Opening Message at the Easter Conference
Reading: Genesis 43:1-34; Genesis 44:1-12.
In connection with the above chapters, will
you turn to the Letter to the Ephesians 2:11-13, and 17-18;
Matthew 26:39a.
There is a word on one's heart in connection
with proximity to Christ. It is very clear in the Lord's Word
that there are differences in the matter of proximity to
Christ; that distances from Christ are very different; are
greater and lesser. You have but just to take that thought and
carry it for a moment into the New Testament on the literal
side to see the bearing upon the spiritual side. There is this
passage here in Matthew 26:30, and you begin at the most
advanced point where the Lord is alone "and He went a little
farther." His "little farther," of course, was going all the
way with the will of God. That bit just spoke of the
utterness, the completeness of His separation unto His
Father's will. He went the bit farther than anyone else, He is
seen there alone. From that point you get differences of
distance from Him.
If you go back (reading backward) you find in
the previous verse He has taken Peter and James and John, a
little farther than the others. They have gone a little
farther than the others, they are nearer to Him than the rest
of the company which came into the garden with Him, but they
are not immediately with Him. You would have thought, perhaps,
and I suppose if it had been us it would have been like this,
"Now let us get down and have some prayer together. There's a
great battle on, there's some great thing to be met, we cannot
meet it alone, let us pray together." But there was something
which made it necessary for Him to forego that fellowship, and
so instead of doing the thing which doubtless His own heart
was craving for, that is, entering into this thing in
fellowship with His brethren, or bringing them into fellowship
with it, He went a little farther, and they could not just go
that extra bit, but He left them there.
And then, reading back one verse further, you
find the eight are left at a greater distance, a distance
between the eight and the three and a distance between the
three and the One; and then if you go over into the Book of
the Acts and read in chapter one, you find one hundred and
twenty. These surely were all followers before the Cross, they
haven't become disciples since Calvary. They were of the
larger company, but they are not in the garden. They are
somewhere else; they are not in the same proximity to Him as
the eight and then the three. And then if you go further into
1 Corinthians 15:6, you will find there were about five
hundred. Paul says "He appeared unto about five hundred at
once." Where are the three hundred and eighty when the one
hundred and twenty are gathered together? Three hundred and
eighty are missing, missing in that upper room in prayer
during the days of waiting for the Promise of the Father. The
five hundred is split and only one hundred and twenty are
there, three hundred and eighty are somewhere else; and so you
go on, and you find in this literal way there is the Lord and
then a very small company nearest; then a little larger
company not so near as those; then a larger company; and then
a much larger company, and who shall tell what the company was
of those who were on the outermost run of things. But you see
— proximity! And I think that is suggestive of spiritual
fellowship with the Lord of those who will go a little
further; those who will go all the way, those who will go
further than most, than some; and beloved, it is my belief
that the Lord gathers us here at this season because He wants
a company who will go all the way with Him, who will come into
the Master's own intimate and immediate fellowship.
We know, do we not, of many who will go just
so far with the Lord and then they draw the line; some will go
a little further, but then they stop short, and it seems that
very few, very few indeed, go right into the absolute oneness
with Him in His Heart, His Mind, His Will: and He is seeking
for those who will be of His own Spirit, who will go a little
further than the rest, than perhaps the most advanced of all
the others, a little further still, to take them into the
innermost secret and suffering of His own Heart.
And it would seem that these differences of
approximation to Him would reveal spiritual state. I do not
want to make much of that on the literal side, but on the
spiritual side, undoubtedly it is true, a spiritual state is
disclosed by just how far you go with the Lord. To begin with,
you have the matter of apprehension and appreciation; the
grasping, the apprehending of the innermost desire and longing
and secret of the Lord and an appreciation of Him, of His
will, His Mind, His purpose. It does seem that some of these
have a fuller apprehension and appreciation than others, and
they went further, therefore. He was constantly suffering, was
He not, from that lack of apprehension and appreciation? Again and again He gave
expression to some feeling, some inner knowledge that they
were not grasping it, that they were not getting hold of it,
that they were not understanding. "I have many things to say
unto you, but you cannot bear them yet." All the time they
were just failing to apprehend the inner thing, they were
grasping the outer and missing the inner, they were not
appreciating His feelings — "Lord wilt Thou that we call down
fire from Heaven?" but, "you know not what spirit you are of!"
You see a lack of appreciation of His Heart, His feelings, His
thoughts, His mind there.
If we are not going on with Him, if we are
not going to find a response in our hearts, may it not be that
it is because we have not a due apprehension or appreciation
of the heart, the mind, the purpose of the Lord? And then the
question of devotion and sacrifice would come in, naturally,
just whether they were prepared to pay the price of going on.
The measure of devotion, the measure of sacrifice, what it was
going to cost and then a hesitating because of the cost; and
to go all the way with the Lord would necessitate paying the
whole price, whatever that price might be, of suffering...
suffering!
Now that brings me back to these chapters
which doubtless you are wondering about as to what connection
they have, these chapters in the Book of Genesis — this
matchless story of Joseph and his brethren. Linked with the
words we have read in the Ephesian letter is a deep spiritual
affinity between these portions of the Word. We have recently
seen that Joseph himself stands to represent the Lord Jesus as
the great Overcomer, the One Who by Divine right and
revelation was to be the object of universal worship, where
the sheaves of earth bow down and make obeisance to Him, where
the sun, moon and stars of Heaven also bow down and proclaim
Him Lord. And that One, that One passing through rejection,
sold for thirty pieces of silver, led in chains by His own
consent — in the case of the Lord Jesus — and then passing
into the dungeon, humiliation, and into the place of darkness
where it would seem that all the promises and all the visions
were totally eclipsed and impossible, at length exalted to the
Throne. The great Overcomer! Wherefore, because "obedient unto
death," "wherefore, God hath highly exalted Him." "Who for the
suffering of death" is now in the presence of the glory of
Heaven. Now that is Joseph here, or Joseph is here as a type
of that.
The next outstanding figure in this story is
Benjamin, and Benjamin represents the believer as the
Overcomer. You will be helped by a study of Benjamin. He is
marked out, he is distinguished. "There goes little Benjamin."
Benjamin is the Overcomer amongst the Lord's people, just as
Joseph was distinguished amongst his brethren at the beginning
as the son of the father's love, so now Benjamin is called the
son of the father's old age, and upon him everything hangs,
upon him, for the brethren, apart from Joseph now; so Benjamin
is the overcomer amongst the brethren. The brethren were at a
distance; all the others are in no proximity to Joseph, the
one on the throne. You see the distance? Everything speaks of
distance. There is no fellowship. Oh, Joseph yearns, he longs
for what is in this fellowship, but he can't have it yet.
Benjamin is not there, and so the brothers are at a distance,
separated, and he says, "It is impossible for you to see my
face, to come into fellowship with me unless you bring
Benjamin," and we hear the argument with their father about
bringing Benjamin, and they determined they would not go if
Benjamin could not go with them because they would not see his
face; and then when they took Benjamin the distance was not
altogether overcome. Yet Joseph had seen him at a distance,
and then he ordered his steward to set the bread for himself
apart, for his brethren by themselves, not feeding together
yet: the Egyptians are present. You know the meaning of Egypt
surely by now, the realm of natural resources, the strength of
the flesh.
How is the final distance broken down? How do
they all come into the closest fellowship as of one man? He
put his cup into Benjamin's sack, and off they went with his
silver cup in Benjamin's sack, and then sent his steward for
them and brought them back. You know how it happened! That
ruse, that trick, so to speak, was the way in which everything
was broken down. By that way fellowship was brought in. What
was it that did it? It was his cup in Benjamin's sack, his
silver cup out of which he himself drank. Have you got it? To
the overcomers — one cup, a silver cup. The Master said to
these "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?" They said "we
can"! He said, "you shall"! And that is absolute fellowship,
it is fellowship in the cup, oneness in the cup, the silver
cup. That means going all the way in closest proximity — the
cost! Have you got it? We need hardly say any more.
That is the story. That which looked like, in
the mind of the world, a trick, was that profound wisdom with
a love motive in it, that they shall become ONE by that cup.
The Spirit writes deeply beyond the wisdom of men, what men
would call anything but wisdom and love. The Spirit writes the
story of Calvary as the ground upon which perfect fellowship
is brought about between the Lord and His brethren. But, oh!
there is this other word. Benjamin, the least, the smallest,
was brought into that relationship on behalf of all the
brethren, the more important ones, according to the flesh, but
who are spiritually discounted. The Lord depends upon a little
one coming into relationship with Him in the cup. It is the
overcomer of the Revelation. You have the brethren in the
Churches, but they are spiritually at a distance, and in the
Churches you have a little "overcomer" company who come into
fellowship with the Lord in His passion and travail. That is
the message of the first three chapters of the Revelation.
Coming into fellowship with the Lord in His Cross as
representative to save the Lord's testimony. You follow on in
the Revelation and you find the small company are there first
and the larger company afterwards, but they are there in
behalf of the rest; the others would never get there if they
did not get there first, but they have got through in the cup
of His sufferings and the others will come into fellowship
with that cup, "for they will come up out of the great
tribulation and wash their robes and make them white in the
Blood of the Lamb."
Now, I am not concerned with times in this
matter at all, but I am concerned with the spiritual facts and
spiritual laws. All the way through from Genesis to Revelation
is that law that He must have one or a little company, a
remnant, an overcomer body, coming into full fellowship with
Him by the altar, by the Cross, on behalf of all the rest. We
have often pointed out that in the remnant of Israel only two
tribes were called "all Israel." It is the remnant who came
back and put the altar in its place and built the House, and
yet they were called "all Israel." You see it is relative.
Now, beloved, it is that small company which
can go all the way which the Lord is after, that little flock
that comes into closest fellowship with Him in His suffering,
in His passion, in His purpose. There are only a few who can
come there. He took with Him Peter, James and John, and then
He Himself went a little further; and so you get the ranges;
and it speaks of just how far you will go, according to the
price you will pay — the fellowship of His sufferings. But too
often in the Laodicean age there is that which is sickening to
the heart of God about the spirituality of the majority. They
are neither hot nor cold. There are those to whom He speaks
right in the Laodicean conditions, "He that overcometh will I
give to sit with Me in My Throne even as I have overcome and
sit with My Father in His Throne." Here is the Throne you see
— "If we suffer with Him we shall reign with Him." Now that is
the call of the Lord to us in these days, and I believe that
will be what the Lord is pressing home in every one of these
gatherings during this season.
Are you going further? Are you going all the way? The end of
the way is the Throne; to get there means to go by the way of
the Cross, by the way of the cup. The cup was found in
Benjamin's sack, a little one, a little one, a small company.
By Benjamin the others were brought into fellowship with the
exalted lord — complete fellowship. There are no more separate
tables and the Egyptians are gone out, and there is perfect
fellowship in the Spirit.
May the Lord get us to be such a company.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, May-June 1930, Vol. 8-3