FAITHFULNESS
Glen M Barlow
John 8: 29
1 Corinthians 4: 1-2
Nehemiah 13: 10-13
2 Timothy 2: 1-2
The impression I have been carrying for this occasion is as to the present need for faithfulness. These scriptures in Nehemiah and 2 Timothy have been before us locally recently. They both speak, Nehemiah in type, of the closing days of this dispensation and my impression from them is that a particular activity in which faithfulness is needed in these days, and for which faithfulness is a qualification, is stewardship. That is, caring for the things that have been entrusted to us. We have received very precious things and I think the question, and the exercise, in these closing days is as to how we care for them.
I had in mind to say something first as to what faithfulness is. We know that faithfulness is a divine attribute. God is described in the Old Testament as “the faithful God” (Deut 7: 9), and I suppose we all know the faithfulness of God. When we speak of the faithfulness of God, I think what that means is that He is true to Himself. Faithfulness is to be true to something, and God is true to Himself, He is true to His blessed nature. His faithfulness is celebrated throughout the Old Testament and I think there is a recognition in that celebration, by the children of Israel, for example, that in spite of all that they were and all that they did, God was ever faithful. He was always true to His nature. I think we can draw from that that the motive for faithfulness is love. All that we have, every blessing that is ours, is a result of God’s faithfulness to us, that He did not take us up on the grounds of what we are or what we have done, but on the grounds of what He is. He has ever been true to Himself in all that He does; it must necessarily be so, and we can be assured that He always will be.
When we come to faithfulness in man, I think it is no longer a question of someone being true to himself. I think faithfulness in man is being true to God. We sang in our hymn of the ‘faithfulness to God’ of Jesus, Hymn 230. I was noticing a reference at the beginning of the book of Samuel which I suppose referred directly to Samuel, but surely only had its fulfilment in the Lord Jesus. God speaks to Eli and says, “I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind”, 1 Sam 2: 35. That was Jesus. We have read of Him here in John’s gospel, answering I think to what God spoke of in the beginning of Samuel. He says, “I do always the things that are pleasing to him”. I think that is a statement of faithfulness in man in perfection.
I would like to draw out some further thoughts from that statement as to what faithfulness in man involves. It begins, “I do always the things that are pleasing to him”, and, if we take up the exercise of faithfulness, the first thing is that it is individual. It is an individual matter. We know that He was -
Faithful amidst unfaithfulness (Hymn 230).
We know that even if every other man was unfaithful, He remained faithful. We know that this is still true. It says in Timothy, “if we are unfaithful, he abides faithful”, 2 Tim 2: 13. What I understand by that is not exactly that if we are unfaithful to the Lord, He remains faithful to us, but that if we are unfaithful to God, the Lord remains faithful to God.
The second thing that I would draw out is that He says, ““I do always the things that are pleasing to him”. My impression as to faithfulness, and it is a great test for me in the closing days of this dispensation, is that it is not really a matter of what we say, or even really what we hold to be true, but it is about what we do. In the Lord Jesus there was always perfect moral conformity in what He did to what He said. Even in a simple practical way, we know that faithfulness to something is a matter of what we do. He did “always the things that are pleasing to him”. We are told in relation to His activities as Son over God’s house that He “is faithful to him that has constituted him”, Heb 3: 2.
The final thing I would like to draw out is that He says, “I do always the things that are pleasing to him". I think the idea of true faithfulness has one person as object, because when the interests of two persons diverge, a choice would have to be made to be faithful to one or the other. So a faithful person is someone with undivided loyalties. That is not to say that faithfulness does not work out towards others. We know that the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus to God resulted in blessing for men, in blessing for His own, but His faithfulness was always to God. He had undivided loyalties, and whatever the will and pleasure of God required, that is what He did: a faithful Priest who did according to what was in God’s heart and in His mind.
Now He has left us a model that we should follow in His steps. We sang that we ‘fain would like Thee be’. One of the features in which I think we are called to be like Him is in His faithfulness. I read this scripture in 1 Corinthians because it draws the link to which I referred at the outset between faithfulness and stewardship. It is noticeable that faithfulness here is linked with Paul, and we are told what he and those with him are “stewards of the mysteries of God”. As those who have the ministry of Paul, those who have the precious Scriptures, we have in some measure at least, “the mysteries of God”. We know His present mind as to what is for the heart of Christ, the body here answering to Him and serviceable to Him in testimony. Paul says that he is a steward of “the mysteries of God”, and it is “sought in stewards that a man be found faithful”. I suppose we know that if something is going to be entrusted to a person, the first characteristic required of them must be that they are faithful to the person who entrusted it. That I think is the call for us in these days. The call is to be faithful to what we have from God in light as to the truth and as to His precious purposes. That involves those four aspects of faithfulness of which we have spoken: that faithfulness is to God; it is individual, a matter of individual exercise motivated by love; it is a question of our conduct - of what we do; and it requires that we have undivided loyalties.
I had particularly in mind to take up these two scriptures, the first in Nehemiah and then in 2 Timothy, as perhaps bearing out the practical nature of faithfulness in stewardship. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah have been applied to the way that persons were recovered to the truth from the 1800s onwards. So we know that what precedes the book of Ezra is that the children of Israel had been carried away into Babylon, and we could link that with the way that the professing church in this dispensation has been carried away into the world system. Then Ezra begins with a decree from king Cyrus, answered in those whose spirit God had stirred, to come out of Babylon and to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the house of God. We know about that movement in the late 1820s led by the Spirit of God. A divine decree that was answered in exercised hearts who returned, as it were, to rebuild the house of God, that is to take up the service of God on Scriptural ground, on the ground on which God would have it, away from what man’s imagination and thoughts had added. Jeshua and Zerubbabel led them and they have been described as pioneers. So there was the time of the pioneers. Then we know that the history proceeds and several decades later the wall is rebuilt in the time of Nehemiah, speaking to us perhaps of the way in which the truth of fellowship, and all that it involves as protecting the service of God, was recovered.
But when we reach the passage we have read in Nehemiah 13, it is many decades since those exercised persons returned from Babylon. It was no longer the days of pioneers, and we are not exactly in the days of pioneers now. The question that is raised in these days is how are the things recovered going to be maintained and continued? I think what this passage draws out is that the qualification for that is faithfulness. What precedes the section we have read is unfaithfulness. When we consider that faithfulness involves undivided loyalties, what precedes this is a priest with divided loyalties. Eliashib the priest, who should have considered alone for God, had set aside a chamber in the house of God for a relative, a chamber which formerly had contained “the oblations, the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithes of the corn, the new wine and the oil”. The consequence of that unfaithfulness, I would gather from verse 10, is that the service of God was hindered or perhaps even ceased entirely, because the portion was not available for the Levites and they “had fled every one to his field”. The wealth of the heave offering, the tithes of the corn and the new wine and the oil, what would speak of the enjoyment of the inheritance, what would sustain the Levites in view of service toward God, was not available, because the chamber had been cleared out for another. One who should have considered alone for God, did not. How much these things might come home to us, because I might think that others will take up the exercise as to individual faithfulness and I will be carried along with them, but one man’s unfaithfulness here caused the service of God to cease. What a test that is.
Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem and rectifies what had taken place in Eliashib’s unfaithfulness, but then in view of the continuance and maintenance of the service of God, involving that these treasuries should be full and the portion should be available, he sets faithful men over the storehouses. I suppose that we might think of stewardship as bearing on those who take up particular responsibility. For example, stewardship is linked in the New Testament with the overseer, Titus 1: 7. However, my thought really is that it is the responsibility of all. I think this passage might bear that out, because you will notice that the four storekeepers were a priest, a scribe, a Levite and one subordinate to them. It is not a special class of persons that is called to faithful stewardship: it is the responsibility of all. The qualification for these persons to be set over the storehouses was not to be a priest, or a scribe or a Levite exactly, but to be “esteemed faithful”. And it says, “their office was to distribute to their brethren”, so that individual faithfulness in these closing days results in blessing for the company. It is taken up individually, but it results in blessing for all.
When we come to 2 Timothy, it is noticeable how similar the thought is that is conveyed. Those who were “esteemed faithful” were set over the storehouses in Nehemiah; here the things heard of Paul were to be entrusted “to faithful men”. When Paul spoke in that scripture we read in 1 Corinthians of being “stewards of the mysteries of God”, he referred to himself and those with him. In particular, he speaks at the end of the previous chapter of himself, Apollos and Cephus. Now, we have received the things spoken by Paul. Paul had entrusted them to Timothy, and he refers to Timothy as his “faithful child”, 1 Cor 4: 17. He had confidence in the faithfulness of Timothy, but he had in mind what came after Timothy, that Timothy should entrust these things to “faithful men”. I think there is a particular link in the days in which we are between Paul’s ministry and faithfulness.
So the question is whether we are ‘with Paul’ in that sense. Are we with him? It has struck me increasingly recently in reading through the second epistle to Timothy, which has particularly in mind the individual exercise to be taken up in a broken day, how many persons Paul refers to as to where they stood in relation to himself. We are told “Phygellus and Hermogenes, have turned away from me” (chap 1: 15), “Onesiphorus … has often refreshed me” (v16), “Demas has forsaken me” (2chap 4: 10), “Luke alone is with me” (v11), “Mark … is serviceable to me” (v11), “Alexander the smith did many evil things against me” (v14). I think what that might convey, in a scene where unfaithfulness in the professing church particularly relates to the disavowal of Paul’s ministry, is that faithfulness is to stand in our conduct for Paul’s ministry. That is the place where particularly we get “the mysteries of God”. We have the light by faith of what the Lord Jesus is seeking in these closing days. It involves what the saints were recovered to in those early pioneering days of which we have spoken, in relation to the body here and the Head in heaven, that there should be that which represents Christ, and speaks of Him, in the scene of His absence. We might see the section in Nehemiah as particularly having in mind the service of God, and what proceeds toward God, whereas 2 Timothy relates particularly to the testimony: “Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord” (chap 1: 8), so that it has in mind the aspect toward man, but both are to be marked by faithfulness.
If we see that the entrusting of these things is to “faithful men”, my impression is that standing for Paul’s ministry is a question of what we do. We have been reading Ephesians locally and in the first two chapters of that epistle the mysteries of God are told out in a glorious way, as they are according to the mind of God. Then the third chapter is a prayer, and the fourth chapter begins with an exhortation to “walk worthy of the calling”. Paul himself says to Timothy that “thou hast been thoroughly acquainted with my teaching, conduct …”, 2 Tim 3: 10. Paul could say that he was an imitator of Christ, 1 Cor 11: 1. In Paul there was someone whose movements were in accordance with what he said. These things Timothy had heard of him; “my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings”. I suppose that faithfulness must involve reproach. It will involve a measure of suffering because we are in a scene of general unfaithfulness. Paul is a prisoner in that sense and his ministry particularly is in reproach. But the call is for faithfulness, and I think these precious things will be maintained and continued if the practical reality of them marks our movements here. Timothy was told in the first epistle how he was to conduct himself in the house of God and it is striking how, throughout Paul’s ministry, the most fundamental practical exhortations as to our movements and walk here follow from the exposition of the most exalted truth. That is what Christianity is, it is life and vitality. That is not to say anything against doctrine which is an absolute necessity to have intelligence as to God’s mind and what is according to His will, but the reality of Christianity is what we do.
I had one further thought as to Matthew 25, where the Lord Jesus speaks of the man who goes away and commits his substance to his bondmen in his absence, v 14-30. I think what that teaching of the Lord Jesus might draw out in relation to the matter of faithful stewardship is that it is a responsibility. It is not exactly presented to us as something that we might take up if we choose, though the motive is love, but it is a responsibility. If we have been given something in His absence, we have a responsibility to care for it. We know in that chapter the Lord’s feelings as to the one who did not care for it - hiding the talent in the earth was not caring for it. We see that it is the divine mind that we should take up this exercise for Him, but also I think it is our responsibility towards our brethren. We were reading Leviticus 6 recently, and it is quite striking that when it speaks of the trespass offering in relation to a trespass against a neighbour, it refers to the way we handle “an entrusted thing or deposit”, v 2. I think we are responsible to our neighbour, our brethren, for the way we handle the things that have been entrusted to us, and whether we hold them faithfully for Him.
What Matthew 25 also brings out in a particular way is that faithfulness comes with a reward. As we have been taught, the reward when presented in scripture is never a motive; we have already said that the motive for faithfulness is love, but it is an encouragement for those already in the way. In Matthew 25, the reward exceeds the faithfulness; “thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things”, v 21. I think that might draw out to our hearts, beloved brethren, the value that the Lord Jesus places on faithfulness to Him in the closing days of this dispensation. May we be helped to take up this exercise that He may be glorified, and that the precious things we have may be faithfully cared for until He comes.
For His Name’s sake.
Sidcup
2nd March 2024