Now Don’t Hurt the Lord
Now Don’t Hurt the Lord
Philip saith unto Him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. John 14:8
1. You Who Regarded Christ’s Command
And he findeth Philip: and Jesus saith unto him, Follow Me. (John 1:43 rv)
You may have had no reluctance in obeying the Lord’s command, and yet it is probable you are hurting Him because you look for God to manifest Himself where He never can “Lord, shew us the Father.” We look to God to manifest Himself to His children: God manifests Himself in His children, consequently the manifestation is seen by others, not by us. It is a snare to want to be conscious of God; you cannot be conscious of your consciousness and remain sane. You have obeyed Christ’s command, then are you hurting Him by asking some profoundly perverse question? I believe our Lord is repeatedly astounded at the stupidity we display. It is notions of our own that make us stupid; when we are simple we are never stupid, we discern all the time. “Lord, shew us the Father”; “Shew me Thy face”; “Expound this thing to me”; and His answer comes straight back to our heart: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?”
2. You Who Realised Christ’s Character
Philip . . . saith . . . We have found Him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth. (John 1:45)
Like Philip, you know that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, you realise His character and recognise Him in the Scriptures, then are you hurting Him by the questions you ask? diseased, morbid questions, not the questions of a child. Jesus has said, “Let not your heart be troubled,” then are you hurting Him by allowing your heart to be troubled? If your heart is troubled you are not living up to your belief. Are you trying to expound the Lord apart from Himself, bringing in ideas of your own along with your knowledge of His character? Are you taken up with considering your own perplexities, allowing some morbid question to perturb your heart? What our Lord wants is the implicit relationship to Himself which takes everything as it comes from Him.
3. You Who Recognised Christ’s Claim
Philip saith unto him, Come and see. (John 1:46)
In the beginning Philip obeyed Jesus Christ readily, there was no traitorous unbelief in his heart; he realised who Jesus was, and testified of Him to others, and yet he had not perfect childlike confidence in Jesus, and it was this that hurt our Lord—“hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” If you know only what you have experienced, you will never see Jesus. Once put conscious experience in the road and you will hurt the Lord. You can never rely on what you believe intellectually; but once have the attitude of a perfectly simple, unsophisticated child of God and there is no trouble in believing. The questions that hurt the Lord are those that are not born of devotion to Him. Am I hurting my Lord by the kind of questions I am asking to-day? They may sound all right to others, but they hurt Him.
“Lord, shew us the Father.” Philip expected the revelation of a tremendous mystery, but he did not expect it in the One whom he knew. The mystery of God is now, this minute, not in what is going to be; we look for it presently, in some cataclysmic happening. What am I asking Jesus Christ to do? “Lord, shew us the Father.” He has done it: “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” When once I realise that everything is in Jesus Christ, I will never allow any questions that spring from without to trouble my heart. The thing that hurts Jesus is asking Him to give us experiences—“I want to be conscious of God’s presence.” Get rid of the morbid idea of consciousness, be so completely in Jesus that His presence is salvation continually.
You have obeyed Jesus Christ’s command and followed Him, you have realised His character and recognised His claims, then are you hurting Him by asking Him to show you things? “Show me Thy face”; there it is! “Show me the Father”; there He is! always just here or nowhere; He is here now. Once realise that and the emancipation is immediate. It is to those to “babes,” to “little children,” “in whom is no guile,”† that the revelation comes. God never guides presently, He always guides now. No wonder Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled”!
What a Man Possesses v. What Possesses a Man
For a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. Luke 12:15
This statement of Our Lord’s needs careful consideration because we dislike it strongly. The whole teaching of Jesus is opposed to the idea of civilisation, viz., possessing things for myself—“This is mine.” The sense of property is connected, not with the lasting element of our personality, but with that which has to do with sin; it is the sense of property that makes me want to gratify myself. Jesus Christ had no sense of property, there was never any attempt to gratify Himself by possessing things for Himself—“the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.”† What was His, He gave—“I lay down My life. . . . I lay it down of Myself.” The thing that leads me wrong always and every time is what I am persuaded I possess. The thing that is mine is the thing I have with the power to give it. All that I want to possess without the power to give, is of the nature of sin. God has no possessions, consequently I cannot rob God of anything, but I rob myself of God every time I stick to what I possess. Immediately I abandon to God I get that which possesses me but has no possessions with it, there is nothing to keep. Being possessed by God means an untrammelled human life.
God seems careless of His children from the standpoint of Time; when we get to the Eternal side of God’s Providence we find He does not estimate a man by what he possesses; the only thing He is after is union with Himself, and He will obliterate all our possessions until He leaves only Himself. As long as I have something from God which I possess, I have not got God. God gives us possessions in order to draw us to Himself, and when we get God we are no longer conscious of our possessions, but conscious only of God. What possesses me in a yielded life to God is God Himself.
According to Jesus Christ a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses—not only in the way of goods and chattels, but in the way of a good name, a virtuous character; these things are a man’s inheritance, but not his life. When the Holy Spirit begins to try and break into the house of our possessions in order to grant us the real life of God, we look on Him as a robber, as a disturber of our peace, because when He comes He reveals the things which are not of God and must go; and they are the things which constituted our life before He came in, our golden affections were carefully nested in them. The thing that hurts shows where we live. If God hurts it is because we are not living rightly related to Him, and if we say “the devil” instead of “God,” it is evidence that we are living a sequestered life of our own apart from God.
Watch the opportunities of filling up “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” When I am possessed by God it is not that He gives me power to love like He does, but that the very nature of God loves through me, just as He put up with the things in me which were not of Him, so He puts up with the things which are not of Him in others through me, and what is manifested is the love of God, the love that suffers long and is kind, the love that does not take account of evil, the love that never fails. Just as my Lord was made broken bread and poured-out wine for me, so I must be made broken bread and poured-out wine in His hands for others. What is meant by “in His hands” is seen in the kind of things that bruise me—tyrannic powers, misunderstanding people, things that ordinarily I would have resented and said, “No, I can’t allow that.” Is there being produced in me, through the crushing of His disguised feet, the wine that is a real quickening of other lives? A yielded life to God becomes a doormat for men. He leaves us here to be trampled on.