UNITY

William Johnson

Zechariah 2: 7-14; 14: 5-7

It is a very great exercise to speak on such an occasion as this.  I desire that the Lord may give a word directly from Himself, so that our present need may be met.  It is quite possible to say something perfectly true and interesting, and a passing pleasure might be found in it;  still it might not be a word from the Lord.  That is what makes it so serious to get up and speak to you.  Hence it is absolutely necessary that both speaker and hearers should be found together in exercise.  I wonder how many here have been exercised as to these meetings.  Exercise leads to prayer - to desire.  How many of us are found here in faith - waiting on the Lord?  We are tested as to how far we can count on His love, expecting from Him that which will meet us in our present need.  Though I feel it serious to speak, yet I feel encouraged in the thought that the Lord cares for us, and can meet all the exigencies of the present moment, and prove to us the way of His love in a very peculiar and blessed manner.  He is still the Blesser of His people, and our need will only bring out the strength of His unchanging love.

         We could not expect anything from Him on the ground of our faithfulness.  A spirit of pretentiousness would be very distasteful to the Lord.  I hope we have chastened spirits, the effect of being in His presence.  What has happened, what is happening, and what will happen should make us very serious.  We have never passed through such times, yet they are blessed times because they will bring out what the Lord can be to us.  The pressure will not cease, it may be increased, it may assume another form, but pressure there will be until the Lord comes.  Do not anticipate its removal, but greatly anticipate what His love can do for us.  Hence we must not look back regretfully at the past, but if there is any future accorded to us here, let us look forward most hopefully.  It is better on before, only we are in danger of being swept away.  Being in fellowship and having taken a certain position will not save us.  The needed thing with each is downright exercise of soul.

         I have said all this by way of preface.  I might have chosen other scriptures to bring my subject before you, but I have read these as suiting that which is pressing on my spirit, I trust from the Lord, the subject of UNITY.  Appreciation of Christ always produces unity, and unity always secures blessing.  I want to bring it before you in connection with the Spirit of Christ as being necessary to it.  His blessed Spirit is seen in the last scripture which  I read.  Many are anticipating unity, it is in their minds, but to us it is exceedingly painful, because we know it is vain and futile.  They hope that peace will be secured by the unity that is in their minds, but it is all in vain.   If you think of unity down here, you will find that it is God's intention to bless this earth through a unity produced by the Spirit of Christ.  If you go back to Genesis xi. we get there the moral springs of that which has happened since.  Men sought unity in connection with their own glory.   They proposed  to build a tower that would reach  to heaven, in order to make a name for themselves.  This attempt to secure unity in connection with their own glory was frustrated.  They sought to build a tower front that which was of this earth.  They made brick, and slime had they for mortar, but nothing having its origin in earth can reach heaven.  The only thing that can reach heaven is that which comes down from heaven.  We are born from above and hence heaven is our portion.  The attempt to build a tower was frustrated and confusion was the result. 

         God called Abram to be the heir of the world, and his call indicated that God had created this earth for His own glory.  It was “the God of glory” that appeared to him and by His call indicated that He purposed blessing for man, saying, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed”.  Whatever may happen, God always keeps to His purpose.  Nothing thwarts Him.  All the counsels and efforts of men come to nothing.  If we were nearer to God, we should see what a poor puny creature man is, but away from Him our thoughts of man are exaggerated.  Hence it is repeated to Isaac and again to Jacob that the nations of the earth should be blessed in them.  It was a very small beginning, was it not?  but a great comfort to read that which the Lord said in Isaiah 51: 1, 2, “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.  Look unto Abraham  your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him”.  Out of that solitary couple God has blessed and is blessing to-day.  That is God's way.   He begins  from Himself.  The gospel opens with this fact, that Jesus Christ was the son of Abraham. 

         Let me recall to your memory the time when Jacob slept by the road side, a lonely stranger, away from his father's house; there was a ladder, not a tower, but a ladder that reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, that speaks of intercourse between heaven and earth.  How beautiful is that!  A number of sad things are happening which we feel, and rightly feel if we are with God.  I do not believe in people being  Stoics.  The reason of all the sorrow is that earth in people's minds is divorced from  heaven, but by-and-by that will be over.  It is a great thing to see that: it will give stability, and prevent your being carried away by the thoughts of men.  A confederacy is coming to pass as surely as it took place in the days of the tower of Babel.

         When Jacob was at the end of his course, he prophetically goes through the history of that which would befall his sons in the last days.  When we are in the light of the glory of God, we get a fine outlook, so this prophetic vision of Jacob gives the history of the people from the start to the finish.  When he comes to speak of Judah, it is Christ that fills his vision (Christ is seen both in Joseph and Benjamin) but Shiloh was to come of Judah, and Jacob says, “Unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be”.  There is going to be unity, but He is the Person that will secure it; it will be upon earth mediatorially through the twelve tribes of Israel.  The key verse to these ways of God is found in Deuteronomy 32: 8.  “He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number (that is, the twelve tribes) of the children of Israel”.  There will not be blessing on this earth until there is unity in Israel.  The twelve tribes must be united, but this comes from their being brought under the anointing of the true Aaron and drinking of the dew of heaven.  It will be in their appreciation of Christ that the twelve tribes of Israel will be knit together, and through that unity will be the  blessing of the nations, see Ps 97.

         What can be more touching than this passage in Zechariah 2.  I want you to see what God's thought is.  Zechariah is a very rich prophet richer than any other save Isaiah.  The blessed Lord is before us here, He is here seen as the Shepherd in the midst of the flock.  You have Matthew's gospel in a nutshell.  They were a flock of hatred towards Him, but He was there to feed them.  Blessed Shepherd!  How we need a Shepherd!  “The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob”, Gen 40: 23, 24.  That is verified in Psalm xxii.  Then we have further, “From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel”.  How beautiful scripture is!  Psalm xxiii.  must follow Psalm xxii.  What a Shepherd for Israel!  He had been hated and grieved and shot at, but He shepherds the poor of the flock.  See where His love led Him!  He was the staff “Beauty,” but they abhorred Him and hated Him.  Beloved brethren, you will never find out your badness from a book, you will not discover it until you have learned the true character of human nature, that when Jesus was presented to your natural mind, you abhorred Him.  Many of us never reach it save in theory.  We may know the doctrine that in the flesh there dwells no good thing, but I mean more than that.  The real sense of it would break you up, and lead you to appreciate Christ.  To use one of our current coins, “the removal of the man” that must be realised, but no one could ever appreciate the “removal of the man” till they have learned the true character of the man.  You learn it by way of contrast.  What a contrast to Christ is fallen man.  The Almighty God put Himself in the presence of His creatures, and He asked the price they would give for Him -  “Give me my price”.  Think of it!  They weighed for His price thirty pieces of silver - the price of a slave!

         I speak in fear and trembling, but let me say that our spiritual growth is not measured by our knowledge, it lies in the appreciation we have of Christ.  Do we not hear His voice at the supper saying, as it were, “Give me my price” (that is, At how much do you value me?).  I am fully aware that the supper is introductory to the privileges of the assembly, but in it He appeals to us, “Give me my price”.  Pay attention to it, dear brethren.  How it should come home to us!  I do not know anything more sanctifying than the supper.  It is love's appeal to us every Lord's day, and your spiritual growth lies in the value which you set upon His love.  There may be great ability to expound scripture and so on, but with it all there should be increasing affection for Christ.  He looks upon every one of us and He sees how our hearts are in relation to Himself.  We shall value our brethren rightly as we value Christ.  If all the dear brethren spoke of me as a spiritual man, the great matter would be, What does God think of me?  He sees where I am in relation to Christ, for He prizes affection flowing out to His dear Son, though it may be imperfectly.

         I verily believe that some of  us think that spirituality lies in correct statements.  No, it does not, it lies in affection for Christ.  One would not desire that saints should be unintelligent, but let intelligence be the result of affection.  What did Thomas say - ignorant  Thomas?  He only saw the Jews and how they sought to stone Jesus, but He walked in the light of God His Father, and saw neither Jews nor stones.  Thomas said, “Let us also go that we may die with him”.  Very ignorant, but very affectionate, full of affection.  Surely the Lord prized that: He did.  Life is not worth the living where Jesus is not - so we may regard the words of Thomas.  I am not putting a premium on ignorance; but mark well, that spirituality does not lie in correct statements.

         There was another ignorant person, yet full of affection: Mary Magdalene - she only thought of Jesus as being dead, and she sought His dead body.  “Tell me”, she said, to the supposed gardener, “where thou hast laid him and I will take him away”.  The Lord prizes such affection.  Thomas said, “Let us go that we may die with him”, and Mary said, as it were: I have no home where Jesus is not.  Are you conscious of decline?  Listen, and let Him speak to you! “Give me my price”.  What will you sacrifice for Him?  That is the point.  I see men who will lay down their lives for their country.  What will we do for Christ?  What trifling things worry us, shame on us! What will you give up for Christ?  What are you prepared to sacrifice for Him?  Let it come home to each one.  Are you prepared to suffer for His sake?

         The religious leaders of Israel prized Him at thirty pieces of silver, and with the money they bought a field to bury strangers in.  It was called the field of blood.  Now mark the Spirit of Christ speaking through the prophet, He accepts their valuation, and breaks His other staff “Bands”.  As a living Messiah He ceases to be the bond of brotherhood between Judah and Israel.  Now pass on to chapter 13; there the Spirit of Christ again speaks, not as taking the place of a prophet but as accepting the position brought in by Adam – “I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for man [Adam] acquired me as bondman from my youth”.  Is that how Jesus is known? Was there ever such a Person?  He who subsisted in the form of God taking the form of a bondman, and as such He became obedient unto death to serve guilty man.  Do we take the place of service to the saints?  Who is the greatest man in the meeting where you are?  The man who is in the Spirit of Christ, and is marked by the love of Christ.  Why are we not charmed with that?  Why are we charmed with that which is official, which often gives a spirit of pretentiousness?  The greatest man in the meeting is the man who is the servant of all in the love of Christ.  Where the love of Christ is present in a meeting there will be unity.  Where there is no gift in a meeting, there is often more spiritual prosperity than in a meeting where there is gift.  You cannot localise gift, it is for the whole church of God.  The moment you localise it you spoil it.  I say these things that you may be exercised.

         Where there is unity there is blessing.  There is gathering power if we love each other.  No matter how few there may be, if there is lowliness God will bless.  There will be the recognition of our nothingness, but God will be praised.  Where there is unity, there will be the outflow of praise.  I could indicate it from other passages, such as Psalm 132; unity is realised when the ark of the covenant finds its place.  There is the delight of David as he dances before the ark.  He takes no place of prophet or of king, but he found his joy, because the ark of the covenant had been brought into its place.  His wife (Michal), who was full of proprieties, despised him in her heart.  In her eyes he was making a fool of himself.  She was a true daughter of her father Saul, who said, “Honour me now ... before the elders of my people”.  She despised the man who would take off his kingly robes, and dance before the Lord in the joy of his heart.  Hence she was not fruitful; legal people are not fruitful.  In the Book of Psalms there is a moral order and Psalm 133, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!” follows Psalm 132.  The secret is in being near Christ.  Let us avoid questions which gender strife.  He is now saying to us by the Spirit, “Come near to me, I pray you” as Joseph said to his brethren.  If I understand the movement of the Spirit, I think that is what Christ is saying; and as we have “come near” to Him, so we come nearer to each other.

         May the Lord be pleased to bless what I have tried feebly to bring before you.  I have endeavoured to shew you how unity is brought about in the future by the appreciation of Christ, and it is brought about now in the same way.  In Psalm 132 the ark of the covenant is going up to its place on Zion, and in the Epistle to the Ephesians we see Christ set in His place at the right hand of God in the heavenly places.  Then in chapter 3 we have the true subjective state of the assembly, and Christ dwelling in the hearts of His saints by faith - thus we may say there is a resting-place for Christ maintained by the Spirit down here, and hearts drawn out to Him in affection and also to one another.  May we realise it, beloved brethren, and if you are conscious of anything inconsistent with unity in the meeting where you may be, may this word produce exercise as to it.  May we each be able to say, as it were, “I am no prophet” - but take the low place, ready to be the servant of the saints in the Spirit of Christ.  May God grant it for the sake of His own dear Son.

From ‘Mutual Comfort’ 1919

Scripture quotations in this article are from the King James Version