Andrew E Mutton
Haggai 1: 1-9
2 Peter 1: 19-21
1 Corinthians 14: 1-5, 26-33
1 Thessalonians 5: 12, 13 (to ‘work’), 20, 21
I seek the Lord’s help to say something as to the prophetic word. I feel extremely limited as to what I can say but I am led to speak of it. Every month at least, or may be more regularly in some of our localities, we have a meeting for prophetic ministry; and I wonder, beloved brethren, what we are expecting to come in at that meeting. What are we expecting to hear? What marks it out from other meetings? It is announced as different. I hasten to say that the prophetic word is not limited to that meeting, but we have that meeting every month - maybe every week - and I would just challenge all of us as to what are we expecting to hear. Some of us are expecting to speak too - and, I hope, more will after today.
Now prophecy is interesting, and I have spent most of my life thinking that prophecy and the prophetic word speak about the future. Many did that in the Bible; many are referred to as prophets; Daniel in particular had a very distinctive prophecy, and a great wealth of information as to the future was imparted to and by him. We have it recorded for us. John is another, and this man of whom we have read, Haggai, is another; all referred to as prophets. Some prophesied who were not prophets by designation: Saul, for example. I have come, however, to see that the prophetic word and prophecy in the day in which we are now is not primarily about the future. It is God’s word for now: direct impartation and speaking from divine Persons for today. That immediately puts a very different complexion on the meeting for prophetic ministry. We have it announced locally as the meeting for ministry of a prophetic character, and I like that because it tells you exactly what we ought to expect as we come together for that meeting: ministry that has a prophetic character; that is God speaking for the time, speaking forth directly. I wonder firstly whether I am ready to receive that word and acknowledge it for what it is, and also, as a brother, ready to be the one through whom that word comes. I find the meeting for prophetic ministry is one of the most challenging meetings. You get home from a day’s work, and perhaps you have twenty minutes until the ministry meeting. You try to prepare a word, and it will not come. This is not about it being my word; it is not what I think the brethren ought to hear: this is to be God speaking. A prophetic word, something distinctive, something that God sees and gives that no one else in the locality or even wider may see. God would see a need for a word to come in, and He is going to make sure it does. It is not up to me to choose who gives it, or whether I do or do not, I just need to be ready, so that if the word comes I either give it or I receive it. I am aware I am speaking primarily of the ministry meeting but in a wider sense I include everyone in this. In one of the later scriptures we read it speaks about everyone having a prophetic word, and there may be other times; so, sisters and younger people, no one is excluded from this. There is, however, a greater responsibility, and therefore a greater challenge, to the brothers who stand up to speak in the ministry meeting to be ready and simply to communicate only what God would have to say.
I read firstly in Haggai because this is a beautiful prophetic word. The setting was in Ezra’s day. If you look, you will see in the book of Ezra that this word came in in chapter 5. The building of the house had been restarted and there had been considerable energy, in work sanctioned by Cyrus the king. Then other people had come along and tried to mingle themselves with what was being built, but the people of God said, ’No, that is not right, this is for us to do’; and they refused them. Those same people went away to another king, king Artaxerxes, and told him that if they continued doing what they were doing he was going to lose tax. So he wrote a letter to them and, with all the pressure that came upon them, they stopped building. As I understand it, there was a period of fifteen years in which no building took place at all. That is not to say that the people did not do anything, because evidently they did. They were evidently very busy; and we touched on this in the reading as to the busyness of our lives in the modern world. These people had been very busy, but none of it had been towards God, and therefore God has to speak to them in the prophetic word. He has to intervene. It says here, “In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month” - how specific, a word for that moment - “came the word of Jehovah by the prophet Haggai”. This appeals to my heart: there “came the word of Jehovah by the prophet Haggai” - a man ready simply to relay what God is saying. I wonder if I am specifically ready just to relay what God would have me to say? By the power of the Spirit, by my closeness to God, my being so aligned with what He is thinking, I am ready to say only what He wants me to say right now. We can read up things and we have such a wealth of ministry as well as the Holy Scriptures, and I think we could find something to say almost all the time. Maybe I am alone in that, but we could find something to say almost all the time about the wonderful things that God has for us. Haggai speaks, “the word of Jehovah” here and nothing else - “the word of Jehovah by the prophet Haggai”, and then the word comes. He starts, “Thus speaketh Jehovah of hosts” - “Thus speaketh”. As the prophetic word comes, it comes through someone who is so in tune with his God, so in tune with what the divine movements are at the moment, that he is able to speak only from God, and of nothing else. I am probably not expressing it very well but it appeals to me; I tend to add so much, maybe others here do too. When we say something we may add our own thoughts; a prophetic word never does that. A prophetic word is from God; it has clarity. How often do we say to one another that we would just like to know what God would have us to do? What would the Lord’s mind be in this? The prophetic word answers that. The question is whether I am available to hear it and ready to act upon it. God intervenes here after fifteen years of nothing recorded for His pleasure - how sad that was - and God says, “This people say, The time is not come, the time that Jehovah’s house should be built”. We have spoken of it in the reading, this glorious wonderful house, one that was to have such beautiful things in it that God could take account of as He came and made it His habitation. The people said it is now not the time that this should be built; what a thing! No wonder God intervenes in the prophetic word. He had a man in Haggai, who was ready for service, and now He says, ’You say it is not the time for my house to be built but look at what you have been doing for fifteen years’, “Is it time for you that ye should dwell in your wainscoted houses, while this house lieth waste?”
Now I just bring this challenge as a word for today, and it has two bearings, it seems to me. The first one is for all of us. Are we dwelling in our “wainscoted houses, while this house lieth waste”, while our part in building it is not attended to? We may say that now is not the time for building; we are just going to wait until the Lord comes. Here it does not even refer to it as His house; it says, ’You dwell in these houses’, and “this house lieth waste”: think of the feelings of God as His house lies waste.
The second application I would give it would be a public one. As you look at the wreckage of Christendom, can we really say it is not time for building what is for the pleasure of God, while His house lies waste? Christendom, as we speak of it, goes on and builds bigger and bigger churches and cathedrals, and all that is outward, and yet the house of God lies waste. Think of the feelings of a holy God as all this activity goes on. Here are those that He has given another opportunity to rebuild, brought them out of captivity to do it, brought them out of that bondage that they might do it, and they spent fifteen years allowing it to lie waste, So He asks, ’What have you been doing?’. What a challenge, is it not? “Consider your ways”: what have you been doing? I take the word to myself - what have I been doing in the last fifteen years? We referred in the reading to the fact that our lives are very busy; we all know that. There is no one here that would not say they are busy. Apparently when you retire, I am told, you are even busier than when you go to work. “Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but are not satisfied; ye drink, but are not filled with drink; ye clothe yourselves, but there is none warm; he that earneth wages earneth wages for a bag with holes”. I know some of you young people have found yourselves part time jobs over the summer holidays, when you do paper rounds or take cleaning jobs or other things. You go and help out in different places. If you imagine this, you spend all that time, get up early, work hard, you work in the evening, but all you earn is a bag with holes. How useless that is! Jehovah says, “This people say, The time is not come, the time that Jehovah’s house should be built”, it is not time. ’My house lies waste and you spent all this effort, all this time and effort, and you have earned a bag with holes’. Jehovah then repeats, “Consider your ways”; when He repeats things we are to take account of them: “Consider your ways”. Here is the beauty of the prophetic word, beloved brethren. Not only does God come in and point out where His work is needed, but He also brings the answer. He says, “Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain”. “Go up to the mountain”. Where is all this work going on? It is down here on the earth. We say we are very busy; where are we busy? Here on the earth doing legitimate things, maybe not worldly things, maybe not wrong things, doing legitimate things. We are very, very busy; the enemy specifically keeps us busy to keep us away from the things of God. God comes in, points it out, and says “Go up to the mountain”. Why do you need to go up to the mountain? Because that is where you will see Christ. That is where He will show you things of Himself. That is where you will get a view of divine things that you can never get from down on the plain, where you are busy with all these other things. “Go up to the mountain and bring wood”; there is Christ. How many different types of wood are referred to as types of Christ in the Bible? You will know some of them, the acacia wood, those great cedars of Lebanon; remember the wood that was cast into those bitter waters of Marah, to make the waters sweet. How many different impressions of Christ do you get as you go up the mountain? It will involve some work. They have got to go up the mountain and cut down this wood to bring it down, to start building practically. It is for building, down in their everyday lives that we have spoken about already. We are always in the house of God; so what is pleasing to Him applies to every part of our lives. We have got to go and cut the wood and use it; we have got to go and appropriate what is of Christ and use it in our lives, and, through the prophetic word, you will find it up the mountain. Through Haggai, God brings that in, in clarity. It says, “and build the house, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified”; this is the effect of the prophetic word.
I just apply this to the word that I or others would seek to give as they stand up in a meeting for prophetic ministry. What skill is seen here; is this a word of Haggai’s? No, “Thus saith Jehovah of hosts”. God’s direct speaking is available and is ready to come; now, who is it going to come through? Who is going to speak? This must have been such a moment for the people. A bit further down in this chapter, it says, “And Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and all the remnant of the people, hearkened to the voice of Jehovah their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet”, v 12. They hearkened to the voice. The prophetic word has a distinctive note about it, I believe. When Moses came down from the mountain after the people had failed, when he came down with the second tablets of stone, it speaks of the tenor of the God’s word (Exod 34: 27), and I think we have some impression of what that means. I am not suggesting we do not experience it; I know we do. When someone stands up and truly gives a prophetic word, the words have the tenor of the words of God Himself. It has the tenor of the truth about it, the conviction of being applicable to something at that time, in that locality, or maybe for the brethren more universally. Maybe as I am sitting listening to it, just for me, it has the character of coming from heaven itself. I would like to encourage all of us to desire to be in such a state, so as to be ready to be the conduit through which such speaking can come.
In Peter, we see that this will not come by our own efforts. I have tried. I would say this particularly to the younger brothers here, I have tried to give words in my own strength, and they have failed. God may be pleased to use something; He can use just the reading of the scripture to effect something, but if you try to do it in your own strength and with your own interpretation, and, if I might say so, with your own motive in mind, it will fail. It may even do damage. It says here, “for prophecy was not ever uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spake under the power of the Holy Spirit”. Here is the power for the prophetic word - the power of the Holy Spirit. It says here, “for prophecy was not ever uttered by the will of man”. The will of man enters into so much but has no place in the things of God. If I desire, maybe even with a right motive, to speak according to what I think, it will come to naught. I have to give myself over to the power of the Holy Spirit to bring such a word in. It is difficult sometimes, as we can feel very strongly about things. I am sure Haggai had something in his heart as did Ezra. They had felt the situation for fifteen years but God chose the timing and He chose the words and He chose the message, and the prophetic word is exactly that. It is God’s word. The speaking comes from someone who is so close to God they are able to speak on His behalf. We would scarcely claim it, would we? But we can claim to have the power to do it because of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is a wonderful gift, and it enables us to enter into such realms. It says, “holy men of God”; none of us would claim that in our own right, but if we are in the dignity of everything God has called us to, we are available to Him in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can speak on His behalf. The brethren will understand that I am seeking to speak very carefully here about these things.
One other point that is made here in Peter is “that the scope of no prophecy of scripture is had from its own particular interpretation”. To search out the scriptures for something to support my own point of view will not be supported by the Holy Spirit. Simply to search for something that supports what I want to say is wrong, and again I have learnt this; I have learnt it bitterly. If the Spirit gives something to say, if God gives you something to say, you will always find it supported by Scripture. I would just urge my brethren to do it that way round. I know even in the recent times there are many exercises that affect the saints, many things that go deep; but searching the Scriptures and the ministry for self-justification, or justification of a point of view, is not the way that it works; it will not be supported by God. It works when God brings in His own word, and the Scripture will then support it. How good God is. He is so faithful to us; if we truly want to have this direction and hear this word, He will bring it in. There were those, Ezra and Zerubbabel among them, who wanted to hear this word, and they respond to it immediately. The prophetic word is a powerful call to action and God brings it in, in His own time.
There is some very practical advice here in Corinthians. Apparently there was a problem in Corinth that Paul seeks to address, in that those who were speaking with tongues were crowding out the prophetic word. Paul has to say, ’If you are speaking in another language or another dialect, the only person who can understand you is God, and you should confine that to speaking to God’; and there certainly are things which have their place when we speak just between ourselves and God. Prophecy comes into its own when it is brought into the local assembly and it edifies that local assembly. A prophetic word is a very positive thing. It says here, “he that prophesies speaks to men in edification, and encouragement, and consolation”. What a word to be able to bring in, beloved brethren; a word that can do these things. Edification - we always need that, there is the wood, bring in Christ. I have been listening over the past few months in meetings for ministry and, almost without exception, some glory of Christ comes into the prophetic word. No matter what the subject is or what scripture is taken up, Christ comes in, and is brought before the brethren; and immediately we are edified, our constitutions built up because of the glory of the One who is brought before us. This is edification; feeding on Christ will always be of benefit to the saints - such a wonderful Man. What a subject He is for any prophetic word: whatever the time, whatever the problem, whatever the situation or circumstances, feed on Christ. “And encouragement”, it says. We always need encouragement. We are always aware of the situation and testing circumstances in which we are. The brethren always need encouragement, every Christian needs encouragement, we cannot always be at the peak of our enjoyment. We are in the flesh and we fail and we get disappointed with ourselves. We may get disappointed with other people. The prophetic word would encourage and stimulate the people of God. “And consolation” - I have thought long and hard about this. There are those in this room who will have proved the prophetic word consoling them more than I have, those into whose lives sorrow has come in a very specific way, and I am sure the prophetic word has brought in consolation; comfort and consolation. Seek out the prophetic word; seek out what God would say. He will bring it in. It is very easy to be able to say a few comforting words, perhaps sympathise with someone, but true consolation, consolation according to the word of God, is something that is very, very precious. He is the One that has the everlasting arms, He is the One who can bring in consolation at a time that you and I could never do it naturally. Again I would refer to what we said earlier, what is natural will never become what is spiritual. The finest example of what is natural, the height of what is natural, will never become what is spiritual or according to God. He may in His ways be pleased to use it, but it never becomes spiritual. What comes from God is spiritual and it has power and it can effect that whereunto it is sent. Paul goes on to say, “He that speaks with a tongue edifies himself; but he that prophesies edifies the assembly”. I like to equate this with the beautifying of God’s house that we spoke of earlier on; to have the privilege of being the one through whom the word comes which edifies the assembly is to be desired. Your local meeting, the local place in which you have been set, is a place where you can be one such, a channel through whom God can speak to edify the assembly. Why would we want to be anything else? The prophetic word is not something that should stumble or should cause offence; it is something that should edify. Whatever the word is, whether it is corrective or consoling or encouraging it should further and edify the local assembly and help all those who are there.
This does require on the other side those who are listening to it and who are under the sound of the word as ready to accept it too. Sometimes that may be difficult; can I get beyond the person who is giving the word? More importantly, can I get beyond the history of whoever is giving the word? He is my brother in the Lord, he is speaking, if he is, in the power of the Spirit on behalf of God, and it behoves me to listen to what God is saying. There would have been those in Haggai’s day who would have been in this group of those who stopped working, who really felt the edge of the word coming in. There were those who may have been quite closely aligned to Ezra who would have said, ‘Yes, but you know what is going to happen if we start building again’. It is going to be difficult, times are going to be difficult, but God prepares them to continue building. The beauty of it is that, having hearkened to the prophetic word, by the time they come to the end of the book of Ezra, they are ready to take some quite drastic action when it comes to those that they had mingled with. They were ready to be before God. There is one instance where Ezra rends his clothes and falls before God, chap 9: 5. There were those who were ready, and in a state to be able to do that, because they had listened to a prophetic word. In verse 26, there is more practical advice. I do not want to go into all the detail, but I would simply say that it says here, “each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation”: everyone has one. I sometimes may think that it has always got to be me who gives the word; that is not the case because everyone has something. Conversely, I may always think that someone else has always got a word, so I am not going to bother. That is not the case, everyone has one. We need to be ready to use it. We need to be ready to be active in the service of God in bringing in a prophetic word that will edify all the assembly - givers as well as receivers. How good God is! He will not leave us without edification; everyone can be active.
Then there is some practical advice, “let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge”. We often use this scripture, do we not and apply this word - “let the others judge”. If I have given a word, it is up to others to judge; it is not for me to proclaim that that is how it must be. I simply want to be a mouthpiece for God. Then scripture says, “And spirits of prophets are subject to prophets”. I am rather touched by that, having experienced it. As the brethren know I was asked to serve in the gospel after a three day meeting, and I was a little nervous in doing so as I had sat through the three day meetings, and I had not contributed vocally at all. The subject was very helpful and it was challenging, but I felt that I was a little out of my depth and not really able to contribute. The thought went through my mind that I was about to get up and preach the gospel but I had not taken part. All these brothers who had expended and worked were now about to listen to me. However, I can tell you that as I spoke, I was absolutely aware that the brothers who had most served, and those perhaps in whom the work of God was very clearly developed, with whom there was a real depth, were the most supportive; and that was a real lesson to me. They were prophets being subject. Now I hope I am not taking that too far; all I would say is, if we love the word of God, we love to hear it through whomsoever it comes and we will be ready to listen to it. A young brother stands up to give a word; he may find it difficult, he maybe stumbles over the words, or is not sure what scripture to use. We will always be ready, if it is a prophetic word, to rejoice in the fact that it is coming, and be ready to support him. “Prophets are subject to prophets”.
I trust the brethren will be gracious enough to accept such a direct word. For His Name’s sake.
Bexley
21st April 2012