Calum McKay
Philippians 1: 6; 4: 11, 12; 1: 12-14
An extract was printed in a monthly magazine recently from Mr Raven’s ministry (vol 13 p113), in which he spoke of our circumstances and how we are to be in our circumstances in our daily lives and our pathways down here. It set me thinking about them and looking into it a little bit, and one thing that strikes me is that it is a great comfort for the believer to know that his circumstances are ordered of God. God has ordered all our circumstances with a view to our greatest possible gain and spiritual development. It takes faith to lay hold of that. The unbeliever does not have that at all. He has no faith. He has no link with God and therefore he is exposed to all the ups and downs of this life. When something displeasing happens to him, he perhaps bemoans his bad luck or whatever he might say. There is no ordering in it, there is no purpose in it, but the portion of the believer by faith has a great comfort and a great stay, I am sure, in seeing that his circumstances are ordered of God. I remember a brother saying that he did not suppose there was any of us that would not like in some way to have some of our circumstances changed: perhaps as regards family life, or work life, or in relation to our local assembly, or whatever it may be, he did not think there would be anyone who had everything entirely pleasing to them. God works with us in that way; He puts us through experiences in view of what is pleasing to Himself.
So I read of Paul. We get an insight in Paul; we get a good bit of detail as to his experiences and his exercises and his feelings too, in relation to all that he passed through, and he is really an example for us. He speaks of himself as a model, Phil 3: 17. So I started with God, “who has begun in you a good work will complete it unto Jesus Christ’s day”. We have the knowledge of that, that God has worked. He has begun a work sovereignly, in new birth, in each one of us and we are so thankful for that and we know that He is going to complete it. I do not think God begins any matter at all without taking it to completion. I do not think that could be so, but God has in view the completion of the work in each one of us. Now it is a question, I suppose, of how we are to be in our circumstances. Paul speaks, in chapter 4, about privation in the circumstances in which he was. He speaks of knowing, “I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound ... both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer privation”. I do not suppose there would be any of us that would know anything like what Paul experienced as regards physical privation. He goes over it in the second epistle to the Corinthians, seeking, you might say , to win their confidence and win their ear. He, almost in spite of himself, goes over some of his physical privation. He says, in 2 Corinthians 11, “in labours exceedingly abundant, in stripes to excess, in prisons exceedingly abundant, in deaths oft. From the Jews five times have I received forty stripes, save one. Thrice have I been scourged, once I have been stoned, three times I have suffered shipwreck, a night and day I passed in the deep: in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own race, in perils from the nations, in perils from the city, in perils in the desert, in perils on the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labour and toil, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness”, v 23-27. What a list that is! At one time he speaks of his “despair even of living”, 2 Cor 1: 8. You can see how much he suffered as he fulfilled the will of God for him, as he took on the divine commission for him and what it involved for him. I think he is an example in the way that he is, in his circumstances. He had learnt in those circumstances in which he was to be satisfied in himself. I do not think he tried to change his circumstances. He had resources in divine Persons that allowed him to be entirely at peace and restful in his circumstances. Mr James Taylor speaks from his own experience about how he had long since given up trying to order his own circumstances and trying to order his own affairs. It was his own experience, and when somebody speaks from their own experience it adds particular weight because it is not just doctrine, right and good as that is, but when someone speaks from something they have actually experienced it carries its own weight. He found that God was able to order his circumstances and order his affairs far better than he could ever do, so he had long since given up trying. He says, that we should commit everything to God in all our circumstances, and that is a wonderful thing. At the same time he said he had no anxiety at all as to his circumstances, vol 1 p153-154. It is a wonderful thing, and I think that is available to us. We can do that and have no anxiety at all in relation to our circumstances. It is very testing, as I know what it is in my own experience to get anxious as to things, but he proved that. So Paul goes over this list. He goes over all these, you might say, outward difficulties in his circumstances but then he says at the end of the list, “Besides those things that are without”, that was the external or physical things, “the crowd of cares pressing on me daily, the burden of all the assemblies”, 2 Cor 11: 28. He obviously felt responsibility. Times are always critical, but the time of which he was writing was particularly critical for the establishing of local assemblies and the furtherance of the glad tidings. You might say it would have been frustrating for him to be writing here from the prison. He was not able to be with the brethren. He was not able to go out and preach. He was in restricted circumstances, and you might have thought that would have been a very testing matter for him, but God gave him to know that the circumstances in which he was “turned out rather to the furtherance of the glad tidings”. They had not been for the hindrance of things at all. God had used the circumstances in which he was rather for the furtherance of the glad tidings, “so that my bonds have become manifest as being in Christ in all the praetorium and to all others; and that the most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord through my bonds, dare more abundantly to speak the word of God fearlessly”. He was given to see that, in the circumstances in which he was, God was using them for “the furtherance of the glad tidings”. I think it is a fine thing for us to have the faith of it, and to come to some realisation that God is using the circumstances in which we are for our benefit. God is our Father. He has our best interests at heart and He would use all these things for our benefit.
God would use them for Himself, too. There is a reference in the Song of Songs where it says -
Awake, north wind, and come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden, that the spices
thereof may flow forth.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat its precious fruits.
chap 4: 16.
God works in that way; the north wind speaking of those trying circumstances and the south wind speaking of the pleasing circumstances in which we are. Scripture says that, “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to purpose” (Rom 8: 28) - both the trying circumstances and the pleasing ones. God uses them all for our benefit and for His own pleasure. We have known what it is when we have trying circumstances to resort more to prayer and feel more dependant, and there is no doubt that God gets something from that. Then perhaps we have been guilty of being negligent in not turning to God in thanksgiving when circumstances have been more pleasing and favourable in God’s ordering. And so it says -
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat its precious fruits.
There is something for the divine pleasure in what we pass through. Well, I just wondered if it might be a comfort to us, and a stay to us, to see that our circumstances are not haphazard; they are not according to chance. God is ordering them, and He has placed us in the very circumstances which are best for our blessing, best for our spiritual prosperity.
He is going to complete that work. He who has begun in you a good work is going to complete it, but not only is He going to complete it, but complete it unto Jesus Christ’s day. That is the day of Jesus Christ. That is the millennium. That is the time when we will reign. It has been pointed out in ministry as to Joseph, that he is a figure of the believer in the way that his experiences in prison circumstances qualified him for the reigning time, CAC vol 1 p229. I understand he was seventeen when the testing came, and he was sold by his brethren; a type of the Lord Jesus of course, and he spent many years in prison. It says Jehovah was with him in the prison. Then, at the age of thirty, thirteen years later, he was finally brought to stand before Pharaoh and he is exalted and given a place of administration. Those years he spent in prison were spent in difficult conditions, in adverse conditions, and the time for us is adverse. In Matthew’s gospel the Lord was up the mountain, the disciples were in the boat and “the wind was contrary,”, Matt 14: 24. That is a picture of the present day. The scene is adverse, the conditions are adverse, constantly adverse, but God is using them in view of that day, Jesus Christ’s day, the day when the saints will reign with Christ. What we experience here, what we prove here, and the wisdom and the knowledge of God that is acquired here, God will use, and the saints will be qualified and made fit for that glorious position of reigning with Christ in that day. I just thought it might be a comfort and a stay to see that our circumstances are ordered of God. May we be encouraged for His Name’s sake.
Glasgow
21st February 2012