God’s People

The Lord presents His disciples to God according to His own thoughts of them, and His own love to them—what they were in their relationship to Him and to His Father. They are the joint possession of the Father and the Son. "They are Thine. And all Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them." John 17:9,10.
It is an important thing, in these days especially, to see God's people from the standpoint from which He showed His people to Balaam (Num. 23 and 24), for that is what gives courage to pray for them, and to seek to help them on. Otherwise we might think that we see so little response, and there seems to be so little heart. But there is no less response in God's people now than there was then in the disciples of the Lord Jesus. What they actually were at that time is quite another thing, and when God occupies His people with His people, He occupies such with what they are in His own thoughts. That becomes the measure and standard of service to them.
Do you remember how Moses so failed when He was occupied with the evil of God's people? It is no more strange to see Moses in Ex. 32 and 33, than to see him again in Num. 11:10-15. Here Moses left God out—it's "I," "me," "my," etc., and, "Thou layest the burden of all this people upon me." God's answer is verses 16 and 17, where He took away some of the Spirit that was on Moses and put it on the elders.
How different was the Moses we read of in Exodus 32! How he did plead with God, and there he was so burdened with all that they had just done. He said, "If Thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book." There he was in the power of the Spirit, but of course, it was God's grace in him.
It is so easy to get occupied with the evil among the people of God. I do not say that the evil is not serious, but what I refer to is the spirit in which we should be occupied with it, considering what they are as God's people.
The law of the Spirit of fife
in Christ Jesus hath made me
free from the law of
sin and death.
Romans. 8:2

Questions and Answers
QUESTION: What is taught by the seven churches? What is the "synagogue of Satan"? (Rev. 2:9;3:9.)
ANSWER: Seven is the number of spiritual completeness. Rev. 2 and 3 give us a complete picture of the spiritual state, or condition, of the Church as the Lord's witness here on earth from the time John wrote, till its end when Christ comes to claim His own out of it. The chief mark of each we might say is: Ephesus, declension; Smyrna, persecution or suffering for Christ; Pergamos, worldliness; Thyatira, seeking worldly power; Sardis, formal religion; Philadelphia, revival of the truth of Christ's Person and coming; Laodicea, indifference to the claims of Christ. The last four run on concurrently till the end. May the Lord keep our hearts true to Himself.
“The synagogue of Satan" is spoken of in the two phases of the assembly where no fault is found with them. It is there that traditional religion opposes the truth; they "say they are Jews"—the people of God—"but [they] do lie." They try to improve the flesh and to keep the law, and this recognizes good in man, whereas the truth is "in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Compare the word "Jew," which means "praise" (Rom. 2:17,18; Gen. 29:35), with those that say they are Jews, and praise themselves; they are good in their own eyes.