THE SPIRIT’S MEN
Terry W Lock
Genesis 24: 57-59
Acts 13: 1-3
Ephesians 3: 1-5
2 Timothy 2: 21
I have been thinking about this matter of the Spirit's men. It is very interesting that in this scripture in Genesis 24 you have the whole scope of what was in the mind of the Father in relation to Christ as seen in the type, which shows what Abraham had in mind for Isaac, and you have the oath that was made by the servant, typifying the Spirit of God, putting his hand under Abraham's thigh in relation to the oath and what he would do and how he would work, showing all of these things given to him, suggesting all the feelings that were there, all that the Father desired in relation to Christ. So the servant goes away, and scripture speaks about the camels, and what happened at the time when Rebecca was there and the water that was drawn, and it goes all the way through to the time of the giving of the gold articles, and through to the time of the meeting with Laban and to the housing of the servant and of the camels. It goes through all those things, and then it says, “And they ate and drank, he and the men that were with him”. It does not say anything about those men at the time of the giving of the articles, nor does it say anything about those men at the time of the drawing of the water, but they were there. Typically they were the Spirit's men; they were the Spirit's men who were going along in line with the Father's thoughts for His Son. They were the ones that were there, subject indeed to what God was doing by the Spirit. So it says that then they went away, “And Rebecca arose, and her maids, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man” (v 61), but it says a little earlier where we read, “And they sent away Rebecca their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and his men”. What happens after that is “Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother”, v 67. The servant’s men, the Spirit's men as I am applying it, were part of that. One of the things in the day in which we live, beloved brethren, is that it is possible to be one of the Spirit's men in relation to the satisfaction of the heart of Christ. It is a wonderful thing to have part in that, and to know as being intelligent in relation to the Father's thoughts of Christ that you can have part in what the Spirit is doing to satisfy the heart of the Man precious to the Father. Wonderful thing to be one of the Spirit's men! The men there were not named, not one of them, but they were there just the same. God knew who they were, Abraham knew who they were, and the servant knew who they were. He knew the ones that he could take, suggesting One who knew those who would carry on in the light of the feelings that were between the Father and the Son. They were faithful men characteristically, which was one of the features seen in Barnabas and Saul.
At the beginning of Acts 13, you can look at the history that had been there with Barnabas, and you can understand Barnabas being chosen. Barnabas was a faithful man, full of the Holy Spirit, and he had given up his possessions in relation to the assembly of God, chap 4: 36, 37. He had done those things. He had been a faithful man. But you may ask 'What about Saul? Why Saul? Why “Separate me now Barnabas and Saul”? - and notice it is not Paul. Why such a man as that? Because such a man as that had light of a Man in heaven and had a distinct revelation from a Man in heaven in relation to what was precious to Himself, “why dost thou persecute me?”, chap 9: 4. That had never been given to anybody else before; that had never been said like that before. That revelation was distinct to Saul who became Paul; he had been given this, but the other thing that he says later on in the book of the Acts when he is speaking to Agrippa is, “Whereupon, king Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision”, Acts 26: 19. That was the vision he received when he was on the way to Damascus. He was here, serviceable, one of the Spirit's men, serviceable to be sent out for the work which had been prepared for him because he was an obedient man; he was obedient to the heavenly vision; he was obedient to what had been given to him by revelation of God. The revelation is a wonderful thing, but if we are going to be serviceable to the Master, as those men that travelled with Abraham's servant, we must be obedient men. It does not say of any of them that they ever stepped outside or expressed a thought in any way contrary to what the servant was doing already. Barnabas and Saul were just there to help in line with what had been expressed by the Father for the Son. They were persons obedient to what the Spirit was doing, or as it puts it in Genesis, what the servant was doing according as the servant chosein relation to what he knew of Abraham's feelings. Saul had come from being an insolent and overbearing man to being someone who, even though his name was still Saul at this point, was obedient to the heavenly vision. What a wonderful thing that was! What a change there was in Saul! What a change there was in his heart! So you can understand why his name was changed, because there was a change in his character before ever there was a change in his name, and the Spirit of God was able to use him, along with another brother who had already shown himself to be faithful by what he had done in relation to the giving up of his possessions, for the furtherance of the assembly of God. He was another one who proved himself to be one of the Spirit's men by his actions. Wonderful thing!
But then we go on to look and see what Paul says in Ephesians. One of the things he says in relation to this was that he was intelligent; he understood. It was not just a case of what he was by association; it is what he was in intelligence, able to lay the thing out, able to speak with intelligence in relation to the heavenly vision, able to speak about what was proper to Christ, able to speak about what was proper to the anointed Man, God's anointed Man, the Christ. “For this reason I Paul, prisoner of the Christ Jesus”; “the Christ Jesus”, not just of Christ Jesus. That is very important there because it is the distinctiveness of the Person from whom he had received that vision, understanding all that that Man was for God. He is “prisoner of the Christ Jesus”, and in the light of that he is able to say of what he has written briefly before, and he could say to them there, “ye can understand my intelligence in the mystery of the Christ”. That was all part of the revelation but it was also all that he was going to work at to attach the assembly to Christ according to all its glory.
Dear friends and brethren, if you are going to be one of the Spirit's men, you must be intelligent as to the glory and suitability of all that is for Christ. It is not enough to say you are Christian: it is to understand what is suitable to the anointed Man of God's choice. Paul was intelligent; He understood that: could the Spirit use him because of it? Yes, absolutely; he was an intelligent man. He does not say he was an intellectual man, though he was that if you look at Paul's history, at how he grew up, at his education, at the instructor that he sat under, and at all the things he had learned. Was he intelligent as to the ways of the world? Yes, he knew how to run a business, how to make enough money to live on, how to work in the normal way of the world, and how to hold down a job. And he was also intelligent in relation to Jewish history, in relation to the Pharisees, in relation to his place and his tribe and the things that were to be upheld. He was intelligent in relation to the coming in of God, and what was to be looked for as to the Messiah and all those things. All of that comes out at the time of his defence to Agrippa. He was able to speak about his intelligence in relation to the things of the people of God in an Old Testament sense. But what he had here was intelligence according to the revelation that had been given to him from heaven, and he is able to expound in relation to “the Christ Jesus”. That is a wonderful thing!
So then you go on to Timothy. He is another person marked by faithfulness, able to be used by the Spirit of God. Paul put it that he was his “true child in faith” (1 Tim 1: 2); Timothy is a younger man coming on, another generation, coming on to something that had been passed down to him, and one of the things that marked him is that he was faithful. Paul was able to say of him, “I have no one like-minded who will care with genuine feeling how ye get on”, Phil 2: 20. That was Timothy; he was intelligent. But not only was he intelligent, he loved the saints, he loved the assembly according to the purpose of God. He loved it in the same way that Paul speaks in relation to Corinthians, “I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”, 2 Cor 11: 2. Timothy was there to work according to that same thought. He went there with genuine feeling to present them as a chaste virgin to Christ because he was Paul's true child in faith.
So we go on to 2 Timothy 2, and quite often we speak of it as being our charter, and, beloved brethren, it is every Christian's charter; it is not just, as we might think it, the brethren's charter; it is every Christian's charter. If you are to work in the day of the Spirit of God, to be able to be serviceable to the Spirit of God, to arrive at anything for God, and to have the saints arrive at anything for God, it must be because there is sanctification, and there is faithfulness; it must be because you have set yourself in relation to divine Persons and the assembly of God. It must be that! So it says here, “If therefore one shall have purified himself from these, in separating himself from them” - that is, all the things that were said previously - “he shall be a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work”. What a wonderful thing that is! “Prepared for every good work” involves what the Spirit of God would use somebody for while they are here for the testimony of Jesus, and in relation to helping forward the assembly of God in the time of testimony, and helping forward the saints in attachment to “the Christ Jesus”. That was Timothy; that was this younger man, and yet he was able to carry forward the testimony that had been given to him by Paul. It is a wonderful thing, the faithfulness of a young man like this.
Well, all of these persons were persons with the attitude, with the features, with the characteristics that made them the Spirit's men. May we have that exercise, while the Lord leaves us here, to go forward exercised to be the Spirit's men.
May it be so, for His Name's sake!
Word in meeting for ministry, Edinburgh
14th November 2017