Giving God a Chance (continued)
Ezra 8:24-30 deals with he deposit; the holy free-will offering to the Lord; "Watch ye, and keep them, until ye weigh them before the chiefs of the priests and the Levites, and the princes of the fathers' houses ... at Jerusalem." It is blessed to regard this as the deposit which the Lord entrusts to us at the beginning. It is that of which the Apostle writes to Timothy - "Guard the deposit which is committed unto thee" (1 Timothy 6:20). The Lord has committed to the vessel for His testimony those things which represent the fullness of His salvation. You have the brass, the silver, and the gold; we know what it means, and all this is the deposit, these sacred things of "the faith ... once for all delivered to the saints." Those great factors of salvation - Righteousness - Redemption - and Salvation.
You meet brass immediately you come within the Court of the Tabernacle - the Brazen Altar - with all its wonderful meaning of the wholly and fully consecrated body of the Lord Jesus to the will of God, "By the which will we are sanctified" - the whole Burnt Offering which avails for our Sanctification (Hebrews 10:10). Then you have the silver of our Redemption, the the gold of that conformity to the Divine Image. That is the deposit of the faith. Jude urges the believers to whom he writes that they contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to us at the beginning, and to be handed up complete at the end of the journey. Paul could say at the end of his life, "I have kept the faith," and he handed it back at the end in the House of God complete.
It represents the ministry concerning the House of God, the whole testimony, the full Gospel. The full faith once for all delivered to the saints is entrusted to us; and it has to be enshrined within the House of God, safeguarded on the journey, and at last presented to the Lord without mixture, she clear testimony; not an iota dropped, but handed back complete.
The Lord give us grace and strength to guard our trust and present it to Him saying, "We have lost nothing, we have kept the faith, we have run the race - henceforth there is a crown of Righteousness."
All this is very good as Bible truth, but if it only goes that far, I have spoken in vain. I know the difficulty of bringing other people into one's own concern and travail. I believe as to how things are today; they are terrible spiritually, but there are those reaching out for more of God, and asking where they can find spiritual food.
The Lord would, I believe, do something in our day; a day of small things; and He will begin by having an instrument with a burden, with whom there is deposited the full-orbed revelation of the Lord Jesus; and who would step out in faith and trust the Lord; give the Lord a chance to vindicate Himself. May the Lord constitute us part of such an instrument and move out to others also. Ask the Lord about this matte, and, if it is true, to lay it on your heart and bring you into fellowship with HIMSELF in what He would do today.
"The hand of our GOD was upon us, and HE delivered us from the hand of the enemy and the-lier-in wait by the way ... and the vessels were weighed in the house of our God ... the whole by number and by weight: and all the weight was written at that time" (Ezra 8:31-34).
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(The End)
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