Two things are very evident in this scripture first that the apostle had a great conflict; and second, what that conflict was for. As the servant of God, Paul was answering to the mind of the Master, he was in conflict to meet the mind of the Master about the saints.
It was no easy thing; he would not have great conflict (agony) for a trifle. He was in prison, and His heart went out to them -- what for? See verse 2 - that they might have "the full assurance of understanding" in the mystery of God.
Note verse 4 -- "This I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words". There was no safety except in reaching this topmost point -- there is no safety save in being where the heart of Christ has set you. In Hebrews you go from earth to heaven; here you go from man to Christ, "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge". "In vain the net is spread in the sight of anything which hath wings". If you are in Christ above, you are above the claims of things here that are snares.
Are saints' hearts comforted (verse 2) practically? They are sure of salvation, but the heart is never comforted until it lays hold of the Person of Christ. In any dispensation, whatever God gave, the great thing was to maintain the top; the highest point was the place of safety, and to forsake it was ruin - Satan always tries to take from us the best bit of truth. Now what are we set for? We have heard of the ruin, but have we lost Christ? Note two or three ways in which failure set in.
In the garden of Eden, what was attacked first? The word.
Abraham: the first failure (Genesis 12:10) is that he goes out of the land. The land was the very point, it was that which God had given him and into which he was called.
Jacob: Genesis 33 -- Shechem and El-elohe-Israel. He is come back to the land, but he is appropriating blessings to himself. Does he go to the point that he had said was the very gate of heaven? He had got the name of Israel and he made Israel the object, but God says, Go to Bethel, and what is the result? He had to clear away all sorts of things. He wanted God to make him the object, instead of his making God the object.
There ought to be progress, always adding, as Peter says (2 Peter 1:5). People are satisfied to get among the brethren, and yet when there, instead of progress there is declension. At deathbeds, too, I find people resigned, and not a full and abundant entrance.
What brought Israel into captivity? The neglect to keep the sabbatical year (Leviticus 26:33 - 34; 2 Chronicles 36:21), the great witness of the care of God for them.
You must get your relationship to Christ as the first thing. In Revelation John shows us the bride, but she went up to heaven to be dressed -- a bride adorned for her husband. See, too, the series of Psalms 120 - 134, verse 2. They are songs of degrees or steps, progressing until we get to standing in the house. God always had a house, but there is another thing -- the body of Christ -- that must be the ultimate of my heart. In Psalm 120 I get away from the tents of Kedar.
That which is foremost in the mind of God must be the highest point with me -- do not let the thought come in that it is too high for you. Where did Daniel look, in spite of the lions' den? Where God's eyes
and heart were -- he opened his window towards Jerusalem. Look, too, at Elijah's last day's walk, 30 miles; he went in company with the mind of God, and he did not skip Bethel either. Wherever there is a power, though it may appear dormant, there is always the desire to act on it.
In Luke 2 the Lord, when brought into the temple as a child, is greeted by Simeon and Anna. She was a sample of one who clung to the chief object of God's interest on earth. In Haggai, it was a right thing for Israel to dwell in ceiled houses, but their hearts were in them and not in the house of God. My interest in Christ and with Christ cannot fail; what we need is devotedness.
In John 20 He is greeted by one who is inconsolable without Him. I connect the affection displayed in her with that word, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come". What outlived that dark tempestuous night when the Son of God was crucified? That woman's love. So you may look at ruins, but there is a bride, and she says, Come! Shall I not aim to be of the mind of Mary Magdalene? And mark the answer she gets; He does not tell her anything for herself, but He speaks to her about Himself and where He is going, and then bids her tell His brethren their relationship.
What though the carved work is broken down, there is a bride. It is not a candlestick coming forth but a bride. "Behold, the Bridegroom" (not "cometh") -- He is there.
You are complete in Him in verses 10, 11 and 12 of Colossians 2 -- He disposes of the man. I cannot better explain it than by a colonist, fearing to be deserted by his friends, burning the ship in which they came out -- thus man is gone, himself and his status.
The conflicts of the wilderness are about our own
circumstances; the conflicts of Canaan are about God's circumstances. I fear some are not on God's battle ground.
Do not forget to go to the top -- nothing short of that will do!
When man first encountered God after the fall, he said, "I was afraid ... and I hid myself". Now for the believer the place of the greatest fear is the place where I am most at home. We are as much out of judgment as Jesus is on the throne of God -- "As he is, so are we in this world"; "He that feareth is not made perfect in love". We cannot be in the presence of God in innocence, for we are guilty, so that we must be there in righteousness, and more at home there than anywhere else, and that place which used to repel now forms me into a likeness of itself. I am not tolerated there, I am at home, and where the distance was, there is now nearness and attraction.
Isaiah was a distinguished prophet having received the word and vision from God; but now he sees the Lord on His throne. Note that it is the year Uzziah died, -- the glory is not gone yet, but it is on the move. This man, distinguished as he is, what is his language? "Woe is me!" etc., -- he is filled with fear. I like to see a child afraid of the dark, there is nothing worse than no fear of God. Not only is he unclean, but undone. Look at Peter in Luke 5, he is an object of favour, and yet he says, "Depart front me", for he was in the presence of God. It was not one craving for mercy, but he had the sense of his unfitness for the presence of God. But mark, the place from whence the fear comes, the relief comes also. The Lord says, "Fear not". So with Isaiah -- "then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal"; not a jot of holiness is abated, it is a live coal; thus the relief comes from the place of fear.
Divine truth always leaves its impress on us, and
so Isaiah having got, as it were, a base of operations, can say, "Here am I; send me". He is with Him that is above and consequently can go down to the lowest place of God's people uttering the words (verses 9 and 10) quoted both by the Lord and Paul.
There is a simple word that the lips utter -- "the just for the unjust", but mark, it is not merely to bring me from hell, but to bring us to God. The Lord says to the dying thief, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise". He would bring a man that the world had driven out of the world (not God, as with the first man) to paradise. God had sought to connect Himself with man in glory on the earth, so that Moses' face shone with the very impress -- a significant intimation that the glory would conform to itself.
In Ezekiel 1, man's wickedness had driven away the glory of God from the earth. As it was departing, the prophet sees, in verse 26, as the likeness of a man in it, -- that is, the bright amber spot. In Luke 2 the glory comes back; in verse 9, "the glory ... shone round about them". They were sore afraid, but the word is "Fear not" -- where there was unspeakable fear there is unspeakable rest; -- "Ye shall find the babe ... in a manger". There is the man in the glory, -- in Luke 9 He, as a man, is glorified on the holy mount, and a voice from the excellent glory proclaims, "My beloved Son". We have the Man there, but nothing about us yet. It is at that moment that Moses and Elias (the law and the prophets) speak of His decease. This glorified Man has to descend from that scene, for all turns on His death, as the law and the prophets witness.
In 2 Corinthians 3 we have two ministrations, -- one of condemnation and one of righteousness, and both come from the glory. God comes in a tempest, making a claim, and what is the answer? "There is none righteous, no, not one". We always avoid the
person who has a claim on us, the effect of a claim was condemnation, and the claim, even of the glory on the face of Moses, was such that they could not bear to look on it, a glory that introduced law.
I do not want to mitigate the claim of a holy God. It is true we cannot meet it, it brings nothing but condemnation; but it is "that he might have mercy upon all".
Now look at the One who enters the earth in Luke 2the world could not contain the books that could be written of all He did, because everything He did was worthy of being recorded, and God glorified Him, that is what we see on the holy mount. He descends from the mount to die. Nothing shews me more how unfeeling I am, than when I speak of the cross. Ah! we are like sons who live on the means their father toiled to procure, without feeling it.
Look at Psalm 22 -- all the accumulation of evil pouring down on the head of the blessed One. I note seven things in that Psalm, from sin in verse 1 to the lion's mouth in verse 21. No one ever knew the extent of the offences against a holy God, but One, the Lord Jesus Christ. How do I know what sin means against God? Nothing can tell it but the cross. Nobody ever knew distance but the One who knew nearness; -- there are two things which only He knew, -- the sin of man and the heart of God. He is left, the solitary One, with all the force of sin and Satan on Him -- Oh, how unfeeling we are to walk about the earth with so little sense of the death of Christ; there is more feeling in people walking in a cemetery where a mother lies.
In Mark 5 He delivers the man who had the legion of demons from the power of Satan, the woman from the power of weakness, and the young daughter from the power of death. His word, His grace, His hand, accomplished them, He gave her His hand; but now it is not merely deliverance, but victory. He
conquered "him that had the power of death".
In John 11 the Lord goes into our side of death; in chapter 12 He speaks of going into the place Himself on God's behalf. Look now at John 13, verses 31 and 32. "Now is the Son of man glorified". Where? On the holy mount? No, it is the One who propounded the law and fixed the penalty, who takes that penalty and maintains the inviolability -- God is glorified when paying the penalty. He is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and now I have a Man in the glory who bore my penalty, and it is a ministration of righteousness from the glory. I look up and see I have a Saviour where there was a law.
In Acts 26 we have a man doing everything wrong; not immoral, but going against the mind of God. In verse 13, "At midday", etc., and what was the effect? "We are all fallen to the earth". What now greets him from that glory? "I am Jesus ... rise, and stand upon thy feet" -- not condemnation. But it is now not that the glory looks down, but that I look up into it, and I say boldly, if it were possible to push a man into the glory, he would be saved, for he would find a Saviour there, nay the glory as a balance to his credit. Look too at the divine intelligence which shone into the heart of the poor woman, "If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole". If it were not for Christ I should be afraid to go about for fear of the devil, but His word casts him out. There is never any violence but he is there, therefore it is said, "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil".
There is not evenness in the course until we have a mark; the effect on Isaiah is; "Send me". On Peter, he brought his ship to land and followed Him. People maintain dignity etc. because they have not a mark -- Christ in glory. It is not now God requiring of us, -- "If thou knewest the gift of God".
Now I am not repulsed, but attracted -- nay, "changed into the same image" by "beholding". I get a taste, -- it is not conscience that is in question, but cultivation of taste through communion with what is blessed. Look at a rushlight and a wax candle together: the one helps the other and you cannot tell which gives the light.
There is not a particle of light that has reached any soul in this whole earth, but came from the glory; follow the history of that ray in your own soul; trace it, eagle-like, up to its source. This is an immense comfort. People may preach, but if light breaks in, it is the glory in the face of Jesus, who paid my debt and satisfied the glory. It is not now compulsion, but that I am afraid to do this or that, -- to read such a book, to talk politics, -- lest I should lose my enjoyment in Christ. To Paul, Ananias said, Receive thy sight, and he filled with the Holy Spirit, as much as to say, If you open your eyes again on this world let it be in company with the Holy Spirit. Christ satisfies the heart; you may say, 'I have not entered into it;' but if the Lord has lighted a light in your heart it came from the glory, and you follow it up to the source whence it came.
We are left to commemorate death. No saint of old ever did that. Oh, retire into your privacy and rejoice that you have a Saviour and not a law! and that you have boldness to find your place in that scene of unbroken delights where Christ is!
There is a verse in Romans 8 of great importance: "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live", How little we make the Spirit of God our Guide and Ruler, and hence we get caught in the trammels of the flesh. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit".
Look around and at yourself. Can you say, 'I never thirst?' Do you consider all that is around you as a cottage, but that you are living in a mansion? As I walk down the street and see a book or a dress -- well, I do not want it, for I have everything in my mansion. It is not enough to say, I cannot afford it -- that is the wrong way of looking at things. I have, so to speak, two hearts, a little one and a large one, my own and God's. Which do I consult? We often talk of our weakness; why do we not speak of God's grace? Weakness does not hinder its action, perverseness does. I ask myself, or I am asked, Do you not want that thing? Not when I am in the mansion.
The fourth chapter of John stands in opposition to the second. It was a joyous occasion in the latter chapter. When the Lord comes in to the marriage feast He is met with this, "They have no wine"; but in chapter 4 we read, "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up". If a christian does not know this he goes back for his enjoyments to himself. In chapter 2 there was the marriage and the temple. At the marriage there was no wine, and the temple instead of producing worshippers produced merchants. In chapter 4 the Lord is speaking of the Spirit of God. If you feel the misery of the cottage, go into the mansion.
If you have the Holy Spirit in one way -- a well of water springing up -- you will have Him in all ways, though you may not have exercised yourself in them. In chapter 4 it was yourself, and the Holy Spirit makes you superior to yourself as Stephen was. If you have a restless night, are you superior to it or under it?
But in Chapter 7: 37 - 39 it is not the man but this earth. It was the feast of tabernacles -- the witness of how God made man an object of consideration on the earth. Is it the time for that now? No. There were ten thousand with Gideon at first, but nine thousand and seven hundred went back, though neither fearful nor afraid. They were tried by a mercy: a mercy tests your weakness -- a trial your strength.
Jesus was not yet glorified; but now that the Holy Spirit has come it is not a question of blessing flowing into man from the earth, but rivers of living water were to flow out. Instead of the earth contributing to believers they contribute to it. Jesus has now been glorified, but what is this earth but the death-place of Christ?
We have not only to be above ourselves but above the earth. Are you looking to the earth or to Christ? The great failure with us is likeness to Noah. The earth was made favourable to him, and he himself was in favour. So are we, but he planted a vineyard and got drunk.
You have perhaps a flower garden, and something comes in to spoil it, and you lose your temper. Like Noah you have lost your senses.
In John 14:26 we find that we have an enormous possession -- One that is to fill up the void made by the absence of Christ. See how little comfort saints have -- how little joy in Christ. This chapter is not meant for those going to die, but for people living on the earth.
The Holy Spirit makes up for the absence of
Christ. He recalls all that Christ spoke of down here, In John 15:26,27 the same Holy Spirit is a power on the earth to testify of Christ. Do you believe it? We speak of our testimony, but do you believe that there is an invisible power for testimony on this earth?
There are three powers on the earth -- Satan's, man's, and that of the Holy Spirit. God put the sword into man's hand and then gave him the law, and he used both to kill His Son.
Can we use those powers now? Christendom has done so from the time of Constantine. There is a new power on the earth, the Holy Spirit. The world is dressing Babylon till the kings burn her -- that is the end of the harlot. She does not become a harlot until the pearl is carried out of it.
We are weak, but we must never use weakness as an excuse for weakness. There is an unseen power, but real to faith.
Paul goes to Philippi. A man appears to him in a vision to call him there. A woman is converted and not a man. Then Satan seeks to help with a woman until Paul, grieved in spirit, casts out the spirit of Python. Satan then raises opposition and Paul is cast into prison, and then he finds the man. There is a power acting in testimony.
The world is now convicted, because the Holy Spirit is here. The world is, as it were, in the dock and the Holy Spirit in the witness-box. We must be in one place or the other. Most christian people try to have a foot in each. Do we know the fellowship of the Holy Spirit? He reveals Christ.
Christ's body is the great interest of God upon the earth, and gifts are for the edification of the body. In testimony it is not so much what we say as the interest with which we say it.
We should remember that in seeking souls there are vacancies in the heart of Christ; and thus if souls are converted they will be brought to Christ.
Matthew 25:1 - 10; Revelation 22:16, 17
This scripture describes the state of things to which the kingdom will come. The "kingdom of heaven" means that the rule of God upon earth is of a heavenly character. It is a closing scene and not the normal state, and this state was brought about by chapter 24: 48; the servant said in his heart, -- he did not preach it -- "My lord delayeth his coming".
Luke 12 describes the normal state, and is addressed to Jews. It diverts them from all earthly expectations, and so to speak breaks the entail. In chapter 11 "the light of the body is the eye" and they needed a single eye; and now in chapter 12 they need have no fear nor care and therefore they were to be as men waiting for their Lord. If you have no fear you come to Him; no care, you are occupied with Him. They were to be waiting for their Lord, giving light for Him. The body was lightsome, (chapter 11: verses 34 and 36), giving light where He was not, like the moon deriving light from an absent sun.
Christ was driven away, and we ought to be like the One that was driven away, and not like those who drove Him away. We do not get any of our blessings perfected until He comes back, and we cannot coalesce with those who drove Him away. Now the wicked servant said: "My lord delayeth his coming", and then went down and mixed with the people that drove Him away. Remember your body is the member of Christ, -- mind what you do with it, how you dress it, -- the body is the light.
They all slumbered and slept, and how are they revived? Revival does not mean what it is often used to express. Revival implies that there was life before. Now look at the manner of revival -- it is not warnings
and threatenings -- they could not be told from dead people. An actual thing occurs to bring about this revival, not a doctrine preached. A cry was made. There must be oil in the vessel, the Holy Spirit there in order to receive the cry -- therefore it is said, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come". It is not enough to receive the doctrine, but to hear the cry, "Behold, the bridegroom" -- He is there.
Ephesus is alluded to four times in Scripture. In Acts 20 it is addressed as the flock (verse 28). In the epistle to the Ephesians the subject is the body; in Timothy, the servant; in Revelation 2, the candlestick. Two evils spring up in Ephesus -- Popery, in 1 Timothy 4, and Radicalism in 1 Timothy 6.
Now see whether you have the cry -- He is there; that brings the heart in. Business etc. is not that which hinders, but the loitering after business is done. After business a man wants to get home to his wife and children, affection draws him. Do you want to get to Him? The testimony is not now to "the church", but that He is coming. How would you all feel, if a messenger came and said 'The Lord is here'? Would you be looking for something you left behind? Affection will survive the ruin of the candlestick. I am not looking for a revived church, but for a people who expect the Bridegroom.
John 21 speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved and who leant on His breast -- he was the one who was to tarry till the Lord came, and it was a tradition to the second or third century that John was alive. He did live to get the finale in the Book of Revelation -- he gets this new thing. The truth of the coming of the Lord is not new, but the cry is new, "Go ye out to meet him". If I am not expecting a friend, I want a telegram to say he is coming; that is what is in this cry.
In John 20 we have the commencement of bridal affection in Mary Magdalene -- after, the Lord speaks
peace in the midst of His disciples; but we see Him in Revelation 1 in the midst of the candlesticks with eyes as a flame of fire, and in the end of the book He is the bright and morning star; the night is dark, but the Lord awakens the heart to His coming by giving in the darkest state such a word as chapter 2: 28, "I will give him the morning star". To Philadelphia He says, "I come quickly". Peter speaks of the morning star dawning in your heart, but the Lord says "I will give". In Laodicea He stands and knocks, but in chapter 22, where He proclaims, "I am ... the bright and morning star", it is affectionate relationship that says "Come". This spirit begins in Mary Magdalene, and it will not be worse at the close.
In the end of the book the bride is saying "Come!" There are two actions connected with the bride -- personal affection to Christ, and inviting thirsty souls. She is bridal and evangelistic -- she is occupied with the heart of Christ and because of that she is evangelistic, but this latter must not be put first. People make salvation everything, and not the body; they find the piece of silver but don't put it with the other nine.
James speaks of the relief and Peter of the advantage of the Lord's coming, but Paul of the "Lord himself". John is Enoch intensified -- he takes care of the earth.
There are three characteristics of the bride -- satisfaction, sanctification and service. We see the first exemplified in Mary Magdalene, John 20:17. She is inconsolable without the Lord. Her heart is not merely won but satisfied with Him. The heart is won in humiliation as in chapter 11, now it is union and association with Christ where He is and He tells Mary where He will be -- that is what we want to know to draw our affections out; the heart only gets satisfied by union with Christ where He is. A dark
day or a bright day, what matters if I am united to Him. All the Lord has to do to produce this is to make the cry ring in your hearts -- He could do it tonight so that you should say "Come!"
When we see the bride coming down out of heaven it is not then saying "Come", but it is adornment -- a bride adorned for her husband -- that is the second characteristic; she who had failed as a candlestick on earth has been robed in heaven and comes down to earth to reflect Him. Psalm 45 shows us the ornaments -- the suitability for Christ in the bride. There are two marks: first separation from what is without, and what she is personally. Sanctification answers to it in the New Testament -- "That He might sanctify and cleanse it". Washing has to do with defilement; sanctification brings to God; there is sanctification through the word, and the Father's sanctification through circumstances. The word brings me into what is suitable to Christ.
Do you not now see many things to be wrong that you did not some time ago? If not, you are not progressing. Are you breaking from things here? "Forget ... thy father's house; so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty". Christ desires our sanctification. Do not say you have sanctification unless you are as separate from things here as Christ is in heaven; Christ says, If you keep my words I will walk with you. We want to study suitability; we must break with our own people to be beautiful for Christ. We often close the front door to the world and open the side door to relations. Do you say, I desire to have beauty for Christ?
Secondly, the person is glorious: "wrought gold", that is divine righteousness; "raiment of needlework", not woven, but careful work, stitch by stitch.
Thirdly, service. People are often trying to serve before they are settled for Christ. In Proverbs 31 we have the wise woman occupied with the interests of
her lord -- "the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her". He can trust her, He wants nothing more, "he shall have no need of spoil" -- neither hunting nor war. Paul says, "He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry". What a wonderful thing to be a friend of Christ!
Well, we can be true to Christ, though the candlestick has failed. The great point is to know that we are united to Christ. Proverbs 31 is a wonderful chapter, for the Lord does nothing and the wise woman does all, and her lord gets the credit. So now, as it were, the Lord does nothing and we do everything, and yet we can do nothing without Him, and He does nothing without us. The two great subjects of the wise woman's service are necessary -- food and raiment.
Now, having these three characteristics, what should be our attitude but to stand and say "Come!"
Psalms 32; Job 42; 2 Samuel 7; 1 Kings 10
I desire to present the subject of confidence towards God in four aspects. Psalm 32 shews how the heart turns to God. Here, we may say, it is the first order of confidence, that of the sinner. The person who understands grace best is the person who confesses his sins best. It is the non-understanding of grace that makes a person timid to confess his sins. There would have been no necessity for grace if there had not been righteousness. Grace reigns through righteousness. The first thing the psalm insists upon is the completeness of grace. "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven", etc. The Lord clears you altogether. The thief on the cross is a perfect blank, so he is a perfect example of grace. He has no past, he is a thief; no present, he is on the cross; and no future, he has nothing to expect from God or man, therefore he must be a recipient. He cannot dictate terms. Grace proposes a new Person and a new place. "This man hath done nothing amiss", and the Lord says to him, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise". He exchanges his own- condition as a man for Christ's. God's righteousness places him in the highest place, in the presence of God, that's what God has done for a man entitled to nothing -- unrighteous -- a perfect blank as to his past, present and future. A person who has nothing must not in anywise modify what grace puts upon him, else he goes back to the blank. Grace proposes a thing to him, he is entitled to nothing but judgment; grace comes in and clears him entirely, and now he must be essentially subject to what grace proposes, namely, he cannot take a lower person than the Person of Jesus, nor a lower place than the paradise of God.
Grace says, 'Everything on your side is gone, and now I will act as I like'. The thief on the cross does propose modified terms; Christ meets him with, "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise". "I can now do with you as I like". You cannot have this too clearly, that everything has been blotted out by the blood of Christ, and now He will write on your heart a new order of things. Scripture presents the effect, you learn what grace is, you have nothing to keep up, and the effect is that in your spirit there is no guile.
The woman in John 4 is afraid in the morning to face the men; in the afternoon she has seen the Lord, and she has nothing to cover now, for in her spirit there is no guile. They may say what they like now, all is out, God has cleared it away, and you cannot make more of it than God does. I am prepared to incur reproach. We have to bear it, and if we have failed in unconverted days we cannot get rid of the marks until the judgment-seat of Christ. But then grace has come in and cleared it all off and put us on an entirely new ground before God. But supposing you have failed again, you are astonished to find you do wrong and that you are a failing person. You ought not to do wrong, but "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness". Again, you find you have sin in you and you feel it ought not to be there. What do you do? In one sense I am not sorry when people are in Romans 7. I wish more people had been there. You may try to cloak or excuse yourself when you fail, if you have a tender conscience, and say, "it was so-and-so", but that is not confession, and it is not for blessing to excuse yourself. You are not to wait for the law to find you out, you are to tell on yourself. I stand before God against myself, and the better I tell out the things, the clearer I get discharged. Why are so many christians
unhappy? I have no doubt because they have never made a clean breast to the Lord of their condition. He has turned over a new page in the ledger. The more fully I confess it, the more I enter into the enormity of the thing in His presence, and instead of its leading to recurrence, if you confess to God and know what it is to be in the consciousness of His solemn presence, you have a horror of that sin you have not of others. You have seen it as He sees it. Hence the scripture says, "Godly sorrow worketh repentance". I never saw a person so hardened that he was not sorry that he had done the thing, but repentance is that I repudiate the principle that does it, not that I regret the tarnish on myself and am sorry that I made so little of myself, but I repudiate the thing as before God.
A child will cry and beg your pardon, but he will not tell you why he broke the window -- that he was in temper; he will not deny the deed, but he will hide the motive. Confessing the motive, that is repentance. In this psalm he says, "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long". He is all withered up. That person is in an unhappy state. I will tell you why, because he has not made a clean breast of his state. Grace reigns through righteousness. "I said, I will confess my transgressions", etc. I know One who the moment I come meets me, when no other eye could pity; to Him you disclose your motive, your intentions, your little spiteful ways, and the like.
Where is there one to whom you can disclose all the ramifications of the evil that is working in you? Your dearest friend breaks off when it becomes too personal -- we are afraid to make little of ourselves. Oh, it is a moment of unspeakable blessing when I find out how degraded I am, but that there is One to whom I can tell it all, to whom I can unfold the whole secret workings of my evil heart, who will
meet me, and who says, "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us". 'I not only forgive you, so to speak, for soiling your dress, but I will put a clean one on you so that neither you nor I shall see the soil, it is no longer to be a trouble to you as a thing standing between you and me'. I do not at all deny that we bear the marks of our folly all the journey through. It is said to David, "now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house". It is not that he did not go on with God. The more I understand the love the more I insist on the righteousness, because His righteousness is the security for the permanency of His love. In the epistle of John we get love and righteousness, in the Hebrews grace and sanctification. The effect produced upon me is there is no one else to look to. Jonah is brought to this point, "I will look again toward thy holy temple".
In Psalm 107 there is every variety of distress, but you can never be too low down to cry to the Lord, and He will hear you. There is a great lack of this confidence.
The second aspect of confidence (Job 42) has to do with condition. Condition and conduct are most difficult to explain, for people think of their condition by their conduct. Here it was not conduct at all. Job's conduct was excellent. It is a wonderful thing for a person whose conduct is excellent to get the sense, "I abhor myself". Many a person does when his conduct is bad, but this is an experience of a different kind altogether. Job was a perfect example, "none like him on the earth". Satan was on one side, God on the other, and Job in the middle. He was depending entirely upon God's gifts, and God says, 'Take everything from him'. He is deprived of his property, bereaved of his family, and he loses his health -- three things which reduce a man to a spectacle of misery. He first loses
the things he could enjoy, and then he loses the power of enjoyment. Job's trial is that God does not interfere on his behalf. If you only hear of the love of God, and have not been taught what the wretchedness of man is, you will be liable to the same thing and will always be expecting that God will do something for you in your own sphere. The higher the sense of your elevation in Christ the greater will be your sense of your moral degradation in the flesh. Paul had a higher elevation than any other man, and he had a deeper sense in himself of the moral degradation of man.
Job is brought to this, "Now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself". Every christian is suffering either from disappointments or obstacles. Disappointments come when you are like a fly in honey, you will not go on, and obstacles when you cannot go on. Jacob's life was all disappointments, and Joseph's was all hindrances. I know of no experience I covet more than "I abhor myself"; it is not that 'I am vile'. Every christian says that he is vile; I never heard of one that did not, but this is a different experience altogether. If you abhor yourself, would you expect love, health, or favours? Not a bit of it! I assure you the fact is that you would be surprised at the favours of God. I used to be terribly disappointed that God did not do this thing and that for me; now I am positively surprised at His mercies. Job will have such a sense of his unfitness for God, that he will expect not one single thing; he will walk out of it like a man would walk out of his clothes when he has had the pestilence! And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends; then he had confidence in God about other people. If you are nobody, then God must be everything; you are nobody, very well! Then you do not want anything for yourself. What had troubled
Job was that he wondered God did not demonstrate His interest about him.
The first thing when you get into Canaan (heavenly ground) is circumcision, is that I have no mind of my own; I have God's mind, not my own. There is a principle that would go counter to Gods will; then I must have the Spirit of God, or the flesh will carry the day. "No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better". Man likes the old best.
God does not grudge a man anything. He gave Job twice as much as he had before.
Now I turn to 2 Samuel 7. The first two scriptures are connected with ourselves, the second two with God. It is what God thinks about me. The Lord propounds it in the parable of the prodigal son, what the father feels for the prodigal. Every one of us takes his place in nearness to God just in proportion as we know how He feels about us. Confidence, I need not explain to you, is when I act on the feelings of another about me. I knock at the door, or perhaps I do not knock, but turn the handle and go in; to another I do not go in unless he asks me. Presumption would be acting on my own feelings. Confidence is a greater thing than devotion. Every one knows, who knows anything, that a mother would rather the child would say, 'Mother, I believe you would give all the world for me', than, 'I would give all the world for you', unless she was a bad mother. I give God credit for what exists in His heart; I am answering to his feelings about me. That is what David did when He went in and sat before the Lord. When I know what He feels about me, I am not acting on my own thoughts or views, but on His.
The fourth confidence (1 Kings 10) is not the confidence of a servant merely, but what every saint ought to know. The queen of Sheba is presented to
us as one who came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. In 1 Corinthians the old man was not looked upon by the saints as an intruder, so the apostle corrects this want of sense by bringing in Christ as wisdom. The queen of Sheba came all the long journey, and now a greater than Solomon is here.
It is not only a person loves me, or that they confide in me, but I want wisdom. I know my children love me, but I am not so sure of their wisdom. If you make a person your confidant who has not wisdom, you have committed yourself where you will be badly handled.
I want a sense of His unparalleled greatness as the wisdom of God. The queen of Sheba communed with Solomon of all that was in her heart. I often say, give Christ the key. There is not a thought hidden, it is the sense of what He is to me in His individual greatness. In Jonah we have the aspect of Christ in His death, in Solomon His wisdom; eye hath not seen it, ear hath not heard it. There is to be nothing hidden, it is an action of extreme importance to our hearts; you let Him see all. It is not going to Him for answers, but you confide to Him the whole of your heart, you have such a sense of what His wisdom is that you give Him the master key. No matter how peculiar the locks may be, the master key will open them all. You cannot make a person your confidant unless you know he has wisdom, and you make him your master.
What makes me proof against the man of evil and the woman of flattery? Wisdom! You must get the higher thing to be proof against the lower. He shews me the path of life, which the vulture's eye hath not seen. The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. The effect on the queen of Sheba was that she was entirely occupied with the things that concern Solomon. She had everything which the world could
give, or attract her with -- camels, gold, precious stones -- all that could minister to these poor hearts, but she is brought into a scene that surpasses it all. It was the personalities of Solomon that impressed her, every little thing belonging to him, and she loses consciousness of her own condition in an ecstasy as to him. Your proper element is a transport, an ecstasy with God, it is the highest order of enjoyment, not enthusiasm, nor by fits and starts, but always. To man I am sober, to God I am beside myself.
Paul in the third heaven was collected about everything but his connection with man, "Whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell".
I have no doubt the reason why there are so few queens of Sheba is because saints will not take the trouble she did. People often think it a great trouble to go a few miles by rail. Did you ever lose anything -- a night or a day -- to seek Christ? She put herself to extraordinary inconvenience to see Solomon. May the Lord lead our hearts practically, beloved, to understand what a christian's life is.
It is not a melancholy life if I can live in an ecstasy. If I can get conversant with the things that concern my Lord, with the scene where He is, my heart is in an ecstasy, no more spirit but for praise, 'My soul is all transported'.
The Lord lead our hearts, beloved friends, to see that whether we take the lowest point of our own ruin and shame, or come to the highest point -- Christ, the King of Glory -- self is lost. Having to do with Him, I go on to Hun, and as I do, my heart is set free, I have lost myself in delighting in the true Solomon.
Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 12:1 - 4; Hebrews 13:10 - 14
In these three scriptures the Lord is presented to us in three different ways, and I take them in their order. The first as connected with worship, the second with the race, and the third more with service, going outside the religious thing on earth.
First, in chapter 10 we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh". In the preceding chapter we read "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us".
The great point in Hebrews is to connect us while on earth with heaven. There are two things you have to learn practically; one is, that you have to break with the man that is here, and with the place where he is; and the other, that you have to do with a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, in another place, in heaven where He is. He is not here, for if He were on earth He would not be a Priest, and it is clear that He is a Priest and that He appears in the presence of God for us. It is true we do not get union with Christ in Hebrews, but the apostle pre-supposes it. Let us go back to the Acts of the Apostles and see how the truth is developed there.
At the end of Acts 7 Christ in glory offering to return is refused, not only was He crucified, but now in glory He is refused. They had said "This is the heir; come let us kill him". but here they are refusing Him from glory; and, moreover, it is the religious council who refuse Him in the person of Stephen. It is as if the twelve judges of the land were
solemnly to decide "We will not have this man to reign over us", for it was not the mob who decided against Stephen, all the power and dignity of the nation decided against him. And then a new and distinct energy of the Spirit of God comes out. Stephen being full of the Holy Spirit looks up steadfastly into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus. Now this is what you must practically learn in order to be able to run the race; for, if you have not your place with Christ where He is, you cannot run for Him here. Many try to run, and fail, because they have not, so to speak, the mettle, the ability to run, but when you know it you can run -- you can be a witness, you are as a giant refreshed with wine, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. There must be strength and condition in order to run the race here, and you must get that first; in fact, you must be a worshipper before you can be a racer or a witness, just as Hebrews 10 comes before Hebrews 12. In Acts 7 we see how it comes out. The doctrine of union with Christ is held by many who are not consciously associated with Him. The real hindrance is that they are still linked to the earth, for a wife, though united to her husband, would lose his associations if she were not in the same place as her husband. The thing I have to learn is that we are not only united to Christ, but we are united to Him in the place where He is.
This is to me the grand significance of the Lord's word to Mary Magdalene, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God", in a word, where I shall be! She had said, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him". And the Lord meets her, and says 'I will tell you where I will be, and you go and tell my brethren, those who are now of the same stock as myself'. He is bringing us into that wonderful relationship with
God which He Himself has. He never had brethren before, for "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit". -- many of the same order.
Though the Lord is gone away, He not only imparts to me what my condition requires, but also shares with me through the Spirit His position in heaven. In John 20 it is the inauguration, the beginning of the creation of God, and it is entirely new. He does not wait for the six days of the week before all will be finished. It is now, the first day of the week. All is coming forth in the sublime grandeur of the new Man, who has broken the power of death, and now will introduce His beloved ones on earth into the knowledge of what He can do for them in their condition, and share with them His condition in heaven.
Man has committed two great crimes. One is, that he has given up confidence in God for self-reliance, dependence on his own powers; that was the beginning of evil. The serpent in the garden of Eden assailed the word of God. He said to Eve, It is better to trust to yourself than the word of God, and she put forth her hand and took the fruit. Self-reliance is preferred to confidence in God. Sin entered, and death by sin; but Christ is risen out from the dead, and become in resurrection the Head of a new creation. Man is lost, but God sent His own Son into the world, "made of a woman, made under the law ... that we might receive the adoption of sons;" and He was refused by them. Now this is the second crime. God gave man a law, and the Jew said "by our law he ought to die". God gave man a sword, now in the hands of the Roman power; the Jew said "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death", so they handed Him over to the gentiles to
put Him to death, so that both the law of God and the sword were used against Him.
Now there is not one of you who will not own that he is guilty of the first crime. But what about the other crime, -- that you are connected with the man on the earth that refused Christ a place here? God, in His wonderful, unaccountable mercy, comes out in grace to forgive you your sins, setting forth His own Son to be a propitiation through faith in His blood; and, more, He says, as it were, 'You would not give Him a place on earth, but I will turn even that to your benefit, and you shall share with Him His place in heaven'. You cannot accept the place in heaven and not suffer from His rejection here.
Thus, through grace, there are two great facts; one, I have done with the man on earth that ruined me, and I am united to the Man in heaven -- my Saviour. Just think of the thief on the cross getting hold of that Man. You remember his prayer; "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom" The Lord replies, I will take you into My place now. "To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" What could the thief do? If he looked back he could only say, I have been a thief, now I am powerless, nailed to this gibbet, and the future is judgment. But by faith he sees the One who had done nothing amiss. Faith is that moral power which diverts you from the ruined thing, and occupies you with that which satisfies the holiness of God. The ruin in the garden of Eden is reversed at the cross. There, man was in the most wonderful earthly circumstances, but Satan comes in and induces him to prefer self-reliance to the word of God. Then, in the most deplorable circumstances, the Son of God comes here to win back the wretched heart of the thief. "This man hath done nothing amiss", It is a wonderful thing for a poor sinner to see by faith a Man
who is thoroughly holy. Well, I want to get away not only from the man on whose account Christ died, but from the place where He was put to death. In Acts 7, Stephen being full of the Holy Spirit looked up steadfastly into heaven and he saw the glory of God and Jesus. That indicates that it is all over here, and, when it is so, I have nowhere to look but to heaven. As Elijah said to Elisha, "If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so to thee; but if not, it shall not be so". There is no power now without this, for all is gone here, and all help must come from heaven. Again, if my heart has been won by Christ, I want to be with Him where He is. As in John 14, the Lord is going away, and it will be all trouble and nothing here to comfort the heart of the one who belongs to Christ; but faith follows Him, and the Holy Spirit comes down to comfort us.
Every saint is troubled here, and some are praying to God to change their circumstances, others that they may be resigned in them, but in neither case are they comforted, because neither have found out the comfort, which is independent of all circumstances; they have not found out the value of the words, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me".
Directly I speak of faith, I have done with visible things. The moment the Lord was ascended, the place was prepared.
First and foremost the Lord says, I will prepare you for the race, for you will have a sore time of it here. So Stephen looks up and then is able to come forth and run his course here: a faithful witness, he is perfectly superior to his circumstances, and moreover, able to act in them. He hands over his own spirit to the Lord, and then prays for his murderers. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep". Nothing can be more marvellous.
Hebrews 10 describes the manner and the place of blessing. "Boldness to enter into the holiest", When we come to the race, it is "patience" not "boldness". Now I ask you where is the Lord Jesus Christ? He has entered into heaven itself. The tabernacle was given to Israel for the wilderness, but what is given to us for the wilderness is heaven, and therefore we read, "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself". We are united to Him there. This is elementary but it is an immense fact, and one which determines your whole course on earth. You are to walk here according to the fashion of the Man, your Saviour, who has won your heart and has drawn you right away from the place where man is, by carrying your heart up with Him to heaven, there to learn divine associations. You are greater than the psalmist in the sanctuary. Outside he could not understand anything; but, when he goes in, his words are "then understood I their end". Everything is different. There you see the Lord at the head of everything.
The first thing God told Moses to make was the ark of the covenant, to be set in the holiest, but the Jew never reached it. The high priest went in once a year, but because of failure did not wear the garments of glory and beauty. But now the saint is an emancipated person, able to enter into that most magnificent scene, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, through the veil, that is, His flesh; and you have all the activities of His heart to sustain you in that incomparable scene.
The ark of the covenant is the very first thing presented to a sinner. The word "propitiation", in Romans 3:25, is the mercy seat. It is the first thing with God, but the last thing man can get to; Jesus brings it about so that it is our first enjoyment. Now, most people are like Jews expecting something
from heaven, and the measure of their comfort is their experience. They use the figure of a ladder reaching up to heaven, and hence they can never be sure of it until they get to the top. They like to sing --
But really the ladder comes from heaven, you are heavenly on the first round of it. Where are you now? "Boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus", and he adds, "by a new and living way". I know it is all right, because He who came from God has gone back again, having finished the work given Him to do -- so that He who measured my distance is the One who is the measure of my nearness. It is not only that I am saved by the blood. Every saint is saved by His blood, but all that is connected with man is entirely set aside, so that you have exclusively to do with Christ in the holiest. You start with another Man and that where He is in the holiest of all. He came to bear what was on us: now, through grace, you are connected with the Man who "hath done nothing amiss". You start with a spotless Man.
Nothing preserves you like knowing the fact that Christ is in the Holiest of all. When you get near Him, the secrets of your heart are made manifest. I would you had a deeper sense of the holiness of God. The woman of Samaria said, He "told me all things that ever I did". Nothing gives you more the sense of what God is, than that He discovers what you have been trying to hide from yourself, and if you are near Him He will. He is light, and that is light which doth make manifest.
But young believers say, "If you ask us to give up the world, what do you give us in return?" Well, I offer you the most perfect delight, that ever was
known to the heart, in that scene where God's love is made known to you in its delight, where He says "Let us eat, and be merry". I would the saints knew more what divine joy is, for then they would find it incomparably superior to any other.
Before touching on the race, I go back to the Acts of the apostles to mark the history. If Christ has been refused on earth, what is the next step? In chapter 8 Philip is sent down from Samaria to Gaza, which is desert. It is not now the queen of Sheba coming to Solomon, it is the servant of God sent to a eunuch -- one reduced in circumstances and condition -- returning from Jerusalem. The scripture which he read was this, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer ... his life is taken from the earth". That is the point. Philip began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. In the beginning of Mark's gospel the grace of Jesus reaching out to the need of man is presented. He is evangelised to us then in chapter 2. He says "The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days". No language could be plainer. The Lord had cast out the unclean spirit; He had subdued fever, cleansed the leper, and healed the palsied man. Levi follows as the witness of all His power, and now He adds, "When the bridegroom shall be taken ... then shall they fast". I want you to see that if you have to do with the Lord in the scene where He is you have to walk in a scene where He is not, and there you must fast. That brings us to the race, and what comforts my heart in it is having to do with Him where He is. Supposing you had a room which contained everything to satisfy your heart, would you not like to go to that room? Well, that is the holiest where He sustains you.
It is not merely "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall
not want". That only states that the supply is equal to the demand, but there is much more, "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures", and again, "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee". Nothing there but praise. The next verse is "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well: the rain also filleth the pools". The valley of Baca is a different place from the house of God. Are you acquainted with it? Are you dwelling in the house? That is the place for the heart!
In Hebrews 12 we find what the race is, You have the race-course in the place where your Saviour is not, and you have a resting-place for your spirit and heart where your Saviour is. Settle those two points and see how they will work. It will not do for you to be merely in the racing-field. The posts mark off the race-course and I want you to be in it, for I believe many are on the racing-ground and not in the race-course. Faith is the steed, so to speak, the power, the only power by which you can run. When Abraham was called out he had to break away from the things that would have most influenced him, his country, his kindred, and his father's house. So it is with us practically. What is nearest to us binds us most, and must be cut first. This was the call, he must depend on the word of God only. A dog follows his master by the scent; if he loses it he has no clue as to where his master has gone. Thus the word of God is the only guide to faith. Abraham "went out, not knowing whither he went".
He was come into "the land that I will show thee". It is an immense principle, that now all is faith. To be in the happiest conceivable circumstances will not keep you in the course. There are two posts, and the race can only be run within them; one is what is on your back; and the other is what is in your heart; the
one is outside, and the other inside. You must lay aside "every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us". I ask you, Are you running with patience the race that is set before you? Have you fellowship with His sufferings? Supposing I had a dearly loved friend in America, but when I go there I find he is gone, would I not like to walk in the very place where he was, and have only the same friends? Now, the blessed Lord made a path all through this scene. You cannot conceive any circumstances of need that a man could be in, with which He did not make Himself familiar. He was a Nazarite from His youth. He entered not into the joys of man, yet He "teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight". Do you consider "Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself?" Have you "resisted unto blood, striving against sin?" "The sin which doth so easily beset us" is not any particular sin; it is yourself, what is inside. The great effort of Satan is to induce you to allow some earthly thing to turn your attention from Christ where He is. If your hearts were happy in Christ outside this scene, you would not want anything of earth. "The bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast". Are you going to promote enjoyment here? We "ought always to pray, and not to faint". Prayer is the expression of dependence, but I don't believe there is any real prayer without fasting, and the absence of it is the secret of the little we gain from prayer. Some one will say, "What do you mean by fasting; are you not getting legal?" Not at all, but my heart is so happy with the One that is in the brightness of the Father's presence, that, while I have to walk here, where He is not, I refuse to give countenance or encouragement to that for which Christ died. "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh
hath ceased from sin", Would you minister to the flesh? You have to be here as Christ was, you have to look off unto a Person "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame".
He went through the greatest suffering to maintain the truth of God upon earth. Such a path must be yours if you are actually maintaining that to which God has called you, but if you don't know the joy you cannot do it, you are not as a strong man rejoicing to run a race. There is an array of witnesses in chapter 11, "of whom the world was not worthy". They were maintaining the truth of God, cost them what it might. "Ye ... took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance". I am speaking now of what would practically be the effect of the race. It is going on in faith, no matter what it costs, for the truth of God must be maintained. I see people checked and hindered in the path of faith by different things. One time it may be attractions, and another time afflictions; but, whatever it is, it turns you from the race, and hinders you from walking as He walked on earth.
There were two things in the wilderness (Exodus 16 and 17 comprise the wilderness journey), one, the manna; and the other, that they had to overcome Amalek. To acquire the Man that is not here and to fight Amalek here -- take that as the principle or rule of your daily course. Well, I begin the day with the sense that the Bridegroom has been taken away and there is nothing for me here, and I learn that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for me, whatever may come. You cannot store up experience, because you never get a chance of the same thing again.
I am far from objecting to reading and prayer in the morning, but gathering the manna is more, it is
the sense in your soul, as you start for the day that you have that which is adequate for all the exigencies of the day. Look at the Syrophenician woman. The power is Christ. You get power over the evil in the presence of God. You take the place of nobody, and you get the crumbs, abundance of blessing.
The manna was to be gathered for the day's use before the sun was up. Your heart should be stored with the sufficiency of Christ for everything you will have to meet through the day, before the demands are made on you; as I might say you have not to go to the baker's shop to buy a loaf, you have it in the cupboard. There is where prayer comes in. If I am looking to Him, I am not trusting to myself at all, and I find there is nothing at all here for me. Saints pray for this and that, and then say they have not got what they asked for, and yet they never fasted, never really renounced self-dependence. I see people who will not deny themselves in the smallest trifle. You may say you were very happy in the meetings, but you did not go home to race, or you would say there is nothing here for me at all. I must leave off what would hinder me. I must get rid of what is in me. That is the race-course, and if you are not within the two posts you cannot be a racer. Nine people out of ten are suffering from disappointments because they want to linger here, and if I ask, "What is the matter?" "Oh, my servant went away, things went wrong with me". "So you expected things would go right, did you?" If you had been racing you would have said, "I don't expect anything here, it is a desert". The Lord took His disciples apart with Him into a desert place and said, "I can feed you here, and more, I am superior to every power of evil here. I will walk on the water", and the man of faith says "I will walk there too, keeping my eye on Jesus. Jesus' power cannot do anything inferior to Himself". But, as soon as Peter
gets taken up with the evil around, he is afraid, and, beginning to sink, cries, "Lord, save me".
It is the most wonderful experience a man can pass through to know how the Lord sustains him in the midst of all that is trying. "I laid me down and slept; I awaked;" and I was not afraid to awake, "for the Lord sustained me". Some people are afraid to awake, afraid to face their circumstances. It is not only that He has travelled all the road, but I have His life, His own grace on every thorn and every rose. If I don't do a thing as the Lord Jesus Christ would have done it, I have to judge myself. How different the saints would be! Instead of being pressed down with weights on their backs, they would be in 'light marching order'. Their testimony would be, I expect nothing here, I only want to get on to be more like Christ, that I may finish my course with joy. There is an immense joy along the road. As you represent Him here, His joy will be fulfilled in you, and, through chastening, you will he made partaker of the holiness of God. Besides, you are not come to the mount that might be touched and that burned with fire, but to mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
You are come to a most wondrous display, not looking at the earth to see how the ten kingdoms will he formed, it is not about Gog and Magog you are thinking. As a racer you are come to mount Zion and all that wondrous group, you are a worshipper in the holiest of all, at home in the serenity of God's presence. As a racer, you are sustained by Christ, feeding on the manna, as He was here on earth. You set Him forth where He is not, and you resist Amalek. But people say, 'You have nothing to enjoy, you refuse the beautiful things in the world, you shut out the wonderful developments of science, and the like'. Surely we can say, It is a mistake; we are come to mount Zion, and to the
most wonderful array of scenes, like oriental gardens from one circle of beauty to another. What God has prepared for them that love Him surpasses everything here. You cannot seek for enjoyment on the earth, whence the Bridegroom is taken. It would be contemptible to say to a friend, I will seek you in your bright circumstances, but I will shun you in your dark ones. A true friend says the very contrary. May we each be able to say, I know the Lord in heaven where He is, and I follow Him in His path on earth. I maintain what is true of the Man who is not here in the place where He is not; man cast Him out and may cast me out too, because I study to be like Him and unlike the man who cast Him out: and, the more I am consciously with Him where He is, the more I am practically like Him when He was on the earth; and, the more I know of the latter, the more I seek to enjoy the former.
My last subject, chapter 13, is in connection with service. I must go outside the camp, -- religious system on the earth. Christ is gone into the holiest of all. Now, you have an altar of which they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle, you are to go forth unto Jesus outside the camp, for you are with Him inside the veil, and just as much as much as you are morally in the one place you will be practically in the other. The difference between Hebrews 10 and 12 is that chapter 10 is in relation to God. I am brought into God's own circumstances, the beauty of the Lord. In chapter 12, you are running to what is in relation to yourself. Mount Zion &c., is all in relation to man. You receive a kingdom which cannot be moved. In chapter 13 you have nothing set up nor organised as an earthly system. "Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come", We suffer reproach for following Christ, but we offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to
His name. What a finish! The Lord lead us to know how blessed it is to follow in that path, a path in which I am dependent on God, but a path all the more blessed, because in it I have to do with Him.
I desire to show the contrast of what not holding the Head is; and secondly, the benefits that flow from holding the Head, and what marks it; thirdly, what is the nature of the opposition to the truth which we have had to encounter within our own memory.
There are two truths that, I might say, mark christianity: one is, I have to break with the man here, and with the place where that man is. Man is here on the earth, and I have to refuse man where man is; but I have a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, and we are united to Him in the place where He is, in heaven. It is true we are still in the flesh and still on the earth, but while so, we are to walk as He walked who is in heaven. We are to work it out here on earth. It is with that intention that I hope to be able to bring before you what are the practical results of the truth in this passage. Our Lord Jesus Christ is now seated at the right hand of God. I need hardly say to any of you that there could be no union with Him as here on earth. In John 20 we have a new thing introduced, and it is marked by the first day of the week. To any heart at all drawn to the Lord this is a most wonderful scene; the beginning of the new creation. It is the first day of the week, the Lord is risen from the dead, and He is now introducing us to what He is to us on earth and what He is to us in heaven. The first thing for the heart practically to learn is, that there is no connection at all with Christ but by the Holy Spirit. Where God's grace is manifested to my heart is in the death of Christ. He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by
the Spirit. If I set aside the man here in Christ's death, then I have to do with Christ in quite a new order. It is not that souls do not know it, but it is a new thing which, in all its newness, ought practically to characterise us entirely. I do not speak of it as a thing we can take in in a moment. Sorrowful though it is, we must own it, that we have to be broken down in one thing after another; but it is a great thing to be assured of the fact that that is our true place, that we are united to Him who is risen from the dead, and who is set down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. The Colossians did not deny union, but the danger with them was, and with us too is, whether we are realising the benefits that flow to us from it. I often say and wonder to myself, 'Am I really united to that blessed One, the Son of the Father, and can I be moved by this poor world and the things of it?' Unless the Holy Spirit holds your heart, you are a poor trifling thing, moved about like a child by one thing and another, I do want your hearts to be moved by the fact itself of what a wonderful thing it is "holding the Head". God in His mercy has been pleased to recover this truth for us. I believe that many a conscientious person has the sense that things are not all right, yet does not know the remedy of "holding the Head". It would correct a great deal of the disorder and confusion.
The first thing is the Holy Spirit, and mark how it comes out in the gospel of John. When John the baptist sees our Lord, he says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world". There is evil in the world, and One has come in who will eventually take it all away. But that is not all; he goes on. "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him ... the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Spirit". There is one mind. God sent His Son to
take away the sin of the world. We were powerless to meet the ruin, and God sent His Son to bear the judgment upon us. "He it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit". That is what comes out; and as I am on that, I may mention another thing that brings in the second point. The disciples follow Him (and very interesting as showing how the divine mind leads to the highest point), they ask Him, "Where dwellest thou?" Has your heart ever gone out to the Lord in that way? For that brings out the second point. If I have gone out to Him, the Man that is away, I must refuse the man that is here, and the place where that man is; but I must walk in this place according to the principles of that Man who is away -- like Jesus who is not here but in heaven. That is the great problem to work out, and it is what we are set for, but it is only by the Holy Spirit that we can act like Him.
First, then, I go to the contrasts. I have the Lord Jesus Christ, the Man now, and in heaven. It was a place not known before. I hope I shall not surprise any one when I say that Moses could not "hold the Head". I take that as an example, I do not say that God did not hold Moses, but I want you to understand it practically. Abel was an accepted man, but is that the way I know acceptance who am "accepted in the beloved?" I remember well when acceptance was a new word to me. I had never heard it before, and it astonished and arrested me, that it was acceptance in the Beloved. That was perfectly new to me, but it is also a long time before the truth works into the soul, producing the due effect.
Enoch had this testimony that he pleased God, but had he the power of eternal life? Had Abraham? Was it in character the same as "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son"? "He
that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life".
But I come to a closer contrast, and I think it is here that souls are puzzled. They have not the sense of having derived power from Christ. It is a different thing, and would have an immense practical effect upon you. There were those who had not the Head, and there were those, as the Colossians, "not holding the Head". There could not be union with Christ in humiliation, because, first, everything must be removed out of the way that would bar the union. So the Lord says, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone". Some lose the force of that scripture, "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" -- they say that merely means He saves many, but it is more than saving many. It is what is said in another place, "Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one". We do not get communion with the body of Christ until after His death. We are brought into another order of things in resurrection and I am learning the goodness of it. It is not only that He has done great things for us -- He has, but we belong now to that blessed One who is at the right hand of God, We are united to Him; He is the Head.
Now I will take the disciples in three different aspects or places in which they were with the Lord, and it was a wonderful thing to be with Him, and a blessed thing to have Him as a shelter. They were under His shadow; but at that time He was only a wing to them, and not the Head. "I sat down under his shadow with great delight". Under the shelter of that wonderful Person they sat, and lacked nothing. "When I sent you ... lacked ye anything?" They answered, "Nothing". I can understand what it was, but they were not united to Him, they could not hold the Head. Tell me, have
you, practically, that wonderful fact in your soul? Do you understand that you are nearer than they were? They knew what it was to be under His wing, and I contemplate them there as under the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and the wonderful charm of His own presence such, that however trying the circumstances around, they could distinctly say in words used in the brightest days of Solomon, that they lacked nothing. (Compare 1 Kings 4:27, with Luke 22:35.) But what is all that now to you? You are higher still, and your place is to hold the Head. I say it and I know it. There is nothing has so shaken the foundations of my heart as that. I still say to myself, 'What am I? Where am I? Is it the place here that is to occupy you? You are united to another Man in another scene. That is to occupy you. A higher place altogether, with another Person, and in heaven'.
The disciples on the mount of transfiguration "were eyewitnesses of his majesty". "Eyewitnesses", and not a bit at home. But what can you say? There is no place where I am so at home as in the glory, because my Saviour is there, in answer to the love of God to me. There it is that the chief of sinners sees his Saviour, and what is the effect? He was three days blind, and neither did eat nor drink. His soul had to go through what it was to be brought up from the depth that was his as a man, to the height of the glory of God, where Jesus is.
Again, John 20 is a most wonderful chapter, for there I see a Man risen from the dead, and not only that, but death broken, and a new Man too, the beginning of the creation of God. The first creation began with the heavens and the earth, and finished up with a man. The new creation begins with the new Man. It is the power of the Christ, the One who glorified God in everything, so perfect,
so answering to the mind of God, that He is saluted, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". God sent forth His Son born of a woman, and He so maintained what was due to God under the weight of our guilt, that He is now raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. Now in this chapter He appears to Mary Magdalene, and says to her, 'I will tell you where I will be'. "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God". That is His place. Then He comes into the midst of His disciples, and imparts to them what our condition requires because of the nature of His own condition. They were not one of them united to Him, He introduces it all, and He winds it up by breathing on them, "Receive the Holy Spirit". As the flesh is the link with the first man, so the Holy Spirit is the link with the new, the Man in glory.
I will now show the benefits that flow out of union with Christ. In turning to Romans 8 I shall be told that union is not taught in that epistle. But I get "no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus". Man is set aside as a sinner, and then the apostle says, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness;" and more, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his". I have to do with Him in all the perfectness of Himself in the glory of God. Romans gives you the justified man, and Ephesians the heavenly man. The only two perfect codes of practice summed up, some one has said, in Philippians. Now Luther never went beyond a justified person, he never got on heavenly ground, or to holding the head. It was all our side. I ask you, you may say that all understand it, but I ask you what is it to be a christian? I don't understand it all. I want to. The proportion, the magnitude of what becomes one is beyond conception. See what a
new place you are in, another creation altogether. The practical effect comes out in Romans 12"Be not conformed to this world"; but "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service". I am delivered from the body of this death by this blessed Person, in whom I am. What a restful place to be in! Where are you? Have you this happy sense that you are in Christ? What is your reasonable service? If I belong to this blessed One, I am here upon the earth where He suffered for me. He wins my heart in humiliation, He satisfies it in glory. He made Himself familiar with every character of suffering in passing through this scene that He might be able to guide us all the way along. We are not only succoured by that blessed One, but we are united to the One who won our hearts in the place where that One is, and it is His own associations that we have now to do with, so that the truth is of practical power here on the earth. It is old associations that ruin us. You see I am the same person that I ever was; a tree, if you please; then God will deal with the branches. The same man with the same duties. But suppose I am a member of a political club, He does not support me in that. He will support every branch of the tree that is for God. He will support it in more vigour and more order than ever naturally I had maintained it. My proper relationships I fulfil better than ever.
The way to keep out the bad is by bringing in the good. Take a banker as an illustration. He is sent into a room till he gets so conversant with the good notes that the bad are detected at once. He has learned what a good bank note is, by handling and observing them. When he sees a forgery he can't tell you how the bad note was produced, but he knows that it is bad, and that is enough for him. He says, 'That is not a good note'. Anything that is not
good is bad, and that is the great thing now.
The action is beautiful in Romans and Ephesians, making a perfect code. You will find the epistles of Paul for the most part correct the intrusion of what is bad by insisting on what is good. He says in 1 Corinthians 6:15, "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" and in the same chapter, "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit". Now, with the Corinthians the flesh was unrebuked; there was no check upon it. And in chapter 10 he turns round to them as wise men to show how foolish they were in what they were connected with practically.
"Your bodies are the members of Christ". What a practical word it is! I am sure it will reach us all in that way. "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit". If you want to improve the world, you are not holding the Head. It affects the smallest detail. For instance, if a person says there is no harm in going to a flower show, I say you are not holding the Head. Is that the place for a member of Christ? You are not mindful of the gravity of your position. You do not deny the benefits of grace perhaps, but you reduce yourself to a lower level. All the great truths lie on one flat -- one level. You might have forgiveness, good conduct, faith, with earthly mercies, and I will call that downstairs; but now upstairs we are united to Christ; we have to do with Himself and with His own interests and a heavenly scene. Upstairs must have downstairs, and includes all the benefits of downstairs; but downstairs has not upstairs. The great difficulty is, meeting souls practically where they are. You say perhaps, 'I never feel up to it'. There ought to be in the heart earnestness in consequence. Do you ever agonise about yourself? The Spirit of God interceding in you with groans that cannot be uttered! Do you ever hear these groans? What tries me is the fact
that one feels one is sharing in the very thing one would like to correct, I think of some whom I would like to see getting on, and instantly it raises the question, "Are you getting on yourself?"
2 Corinthians shows the contrast. To me it is an immense thing that the heresy that underlay all at Corinth was that there was no resurrection of the body, and yet the body here is to be light, in the way the moon derives light from the absent sun. You are to be here the light of the world when the One who was the light of it is not here. It is the most cheering thing. I am to be like the One that is not here and unlike the world -- the people that are here that cast Him out. Like a true wife, she is to remain in the premises, but to be there looking out for Him, contributing His light to the ruthless world which has driven Him away. I am to answer to His tastes, and I have nothing to do with the enemies that refused Him. You are to have the same moral expression as the moon has, sailing through the sky on a dark night, towards the world. I contribute light to this scene from the absent sun. I am not looking for any thing in it or from it. Those who had a title to possession on earth were to waive it. What of those who had no title?
2 Corinthians 3:18: "We all, with open face", &c. We see the glory, and the glory claims us as its own. The apostles had seen the glory on the mount of transfiguration and were afraid, but now the glory says 'you must take the same image'. It claims us as belonging to it. I believe you will never get deliverance from this present world until your heart gets the impress of what the glory of Christ is. You must get a new taste and be brought into circumstances to form the taste, and once formed, you are at home in that which is above the brightness of the sun. The effect on Paul was that he lost his eyesight. I must not omit speaking of the effect, that
while your associations are with Christ in heaven, you walk as He walked on earth. The difficulty is to maintain what you have learnt. The practical action in 2 Corinthians is "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus". I want you to understand the actual magnitude of the position. We are united to this blessed One, our hearts know that He loves us. I am to live here in a life of another order, but to do this I must set aside that in myself that would hinder it. Those who are most living to the Lord find out practically that there is nothing to promote it in the other.
Galatians gives you a legal man. Ephesians is an advance on Romans, it is in heavenly places. I come out, properly speaking, a heavenly person on the level to which God has called us. The Man now at God's right hand walks into the scene and says "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest". 'I ignore the existence of everything of the first man, I set aside everything but Myself, the saints are Myself'. Here Paul says: "It pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me". Now, in Colossians it is the religious man that has to be set aside. In Hebrews it is heaven instead of earth. Philippians is where they combine. I find Christ (chapter 3) is the simple object. Christ set aside everything, and "we are the circumcision", &c., and He is not only the object but the mark for which I leave all things behind that were gain to me. It is not intended only to set forth beautiful theories in Scripture, but you find out their magnificence just as you get into the practice of them. You might talk to a child for ever about walking, and what is the good? But as soon as he puts his foot to the ground he knows what it is.
What I dread is an aptitude for hearing truth, and no sense of the responsibility which I incur because I have heard it. In a certain sense Israel was worse off in Canaan than in Egypt when there
was no rain, for in Egypt the river came up and watered the land, but in Canaan the rain was stopped and they had no river, when they grew indifferent.
There are many persons with great and high truth who are worse off than when they had very little, because they have not gone on with what they had, and are not walking in practical diligence. Then God says, 'I will not give you the rain'.
Now 2 Timothy is to the servant what Philippians is to the congregation. It is the last words of the apostle Paul to the servant. He says "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord". Why is this? Why does he not speak of the power of the enemy outside? All they in Asia had turned away from him; Asia, where his chief work was done. (Philippi, I need hardly say, was in Europe.) Those in Asia had not turned away from "downstairs" from the forgiveness of sins, from expecting the favour of God, or from good and upright conduct on earth, Probably they became very scrupulous and made more parade about that, mere Pharisaism; for there is not most depth where there is most parade. But they had turned away from "upstairs". I thank God for the wonderful ways of His mercy, that it is not lost to us long ago, that this wonderful truth has been preserved -- that we are united to Christ at His right hand. Paul could only light upon one man (Onesiphorus) who had not turned aside. No one could understand this testimony but by the Holy Spirit; namely, I must set aside the man that is here, in all his development and talent, and the place too -- the earth, where all these wonderful things are; I must refuse both the man and the place, and introduce here the manners and ways of that Man in heaven whom I know not only as my Saviour and Lord, but
to whom we are united as our Head. That is the truth. 'Be not ... ashamed of the testimony of our Lord'. What is it? Are you ashamed of it?
But the thing that ought to come home to every heart here is this, Do you hold the Head? Are you ashamed of the testimony of the Lord? Christ was not only refused life upon the earth, but they rejected the Holy Spirit in Acts 7, and God has turned it round to my gain. He gave Jesus a place in heaven, and the very place He has given Him He gives us. And what consummates the joy of my heart? I am in company with Him where He is. The wonderful thing in the mind of God is that saints are united to Christ. I look back and see for 1800 years great men, devout men; but Satan closed the eyes of the most devoted, so that they never saw this truth as we see it now. It may be that all do not see it now, and, though I could not refuse any such, offering to come among us, yet I never would encourage them. I never discourage, but I try to press on them the gravity of the position, because I think it is too easily adopted. The word said to myself, when I was coming out. I feel to be momentous, 'Have you faith for it?' There is not sufficient sense in the heart of what the position is. Are you conscious of this, that the more you have of a divine truth, the more immense it becomes, and the deeper is your desire to know more about it, for you know its value; your capacities increase as they are ministered to.
"Be not ... ashamed of the testimony of our Lord". Chapter 4. "Do the work of an evangelist". The apostle puts maintaining the testimony on higher ground even than his work in the gospel. This is precious to me, and I should not easily give it up. I see it is an immense thing to maintain what is due to Christ, and I would rather be known as a man standing here for the Lord Jesus Christ, that
He knew it, than be the performer of the best works that could possibly be done. Was the gift the first thing? The first thing was maintaining the testimony. Timothy must wear the uniform of a soldier. The first thing to do is, whether officer or anything else, to put on your uniform. If the army be demoralised, so to speak, you must first, when you return to allegiance, put on your uniform and then do your work. You must put maintaining the testimony higher than any gift.
One point more, though I am hardly adequate to it, and that is, the different oppositions which the truth has encountered within my own memory. When the cry was made, "Behold, the bridegroom; go forth to meet him", there came in a very dreadful error, only checked by the maintenance of the truth, and that was, that the Holy Spirit was not here. We were to fall down and pray for the Holy Spirit. Look at all the various ways Satan has attempted to draw away the saints, just as you might look down a river and see all the colourings in the clear stream.
In a certain sense, I don't believe that we ever lose the consequences of declension. A deserter may return and be a good soldier, but there is the mark "B" on him, for he has deserted. Like a horse that has been down, I do not believe we ever recover entirely from the effect of a fall. I am higher morally, because I have the divine power that has put me higher than my failure, and with the Lord I go on more thoroughly. I have no one but the Lord now; I had brought myself into ruin, but there is nothing for me but the Lord. So that a fall often produces real devotedness.
I think there is a danger of losing sight of the fact that the only power we have, is the power of the Holy Spirit. Then as to the coming of the Lord, I suppose no one in this room denies it; but I ask
the question, Are you really going out to meet Him? Are you waiting for Him? Do you think you can wait for Him in the flesh? Never! "The Spirit and the bride say, Come", and what does that lead to? In the same verse it leads the servant to that which meets the deepest need of man, but it begins with the highest. From the highest occupation down to the lowest. You say, 'Oh, I believe in the coming of the Lord'. I admit it, but is that the testimony you bear in Manchester? 'That is a man we can't understand. He has gone out to meet the Lord'. They were leaving the things around and pressing on to meet the Bridegroom. I say that cannot be without the Holy Spirit. I speak of that now as the power, and I think we suffer from losing sight of this.
Satan's way of acting and hindering truth is varied. There is no evil or error going on around without our being influenced by it. There is no activity outside of us that is not in the air, so to speak. When a malady is prevalent around, it attacks whoever is predisposed to take it. How will you be free? By holding the Head. He is gone into heaven, having condemned all of man; and the rudiments of the world, the A B C, the elements therefore, whatever is going on, affect us. For instance, ritualism. 'Oh, that never touches us', you say. Does it not? There are some among us who never come out to any meeting at all, but the breaking of bread. What is that but a little bit of ordinances, and baptism may become so too. What is ritualism? It is that you get Christ through ordinances. It sprang up with the revival of truth, and no doubt carried off many a true heart from the river of blessing. I am not preserved at all but by holding the Head.
Another error is, that Christ came among men merely to restore man, to add His divine virtues
to a human stock. It is trying to get Christ to mend up the old thing, and there is no such thing. Instead of that, you get the old thing superseded. You must be good, most people say, but that is not enough, there must not be a leaf of the crab tree at all. The true gardener will not allow one bud. As to what sprang up among ourselves, it began with saying that the church would be in the judgment, and what eventually came out was that we had no Head in heaven at all. There was neither knowledge of the Church, nor the truth of holding the Head. You never get the right sense of how the saints are in the care of Christ, unless you begin with Him as Head. I remember a subscription being made for a poor widow, to get a sum invested that she might have a yearly income, and I said to myself, Surely, they might trust the Lord's care for her next year as well as for this.
All these things are landmarks, but what I seek is that all should go home saying 'Well, I will seek to cleave closer to the Lord than ever', owning that there shall be "one Lord, and his name one".
Ecclesiastical laxity came out next, called Bethesda. They did not understand what the unity of the body was. They did not hold the Head. You will never understand this phase unless you know it is not the evil you sow that defines the character of the evil you will reap. You may say "That is not what I sowed", but you are not prepared for the various things that will grow out of it. In Corinth they had no respect for the holiness of God's house, and so they went to law with one another before the ungodly. There was no respect for God's judgment in His own house, and they went to the world for its judgment. The leaf -- the outward thing -- will tell you where there is church laxity. They do not understand the body at all. They do not hold the Head.
The refusal of the third class of sufferings turned out to be a denial of the end of the first man. I think that many lately who have got hold of the unity of the body have got it without power, because they have got hold of it merely as a doctrine. In all cases where it has not power they have not begun by holding the Head. "From which all the body by joints and bands", &c. What is the use of the most beautiful network of gas-pipes in this city if they are not connected with the gas-works?
One thing more -- what I believe has done more detriment to the truth than any one thing yet is the gospel without the church. I am bold to say it, and I say it anxiously, I have lost friends by it, because I have tried to maintain what is the truth. Nothing has come in and given a character of laxity and indifference as to vital truth so much as this. They are content with the gospel, and say the church is secondary. There are those who have no church, while they have derived their gospel from us. We have heard of the gathering the good into vessels. They have no vessels at all!
Do you think we are safe from it? That is why I touched on that point in Timothy. In a moment I am assailed, 'Oh, you don't care for the gospel'. I do; but I have a deeper thing before my mind. What one desires is that souls should be converted to find their true place in the body of Christ.
In Ephesians he gives "evangelists" for the body. Therefore I spoke of 2 Timothy. Timothy was to maintain the testimony of the Lord prior to all: he was to do the work of an evangelist. I may call it "a forlorn hope", but it is not forlorn. It does not mean a hopeless thing. It means a company of volunteers who will die or succeed.
My heart knows many who really do hold nothing so dear to them as to maintain what is due to Christ upon this earth. Do you think this will
produce a lower character of work? I say all this because I do not want that we should be carried away by what is outside. I do not want to judge my brethren with regard to their work; I have nothing to do with that. It is not that I regret the work of those to whom I have alluded, but I would not co-operate with them. I would not touch the net while they were touching it. I have a different business. I am in a different position. I feel I must be for the Lord, and I can turn to Him as the one simple thing to guide me upon the earth.
I believe the more one knows of the Lord the more one values His own. You cannot be united to the Head in heaven but by the Holy Spirit, by whom you are baptised into one body. If I had not any interest in the things of the Lord Jesus Christ on this earth, what a nonentity I should be! The Lord lead our hearts more into association with Himself in heaven, and there you will find, a great deal better than I can tell you, what a source of unspeakable light, and power, and guidance in everything He will be to your heart.
Philippians 3 and 4
The epistle to the Philippians is to the saints in general what the epistle to Timothy is to the servant. The apostle has not been delivered out of prison, and his voice from the prison tells us to "Rejoice in the Lord". There is nothing here on earth to rejoice in; but that is what people are very slow to learn.
Now one of these chapters is in relation to yourselves; the other in relation to things around you. Some may say, It is not my state that depresses me, it is the things around me. Well, the third chapter treats of your state; the fourth of your circumstances.
There are three things I must notice in the first of these chapters. First, Christ is the object, second, He is the mark, and third, He is the hope of the saint.
The apostle begins with a warning, "Beware of the concision". The concision are those who try to correct themselves; and they stand lower in the sight of God than even the self-indulgent. The apostle writes much more severely to the Galatians, who tried to mend the flesh, than to the Corinthians, who indulged it. The great attempt of the present day is to christianise man; but God's way in Scripture is to make man a christian. The attempt to christianise man is all wrong. A christian is a man of an entirely new stock and a new lineage; he is of Christ, who is the beginning of all. Hence, in the third chapter of Revelation, He is spoken of as "The beginning of the creation of God". There was the Laodicean church boasting
itself that it was rich and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, and knew not that it was wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. And what was to come in to correct such a state of things? Why, "the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God".
Then he says, "We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus", -- not "rejoice", it is a stronger word than "rejoice", -- "and do not trust in flesh;" that is, the flesh is practically set aside. This is what you must start with. The thing that was insisted on as soon as ever the people of Israel got into the land, -- the first thing, as you may remember, -- was, that they were to be circumcised; and that was to set forth this fact, that in heaven we have no will of our own. Abraham brought in Ishmael by his own will; and the rite of circumcision was to show that he altogether ignored the flesh that had brought him in.
Now in the following verses (4 - 6), we have the good state of man, -- human righteousness, everything that is good in itself, -- and we find this: that man, not only in his bad state, but in his good state, has no sympathy with God; so that the apostle ends by taking God's side against himself, and saying, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ". Christ is the object, and what I seek is, "that I may gain Christ". The apostle says in the first chapter. "Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better", and "to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain". The gain would be to be with Christ: it would be gain to him if he were to die. Rut here, in the third chapter, he shows what it is
that leads him to this, -- even that Christ is his object.
Now it is a great moment to the soul when Christ first becomes your object; it is then that you can count all things but loss for His excellency, so that He may be your gain.
But many persons ask the question, How can I have Him in such a distinct way that I may know Him as my object? Well, there are two ways. When Jonathan saw David with the head of Goliath in his hand, and knew that he had delivered him -- brought relief to him, -- he loved him as his own soul. He stripped himself of his robe, and his garment, and his sword, and his bow, and his girdle, and put them on David. It might have been said, What an improper thing for the king's son to do! But Jonathan cared not for that. His heart was won by David because of what he had done for him, and he loved him as his own soul.
But there is another kind of devotedness, of which I will also give an example in the Old Testament which will make it clear to you. Ruth says to Naomi, "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God". This is a deeper thing. It sets forth one to whom the Lord becomes the object of the heart for what He is, not only for what He has done.
Now you will find that saints rarely arrive at the second of these, though every true-hearted saint knows something of the first. You may know Christ as your relief, but it is quite another thing to know Him as your resource. It is one thing to know Him as the One who has relieved you from every pressure; it is another thing to know Him as the one attraction of your heart. If I know Him thus, I ascend as a balloon with not a string left to tie me to earth. All my links were to earth, but now I have
Him, not only as my relief from the death on myself, but as my resource from the death and ruin on everything around me. I will try to explain the difference.
I might say to Jonathan, Do you know David? No, he says, I do not know him, but I love him; he has relieved me from the dreadful pressure that was upon me. I love him as my own soul.
I say to Ruth, Do you know Naomi? Yes, she says, I know her, and I love her too. I say to her, "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God".
Now this is an example of a heart not only attracted by what a person has done, but by what he is.
There are four stages in a soul which is led to this happy, practical association with Christ. In the case of the widow of Sarepta there was first relief from the pressure that was upon her and her son; the barrel of meal did not waste; neither did the cruse of oil fail; it supplied all their need for a whole year. But, though it did not waste, neither did it increase. Then, at the end of the year, death comes in. The prophet takes the death upon himself, -- bears the child up to his own room, and from thence delivers him alive to his mother, and he becomes the solitary witness that the power of death was broken. Then she says, and not till then, "Now by this I know that thou art a man of God". She had learnt so far, even that there was power over death. We have more; we have eternal life, and the witnesses to us of it are the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. I have not only got power over death, but there are witnesses to me that I have eternal life. I have first relief from death, and secondly, I have eternal life.
The next thing I find is that there is death on all
around me. Jonah finds, when he gets out of the depths of the sea, that there is death all around him; his gourd withers. Where then does the heart find comfort? Where did Mary of Bethany find comfort, when every light was, as it were, gone out? It was then, as she trod that solitary path to the grave, that she found that He walked beside her, -- not only as a relief to her, but a resource. And, fourthly, in the next chapter, she takes the costly ointment, and anoints the Lord with it.
Is it thus with you, or have you a hundred other things to delight in beside Christ? Paul might have had attractions down here to bind him to earth. But would he stay here? Yes, he says, I would stay for the church, but not for myself. "To depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better" for me.
If I look at the Lord I ought to be able to say, "Come"; because I answer to the wish of His heart, but, if I look at the earth, I have nothing to tie me down here, and then my wish is to depart to be with Him, How was it that Hezekiah, when he had to face death, said, "Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter"? It was just because he had all his links to earth. The apostle was quite different; he had nothing to detain him here.
Christ is not only my relief, but He is my resource. If I have nothing down here but a dreary waste before my heart I can say, He has relieved my conscience, He has satisfied my heart.
If you have not Christ thus as your object, you cannot count all things but loss for the excellency of His knowledge; but if you have, when you get up in the morning, your thought is not, I hope I shall behave myself well today; but, I have to live Christ today. You ought to begin your day with this confidence that you have enough in Christ to meet every difficulty that may befall you, just as you know that you will have light enough to do your work by;
you never think of wanting another sun; the day may be more or less bright or cloudy, but all you want is clearer light, not a new light.
If you do not know this you are not enjoying eternal life. I have a new condition altogether. I am in a region where I can enjoy God, and the proof of it is that death is not on me only, but it is also on all around me. Have you ever seen the world a bleak barren desert, and you yourself left alone in it like a solitary tree? And could you then say, Well, there is One who sits on the throne, and He is enough for me, though all else has withered? I make Him my object; and as I cannot yet depart to be with Him, I shall try so to win Him while I am on the earth that I may be as truly with Him in spirit, and as truly see Him by faith, as if I were gone to Him. When we see a man without an object in life we say he is an aimless man. Now here is a man with a purpose, with an object: "that I may win Christ", and "that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death".
And now comes another thing. It is not only that he has an object, but he has a mark. It is not only that I know what He has done and what He is, but I must be in association with Christ where Christ is. Then it is that I come to understand what the mark is.
The mark is what gives steadiness to the walk. If a man is a stranger he shows by his behaviour that he is strange in the place; if he is a pilgrim he shows by his behaviour that he is going to a place. Now Paul says: I am going on my way to do a service; I have started from a place, I am going on a circuit, and I shall come back to that same place again after I have done my work. I do not expect to grow old here; if I look forward I see
myself die as a martyr; I see the stake before me, But when I think of what I have to comfort my own heart, I see Him before me. There is no steadiness in your heart unless you see Christ in glory. When my heart gets the sense of seeing Him where He is, it acquires a certain definiteness. It is vain to talk of a mark if you do not see it.
Now what people say in answer to all this is, -- I do not see what you say! Well, have you ever spent a night praying to God to show it to you? Have you ever been thoroughly in earnest about it?
The apostle brings these things before them so that they may be able to rejoice always. I find that if there is one thing that marks the saints in general, it is absence of joy in the Lord. How can you get joy in the Lord? By making use of Him. You will never know the value of Christ until you use Him. The Lord likes you to use Him, He says "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee", and "casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you". I find when I sit down with people quietly to have a talk that they begin at once to speak of the trials of the way! And after that, if I say, Suppose we change the subject and talk of the things of God; -- then I find that they can talk of nothing but the mercies of God to themselves, but it is all the temporal mercies of God they talk of. And they get no higher than this. How few can say, The Lord has shown me wonderful things lately about the Lord Jesus Christ!
Lastly as to our hope. "We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ". This is what we are looking for; we have no country but heaven, and we are looking for the Lord to come and take us to it. And when He comes forth the first thing He will do will be to raise the bodies of His sleeping saints; He will raise them in likeness to His glorious body; and as to us, He will also "change our vile body, that it
may be fashioned like unto his glorious body". That is our hope, and you see it is all connected with Himself.
And thus we are brought back again to the text that we started with, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice".
Well, so far, it is all about myself, but what about circumstances outside? Now we come to them; and the first thing is, "let your moderation be known unto all men". A man jostles you in the streets: let him. "The Lord is at hand". You can "be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving" -- do not forget past mercies. Is my child sick? I remember how one was before, and how God succoured me then, Keep up the recollection of His goodness; there is nothing so good for the soul as to keep up the remembrance of the goodness of God. "With thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus". All your requests are to be made known. What! pray about every thing? Yes. I am sure the saints would not have half the foolish things they have in their houses if they made all their requests known to God, Make known everything to Him.
In public, as well as private, we are often troubled with the thought as to whether we are expressing God's will. Now the first question is, Have you been to God about it? And, having been, do you know that God's ear has taken in what you have requested? The moment that you have got the sense that He has heard you, you are satisfied; you want no more, and need not repeat it; just as a man says to his child, -- You have talked to me about that before.
The great importance of prayer is, not that you
may get your request, but that you may have the sense that God has to do with your affairs. You have got a sense of what it is to go to Him and get an audience. I have taken, as it were, the whole of the contents of my heart, and poured them out before Him, I say, I know He has them; I need not tell Him about them again. The fact is people lose their time saying a great many words to relieve their consciences, and not to ask for what they really need. When I ask anything according to His will I know that He hears me, and that I have the petition that I desired of Him.
The first great parable about praying is that in the eleventh of Luke. The man would not go away without his friend giving him the loaves, because he wanted them, and had no other way of getting them. Do not go to God if you have any back door; do not have any plan of your own if you are going to pray to Him. That is the principle of real prayer. What makes people so often not gain in prayer is that they have some plan in the background. They go to some place for their health, and pray about it, but all the time they are thinking that if this place does not cure them they will go somewhere else and try another.
Well, how can you know when you have had an audience? -- when you have gained God's ear? You can know at once; I will tell you how. The most wonderful favour that ever was conferred upon man by God will be yours. You will have the peace of God. Have we any troubles at this present time? We have. And why do we go about troubled with them? Because we do not go to God with them. When I go to God with my troubles and get an audience of Him, He gives me His own peace about them. I am in the state that God is in. What a wonderful thing! Here is a man who was troubled this morning; he has gone to God and got an
audience. And has he got his prayer answered? Perhaps not. But he has come out in the state of God.
Well, do your work like a horse in a mill, and go on. Circumstances are not to bear you down. We all fret and worry until we can go to God with it and say to Him, Settle it as you, like; and then we can go out with the peace of God. The effect of it is, first, to bring us into a calm from a state of perturbation, and next, into the peace of God.
Now, if your own state is not right you cannot rejoice. Your own state which you find in the third chapter, must come first. You must have Christ as the one object of your heart to supplant everything else. Then as to the things around that try and afflict you, if you tell them all to God you get rid of them. The point is, Have you had an audience? What a solemn blessed sense it imparts! A man can go about in the world saying, I know I have the ear of God! And thus this most wonderful favour that ever God conferred on a man on earth is his. It is the most wonderful favour, because God might have given me all the world and not have given me peace.
And "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus". Amen.
Matthew 16:1 - 23
The two great subjects which come out at the end of the chapter I have read are, the one, the rock on which Christ builds the church -- that is His own Person; and, the other, the cross. These two things must go together, and I desire to dwell upon what will prepare you to understand them; looking however at the cross, not as connected with our sins, but as that which separates us from the man that is here, and from the things that are here.
You will never understand that wonderful scene in which the Lord presents Himself to Saul of Tarsus unless you see that He there recognises no other man besides Himself: He has done with man. That blessed One, who is the Son of the living God, brought man -- the first Adam -- to an end in the cross: so that my hope is not in a dying man but in a risen Man. Now I wish to show you how we are taught this.
You have to learn the cross as that which has separated you from things here; you have to find out what Jesus is when there is nothing else but Jesus, or, as this scripture teaches it in figure, when there is "no bread". The Lord says, Do not look for a sign. The leaven of the Pharisees was looking for a sign; but Jesus is to be sufficient for you when there is nothing but Himself, when there is nothing to supply you naturally. The natural is what man looks for; but what Christ would here teach His disciples is that it is not for what is natural they are to look, but for Himself.
You will never really understand the church of God until you understand this lesson. And why do not saints understand it? Because they have not
learned Jesus as the resource of their heart, though they may have learned Him as their Saviour, as a relief for their conscience.
Bread is what suits nature. After forty years' wandering in the wilderness Israel learned, "man doth not live by bread only". God's purpose is to teach me this lesson, and He does so in various ways: not only by leading me through sorrow; He gives me bright days as well as dark ones. But though there are dark ones, I wish to correct an idea that often troubles people, namely, that God always wants to bring us down when He chastens us. When He corrects a man it is not that He may bring him down, but that He may lift him up. He says, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time". I discipline my child in order that I may exalt him morally.
The Lord says, "Man shall not live by bread alone". That is what I have to start with. Here is the blessed Son of God led into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, and when He has fasted forty days and forty nights He hungered. He has no bread. Is it wrong to be hungry? Of course it is not. But what does the Lord say when the devil comes and says to Him, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread".? He says, I have got no instruction from God to make bread. What a marvellous sight! There is the Son of God, that made the heavens and the earth -- there He is, hungry, in the very nature and make that He Himself created; He is hungry, and He will not stir His hand to provide bread for Himself!
I just turn to that passage in Peter to which I referred. He says, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time". Then, "Casting all your care
upon him; for he careth for you". That is the proof that you are humble; a man who is really humble casts His care upon God. As a man here I must have care, but when I am humble I cast it on God.
But besides this there is the devil. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour". Here I get a double character of evil: care inside and the devil outside. As to the care, you are relieved from it when you can say, I am so little that I cannot help myself, so I just cast it upon One who can help me, as in the case of the widow with the adversary. I am then a humble person, because I cast my care upon One who can care for me. But this lowly weak person has besides a most terrible enemy; and where does this enemy show himself? Perhaps in your next-door neighbour, who will try to carry you off to a flower show; perhaps in another, who will come in to talk to a mother about her children, or to a man about his business. "Whom resist stedfast in the faith"; and the more sense you have of your own weakness as you resist him, the greater the sense you will have of the power of God. You never learn power but in weakness, and the measure of the strait you go through with God is the measure of your strength.
Oh! it is the distraction of the soul that so hinders, -- the looking for something else to relieve it in the strait instead of Jesus; so that it is unprepared for a place where there is only Himself. Our place is in the holiest, and what is there there save Jesus? What does Paul find when he gets into the third heaven? Not one bit of bread there; nothing to keep up nature. He did not even know whether he was in the body or not, so little was there to minister to it there.
Now there are three powers in the world: the
power of Satan, the power that God gave man, and the power of the Holy Spirit. And since the cross, there is, as it were, a subterranean passage between the power of man and that of Satan. There was a coalition between them when they put Christ to death, so you cannot now use the power given to man; for Satan is connected with it. The moment you use it the Holy Spirit retires. I do not stay to dwell upon this now, but pass on to the power of God with which you really have to do; for the Spirit of God is my only power, and the only bond that I have to Christ. When have I the greatest sense of His power? My adversary the devil is going about as a roaring lion outside me, and inside, it is weakness and cares; but it is when I am most conscious of the power outside and the weakness inside that I have the greatest sense of the power of Christ.
What strait have you passed through with God? I do not doubt you have had troubles; but it is not passing through troubles that makes you strong, but passing through them with God. It is "that the trying of your faith worketh patience"; the trying, not trial. Putting a horse at a fence that he can go over is a trying of him, but it is no trial; on the contrary, he enjoys going over it if he can clear it. You say, I have gone through plenty of trials. But how has it been with you in them? You have been looking for bread, and often the bread has come in, and you have lost the blessing of the lesson which you might have learned. If God is going to teach it you, He will not let you have any relief until you have learned it; He will not give you relief until you are fit for it. When Peter was going to be relieved what was he doing? He was sleeping: he had no care; he had cast it upon the One who cared for him. But instead of this, people are shrinking from distress, whereas it is in distress that you learn what
God is to you. In favours you learn what the kindness of God is; but it is in distress that you learn what God is Himself.
Let me say a word upon enjoyment, for I think people confuse in their minds the difference between enjoyment and strength, and thus after a season of enjoyment are much surprised to find that they want strength. Paul found this. After being in the third heavens he had to say, "When I am weak, then am I strong", and to learn, "My strength is made perfect in weakness", so that he could say. "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong". No man in life could make sense of this unless he knew that it is in straits that you learn what Christ is. Do you like to get into a strait to learn something of Christ? We are glad enough when it is over to see what we have learned in it; but do I say when going into it, Well, now I shall learn in this sorrow what a resource Christ is? I hear people talk in a very loose way of their 'being on the Rock', when they have very little idea of what they mean. To say that you are on the Rock is to say that you are connected with Christ, and, if so, you are prepared to find that Christ is sufficient for you in any circumstances in which you may be placed.
Now I want you, beloved friends, to see how what I have been saying is established in the third chapter of Joshua; namely, that it is the measure of the strait you go through with God that is the measure of your strength. This great truth is brought out in the bed of Jordan -- in death. Here is a type of death! -- every bit of "bread" gone, not a thing left to support nature. What can be weaker than death? Well, "Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you"! See it in the death of
Christ; God, the living God Himself came down -- the mighty power of God -- and raised Him from the dead. I have not got a bit of power; there is nothing left; well, then 'man's extremity is God's opportunity'.
If you have thus gone through death you will never lose the mark of it. Do you think you could forget what God is, when He is thus known to the soul and thus learned? And how did you learn this? Was it in His favours? When did Jonah learn it? He learned it when the gourd withered; when he had no one but God; when he was in extremity. I tremble for the saints who look for favours upon earth. Favours will teach you God's kindness; but if Noah had been in a desert where there was only a little stream of water, he would never have got drunk. It is not that I want you to look for trial; I think a person who could do that has self-confidence: but I want you to say, Jesus is enough for me, and if trial comes, it but brings out the preciousness of Christ.
Look at David at Ziklag. He was in the greatest and most terrible strait; everything seemed to bear down upon him; his own conscience could not be happy because he was in a wrong place; and his friends, who had adhered to him through thick and thin, now spake of stoning him. What did he do? "David encouraged himself in the Lord his God" He cast all his care upon Him. And what was he brought through such straits for? It was all to prepare him for the elevation to which God was going to raise him.
As to myself, practically speaking, I may feel that I am not fit to be put through much suffering; that I should go to pieces if I were. But when I have the mind of God, I know that the highest portion I can have is, not favours, but suffering. In that wonderful chapter where the Lord sends out His disciples,
He tells them that they are going out as "sheep in the midst of wolves", and that "he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me". You cannot complain of any suffering when you see that the greatest possible suffering, -- the cross, -- is only your normal state. But the Lord sometimes cannot put you through suffering; because you would be discontented, and He does not want you to be that. It is marvellous to see one like Stephen superior to everything, and to think, -- Why, a tooth-ache or any trifle of that sort would put me out at once! The Lord says, I have given you an opportunity of learning, and you will not take it; you prefer the bread, so I let you have it. If you will not learn of Him, He will not force you; He will not subject you to suffering if you cannot bear it. But I believe the saint ought to be subjected to suffering. If he is not, he is to me like a horse turned out to grass; it may be all very fine for the horse, but I would rather have it said of me, I cannot do without that horse, and find myself kept at work, than be the horse turned out to grass because I was not wanted.
The more I suffer, the more deeply I feel a trial, the more I know Him with me in it. As He walked beside Mary to the grave, the Lord could not suppress the sensibility of His heart. Lazarus was dead; He knew what it was; and He walked beside her to bring her heart into acquaintance with His own.
Now you never understand a truth until you practise it. You do not preach to a child to walk; he must be set on his feet if he is ever to know how. It is in your greatest weakness that you learn the power of God, and you never know what God's power can do until He has done it in yourself. If He has done it in you, then you have proved it, and you will be able to use it yourself. If you compare
Ephesians 1:19 with chapter 6: 10, you will find the same word used. I have only to take that same "power" that He used to quicken me, and use it against my adversary. I have learnt it in my weakest point, in death. No one ever yet got a right sense of dependence on God who did not learn it through death. This is the practical difference between a nun and a widow. A nun is a person trying to retire from things; a widow is one who has lost them all through death. We can learn this lesson in the death of Christ, and we ought to. I often think in connection with the death of those I love, how I have passed through a greater death before -- the death of Christ. But there is this in sorrow, that you never get used to it; every new sorrow revives all the old ones, while every new joy eclipses all the old ones. And not all the nunneries in the world will teach you this; it must be death. A nun dare not look out of the window for fear of what she will see; but a widow says, However much I look out I can see nothing to engage me, for I have lost all. And when I have learned death I have learned what the sufficiency of Christ is.
Now I turn to two miracles in Matthew to show how they meet these two points, and whilst I do so I would say that it is not in our power to apply truth; God applies it according to the condition of the soul.
In chapter 14 John baptist is cut off from the earth. Death has come in; death is a thing that I am now prepared for; it has come in like a wave, and, if it has done its worst in the death of Christ, I cannot fear anything else; it cannot now take me by surprise. "When the bridegroom shall be taken from them ... then shall they fast". That does not mean that I am to deny myself this thing or that thing, but that the Friend who lent a charm to
everything has departed. Do you say, I want to learn the Lord in this way? Well, then, you must go into the desert to learn Him thus; this world must be a desert place to you; you are to be fasting here and feasting with Him.
Now the Lord finds in the desert the multitude that has followed Him; and He is moved with compassion towards them. In both the fourteenth and the fifteenth chapters of Matthew He gives us a miracle and an illustration; in one case the illustration is given before the miracle, in the other it is given after. As we have seen, there is the evil working in myself, and there is the adversary outside; weakness and care within, Satan without. In this fourteenth chapter we get the outside evil. He goes out to the multitudes and feeds them with five loaves and two fishes, and they take up twelve baskets full of fragments -- twelve being the number of earthly administration of government. Where there is no resource He is my resource.
Then He sends His disciples over the sea; the ship is in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves, and the wind is contrary. And now we find Jesus walking on the water to go to them. He is acting throughout like a rejected One. He begins with feeding His people in spite of all the dearth, and then He shows Himself in power above all the evil. If the church had held firm to the Holy Spirit it would have been kept from the inundation of the world. Nothing but the Holy Spirit can keep me from the world. Christendom has entirely lost sight of Him as the One who is standing for Christ in the presence of the world, and He is here not only to comfort me but to witness for Him. I feel at times that I would do anything if I could persuade brethren to say. Not one single natural thing will I allow to come in to help me in the testimony.
Well, the Lord finds them in these trying circumstances.
The waters are men, and the winds are Satan; He is above them all. Where will you be? The ship was made for water; the ship was 'bread'. Peter will not have anything to do with it. He says, I will have faith; I walk on the water to go to Jesus; I have done with bread. Is not a ship made for water? Of course it is; and if you have not faith you had better stay in it. But a ship is not faith; Jesus is not there; He is walking on the water. Do you think a man would try to walk on the water if he had not faith? I hear people say, But I cannot do as Christ did! Peter had the same power. There is no mediocrity in Christ. In any act of faith, I either have the power of Christ or I have no power at all. It may be only a thread of gold in a rope of cotton, but if there is gold there at all, it is as good gold as in Christ Himself, because it is the same gold; there is no mixture. If it is of faith, it is of Christ.
Faith leaves the ship which is made for water to walk upon the water because Jesus is on it; and the power to do it is to keep looking at Him, to keep the eye on Him. I find if I begin planning, and say, I will go to such a place and do so and so there, that it is sure to be all wrong, and nothing to happen at all as I expected; another time, when, instead of planning, I say, 'I will just go looking to the Lord', everything will turn out right. Why? Because "I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved". How did Peter fail? He looked at Satan's power, and he began to sink. However, I had sooner be near the Lord and sink in the water and have Him save me than I would be in the ship.
I turn now to the next chapter. Here we have the illustration before the miracle. It is the inside thing now. "Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile
the man". There is weakness, evil within you that you cannot get rid of. In the last chapter we found Christ taking His place in the desert and saying, I feed My people in spite of all that is against them; but if you will walk with Me I will make you superior to the bread altogether. I often ask myself. Why was one put before the other? Well, I believe it is that I often find that Christ has the power over things all round me, before I find that He has got practical power over the evil inside me. Stephen gives us an example of the one, Paul of the other. Stephen was superior to everything that was around him; Paul to all that was within him: he had the messenger of Satan to buffet him that he might know the power of Christ resting upon him.
In this fifteenth chapter we get the evil in ourselves. The Syrophenician woman comes to Him, and He answers and says, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs". Here we get the illustration. She has no claim. She says I quite admit I have no claim; I am the lowest of the low. If I have gone so low as to be a dog I certainly have not a particle of claim on the Lord. When I accept the lowest place the trying is over -- the strait is passed. What is the use of keeping Paul and Silas in prison when they are singing? They are just as comfortable as if they were at their own fireside, so what is the use of keeping them there any longer? They are morally over the fence. And David is over it when he says, "I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people that have set themselves against me round about".
You will often hear a person say, I am so worried by the evil thoughts that are in me. Then, I say, you have never yet taken the place of being a dog -- of abhorring yourself; that is repentance. You would soon come down if you got into the presence of Christ. This woman is there, and she says, I am
a dog. And at once He answers, The devil is gone out of your daughter.
Then come to Him great multitudes of lame, blind, dumb, maimed -- all weakness finds in Christ a complete resource. And next we find the seven loaves to feed the multitude and the seven baskets full taken up; that is completeness again -- a complete resource. And thus we get back to what He is teaching His disciples: to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. He prepares them to know the Rock, the Son of God, and then shows them that in the cross, the man that is here is set aside.
Well, what is the good of it all? What is the good of an hour's recital of the truth? The soul must be exercised if there is to be any real good. Am I in straits? Then I am to learn what Jesus is in my strait. That is what measures every one of you here tonight. People go through trial, and think God has dealt very hardly with them. The fact is they have never gone through a strait with God; it has been a trial to them, not a trying. It is a wonderful thing to think that each of us has a history that will come out at the judgment seat of Christ; all that He makes us pass through will come out there. Is it that He likes to see us suffer? It is not! And this is why He spares a person who He sees will not learn in it.
What a blessed thing it would be if you were to start now and say, Well, whether it be a strait from outside or inside, I must from this night learn Christ in it and His sufficiency. I have to do with the Son of God, and in this same Son of God the history of the man that ruined me has been ended. God says, I have broken the bond that united you to him, and have brought in a new bond: I unite you to My Son. You are of the church, which is founded on the Rock.
The Lord lead our hearts, every one of us, to
know what is the wonderful way in which He would lead us -- the wide place into which He has brought us, even to have to do with the Son of God. May the Lord bless us. But to be blessed we must be content to walk with Him through straits to learn in them what Christ is, and how He can make Himself known as a sufficient resource when there is nothing but Himself. Very often then the strait is over; but the fence does not fall until you have passed it, and what matter if it fall or not when you are over it? Our place with Him is that of those who have passed into a scene where the natural man is at an end, to have to do with Christ Himself.
Matthew 25:1 - 13; Revelation 22:16, 17, 20
I have read these two passages, the one as the closing testimony of the church on earth, the other as the state of the heart of the believer towards the Lord -- the affections of the bride. The public testimony in keeping with the state of heart in Revelation 22:16 is that of Matthew 25:1 - 13, when at a certain time the kingdom of heaven, which was being spoken of, became like ten virgins, etc.
Now for what brought about this state of things we must refer to the preceding chapter. There we read, "That evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming;" and as the consequence, "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which ... went forth to meet the bridegroom", and, "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept". This is the sad state into which the church has fallen; but to explain it I must refer to its normal state. And before doing so I will say that the expression, "the kingdom of heaven", means the character of God's rule at a certain time, whilst the other rule -- that of the earth -- is going on at the same time; just as we say "The British rule in India". The rule is of a heavenly character; it is the kingdom of heaven.
If you look at Matthew 13 you find what it was like at the beginning; this in chapter 25 is what it was to become like. The normal state of the saints is also pointed out to us in Luke 12. There we find that the saints were to express Christ whilst He is not here. Their lights were to be burning; they were to be His glory, set forth in the scene where He was not, without expecting anything from the earth; just as we see the moon soaring
through the sky on a dark night, not receiving anything from the earth, but shedding forth to it the light of the sun that is not there. The true character for the kingdom was that of expecting nothing -- quite a new state of things for the Jew. They were to sell that they had, and give alms; to provide themselves bags which waxed not old, a treasure in the heavens that would not fail, This is to the Jew; the gentile had nothing to sell; he had no rights to claim; and the Jew who is entitled to the earth is to forego his rights as to it. He says to him, You are now to look for another thing. And if the one who had title has to surrender his title, what about him who had none? This is how it touches the gentile. Then, as you have nothing here, you do not fear them that kill the body; you have no care without, no fear within. And the effect is, as you do not fear anything, that you can bear witness, you can confess Him before men; and as you take no thought for yourself, you can seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Well, all this failed. "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept". And then there comes a change. How does the alteration occur? A cry goes forth. "Behold, the bridegroom". The Lord counts upon the affection in the hearts of His people to respond to it. The word "cometh" is not there. It is just the statement, "Behold, the bridegroom", and He counts that that announcement will awake them. If it were "cometh", He might be still at a distance. It is not cometh. He is there -- go to meet Him! How interesting it is that the Lord counts on the effect of this cry! Yet, though the cry is now preached, many have not been awakened by it. But the fact is the same, There is the Lord. And when He comes, in a moment all else passes away from you; it is not like death, when you leave those you love behind you;
but all is absorbed by this One who calls you out to Himself. And we are called now to the meeting; we "wait for his Son from heaven;" we are "like unto men that wait for their lord". That is the testimony, the thing that has been made known.
But as to the kingdom all is a failure. We turn to Revelation, and find that the church, the candlesticks, have all failed. But before looking at it there, I turn to John 21 to read two verses: "Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" Now, in connection with this, John gets, in the book of Revelation, this coming of the Lord, that which closes the history, and therefore I turn to it, and read in the first chapter -- "I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead". Mark how changed everything is. Just look at John 20 for a moment; for if you do not see how things were at first, you will not see how changed they are now. At verse 19 you read: "The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the
Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive the Holy Spirit". That is as it was at the beginning. Here was the opening of everything; a Man risen from the dead, who for the first time takes His place in the midst of His own, speaks peace to them, and breathes on them. That was the normal state.
Now when I turn to the book of Revelation, I find a change. I see Him in the midst of the seven churches, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass, His voice as the sound of many waters, and a sharp two-edged sword going out of His mouth. There is the aspect, the terrific aspect, of the Lord. How can you account for the change? It is that ecclesiastical corruption has come in, and He is indignant. Nothing makes any one so indignant as slighted affection. In John 20 He was in all the delight of reciprocated affection. What is He now in the midst of the seven churches? He is there with such an aspect that John even cannot recognise Him. His eyes are like a flame of fire. I never talk to people about ecclesiastical corruption; I try to bring them near the Lord. You cannot keep mixed up with ecclesiastical corruption when you see the Lord's eyes; -- all bright and beautiful at first, but what now? "His eyes were as a flame of fire". Who can look at them? And why this change? Because He is indignant; His affection has been slighted.
The first church brought before us is the church of Ephesus; the one of all others which had been before us as that to which the full favour of God was shown. And now it has given up the very thing that God first looks for; it has lost its first love. We cannot stay now to look at each of the churches; but when it comes to the very worst state of things (I suppose all here know that Thyatira brings before
us Roman Catholicism), when the church had got to the lowest depths of darkness, then it is you get the precious promise of the morning star: "I will give him the morning star". The night is wearing on its dreary length; its long dark hours are passing slowly by. You know how in travelling by coach, as the tedious hours drag on, how eagerly the weary traveller looks out for the morning star, the promise of the coming day. And that is just what the Lord gives us here when all is at the darkest; He gives us the morning star, His own coming.
Of course this is not all, but I just pass on to mark how the Lord completes His dealings with the church. Though He finds no love of theirs to speak of, yet His own has never failed; at the very last it is, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten". And what does He say to them? "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 says, I do not give up my love, though you give up yours; all the dreary night I stand at the door and knock.
All this I think plainly shows you that, looked at as an ecclesiastical testimony, the church is a failure. And when I turn to the last chapter of the book, I say, Is there then nothing for the Lord in the whole earth?
Well, here I find something new. The testimony was that of the wise virgins going forth to meet the Bridegroom; but now I find a little word of great importance -- "the bride". In the midst of all this ruin, then, there will be a bride, When the Lord comes, He will find a bride here. That "bright and morning star" will so gain the affections of the saints, that they, in company with the Holy Spirit, will invite Him to come. The cry has gone forth, "Behold, the bridegroom". The Lord says, "Surely I
come quickly;" and the saints, awakened up by the approach of Himself, answer, "Come, Lord Jesus".
I will explain now what the bride is in character, and also show what is the effect upon the saint of being in that position.
The importance of the bride's hope is, that practically, that affection is awakened in my heart which invites Him to come, and this makes me fit for Him to come. His coming is the only thing that answers to the affections of my heart. Now what would prepare a heart -- what would make a heart fit to say these words, "Come, Lord Jesus"?
I turn again to John 20 because there that which characterises the bride begins. Mary in heart is representative of the bride. Now there are four different things that characterise the bride. First, the heart must be won; second, it must be satisfied; third, it must be made suitable; and lastly, comes service.
But first, you must be won. Mary's heart here is wholly won; I need not show that to you, for it is evident. She is inconsolable without Him. She, like the bride of Canticles, seeks Him whom her soul loves. That is the effect in the saint of the heart being won and not satisfied. A heart won and not satisfied is a miserable heart; it does not possess the object of its affections. And many are in that state; the affections His, but no sense of being united to Him; they are bright one day and cast down another, just like the bride in Canticles. There is no sense of union, for affection is not union. You may love the Lord in the deepest, fullest way, and yet it may only make you miserable because you are not with Him, because you do not know union. The very fact of my heart being won makes it dissatisfied; I am inconsolable without the One I love; nothing but His company satisfies me. A heart fully won knows the Lord in a two-fold way: as a
relief, like the widow of Sarepta when her son is dead; and as a resource, like Jonah, when the gourd is gone -- when all that was a shelter and a delight is gone -- there is but one to turn to, and that is the Lord.
The next thing to having the heart won is to have it satisfied; and that is what Mary also is in John 20. He says to her: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God". She goes, no longer inconsolable, but satisfied, to tell her message. She is satisfied through knowing Him where He is; it is "My Father, and your Father"; "My God, and your God". Association with Christ where Christ is alone satisfies my heart.
And as I know Him up there, I find that the One who has gone down into judgment for me, that same blessed One who is now set down on the Father's throne is the One who bears me company on my path down here; He has won my heart, and the affection increases as we go along. He is there as the Priest to sustain me, and the Advocate to restore me. I have an Advocate when I sin; and because of this I confess; and God is faithful and just to forgive me my sins, and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. The man who sins and does not confess loses the sense of divine favour. The one who confesses goes in and condemns himself, and God says, I come and forgive you all unrighteousness; and thus the heart is kept up fresh in the knowledge of His love. He will sustain me in all that bright scene. The Spirit carries me into it all -- into the holiest -- and He is the One who sustains me when I am in.
So the heart is satisfied, which it never will be but by knowing Christ in the glory. He wins my heart in humiliation, but He satisfies it in glory. And
that is union. "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit".
Let me ask you, beloved friends, do you think any person like the Lord? Can you -- now that He has won your heart, and it is devoted to Him -- can you be happy apart from Him? Well Paul says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ". It is "in heavenly places in Christ". I see many a person longing to get the Lord here, to get Him in their place; but they do not care to get Him in His place. What could delight your heart more than to be in company with Him? That is what satisfies the heart. It is thus that it is made "suitable", and for this I turn to Psalm 45.
I only use the word "suitable" so as better to convey my meaning, because words get so hackneyed that they fail to convey anything to the mind; it is hard to get words to bring truth home to hearts. Sanctified is the word that is generally used. Of course, in this psalm it is the earthly bride that needs adorning for Christ; how much more the heavenly bride? "Kings' daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty". Now that is suitable, or, if you prefer the word, that is sanctification; I do not object, if you only know what I mean. In John 17 you get the character of this sanctification. "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth". And if you ask me, What is the measure of it? I reply, -- to be as separate from the things of earth as He is in heaven. "Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house". Not only is it that I do not
go near them, but I have forgotten them. He absorbs me with His company.
You never can learn what suits a person, except in his own company. There was nothing wrong in Martha. She judged by her own feelings that a wearied traveller would like refreshment, and so set about preparing supper for the Lord; she studied her own feelings instead of His. People often think that because they like a thing themselves their friends will like it. Now Mary, on the other hand, studied the Lord's mind. She sat at His feet; and that is the only place where you will ever learn His mind; you cannot possibly know it otherwise; it is preposterous to think that I can out of my own mind find out what He would like; He is so infinitely above me. Thus I must be with Him to be satisfied, and, being with Him, I grow suitable to Him; and that is what sanctification is.
"So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty". When I read Canticles, the whole thing that I find is the bride's feelings towards the Lord. But in Revelation, as the bride comes down from heaven, I do not find a word about affections: affection has done its work; now it is "adorned" that she is.
I now turn to Proverbs 31 to show you what service is. There we find the wise woman taking care of her lord's house. Now the lower the state of things, the less work there should be done, In Laodicea there is no exhortation to work. Is there anything more marked in this present day than how much work there is done, and at the same time how little souls are in company with the Lord? I do not mean that there should be a great amount of reading got through, but how little there is of sitting before Him to wait for His counsel.
"The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her". That is the place for a saint. Christ's heart can trust him. If he is only coming down the street,
Christ can say of him, That is a friend of mine.
The public side of service is giving one's life for the brethren; the private side is washing the saints' feet. The public thing is to die. You ought to be known as a man who would give his life for the saints. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends". Now how can a man be the friend of Christ, who does not know any of His ways or His likings? Why, Enoch walked with God! That was how he came to please Him.
I think people too often confound sympathy with communion. Do you understand communion? a common mind with the Lord? My child may be in the same room with me, but he may be thinking about the fire; I about the gas. There is no communion between us. But if he is thinking about the gas, though he may understand very little about it compared with what I do, yet our thoughts are on the same object; we have communion with each other. I believe that the one thing we have to seek is to be in communion with the Lord; and when I have got to His side, when I have begun from above, I am able to face anything here. "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her". That is the principle of real service; but I think service has lost its solemn place.
Thus what really characterises the bride is, first, the heart won; then, being in company with Him where He is, the heart is satisfied; then, being satisfied with Him, I learn to be suitable to Him; and this suitability becomes my beauty; I am "adorned". Then comes service. The person whose heart is most set upon the coming of the Lord is the one who can go out in service to others. And notice that the coming
of the Lord is not ecclesiastical; to the very last it is evangelical.
There is nothing here to delight me but that one thing that is expressed in that word "Come". The testimony now, when everything has failed, is that of the wise virgin going forth with but one purpose -- one object -- and that to meet Him.
Luke 14:15 - 33
The parable we have read was spoken in reply to one of the company who said, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God". Then the Lord set forth, under the figure of a great supper, the greatness of what God has provided. It is a great thing for us to get hold of and understand, in some measure at least, the goodness of God, and that which His heart has provided for us.
What is here put before us by the Lord is not a purpose in God's heart; it is what He has already accomplished, and accomplished by the One who alone could accomplish it; and therefore, all that remains for us, is to take possession of it and to enjoy it. But in order to enjoy a thing there is something more needed than the mere possession of it. Many a man has property who has not health, and of what avail is his property to him then? You need health in order to enjoy what is given you.
Now it is most important that I should know the things that are in the heart of God for me. He had a purpose to bring me into a wondrous place, and that purpose He has accomplished in His Son. Just as in the case of the children of Israel, He says to Moses, Bring my people out of Egypt into the land of Canaan. His purpose was to bring them into the land, and that purpose was accomplished. There were difficulties and dangers by the way, and failures too, but God's purpose was accomplished. We have not only to get out of Egypt, there is a land for us to enter and to take possession of; a house prepared by the Father to which He calls us; a feast to which He has bidden us.
Have you understood anything of the love that
is in His heart? The Lord sets it forth in this chapter as a feast; in the next chapter He shows how the guest is fitted for the feast. He tells out the Father's heart -- how He feels about us. It is not the prodigal's feelings; it is the Father's feelings about the prodigal coming home. God there says, I am a Father who will receive you when you come back to me, and whose heart will rejoice to welcome you. There is one Man who has told us of the Father's heart. He was the only one who could, for He was the only one who knew it -- the Son of God. And He was the only one who ever knew the enormity of my offence against God -- the sin that had put me at such a distance from God -- and He bore it. I do not know the measure of my sin, and therefore I cannot pay the penalty it incurred; but that One knew it, and He paid it; and He also knew what no other man ever knew, even the love that is in the Father's heart; and that love He declares.
Thus the first thing that comes out is the purpose of God: God makes a feast. The Lord introduces you here to the Father's thoughts and counsels for you. One of the company says, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God". That was nothing in comparison to what the Lord had to tell, and He answers, "A certain man made a great supper".
But, before speaking of this supper, I should like to say a word about the guest. In the next chapter you get three things about him. He is first kissed; next robed; and then feasted. Now without this revelation of the Father's heart we never could have known what the Father's love is. Could philosophy teach it to us? The present race of philosophers are the most contemptible because they borrow from this Book and deny the Author of it. The old philosophers never got beyond benevolence because
they had not this Book to reveal love to them. Love delights in the one it serves. This I get in the fifteenth of Luke in the wonderful way in which it unfolds the Father. The prodigal is first kissed by Him; next robed; and then feasted. A kiss is the intimation of affection on the part of him who gives it. The heart of God, which was denied by Satan and doubted by man in the garden of Eden, is the first thing He brings out. The first impression of having to do with God is what Scripture calls a kiss, though grace had already worked in him. The second thing is the robe; "Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him". And notice that, as soon as the robe is on, he is in the Father's house, though he was "a great way off" when it was brought to him. This robe is what fits him to enter the house; it is the new nature. The moment you have the nature you are qualified to enter. The word is, "Bring forth the best robe". You do not say bring forth a thing when you are inside a house; you must be outside if anything is to be brought forth to you. But now that they are inside, it is "Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry". When they were outside it was "bring forth;" now that they are inside it is "bring hither". He has brought us inside. He has made us "meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light". There is not a saint on earth who is not fit for heaven; but there is not one who is perfectly fit for earth. The only one who was fit for earth was the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the Son of man who is in heaven. You are left here heavenly men upon the earth; there is no provision made for your being earthly ones. That is the marvellous place you are put in; you cannot understand what it is to be fit for earth until you have been to heaven.
Now this great supper is not a future entertainment, any more than the Father's house in chapter
fifteen is a future heaven. It introduces you into that wonderful scene which is typified in the Old Testament Scriptures by "the holiest". You cannot worship anywhere else, and that is what we are brought to now. Mark! now -- not by-and-by. We are brought now by God into a position which is altogether beyond nature.
In 1 Corinthians 2 we read, "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God". The point here is to show the Corinthians that they were above nature. A man that acts below nature is a monster. But here you are above nature. You are on a higher level than that which is naturally your own, just as a man on horseback is above his own level and power. Do you say to me, See what lovely things! How the eye rejoices in them! -- Well, I say, so it does, and there is nothing wrong in an eye; but still "Eye hath not seen". -- Do you say, Listen to those sweet sounds! did you ever hear anything more lovely? How the ear rejoices in them! -- I say, so it does, and there is nothing wrong in an ear; but still "Nor ear heard". -- Do you say, Look at the wonderful feelings of the heart? What sensitiveness! what refinement! what delicacy! -- I say, so it has; the heart does feel wonderfully; but still it has not "entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him". This is what we find in Isaiah; he says it is a hidden thing;
man has not seen it, heard it, or conceived it.
Well now, what is heaven? Oh! you say, we do not know. We believe it is something very grand, but we do not know what it is like. Then you have not got beyond Isaiah if you do not know what heaven is like; "which God hath prepared" is not a hidden thing to us. "God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit". That is the Great Supper; but none of our natural powers can enter into it.
It is an immense thing for the heart to get into this place. The Lord, speaking of the children of Israel, said, that He was come "to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them ... unto a good land, and a large". And, speaking of His people now, He says that He has revealed all these good things unto us by His Spirit. If you say, We believe we shall have it all by-and-by, that implies you have not got it now. The first thing the sinner meets with now is the mercy-seat. It was the first thing that Moses was told to make, but the Jew never could get to it; it was hidden in the holiest. But, we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh".
Have you ever entered the holiest? Has your heart ever entered that wondrous scene? "By a new and living way ... through the veil, that is to say, his flesh" -- that is what you are to pass through. And, having entered, there you eat of "the old corn of the land" -- there feed on Christ at the Father's right hand in glory. Is that what you are doing? or is all that only future to you? Is that union with Him there to be by-and-by? Oh, it is an immense thing to know that it is now! It makes you superior to everything! See the seventy-third Psalm. There the prophet was cast down, troubled, perplexed; he could not understand God's dealings.
But when once he gets into that scene how differently he views everything; there is no more perplexity for him now, no more dissatisfaction; he says, "When ... I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I".
Even in natural things what a different effect is produced upon us by an object according to the level from which we look at it -- whether we see it from above or from beneath. And you cannot be on both at the same time; you must keep either to one level or the other. The apostle says, "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received ... the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God". Thus what God has done is, He has brought in another power. He has revealed these things to me, and given me the power to understand them. He says, By the Spirit of God I can unite you to the One who sits at My right hand; I can bring you into association with Him up there. Do you say, I do not think I ever have enjoyed what you speak of? Well, if you have not, it is a good thing to be awakened to find it out. All that I say is: "Come, for all things are now ready". It is not you that have to make them ready.
Now Satan has a device to hinder souls getting to this supper. And I would say he will let you go through the world pretty fairly if you do not aim at the top of the ladder; he brings all his guns to bear on the top, if he finds you are set for that. It is not at the first round of the ladder that he aims; it at your hands that he strikes, not at your feet. If he struck away the round you are standing on, you might hang on by your hands, but if he strikes away what you are holding to with your hands, you can make no progress. It is the highest point of
truth you have that he aims at. It is the most advanced bit of truth that any person in this room holds that he will let go the first when he begins to let anything go. We find throughout Scripture that Satan has always aimed at the highest truth that was held at any given time.
The device that is now current in christendom to hinder souls getting to the supper is the thought that they will get heaven when they die. Now, this is not true. I shall be in heaven when I die, that is true enough; but, as to position, I am in heaven now. But if you say I shall get heaven when I die, then you imply that you have not got it now; and that it is the earth you have got now. That is Satan's device. He puts heaven in the future, and presents earth to you now. The wine is red, and, as you look upon it, it deceives you.
Tell me is there any Spirit of God? And, if there is, what does He reveal to you? Where is Jesus? In heaven, you say. And do you never get there? do you never get to Him? Surely I am made acquainted by the Spirit of God with Christ where He is now. By the Spirit I am brought into heavenly places. Our translators have made it "heavenly things", but it is really "heavenly places". And from these heavenly places I am to come down and act on earth as a heavenly man; Christ imparts power to me from above so that I may thus walk, and my heavenly walk sets forth God's own glory. I am a heavenly man on earth. Is it a question what I am to do? I am responsible for nothing but to come in as Christ was upon the scene, and not as a mere man.
If you say we shall get heaven by-and-by, that puts off heaven till you die. Are you never there now? People confuse going to heaven with eternal life. Eternal life is that I have the capacity now to enjoy the things of God, and, because I have it,
I pass into a scene where I can eat the old corn of the land; where I find perfection, quietness, satisfaction, Christ Himself. I dwell where I can enjoy Him, where, by "beholding ... the glory of the Lord", I am "changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord".
Do not let any one here say it is too much. God, in His grace, has come in and ended the history of man in the flesh, in the cross, and now by the Spirit I am brought into association with His Son at His own right hand in heaven. Christ wins my heart in humiliation; He satisfies it in glory. A won heart is not necessarily a satisfied heart, But I believe if a heart is truly won by Christ it never will be satisfied without Him. No heart that is won is ever satisfied but in the company of the one who won it. Absence does not 'make the heart grow fonder!' You only discover in absence what you have gained in presence.
God's thought is to bring me into the best -- into the highest -- place. Paul was taken up into heaven on purpose that he might come down and show us into it, just like a servant to show us through the different rooms of a house. Look at the queen of Sheba; "there was no more spirit in her;" she was lost in the surroundings of king Solomon. Were you ever lost in the things of Christ? Were you ever in an ecstacy? Do you think if people were in an ecstacy to God they would be so taken up with things down here? It is true I have to be occupied here, but is it as one who comes out from heaven to do duty for Christ? There is a great difference between a man working in an office and that same man at home. Have you ever seen one glimpse of heaven? If you have it will have thrown earth into the shade. The more you look closely at man's things the more you will find out their defects; take a microscope and see what the finest things of man's
manufacture will look like under it. But the more you subject to examination anything of God's, the more beautiful, the more wonderful, and the more symmetrical it will appear. Now God has brought man into His own heavenly scene, but man could never take it in. To begin, there are numbers of saints who have not got hold of the power that can keep them separate from the world. It is not a question of thus merely coming out of Egypt: we are to "go in and possess the land".
I will just turn for a moment to the tenth chapter, that we may look at the earthly side of this. Here we find the parable of the man who fell among thieves. We are upon earth evidently; here there is a "neighbour;" you do not want a neighbour in heaven. Now there are three things connected with this neighbour. First, he pours in oil and wine. We are poor, helpless things, full of wounds, half dead; that is the only attraction we have. But misery is an attractive thing to grace; that is a great comfort to a poor soul. Man meets a miserable creature in the street, and he shrinks from him; but never did a poor creature meet Christ in the street that He was not attracted to him.
The second thing in the parable is something entirely new to man -- something he never had before. He "set him on his own beast". This is a very difficult thing for man to accept; there is nothing so difficult as to induce a man to leave his own legs for the power of Christ. Everyone likes to have wine and oil poured into his wounds, but the many do not like to go farther than that. Not so Paul. He had a power outside of himself; he says, "I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me". "For when I am weak, then am I strong". No one minds a difficulty, when there is power to meet it. You see a woman standing by the side of a street, wanting to cross, but not
daring to do it. A policeman comes and takes hold of her arm, and at once she goes straight across without any fear; and yet there is just as much difficulty as there was before; the difficulty is there just as much when the policeman is with her as it was before he came. What then is the difference? She is trusting in his power to take her across. A difficulty is no difficulty when there is power to meet it. He "set him on his own beast". But, that is not what saints want. They would like the Lord to make them prosperous on the earth -- to help them along on their own legs. But that is not what He does. He "set him on his own beast".
Then thirdly, He "brought him to an inn". Now an inn is a place for strangers. People try to be strangers, which just proves they are not strangers. For instance, John the baptist had to eat peculiar food, and dress in a strange way to show the Jews that he was a stranger amongst them; and this showed that he was not really a stranger. The Lord has put me on His own beast, and brought me to an inn, and that is my place on earth, I have no other. That is the earthly side: "strangers and pilgrims". The fifteenth chapter is the heavenly side; and in the fourteenth, we get it as the feast.
Oh, you say, but none of us would refuse the Great Supper The Lord says "They all with one consent began to make excuse".
Now mark It is not sin that refuses the supper -- it is nature. Nature has got something that satisfies itself. There is no sin in any of the reasons given as excuses for refusing the invitation. There is nothing wrong in a person buying a piece of ground; on the contrary, it is one of the strongest instincts in our nature to own land. "The earth hath he given to the children of men;" there is nothing more attractive to man; you never knew a man yet
that did not like a bit of land. There is no sin in it; but it is nature; and nature cannot rise to the Great Supper.
The next buys "Five yoke of oxen". You see this is in advance; he has the land, and now he wants to cultivate it. And the third marries a wife, and therefore he cannot come. He wants to settle down and make himself happy in his own home. Is there anything wrong in that? No, nothing. But they refused the supper.
Then the Lord turns round to the multitudes and says, Nature will not do; every relation in life must be taken up in a new way if you are going to follow Me. The tree, i.e. yourself, will be in the same place that it was before; the leaves of it withered often, and the sap was often not there; but now there is a new nature put into it, and the leaves may never wither, and the sap should be ever flowing in its branches. Such is the wonderful elevation to which I am brought, that in all my earthly relationships I derive grace from Christ, and am in them to His glory. God sets me in every relation in keeping with this place which He has given me in Christ.
Love in nature is not the point: it is sure to fail when put to the test. A mother loves her child, and yet when it is peevish and cross, she may get cross too. The Lord says, If you do not take up these relationships in grace, you will never be able to finish the tower, or to meet the enemy. The tower is defensive to arrest an attack; the army is aggressive, to make an attack; you will not be equal for either, unless you have a power outside nature. If you are not superior to all natural ties -- "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple".
I am in the same place that I was, but I am only used there now by Christ. Christ's cross sets me free
as I bear it and go after Him, a slave to Him on the earth. Saints often think that unless they are doing something very great, that they are not serving the Lord at all. It is often said, "Mary has chosen the better part", as if there were two parts. There never was but one part, and Mary chose "the good part;" the other part was the invention of Martha s own heart, and not from Christ. She judged from her own feelings that a tired traveller would like refreshment; she had studied her own thoughts more than the Lord's. But Mary knew His heart, so she sat at His feet and heard His word. This is what is lacking in service now; this is where lies our real difficulty as to pleasing Christ; we need His mind to know what He would have us do, so as not to be going after our own thoughts. What we labour for is, that "whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him".
In conclusion, I would say that the higher you go, the more is man exposed to you. No amount of actual conversance with the things of God will do; but once get into the holiest, into the presence of God Himself, and you will get a sight of man's moral state that will almost shock you. The Lord grant that each beloved child of God may be encouraged to press forward; as the Lord said to Paul, "Be of good courage", and to Joshua, "Go in and possess the land".
Mark 2:1 - 12
You will find there is a moral order in the miracles of the Lord as recorded in the opening of the gospel by Mark. He meets man here according to his need, and therefore the first miracle spoken of is that in which He casts out an unclean spirit. The second is the fever; that is the excitement of nature; and the third is the leprosy -- man's state by nature. He heals the leper. Of course God always had power over Satan, but here is a Man who has power over him; He shows that He is able to meet every kind of evil from which man suffers at the hand of Satan. Leprosy is external defilement; if a man speaks a bad word, it is leprosy; it not only does himself harm, but it contaminates others. And next we come to the fourth -- the palsy -- the perfect helplessness of man; and the man that is thoroughly helpless draws the most from God, for the great attraction for the grace of God is my need of that grace. So what is it that attracts the heart of Christ? What was it that was attractive in the widow of Sarepta? It was her sorrow. A poor widow gathering a few sticks to dress a last meal for herself and her son, and then going to die! Christ ever desires to find a home in the widowed heart -- in the desolate heart. Do you want to attract Christ to you? What is there in you to attract Him? Is it that you are great or beautiful? No, but that you are powerless. See how the Syrophenician came to the Lord. She takes the lowest place to get a claim on Him; she says, I am content to be a dog if only I may have a crumb. Then, He says, you have got a claim, and more than one; great is thy faith!
Here we get a case of utter powerlessness; a palsied man; so a new principle comes in that is not mentioned in the previous miracles, and that is faith. Where one can do nothing -- where there is least power, -- there there is most faith. "It is of faith, that it might be by grace". The thief on the cross is a wonderful sample of faith to us; he recovers what was lost in the garden of Eden; he is the first man who turned the corner in that way, so to speak; he gained the power of God where the power of man had been lost.
So here with the palsied man. He has not a particle of power; he cannot come to Christ himself, and the moment others attempt to bring him, they are hindered by the press; but "when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay". There is nothing that will really stop faith; faith wants to reach its object -- an object outside itself. They want to get to a Person, and they find obstacles in the way, but faith is not hindered by obstacles; it is like a river that is dammed; it swells until it gets over the barrier.
There are two things I would now bring before you: first, what Christ does for a soul, and next, what a soul does for Christ: what is done for me, and what is done in me; and I must not confound the two.
What is done for me is the first thing. The palsied man is laid before the Lord; but He does not say a word about his palsy; He says, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee". Why is this? Because He comes out to meet the greatest enemies first; it is not the palsy He is looking at; and as to his sins, it is not one or two of them, nor three or four, but all; when He accomplished the work He removed them all. If he had only removed twenty out of twenty-one, I
should be lost for the one; but it is "the forgiveness of sins", of all of them. And not for past sins only: as has been said by another, there is not a sin of ours, but has been committed since Christ died, so that we are in a poor position if He has not died for them all. I must see that He is the Person who has done away with all my sins; He has not to die for my sin every time I commit one; if He did not die for them before I committed them who is to die for them?
God says, I will meet the case. It is plain we could not meet it ourselves. I may say to one of my children, You have broken this beautiful pane of glass, and you cannot mend it; but I will repair it myself in a perfect way. It is just so between ourselves and God. We cannot meet our sins, but He has met them in a perfect way. Suppose a man owes me money and cannot pay it, and I say, You can never pay me this, so I will pay it myself! It is thus that God has dealt with us. He has "laid help upon one that is mighty;" He has taken away through Him the thing that offended His holy eye, so that He might have me in His presence for ever. And He cannot lose sight of the efficacy of what He has done; I may lose sight of it, but He never can. God comes forth of His own self, and says he loves the world: Jesus says He takes away the sin of the world. He "was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification". I look to Him as I walk, and I say, The man on that side of the road ruined me: I belong to the Man on this side; so I turn my back upon the one, and I turn my face to the other -- I turn my eyes to Him. One man is the man that ruined me; the other is the Man that has wrought deliverance, and therefore He says, "Look unto me, and be ye saved". The lamb in the Levitical order only showed what God required; so Christ, as the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world; and,
the moment a man has faith in Him, He rises to the height of grace, and says, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee",
Well but, says some one, I have committed a great many sins since I have been converted, and I do not doubt you have; but you have now to regard your sin as a child, and not as before, as a vagrant. As a child of God I say, when I sin, I have no right to have done such a thing as this -- I repudiate it; I confess my sins, and then "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness". "Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins", and, "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more". Do you believe that God really ever spoke those words? God cannot impute sin to a believer. You may have a sense of having committed sin, but God will never lay it to your charge. When I sin what do I find? Why, that the moment I go into Gods presence I am humbled, and have to confess it; but, as I do so, I say that God did away with it all at the cross. God says, you must get rid of all this black that is upon you. Like a naughty child I have gone down into the cellar and got myself soiled; but God says, You must come up out of that place and be made clean again -- be made fitting to the place I have set you in.
And what a place that is! I am now a brother of the risen Man! (See John 20.) And I love to think how that I am more distinctly a brother to Christ than I am a brother to the old nature -the Adam nature in which I was born; I am more distinctly by divine power in the new creation than I am in the old. A new and more wonderful creation has been wrought in me -- poor creature though I am in myself -- than has been in the making of this world, this sky, these stars, which we all admire so much. In the new creation I am a brother to the glorified
Christ! I never was a brother to Christ on earth. It was not until He was risen from the dead that He could say, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God". I am a brother to a risen Christ, and though I have belonged to the old man, the cross has broken me off from him and united me to this risen Man.
What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, How am I to keep my eye on Him? I reply, Keep your eye off everything else and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Hint. How simple it is!
Now they raise the question, "Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?" And Jesus says, "Why reason ye these things in your hearts? whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house". Now comes out the power in us. And what I want you to see, beloved friends, is that you have nothing to say, or to do, as to the first of these two things, whilst you have everything to say to the second. People are continually confounding the two. God does the first entirely for you, but having done it, He does not leave you there; it is said, "He it is which baptiseth with the Holy Spirit;" He imparts a new power to you.
How shall I know when I have a new power? I will tell you. Whatever you are most singularly defective in in nature, there you will be most singularly superior in grace; in other words, you will
carry your bed. In everything it is so. Here is a poor weak man who says he cannot do without his bed. Well then, that is the very thing he is to carry. Whatever you are notorious for in nature that is the very thing you will be the reverse of in grace. A man is covetous: he will become the very opposite in grace; he will be generous.
Christ is now in the place of power; He is at God's right hand, and He says, I am going to give you a power that shall enable you to show me forth in spite of all that is around you and within you to hinder it. But, you say, I am in the old creation -- I know you are; but remember that the Head of the new creation is the Lord of the old. And if you have this power it will manifest itself most where there has been most carnality -- most of the old man; there it will express itself most distinctly.
How do I learn my besetting sin? By seeing how the Lord watches me, by seeing how the word touches me, and by seeing how the Lord exercises me. There is not a person who walks with the Lord but he finds out what is his bed -- what is his weak point.
What does Christ want to do with you, beloved friends? what does He want to do with you upon earth? He wants that He Himself -- Christ -- may be seen in you. But there is that in you which hinders the expression of His grace. Now what will He do to get rid of this hindrance? He will bring in a power that will entirely overcome it -- to such a degree that that man's body here upon the earth, which was the very soil in which all the seeds of Satan were sown to his cost -- that body is to be the garden of the Lord; it is to bring forth fruit for the Lord; so that people may well say, "We never saw it on this fashion". It is a new point set forth in christianity -- that the body is the Lord's.
Look at the history of any saint walking with
God, and you will see how, in grace, he becomes superior to what distinguished him in nature. If he be in nature an ambitious man then that is the very thing he will not be now, because that was what ministered to his infirmity -- that is his bed. People say, I cannot do without reading light books, newspapers, and so on. I answer, that is the very thing that ministers to your selfishness -- to your nature --; and when you get power you will carry it. It is the very thing that you were most notorious for in nature as a man, that in grace you will be made most superior to; for now, instead of being under its power, you rise above it; instead of letting yourself down to it, you are superior to it -- you carry your bed.
Just turn to Ephesians 4:28. "Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth".
Now here is a case that is very remarkable. You see it is a very bad case. "Let him that stole steal no more" -- that is where most people stop; and, in doing so, they make it only the law, and nothing more. But what will this divine power make of a thief? A thief is a taker; but grace makes him a donor. "Let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he" -- may be able to support his family and take care of himself? Not a bit! but, "that he may have to give to him that needeth".
I can bring you instances enough to show you that saints have been distinguished for the very thing in which by nature they failed. Take Peter. He was so active -- always foremost in everything. He ends by being carried, and that too where in nature he would not like to go.
In Hebrews we have another example of grace making strong the very spot that was weak. We all
know what Jacob was, a most grasping man, always looking out for the present, always thinking of himself. God took him up as the most perverse of men just to show what grace can do. Here at the end of his life he is found leaning on his staff, a worshipper. -- Now a worshipper is one whose heart is detained by the object that controls it -- adoringly occupied with that one object. And he was not only worshipping -- occupied with another instead of himself; but he was also blessing the sons of Joseph -- thinking of things future instead of planning for the present. And thirdly, to complete the picture, we find in Genesis what we do not get in Hebrews, that, when he looks at himself, all that he can say is: "As for me ... Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way". He says, I can bless you as to the future, but, as for me, the whole scene is a blank here; death has cast its pall upon it.
He is brought out at the close of his life to show how grace has turned him right round, and made him the very opposite of all for which he was notorious as a man. He was thinking of others; he was not moping, though all was a blank; Rachel died by the way. All is the very reverse of what it was. Is this the Jacob we used to know? Yes, indeed! he is carrying his bed!
We make so little of divine power. People often indeed go on just the same after they are in Christ as they used to do before. But a christian is a man who is exemplifying a Man who is in heaven, whilst he himself is on earth. And I cannot do this -- I cannot learn Christ here upon earth, but as I know Him where He is. As the apostle says: "To me to live is Christ", That is not a man of whom men can say, Oh, that is a very nice man; christianity has improved him -- lent a burnish to him -- a polish to him. It is not that at all. But christianity has turned him right round -- made a new man of him altogether.
That is what divine power is: not to make him a good man, but to make him like Christ. People are all for humanising Christ, and christianising men, and there is nothing I fear more for saints than that. To humanise Christ is to bring Him down to man's level; and to christianise a man is to make a good man of him.
I am sure I say it humbly, that I often do not know how Christ would do a certain thing. I often think and know how a man -- and how a nice man would do something; but the thing is how would Christ do it? It is easy to find out how a man would like a thing done. If I say, How would people like this to be done? I am going wrong. That is not the way to do it. The question is, How would Christ like it done? It is another order of things altogether. I feel for my own part how ignorant I am about it, but I am glad to say I think about it, and am exercised about it.
If I am to have power, I must know a glorified Christ seated in heaven at the right hand of God. What would that make me? Why it would make me like Christ. It is as plain as can be to me; I am carrying it out very little, but the fact is plain, that divine power would give me that divine shape, that divine attitude, that divine conduct, that would be His if He were standing in the very place in which I now am. Therefore the apostle says: "Christ shall be magnified in my body".
There are two parts in christianity. First there is the Deliverer; He brings you to God through His own work on the cross. And second, being delivered, you are to be like the Person who delivered you; you are to be the expositor of the One you belong to. You are to express nothing of yourself; you are a thorn in the hedge, but a thorn that is to bear a rose. I am in myself but a briar in a hedge, but I have been engrafted; and the consequence is I bear
what is not natural to me, a rose; and thus, though my stem is but a briar, the fragrance that I shed around, is that of a rose of Sharon.
Divine power is to be manifested in the one who is absolved from his sins -- in the one to whom it has been said: "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee". The man that is naturally avaricious, when grace works in him, will cease to amass for himself, and will end by being a giver. The man who is ambitious will be brought down in every direction. The Lord will not let a man glory in flesh.
May the Lord in His grace make it plain to your hearts, first, that Christ's blood-shedding washes you completely before a holy God, from everything that could rise up against you; -- and God has never lost His satisfaction in Christ, and never can lose it, and therefore He can never lose His satisfaction in me who am in Christ. And secondly, that divine power has come in to make me much more marked with the power of Christ, than was even that man who carried his bed in Jerusalem. There is not one of you but has a bed; and the work of God is just hindered in you because you will not carry it.
This man was not to carry it about the streets either; he was to take it to his house. A christian husband is to be a peculiarly good husband; a christian wife, to be a peculiarly good wife; a christian child, to be a peculiarly good child. It is at home that people always fail -- it is in the inner circle that failure first comes in -- because there they are off their guard.
As I have said, what I want the Lord in His mercy to keep before our hearts are these two things. One, what Christ has done for me -- that He has removed everything by His own work that stood between God and me, so that nothing can ever come between Him and me again. And the other, that there is a
power which can make you superior to everything in yourself.
I do not know what your bed is; I know very well what mine is; and God says, I will crush it, snap it, do anything to it to put it down; because it is every bit of it, the flesh in me, that hinders Christ from shining forth in me. The thing here is not to get Christ in to me, though that must of course come first, but to get Christ out of me. That is the thing!
And "they were all amazed"! It does make people amazed to see Christ come out of such poor creatures -- to see divine power act through such weakness. Christ says: The body is Mine; and now it is to grow beautiful flowers for Me. Your very countenance is to shine! Is it to be sorrowful? No! "alway rejoicing"!
The Lord lead you to see what this grace of God is -- what this divine power. That is all that I desire. The power that wrought in Christ Himself is the very power that is working in me to bring me now to His image, to which I shall be conformed entirely when He appears.
Psalm 22; Galatians 1:15, 16
The twenty-second psalm is an account of what the Lord went through for us.
There are two subjects in this psalm: one, that this blessed One bore all that was against us; the other, that He declared the Father. These two things, when you come to understand them, bring out distinctly the fact that He was the Son of God. So much so, that Paul, after seeing Him, went into the synagogue and preached that Jesus -- the Man -- was the Son of God. We have it "Christ" in our translation; but the right word is "Jesus".
Now mark, for you may not at first see why the Person who endured all that was against me, and the Person who declared the Father, must be the Son of God -- that it proves it. First, there never was a man who knew the nature of my offence against God; and next there never was a man who knew the love in the heart of God to a sinner.
There never was any man but One who knew these two things; and He who knew them must necessarily be equal with God in order to know how He felt as to each. A child does not know how I feel. People misunderstand the feelings of one another simply because they have not the same order of intellect. You must have a mind equal to that of the person aggrieved if you would understand how he feels about the grievance.
Tell me, have you ever measured or understood the extent of your offence as it is seen by God? I will put it in the plainest language. How could you go about paying a debt that you did not know the amount of? None ever knew the extent of your offence but one Man; and that Man must have been
the Son of God, or He could not have known it. Well, that Man comes to bear it. There were two things known to Him that were never known to any other man, and these two things prove that He was the Son of God: no other man knew the amount of my debt but Himself; and no other man ever knew the heart of God, and understood the love that He bore to me, but He. He alone could declare that love, just as He alone knew the nature of my offence.
As we grow holy we know something about it, but the unholy know nothing about it at all; we have no sense of what a terrible thing sin is in the mind of God, but as we get near Him; none ever knew what sin was in the mind of God as the Son of God did, and He was the One to bear it. But, besides this, as I have said, no one knew the love that was in the Father's heart for the prodigal but Himself, and therefore He comes out Himself to tell us what it is.
This is what this psalm recounts to us: sins borne, and then the love of the Father declared. The one is when all the enemies are strewn upon the battlefield; He has encountered every foe, and laid them all prostrate; and then on that very battlefield, where they are all laid low, comes out this blessed, this unknown, eternal light; when there is not a foe left that He has not encountered, He brings into the scene the wonderful declaration of the Father's love to the poor wretched ones now rescued by His grace.
Paul speaks of it, as one in whom it was perfectly accomplished, when he says, "It pleased God ... to reveal His Son in me". But practically souls do not reach this -- do not understand this new light, this new day, which in fact was called, and I doubt not significantly, "the first day of the week", because on it the new Man comes in; and when the new
Man comes in, there must be a new day, which is what I want to show you.
The Lord descends from the mount of transfiguration to die at Jerusalem. The soul never gets perfect deliverance until it sees the Lord put Himself in this place, where He says: "Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour".
Now I will show you the foes that He encountered for us. I do not think we bear along in our hearts sufficiently what Christ's path was for us down here. I do not mean merely to be looking at the story of it, or reading theoretically about His sufferings; I mean the entering in our hearts into what He actually went through for us, so that sin might come before us as "exceeding sinful".
I will go through the psalm in detail. We may notice that generally in a psalm it is the greatest thing that begins or heads it. And I state according to my judgment, that a psalm is always the record of what the soul has gone through. When you write the psalm you recount what you have gone through. So I find I cannot read a psalm well till I am out of the thing it recounts, because it was written by one who had got out of it. When I am in the depths it is no use to read it; but, when I am out again, then I can bear the recital of what I have been through, and then is my time to read it; I am exercised in the place I am in to see how I reached it.
Paul sees Christ in glory, but for three days afterwards he neither eats nor drinks. He does not want to know that he has been there, but he looks back to see how he got there. He has to learn how Christ went down into judgment, how He bore death for him. It is the answer to what we get in the twelfth of Exodus. It is the lack of this that makes the conversions of the present day so weak in their character.
There are two things: there is the blood on the lintel -- that is security, I admit; but what is the eating the roast lamb with the bitter herbs? A person says. I believe in the blood. And I say, I do not question it a bit, but you have not got the sense in your soul of how Christ bore the judgment of your sins; you have not a sense of the consequences of sin, and consequently there is no coming out of Egypt. But I am not only delivered from the judgment; I am going out of the place where the judgment was. Therefore Scripture says; "Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water". People speaking in a familiar way of the Lord Jesus Christ as "dear Jesus", and "the adorable Jesus", and such like, is eating it raw. I do not touch the question of security, because the slightest faith in Christ brings security; but I say there is no depth in it, because they have not gone inside and eaten the lamb "roast with fire", and "with bitter herbs"; they have no sense of what Christ went through when He was made sin for us.
There is so little known of confession. "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation". That is not merely going out and telling people; the meaning of confession is the heart having a sense of what it has found in another, so as to be forced to acknowledge it. When Jonathan made a covenant with David, that was confession. The woman coming into the Pharisee's house was for confession. She had heard of Him and believed in Him before, but she says, I must go and speak to Him; I must give up all for Him. And she comes in, and stands behind Him weeping, and anoints Him. That was confession; with the mouth owning Him. So did Jonathan. He first made a covenant with David, and then he "stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle". That was
public. There must be the private and the public action, to show that I am indebted to Him for everything. It is a great lack to souls, their not practically accepting this. When your soul gets the sense that Christ bore the judgment in the place where you are, what must be the effect of it? Why, that you long to get out of the place.
In this psalm I count seven distinct things that the Lord encountered for us, and I pray Him to show it out to us, that we may understand it, for it is holy ground that we are on whilst we look at that holy One going down into death. As He went through this world, He walked scatheless in the midst of all that was against Him; enemies might rise mountains high before this, but not a single one could touch Him. But now His hour was come; every barrier was broken down, and the accumulated force of men and devils bore down upon that spotless One! And not that alone: He had to encounter the judgment of God. It is, "Father, save me from this hour!"
Has your soul ever gone in company with Him in this hour? If it has, if but for one moment, you will know something of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This is the first thing in the psalm; not that it comes first chronologically, but that it is morally the greatest; it is first in its gravity. No one can understand what sin is but a holy person; who then could estimate it like the holy One of God? And when He took the sinner's place, He bore the sinner's penalties. There was not a single penalty attached to disobedience which He had not fixed Himself; none knew so well what those penalties were as He, the law-giver, who had fixed them. And He it was who bore what He Himself had fixed. He takes the sinner's place in judgment, and He says, "My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He gets the sense in His soul of the distance between the sinner and God, and darkness comes in. He felt it as none other could. Despair has something of this character, because it is the feeling of one who has had the light and has now lost it; and who says, I know what the light is, for I have rejoiced in it; but it is gone, and now I am in despair until I get it again.
This is what He has borne. Have you got a sense of it? He has borne it, and the darkness is gone; the sinner's distance from God is gone in the One who has met it. Therefore the Lord can come forth and say, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him". When was this? Was it on the mount? No. At the grave of Lazarus? No. He was the Son of God there, not the Son of man. Where then was it? It was on the cross! He was not thinking of what it would cost Him, but of what was due to God, cost Him what it might. He says, I know the holiness of God, and I know the penalties of sin, but I will bear it all.
Practically we have to learn this in our own history; but I hope I shall be able to show you that we have nothing to fear when we look up; but if we look down, God says, I am going to shake all that is here. That is the twelfth of Hebrews. "Our God is a consuming fire". If you do not shake yourself, as sure as God is in heaven, you will get a shaking some of these days, and lose your reward too. He says, "Ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem". I have thrown it open to you up here; but if you go down to the earth, you will get to a consuming fire; for I am going to shake terribly the earth.
That is the first thing; and I want your souls practically to understand it. There has been a good deal said about being personally occupied with
Christ, but you never will be occupied with the deliverer until you have got deliverance. How could Jonathan be occupied with David the deliverer before he saw the head of Goliath in his hand, and he knew that deliverance was wrought? Then David becomes his object.
Christ has removed every single thing out of the way; there is now nothing to bar your access to God. He has removed sin, and the darkness of divine wrath, but there must be more than this. You cannot get into Psalm 23 until you have learnt the Lord in Psalm 22. How can you lie down in green pastures unless you see first that He has removed everything out of the way which could come in to disturb you there? Praise comes out as I look at the One who is triumphant; the song comes after the victory, when the whole thing is accomplished, as in Exodus 15"The Lord ... hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea".
I would encourage your conscience and heart in this matter. Can you say, I see that the distance between myself and God is gone, that the darkness is over? Yes. And do you see the Person who did it? Yes. And you can be occupied with the One who did it all?
Now mark, you must keep another thing before your mind, and that is, that God Himself sent Him to remove the distance which man had brought in between God and himself. Man was responsible to remove the distance, but he could not, so God says, I will prove that there is love in My heart. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". God commends His love by the way He acts love, not by insisting that love is there. He proves that He loves us; the very thing that was denied in the garden of Eden. You were bound to repair the distance, and you
could not do it; so now, says God, I will do it Myself; I lay help upon One that is mighty.
This is what He teaches us in the parable of the prodigal son. You get three parables in Luke 15, all of them unfolded in the thief on the cross. The point to be established is that God Himself acts; He sends the One who will perfectly meet His own mind, so that the work is perfectly done. I hear people say Christ has paid all their debts. Yes, all that you know, I say; but what about what you do not know? Your conscience is clear, but I know where you will be presently: you will be in misery; you will find that it is not only what you know, but that sin is working in you; you will be in Romans 7. You have not got hold in your soul of the fact that God Himself has provided the sacrifice that satisfies Himself. It is not only that I know that every one of my debts is paid. The thing that will stand, and that gives the soul real stability, is the fact that God is perfectly satisfied, because He has provided the One who satisfies Himself. And what am I to do? Why, to look at that One who satisfies Him.
I might tell you an incident of a man I met with in a train a short time ago. He was evidently dying, and I spoke to him of Christ. He answered me, "I knew Him before I fell sick, I am thankful to say; but still I am not perfectly happy, for sometimes a cloud comes between". I said, "But God satisfied Himself with the sacrifice He provided". "I thank you for that", he said, "I never thought of it before". His face lighted up with joy; he saw it in a moment, and I trust he went away really happy. It gives immense strength to the soul seeing it. As a woman, to whom I had spoken the previous day, said just before her death, "He is satisfied, and so am I".
It is not the mere fact of His paying my debts;
but He has so met the mind of God that He has entitled me to a most inconceivable inheritance. I have searched up and down in nature for an illustration of this, but I cannot find such a thing. The One who discharged the debt did it according to the mind of God. I did not know what I owed Him. One only knew, and He discharged it. Well then, rest in this!
That is the first point; and I have dwelt long upon it, because I do not think people are clear about it. God never imputes sin to me any more. He has raised Christ from the dead to prove it. He never sees me "in the flesh" any more, though He sees me acting in it. But all the question of sin is settled, and it will never come between me and God any more. If I call in question my acceptance I am simply dishonouring Him; but the more I am concerned about my acceptability the more I honour Him. The heart does not get perfectly clear until it sees this.
Now I turn to the second point. The figure I use is this. The Lord is on the battlefield, and that to encounter not one Goliath but seven. I see Him meet them here in single combat. They are all coming down upon Him, all the enemies that could gather themselves against Him. I see Him encountering each of them, and, after overcoming each, eventually enter into death Himself to "destroy him that had the power of death ... and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage". I find that, unless a person gets clear about the death of Christ, he is sure to be balked by one of these seven things. But I trust that every one in this room is clear as to the question of sin being entirely gone.
Next we find that He is the "reproach of men, and despised of the people". Now tell me, does this ever hinder you? Is that giant laid low? Christ says,
I bear all that, and take it out of the way. These are the things that bear upon man here. He says, "I am a worm, and no man". He bears that too. He has met God; now He comes down to man. Are you clear of this? Are you superior to what man is? Are you not afraid of what man can do? Look at Stephen; you will see all that we find here worked out there. He says, I do not fear what man can do to me. He looks up and sees no fear as to God; he looks down and sees no fear as to Satan, no fear as to man; as to himself, no fear of pain; he is superior to it, and shows it by being able to act for others -- able to pray for his murderers. People say, I am sure I am going to heaven; but I say, Are you above the power of man here -- above all that he can do?
He says, "I am ... a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head". That is what Christ was; and if your heart does not get clear of it, you will be balked by it. In Stephen you find a man who has got perfectly clear of all these things. Everything is gone. There is not a particle of distance between him and God; he looks up and sees Him. Is he afraid of Satan? Not a bit! Afraid of the people? Not a bit! Afraid of pain? Not a bit! Not a bit concerned about anything! He is the prince of heroes! If all the heroes in the world were put together they would never make such a hero as Stephen, because he is not only above all these things, but he can act for others in them, and that, too, for those from whom he was suffering.
Now we come to the next. "Many bulls have compassed me". Who are these? The Jews; I find the Lord surrounded with them. "Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion".
That is what they were. He says, I have met them all and have laid them prostrate; the battlefield is strewn with them. And if you do not see the battlefield strewn with them, as Jonathan saw the head of Goliath in David's hand, you will surely be balked by them some day.
Now comes the next enemy, one that balks very many; that is bodily weakness, which is the fourth. Where was there ever weakness like His? "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint". You have read of the Inquisition; you have read of the screw and such like instruments of torture; but where was there ever anything like this? "All my bones are out of joint". I speak not of sickness, but I have here One who was weaker than any other in this world ever was. Do you say, Have I sympathy from the Lord in my sickness and weakness? I say, Yes, I have. I have the sympathy of One who was weaker than any other ever was. I have the sympathy of One who, whilst thus in weakness, encountered the judgment of God and bore it, and thus entitled me to an inconceivable inheritance besides the debt He discharged.
Do you think people are not balked by bodily weakness? I know nothing that balks like it. And why? It is because the body, instead of being the medium of what is going on within, becomes a positive burden. As the apostle says, "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened". I ask you, is this giant gone for you? Do you think it was not gone for Stephen? Do you think his bones did not loosen as they were battering him to pieces? Of course they did! And did he not feel it? How is this effected? It is that he was triumphant in the power of the blessed One who had laid low every foe that could come against us.
"My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my
tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death". I can not get lower, I find this blessed One where? In the grip of this fearful antagonist. But He says, I will meet all; in single combat will I encounter all. I know what it is to meet the judgment of God, and now I will meet all that the malice of man can bring against Me. I am brought down to the very dust. Thus did He glorify God under the weight of it, and God has glorified Him.
And now He takes up another point. "Dogs have compassed me". That is in Romans. We have spoken of the "bulls", which represent the religious magnates -- the Jews; now we get the "dogs" -- the gentiles. The Jews delivered Him over to the Romans. You cannot say that it was thus with Stephen, but with the Lord it was so; therefore I do not connect this part with Stephen.
"The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture". Now, beloved friends, let me ask you (for it strikes me sometimes how desperately unfeeling the heart of man is), if I were to say, A friend of yours is dead; would not your heart feel it? But then if I were to say, He died for you? What then? Surely I need not dwell on it.
And now we come to the sixth point. "Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth". Here we get Satan. See what a place the blessed Lord is in for me!
And then He says lastly, "Thou has heard me from the horns of the unicorns". That is generally supposed to be the pains of death.
He has gone through all that. And now let me say, That is my Saviour; that is the One
I belong to, the One who has done everything for me.OUR PLACE IN GLORY
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
"BEHOLD, THE BRIDEGROOM"
CONFIDENCE IN GOD, IN FOUR ASPECTS
WORSHIP, TESTIMONY, AND SERVICE
'Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o'er'.HOLDING THE HEAD
REJOICING IN THE LORD, AND THE PEACE OF GOD
NO BREAD
"GO YE OUT TO MEET HIM"
THE GREAT SUPPER
"ARISE, AND TAKE UP THY BED, AND WALK"
DELIVERANCE AND THE EFFECT