Revelation 1:9, 10; Acts 20:7, 11; John 20:19,20; 1 Corinthians 1:1, 2.
I am not sure, beloved friends, whether these scriptures will indicate what we have to say. I have not read them with any thought of an exposition of them, but because I think they indicate the points we desire to bring before you -- that is, christian fellowship, and then heavenly privileges of the saints at the present time. I might use the word assembly and say that we desire to bring before you the fellowship of the assembly and heavenly privileges of the assembly.
I have been very much exercised about speaking here this evening. It were easy, in a sense, to occupy the time by the utterance of words, but that is not what is before us; but what we have before us in our small measure, and in a sense of our own feebleness, is really the
spiritual prosperity of the saints. We trust we can speak honestly before the Lord and say that above everything else that is what we desire.
In the first place, the point I have in my mind in reading this scripture (Revelation 1) is that things are there brought before us individually. If we speak of the fellowship or the privileges of the assembly we are not, of course, speaking about the fellowship or privileges of an individual, but of the assembly, and I trust we are speaking of it in full view of scripture. We are not speaking of the fellowship privilege of "brethren" so-called, for it has come to pass that the term "brethren" (I do not know that we can altogether help it) often means, with some of us, a certain number of saints, but we desire for ourselves and for you that all this might drop out of our minds for the time being and that we may come back to the scriptural use of the word "assembly" as really embracing every Christian. But while one is desirous to have scriptural thoughts, scriptural conceptions, feelings, and affections for all Christians, for all the saints of God -- all who comprise His assembly, whether we speak of its fellowship or its privilege, we have to begin individually, and not only have we to begin individually, but in a certain sense we never lose our individuality. Though we may speak of ourselves in
connection with the assembly we have to take account of ourselves individually; and whether it be the fellowship or the privilege of the assembly our ability to answer to the one or to the other is really the measure in which things are true of us individually. To speak simply, take the scripture we have read in Acts 20:7. "And the first day of the week, we being assembled to break bread" (not simply the disciples at Troas, it is "we", inclusive of Paul and his company who were there at that time). Now I think I am addressing a company who are familiar with that. I am addressing those who are in the habit of coming together on the first day of the week to break bread; but our coming together on the first day of the week to break bread does not in itself change our individual spiritual condition. If I leave such and such a place, and come into this room, the fact of getting ready and leaving my house and coming to the room and sitting down with the Lord's people here does not change my spiritual state.
I want, beloved, in connection with that scripture we read in Revelation 1 to emphasize that which is individual; not simply as to the possession of the Spirit, but that which is individual in connection with the activities of the Spirit in me. We are not going to discuss the point as to whether every Christian has
the Spirit; we are assuming that every Christian is indwelt by the Spirit, but I believe it needs to be emphasized in our souls at this time -- what must be true of us individually. If it is not true of us individually the fact of fellowship with others in the breaking of bread, or the question of outward association with others who are spiritually fitted for the enjoyment of privilege, will not help us.
It is wonderful how John speaks of himself. If he had said: "I John, an apostle", we might have been interested in what he was about to say, but if he had said that we should have had to stand off, as it were, we should have had to say -- it is not common ground. It never was common ground even when the apostles were here among the saints. "He has given some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints", but it could be asked even then: "Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers?" Not by any means: "Having then gifts differing". But look how John speaks. He says, "I John, your brother". If a man speaks of himself as your brother, you may get close to that man; there is no distance, and more -- there is no difference; it is common ground. But it is not only "I John, your brother", but it is also "and fellow partaker". That is the language of fellowship.
Now I need not say to you -- because it will be very obvious to every one here -- that as banished to the Isle of Patmos it was not possible for John to give expression to his fellowship in the breaking of bread; you would have to have more than one saint for that; you might have the breaking of bread with two saints, or three, or more; but let me emphasize this -- John brings himself before us on common ground as our "brother", and he is in fellowship. Oh! you say, could a man be in fellowship without breaking bread? Excuse me if, in reply, I ask you: How is he going to break bread according to scripture if he is not in fellowship? If I understand the breaking of bread, it does not produce fellowship; the breaking of bread is the scriptural and divinely-appointed expression of it, but fellowship must exist. What else could you make of the order of the words in Acts 2:42: "And they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers"? That is the right order. Does Paul call in question the fact of the Corinthians being Christians? Look at the very opening of his epistle to them. He addresses them. "To the assembly of God which is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints" -- not "called to be saints". They were constituted such by divine
calling. So far from calling in question their Christianity, he speaks of it as a matter of thanksgiving, and he does not hesitate for a moment to give expression to his assurance concerning them -- assurance that not only covers the present but reaches on into the eternal future; and yet, beloved, you may have a number of Christians and they may break bread -- (that is, outwardly -- there is the table and the bread and the wine, and things may be done in a kind of orderly way), but if the truth of fellowship is not there, if they are not in fellowship, how would that affect their outward breaking of bread? Well, in Paul's judgment it would so seriously affect it that Paul would absolutely deny that their breaking of bread was the Lord's supper. Now that may seem a kind of paradox, but that is just what he says in chapter 11: 20. Ostensibly, and possibly in outward form, there was the breaking of bread, but he says, "When ye come together therefore into one place, it is not to eat the Lord's supper". And he says why; his statement is not arbitrary, or one which is unsupported by good reasons. The first thing, then, is individuality, and we have got to be in fellowship, and the question is, How? Well, what we desire to affirm most emphatically is that everything in Christianity not only subsists in the power of the Spirit of God, but everything in Christianity
must be taken up in the power of the Spirit of God. If the breaking of bread is taken up apart from the activities and power of the Spirit of God in us, it will lose its proper character. This was the case with the Corinthians; the reality of fellowship was not there; externally they were in fellowship and responsibly they were in fellowship, but fellowship was not there -- they were carnal -- fleshly. "For whereas there are among you emulation and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?" These are the specifications supporting and proving the apostle's charge that they were "carnal", "fleshly". It is a serious thing.
I have thought -- I do not speak positively, but as a suggestion -- that the opening of 1 Corinthians is very significant. In chapter 1 the cross of Christ is emphasized, and it is the cross of Christ not simply as meeting the question of man's sins, but as meeting the whole state and condition of man according to flesh. There were great differences in that day with regard to man according to flesh, and there are great differences now. Some of them at that time were very religious -- they were the Jews. Some men were not religious, they were intellectually cultured men, they were philosophical men, but, differ as they might in the sense in which we have just spoken, they were
united in their opposition to the truth. Why? Because the cross set man according to the flesh -- religious man according to the flesh, aside; indeed, it was the sentence of divine judgment upon that man, and it was just as much the sentence of divine judgment upon the other man, the philosophical man. The preaching of the cross was foolishness to the Greek and a stumbling-block to the Jew.
But in chapter 2 what is emphasized is the Spirit, and I presume that you would agree with me that it is on the ground of the cross -- the cross as that in which man according to flesh has been judged and judicially terminated and set aside for ever from before God -- that it is on that ground the Spirit is given. Now if that is the ground upon which the Spirit is given, it is only as the truth of the cross is really made good in our souls that we may expect the activities of the Spirit of God in us.
Now take chapter 11: 31. What does Paul say there? "If we judged ourselves, so were we not judged". That is the practical power of the cross so brought to bear on my soul that I judge myself: "But let a man prove himself, and thus eat of the bread and drink of the cup". They were refusing to judge themselves at Corinth and they were coming under the judgment of the Lord. I venture to say
this -- some of us get over bad conduct or bad ways because perhaps we have grace enough to pull off the bad fruit when it appears, but we do not judge ourselves. There will not be bad fruit or bad conduct if there is the judgment of self.
In chapter 5 the apostle is beginning to deal with the saints in a very practical way -- a very real way, and what comes to light is that the failure to judge themselves at Corinth was bearing its bad fruit in many ways; but what I call your attention to for a moment is this -- he brings in the truth of the Passover: "For also our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed". Now while the head of each family in Israel had to take the lamb, and was responsible for the slaying of it, you must remember that was only true in the beginning; after priesthood came in, the priest attended to the slaying of the paschal lamb; but when we come to Christianity you and I have had no part in the death of Christ -- "our passover". For Christ our passover has been slain for us; but where the truth is brought to bear upon us in this passage is just as the feast of unleavened bread lasting seven days (a complete period), was based upon the passover and was really the practical answer in the Israelites to what the paschal lamb represented and typified -- so it is here; he applies it to us, and here is
the real reason why these beloved saints at Corinth were not in the truth of fellowship. Hence when they came together ostensibly to break bread Paul said, I cannot own it, "this is not to partake of the Lord's supper".
So in chapter 5 we come to the bottom of this; their failure was in what the feast of unleavened bread sets forth; there was not in them the practical answer to the death of Christ as the true passover. Instead of purging out the old leaven, Paul brings them face to face with the fact that the old leaven had been allowed by them and it was active among them, and so they are called upon to purge out the old leaven that they might answer in their practical condition to what was true before God of the saints viewed in the light of the death of Christ as our true passover. There was their failure, and how could there be the activities of the Spirit? The Corinthians had the Spirit -- chapter 6 is positive proof of it -- the apostle does not challenge the fact of their having the Spirit; he owns in it chapter 2 and he owns it right through his epistle -- he owns it in chapter 3, for, apart from the Spirit, how could the saints be spoken of as the temple of God? He is speaking to them individually, as it were, of their bodies being the temple of the Holy Ghost, "which is in you, which ye have of God; and ye are not your
own, for ye have been bought with a price"; but he most emphatically challenges their having the activities of the Spirit. He says, I cannot speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. I know that many of us have dropped, perhaps unconsciously, into the thought that "spiritual" describes solve wonderful attainment on the part of Christians, but it is not so. If you are a Christian you ought to be spiritual. To be spiritual is the normal condition of every Christian; one might say God has had it before Him in giving us the Spirit that we might be spiritual. Has God given us the Spirit that we might grieve Him, and that we might allow the flesh -- indulge the flesh? No; He has given us the Spirit that we might be spiritual and not carnal. For this there must be correspondence and fellowship with Christ's death.
Now where the trouble lay was in the fact that there was not an answer in their souls to the death of Christ as the passover lamb. And let me say one simple word -- when it speaks of Christ as our passover (the great truth set forth in the passover was God acting in judgment -- it was a night of judgment, and in the blood of that lamb, sprinkled with the bunch of hyssop on the two side posts and the upper door post of the houses where they dwelt, presented for the eye of God), there was this fact set forth that the judgment of God had already taken
place; the blood which was sprinkled there sheltered and screened them ... . I trust you will in grace bear with my saying a word as to this, but I feel that in these days many of us are occupied and working away with a superstructure in Christianity, when the real trouble is that which is connected with the moral foundations of Christianity in our souls; we are occupied with the superstructure, and we do not get on very well with it. What is the cause? The foundation is lacking in our souls. And for this we have not to look on one another, but each one of us to see to it for ourselves.
Well, the Corinthians were not ready for the supper. The supper is the divinely-appointed expression of the fellowship, and it is most precious to me, if one might for a moment speak personally -- it becomes more precious than ever to me in all the years that pass by; but, beloved brethren, the fellowship must be there. The Corinthians were partaking of the supper outwardly, and in doing so they were eating and drinking judgment to themselves. I need not stop to say to you that the Lord never designed that in the breaking of bread you and I should be eating and drinking judgment to ourselves; the Lord intended that it should stand till He comes, and as the precious expression of the truth of our fellowship together --
fellowship based upon His death, a fellowship that calls for correspondence with that death, and a fellowship together in His love expressed in His death; that is the Lord's supper.
Well, I have dwelt thus long on the individual side of it; I trust that we may be able to receive it and to take it home to ourselves, for the Lord does individualise things. I am aware that fellowship in the very conception of it is the fellowship of the assembly of God; indeed, I do not know any other fellowship -- I am not concerned about any other but the fellowship of the assembly of God, and while it necessarily embraces all who are in and of the assembly it does not at all interfere with individual responsibility "Let a man judge himself, and so let him eat"; that is individual. I am coming to the supper every Lord's Day morning, but it is a solemn consideration -- am I really in the truth of fellowship? It all turns upon the Spirit of God, and the free action of the Spirit of God in your soul, and that depends on whether you are in correspondence with the judgment of God as expressed in the death of Christ as our passover. He has borne the judgment, but, mind you, those who are sheltered and screened by that blood are those who are called upon to keep the feast of unleavened bread; and if the
leaven is allowed individually, or if it is allowed collectively, it vitiates fellowship and it vitiates the breaking of bread. You cannot have the Lord's supper apart from the truth and reality of fellowship, and the truth and reality of fellowship involves your unconditional acceptance of the judgment of God as expressed in the death of Christ as our passover. It is not the passover at the supper; it is a different aspect of Christ's death altogether. In the Lord's supper it is the Lord's death as the expression of His love for us; you cannot have any words better than the Lord's own words: "This is my body, which is for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you". It is His death as the expression of His love, and it is the expression of God's love for us. It is not only the "love of God which is in Christ Jesus", but it is the death of the Lord Jesus wherein He expressed His love for us that the love of God finds its full and perfect expression; not that we can separate them; you may distinguish them in a certain sense, but you cannot separate them ... .
I do not see how I could dare to come next Lord's Day morning and sit down with the saints to partake of the Lord's supper if I were not self-judged. I beg you to bear with this; I say it for the sake of the truth; we need it in its living, practical power in our
souls. No amount of correct statements of doctrine or correct ways of putting things (I fully believe in doing things decently and in order), but no amount of that will form a substitute for the inward and spiritual reality of christian fellowship; that can only be known in connection with the free action of the Spirit of God in us ... . I know how we are tested, and nothing puts us more to the test than when something is done by somebody that makes us feel, "Well I know that is not right", and when it is done it often becomes the occasion of that which is not consistent with the truth which we have been feebly attempting to put before you.
In chapter 1: 9 the Apostle Paul says, "God is faithful, by whom ye have been called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord". And what is the next verse? Well, I will leave you to find out what it is; I tell you, it will pull you up ("Now I exhort you, brethren", etc.); it is intended to pull up every one of us. We often drop down to the miserable, low level of religious systems, while loudly denouncing them! May the Lord bring it home to us, and bring us into the reality of christian fellowship!
I wish I were able to speak of the blessedness of the divinely-appointed expression of it. The expression of fellowship in the breaking of
bread stands in relation to the spiritual -- the heavenly privilege of the assembly as brought before us in a scripture like John 20. And do not let your minds drop down to some quibble; get the reality of what this wonderful spiritual privilege of the assembly is.
Well, I ask you, what is the relation of Christian fellowship, and the truth of Christian fellowship as expressed in the breaking of bread, to what is beyond it -- the privilege? I will tell you. There is a scripture I have often thought of which illustrates it. It is in the last chapter of Revelation -- "Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life, and that they should go in by the gates into the city". The expression of Christian fellowship is the gate into the city; it is the gate into the marvellous privilege that is found inside the city. A beloved servant of the Lord, alluding to the meeting -- when the saints come together on the first day of the week to break bread, he said, "It is the meeting-place -- it is the gate into the city". I can think of the gates, but I can hardly think of them apart from the city; you go "through the gates into the city". The Psalmist says, "Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem"; he was delighted at the thought of going through those gates and entering the city. I wish that our hearts were
fairly ravished with the thought of it; I wish we knew the spirit of that"I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord". What is in the city? Well, the tree of life is there. "That they might have right to the tree of life". There is a wonderful, illimitable, unspeakable wealth of spiritual and heavenly privilege found in the city?
Now is the time to go in for the reality of the truth of Christianity, whether it be the privilege or the fellowship of the assembly. There are, I fear, a good many in a path of pretension and assumption; they boldly say, We are the assembly, we are the church. On the other hand there is the ignoring of the truth of the assembly -- utter independency! And the only thing that will preserve from either the one or the other is the truth of the assembly. If I find a few people who are in the truth of the assembly, or the privilege of the assembly, I am glad to have the opportunity of being with them, but we want to stand for the truth in these days.
I might have called your attention to the fact that all the four scriptures that I have read are connected with the same day -- it is the resurrection day; it is the day on which the Holy Ghost descended; it is the assembly day; the Christianity day; and it is also called the first day, or the Lord's day. As the Lord's
day, we think of it in connection with Him personally, and we think of all that belongs to Him, and as connected with Him, as the Lord; and if we speak of it as the first day of the week we think of the new order of things, and the new scene that has come in. We might have spoken of these scriptures in that way, but it was the truth I desired, as the Lord might help me, to put before you simply, and I trust He will be pleased to use it. Well, it is a wonderful thing to be so self-judged, as to be really keeping the feast of unleavened bread in sincerity and truth, and to answer in my soul to the judgment of God expressed in the death of Christ as the passover; to be in the truth of fellowship, and being in the truth of fellowship to be permitted to give expression to it in the breaking of bread; and, remember, you find it is the gate into the city; you are in the city of heavenly, spiritual, privilege, and when in that city you will know what belongs to it, and what belongs to it crowns everything, and that is His presence in the midst! "Theta ... came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace unto you", and the disciples "rejoiced" when they saw Him in the midst. That was the joy connected with His own presence as in the midst.
May we, beloved, increasingly know that joy -- not only know what it is to sit down together
and break the one loaf and drink of the one cup; and thus practically announce ourselves one body, but to find that the breaking of bread in the power of the Spirit is the open doorway into spiritual and heavenly privilege. May the Lord add His blessing.
Luke 24:27 - 53; John 20:10 - 20.
I am sorry, beloved, not to read the entire passages, but I think that what I have read will suffice to bring what we have to say before you.
We have, in the passages I have read, three wonderful facts concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, and I need not say that if they concern Him they ought to concern us, because when you come to Christianity everything is really so inseparably bound up with Himself, and with facts concerning Himself, that I am sure nothing could be more important, more deeply interesting to us, than the consideration of the facts concerning Himself.
I want to speak very simply. The first fact is the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, pursuing the order of our reading, the second fact is the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ; and then the third fact, in what is recorded in John 20, is the Lord coming into the midst of His disciples as they were thus gathered together, and what is connected with His presence as thus found in the midst. But
if we take account of time we should have to say that the third fact precedes the second, because as a matter of fact the Lord Jesus Christ in John 20 had not ascended -- He was risen from the dead, but He had not yet ascended. Indeed, I suppose there would be at least a period of forty days between His resurrection and taking His place in the midst of His own, as recorded in John 20, and the fact of His ascension as recorded in the closing verses of Luke 24.
Let me say further -- these were three wonderful facts of actuality. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ was an actual fact. I wish to dwell upon it for a moment, because I would that the Spirit of God might so bring these facts before us that they might affect us in all their actuality; and so with regard to the fact of His ascension it is actual; so with regard to His corning into the midst of His disciples as it is brought before us in John 20, it was actual. I suppose with regard to time that both the first and third facts occurred on the same day. His taking His place in the midst of His own was on the very day of His resurrection, while the second fact -- the fact of His ascension, did not occur until the end of that period mentioned by Luke in the opening of the Acts of the Apostles -- the end of the forty days.
The actual appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of His own in John 20 is really a pattern (I use the word because it is so freely used amongst us), and it is a pattern, beloved friends, of the assembly; not the assembly as in the light of I Corinthians, where the world is in view, and where those who do not believe may come into the midst of the company, but the assembly in a spiritual way, and not only in a spiritual way, but the assembly in regard to real enjoyment of heavenly privileges; and so (if we take the actual fact recorded in John 20 as a pattern, though its application to us would be in a spiritual way, and we should have to take it in that sense out of the realm of what is actual and transfer it to the realm of what is spiritual), it is none the less true. I know there are those who seem to think that if you talk about things that are spiritual you talk about things that are not real, but it is not so at all. It is a fact of spiritual reality in its application to us, and I have not much doubt that so far as regards the moral order of these three scriptures, that we have read them to you in their correct order. We first learn the Lord in connection with resurrection, and then we learn the Lord in connection with ascension, and with all that it involves for us in connection with Christianity, and then I
think the climax is reached in learning the Lord in spiritual reality as coming into the midst of His own as assembled.
I wish to speak first of the Lord in resurrection. I am very conscious of great feebleness in attempting, in any way, to speak of such marvellous facts -- facts of such tremendous importance. I could not hope in any sense whatever to cover the ground: I could not pretend in the course of a few minutes to speak to you of all that is involved for God and for us in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now it is difficult in a certain sense to speak of these three facts without at least an allusion to what goes before and to what fairly underlies these facts, and to what gives them their wonderful significance and meaning -- I mean the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have four accounts of His death: we have Matthew's account, and Mark's account, Luke's account, and John's account. I cannot take the time, beloved friends, to mark out in any detail the distinctions and differences, but I would rather allude to the broad general fact of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It has often been said that in Matthew and Mark He is the Victim, hence in Matthew and Mark you get that cry from His lips on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" but in
Luke He is not exactly the Victim; that is, it is not exactly in that way that Luke presents Him in connection with His death; He is rather the offering Priest; He offers Himself, as we get it in Hebrews -- "Who by the eternal Spirit offered himself spotless to God". But John's account must for ever stand alone; it has its own unique character; He delivers up His spirit -- that is the wonderful thing when you come to John's account of His death. That is a marvellous fact. It is not in your power, or mine, or in the power of any one to deliver up one's spirit, but it was in His power; after He had cried He bowed His head and delivered up His spirit. Not only, beloved, is He presented in John's gospel as a divine Person in manhood, but even speaking of Him for a moment as a Man -- oh, what a Man! Such a Man had never been in this world before. He did not need to wait for His own death, or His own resurrection; He could say at the grave of Lazarus: "I am the resurrection and the life". Resurrection and life were inherent in Him as a Man. The Father had given to Him as Man to have life in Himself. If you think of Him as a divine Person only, you could not speak of anything having been given to Him; as a divine Person all was His; He was equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead; but He had taken upon
Him the condition of Man, and so He says in John 5"For even as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son also to have life in himself"; and then in chapter 10 He says: "I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it again" -- "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself". Have you considered Him in this wonderful light? What a Man! I am inclined to think that the title -- the inherited name according to Hebrews -- the Son of God -- is not a title or name that describes Him so much as a divine Person; it describes Him as a Man born in time; in His relationship to God that Man was God's Son. It is true that underneath that -- never apart from it -- there is the blessed fact that He was the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. But, not to multiply words, what I say is, that John's account of His death is unique -- He delivers up His own life; and so it is with His resurrection, as He says in chapter 2 of this gospel: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up"; He was alluding to His own body. He delivers up His spirit, and He raises Himself; it is all His own blessed act, and He is not "carried up" into heaven in John; He says: "I ascend"; it belonged to Him; He had that right, that privilege, in His own Person as Man; He says
"I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God".
I have made a sort of digression, yet I trust it will not be without some profit; but I want to go back to the fact of His resurrection. I need hardly say that the resurrection presupposes death, whether on the part of the Lord or anybody else. Some of us may be in the room tonight who will never know resurrection, because the apostle says: "Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet" -- it is a wonderful fact (I can hardly forbear alluding to it). People say: You have got to die. I say: No, in a real sense -- a literal sense -- I have not got to die. If the assembling shout should be heard tonight, not one of us Christians in this room would ever fall asleep -- we should all be changed: in the practical effect it comes to the same thing, whether we are raised or changed, but for the moment I call your attention to the fact that resurrection, whether of the Lord Jesus or of the saints, implies death. And so with the Lord Jesus, He really died; even in John His death is very real; indeed, the reality of it in John stands out, perhaps, as it does not stand out in any other gospel, because it is only in John that we get the incident of the Roman soldier, and the
spear thrust into His side. Whatever peculiar character or significance attaches to His death in John's gospel, you cannot read that record without the reality of it corning vividly before you. It is said "He was already dead", hence the action of the soldier -- "The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first and of the other that had been crucified with him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water". Wonderful witness to the reality of His death!
Now to come to the resurrection. I hardly know how to begin to speak of it, because it is so marvellous -- so transcendently great; but there is no fear of over-statement; the question is, can we take it in -- can we speak truly according to the scriptures of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ? In the most simple way we might speak of its effect, for it had a wonderful effect upon the disciples of the Lord; you can hardly conceive of a greater moral effect than Luke 24 gives you as to this company. If we take account of them in the beginning of the chapter we see how they were affected by the death of the Lord! Peter says in his first epistle: "Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead". Those two had had their hopes, but when the Lord joined them in that walk to Emmaus, they said mournfully, "We had hoped"; they thought it was all over. But what a change His resurrection made! We have not the details of His appearing to Simon, but we have the details of His appearing to the two that went to Emmaus. What a moment it was to them when they "constrained" Him; He could be constrained, and He is still constrainable; He loves to be constrained by those He loves and by those who love Him. "He made as though he would go farther" -- that brought out the constraining from theta and He went in. "And it came to pass as he was at table with them, having taken the bread, he blessed, and having broken it, gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognised him". He took the place and gave thanks and broke the bread. That was enough; they had been with Him before, they had not forgotten it, and the moment that action took place they knew Him.
Then when they were gathered together -- they had not, as a company, seen Him yet, but Simon had seen Him, they had Simon's
testimony, and on the strength of Simon's testimony the fact of His resurrection was the theme of their conversation, saying, "The Lord is risen indeed and has appeared to Simon ... . And as they were saying these things, he himself stood in their midst". Were you ever so happy, beloved, that you were afraid to speak? Such joy filled their hearts -- a kind of surprised joy, they hardly dared to speak. He was risen. All their trouble was over; their sadness, their reasonings and unbelief -- all over!
Now I think one might say a word about the resurrection of the Lord in regard of God. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ has been a wonderful thing for God. If it be a question of the declaration of the righteousness of God, that was at the cross. If it be the question of atonement, that was at the cross, all that it involves was set forth at the cross. I would not brook for a moment anybody that would dare to add to the cross of Christ, because we know that all was completed in His death. But then, what of God? Sin had come in on the part of man, and the question of sin had been met -- it was met in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ; but was there nothing else in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ besides meeting the question of sin? We know better than that. In the heart of God there had been counsels of grace before the foundation
of the world was laid, and in raising Christ from the dead God reached the moment when He could put into effect as to man the counsels of His grace; He could express toward man what was in His blessed heart. I think we may say that if it is the death of Christ alone it is a scene of judgment; we shall never know the depth of all His sufferings; no heart could conceive them. When we contemplate them in any measure we can only bow our hearts adoringly. In the cross we see all that man could do, but that is not atonement. When the wrath of God came upon Him, when God made His soul an offering for sin, when God "put him to grief", who could presume to sound the depths of those sufferings through which the Son of God passed on the cross? All that man inflicted upon the Lord Jesus Christ never wrought one atom of atonement; it was what He suffered at the hand of God. Now what must it have been to God to raise that One from the dead! God longed for the moment when He could express toward man all His pleasure and His wonderful thoughts of grace! Well, now, that is the resurrection. There is no forgiveness for man, no justification till you come to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ -- there is no salvation at all until you come to the resurrection. "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins". But Christ is raised and
the believer's faith is not in vain. "Who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification". His death effected things greater than that -- beyond that. When Christ was raised from the dead there came to pass in God's mind a scene -- a world altogether beyond death. There never was a death like the death of Christ, and there never will be; you and I might die naturally, but we could not put into our death what was put into the death of the Lord Jesus Christ -- the question of sin, the claims of God, the wrath of God, everything on that side was brought to an issue in the death of Christ. Hence in His resurrection a world beyond death was opened -- a world of life -- life according to God, life for man according to God, where every question of sin, and every question of the judgment of God has been settled -- a world that Satan can never touch. Do you believe it? Are you in the good of it? You pass through the death and resurrection of Christ into a world of life and glory.
Now I just want to say this: you must give to resurrection its proper character. You need not detract from it. Resurrection is the great evidence of the power of God. If somebody said to me, Search the scriptures and give me the greatest proof that scripture affords of the power of God, I would not go to Genesis, I would go to the first chapter of Ephesians. It
is as though the Holy Ghost, through the Apostle Paul, just piled up the words till they could not be piled any higher; it is as though there were a tremendous effort on the part of the Spirit of God to impress upon us "the surpassing greatness of his power to usward who believe". What a marvellous exercise of His power when God raised Christ from the dead; it will ever remain the foundation of the effectuation and accomplishment of the counsels and purpose of God. Who would detract from it? I would that I were equal to speak suitably of it.
Then the second thing I want to speak of is the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great thing to be able to see things as scripture presents them. One thing connected with the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ is glory, and consequent upon His ascension and glorification is the Spirit. Where should we be practically without the Spirit? We might talk of resurrection, but what would it amount to apart from the Spirit of God? Peter's discourse on the day of Pentecost puts it very plainly. There was the great fact that the Holy Ghost had come -- a divine Person -- with unmistakable attestations and proofs, and Peter rises to the occasion, and how does he account for it? Christ was exalted. He received of the Father, as glorified, the promise
of the Holy Ghost which He had shed forth. So John says: "For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified". I would that we might take in all these facts in their proper connection; for they are all facts concerning Him, and, as I said, they ought to concern us deeply. Who wants to separate them? who wants to put resurrection over against ascension or ascension over against resurrection? It would be a very unspiritual person who would do so. No, we want all. We cannot do without the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and we cannot do without His ascension.
Well now, to return to Luke 24, they witnessed His ascension. He goes up with His hands uplifted in blessing, and the effect was they returned to Jerusalem with great joy. In the beginning of the chapter they are full of sorrow; they cannot tell out the sorrow of their hearts; they thought they had lost the Lord. Look at them at the end of the chapter and you find them in Jerusalem praising God. The Lord had gone up to heaven and He had gone up with His hands uplifted in blessing -- in the very act of priestly blessing -- and if He went in that sort of way what will He not do for His people? And when you come to Pentecost (because the connection, as you know, between Luke 24and Acts 1 is very close --
it is the same writer, this beloved physician, Luke, and he is writing to the salve Theophilus, and he just continues it in Acts 1), there they are, and what is the outcome? The Holy Ghost comes down upon them all.
I have tried to say a few words about resurrection, but resurrection in itself does hot give another place; it does give another condition -- passed out of death, as it were, into life. Between you and death, between you and the power of the devil stands the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But now when He goes up it is to another place. His death was not for Himself, His resurrection was not for Himself, His going up to heaven was not for Himself. He has gone up as our Forerunner. Hebrews puts it very literally -- He appears in the presence of God for us; the same One who appeared in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself now appears in the presence of God for us. He is our Forerunner. What does that mean? It means that you and I are going to get there; it is the pledge that the whole company is going to get there. It is not only that you have new condition, that you are clear of death, but you have got a new place; and it is wonderful how the Holy Ghost connects things in scripture. Take the five links, as you know, in the chain of Divine purpose
in Romans 8:29 -- foreknew, predestinated, called, and "whom he justified, them he also glorified". All is assured, and see the wonderful way the Spirit of God puts it there and states it, as if it had already taken place. And again, "Being justified by faith ... . we boast in hope of the glory of God". You cannot rejoice in anything unless you are perfectly certain about it; there cannot be rejoicing if there is any uncertainty. A good many people say they hope they will go to heaven when they die, but that is a poor thing. By the Holy Spirit you are consciously linked up with the One who is there; you are linked up with Him, you have the certainty of the hope.
Now I want to speak a little about John 20, because that is where you reach the top -- the summit. It is a wonderful moment when the One who is risen and the One who is ascended comes to take His place in the midst of His people. "The disciples rejoiced therefore, having seen the Lord". They are together in a very special way; they are together, too, in Luke 24, but their being together in John 20 is another kind of thing. One could not speak so positively if we had not what we have when the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene and said, "Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren", etc. What does the Holy Ghost
say about it? "For both he that sanctifies and those sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren".
What has taken place? Why, the grain of wheat has fallen into the ground and died, and these are the "much fruit". There is a company here upon the earth that is derived from Himself; His death is the womb of their new existence. He says to Mary, "Go to that company -- go to My brethren". There we get the first meeting of the "brethren". People sometimes say: Can you give me the history of the brethren? I say, I can give you their origin; I can tell you the first time the brethren ever met together. He did not say, Go to Peter, or James, or John, but to "my brethren". I wish you could grasp it in a spiritual way, because it is a company; it is not a number of people who have got together on the ground of mutual agreement or anything of that sort. He has been into death, and there are His brethren, the "much fruit". They are a wonderful company, derived from Himself. Now, I trust I am not saying too much in saying that they are together in the light of that wonderful message; they are together as His brethren -- it is blessed every step of the way; but they are together, not only in the light of the fact that they are His brethren, but they are together in the light of
association with Himself. "My Father and your Father, and my God and your God". That is association, and association in the most marvellous way; you could not conceive of any other association like that; every other kind of association of people pales into utter insignificance when compared with that. They are there in that light, and to that company of His brethren who have derived their new being from Himself, and whom He has set in the light of association with Himself, into, the midst of that company He comes.
My time is up, and I must not go further, only to say, what a marvellous thing it is to enter really into that -- to know that in spiritual reality. Do not be content with merely reading it in the chapter, blessed as it is. Do not be content short of the blessed Spirit of God making it so real in your heart, that you know the reality of being derived from Himself, and the reality of the light of association with Him, and to crown it all, the reality of His presence in the midst. The disciples "rejoiced" when they saw the Lord. It is the assembly, but it is the assembly in respect of heavenly privilege down here, and this enjoyed, beloved, with Himself in the midst; He the Sanctifier and we the sanctified; He the "Firstborn among many brethren". I have no doubt that the passage in Romans 8:29
looks on in a way to the future; but then all that is of the future has a present realisation in the power of the Holy Ghost. I trust we may be greatly encouraged. I have spoken very poorly; but [ commend the Lord to you and I commend these things to you. You may say you believe in the doctrine of resurrection. You may believe in the doctrine of resurrection and freeze! I put it strongly, but you must reach HIM. Do not be content to live in dogmas and theories. Get close to Himself. These disciples got close to Him; He possessed their hearts; they were filled with joy when He came into their midst. There was joy in the risen One, and great joy in the ascending One, and oh, beloved, the joy of having Him in the midst cannot be told; it may be known, but you could not express it. It is all an anticipation of what is coming.
May the Lord bless His word to us for His name's sake!
Matthew 11:25 - 30.
In the first three words of verse 25 the Spirit of God calls our attention to this wonderful moment in connection with our Lord's path and ministry down here. Generally speaking, what marked the moment on the part of man was the utter refusal and rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ; indeed, speaking morally (not quite actually), I think we get "at that time" the climax of the rejection of our Lord by the inhabitants of the land of Palestine. Confining ourselves to this chapter, there are three things that marked the moment. The first is the sorrowful and painful breakdown and failure of John Baptist. We must not allow ourselves to lower our thoughts or estimation of him, because in this very chapter the Lord in His grace bears a most wonderful testimony as to him. He says: "Verily I say to you, that there is not arisen among the born of women a greater than John the baptist", nevertheless, it
is a sorrowful breakdown on the part of that wonderful man. He was no other than the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who had been appointed of God to introduce publicly the Son of God to Israel, and yet it is evident that there is a breakdown. Just fancy that man, John Baptist, sending a message -- "Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?" -- the man who, on the banks of Jordan, in the presence of those assembled thousands of Israel, had borne that beautiful testimony, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world"; then the next day, not publicly, but privately, there had burst from his lips that spontaneous testimony as he looked upon Jesus as He walked, "Be hold the Lamb of God"; and the effect of that testimony on two of John's disciples was that they immediately turned and began to follow the One of whom John had just borne this wonderful testimony. Now he is in prison; it is no longer Jordan -- no longer the assembled thousands of Israel, and, I would say it sadly, it is no longer with John the energy of the Holy Ghost by which he bore that testimony. He is shut up in prison alone, and having heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent by his disciples and said to Him: "Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?"
Then in the second case we have a very
solemn picture of the moral insensibility and indifference that characterised that generation who were here when the Lord was here, for the language the Lord used -- the simile He introduced, emphasizes in a most solemn way their utter indifference and insensibility. There was absolutely no repentance. There were the sweet "pipings" of grace in the ministry of the Lord, but no responsive dancing; there was the "mourning" in the ministry of John Baptist, but no responsive wailing. Hence He says: "But to whom shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets, which, calling to their companions, say, We have piped to you, and ye have not danced: we have mourned to you, and ye have not wailed".
Then lastly we have the Lord's reproach to these cities of Chorazin and Bethsaida particularly, and then Capernaum. In these cities they had been privileged to witness the mighty works of power wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ, and there was no repentance, no evidence of any work of God in their souls, no evidence of any proper sense of their responsibility in regard to God. God had sent that blessed One, and in the midst of these cities, on the behalf of God. He had wrought these mighty works of power, and there was no repentance.
I do not dwell in detail upon the, solemn
language which came from the lips of the Lord Jesus concerning these cities, but I want to shew you that these things marked that moment, and it was: "At that time, Jesus answering said, I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight". I hardly know how to speak of this as I should. How glorious the Lord appears! how glorious morally, spiritually! Many of us have eyes and ears and hearts for that which is merely material and external, but there is nothing of that sort here: what characterises the Lord "at that time" is like a sunburst on a very dark, cloudy and stormy day. I cannot refrain from saying I have a sense of how little I am like Him; how easily we succumb to discouraging circumstances. Many of us can manage a hymn of praise when things are bright and fair, but how many of us could manage a note of praise at a time like this? It is an ascending note of praise, and I am sure it filled the ears and heart of the Father with the sweetest music that had ever risen up from this world; the music of that note of praise not only filled the Father's heart with delight and pleasure, but it has been sounding down through the intervening centuries, and I feel that all of us
here tonight need is to come under the power of the Spirit of God that we may know something of the music of it.
The "Lord of the heaven and of the earth", I understand, expresses the thought of sovereign Ruler. The Father is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and the earth. No matter who breaks down, no matter what indifference or insensibility or impenitence may be in evidence, He, the eternal Father, sits upon the eternal throne, and He is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth. Do not give up in discouragement, do not get under the power of any breakdown here, the Father is the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth. It was just the suited moment for the Lord Jesus.
You know, speaking generally, the way the Spirit of God presents the Lord to us, especially in the first three gospels. He is "A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief". The record of the notes of praise are very rare; but how sweet this note is; what a contrast to the words that have just left His lips -- sorrowful, solemn words, announcing the gathering clouds of divine judgment. But the moment His heart turns to the Father there leaps out from His lips this note of praise: "I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight".
Then let me note another thing. There is, as He turns to the Father, the ascending note of praise as we have seen, and then as He turns to all those about Him -- what do we find? The outflowing streams of divine grace! I am afraid if you and I had been there at that time it might have been a sound of murmuring, a note of discouragement, and perhaps we should have closed our hearts against those about us. We might have said, Everything is in vain; there is no use going on with men. Not so the Lord. You know what the Lord Himself says: "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh", and He stands before us the perfect example, the perfect illustration of that. From that heart, beloved, that was filled with the eternal sunshine of the Father's love there leaped this blessed note of praise, and from that same heart He turns to men and says: "Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest". How it makes one long to be a little more like Him! Well now, let me say, the conditions that are expressed in the three things mentioned in this chapter have obtained from that day to this. They obtain all around us tonight. There is plenty of failure; there is even the
questioning, in the spirit of it, "Art thou he that should come? or are we to wait for another?" and there is still the indifference, the impenitence all about us; but the music of that note of praise may still be heard and felt in our hearts, and those precious streams of divine grace that burst from His lips are still flowing, so that tonight we may still catch the tones of that voice, we may still hear Him saying: "Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened".
Some one has said that in this passage (the end of Matthew 11) Matthew and John coalesce. I do not think it is too much to say that what comes out in these wonderful utterances, whether it be the note of praise to the Father, or the expression of His grace, and what precedes it, is not exactly characteristic of Matthew, it would be rather more characteristic of John; but in saying this you understand it is not calling in question the absolute perfection of scripture; you may depend upon it that it is set in the right place; the Spirit of God has put it just where it should be, and the very darkness of the moment, the breakdown of John, the indifference, the insensibility, and the impenitence that formed the background of it only make it shine out the more brilliantly.
Now divine Persons are mentioned here, and let me say it is around the revelation of divine
Persons that all the interest, the value and importance of scripture centre; and surely we have that revelation here. There is first the note of praise to the Father, and then He says: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father". The Lord Jesus never speaks from the standpoint of circumstances. Underneath all the circumstances of His path and ministry here there ever was that wonderful divine circle of holy heavenly relationship between Himself and the Father. It is not always seen, it does not always come out, but it is always there. If we speak for a moment of the circumstances surrounding the Lord -- did it look as if all things had been delivered to Him of the Father? Indeed, it did not. I do not think I should be exceeding the scripture if I said that so far as the external look of things went at that time it looked as if the whole ministry and miracles of the Lord Jesus were a complete failure -- it looked that way. But the Lord had a heavenly and out-of-the-world view; He was not looking at circumstances only. He does look at circumstances in His previous utterances, and His utterances are absolutely perfect; but when He turns to the Father He retires in spirit from all external circumstances of His path, and retreats into that holy, heavenly circle of relationship and affection between Himself and
the Father, and retiring there He can not only send up the note of praise and express His most perfect and absolute acquiescence in, and subjection as a Man to, the Father's will, but He can go on to say: "All things are delivered to me by my Father". He is standing there amidst all this rejection, and indifference, and impenitence, and if the Father is brought before us as the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth, that sovereign Ruler of the heaven and of the earth has put "all things" (and who would dare to limit it? -- I would say the language of the context would require that we should keep to the scope of the Father's sovereignty; He is sovereign; He -- the Lord of the heaven and of the earth), has delivered "all things" into the hands of Him who is the Son -- He speaks of Himself as the Son, as a divine Person in relationship with the Father -- nevertheless, He speaks as Man down here; it is to my mind one of the most lovely -- indescribably lovely pictures of that blessed One as Man down here.
Now He goes on -- "All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son but the Father". That remains in all its unchanged force of meaning as true tonight as when those words left His blessed lips. That has not been brought into revelation; it lies beyond the scope of revelation,
and lying beyond that scope, it lies outside what we know; though I think it would not be too much to say that at that time the Son even viewed as Man was not known by any one; not that that is the force of the expression; the expression is to be left in its proper force and meaning. "Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son" (that is the same word -- real knowledge, not a mere objective acquaintance with the Person), "and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him". From all eternity the Son had His home, and has His home in the bosom of the Father; and when He, the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, was pleased to take up a condition as Man down here, He brought into that, morally, all that belonged to Him as the only-begotten Son in the Father's bosom; He brought that intimate knowledge of the Father. And, further, it marked Him, it distinguished Him pre-eminently as a Man while He was here. Hence in the gospels, as it has often been said, He always spoke to God not as God, but to the Father as such; the only departure that scripture gives us is in connection with the cross when He cried; "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Now can you conceive what it would have been if a period had been placed after "Nor does any one know the Father, but the
Son", and if the rest of the sentence had not been there? To my mind it would have been like the blotting out of Christianity. It remains true; "Nor does any one know the Father, but the Son"; but for what reason has the Son, the only-begotten Son in the Father's bosom, come into manhood? In other words, why the incarnation? That the Father might be morally revealed and known by men down here. So He adds the words "and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him". There stand those precious words. One may say that is, in a sense, Christianity. It is the revelation of the Father in the Son as Man down here, and when He is pleased to reveal Him it becomes on our side the knowledge of the Father as revealed in the Son, and there is one lovely word that expresses what that means. Do you know what it means? It means REST. I can remember in days gone by that they used to sing: "There is sweet rest in heaven"; I have no doubt about that, but let me tell you there is rest down here; there is rest in the midst of and in spite of all the conditions that obtain here. He has come to give that rest. He alone could give it. He alone is competent to reveal the Father. We are shut up to that blessed One as Man down here. There is no knowledge of the Father possible in any other
way, but He has come to reveal the Father; so this is the proper connection of verse 28: "Come to me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest". How? By revealing the Father in Himself. He gives rest. Has it come to your soul? Oh, the rest of knowing the Father revealed in the Son! My beloved brethren, let me say, it is involved in the proper knowledge of Himself. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4, speaking of the gifts from the ascended Christ and of their end, says: "Until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God". It is wonderful how it is put in scripture; it is not said, "He that hath the Father hath the Son"; no, it is, "He that hath the Son hath the Father". You could riot have the Father any other way.
Let me venture a little further. The force of the expression -- "the Father", here is not the common apprehension of it. It is the Father in His relation to the Son -- in His love for the Son. We have in John 3, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son". We have the new covenant in that way, the blessed expression of God's love toward us; but we have more than that; w e have in the end of chapter 17 in the Lord's utterance to the Father, "And I have made known to them thy name, and will make it
known; that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them". Do you not delight to think of Him as the one and only adequate object of the Father's love? By-and-by you and I and all the saints of God shall behold His glory, and that glory will be the adequate expression of the love with which the Father loved Him from before the foundation of the world. Do not lower scripture; if you do, you will lower your own blessing.
He says: "Come to me ... . and I will give you rest" -- and how? By revealing the Father. Now that revelation of the Father is once and for all. But there is our pathway here; we have not yet reached the prepared place in the Father's house, we have a few more days, perchance a few more months or years still to go on through this scene down here; and what about that? The Lord says "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light". You will find rest right along your path here, no matter what your circumstances are, no matter what happens: up, down, dark, light, joyful, sorrowful, tears or anguish (for Christianity never makes stoics of us), you shall find rest to your souls. And now think of that expression
which He uses about Himself -- "for I am meek and lowly in heart". That is what the Lord was as a Man down here; that is what marked Him, what pre-eminently characterised Him. He was meek, and He was lowly. We bump pretty hard against the rocks sometimes; and we even bump against one another, and we bump against what we call our adverse circumstances; but do you know why? We are not like Him, meek and lowly. It would not be justifiable for me to speak of myself, but it was perfectly justifiable for Him to speak of Himself, and it is perfectly beautiful the way He speaks of Himself, and we may be wonderfully helped and instructed by considering the way He speaks of Himself.
But what is His prescription? "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me". Does a "yoke" speak of service -- of something imposed? Yes. Peter, you know, when up at Jerusalem, said, speaking of Judaism: "Why tempt ye God, by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" You could not say of that yoke that it was easy, nor of the burden it imposed that it was light. There must be something in the yoke, beloved -- His yoke, that makes it easy. Do you know what it is? May I attempt to express it in a word?
It is sonship. The Lord Jesus is so variously
presented in the scriptures; He was the perfect embodiment and expression of all that a man ought to be in relation to God. He is not only the only one competent to reveal the Father, though that is true (no one knows the Father intimately but Himself); but He was the perfect embodiment and expression of all that a man ought to be for God. And what is His yoke? It is sonship. And what is sonship?
It is love. "Take my yoke". Did you ever try it? Who introduced sonship? He brought it in. Jehovah, of course, bad spoken of Israel in that sort of way; but the reality of sonship, as what is proper to man before God, or in relation to God, never was here till the Son came; He brought it in ... Peter, in the way of contrast, in the opening of his first letter says "Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to ... elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ". Jesus Christ characterises the obedience as well as the sprinkling, and so it is the obedience of Jesus Christ -- the obedience of sonship. What makes it easy? Because in the spirit of sonship you only have to do the things you like to do. That is the way it works. Look at the expression of sonship in the Lord: "I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid
these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight". ... To Him God's will was perfectly right; He was not only subject to the Father's will, but He acquiesced in it. He delighted in it. You would not learn sonship by studying me, nor could I learn it by studying you; but I know where you can learn it as you can learn it nowhere else -- that is, from Him: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me". We are too busy, I am afraid, in these days; we do not take time to sit down and look at Him; we do not take time for the spiritual contemplation of that blessed One. He is not only the perfect expression of God to man, but the perfect expression of man to God. You can "learn" from Him. And it stands out here in a very marked way. He is not only the Son whom no one knows but the rather; but He is as we see Him here that lowly, meek, patient Man, and I am sure when that note of praise went up, with those accompanying words from His blessed lips, that it was a perfect delight to the heart of the Father.
Well, I cannot say more now ... but whether rich or poor, sick or well, whatever tomorrow may bring, if you take His yoke upon you and learn from Him you will find rest to your souls. You will find it right along
your pathway ... and the longer you wear the yoke, and the more you learn from Him, the more you will prove "for my yoke is easy, and my burden, is light".
May the Lord be pleased to add His blessing!
2 Timothy 2:15 to end
I desire, as the Lord may enable me, to speak in a very plain and practical way in connection with the scripture we have read, especially from verse 19. This scripture is, perhaps, familiar to most here; but we are not here to give instruction exactly or any further light. Many of us take credit to ourselves in connection with our familiarity with the letter of scripture, and it is in reference to those scriptures with which we are familiar that we need stirring up and exercise of soul.
Our desire is to speak to you in connection with this scripture in a practical way. If you have come expecting some great unfolding of doctrine you will be disappointed; but I trust the Lord will give us just the word that He can use for our real spiritual help.
It has been conceded for a long time in connection with this scripture that it is the one scripture the Lord has given us to mark out the path for us in the midst of what we speak of as the ruin. I do not want to speak much about the ruin; it is not well to be too much
occupied with it -- I am sure the Lord would have us sensible as to the conditions that obtain on every hand, but I think there is a danger of becoming too much occupied with it, and that is not for our spiritual profit. Whatever ruin has come in, you will always find it is connected with the responsibility of man: but in this second epistle of Paul to Timothy, from the outset of it, we are brought face to face with the purpose of God; and that is beyond the ruin. The effectuation -- the accomplishment of God's purpose is in His hands -- "He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will;" there is no danger of defeat or frustration or failure in that. I think, generally speaking, the two epistles of Paul to Timothy indicate in the beginning a certain difference. The apostle in the first epistle connects his apostleship with the commandment of our Saviour-God, you will find there is a largeness about it -- "all men" are in view. But when you come to the second epistle he connects his apostleship with the purpose of God, and in a certain sense things are more limited -- it is not "all men" -- "the elect" come into view. What I want you to see is this, that from the beginning of this epistle you breathe the air of the purpose of God. Take what I have read, there is the allusion to Hymenaeus and Philetus -- they are only sample men -- "of whom is
Hymenaeus and Philetus; who concerning the truth have erred", and we get their teaching and the effect of their teaching: they were overthrowing the faith of some; but the next expression stands like a solid, immovable rock, and the waves of error only dash themselves into spray as they strike it, "The firm foundation of God stands steady". It stands steady, and as you touch it spiritually it will impart to your soul its own steadiness, you will become steady, you will cease shaking.
The point in the passage I have read is testing but simple. It is the responsibility of every one who names the name of the Lord to stand for the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ. He brings in the simile of "a great house", not the great house, but a great house; but he brings it in to illustrate the prevailing condition at that time. "In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour". "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour", etc. Whose honour? The honour of the Lord. That to me is the centre of the passage: the responsibility resting upon each -- "every one" -- to be apart from everything that involves the dishonour of the Lord, and to be here in identification with that which would really be for His honour and glory. It is a
great test, because it tests us as to the state of our souls; it tests us, not in regard to a standard of doctrine or knowledge, but it tests us with regard to our affection for the Lord. If the Lord has got His place -- His right place -- in my affections, I am bold to say that, the honour of the Lord would be dearer to me than life itself; you could put nothing in competition with it, not for a moment.
I think some believers have thought that certain conditions have arisen during the last eighty or ninety years, and that certain things are peculiar to these late years. Do not be mistaken. This second epistle of Paul to Timothy was written a good while ago, and the conditions that are disclosed in it, and the instructions that are given by the Spirit of God in it, have been, not only true, but have been in force from that day to this. It is easy to prove to you that the second epistle to Timothy goes on to the end.
I would now speak of three words that indicate the points of the truth. The first word is "depart from", or "withdraw"; the second word is "flee"; and the third word is "follow", or "pursue"; so that if we answer in any measure to this instruction, these three things will characterise us.
"Withdraw" is a quiet word; it is not to make any fuss or any display about it; the
thing is to do it. I cite as an illustration Jeremiah 15:16, shewing what the force of "withdraw" is, where the prophet says, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts". What is the next word? He withdrew: "I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone". Now it was not the fact of eating the Lord's words that brought him into trouble, that made him very happy, when he discovered that he was "called by the name of the Lord". To be called by the name of another in scripture is identification. But it was not that which brought Jeremiah into trouble, it was withdrawing. Are you prepared to go through any trouble on account of the Lord -- on account of refusing that which compromises His honour and glory? Jeremiah withdrew very quietly, "I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation". (Jeremiah 15:17.) A man may be very indignant and very happy at the same time. Jeremiah was happy in the apprehension of his identification with Jehovah -- God of hosts; but that assembly of mockers filled him with indignation. Have you ever "sat alone"? I speak plainly, but it is taken so easy nowadays.
People are found in the position of separation, but how did they get there? Perhaps very easily, without exercise. Did you ever "sit alone"? It is a real thing. You have withdrawn from iniquity and you "sit alone". Some of us hardly know how to appreciate good company when we get it, and it is because we have never "sat alone". There is first the withdrawing, you separate yourself from the vessels to dishonour, and then there is a word for you personally, not in regard to your associations with others, but in regard to yourself, "Flee also youthful lusts". And there are four things you are to pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace. You are still addressed individually -- you are individual up to this point; you are not in any fellowship. Till you reach this point you are not ready for fellowship according to God. You may say, I belong to such and such a meeting. That is a poor thing, and you will prove it so. When you follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, your privilege is to follow these things with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.
We are not in the days of I Corinthians. I am thankful for I Corinthians, it is a wonderful epistle, but do not persuade yourself that you are in the days of I Corinthians. It was enough then to say, "To the assembly [or church]
of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints", and to add, "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord". But now we must have the divine addition, "with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart". People raise objections; they say -- How are we to know who are those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart? I only know one way; that is, to call on the Lord out of a pure heart yourself; I do not know any other way.
I am exercised that the Lord might help His people here tonight. And now I am coming to this; and let me speak simply. You know Mr. Darby's translation of 2 Timothy 2 is divided into two paragraphs; if we speak of verses, there are thirteen verses in the first paragraph and thirteen in the second paragraph, and I trust we are all convinced of this -- that the scriptures have been written in divine order, and if one might speak for oneself for a moment, I am sure the apprehension in any measure of the divine order in scripture is most helpful.
In the first paragraph, "In Christ Jesus" is the characteristic phrase, and the characteristic phrase of the second paragraph is "the Lord". Now "in Christ Jesus" stands for privilege; but; "the Lord" stands for responsibility. The Holy Ghost speaking of "the Lord" says,
"Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity". This should have such an effect on us, it should evoke such a response from us, that we would never rest until we had "withdrawn". The test in Christianity is always the affections. Love never fails. If there is a response in our souls to the Lord's mind there will be withdrawing, fleeing, and pursuing, because the Lord has His place in our hearts.
I take you back for a moment to the beginning of the chapter. Paul in writing to Timothy says, "Thou therefore, my child;" that is a word which implies two things, relationship and affection, so that Paul uses it as a term of endearment to Timothy, for there was peculiar affection between them -- "Thou therefore, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus". I think when you get Christ Jesus mentioned alone it is that Person, it is that anointed Man. Peter said at the close of his discourse at Pentecost that God had raised up Jesus and had made Him Lord and Christ. I think when you get Christ Jesus alone you get Him as the risen and exalted Man -- the Man that God has anointed; but when that little word "in" is attached what do you get then? The thought is not the grace that met me as a poor guilty, lost sinner; I do not mean that there are different
sorts of grace; it is all the grace of God, but it is not grace in that point of view; neither is it the administration of grace to you as a believer in connection with your responsible life herein your weakness, your circumstances, all that may come upon you, that is not the thought of "grace in Christ Jesus". We spoke on Sunday night of that expression in Ephesians, "The exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus". I think that wonderful display of grace on the part of the father in Luke 15 to the younger son is a blessed picture of it. It is not on the side of our need; no, it is the other way; it is if one might say so, the need of God's heart; He wants us in His presence that He might have perfect complacency in us, perfect delight in us; He wants us there so that we might share all that infinite joy that fills His own heart in Christ. How far are we acquainted with "the grace that is in Christ Jesus"? You may say, My sins are forgiven, and I have been justified. Thank God for that. You may say, I have been in trouble -- weakness, bereavement, loss of property, various kinds of sorrow here, and difficult circumstances, and the Lord has wonderfully met me, has wonderfully sustained me. Thank God for His grace, and I can thank Him with you. But how about the other side? Have
you touched "the grace that is in Christ Jesus?" -- because (let me speak simply, not theologically) when you touch the grace that is in Christ Jesus you are lost in an ocean of love. You say, I have really entered into the heavenly and eternal side of things. Have you? Are you sure? How do you feel about the honour of the Lord down here? It is all very well to go to a nice meeting and talk about how we have enjoyed it (do not think I am against enjoyment; I go in for enjoyment, for the enjoyment of the very best -- I mean the best robe, and the ring, and the shoes, the fatted calf, and the music and the dancing, I go in for all that) -- but do you come out of it like Jeremiah? He sat alone. You can hardly conceive of a man being happier than Jeremiah was, but look at the proof he gives you of the reality and the effect of it. "I sat not in the assembly of the mockers", etc. And what is his concern about? The honour of that name, Jehovah -- God of hosts.
There are many interesting things that I would like to say to you about this scripture. There is great scope in it in a sense, "Let every one that names the name of the Lord", and yet it is put individually, it says every one, and "if a man purge himself from these". Do not let us drop into the thought that things have only in the last few years become individual,
they have been individual from the days of 2 Timothy. You will find it is an invariable principle with God that when He has set up a dispensation or order of things, and when that has broken down through the failure of man in responsibility, God does not give up the truth for one moment. Do you think God has given up the truth of the assembly? I would not walk with people who held that. How could you follow righteousness and faith with such people, to say nothing about love and peace? You could not do it. God has not given up the truth of the assembly, but in the days of 2 Timothy God reverted to the individual. Hence, beloved, I do not know any scripture that ought to rivet us like this. Is there any pretension to being the assembly? We ought to be ashamed of it in the face of this scripture. Mr. Darby said in a letter over fifty years ago, "I would not walk one hour with any company that pretended to be the assembly". Is that giving up the truth? No; it is retreating and retiring from a false position to take the only position in which the truth of the assembly can be maintained. And who are these that call on the Lord out of a pure heart Only a company of individuals, that is all. I beg you to bear with me, but I am not alone in saying what I do. It has been said, I think, in this room by our beloved brother who is
with the Lord now, "There is no other company than the assembly of the living God". There is no other company. Do not think me hypercritical, but things steal upon us so softly, so insidiously, we begin to think of ourselves as a company and we begin to lift up our heads and to take assembly assumption, but it will not do. I am certain of this, that the Lord will not for one moment support any pretension or any assumption of that sort, because if the Lord reverts to the individual why does He do so Because, as to the responsible body, it has broken down and failed, and the Lord says, I am not going to give up the truth, I am going to maintain it in spite of the ruin, in spite of the failure, and I will maintain it in connection with individuals; and God has been maintaining it for nearly eighteen hundred years, and He is going to maintain it to the very last day. He will maintain it till that blessed moment when we shall hear the assembling shout. It is no time to hang down our heads and be discouraged; there is plenty of ruin, but the Lord remains and the Holy Ghost is here. Now God reverts to the individual. God is wiser than we are. We take steps sometimes to conserve what we think is the truth, but we are not wise. I have no doubt you might take the creeds of Christendom, and I speak respectfully of them; these creeds were written by
very godly men, perhaps the most godly men of their day, and were formulated by them as bulwarks of the truth; but I ask you, Have they maintained the truth? My dear brethren, you know they have not. No; there is no power to maintain the truth in a creed, and you must bear with me in saying that we have reverted sometimes to ecclesiastical actions and ways to maintain the truth, but they do not maintain it. God's way does it, and it is the only way it can be done. Mr. Raven said of this scripture that the language was not ecclesiastical, and Mr. Darby said in his day that scripture was intensely moral. Take these four terms. I am not speaking of the iniquity from which you are to withdraw, nor the youthful lusts from which you are to flee, but of these four things which you are to pursue -- righteousness, faith, love, peace. I am bold to stand here and say that there is not a jot or tittle of Christianity that is not embraced in these four terms. We read in Philippians of a brother who "laboured fervently in prayers". And what a labour it was! And what was his prayer for? That they might stand complete in all the will of God. That is righteousness.
We are to pursue righteousness. Ah! the inclusiveness of that term, and the exclusiveness of it; it includes every will of God, and
it excludes every will of man. Righteousness is God's will, and I ask you to stop and consider a moment -- could you have anything on any other basis? God has put everything on the basis of righteousness. There will be the world to come -- the habitable world to come -- and beyond that the eternal state, and the world to come will be established on the basis of righteousness, and the eternal state will be the home of it. There righteousness shall dwell for ever and ever.
Then we are to pursue faith. That is not the act of believing -- that is not the force of the term always. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism". What is the meaning of faith there? Why, just one blessed word that covers within its comprehensive grasp the whole truth of Christianity. Paul spoke to Timothy of some that had sacrificed a good conscience, and what was the result? They had made shipwreck concerning the faith, they had given up the truth of Christianity.
You pursue righteousness and faith, and then what? Love. In chapter 1 he says that God hath not given us the spirit of cowardice but of power and of love. You may have power (I do not say spiritual power) without love, but the more power you have apart from love the worse it is. If we have power and love, the use of it is a wise discretion. So here
you pursue righteousness and faith and love. You are to pursue it. What a foundation for peace! You can have peace now. Do not turn it upside down.
I commend these few scattered remarks to yon, and I trust God will be pleased to give us distinct exercise. I beg you not to take things too easy. There is not one atom of spiritual movement apart from exercise. May the Lord so bring home the truth to us that in the light of it we may be individually exercised, and that there may be in us an answer to the mind of the Lord in this day.
In one way, beloved friends, what we have read is a very simple passage of scripture: it is an appeal on the part of Jeremiah to Jehovah. The prophet was in circumstances of trial, of reproach and of persecution, and he turns to Jehovah and appeals to Him, asking that the Lord would interpose to avenge him of those who were his persecutors; and in connection with this appeal we learn what had brought the prophet into these circumstances of reproach and persecution, but before speaking at all of the answer that Jehovah vouchsafed to the prophet, I might say, beloved, that I have taken this scripture and bring it before you, because I believe that the time in which we are now living in a very important sense corresponds to the time in which Jeremiah was living; and the circumstances that surrounded Jeremiah find an answer in the circumstances that surround us as the Lord's people, or, if you please, as God's people, at this present time.
I need not tell you that Jeremiah lived on to the close of the history of the people of God in his day. Long before this, of course, the nation of Israel had been divided, and so far as the ten tribes are concerned, their history had closed in judgment; Shalmaneser the Assyrian had carried them away into captivity, and they have been there from that day to the present; they will, as we know, be recovered, and will yet be brought back into the land, and the whole nation will be reunited and brought into blessing; but even as to the kingdom of Judah, this prophet lived very near the end, he lived in the days of Josiah the king, and what marked Josiah's time in the beginning? When he came into the kingdom everything was very dark, they were suffering under the hand of Jehovah the results of their unfaithfulness. But I just want to say that there was a wonderful revival in the days of Josiah and of Jeremiah. The house of God was in a very sad state, and the service of God in connection with it was practically well-nigh abandoned; but God wrought -- Josiah was but a youth, but the heart of the young king was in exercise of soul before God, and he began where every true revival generally begins, that is, with God's interests here, and, of course, those interests at that time were centred in the temple -- the house of God -- just as God's interests
are now centred in the assembly -- the church of the living God -- the house of God. So Josiah began to clear up things in connection with the house of God. Shaphan was the scribe; Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, was the high priest, and in connection with the work inaugurated by Jeremiah Hilkiah discovered in the house of God the book of the law of God, the book containing the mind of God concerning His beloved people. I must only speak briefly, but the book was given to Shaphan the scribe, and Shaphan carried it to the king, and the book was read, and the finding and the reading of that book was the beginning of a wonderful revival among God's people.
Now Jeremiah alludes to this. In connection with his appeal to Jehovah he writes his own personal experience; he says, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them". Hilkiah, the father of Jeremiah, literally found them; but it is not the details that I dwell on, but with the fact itself. What a wonderful thing! "Thy words" -- the very words of Jehovah, setting forth what was in the mind of Jehovah concerning His house, and concerning His people -- concerning His interests here in this scene. Jeremiah says: "Thy words were found, and I did eat them". You can understand the figure without any difficulty, because it is a very
simple figure; in eating food we appropriate it, and in the appropriation of it we realise the good of it. Eating food is what we are in the habit of doing constantly and literally, but Jeremiah speaks of eating in a moral sense, though the simplicity of the figure is kept up, and the result of eating the words of Jehovah was that he realised in his own soul the good of those words; and the first result was they made him very happy; he says, "and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart". But why did they make him so happy? Because those words of Jehovah made known to him the blessed fact of his complete identification with Jehovah, and his complete identification with Jehovah in the way of blessing. It is well to know that a person is happy, but it is better to know why they are happy, and Jeremiah tells us why: "Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Jehovah God of hosts"; he learned his complete identification with Jehovah God of hosts; it was such a wonderful identification. As illustration -- when a woman marries, she takes her husband's name -- she becomes called by his name; so Jeremiah was so wonderfully identified with Jehovah God of hosts, that he says, "for I am called by thy name".
Then you get the next effect of "eating those
words". First -- they discovered to him his complete identification with Jehovah, and thus they brought to light his privilege, as identified with that name, and they filled his heart with rejoicing. That was one side, but then the other side was his responsibility, and that which measured his privilege and his blessing on the one side, measured his responsibility on the other side. If being called by the name of Jehovah God of hosts, was the full measure of his privilege, it became also the measure of his responsibility; he was responsible to stand apart from everything that dishonoured that name. So he says: "I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation".
Now it was not because of the rejoicing that filled his heart in the discovery of his privilege, it was not on that side that he had got into reproach -- although, of course, these things cannot be disconnected -- these two sides of the truth are never really apart. You may distinguish them, but you cannot separate them, for they go together. There is joy in the apprehension of privilege, but there is also the exercise connected with the apprehension of the side of responsibility, and, in a word, that is where you get into trial. The devil does not care how happy you are; he is not concerned
about your apprehension of privilege and your joy in the apprehension of it, but what the devil is opposed to is separation, and separation will get you into trouble, It always has got the people of God into trouble, That is nothing new; it could not be otherwise, I think, in a sense, that it was Abel's separation that got him into trouble with Cain, I think one might say, speaking reverently, it was so with the Lord, Oh! it was His intense separation that man could not bear, He was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners". That was one reason why He suffered as He did at the hands of men, There is a wonderful testimony in separation, not in denunciation. Souls will get hardened under denunciation; you can easily get hard, and bitter, in connection with denunciation, but testimony is in separation, and as sure as we are marked by separation we shall be in the reproach that Jeremiah suffered from; and we know from the body of the book how he not only suffered reproach, but he suffered in every way from the hands of his enemies.
Well now, what I want to come to is this, Just as there was a revival in the days of Jeremiah, so there has been a revival in our day, and, let me say, it is God who brings about a revival, God brings about revivals in the history of His people, and He brings them
about for His own glory and for the blessing of His people, You always find, beloved, in a divine revival that God ever has respect to that which He has established, to that which He has set up, There may be but a very few who are directly, personally, involved in the revival, but I am bold to say that in every revival God has in view, not only the maintenance of the testimony which He has established, but He has in view the blessing of His people.
Well, God has been pleased to bring about a revival in our day, He has been pleased to recover the truth for His own glory, and for the blessing, not simply of the few that may be immediately and personally concerned in connection with the revival, but God has in view the whole of His people, I wish we could think of that, because sometimes it seems to me we act as if we thought we were kind of favourites -- a few select ones, and that God had some special interest in some few of us that He has not in all His people, Well, there is the revival; but now the question is, what is your relationship and mine concerning it? God brings about a revival, But then a great many people become connected with it in a mere outward way, It was so in times of old; it is so in more modern times, In the days of Martin Luther there was a revival, and I believe God brought it about, He brought it
about for His glory and for the blessing of His people, all His people; yet how many there are that have a mere outward, historical connection with it! They still speak of belonging to reformed bodies or reformed churches; but, alas! it is only like what the Lord says about Sardis, "a name that thou livest and art dead", It may be so now. I am not saying whether it is so or not, but it may be a mere historical, outward, doctrinal, or ecclesiastical connection. But what I am concerned about is this, beloved, have you and I in our souls a living, vital connection with that revival which, unquestionably, the Lord has brought about in these last days? I do not wish to undervalue any one or any thing, but I am inclined to the conviction that we have witnessed the last revival in the history of the assembly here, and it is a very serious question -- what is your relationship and mine to it? -- for, however God may have wrought, and by whomsoever He may have wrought, the revival has come, God has brought it about, and what I think is emphasised in the passage I have read to you is this -- that whilst the revival concerns the honour and glory of God, the glory and the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whilst it concerns the whole church of God, you and I have to be brought into it individually. God has not a remnant of the church before Him, Do you think He
has given up the church? Never, He will never give it up; the church, beloved, is just as much an object of interest and concern with God, and with the Lord Jesus tonight, as at any moment in its history.
But while it is true that the revival is not a matter that has for its object the blessing of an individual, or a number of individuals, but that in it God has the assembly in view, the honour and glory of God, the maintenance of the testimony of our Lord -- I repeat that I think what we should learn is, that you and I have got to be brought into it individually, We like large companies, and I am not averse to them; I am very thankful to the Lord for all that are here tonight; but we have to take this matter home to ourselves, each one of us, and we have to look it in the face, how far are we personally and individually in what God has brought about? My father, mother, brothers, sisters, may be in the meeting; but that will not do, If you are going to touch at all what God has wrought, if you are going to know the reality of it, you must know it for yourself: "Thy words were found, and I did eat them". These things test us as to our spiritual state, as to how it is with us in relation, to God, Jeremiah ate His words; he had an appetite for them: have you an appetite for the words of God -- for the testimony of
our Lord Jesus Christ? Then we see from what Jeremiah goes on to say that the question which was involved in the word of God's truth was identification of God's people with God Himself, ... You may say, Is not that true of the whole church? Yes. I grant it is; but have you got a personal experience with regard to it? Has there been wrought in your soul such a spiritual appetite for God's words, His truth and His testimony? Some people are where I was once myself, when one thought the whole thing -- the acme in Christianity, was in being saved, and I am not saving anything against safety, nor certainty, nor enjoyment; but I. am opposed to sitting down on the doorstep of Christianity, There are a great many religious people in these days, there are a number of people, Christians too, who think that the whole thing is to get a little blessing for themselves, But that is not all; of course we all have to learn our A B C; but that is not the end of it: "Thy words were found, and I did eat them". It is a very serious question -- have we learned for ourselves our identification with the Lord Jesus Christ as the prophet learned his identification with Jehovah God of hosts? That is the test. I am afraid that we somehow hide ourselves under the general statement of the truth we know. Oh! you say, I have seen wonderful
things about the assembly, But how have you seen them? Have you seen them through the light of the Spirit of God in connection with your own experience? If not, you are only the victim of a theory; it may be a very beautiful theory and quite correct, but that is all, Perhaps you have been brought up in the meetings -- have been converted, and you break bread, and I am thankful for it; but you will not mind if I ask you the question, have you really in your soul grasped this -- "for I am called by thy name", We did not all learn it so easy; some of us learnt it alone -- apart from teachers, or evangelists, and apart from tracts and books -- and it cost us something, and I want to press upon you the reality of it, Have you got the joy of it? We are told in the Old Testament that "the joy of the Lord is your strength", You ought to be happy; you and I are divinely entitled to be perfectly happy, and it is a great thing to be happy; you are so safe when you are happy divinely: "Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name",
Then there is what comes with the happiness; there is responsibility, There are many people of God who claim to see the truth, they like the truth and hold it; but what about the separation? If your separation is not equivalent
to your joy, I am rather suspicious about your joy. "I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation", Have you just left one thing and joined another? That will not do. "I sat alone". That will do, You have got to sit alone outside "the assembly of the mockers", In 2 Timothy 2, we read: "If therefore one shall have purified himself from these in separating himself from them, he shall be a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work". Then you flee youthful lusts, you do not do it in a crowd, yon do it alone, and you pursue righteousness, and faith, and love, and peace; you do that, then you are clear; and when you are clear you find a few more, and then you can walk with them, We want to have a personal experience on these lines at the present time; and now let me say this, lest I should be misunderstood Do not think I am speaking against fellowship -- against the joy and blessedness of walking with a few of your fellow believers in these days, God forbid, But I would like you to enjoy it when you get it -- and you will only enjoy it in the measure in which this has been made personally good and true in your soul.
And then, what was the indignation about? "for thou hast filled me with indignation", It
was about the Lord's name, The Lord is your joy, and you are indignant at the dishonour to Him, If you get indignant about persons you will get hard, and you will be most unlovely and unlovable, Jeremiah says, "because of thy hand", His indignation was for the Lord's dishonour; he could not go on with the mockers, It was his separation from them that got him into trouble; all manner of things were laid to his charge, Well, it seems from the appeal of Jeremiah that the Lord did not come in at once, I take it that the Lord allowed Jeremiah for a while to suffer, and so he makes a desperate appeal, He says: "Why is my pain perpetual", etc. Here is the answer -- "Therefore thus saith the Lord, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them", What wonderful words! I have no doubt that we need them in these days, "And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord, And I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible".
Of course these words of Jehovah could be, and no doubt were, taken in a literal way by Jeremiah -- all in perfect keeping with the character of that dispensation; but we must take them in a spiritual way, and let me say that in the answer of Jehovah taken in that way there is everything that the heart of the believer could desire. You can count on the Lord; you can count on His making you to stand; you can count upon Him for your spiritual protection and preservation, for your deliverance. I would like to encourage any trembling heart that has been brought face to face with a little of the consequences of What it is to be true to the Lord at a time like this. He will really cause you to "stand before the Lord" -- to have a standing, as it were, in His presence. "And if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth". Beware of indiscriminate condemnation or censure of anybody. Learn to discriminate; there is the precious and there is the vile; learn in your souls to discriminate spiritually. God encourages every one of us in that direction. He says: "Thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them". If the Lord has separated you, never set your face in the direction of what He has separated you from.
Well, beloved, I have spoken simply and personally. I have not thought of entertaining
or of pleasing you; but I have spoken with some desire of helping you, and I trust the Lord may really take up these feeble, scattered thoughts, and bring them home to you, that they may be a real blessing to you and to us all. Let me say to you, the measure of your helpfulness among your brothers and sisters in the Lord all hangs upon the measure in which in your own soul you answer to the Lord and are found in intelligent response to His mind. Remember there is the privilege, there is the joy, and then, on the other side, there is the responsibility of separation -- of being apart from everything that would dishonour His blessed name, by which name we have been called.
Galatians 1:15, 16; Galatians 4:4, 5, 26, 27, 6, 7; Ephesians 1:3 - 7
It will not be very difficult, beloved friends, in the light of the scriptures we have read, to understand what is in our hearts at this time. We desire to bring before you in connection with the scriptures read (though not confining ourselves to them) the subject of sonship. I feel the greatness and importance of the subject, and how little I am qualified to open it out, and, at the same time, one feels the limitations of our present time.
What I desire, in the first place, is to attempt to spew you from the scriptures, especially the New Testament scriptures, what I might term the origin of sonship, and in connection with the apprehension of this I think we shall be brought to see something of the character of it, something of the significance and meaning of sonship.
In the first place, I think the real origin of sonship is the relationships and affections existing between divine Persons in the Godhead. I speak particularly with regard to the Father and the Son; I think every one of us
must feel that if we are going to understand anything of scripture, anything of the truth of Christianity, we must begin with God, and we must begin with the revelation that God has been pleased to make of Himself in the Person of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ; and I am increasingly persuaded, as to myself, that it is most important that we should start there. Now I may say things that are very simple, but I believe they are important, and need to be clearly apprehended in our souls; and I would make this remark -- that when you come to the revelation of God in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ, what you come to see is this -- that in the revelation of God there has come to light the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the way in which God has revealed Himself is in connection with the relationships and affections that have existed from all eternity between divine Persons. I trust I speak soberly and carefully, and that I shall not say anything that would lead anybody to think that in respect of these things there is any ground given for mere intellectual speculation we are shut up, beloved friends, to the revelation of God as given us in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, with regard to the Spirit, there is a simple statement in Mr. Darby's translation,
in the Gospel of John (chapter 15: 26), about the Spirit, We are told that the Spirit proceedeth forth (now mark!) from with the Father, Thus you see the blessed Spirit in all His wonderful ministry, whether it is on the side of the revelation of God, or whether it is on our side -- our apprehension and appreciation, or, you may say, our entrance into the revelation of God, you see how the Spirit of God Himself stands inseparably connected with the relationship subsisting between the Father and the Son, Well, you can only speak of the Father and the Son according to what has been revealed, and what is really written in the scriptures, To pretend to know one jot or one tittle outside what is recorded in the scriptures would be a vain pretension and would simply indicate that one has some confidence in one's own mind apart from that which is written, We have the wonderful revelation in chapter 1: 18 of John's gospel -- "No one hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him", In that wonderful verse comes to light something of the truth of the relationship between the Father and the only-begotten Son, who subsists and has ever subsisted in the Father's bosom, and, may I say, the use of the word "bosom" not only points out the relationship, but points out
the affections existing between the Father and the Son in such relationship, for the bosom, beloved friends, is used in scripture as a figure of speech to indicate the home of affection, and in this case it conveys the thought of the home of divine and holy reciprocal affections subsisting between the Father and the Son -- all the Father's love to the Son and the Son's love to the Father, I am going carefully, and a little slowly, but I want you to get hold of this wonderful subject, What we find is this -- we have been speaking of the revelation of God in the Person of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, but in speaking of this the fact of incarnation is, of course, involved; and incarnation, as simply as it can be stated in the light of scripture, is the fact of a divine Person, an eternally-existing Person, who is described as the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, that divine Person has taken upon Him the form of man, the condition of man, To put it in the exact language of scripture, chapter 1: 14 of John's gospel states "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father), full of grace and truth", Whenever He is viewed in scripture as having taken upon Him the condition of man, His personal and distinctive title is the "Son of God", The title
Son of God does not describe Him as a divine Person in eternal relationship with the Father; it describes that same divine Person as a Man down here, as a Man born in time, for when He was brought into this world the Father salutes Him, "Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee". Every thought of begetting, or of having been begotten, must be put out of your mind when you conceive of Him as a divine Person in eternal relationship with the Father; the reasoning of theology is fatally false and misleading; theologians have said that He was eternally begotten before all ages by the Father; it is nothing but confusion; it is as a Man, beloved friends, that we have the account of His generation in time, Then it was that God said to Him: "Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee"; and we know from the opening of the Gospel of Luke, when the angel Gabriel had that wonderful interview with the Virgin Mary, how he said to her in response to her beautiful expression of wonderment as to how this could be: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest overshadow thee, wherefore the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God", Luke 1:35.
Now to speak in a very simple way -- a very direct way: in that blessed Person -- the Son of God who was begotten by the power of God --
by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin, we have, as to His actual being here in time, the beginning of sonship. Wonderful men had been here, men owned and used of God; it has always been a marvel to me to read of certain men in the Old Testament scriptures: I am not losing sight of the peculiar character of Christianity, and of what we are brought into in Christianity, but take, for instance, a man like Daniel as the Holy Ghost presents him to us, one feels how small one is in the presence of such a man; but, beloved friends, never had there been such a Man in this world before as that One born of the virgin -- begotten in the womb of the virgin by the overshadowing power of the Highest -- of the Holy Ghost, There never will be such another as He, We have read, "for ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus"; but that Man is not a son of God, He is not one of the sons, He is the Son of God, He, as born into this world, was "the Son of God"; God stood in a relationship to Him as Man that He never stood in to any other, and never will, He is the Son of God; and I am sure the Spirit of God would lead us to give Him His proper pre-eminence; He would produce even in our minds, as well as in our hearts, thoughts and feelings in relation to Himself as He would to none other, Now it is in Him you have the
beginning, the setting forth of what sonship is, and I think the gospels help you. I am not taking account of the distinctions between Matthew and Mark and Luke and John; there are distinctions, important distinctions, but you may read the four gospels just as they stand, and if you keep your eye upon that blessed Person you may learn the truth of sonship in Him as in no other. There was in Him -- in that Man; not only the revelation -- the perfect expression of all that God is as Father, as Son, and as Spirit in all those wonderful divine relationships and affections, but there was more than that, there was in that Person, that same blessed Man, the perfect setting forth of sonship -- that is, of what man is in relation to God; man in the knowledge of God; man walking in all the light of what God is; perfectly answering to it, the Object of the Father's affection, and the One too in whom responsive affection is fully set forth. I am not drawing your attention to anything new; it has often been said that whenever the Lord addresses God, whether in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, it is never under the name of God; the only instance of that is on the cross where He was making atonement -- where it was a question of meeting the claims and maintaining the rights of God as such, sin being in question, but apart
from that it is always "Father". God, as God, may speak of responsibility -- of judgment, but not the Father. That word is a word of holy and divine affection, a word of grace, beyond all human thought. He always said Father; He ever walked in the sense of that relation ship with God. In Hebrews 1 we have: "I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son". Was not that made good? How He walked in all the light, and peace, and joy of it! There was in His blessed heart, as Man, an unvarying response to all the Father's love, and to all the peace, all the joy of it. Peace and joy form the atmosphere in which that blessed name of Father is known, and in all the unclouded light of the Father's love, and all the peace and joy that belongs to it, He walked as man down here.
I have quoted it, but I will quote just once more, John 1:14. It says: "And we have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father, full of grace and truth". As it has often been said, He found nothing in manhood. Though truly a man, manhood never contributed to Him. He brought everything into manhood, as a divine Person taking His place in manhood, the distinguishing glory of His manhood derived from what belonged to Him as a divine Person in the Godhead in relationship with the Father.
Now that is sonship. Sonship is an integral part of Christianity. Sonship is not presented as a privilege dependent upon spiritual attainment on the part of Christians; it belongs to the wonderful revelation of God in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God -- it is set forth in Him. It is as wide as redemption is. (See Galatians 1:16.) "To reveal his Son in me, that I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations". All that is set forth in Him (as another has said) is for every man -- righteousness, life, sonship. God has no other thought for man, save what is set forth in that Man. Hence the Son of God is preached, and what is set forth in Him is God's mind for every man. But I go further. In speaking of those who believe, I can say, "Ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus". There is no other position now for Christians -- it belongs to Christianity; the place of sons is given to us and no other.
I think all would readily admit that the highest unfolding of the truth of Christianity is found in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Did you ever take account of that expression in connection with the prayer of the apostle, beginning with chapter 1: 15? He prays for three things -- the first is, that we might know what is the hope of the calling of God (he addresses "God and Father", not "Father and
God". In Ephesians we are not in John, we are in Paul, and so it is the "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"); then the second thing he prays for is that we might know what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints; but look at the third -- that we may know what is the surpassing greatness of His power towards its. Is that to a few Christians? -- a few that might be taken account of as "young men"or "fathers"? (1 John 2) No, it is "towards us who believe". Is not that lovely? I want to cheer you tonight, and I pray that the Spirit of Clod may give the answer in your soul to what is really true of you -- that you are one of the sons of God. There is nothing else -- nothing lower for you. Would I make light of the Spirit's work in us -- would I make light of spiritual attainment? God forbid. I take great account of the distinctions in 1 John 2, between the children, the young men, and the fathers; the fathers are characterised as those who have known Him from the beginning. That is the result of the Spirit's work, but, beloved, you are one of God's sons. Do not look within to learn what sonship is; look at the Son of God -- look at that Man, and then take account of yourself as one of God's sons. "We are all the sons of God by" what? -- by experience, by attainment?
Oh no, it is "by faith in Christ Jesus", Have you faith in Him? Well, He is the Son of God, and He is the measure of everything in Christianity, If we speak about the Spirit's work, let me say the work of the Spirit of God in you and in me does not proceed on the ground of speculation, or of questioning or of doubting, Do you say, "I would like to know what it is to be in the good of sonship"? Are you sure that you would like that? Well, let me tell you then that there is One who desires it for you more than you do, He wants you to be in the good of it, But the Spirit of God is not going to work in your soul or in mine on the ground of unbelief, He works on the ground of faith -- on the ground of our believing. Now let me ask, is it clear to you tonight that you are one of the sons of God? If sonship belongs to you, all the blessedness of it, whatever is connected with it, whatever attaches to it, belongs to you, What was the gospel Paul preached in Acts ix,? "And straightway ... be preached Jesus, that he is the Son o f God", That was the first note of it, and Paul never preached below that; he might emphasise this official title, or that, with regard to this wonderful work, but the first note of it was that Jesus is the Son of God.
Then, as we read just now, in Galatians 1, he speaks of his own experience, how it pleased
God to separate him from his mother's womb, and called him by His grace, to reveal His Son in him, God did that, God revealed His Son, that is not the Father revealing His only-begotten Son, who is in the Father's bosom; but God, as God, revealed His Son -- God's Son, in the apostle; and what for? "That I may announce him as glad tidings among the nations", That was the gospel that had been announced in Galatia; the glad tidings announced to them were the glad tidings that Jesus is the Son of God, A Man? Yes; but oh, another kind of Man: a Man, beloved, that lived in the sense, not only of relationship -- so that, as Man here, He could speak of God always as His Father -- but He ever lived in the sense of the Father's love, and there was in Him a full response to that love.
Well now, we are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus; and what does that involve? Why, that you are in such a relationship with God, that you so know God, that your whole being is lit up with the light of God, and that in your heart there is response to that love, The "sons" speak a language of their own; they speak one language, a language common to the sons -- "Abba, Father". Do you speak it? "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God"; we are apt to take that out of its context, and connect it with our
responsible life in flesh, but it goes right on, "For ye have not received a spirit of bondage again for fear, but ye have received a spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father", "Abba, Father" is the response from a heart that knows God as Father, and knows all that wonderful love that fills the Father's heart and is responsive to it, That is sonship. Hence, you see, the difference between Galatians and Ephesians; it is not that there is one truth of sonship in Galatians and another truth of it in Ephesians -- it is the same truth of sonship in Galatians as in Ephesians; the difference is not in the truth, but in the way the Spirit of God applies the truth, The Galatians had had a good start; the right kind of gospel had been preached to them, the best preached gospel that ever was preached -- that Jesus is the Son of God, and they had got the Spirit; they had had a fine start; but something had happened since; those Judaising teachers had got in among them, and they were thereby hindered spiritually, they were taken up with that which is of the world -- with "beggarly elements", and what else? With the flesh, These go together; and in turning aside from the gospel, and from what properly belongs to sonship, they had turned aside to the "beggarly elements" of the world, and to a religious revival of the flesh; and now the Spirit of
God through the apostle uses the truth of sonship to recover them, and to deliver them completely from all that under the power of which they had fallen ... . and how wonderfully he uses the truth to recover them, The leaven of Galatianism, which was introduced in Galatia, has been among the saints of God from that day to this, So the Spirit of God brings in the truth of sonship to recover them, and He tells them, "Ye are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus", And that is not all; He tells them that they were not only the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, but because they are sons God had sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, Do you know what really recovers people in this present day? Do you know what delivers the saints from everything that is of the character of Galatianism? It is their waking up to the truth not only of what they are, but of what they have got, He says, "Ye are all the sons of God"; and when did they come into that? When they believed on the Son of God; when they believed the gospel that came to them; and then because they were sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father No wonder the apostle felt so keenly about them! How the enemy had come in through these Judaisers! -- had really bewitched them and hindered them, when they
might have been going on in all the joy and in all the freedom, in all the heavenly freedom of sonship!
Well, we may say a little more about the Lord Jesus Christ as a Man here, as the Son of God: what do you find? Why, you find He is the heavenly Man; He is the second Man out of heaven; and so His connections were not with anything here; His connections were in heaven even while He was here; and so, beloved, as sons of God we are not connected with Jerusalem here, Jerusalem above, which is free, is our mother. What would have been the use of those men coming front Jerusalem to Galatia and talking to the saints there about circumcision or keeping the law if they had been in the light and the good of sonship? What is the use of telling me that I ought to join this or that down here if I am in the light of sonship? I do not want to join anything.
What a wonderful thing it is to be in the faith of the gospel that Jesus is the Son of God! We receive adoption or sonship on the ground of redemption, but we receive it as gift from God, a gift which is nothing short of sonship! If you were not a son, you would not be in accord with the Lord Jesus Christ -- the Son of God: you would not be in agreement with Him, there would be disparity on your part;
but there is none; He is the heavenly One, and He will always be the heavenly One; and we are heavenly ones, Is He the Son of God? We are all sons of God with Him, Did He as a Man live in the unclouded, unsullied consciousness of God's love as Father? He did, and that is your privilege and mine.
I am not opening it out fully; I have not the time to take up its connections, for there are certain connections which come to light in Galatians; you find amongst them new creation, We have to be the subjects of new creation to come into these things, Of course, the Lord Jesus Christ (I would say it reverently) did not need new creation, That "holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God", but we come in on the ground of redemption, and in us sonship involves new creation, and that is the only thing that counts; circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing.
Now there is the same blessed truth of sonship in Ephesians, but it does not regard any present or actual spiritual condition on the part of the saints, Sonship in Ephesians is presented in the full light of all the purpose of God, and not only presented in the full light, but presented in connection with the full scope of those purposes of God ... . that is why I read those verses: "Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ: according as he has chosen us in him before the world's foundation, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love: having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself", (Ephesians 1:3 - 5), Sonship there comes out in the most marvellous way -- in the largest way marked us out beforehand for sonship; it goes back before your history, back before the entire history of man in responsibility, I have no doubt that it is in the light of this that you have it in Proverbs 8, although, of course, there it is anticipative, but there it is.
Now all this blessed light is brought to bear upon us, and I would that we might take account of sonship in this connection, because it sets the soul in such a large place, it sets you in the holy freedom of sonship, not simply, as in Galatians, to deliver you from Judaism, or the beggarly elements of the world, or the flesh in a religious way, but it is brought to bear on your soul to set you before God in all the greatness, the magnificence and largeness of the purposes of God, It looks on in Ephesians to the age to come, it looks on to that wonderful day of display; but it is the light of it now, the largeness of it now, filling our souls, ... Do not take it up doctrinally, God would have
you to be in the good of it, in the good of what we are, and God would set us in the present light, and love, and heavenly liberty of it all, and in that way the Lord would maintain us here, and we should prove, not simply what comes to light in Galatians, as setting us free, as delivering us from everything and anything the enemy would bring in (the man in the flesh, or any connection with the beggarly elements of this world), but the Lord would make it good in us in connection with that which is heavenly, with all that is divine, and with all that is eternal, It is an anticipation, of course, of what we shall be in the actuality of -- but the blessed thing is, God has brought it before us in all this wonderful way that we might be in the reality of sonship even now.
I trust the Lord may interest our hearts in it vitally -- not merely our minds, May He engage our hearts in all the present light of it for His name's sake!
John 17:1 - 3
The Spirit, beloved friends, of the Lord Jesus had reached the very end of His sojourn here; it is in this chapter that, speaking to the Father, He says: "I am no longer in the world, ... I come to thee". Not only has His public ministry and all His connection with the people closed, as we know in chapter 12, but from that point the Lord is seen exclusively in the company of His own and occupied with them; there has been the passover supper and what we speak of as the Lord's supper (though it is not brought to light in John) in that upper room, and the Lord has washed the disciples' feet, and has spoken to them in a very wonderful way, We have what is recorded in chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16 of John's gospel, He has no more to say directly to His own, and now just before they leave that upper room and start across the brook for the garden of Gethsemane the Lord turns to the Father; and here, though He is not speaking, as we have said, to His disciples, He speaks to the Father in their presence,
they are privileged to listen while He pours out His heart to the Father; so that I have no doubt the Lord intended, not only those who personally surrounded Him at that moment to hear what He said to the Father, but He intended that we should hear it, The very fact of the Spirit of God having put these wonderful words on record is proof that the Lord intended that we should hear them, and I have no doubt, beloved, that He intended that we should understand them, and that our hearts should be greatly impressed by them, What a wonderful privilege for us as Christians here together to be thus permitted to take account of these utterances from the lips of the Lord Jesus! It seems to me the very fact that He addresses the Father gives a peculiar, a unique significance and importance to His words, I cannot conceive that anything could be of greater importance for us as Christians than to know the very heart of the Lord Jesus and to know the desires of His heart as poured out to His Father, and I trust there is desire in our hearts at this time that we may not only know what the heart of the Lord Jesus is, but that we may really desire to respond to His heart.
The opening words -- not yet His own utterance, but the words of the Spirit of God, as recorded for us, are significant: we are apt to
read lightly or carelessly; our poor minds are not always under the direct power of the Spirit of God; we have our life and interests here, and these things occupy our minds too much, but let me just call your attention in a very simple way to the beginning of the chapter "These words spake Jesus", ... We often sing, "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds", (Hymn 54) and the heart does delight in the music of that precious name.
We must not forget that we are speaking from the Gospel of John, At the close of the gospel -- chapter 20 (chapter 21, though just as much inspired as any other chapter, is in the nature of an appendix), referring to the signs, of which there are seven recorded in the book, the Apostle John says, "But these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in his name", The Spirit brings Jesus before us in the Gospel of John as the Christ and as the Son of God, It might perhaps be said that as the Christ it brings Him before us in a certain official way, in connection with His wonderful office and character as Messias, Christ, anointed Man, God's Messias, God's Christ, God's anointed Man; but when it adds "the Son of God" I think it brings Him personally before us as a Man in relation to God .... "Son of man" (and
that is personal too) speaks of Him as a Man in relation to man, but as "Son of God" -- while He is still a Man, it is His relation to God; that Man is God's Son, I want to bring this before your souls, because I think it is very important that we should see that in this wonderful outpouring of His heart to the Father, the Lord is speaking as a Man, You will understand, I trust, there is no question in our mind with regard to His being a divine Person; I love to think of chapter 1: 18, it is such a wonderful testimony to His glory as a divine Person in the Godhead: "No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared hirer", Well, He was ever that, never less than that; He could not be (may I say it reverently) more than that, and He was never less than that; but still, here in chapter 17, He is speaking to the Father as a Man, and He says, "Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee". Now, as a divine Person, how could He ask to be glorified? As a divine Person He is God equally with the Father and with the eternal Spirit; nothing could be given Him as a divine Person, because as a divine Person everything was His necessarily; but He says, "Father, glorify thy Son"; He asks the Father to glorify Him as a Man, It is true
He was entitled to it, but the wonderful thing in John is that He will receive nothing, except from the hands of the Father; so He says, "Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee", From the very first step of His path here to the last step His heart had been set on the glory of the Father, as He says a little further down, "I have glorified thee on the earth". ... He had come forth from the Father and had come into the world, and He was now about to leave the world and return to the Father; but, beloved, He is just as much set upon glorifying the Father now that He is glorified by the Father, as He was in the days of His flesh down here; so He says, "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee". Then He continues: "As thou hast; given him authority over all flesh" -- and the word means more than authority, it means one who has the right and title as well as the power. The Lord in His death has established His right and claim, though He speaks of it as given to Him of the Father, and that is in perfect keeping with this gospel. Has He not by the grace of God "tasted death for everything"? Did He not give Himself a ransom for all? Has He not died for all Yes, He Was; and He has the right, title and claim, based upon that wonderful death, yet He attributes it to the Father. He says, "As
thou hast given him authority over all flesh, that as to all that thou hast given to him, he should give them life eternal" -- not to everybody, it is to "all thou hast given to him"; it is in principle, I might say, what answers to Matthew 13. He buys the field, but it is in view of the treasure hidden in the field, and so He has got power over all flesh, but it is in view of giving eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him.
Now I am coming to my present point. I am going to attempt to spew from scripture what eternal life is, You may say it is a bold attempt, I do not know that we should think so; surely we may well believe what the Lord says, and He tells us what it is, He says "This is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent", You may hear even God's people sometimes talking about what they feel, or what they are trying to do, or what they are aiming to be, but that is not it. "This is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God" No doubt that personal pronoun -- "thee" goes back to the word "Father" in the first verse. He is speaking to the Father as such, and that word "thee" stands for the Father, who is "the only true God", If we speak of divine Persons in distinction we may speak of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost. Christian baptism is in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; but note the expression, "the only true God". It is not here a question of distinction between divine Persons in the Godhead; the Son, of course, speaks to the Father in the consciousness of His own relationship with Him, but as regards men generally He is "the only true God"; it is a question of the manner or character in which God has been pleased to reveal Himself. Referring for a moment again to chapter 1: 18, it begins "No one hath seen God at any time", then it goes on, "the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father"; that distinguishes Him as a divine Person in the Godhead, distinguishes Him from the Father. He is said to be in the bosom of the Father, hence the One who is in the Father's bosom is viewed in distinction from the Father in whose bosom He is. But it is not that here. "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him". Who has He declared? He has declared God, and if He, as Man, has declared God, He has declared God according to the relationship in which He stands to the Father in the Godhead, but also according to the relationship in which He stands as Man here to the God whom He has declared; so He
says: "And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent".
I would like to endeavour, for a few moments, to speak very simply and as plainly as the Lord may enable me, about eternal life -- what it is. It is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ -- that blessed Man, who is ever viewed in this gospel as a Man here, the One sent of the Father. The word for "know" here (I add a word, because I understand there are three Greek words translated as "know" in our authorised version) is not the word which expresses "consciousness", but it is the word which expresses certain objective knowledge. For instance -- "I know whom I have believed"; there is implied there a certain intimate acquaintance with the person. So here: "And this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent".
Now the difference between Paul and John is this -- Paul always speaks of "God and Father", but John speaks of "Father and God". It is just the difference between the two sides of the truth, and characteristic of the ministry of each respectively. For instance, take 1 Corinthians 8; it says, speaking of the heathen: "For and if indeed there are those
called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are gods many, and lords many), yet to us there is one God, the Father ... and one Lord, Jesus Christ". As has often been said, it is not a question there of the divinity or the true deity of the Lord Jesus as such, it is a question of the wonderful way in which God has come out in the revelation of Himself, and the relative position taken by God on the one hand (the Father), and the Lord Jesus Christ on the other hand -- there is one God, even the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Now that is the truth here, only John reverses Paul's order, or you may say Paul reverses John's order. Paul, as we have said, speaks of God and Father: John of Father and God. Here it is the Son of God, and it is the One of whom God said when He was born in this world, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee", and so in John the Father comes first always. Take the language of the Lord in John 20, in the message He sent through Mary Magdalene: "Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God", So that eternal life (let me repeat it again) is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ the sent One of the Father; it is not the knowledge of divine Persons as such in their relationship to each
other as in the Godhead, I have always had a difficulty in my mind with regard to statements of that kind, and we have the words of the Lord Himself in Matthew 11, where He says, without any qualification: "No one knows the Son but the Father"; and what do you and I know of divine Persons as such in their relationships to each other in the Godhead? We know what has been brought out in revelation in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ; we know there is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost in the Godhead, but the Lord says (we refer again to Matthew 11), "nor does any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him", How can He say that of the Father? Because it is the Son who has come into incarnation, and it is in the Son incarnate that the Father is revealed and made known. Again, in John 10:14, the Lord says: "I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father", Do not think, beloved, that these precious words bring you and me into Godhead. Do not think even that it brings us into that circle of knowledge subsisting between divine Persons as such in the Godhead, It does bring us into a marvellous circle -- we are brought into the circle of knowing the Father as that Man -- the
Son of God -- knows Him, and we know that Son of God, that wonderful Man, as the Father knows Him. What a marvellous circle! That is eternal life. It is the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, but it is more than that, it is the knowledge of Jesus Christ as the Father's sent One. Why? Because in Jesus Christ as the Father's sent One you have not only the light of the perfect declaration of God, the perfect revelation of God in Him, as Man, but you have more than that, you have the perfect answer to it in Him as Man.
Now I apprehend, beloved (it is a very interesting point, though I can only just mention it, and it is peculiar to John), that salvation in John is a consequence of eternal life -- that is, salvation from the order o f things here. Let me give you a very well-known passage, John 10:9; "I am the door: if any one enter in by me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture", What do you enter into when you enter in by Him as the door? I should say that you enter into the sphere of eternal life. You enter into the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and more you enter into the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the sent One. I have not time to prove it by many quotations from John's writings, but you will find it to be so; salvation in the gospel of John follows in the train of eternal life. I think
our brother Mr. Raven said, as it has often been said as to the gospel, that salvation follows in the train of righteousness, Well, that is true; but in John's gospel salvation follows in the train of eternal life. Take chapter 3: 14, 15, the Lord's allusion to the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal", Then verse 16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal", Not a word about salvation yet, but now read verse 17 "For God has not sent his Son into the world that he may judge the world, but that the world may be saved through him", It is not a strange doctrine to scripture that salvation is the result of knowing God. There is a sort of intimation of it in the conversation of the Lord with the woman at the well in chapter 4 He said: "Ye worship ye know not what", There was no true knowledge of God; what did their whole system of worship amount to? Nothing, It had no basis, Then He says: "We worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews". There was the true knowledge of God there, hence there was salvation there. Take the Old Testament scriptures, Psalm 27"Jehovah is my
light and my salvation"; it is not that I am going to reach Jehovah as the result of light and salvation, but Jehovah is my light and my salvation. Salvation lies in the knowledge of God; it is as you come to know God that you enter into all the blessed results and consequences of knowing God. So with regard to eternal life, what you find in John's gospel is -- that those who have eternal life "shall not perish", The perishing is not future, but here and now, Eternal life guarantees you against perishing here.
Well now, that is how these things are put in John's gospel; but before I pass on to those who receive eternal life and what is involved in it I would like to speak a word about the Giver. In the passage immediately before us the Lord Jesus is the Giver"that as to all that thou hast given to him, he should give them life eternal"; so in chapter 10: 28, "And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand", the Lord Jesus as the Son of God gives it, and yet God gives it, Take 1 John 5:11 "This is the witness, that God has given to us eternal life"; then he adds, "and this life is in his Son", "He that has the Son has life", God primarily is the Giver of eternal life, but He does not give it apart from Christ; and speaking again of Christ as the
Son of God, He is said in Romans 5:21 and Romans 6:23 to be the Giver of eternal life; so that He may be spoken of as the Giver, or the gift may be attributed to God. There is an interesting passage in John iv, in that connection; you remember at the beginning of the conversation, after the Lord had laid the walls of prejudice in that woman's heart flat to the ground, He said, "If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water"; it is not exactly that the living water is eternal life, it is the Spirit; but it is in view of eternal life, because He says again, "But whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life", That is bow it is presented; it is God's gift, and it is also the gift of the Son of God, He has that distinguishing honour and glory of being the Giver of the living water; you and I may receive it; the living water as such may spring within us, or may flow out from us, as the Lord says in chapter vii,; but nowhere are we said to be the givers of it, we are the recipients of it.
Well now, who receives eternal life? The scripture's answer is this: "Whosoever believeth
in him", I apprehend there has been a mistake as to this: people have asserted that because they have believed they have got it. One thing is very certain, that if you have never believed, you have not got it, that is very clear; it is perfectly true that none but those who believe get it; that is, the believer is the kind of person who gets it, and if you are a believer, you have a right -- a title to it. I admit that gladly, but let me say, we have got very loose ideas about believers in these days; a believer, as spoken of in the Gospel of John, is one who believes on the name of the only-begotten Son of God. If you read the Epistle of John you are bound to own the distinctions -- "whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God"; but what about the man that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? -- "This is the victory which has gotten the victory over the world, our faith. Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" I just want to say this, lest we should be carried away with taking up scriptural expressions loosely; in the Gospel of John a believer is one who believes in that Person who is none other than the only-begotten Son of God. Of Him as born in time God said, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee", It was of that One that the angel
Gabriel said to the Virgin Mary,. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest overshadow thee, wherefore the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God", Such a Man this world had never seen, had never known; He was the "Second Man out of heaven",
Now it is the one who believes on the name of that Man who is the only-begotten. Son -- the one who has the faith of the Son of God, he is the one who has title to eternal life, he is the one who gets it. How does he get it? What is the great gain of believing on the only-begotten Son of God? It is to get the Holy Ghost. "This he said concerning the Spirit, which they that believed on him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified", (chapter 7: 39). The Lord there anticipates Pentecost. That is the next step.
But we were speaking of how we get eternal life, We have light, and, I say, loose thoughts about this, because we do not give the blessed Spirit of God His place. It is not enough to have received the Spirit; we must give Him place. See what the Lord says about the living water. Speaking generally, we may say that the living water is the Spirit, but it is the Spirit in that special character; so He says, "The water which I shall give him shall become
in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life", Then see Paul's language in the Epistle to the Galatians: "for whatever a man shall sow, that also shall he reap, For he that sows to his own flesh, shall reap corruption from the flesh; but he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life", Every intelligent Christian would surely own they have the flesh in them: "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; but having the flesh in me need not issue in corruption; it is he that soweth to the flesh shall of his own flesh reap corruption, But now see the other side: "he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting". There is not only the indwelling of the Spirit of God, we must leave room for the blessed activities of the Spirit of God, And that is how the believer comes into the present good of eternal life. I am speaking of eternal life as a present blessing, I know there are scriptures about it in connection with the future, We read of the hope of eternal life, but we are speaking now from John, and John speaks of the present gift of it and the present title to it, and the present good of it in connection with the activities of the Holy Spirit. That leads me to the next point -- what is involved in it, I mean in the present possession of it, There has been such a way (and we
have suffered immensely from it) of assuming that because I am a believer I have got it; but the fact is, while we have loudly asserted our possession of eternal life, we have hardly been able to tell what it is, or to give any account of it, Generally speaking, if people claim to possess things, they are supposed to know something about the things they possess.
Well now, I want to speak of what is involved in eternal life, I want to speak most simply. Of course, you will understand that to begin with "you must be born anew". You could not speak of any one having eternal life who had not been born anew, that is going far back. "Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God"; he can have no spiritual perception of it, no understanding or apprehension of it. The first thing then is that you are born anew, The next is that you have got faith in the Lord Jesus Christ -- the faith of the gospel, that He was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification, To revert again to John -- you have got the faith of that Person, the Son of God, "That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name", You have received the Spirit, But what does that involve? I want to shew you that after the reception of the Spirit there are the activities of the Spirit, There is the
springing up; or, to change the figure, turn to Galatians vi,, where there is the figure of the sowing and reaping, Now you know that in the figure a great deal takes place between sowing the grain and reaping it, there is the germination down in the ground, which you do not see; then you begin to see the little green shoot coming up from the ground, and you may take account of its subsequent growth, there are all the stages of the growth on to the reaping. The sowing and the reaping are here and now. We may be in the good of eternal life now. May we not know the Father -- the only true God? May we not know Jesus Christ as the sent One? Who could surrender that? But I want to shew you now what is involved in these blessed activities of the Spirit. In Romans vi, towards the close we read: "But now, having got your freedom from sin, and having become bondmen to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life", If you are a believer on the Son of God no one can question your title, but what about the present enjoyment o f it ? People want to read a whole lot of time into that word -- "end"; but it is not time, it is moral order, So again referring once more to the first Epistle of John, what characterises the man that believes that Jesus is the Son of God is that he has got the victory over the world. The world, alas! has got the
victory over many, but in that man's ease the scales are turned, he is not under the power of the world, he has got the victory over the world, We need to contend for the reality of things, That is what is involved in it, I would not discourage you, beloved, I would that I might be enabled to encourage you, but I would not encourage you in anything that is not scriptural, Have you got the faith? Has God given you His Spirit? Well, you are on the way. But are there now within you the blessed activities of the Spirit? Are you in the present good and light and joy of eternal life? John says, in the beginning of his epistle, "These things write we unto you", not to make you unhappy, but "that your joy may be full", If you want the fulness of joy you may have it; it is all in eternal life; there is not a cloud there; you might be poor or rich; eternal life knows nothing of these things; the very things that naturally we seek to avoid and evade are sometimes very suitable conditions for our realisation of it in all its blessedness.
I only have one more word to say. I have just one more point to touch on, I cannot enlarge on it, but just a word as to the sphere of eternal life, The blessing itself, involving as it does an entirely new order of things, lies outside of everything here; it is beyond death, in the resurrection sphere. It is a faith-sphere
"over Jordan" (as we sometimes say), That is the sphere of it, and as we experimentally reach that sphere in our souls we enter into and enjoy it in the power of the Spirit. "The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life",
But while this is so, yet it is a blessing that belongs to us while we are on earth as being in a scene where sin and death are, and in which lawlessness and idolatry prevail on every hand, and outside all this eternal life is to be enjoyed here and now, Thus for Christians it belongs more to the present than to the future. I do not say that we shall lose it when we go to heaven. We shall not lose then any blessing that we have here; but the term -- eternal life -- will have no force in heaven. It is for the present it is given to us, and it is while we are on earth that we are in the enjoyment of it.
It is important and helpful to distinguish the blessing of eternal life from the calling of sonship. The latter belongs to heaven, and for the full enjoyment of it we must go to heaven. We have the light of it now, and we have received the spirit of it by which we may taste the blessedness of it; but still we await the actuality of it, and this will be when we go to heaven.
I do not mean to convey in any way that
eternal life is earthly, but only that scripture connects the blessing with us as on earth. Eternal life is not a blessing distinctive of Christianity, for Israel will have it in the age to come, The "righteous" in Matthew 25 "go away into life eternal",
Well, I have overstepped the time, May the Lord stir up our hearts, beloved, Have you the knowledge that we have spoken of -- the knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, the Father's sent One? "This is life eternal -- to know thee -- the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent",
Haggai 1, 2
According to the positive statement of the Spirit of God in chapter 15 of the Epistle to the Romans, these prophecies by Haggai were written for our instruction. We are told there that "as many things as have been written before" (that really covers all the Old Testament scriptures) "have been written for our instruction"; and I am satisfied, beloved brethren, that there is very important and much-needed instruction for us in this Book of Haggai the prophet. I think the circumstances in which the earthly people of God were at the time of Haggai's prophecies are similar to those which surround us at the present time; or we might put it the other way and say, that the circumstances surrounding us at this present time, as God's people, are very similar to those existing at the time of Haggai the prophet.
God had wonderfully interposed in connection with His people: God had almost, as it were, departed from His usual ways; He had stirredRESURRECTION AND ASCENSION
THE HEART OF THE LORD JESUS AT THE MOMENT OF ENTIRE REJECTION
WITHDRAW, FLEE, AND PURSUE
SEPARATION -- IDENTIFICATION WITH THE LORD
SONSHIP
THE BLESSING OF ETERNAL LIFE
THE HOUSE OF GOD -- "CONSIDER YOUR WAYS"