other generations coming on, your children and your grandchildren, you say, ‘What am I passing on?’. It has been passed on to me by my father and grandfathers, sometimes at great cost to themselves. There were men that faced the power of Trade Unionism, for instance, and those that faced the difficulties in the thirties in the depression, and those that had to stand for the truth in various conflicts. They had suffered for it; Paul had suffered for it; but he kept it and these dear men that we have known in our lifetime in that sense “kept the faith”’ and they passed it on intact. It is a question of how you and I are going to keep the faith, or whether we are just going to accept a slightly lower level so that we can get by a little more easily. It is what Christendom has done: they have adjusted their sails to the prevailing wind. You do not need to do that. If you are kept in the love of God you will be helped to keep the faith as it was “once delivered to the saints”. It is a wonderful thing that God never has to alter His gospel to circumstances. Times change, life gets more sophisticated, we live in an electronic age, but God has not had to change the gospel. He certainly has not changed “the faith once delivered to the saints”. I think we should be exercised that we should keep it, seek grace to keep it, as it has been delivered to us by faithful men, by men who were committed to it. How Paul must have sorrowed to see how all in Asia had turned away from him, men he trusted, men he loved, men who were his brethren in Christ, and yet they turned away from him.
John was a man too who had “kept the faith”. Writing his gospel, speaking of the love of Christ, speaking of how the Lord loved him - how he must have gone over that in Patmos, how he had been in the bosom and leaning on the breast of Jesus! That is where John learned to keep himself in the love of God! What an impression he gives in his epistles of God’s love! He kept himself “in the love of God” and, like Paul, he had “kept the faith”. I often sit in the prayer meeting and think there have been faithful sisters in the locality and maybe the Lord is honouring their faith, and that the testimony in the place where I am has come down through the exercises of sisters. There have been brothers there who sadly have not been faithful, but maybe those sisters “kept the faith”. Let us be committed to the faith that has been delivered to us!
And then in 1 Timothy 6 Paul pleads with Timothy to “keep the entrusted deposit”. I think this is something more personal. This is what God has given you, what God has given me; an impression of Christ; some particular understanding as we have come to love and to know the Lord Jesus, that has been put into our hearts, “the entrusted deposit”. Paul says in 2 Timothy that he knew that the Lord was able to keep that which he had entrusted to Him, chap 2: 12. The Lord can keep that, but what about you and me? God has put something of His work distinctively in each one of us. Not the same in all of us, no! It is going to take all the saints to display the glories that are seen in that blessed Man in the “vest of many colours”, Gen 37: 3. We do not all have all the colours, but we have a colour; we have an impression of Christ; we have an “entrusted deposit”. God has placed something in you and something in me which is a deposit that is worth keeping, and it has been entrusted, and there is a commensurate responsibility. If someone gives you something and asks you to keep it safe, you have a responsibility to do just that. Here, Paul with all his feelings, says, “O Timotheus”, a personal appeal to this young man, ‘There is something in you which is of God, and you are to keep it. It is precious. Do not be robbed of it! Do not lose the preciousness of it!’ In one sense, of course, the work of God in you and me cannot be destroyed. That is a great comfort. Far better if you have been entrusted with something from God to keep it and make it available to the saints, put it into circulation. It reminds me of the parable of the talents, Matt 25: 14-30. One man went and buried his but there are others who traded with theirs. “Keep the entrusted deposit”. This is something very particular to each one of us. The faith is the same for each one of us; it is “the faith once delivered to the saints”. I think “the entrusted deposit” is something that would be specific and special to each one of us, the glory of the work of God, star differing from star in glory, 1 Cor 15: 41. That glory, dear saint, is an “entrusted deposit”. God has placed something in you, in an earthen vessel. Paul says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels”, 2 Cor 4: 7. Thank God we can see it; but sometimes we do not. I am often challenged at a burial as to whether the work of God in the beloved saint being buried was actually appreciated by me while they were alive; whether I actually saw the treasure that was there. We ought to value the work of God in each one; it is very, very precious. If we keep ourselves in the love of God, I think we would begin to see the treasure that there is in one and another. You say, well, that is a very awkward brother or a very awkward sister, and they say things that are a bit alarming at times, and they offend people and so on. Paul says in that wonderful chapter in Philippians 2, “each esteeming the other as more excellent than themselves”, v 3. Mr Alfred Gardiner used to say that there is always some feature in your brother or your sister of the work of God that is more developed in them than it is in you and that is what you value, that is what you esteem. There is always some feature of the work of God that shines. Maybe there are lots of other features that preoccupy my mind and should not. Can I focus on God’s deposit in them and value that? What a wonderful thing it is, that there is something in every brother and sister. Could you identify that in every brother and sister in your locality, a feature of the work of God that makes you esteem them as more excellent than yourself? I do not think the enemy would have too much room for bringing in personal feeling if we were on that line. So, “keep the entrusted deposit”; be yourself; let it shine; and then make sure you see that deposit shining in others because there is something special in every blood-bought saint.
God loves variety. If we were all the same in natural things it would be unworkable, but in spiritual things there would not be the opportunity for God to temper together. Paul speaks about that: “But God has tempered the body together”, 1 Cor 12: 24. He has set us together; He has put different shining stars together; and that is what your local meeting is and that is what my local meeting is, a collection of stars. God has put something special in all and he wants that to shine. He has put something in the young people. Some of us older ones can be critical of the young brethren, and sometimes they deserve it as we did when we were young and did things that we should not have done. But if there is a work of God begun in a young brother or a young sister we need to esteem that too, and those of us who are older should foster that, and let it grow, and let it shine and bring that into circulation, because God loves that. There is something very special about devotion and committal in a young brother or a young sister. Some of us wasted those years, did not really get committed to the Lord‘s things until those years of youth with our youthful energy and our ability to learn, and to take in the ministry, had gone. God is able to “restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten”, Joel 2: 25. The exercise now is to keep the “entrusted deposit”, to value it in ourselves, to keep it in ourselves, and to value it in one another.
I go on to Ephesians 4, and again we are exhorted by Paul in one of his prison epistles, “using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”. You do not keep things safe and pure just by hoping. It needs diligence. We need to be diligent and to value the things that we have. We should be above the level and standards and customs of the world through which we are passing. We have something distinctive and we have to do with the very greatest things that have ever entered the heart of man, “things … which God has prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2: 9) and it needs diligence. And if you keep yourself in the love of God, you will want to be diligent in this area of keeping things in a pristine condition for divine Persons.
We have often been told we do not make the unity of the Spirit; it is there, to keep. I think this links a little with what was said in the reading about how we are together, how we are in our places. Are we “using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit”? When we review the history of the testimony, we see certain things that were done “using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit” would have done them in a way that better reflected “the uniting bond of peace”. So let us use “diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit”! Do not bring anything in among the saints, beloved brethren, that is going to make for disunity. Strive to use diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit! Strive for the things that unite the saints! Even the spirit of disunity can cause trouble among the people of God. Even if things are difficult among the people of God, we still need to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”. It is there; it is in the Spirit; and we need to keep that unity among the people of God, and especially any of us who have the privilege of serving the saints. We need to see that it is a very, very serious thing to speak or act in a way that gives the enemy scope to bring in what is divisive, even in thought let alone in action.
I just finish with Revelation and the word to Philadelphia. There are two things they had kept. They had kept the word of God, the word of the Lord; and he commends them also - and this is particularly what I had in mind - because they had “kept the word of my patience”. I would just like to finish with this: they had “kept the word of my patience”. The dispensation we are in, beloved brethren, the time we are in, is a time in which the Lord, indeed, God Himself, is showing patience. He is waiting over the world; provisionally it is reconciled to Himself, the work of Christ having been done. Think of how long God has waited over this world, the world that is going on to judgment. The appearance is of evil increasing, and these saints had been with the Lord in that: they had kept the word of His patience. We have to wait the Lord’s time. We wait for the rapture. I trust all of us would like that to happen today, but we are having to keep the word of His patience, and that is sometimes very trying. The note speaks about ‘endurance’. To keep going, even though we have the power of the Spirit and our High Priest being Christ on high; we are tested by the word of His patience. These beloved saints in Philadelphia had kept the word of His patience. They had been with the Lord. They had not been behind the Lord. They had not been in front of the Lord. They had kept the word of His patience. And the Lord adds this exhortation, “hold fast what thou hast”. Keep it safe! Do not let that deposit go! Do not let the great truths go! Do not let the saints’ enjoyment of the things of God go through lack of diligence and lack of committal! Do not let me bring in what is weakening - “that no one take thy crown”. Beloved brethren, we have to do with the very greatest things. I will say that again, the very greatest things. Sometimes through smallness and isolation and difficulties, we lose sight of that and we let the difficulties loom large, but there is this crown, and no one must take it! The Lord Himself is speaking here. It is not Paul or John. “And to the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: These things saith the holy, the true”, v 7. The Lord Himself is speaking and He is saying, let “no one take thy crown”! Do not let the very best be spoiled! How much ministry we have had on this! The crown is the top stone and that is what goes first. It is what Ephesus let go, their first love. How sad that was! They did not have a meeting and decide they were going to give up their first love. No! It gradually came in through lack of diligence and lack of keeping what had been committed to them. They left their first love. Gradually, gradually it went. And the Lord says to Philadelphia, “thou hast a little power”: do not let that crown go!
Let us keep these things, beloved brethren, the things we have gone over together, and there are many more in scripture. It is amazing how many things in scripture we are exhorted to keep. I could have read in the Old Testament about keeping the charge, about keeping the utensils in the house of God, about gate-keeping, but I just wanted to concentrate on these because they relate, I think, to the crown. They relate to the great things that God has given us to enjoy and we shall enjoy them at the full height of the love of God. Tomorrow morning we come, if the Lord leaves us here, to break bread; we enter into the service of God and we enter into it at its height. It does not depend on numbers; it does not depend on gift: it depends on affection for Christ; it depends on our having kept ourselves in the love of God. It is what is in the affections of the saints, “the entrusted deposit”, that has been kept. It is the word of His patience that has been kept; it is the faith that has been kept, operating in the soul, that will bring us, freighted with love’s treasures, ready to enter into the service of God. Is it not wonderful that we can lose sight of the conditions we are in and enter into that realm where everything is of God? We are brought into a large place where we can enjoy the very best that God can provide for men, and we enjoy it in its fulness. Why? Because we have Christ and the Spirit. “For through him we have both access by one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2: 18), and there are no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’; there is no quorum. Men have their quorums. You come together sometimes for a meeting and you cannot have the meeting because there is not a quorum. “For where two or three” - that is the quorum -”are gathered together” (Matt 18: 20), you can touch the best, and you can have the enjoyment of it at the height that God intended it to be. Beloved brethren, can I say simply, do not let us settle for less! May the Lord help us!
Los Angeles
17th November 2007