Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Dec 1944

Last month we referred to the matters of "within" and "without" which are illustrated by the garden that God planted in Eden, and the field, which is the world, that lay without. A garden means a place enclosed by a hedge or wall.

Many, yea most, in their great endeavours to reach the unsaved in the world

have discarded entirely the thought of God having a garden and have gone out into the field; and the reaching of unsaved people with the gospel is the sum of their spiritual activity. They give neither time nor place in their thoughts to the purpose of God relative to a husbandry (1 Corinthians 3.9) where He can receive of the pleasant fruit of an obedient people. God's purposes relative to the field and the garden are not diametrically opposed, but are complementary to each other.

The purpose of God in having a garden was not an idea which He developed consequent upon the entrance of sin. Even in heaven God had a garden, before the fall of Satan, which was before sin had raised its head in all His fair creation (Ezekiel 28.18). But though He had a garden that in no sense meant that He had in any way abandoned what lay without its wall or hedge. We to whom some

modicum of understanding has been given relative to the garden and the field, the "without" and the "within," must not run to the opposite extreme and suppose that almost the only thing that matters is that which pertains to "within." We would be as wrong in that as are those who discard the idea of God having a "within" and go in entirely for soul-winning. We must hold the balance. We must be men who sling stones with both hands.

In order of time and work the preacher must come before the teacher, the mother before the nurse. "For though ye should have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I begat you through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4.15), thus spake Paul with a correct sense of the fitness of things. Sowers and reapers are needed as well as planters and builders. The sower comes first, he is the first man on the ground. He is the spearhead, the man of tremendous potentiality because of what he carries and what he sow the word of God. where are the sowers? where are the sowers who go forth weeping, bearing precious seed? Such shall come again bringing their sheaves with them (Psalm 126.6). what a conscious joy of a fond parent is in the words, "I begat you through the gospel!" It is true that we know not how to pray (Romans 8.20), and often we do not know what to pray for, but when the Lord appointed seventy others (besides the twelve) He said to them, "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth labourers into His harvest" (Luke 10.2). In this particular at any rate we know what the Lord's will is as to that for which we should pray.

Seventy men, were they not enough to gather in His harvest? No. As they went to preach they were to pray that others might be sent. The harvest is not

ours, it is the Lord's, and, if His harvest is to be gathered as it ought to be, then labourers must go forth to labour in His field, for the world is His field. But let us remember that the movement is from "within" to "without." What caused the fall was the result of a movement from "without "to "within," that was the Devil's movement. God's movement is from "within" to "without." "Go ye!"

J. Miller | Dec 1944
Jottings