Reading:
Exodus 21:1-6; Deuteronomy 15:12-17;
Leviticus 8:14-28; Isaiah 50:4-5.
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches." (Revelation 3:20-22).
The Servant's
Ear
You notice the common feature in all these passages is
that of the ear. We are occupied with the matter of the
servants and the service of the Lord, and it is not a little
impressive to note how in the Word of God the ear has
such an important place in the service of God. We need,
of course, always to get an adequate background for any
subject under consideration. It is very easy to make a
Bible Reading of
"ears," to gather up the "ears"
of the Bible and form them into some ordered arrangement, but that is not
sufficient. We want to get the range of things from the Divine standpoint and
see how these things, are not just things in themselves, but they fit into
something which
is
tremendous in its contemplation and application.
We might be helped to get this great background by
reminding ourselves that the ruin, wreckage, all the misery
and wretchedness, sin and sorrow, pain and suffering of every kind, all that has
struck home to the very heart of God, all that has been a hand against His
throne, all that has stood in the way to arrest His great eternal purpose, all
that necessitated God giving His only and well
beloved Son, all that made essential the Cross of Christ,
and much more, is the direct result of an ear operating
wrongly; all that was brought about by the capture of an
ear by the enemy. The enemy in laying his plans to
capture the race and the world and the
place of
authority
for himself decided deliberately that the
point of attack which would serve him best, would ever
serve his interest most, would be the ear. And so he
assailed the ear and made his insinuations by way of the
ear.
"Hath God said..."
and all the rest followed.
The ear was lent to the suggestion, to the
insinuation; the ear was surrendered with these
far reaching terrible consequences.
Now, beloved, that is only half of the story.
The other half is this, that in the redemption of
the world, in the redemption of mankind, in
the re-capturing for God and for man of the
government of the universe, in the overthrow of
all that power and the destroying of all those
works, God does it by capturing an ear. And these passages which we have read
this evening,
in type, relate to the ear of the Lord Jesus, that God had His ear. It was
because God had His
ear
as
He did have it that the rest followed.
You see you have got a tremendous principle
there in this service and servant of the Lord,
the Servant, greater than Whom there has never
been a Servant of the Lord, the Lord Jesus
Himself fulfilled His marvellous service, commission, His wonderful work, firstly by a
surrendering of His ear to the Father. It was
the law of the ear in relation to God that
governed this Servant to begin with. Other
things followed, as we shall see another time,
but this was where it began, and while in His case it is so much more than it
could ever be in
the case of any other, yet the principle
holds good for all the servants
of
God, that God is going
to accomplish His heavenly purpose firstly by way of
having an ear in His charge, under His control, in
fellowship with Himself. And, if you and I are going to
understand the nature of priestly ministry, we have got to
come to know what it is to have our ear held by and for
God. Now, of course, having established the
background, or seen the range of this thing in principle,
we can come down then to the illustrations of it, and can
get the meaning of these various passages which have to
do with the ear.
In
the first of these passages in Exodus and
Deuteronomy, the servant, the bondsman is brought in.
Note one or two details. He is a Hebrew. He is not a
stranger, he is a member of that race that has been
delivered from slavery and bondage, whose covenant
rights were liberty, but within the compass of a liberated
people he is in bondage. He is a Hebrew. He is owned
by a master. He serves that master for six years and then
the seventh year, the year of jubilee, is the year of
liberation. This bondsman comes to the day when his
master is compelled to release him and let him go; he can
hold him no longer so far as the law is concerned, and
the bondsman is given his liberty. The master says to
him, "Well, so and so, the time has come for you to take
the liberty which
is
yours
by right, to go out free, I can hold you no longer, there you are."
The bondsman turns to his master and says, "But there are stronger ties than law, there are mightier
bonds than legalism, there are such things as heart ties,
and it is those ties that hold me. I have long since ceased
to be bound by law, I have become bound by love and
I do not want to be released from that, I will not go out
free, I choose deliberately on the basis of a heart
relationship to be forever, not for another six years, not
for another term of the law, not for twelve or eighteen
years or any number of legal terms, I choose forever for
the whole length of my life, to abide in this house and
serve." That declaration must be formed into a covenant,
sealed in blood. The master takes him to the threshold of
the house and with an awl bores through his ear to the
door-post and the blood falls upon the threshold, and
that threshold has become an altar with blood sprinkled
on
it, and
in
that covenant of blood the master and the
servant belong to the one household forever.
Now that
is all very simple, all very beautiful, but you see it brings
in the true nature of the servant and of service as
represented by the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus was
under no legal obligation to come and fulfil that service,
but He fulfilled it. He did not come because He was
legally compelled or judiciously bound to it. He did not
come in a spirit of independence, that He would do this
thing but, of course, He would do it if He liked, but
could resign. No! He came on this basis - for love's sake,
on the basis of love. He was the bond slave of Jehovah to carry out this work in relation to the House of God, and
that service and servant was sealed in His own blood.
The shedding of that blood was the outpouring of His life,
the token that life and death were bound up with this fact.
It was a matter of blood, a matter of life and death, and
love led to that, and that was the nature of His relationship
to His Father.
Now there are two things, beloved, to be
noted. One, the significance of the ear in this matter. Why
could it not have been anything else? Why not first of all
let us give our hand upon it? When we make a pact we
say we
give
our hand upon it. Why not some other
member or some other instrumentality, why should the
ear be the basic thing in this? Well, the answer I think is obvious. That you can never do
anything with the hand, that you can never
express your service by any other means
until you have come into an intelligent
apprehension of what is in the heart of the
one to whom you are giving your service,
whose servant you are. The working of the
hand is dependent upon the knowledge of his
will, and this ear coming into evidence in this
connection
is
simply saying this - forever,
voluntarily, utterly, on the basis of the strongest
possible tie, the basis of love, I have no ear
for any one else, my ear as the gateway of intelligence is yours.
You see this bored ear, beloved, stands right over that freelance, lawlessness of the Adam man who
yielded to Satan. It was the lawlessness of the
ear in Adam that brought the trouble, and
when you take the awl and put it through the
ear, the ear has become sealed in blood to
another, and it is the taking back of this ear
from the realm of lawlessness which has brought
about all the ruin and all his power
to do his work, taking it back completely and
utterly, and putting it into the hand of God
that the works of the devil shall never again
have a chance along that line; from that
moment the ear is God's ear.
Now, of course, we understand that we are
not just talking about the physical ear,
although that comes in. The believer must be careful about what the ear shall listen to. It
is just that in the ordinary every day kind of
way with the physical ear that the devil does
get so many advantages. The gossip which we talk, the rumours and reports which, in
themselves are so often mistaken and distorted
by the people who spread them, believing that they are very truth, and we
believe them to be
the truth, and when the whole thing is sifted
out there is very little truth in them at all, and
the whole thing has been mistaken. The Word of
God tells us to "take heed how ye hear."
In the
physical sense it is true that our inner man is
affected by our outward ear, but we are not
only speaking of that, important as it is for us
to safeguard our ears, the real service of the
Lord is not just that physical realm, it is in
that deeper inner ear which is open to the
Lord and which is the Lord's. I mean that
the Lord is given His place in the inner life
to be allowed to speak, and other things are
being shut out that the Lord may speak; and
that is a thing which is basic to priestly service.
The man or woman who has no inner ear, no
inner silence, no inner place for hearing the
Lord is never going to be of much use in the
service of the Lord, and mark you, it must be
the Lord, and we must be very careful that
we do not give even good men and good
writers the place that the Lord ought to have.
There is a time when we must sweep our books aside,
when we must shut ourselves up from the voices of men,
when we must get quiet with the Lord and listen, and
more, we must seek to cultivate, by the grace of God, the
ear that is always open to the Lord even when all the
other sounds are around us. It is difficult, yet not
impossible, that in the raging of the street and the rush of
business life the Lord should say something; but He will
only speak to those who recognise the value of listening
to the Lord and who are giving Him His place of silence
to speak when possible. The ear to hear the Lord when
all other sounds and voices are around us is prepared
and trained in these times of detachment which the Lord
demands, and against which the devil is eternally active to
capture the ear again.
Now, that is elementary (we are not
seeking to be profound), but tremendously important.
You and I know, never mind how spiritually mature we
are - the one object of the devil is to capture our ear from God, to make it impossible for
us to have the silent hour and the silent ear for God. The pressing in, and all
the things which happen just
when you have decided to have a little quiet time; then it
is you have to fight for the ear - you know it is true. Do
you see, there is something bound up with that; the
undoing of the work of the devil, the registration of
God's mind upon this universe, everything which is
meant by priestly ministry, which is bringing God in, is
bound up with this: God having the ear.
There are two things to note, this is one. The other is
this: with this Hebrew servant it was a crisis. There
came the day when he made a decision, the thing reached
a point of decision and that decision was one which
involved him for all time. A crisis. The voluntary decision.
Now, beloved, the point is this.
We have got to come,
we shall be compelled to come, to the place where we
decide once and for all whether we are going to serve
the Lord under compulsion, under a sense of legality,
under a sense of duty, under some sense of conscience
and we go on day by day and year by year, but if only we could be exempt, if only it need not be; the groaning under
it, the groaning in the service of the Lord. We have to
decide whether it is going to be because we must, or
whether it is going to be our delight to do His will, our joy.
That is a crisis, and this crisis represents the position of
appreciation of the Master to which we have come. Are
we bondslaves in the sort of conscientious legal sense,
yes, that we are afraid to do otherwise, we must do it, we
are compelled to do it for various reasons, it would be a
disastrous thing to draw out and give it up.
Whether that is
the spirit or whether it is
"I love my master, I will not go
out free," represents a point of our estimation of the Lord,
our appreciation of the Lord, our sense of indebtedness to
the Lord, our recognition of the value of the Lord; and,
beloved, the service that the Lord is seeking is not service
which we have to be coerced to do, the service which we
will not render unless we are invited to do it, the service
which is not spontaneous but which is organised, and
unless we are asked to take it up we do not do it.
Oh, that we should get some better idea of what the
service of the Lord is than that it is platforms and pulpits
and open-air meetings. Beloved, service for the Lord is
just as important when it is rendering some kindly act of
helpful service
to
some rather depressed child of
God
in the ordinary domestic things of
daily life; just as valuable as getting on the platform and
giving a message. You see it is strengthening the hands of
the Lord's children, it is coming in to check the crushing overweight of the adversary, coming alongside to lift up
the testimony in some life or home where the enemy is
trying to crush the testimony out - and the testimony is
something maintained in domestic relationships, in family
life, private life. There are too many who want to give up
their domestic service and go to Bible College, failing to recognise that that service there may
be just as valuable to
the Lord as their going out to the mission field. It is
spiritual, not technical, not organised, and you may be as
much a priest of the Lord in going round to some home tomorrow where the enemy is pressing in, and giving a practical hand
in helping with the washing, as you may be a priest in
standing on the platform. Let us revise our ideas of
priestly service and not think it is bound up with public
ministry in the service of the Lord. Not always, very
often perhaps for the majority it is otherwise, for more are called to fulfil priestly ministry
in that realm than in this realm. Do not
neglect it. Let it be the spontaneity of love
for the Lord, not the compulsion or sense of
duty, not merely for conscience sake, for when
the heart is rightly related to the Lord these
things become spontaneous. They are not
forced, they simply flow out. Find the person
who has most of the love of God in their heart,
that person is most concerned for the other
children of God.
There are many priests of God
whose voices have never been heard in public,
who have never been seen in a public way, who
are unknown, hidden very often in the assembly
and yet in secret history fulfilling a most
valuable ministry. Get adjusted over this thing. We have
to come to the point where we deliberately decide as to whether the
Lord is worthy of this, and abandon ourselves to it
because of our appreciation of Him, the Master. You see,
this servant abandons himself freely, voluntarily, for all
time to the service of his master because he has come to
love his master.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Jan-Feb 1932, Vol 10-1