KNOWING THE TIME
Roland H Brown
Luke 19: 41-44
Romans 13:11-14
We have read locally that word in Thessalonians where the apostle speaks of the day of the Lord coming as a thief. People may say, “Peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them”, 1 Thess 5: 3. And then he says, “But ye, brethren are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you as a thief: for all ye are sons of light”, v 4. Those persons in Thessalonica were awaiting God’s Son from the heavens, chap 1: 10. They were not asleep and therefore what the apostle said of them would be true, and not only of them, but of all like them. Although that day would come, and will come, as a great shock and surprise to the world around us, it would not be so to them because it was what they were looking for. But when the Lord addresses Sardis in Revelation, He says in chapter 3, “If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know at what hour I shall come upon thee”, v 3. That is quite a sobering thing because that is not addressed to the world at large; it is addressed to a local assembly of believers. It is evident that the general apathy of the world had affected the church, so that His coming would be a shock, even for those that were His own.
I thought what an exercise that is, to be intelligent as to the times in which we live. For that intelligence, we need to be near the Lord. We need Him to open it up to us, I think. It is striking how often the Lord refers to this in His own ministry. Here in Luke 12 He says they can forecast the weather; He says, “how is it then that ye do not discern this time?”, v 56. Discerning “this time”, the time in which we live, is always a challenge as to our nearness to the Lord. We can read in the Scriptures of many times, and they are recorded for the instruction of believers: we can read about the period up to the flood, we can read about the period of the patriarchs, we can read about the journeyings of the children of Israel, we can read about how they were taken captive, how there was a little reviving - what times have passed over the history of the testimony. We can read about the days of the Son of man on earth; we can read about the coming of the Holy Spirit, the establishing of the assembly and its brightest day. Then we can read about the labours of the apostle Paul, what he set up with such energy and vigour, and how the signs of decay were in it even before he departed. He foresaw that grievous wolves would come in, “not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29), and even, he says, “from among your own selves shall rise up men speaking perverted things”, v 30. These things were held at bay while the apostles were alive, but there were going to be different times coming. All the apostles in their writings were anxious to prepare the saints, you might say simply, for what life would be like after they were gone. We can take up the story, how there has been a departure from what was established at the beginning, the period of what is often referred to as the dark ages, when what was here maintained by the Spirit was in obscurity. The hymn writer says,
And night like a pall shrouds the land;
(Hymn 131).
But then, just as there was recovery as in Ezra and Nehemiah’s time, so there has been a great recovery of the truth, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, there has been a great recovery of believers to the truth, in the early nineteenth century. Some people speak of it - it is often referred to publicly - as the movement of Mr Darby, but it is very clear, if you look at it, that it was much more than that: it was a movement of the Holy Spirit, affecting brethren at the same time in different places with no outward connection with one another. But persons left that in which they judged God was not, and they sought a scriptural basis for their gathering. They gathered together in great simplicity and in weakness, acknowledging that the Head of the church was in heaven, not on earth. And they gathered together with the desire to maintain conditions in which the Holy Spirit was free. That recovery gained pace under the power of the Spirit. Others followed a good example, and what has come out has been a remarkable opening up of the truth.
Our brother has already referred to hymns that we have in our book, and the remarkable insight contained in them as to what is proceeding in heaven. Where, I ask, do you find that, except in the circle of the truth? You might say, if you look back, that it has been a history of conflict, a sorrowful history of schism. That is how it would appear if you only looked at it outwardly, but what it was in reality, morally, was persons seeking to preserve inviolate a sanctuary for God here on the earth, meeting together on the basis of the Scriptures, seeking their guidance from the word of God, and proving that that was answered in a living ministry and opening up of the truth, and a richness of hymns from which we benefit today. I was thinking of the hymns, because we have heard that almost the last contributor to the Little Flock hymn book has recently died. And that therefore raises the question that if there was this richness in the opening up of the truth and finding its reflection in the provision of hymns of quality and substance, where is that today? Where is the richness and the fulness that marked the early days of the recovery? We have to say that we are in the days, not simply of the general breakdown from the apostolic church in the Acts, but that the very recovery begun by the Holy Spirit has fallen in our times into decay and departure.
The challenge therefore is peculiarly for the overcomer in those conditions, to maintain conditions for a sanctuary for God, not only against the outward indifference of the world, but against the growing indifference of many that are actually the Lord’s people. The Lord, as He came into Jerusalem, in chapter 19 of Luke, was the King coming into His capital. He wept over it, because He foresaw and prophesied as to what would happen in detail to Jerusalem, as indeed it did happen. But it happened as it says in verse 44, because they knew “not the season of thy visitation”. They were not aware of the character of the time in which they lived. And so, the apostle says in Romans, “This also, knowing the time, that it is already time that we should be aroused out of sleep”. This is not addressed to the world in Romans; it is addressed to believers, who have become affected by the world. I suppose in Rome it was particularly persons who had been delivered from idolatry and its practices, but they may well have carried some of those practices still with them. The apostle reminds them that the character of the time was to govern their walk.
That was the thing that affected me on Lord’s day when we read the genealogy in Matthew, that a man gets a reference who was not part of it: “And David begat Solomon, of her that had been the wife of Urias”, chap 1: 6. There was no genealogical reason to include his name; I think it is a mark of divine honour, for this man who was so grievously wronged in his lifetime with a wrong that was never ever put right, that he was aware of the time. When he was summoned by David from the battle, he said it was not the time to go down to his house, to lie with his wife and to eat and to drink, 2 Sam 11: 11. He said the army was in the open field, the testimony was under assault, and although the opportunity was there, it was not one that he was going to take. In other words, his understanding of the character of the time was so very different from that of David at that point; it governed him in this life and walk. He gets this honour that his name is mentioned with divine approval. We get this appeal here that we should be “aroused out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed”. This is not the salvation of our souls, which has been secured, but it is our entrance, actually, into finality. I wonder if that weighs with us?
Our brother has spoken of what is going on in heaven, the activity that is proceeding in heaven, and the distance that has come in between heaven and earth on account of sin. But, dear brethren, we are on the verge of entering into heaven. The Lord is securing, in this time in which we are, a heavenly company. Is He to find, when He comes, that it is enmeshed and entangled in the things of this world, and asleep as far as concerns His presence and His return? Publicly that is the position of the church, and it is very easy for the lethargy of it to creep over us. He says, ”let us cast away therefore the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light”. It is a remarkable thing that the light of a coming day is an armour to the believer. As his life is regulated by it, it is something that is taken account of in testimony. It has often been said of a believer walking on this line that people are ashamed to swear in his presence, in the office or the workplace, and if they do, they often apologise for it. Surrounding one whose life is manifestly regulated by the return of Christ is an armour: an armour of light. He says, “let us walk becomingly”, not in these negative things that characterise the age, but in view of the coming of the Lord, so that we can say with the Spirit, “come, Lord Jesus”, (Rev 22: 20) - not only say the words, but that our lives express that desire, that we understand that it is His desire to come for His own, to receive them to Himself, and we live our lives in the recognition and sympathy of that.
One feels the importance of knowing the time as the apostle speaks of it. How frequently the Lord referred to it in His ministry that we might, in His presence, be intelligent as to the nature and character of the time in which we live and the walk that is appropriate to it. For His Name’s sake.
Word in a Ministry Meeting, East Finchley
11th February 2020