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Into the Heart of God

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1964,

Vols. 42-6 through 43-6.

The original included the following statement:

(The following messages are from the series given at the conference in Switzerland this year [1964]. It is printed here practically as it was spoken. In due course we expect that the whole series will be published in book form.)

Contents

Chapter 1 - Oneness With God in His Repudiation of This World

Chapter 2 - Oneness With God in a Crisis Regarding the Natural Man

Chapter 3 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything

Chapter 4 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything (Continued)

Chapter 5 - Oneness With God in His Purpose

Chapter 6 - Oneness With God in His Method and in His Power

Chapter 7 - Oneness With God in His Passion

About the Conference

Chapter 1 - Oneness With God in His Repudiation of This World

NOTE. The following message is the first of one of the series given at the conference in Switzerland this year [1964]. It is printed here practically as it was spoken. In due course we expect that the whole series will be published in book form.

"Didst not thou, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever?" (2 Chronicles 20:7).

"But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend" (Isaiah 41:8).

"And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God" (James 2:23).

We have announced that in these evening gatherings our subject is going to be: "Into the Heart of God", and when we speak about the heart of God, we mean friendship with God, for friendship means that the one has entered into the heart of the other. It is a matter of heart relationship.

It is a wonderful thing that that is possible between man and God! It was God who said of David that he was "a man after my heart" (Acts 13:22), and we have read that three times in the Bible Abraham was called 'the friend of God'. Indeed, God Himself said of him: "Abraham, my friend" which means that he had entered into the heart of God. That entering was progressive. It did not happen all at once, but was a lifelong movement, a spiritual pilgrimage which ended in the heart of God. It had eight distinct stages - there were eight different movements in the life of Abraham which ended right there in the heart of God, and we shall hope to consider some of these stages.

First of all, however, let us remind ourselves that the Word of God reveals that there is a spiritual pilgrimage. Peter said: "Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims" (1 Peter 2:11), and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews put it in this way: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own... But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly" (Hebrews 11:13,14,16). You see what that says: They all died in faith not having received the promises. They had seen them and greeted them from a long way off. All these heroes of faith mentioned in that eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews are still looking for a country, that is, waiting for their inheritance, and chapter twelve makes it quite clear that although they have left this earth, they are one with us in 'looking'. They "all died in faith, not having received the promises... God having foreseen some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect" (Hebrews 11:1,40. R.V. margin). So Abraham is still 'looking' with us for the heavenly country.

There is a whole group of New Testament words which describe the believer as a pilgrim and a stranger, and these many Greek words relate to people in the Roman Empire who had no settled abode anywhere. They were just visitors to the place. They had come to stay for a night, for a week, for a month, or for a year, but no matter how long they stayed, they did not belong to the place. They had no permanent residence there, and our New Testament is built upon that truth. All these Greek words are taken over and applied to Christians. When Peter said: "I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims", he did not say: 'Be pilgrims and sojourners' but 'You are'.

The first five books of the Bible are books of a pilgrimage. The Bible opens with man at home. God had made a home for man, and he was there with God in that home. It was called 'Paradise'; but man lost his home, was driven out from it, and he became a stranger, a homeless stranger, a displaced person. He was a wanderer in the earth and a foreigner to God's home, all because he was out of friendship with God. When that friendship broke down, man lost his home, and he has been a pilgrim and stranger in the earth ever since. There is no restful home for the soul of man in this world because the world is no friend of God. That is how the Bible begins, and then that truth is broken up, firstly in the case of Abraham. All through his life Abraham was a pilgrim. We are told that he lived in a tent, and he moved up and down the land with that tent. You may think it is all right to be in a tent for a week's holiday (although that depends upon circumstances) but I doubt whether there is anyone here who would like to spend their whole life in a tent. Abraham was one of those of whom it is written: "They are seeking after a country of their own" - a place which they could call 'home'.

We pass from Abraham to Israel, who for forty years of their life were pilgrims and strangers in a wilderness. God had promised them all a home, a rest at the end of the journey, but they never received that promise in their lifetime - "These all died in faith, not having received the promises". Even when they went into the land of promise they never had rest. Why was this so? Because they were in a world which God had rejected and repudiated, a world with which God was not in friendship, and a world which was no friend of God.

That brings us to our first stage in the spiritual pilgrimage, and we must look at other passages of Scripture.

"Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abraham, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees" (Genesis 11:27,28).

"Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him" (Genesis 12:1-4).

"And Terah look Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan" (Genesis 11:31).

God had said to Abraham: 'Get thee out of thy country, thy kindred, thy father's house, unto a land that I will give thee'. Many hundreds of years afterward Stephen said: "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran" (Acts 7:2). How I would like to stay here to tell you something about Ur of the Chaldees! What a great city it was, and what a wonderful civilisation existed right back there at that time! I would like, too, to tell you something about father Terah, and about his three sons, the eldest of whom was Abraham, and about the kind of life they were living in that great city; of how the son, Haran, died there, and of how Haran's son, Lot, joined himself to Uncle Abraham, but time will not allow us to talk about all that, however interesting it may be. We have to come to this first step into the heart of God.

God had said emphatically and precisely. "Get thee out"! In those words it is quite evident that God had repudiated the old world of Abraham, and, so far as he was concerned, had finished with it, and finished with it in finality. In effect, He said to Abraham: 'Now that is absolutely finished with for you'.

This marks the first step into the heart of God. God's heart was not in Chaldea, but outside of Chaldea.

Now mark carefully: this was not a stage in the spiritual journey, but a definite, basic step. There was a point at which one foot of Abraham was in Chaldea and the other was outside, and when he lifted that one foot and put it at the side of the other he had crossed the line. There was just a line between Chaldea and outside of Chaldea. In our New Testament language: between the world and outside of the world. It was intended by God to be absolute and final at that point. He was allowing no compromise - Abraham's heart had to go over the line toward the heart of God. All the phases and the stages will follow that. This basic decision and step will afterward be applied and tested all through his life. Many situations, many trials and many difficulties will arise to challenge that step, and every one of those circumstances will ask the question: Did you really mean it when you began? How far did you really mean it when you said that you were going all the way with God?

You see, there stands right at the beginning of the spiritual pilgrimage, which ends in the heart of God, this crisis: the crisis which is in these words of God - "Get thee out"! All God's intention and purpose are bound up with our reaction to that first command.

Perhaps many of you older Christians do not need this word, but there are a number of young people, and there may be some older in years who are young in the journey. What God is saying is this: If you are at all concerned with finding a place in the heart of God, this is where you must begin. You must come to this first step of oneness with God in His repudiation of this world.

You see, what we are concerned with is the heart of God, that is, friendship with God. It is said of Noah that in building the ark "he condemned the world" (Hebrews 11:7). It was not a matter of whether the world believed that it was being condemned. The fact is that it was a condemned world, and it was only a matter of time before the flood came and destroyed it. It was a good thing that there were eight persons in the heart of God! They escaped the coming judgment.

Jesus made this basic separation from the world when He was baptized, and used His baptism as a means of declaring to heaven, to men and to hell that His heart was separated unto God. At His baptism Jesus took sides with the heart of God against this world, and declared that His heart was not in this world - it was with the Father. Every Christian is supposed to be baptized. You may have different opinions as to what it is, how it should be, but if you are going to take Jesus as your example, and what the New Testament teaches on this matter, you have to recognize that baptism is a declaration that you have stepped over a line and that now your heart is wholly with God and out of the world. No sooner had Jesus been baptized than He began to be tested as to the step which He had taken. Those temptations in the wilderness by the devil were to test Him as to whether He meant what He had done. Satan offered Him all the kingdoms of this world and all the glory thereof, and the test was: Was the heart of Jesus out of the world or not? He stood faithfully to the position that He had taken and repudiated the world, and if you want to know what Jesus thought about the world you have only to read one chapter in the New Testament - the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel by John. There Jesus refers repeatedly to the world and prays that His disciples might be delivered from it. He said: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (John 17:16).

Now notice something: What was the world to which Jesus was referring? The only world that the disciples knew was the religious world, and that was the only world that Jesus lived in in the days of His flesh. What do you mean by the world? You see, it can be a very religious thing. There can be a lot of worldly religion - there can be as much of the world in religion as there is out of it. The world is a spirit, a mentality, a power. In one word, it is all that which is not in friendship with God.

God was no friend of that religious world in the days of Jesus. The world means independence from God, being able to get on without Him in its own way. It is self-centred, not God-centred; it is governed, deceived and blinded by Satan.

Now the point is just this: We shall never get anywhere in this spiritual pilgrimage until we have fully and finally settled this one question. One of the most painful things that we see is the way in which all young Christians do not go on with the Lord. They come to a point where they say that they are going with the Lord, they make a decision for the Lord, and there it stops. So many do not go any further than that - and here is all this immense purpose of God. They have only taken the negative side of His command and have not listened to the positive side: "Unto the land that I will shew thee..." ... 'I will make thee a blessing and thou shalt be a blessing' ... "in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed".

You see, God has called us 'out' for a mighty 'in'. He did not just say to Abraham "Get thee out"! The separation was governed by the great purpose of being made a mighty blessing to others.

One world is repudiated, but God does not believe in vacuums, so He must put another world in its place. Abraham was God's new beginning for a new world. He was called "the father of a multitude of nations" (Genesis 17:5). The father gives the character to the family, and the very first thing about the character of this man was that his heart was wholly set on God. If we are truly spiritual children of Abraham, we must take his character.

Well, that is where we begin, the first step in the spiritual pilgrimage to the heart of God. Whatever we may say about ourselves, in our faults and failures, may it be true of every one of us that we have a heart wholly for God, for this is the way that ends with God being able to say, of you and of me, "My Friend".

Chapter 2 - Oneness With God in a Crisis Regarding the Natural Man

"Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees... And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran. Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee" (Genesis 11:27,28,31,32; 12:1).

We are seeing in these messages that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage, and that the Christian is on a journey which begins in the world and ends in the heart of God. God's verdict on the life of Abraham was: "Abraham, my friend" (Isaiah 41:8), that friendship meaning that Abraham had really entered into the heart of God. We are seeing that this spiritual pilgrimage has eight steps and stages, and we have already seen that the first major step is in these words: "Get thee out". It is a call of God which allows no compromise. There has to be a point to which we come when we step over a line and are out from the world into the way of God. It is a very clear and unmistakable decision to be separated completely from this world unto God. That is where we were in our last meditation. The first decisive step is oneness with the heart of God in His repudiation of the world.

Now we come to the second phase in this pilgrimage, which is oneness with God regarding the natural man. When we have come to the great decision to go with God and to obey His call, everything is not finished: the battle is not all over when we have decided that this world is no longer our world. We find that the battle only takes on another form, and we are brought face to face with another issue. Our first crisis was concerning the world outside ourselves; the second phase in our pilgrimage is conflict with the world inside ourselves. Indeed, this issue is just with ourselves as ourselves, and this is the beginning of a new battle which may involve all that has gone before: if we fail in this battle we may just undo what we have done before.

It is the conflict with the natural man, and this natural man is a very deceptive thing. He can be a very religious and very zealous natural man.

I think that you will have heard the story about the great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, who had a college for training preachers. One of the subjects in that college was on how to preach, and every student was given a text from the Bible on which he had to preach a sermon. One student was given the sixth chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians: "Wherefore take up the whole armour of God", and then come all the parts of the armour. Well, this student got busy with his text. When the day came for preaching his trial sermon, he stood in the pulpit, pulled himself together and began to describe the armour. He represented himself as a soldier, and, in a very self-confident, strong way, he described the armour and himself as putting on that armour. He was going to make a great impression on his audience! He stepped forward, clad in all the armour, drew the sword and cried: 'Now where is the devil?' Mr. Spurgeon, who was sitting near him, just put his hands over his mouth and said: 'The devil is inside the armour!'

Now, that story does illustrate this point. We may have made the great decision to come over on to the Lord's side, to leave the world and follow Him, but it is just then that the real battle inside begins. There is an enemy inside, and that enemy is ourselves, what the Apostle Paul calls "the natural man".

Notice our Scripture. The Lord had said to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will shew thee", and then we read that the whole of his father's house went with him! Terah, his father, took Abraham out. Abraham's brother went with them and so did his nephew, the son of his dead brother, and later we are led to see that the whole household went. They all went out with Abraham, and yet the Lord had said: "Get thee out... from thy kindred, and from thy father's house".

You see, in type the natural man had taken hold of the divine purpose. Terah and the family not only went out with Abraham, but they took him out. You are not, therefore, surprised that they did not get very far! They came to Haran and there they stayed, we are not told for how long, but probably quite a time. We are told that Abraham was seventy years old at that time, so quite a lot of time was lost.

This was the first delay in the progress of this spiritual pilgrimage. They came to Haran, and there they stayed until Terah died. Terah, it says, was a very old man, and "the old man" does take a long time to die! But it was not until Terah died that they were able to resume their journey. Terah was the main factor in this spiritual hold-up, but even when the crisis of Terah was passed, there was still something clinging to Abraham. It was this man Lot, who was a perfect nuisance all his life: this something of the old life which continues to cling and is always threatening to hold up spiritual progress. The whole history of Lot reveals that which can limit the purpose of God. Lot ought never to have been there, and his presence is always a menace to the spiritual life. That will create the necessity for another crisis, for the last thing that belongs to that old natural life has to be cut off. Lot will have to go.

What is this man Lot? Well, you remember the crisis between Abraham and Lot, when their herdmen quarrelled amongst themselves and Abraham, who represents the spirit of grace, said to Lot: 'Let there be no strife between your herdmen and mine. Lift up your eyes and see the whole land. It lies before you. You choose what you would like and I will have what is left. If you go one way I will go the other.' So Lot lifted up his eyes and surveyed the whole country, and seeing the well-watered land around the great cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, he said: 'I choose that.'

So Lot moved his tent in the direction of the city of Sodom. He pitched it for a time outside the city, and then the attractions of that city drew him inside. He yielded to the call of the city of Sodom. Not satisfied with getting outside, and then getting inside, he had to become an important person in the city, and so we eventually find him sitting in the gate of the city, the gate being the place where all the important people met to discuss the affairs of the city. So Lot is at last an important official, and it was not long before trouble began. Certain kings made a raid with their armies upon the cities of the Plain, and Lot, with his whole family and all that he had, was carried away captive, and it was Abraham who had to go and rescue him. Then Lot went back into the city and became so much a part of it that when the angels came down to declare that Sodom and Gomorrah were going to be destroyed by fire, he was so reluctant to leave that the angels had to take him by the hand and pull him out.

Well, we are all ready to condemn Lot. We think that he was a poor sort, and not much good. But really he is only a type of the natural life in all of us. Anyone who really knows himself or herself knows that there is something like that in their natures. It takes the very mercy and power of God to get us separated from ourselves. Yes, this self-life is a terribly strong thing and will always gravitate in the opposite direction to the spirit. It will always work to keep us back from going on with God, and there has to be a very real crisis in this matter. That crisis came in the life of Abraham when Lot was separated from him. On the very same day that Lot decided to leave Abraham, and Abraham was separated from Lot, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said: "Lift up now thine eyes", and He showed him all the universe and said: "I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth" (Genesis 13:14-18). That is only another way of saying: 'Now we can go right on to the fulness of My purpose.'

The great crisis of separation between what is of the spirit and what is of the flesh has taken place, and that is the great crisis of the sixth chapter of the Letter to the Romans. You must remember that that chapter was written to Christians, not to people who were still back in Ur of the Chaldees, that is, to people who were still in the world. It was to people who had taken the first great step in decision for the Lord but had evidently not recognized all that that step involved. The Apostle Paul is not saying: 'You must be baptized as a testimony of the fact that you have come right out for the Lord', but: 'We were crucified with Christ. We were buried with Him in baptism.' That is what is meant when we were baptized. Our old man was crucified with Christ - but we have brought out Terah and Lot and all the rest with us. We have not recognized all that it meant when God said: "Get thee out!" There has to be this new crisis in our lives when we not only say farewell to the world but we say farewell to ourselves: "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I" (Galatians 2:20).

Now most of you know all about that. You know the teaching of Romans 6 and perhaps you know it so well that you are not very interested in hearing about it again. It is not for me to judge you, but if you really have passed through this crisis, it never becomes a thing without interest. It stands out in your life in such a way that it is bigger even than your conversion.

Now, let me get this matter quite straight so that there is as little confusion as possible. It must be recognized that we are dealing with a situation which is due to an imperfect apprehension of the meaning of the great crisis of the Cross: the crisis which really involves and includes everything from the initial step to the final step; from the basic 'out' to the ultimate 'in'. With God all that is present and implicit at the beginning. With God the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was no more than eleven days; but with Israel it took a generation, a lifetime. On the 'out' side of the Red Sea the song contained a clause which supposed that they had already come to God's Holy Habitation (Exodus 15:13) but, while that was present and inherent with the Lord, they had a way to go before it was realized. That delay was due to "the mixed multitude" (Exodus 12:38), that is, mixture in Israel, two things which are from two sources. This is a parable.

It is Lot and Abraham, one of the flesh, the other of the spirit: of faith and not of faith. With God, these two things are fully and utterly separated in the death and resurrection - the Cross - of Christ, but with His people it is a long history of many applications of the principle through a crisis and a process, or a series of minor crises.

Perhaps we have not been sufficiently aware that the New Testament in its teaching books or letters, as well as in its history, stands wholly related to these two aspects, a basic, all-inclusive crisis, and a process marked by many particular applications of that content; progressive illumination and successive challenges. This is the explanation of the whole evangelical convention movement in the last fifty years and more. It is based upon the imperfect understanding of the fundamental implications of the Christian life. Therefore the two things implicit in true spiritual conventions are illumination and challenge, resolving into a further crisis.

These crises created by the conflict between the natural man and the spiritual man in us all are represented in the case of Abram by Lot, Egypt (Genesis 12:9-20), Abimelech (Genesis 20), Hagar (Genesis 16...), all of which represent outcroppings of the natural man in his own wisdom, strength, effort and weakness. These will come up again in these studies, but they are recorded for our instruction in what has to be brought back to the initial transition. Abraham was called the Hebrew, and that means: the Man from Beyond, that is - beyond the river (Euphrates). A river lay between his old and his new realm.

The Christian has a river, like the Red Sea or the Jordan, which is a dividing line; and spiritually it declares what does and what does not belong to each side. According to Romans 6, that dividing line is the Cross of Christ, and baptism is there said to be the believer's spiritual acceptance of that great divide. The point is that the Cross goes with us throughout our lives and challenges the presence and action of everything belonging to the 'beyond' as not to be tolerated here. This history of denying our selfhood is the pathway which brings us ever nearer the heart of God. Every fresh expression of Christ's victory over the world is a further step into the heart of God. As His 'being made perfect through suffering' meant a progressive and final repudiation of the world and the self, so that He arrived at last in the heart of His Father, attested and declared "My Beloved Son", so every believer is called upon to make the same spiritual pilgrimage to the same most blessed destiny. It is the way of the continuous

"Not I, but Christ",

but this way of His Cross leads right on into God's heart, when and where He will say "My friend".

We may have come out for the Lord and may be working for Him, and yet there may be something of that self-life which is holding up our spiritual progress, something of our natural life which has come out with us. We are not willing to let it go. We argue for it and say: 'There is no harm in it. Other good people do it', but that is not good enough for the Lord, and many Christian lives are under arrest for they are not just going on fully and freely with the Lord into all His purpose because there is something like Lot in the life.

We are here that the Lord may get a full, free way in every life. Let us say: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any way of grief in me" (Psalm 139:23,24).

Chapter 3 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything

"By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God... These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16).

We have seen that the first crisic step toward the ultimate entering the heart of God was when Abraham repudiated the old world. When God said to him: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house" (Genesis 12:1), it was God's repudiation of the old world. Therefore, the first step toward the full entering into the heart of God is our oneness with God in leaving the world behind.

Then we saw that when that step had been taken, the journey was not at an end. There was another great crisic step to be taken, because Abraham's father, brother and nephew had gone out with him, although God had said: "Get thee out... from thy kindred, and from thy father's house". That next step, then, was separation from the natural life, what the Apostle Paul called 'our old man' ... "Our old man was crucified with him (Christ)" (Romans 6:6) ... "Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings" (Colossians 3:9).

(Having spent so much time upon that, we will just leave it there for the time being.)

Now we come to the third phase of this spiritual journey, which is oneness with God in the heavenly nature of everything. Perhaps this is where we ought to read the verses we have already read, for they so clearly set forth the heavenly nature of the journey which Abraham was taking. Leaving for the moment the mistakes that he made because of the difficulties of this way, we look at it as a whole, and it is very comforting to notice that the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, when speaking about Abraham, never mentions his faults. You have to go back to the Old Testament to find those, and we will do that presently.

First of all, however, let us look at it through the eyes of this writer of the Letter to the Hebrews. Of course, we cannot fully appreciate the meaning of what is written here, for we are not Abraham and have not got his background, but, even if we did understand it all, it is a very wonderful thing that Abraham did. God must have done a very great work in the heart of this man!

Abraham was born in a great city and he lived there for over sixty years, which is the greater part of any life in our time. We have seen that Ur of the Chaldees was a wonderful city. It was set in a very wonderful civilization, and it was there that Abraham was born and brought up. We could say that the city was in his very blood. He was not only in the city - the city was in him. Now he comes right out of that city and is brought into the country of Canaan - and God gave him not one foothold in that country. It was a good country, too; not a country to be despised, by any means, and in it there were a number of cities. You may think that Sodom and Gomorrah were not much in the way of cities and that Abraham had very little difficulty in refusing them, but there were other cities not as bad as they were. At any rate, the other cities might have suited him, but although he had been such a man of the city all his life, he never entered into one of those cities to become a citizen. Whether they might have been desirable from the standpoint of the natural man or not, and whether it might have been quite a good thing to take possession of some part of that country or not, Abraham neither took possession of the land nor of one city all his life. We have read that he was a sojourner in the land, living in tents, moving up and down the country and never far from a city, but although the country and the cities were there, he looked for a city and for a heavenly country.

God had done something very deep in this man's heart. If Abraham had looked at the country as his nephew Lot did, he might have said: 'Well this is quite good enough. Let us settle down here.' Or he might have looked at the cities and said: 'This is not a bad city. Let us go in and settle down here.' That is what Lot did, but Abraham looked at the country and said: 'No, this is not it. This does not answer to something that has been done in my heart. God has done something in me that makes me unable to settle down here.' The word is: "He looked for the city... whose builder and maker is God... They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly", and then the writer of this Letter to the Hebrews gathers it all up into this: "He (God) hath prepared for them a city".

The heavenly things had got such a hold on Abraham's heart that nothing else could satisfy that heart, and because heavenly things had got such a grip on him, earthly things lost their hold upon his life. This is a very real stage or phase in the spiritual pilgrimage.

I wonder if you understand this from experience! Of course, when we get old the things of this life and of this world do lose their interest for us, but I am not talking about the natural realm. This has to be just as true of the youngest Christian as it was true of Abraham. I do not know who may be the youngest Christian to whom I am speaking, but I want to say to that one, as to everyone else, that a real mark of the work of God in the heart is that we have been spoilt for this world. We have come to realize that there is nothing that can take the place of the heavenly things. I do wish this was true of all Christians, and especially of all young Christians: that heavenly things have become so real and precious to them that they would travel half across the world to get them, and that they are prepared to give up their holidays and all the earthly interests to get some heavenly things. Well, I think I am right in saying that that is why most of us are here now, that we have at least come this far on the journey: that there is nothing that can take the place of the things of God for us.

So what we are saying is that it is a very impressive thing that, although it was a country full of good things naturally, and although there were cities there, Abraham never settled down in any of it. God had done such a deep work in his heart, and that word 'never' went right on to the end of his life... "These all died in faith, not having received the promises".

Now you see our connection with the last message. We said then that oneness with God in repudiating the natural life is a step forward. It is a most unnatural thing never to want to settle down in some abode or residence on this earth! It may be all right to dwell in a tent for a little while, but the time comes when we say: 'Let us leave the tent and get home', where we have all the conveniences of a settled abode. I repeat: it is a very unnatural thing never to want a home, and Abraham, although he longed for a home, could never settle down in this world. That was a very unnatural thing: it was a spiritual thing.

So we see that in this journey we do have to come to this spiritual position of a gravitation toward the things of God and of heaven. God puts a law of spiritual gravitation into His born again children and, as surely as there comes a time when that law works in the birds of the air and they say: 'It is time we left this country', so in the true Christian the law of spiritual gravitation toward the heavenly things is a mighty work.

If we are moving with God we shall discover that He is never in favour of our having settled and permanent spiritual centres in this world. The horizon of the people of God is not the horizon of this earth. Perhaps you have heard of certain places where the Lord has given great blessing and you have said: 'Oh, if only I could go and spend the rest of my life there!' If you did that you would be making a terrible mistake. God is never going to allow any centre on this earth to be the end of the journey. We may get blessing there, it may be true that the Lord meets us there, but if we begin to think that this is the end of all things we are going to have a great disappointment.

And what is true of places is also true of experiences. Again and again in my own life God has given a new experience. When I had the first one I thought I had come to the end of all blessing. 'Surely', I thought, 'there can be nothing more than this!' But then, later on, the Lord did something else, and again I thought: 'Surely there is nothing beyond this! I must be ready to go to heaven now!' And yet again there was another movement forward, and every fresh experience of the Lord was something in advance of everything that had gone before. Be very careful that you do not come to any position which says: 'Now we have come to finality'. They "greeted them from afar" - there was always something more beyond, and this is a true mark of a spiritual progress toward the heart of God.

There are many times in the life of the people of God when they come to disillusionment. They think that they have now come to the thing which is everything, and then they suffer a great disillusionment. They find that this thing, after all, is not the final thing. Indeed, it is not what God puts into their heart as the thing that is what He is after. Although it may be something very good, and even wonderful, there is an element of disappointment about it. You see, there is a disappointment about everything and everybody on this earth. If you knew the truth about Abraham, or Moses, or about any of these great men, you would find that there was something to disappoint you in them. There is nothing, and there is no one, perfect here.

I must just make this statement and leave it there for the present. The fact is that the Lord must have us always going on. We are pilgrims and strangers, which means that we shall never come to finality here on this earth. If you are disappointed with what you thought was going to be the perfect thing, just remember that the Lord is calling you on to something better. When we look at some of the mistakes that Abraham made we shall see more clearly what we mean.

We will close by just illustrating from the life of Moses. It says of him: "He supposed that his brethren understood how that God by his hand was giving them deliverance" (Acts 7:25). He had clothed his Hebrew brethren with a great idea that if only he presented himself as their leader they would all come round him and make a great fuss of him. So one day he went out to offer himself as the hero of the deliverance of his brethren. And the first Egyptian that he found badly treating them he knocked on the head and forced all the breath out of him. What did he expect? That all his brethren would rally round and say: 'Now we have got a champion', and they would all begin to treat the Egyptians as Moses treated that man. It was a very great surprise and disillusionment to Moses when one of his own brethren turned on him the next day and said: 'Who made you a ruler over us?' That was a great disillusionment to Moses. Why? Because God's way is a heavenly way and not an earthly way. We do not do God's work by throwing our own weight about. When it is done, it will be done from heaven and not by that kind of Moses. He only made things much more complicated and lost a lot of time by trying to do heavenly things on an earthly level.

So what we have to learn is that we are called to be a heavenly people whose weapons of warfare are spiritual weapons and not carnal, whose methods are not the methods of this world, but the methods of heaven. And to learn that lesson is a phase in a journey which will end right in the heart of God.

May the Lord interpret this word to our hearts and teach us what it means that we are "born from above" and have heavenly resources at our command!

Chapter 4 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything (Continued)

"And these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 11:39-12:2).

The Bible teaches us that people of the Old Testament went through experiences of which they never understood the full meaning. The real meaning was hidden from their eyes. All that they knew was that they were under the hand of God, and that there was something more in their experiences of His dealings with them than they knew.

The Bible also teaches that that meaning, which was hidden from them, has been revealed to us in this present dispensation. We have the light on their experiences which they did not possess. The things which happened to them, and the ways in which they were led, had a spiritual meaning which waited for our time for its unveiling, so that we know the meaning of them while they did not. In the light which has now come to us we are able to see the meaning of their lives and to read the Old Testament in a new way.

So in our consideration of the life of Abraham we are able to see that the events in his life represent something for us. "These all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided (or foreseen) some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made complete." There was something incomplete about their experience, and we have got that something.

Thus we come back to consider these steps in the life of Abraham, steps in a spiritual pilgrimage which begins in the world and ends in the heart of God. In our last meditation we began to consider the third step, that is, oneness with God in the heavenly nature of things, and we considered it from the positive standpoint, how that God had done a deep thing in Abraham which made it impossible for him to be satisfied with anything in this world. As the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says: "They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly" (Hebrews 11:16).

Now we are going to look at this from what we may call the negative standpoint, though that is only a way of speaking, for there is nothing negative about God's dealings with His people. What I mean is this: that this great reality of the heavenly nature of things was made known to Abraham by his mistakes, and this is one of the necessary methods of God with us. God would not let us make mistakes if we were different people from what we are, but He knows quite well that most of His children will never learn anything except by making mistakes. You may tell a little child a hundred times that it will get burnt if it puts its finger in the fire, but most children will not believe that until they have tried it, and then they know by experience what they cannot know by theory - they know in life what they could not learn by doctrine.

Some years ago I went to a great engineering factory, and there I saw them melting steel. I watched them pouring the molten steel into vessels, and we all had to stand well away. Even the hot air round about was cold to that steel, so that as it came out into the air it just flew out all over the place. I said to one of the men who was pouring out this steel: 'Do you know that it is said that if you put your arm into cold water and then put it into that steel, you would not feel it?' He replied: 'I have been doing this for years, but if you like to try it you can. Theory or no theory, I know all about molten steel, and I am not engaging in any experiments.'

The Lord knows quite well that you and I will never really learn unless we make mistakes. We do not enjoy pointing out the mistakes of great servants of God, but it is impressive that He has had these things written in His Word, and the Scripture says: "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Romans 15:4), and the mistakes are included in the "things written aforetime". Thus they were written for our learning.

Great as this man Abraham was, he made three big mistakes in his life, and we only take note of them in order that we may learn not to make those mistakes.

The first one is recorded in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Genesis. Abraham had been commanded by God to leave his own country and go to another country which God would show him. He obeyed and went into the land of Canaan where he lived for some time. Then there arose a famine in that land, and that meant quite a serious crisis for Abraham. Naturally the question would arise: 'Did God send me here to let me starve to death? This looks like an absolute contradiction on His part. All that He has commanded and promised now seems to be a big question. I am in the place where He has put me, and circumstances say that it is impossible for a man to live here.' It certainly was a big test of faith! We shall come to the explanation later on, but it is here that Abraham made his first great mistake. He took his journey down into Egypt. Now, it must have been something that was very carefully thought about. You will remember that later on Israel took that journey in the opposite direction, and it says then that it is eleven days' journey from Egypt just to the border of Canaan, but Abraham was not just on the border. He was right in the land, so that he had to contemplate an eleven days' journey across the desert at least, and you do not do that sort of thing without serious thought. I only say that to indicate how serious this thing was.

Abraham went down into Egypt, for he thought that that was the way to save his life. But do you know, when we do things like that we only - as we say - jump out of the frying-pan into the fire!

On the journey something came to Abraham's mind. He looked at his wife, Sarah, and he said to her: 'Sarah, you know, you are a very beautiful woman, and when you get down into Egypt Pharaoh may take notice of you. You know, Sarah, you are not only my wife; you are also my sister, so if any questions arise about you when we are in Egypt, you just say that you are my sister.'

Now there are two things in that connection. Abraham was prepared to compromise his own wife to save his own life, and he was not only going down geographically, he was descending from the high level of principle to the low level of policy. When we sacrifice people for policy, we do not get out of our difficulties: we make them worse. Let me say to the young men and young women, as to everybody, that it is never a safe thing to compromise on people. If God has called you to Himself, He has called you on to heavenly ground, and that ground is the ground of heavenly principles. The peril of many a young man or young woman is to compromise with this world in order to gain some advantage, and to compromise is always a half-truth. It is what we call 'a white lie'. It was quite true that Sarah was Abraham's sister, but that was only half the truth. So Abraham resorted to a half-truth to gain some advantage, as he thought. We shall be tested sooner or later on this thing - as to whether we will compromise in order to gain some advantage in this world.

You can read what happened. God plagued Pharaoh because of what he did over Sarah, and Pharaoh said to Abraham: 'What is this you have done? You have told me a lie.' Abraham brought dishonour upon the name of the Lord before the world because of compromise. Pharaoh sent Abraham away and he had to take that long journey back to the place where he had built his altar. The altar always represents the Cross, and the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ always represents no compromise with this world. There is no place for a lie in the Cross of the Lord Jesus! Let us learn this lesson! To arrive at last in the heart of God we have to stand very strongly, even if we die for it, on the truth. We will come back to that again presently.

The second great mistake that Abraham made was with Hagar, and Ishmael was the result. You know your Bibles well enough to make it unnecessary for me to tell the story. God was trying Abraham's faith on the ground of patience. He had promised Abraham a son by Sarah, but the years went on. Abraham, ten years older than Sarah, was an old man, and Sarah was getting an old woman, so the situation seemed absolutely hopeless. As they were talking it over and wondering how God's promise could ever be fulfilled, Hagar passed by the opening in their tent, and an idea came into Sarah's mind: 'It is impossible with me. Try it with Hagar', and Abraham accepted the suggestion.

What does this say to us? 'The situation seems to be impossible naturally. Let us then try by the energy of the flesh to realize what seems impossible in the spirit.' So Abraham descended from the level of faith in God to the level of faith in his own works. It was a case of trying to be spiritually fruitful by fleshly methods. Thus Hagar was introduced.

Now there are two things to note about this. Hagar was an Egyptian, and how did they come to have an Egyptian in their service? When did an Egyptian come into the family? Well, we cannot answer that question with certainty, but we know that Pharaoh did not send Abraham away empty-handed. That may answer the question. But what does Egypt represent? I have only to remind you of Israel in Egypt! The one word which always described Egypt was 'bondage'. If we descend to the level of the flesh to try and help God out, we will only get into worse bondage; and there resulted the terrible tragedy of Ishmael and Hagar. The Apostle Paul makes a great deal of this thing in his Letter to the Galatians, where he speaks of Hagar as the bondwoman and says: "With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage" (Galatians 5:1). So Abraham learned the great lesson that we, being heavenly people, must stand on heavenly ground. We must not come down on to the ground of the flesh to try and help God out of what we think is His difficulty.

Abraham had to learn the lesson by failure, but did he learn it? I am terribly sorry to have to say that he did not seem to have done so very thoroughly, because some time afterward we find him going down to the country of the Philistines and, strange to say, he resorted to the same old subterfuge. Again, it was exactly the same thing: 'Sarah, you say that you are my sister.' You can hardly believe it, can you? How slow we are to learn these lessons!

Well, he went to the country of the Philistines and Abimelech just came out on the same ground - he took Sarah from Abraham. How merciful and faithful God is! That night He appeared to Abimelech in a dream and said to him: 'Abimelech, you are a dead man', and Abimelech explained to Him why he had taken Sarah, as Abraham had said that she was his sister. When Abimelech got up in the morning he called Abraham and said: 'What is this that you have done? You have lied to me and have brought me near to destruction.' The details are almost exactly like the Egyptian occasion, but not quite. These are not the Egyptians, but the Philistines. All that you know about the Egyptians tells you that they would never have anything to do with what was of God. As with Pharaoh in the time of Moses, who would fight God to the last moment, Egypt would never have anything to do with divine things - but the Philistines were always trying to get their hands on divine things. They tried to get possession of the land. They were always invading it, even until the days of David. Their one ambition was to get hold of the ark of the covenant, and when they did get it, they opened it to have a look inside. These people were always very interested in divine things, but do you remember the description which was always applied to them? The "uncircumcised Philistines" (Judges 14:3). They represent uncrucified flesh trying to get hold of the things of God, the people of the senses in relation to the things of God. They are that which wants to 'see with the natural eyes, hear with the natural ears and handle with the natural hands', while their hearts have never gone to the Cross to be circumcised.

Abraham went down to the Philistines. What a descent from a heavenly level to an earthly, from the spiritual to the natural! When a servant of God does that, he always brings God into dishonour.

I think Abraham did learn his lesson this time, for we do not read again of anything like that.

Do you see the way into the heart of God? I said that I would give you an explanation of the whole thing.

Do you not recognize that God always puts His people on to supernatural ground? The life of the child of God has to be a supernatural thing altogether. It has to be a continuous miracle. That is a very difficult position, but if you look at God's dealings with His servants in the Bible you will always see this: that He has put them on to a supernatural ground. That means that only God Himself can meet the situation. No one else can get us through. Our own flesh and energy cannot do so, nor can our own natural wisdom, as with Pharaoh and Abimilech.

Whether it was Abraham, or Moses, or Elijah, or any other one, they were put on to this ground where only God could see them through, and He would not give His glory to another.

Now look at Hebrews chapter twelve! All this great host of witnesses has been collected together, having all come at last to the victory, and they are represented as gathered in the great grandstand of Heaven, as though they were looking at us... "We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses". Go back to chapter eleven and pick up each one singly. On the one side their situation was an altogether impossible one naturally. On the other side, therefore, every one of them is a miracle of God. Their arrival in victory at the end of the race is a supernatural thing, and their God is our God, and we are called in that way. It is a difficult way and it does not get easier as we go on, but God is able to make every one of us a miracle of His grace.

Chapter 5 - Oneness With God in His Purpose

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).

"But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:4-6).

"For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned for a seed" (Romans 9:6-8).

We are now to consider oneness with God in His purpose, but before we come to that I want to say a general word.

I think it must be very clear to everyone that what we Christians have been brought into is a very great thing. I do not know what is your conception of the Christian life. It may be just a matter of having your sins forgiven and being given the promise of heaven, or it may be something more than that, but we ought to be realizing that this into which we have been called is something immense, something which the longest life here on this earth can never exhaust. Abraham lived well over a hundred years, but he never came into the fulness of all that unto which God had called him. He is included with the large number about whom the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews said: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises" (Hebrews 11:13). Many of those referred to in that chapter had a long life and walked with God, but at the end of their long lives they had not exhausted all that unto which God had called them.

You may wonder why I am saying this, but there are many young Christians in this conference, and I feel that one of the greatest needs amongst young Christians today is to know how very great is the thing into which they have been called in Christ. Those of us who travel from Far East to Far West in this world are really shocked by the little knowledge that Christians have of the full meaning of Christianity. It is quite the exception to find anyone who knows more than the elementary things of Christianity. If I said nothing more than this, it would be important.

This is not just extra Bible teaching. This is the living provision which God has made in His Son, Jesus Christ, for every one of us. I could desire nothing more than that you should go away from this conference saying: 'Well, what I have come into is something bigger than anything I ever imagined it to be!'

So we proceed at this time just to look at a little more of this great meaning of our calling.

If you were to try to sum up the whole meaning of the life of Abraham, you would have to do so in one thing. Why did God call him out of Ur of the Chaldees and deal with him in the way He did through his long life? The answer is found in one thing: The purpose of God was to secure a heavenly people on the basis of sonship. Abraham was the first of a new race of heavenly people. God said to him: "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 22:18), and that was to be realized through his son Isaac - a people of a heavenly nature in terms of sonship. Here again we touch perhaps the greatest thing that has ever been revealed to man: God's intention and purpose to have at last a race of people who are His sons. There is nothing greater in all God's revelation than this - that He would make us into His sons.

We have said that in Abraham's case this was to be realized through Isaac, but those of you who know your Bibles know quite well that Isaac was a natural impossibility. If Isaac was to be at all, an absolute miracle had to be worked by God from heaven, and when he did come Abraham was more than ninety-nine years old. Sarah was just ten years younger, and that speaks for itself. The Apostle Paul put it in this way: "He (Abraham) considered his own body as good as dead" (Romans 4:19). Isaac was impossible - but Isaac was born. It was a miracle of God - and all the sons of God begin there. It is absolutely impossible to be a son of God unless He works a miracle.

That brings us to our well-known Scripture. Well might Nicodemus say: "How can a man be born when he is old?" But Jesus just brushed aside that word 'how?' and said: 'Nicodemus, it must happen. You must be born again. You, Nicodemus, are thinking of the natural, while I am speaking about the spiritual. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, and that is what I am talking about. That is a miracle of the Spirit of God. Therefore it is possible for you to go right back and start life all over again like a little child.'

Every child of God is a miracle. Nothing, and no one, can make you a child of God but a miracle of the Spirit of God. You will not become a child of God by going to church every week, or by adopting the sacraments of the church, whether that sacrament be the sacrament of baptism or of the Lord's Table. Those things do not make us children of God. They are in the New Testament as things which children of God do when they are children of God, but you can accept all the sacraments, you can go to all the services and may know in your head all the doctrines, and not be a child of God. A child of God is one that is born by a miracle of God. All these other things to which I have referred may, after all, be things of the flesh. The first phase of a true child of God is supernatural, spiritual birth. It is one of those wonderful things of God which lie at the very foundation of the Christian life.

So the first phase of sonship is spiritual, supernatural birth. You see, it was in Isaac that Abraham came to sonship, for Isaac represents the spirit of sonship. "God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts" (Galatians 4:6), and the receiving of the spirit of sonship is a divine act: not a process, but a crisis. There may be a process leading up to it. You may be a long time on the way to it, but when you do come to it it is a definite, positive experience. Abraham was a long time coming to Isaac, and Isaac was a long time coming to Abraham, but when Isaac was born he was not a process - he was an act. I suppose it happened within twelve or twenty-four hours of one day: this morning Isaac is not - this evening Isaac is.

Now, I know that many of you older Christians are not at all interested in this, for you know all about it. But while we all need a fresh realization that our Christian life begins with a miracle, and that our very existence as Christians rests upon a supernatural basis, the young people need to understand this very clearly. I feel that I must take time over this, because the Christian life is being made all too easy. All too often the tremendous thing of new birth is not made clear. To become a child of God is not to put something on the outside, even the name of Christian, but to have something done inside that no one but God Almighty can do. That is the beginning of sonship, and Abraham's experience with Isaac, his son, is the great illustration of this truth.

You see, God took very great pains that it should be like that. As we have seen, Abraham tried to do this in other ways, but it was a tragic failure. God pushed this thing so far that it was absolutely impossible naturally; and if we have not seen that to become a child of God is a miracle, we have never understood what Christianity really is. All that, and much more, is in this simple word that we know so well: "You must be born again." There is no substitute for new birth.

When we have commenced the life of sonship, then we commence the life of the training of sons. There is one chapter in the New Testament which especially deals with this - the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. There it says: "My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons" (Hebrews 12:4-7).

I think we have a wrong idea of that word chastening. We think, perhaps, that it represents God as having a big stick in His hand and knocking us about all the time. You have only to make a mistake and down comes the big stick! That, of course, is a wrong idea of God, and is not what the word means. The word 'chastening' just simply means 'child training'. It is not a sign of love for your child if you never train him. If you do not train him he will not be liked by anyone later on, so it is not kind not to train him. While training does, of course, mean correcting, and sometimes using the stick, the idea is to do anything and everything to make that child a responsible man or woman. It is a poor kind of man or woman who can never take any responsibility, whom you can never be sure of, who is not reliable and who always has to be told what to do, not having any intelligence in himself or herself. The idea of sonship in God's mind is to have people who are absolutely reliable and responsible, who know in their own hearts what is right and what is wrong, and do not have to be constantly told.

You see, dear friends, God is going to put very big responsibilities upon us in the coming ages. The Word says: "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:12 AV), and what do you think 'reigning' means? Do you think it means sitting on some kind of a throne and doing nothing for all eternity? Well, if that is the idea, I'm afraid I don't want it! I want to have something to do that is worth doing. There is a word near the end of the Bible which just says: "His servants shall serve him; they shall see his face" (Revelation 22:3,4 AV). There is a great work of government in the eternal kingdom for which we are being prepared; the greater part of our experience as Christians in this life is training for eternity. There are many things which cannot be explained if that is not true. Here is someone whom we think is indispensable to the work of God. We cannot do without him! He is so useful and so necessary... and then God puts His hand on him and lays him aside for months, or even years, or He takes him right out of the work to Himself in heaven. We cannot understand those things. We would say that that person was absolutely necessary. We cannot get on without him - but God has greater service in His presence than He has here.

You see, there is this phase of sonship which is childtraining. I wish we could always look on our difficulties in the light of this! It does seem that the life of a Christian is more difficult than any other life, and more troubles come to us than to anyone else. God does not protect His children from troubles, but, whether we recognize it or not, and whether we like it or not, these difficulties and troubles which come to us are to train us for something and to develop in us the spirit of sonship, that is, to develop spiritual intelligence and spiritual ability in us.

Now I must come to the third phase, which will not take very long. It is what the Apostle Paul calls: "The manifestation of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19 AV). Here are his words: "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God... for we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Romans 8:19,22 RV).

Here is a very wonderful idea. No one will question that the whole creation is groaning. The Apostle pictures it in a state which is saying: 'Oh, I wish it would happen soon! Why does it wait so long? When will this thing happen that I feel is going to happen? I am just in agony about it all.' That is how the Apostle explains the conditions in creation, and it is like that, isn't it? This poor creation is in a very bad way. It is groaning and travailing in pain and then the Apostle, with the light which God has given him, tells us why it is in that condition. God has a purpose hidden in the history of this world, and in the history of the nations, hidden from the eyes and the understanding of men: God is doing something through the ages which men of the world do not understand. What is this thing that God is doing secretly? He is securing sons, who are hidden from the world, but the very existence of the world demands that this thing shall come to light one day. This secret purpose and work of God must be made manifest, and Paul says: When that happens the whole creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Romans 8:21). What is this thing for which the whole creation waits? Here it says: "The manifestation of the sons of God." The sons of God are going to be the explanation of all the groanings of the creation, and when they are manifested the whole creation will say: 'This is what I have been waiting for!'

The Apostle John says: "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2). That is the full meaning of sonship - we shall be like Him, God's Son.

I think you will agree that what I said at the beginning is right: It is a very great thing that God has called us unto in fellowship with His Son.

Chapter 6 - Oneness With God in His Method and in His Power

(We are now coming near to the end of these meditations. We have been occupied with the spiritual journey of the Christian life from the world, through its various stages, until it reaches the heart of God, each stage and phase being some further aspect of union with Christ. Having covered so much ground, we cannot, of course, go back.

Latterly we arrived at three phases of this journey: Oneness with God in His purpose, which purpose we saw to be the securing of a heavenly people on the basis of sonship, firstly, the birth of sons, secondly, the training of sons, and thirdly, the manifestation of sons. We are letting Abraham be our teacher in this whole matter.)

The two phases to which we now come are oneness with God in His method, and oneness with God in His power; and I want that we should read two fragments of Scripture, each of which touches on these two phases:

"By faith Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son, even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called; accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a parable receive him back" (Hebrews 11:17-19).

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10-11).

We are going to put these two things together, and you will notice that they bring us to the sixth phase of this spiritual pilgrimage: the method and the power of God. The method is resurrection, and the power is the power of resurrection life, or the Holy Spirit as the power of resurrection.

When we come to this matter of resurrection we have to recognize that it is the crisis in the life of the child of God. In the case of Isaac, and in the case of every child of God, the beginning is resurrection. It is the giving of a life which has already conquered death, and that is what Isaac stands for, as a type. He was, in a parable, brought back from the dead, and the life which he lived from that day onward was a life which had triumphed over death. And so it is with every true child of God. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ, every true child of God receives a life which has conquered death, a life over which death has no power. It is called 'eternal life' in the New Testament.

Science has proved that life can only come from life and can never come from something which is dead. This is true in the spiritual life. We can only have resurrection life from where that life comes. The Lord Jesus Christ truly died and was raised again as a first one of resurrection, and, being the first one of resurrection, life can only come from Him. This is a crisis in the experience of a child of God.

To begin with, it is not a process, but a definite, precise act. It is so definite and so precise that at one moment you have not got it, and the next moment you have it. At one moment you are what God calls 'dead', and the next moment you are what He calls 'alive'. It is as definite as that.

Let us take Abraham and Isaac as an illustration.

Abraham bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar, and then he raised the knife to plunge it into Isaac. At the moment that Abraham raised the knife Isaac was dead, and the moment that the angel of the Lord got hold of Abraham's hand Isaac was alive. It was as precise as that.

I do not know why it is that the Lord is compelling me to speak so much about the beginning of the Christian life. It is not what I had thought of for a Conference of Christians, but, against my own pre-meditation, I was compelled to give that message last night, and I discovered afterward that there were a number of unsaved people in the meeting and also a number of young Christians who do not understand the meaning of the beginning of the Christian life. Now we are here again tonight. It may put a big strain upon the patience of the older Christians, but we must take nothing for granted. We must not take it for granted that everyone really understands the nature of the new birth, so we repeat, the true beginning of a true Christian life is nothing other than a resurrection from the dead. It is the receiving of a life which is called resurrection life.

The next thing is that resurrection is God's unique act. Resuscitation is not resurrection. Wonderful things are being done in our time. We hear of people whose hearts stop beating, and then by some artificial means they are started again. People are calling that 'bringing them back to life from the dead'. Then there are people who are drowned. After some artificial application there is given what has come to be called 'the kiss of life', which means that someone breathes into their mouth and inflates their lungs again, and they come back to consciousness. Men are calling that 'raising from the dead'. But is it that? Let them stay in their condition for four days. Let the blood run cold, and then, after four days, try artificial respiration. Well, you can work at it for ever and they will not come back to life. Lazarus was dead and in the grave for four days, and Jesus refused to go near him during that time, so that no one would be able to say: 'It was resuscitation.' It had to be resurrection.

That was why God left Abraham so long before He gave him Isaac. If we had read from the fourth chapter of the Letter to the Romans we would have come to these words: "He (Abraham) considered his own body now as good as dead (he being about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb" (Romans 4:19). God made the promise to Abraham that he would have a son, and then He went away and left him for years, until it was absolutely impossible for him to have a son naturally. What was God doing? He was demonstrating that this was not going to be resuscitation but resurrection, that is, life out of death.

What we are saying is that resurrection is God's act, and not man's act. It is something which only God can do, and if the beginning of the Christian life is a resurrection, then only God can do it. It is absolutely hopeless for anyone to try to be a child of God without His help. If this is true - and it is true! - how foolish for anyone to say: 'Well, I will become a Christian tomorrow', or 'Later on in my life I will consider this matter.' If God comes to us at any time and offers us this life, it is not in our power to say: 'Not today, but some other day.' We cannot fix times for God.

We must leave that there now and go on.

We pass from the crisis and the act to the process, because spiritual resurrection is not only a crisis at the beginning, but something which is carried on throughout the whole of the Christian life. The Apostle Paul put it in this way: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10). That word 'always' spreads itself over the whole life of the Christian. After the one fundamental crisis there are many more crises on this matter. You notice that the Apostle said "Always... in the body the dying", so that the life of Jesus is operating over against something that is always in the body.

Now, it is the privilege of every child of God to know the power of His resurrection in the body. We can know it at any time when we are experiencing something of death in our mortal bodies, whether it be sickness, weakness or weariness. There can be a fresh manifestation of His divine life, and what is true for our bodies is also true for our spirit. Oh, we may feel so down in spirit today! We may be suffering from very real spiritual depression and discouragement and may feel just spiritually dead. Have any of you ever felt like that? It is a common experience even of the children of God, but let us get to the Lord at that time and do what Paul told Timothy to do: "Lay hold on the life eternal" (1 Timothy 6:12). Now Timothy needed that in two ways. He needed it physically, for he suffered from stomach trouble - what Paul called "thine oft infirmities" (1 Timothy 5:23). Then Timothy needed it spiritually. He was a young man and was put into considerable spiritual responsibility for the church at Ephesus, and the old, wise people said: 'Well, you know, he is so young.' Paul said: "Let no man despise thy youth" (1 Timothy 4:12) ... "Lay hold on the life eternal." Timothy needed eternal life for body and spirit.

And what is true about our bodies and our spirits is very true in the work of the Lord. How often it seems that the work to which we are called just goes dead! Death invades the people and the work, and as we look at them we could say: 'Why, it is dying. It is just going into death.' Some of us who have been in the work of God for many years know much about that, but we have seen the work of God raised as from the dead again and again, and it would seem that God just allows these experiences of death in order to show the power of His resurrection. God would not have us accept death until He accepts it.

Now I must say a little about the power of God. The method of God is always resurrection, and the power of God is always the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of resurrection.

I am going to say something of which I want everyone to take very careful notice. The greatest and most comprehensive proof of the Holy Spirit is resurrection life. We are told that the proof of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is this and that - you can put names to them - but the supreme proof and the most comprehensive proof of the Holy Spirit's presence is resurrection. There may be various expressions of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, but the supreme proof and expression is in resurrection. "The power of his resurrection" comprehends all other expressions. I believe that that chapter of the Letter to the Philippians sets forth Paul's full expression of what he wanted. He did not say at the end, when he was comprehending all: 'That I may know this expression, or that expression!' or 'That I may know the expression of the gift of tongues!' or 'That I may know the expression in the gift of healing!', or any other particular expression. He said all-inclusively, at the end: "That I may know the power of his resurrection."

Paul, who himself had been used to heal the sick, had infirmities until the end of his life. That man, who knew the power of healing as working through him, said: "Trophimus I left at Miletus sick" (2 Timothy 4:20).

No, resurrection life is more than healing. You may not be healed, but you can know resurrection life, and the greatest miracle may be just how you go on through the years with a weak body. I am not saying that there is no such thing as healing, but I am saying out of the Word of God and out of my own experience that there is a greater thing than healing, and that greater thing is divine life.

This is the power of God. If you look through the Word of God, Old Testament and New Testament, you will see everywhere that the supreme manifestation of the power of God was in resurrection. The people of Israel were in a grave in Egypt. For them Egypt was the house of bondage, and the bonds were the grave-clothes wound around them. They were like Lazarus, bound in grave-clothes from head to foot. And, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, the deliverance of Israel from Egypt is always referred to as the greatest act of God's power. When Israel went later into captivity in Babylon, Babylon was called their grave, and through the prophet God said: "I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people" (Ezekiel 37:12). And the recovery of Israel from Babylon is set forth as the second greatest demonstration of divine power in the Old Testament.

Resurrection is the supreme proof of the power of God. You do not need that I say much about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. When He was on that Cross everything was done to make sure that He was dead. After they had nailed Him, hands and feet, on to the Cross, to make sure that He was dead they thrust the spear into His heart. When He was taken down from the Cross and put into the tomb, the high priest said: 'Take a guard and make sure', so that great stone was rolled against the tomb and the official seal was put on the stone. Then they mounted a guard of soldiers. What more could be done to make sure that He was dead? Well, everything that men and devils could do - and then, over all that, it says: "This Jesus did God raise up" (Acts 2:32). What an immense thing resurrection is!

And all the potentialities of the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus are given to the child of God. We can go right on to the end because we have His life. Until the Lord says: 'It is enough: come up higher!' there is no need for any child of God to die. Death and life are in the hands of God. How many wonderful experiences we may have of this divine life! We may make a lot of other manifestations of the power of God and they may all be quite wonderful - we will never take anything from what is of the Holy Spirit - but when we have said all, the supreme thing is "the power of his resurrection". That is the birthright of the child of God and something that you and I may be knowing now and all the days of our life. "Lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called."

Chapter 7 - Oneness With God in His Passion

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Genesis 22:1,2).

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16).

"By faith Abraham being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had gladly received the promises was offering up his only begotten son" (Hebrews 11:17).

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church" (Colossians 1:24).

During these meditations we have been moving along the line which leads into the heart of God. We have been letting Abraham be our teacher in this matter and have seen how he moved step by step toward that place where God could speak of him as 'My Friend'. No more glorious crown could be put on the head of anyone than that!

I want now as quickly as possible to dwell upon the last step into the heart of God, which is oneness with God in His passion - one with God in His suffering and in His joy. All the other aspects of oneness with Him meet at the Cross, and the deepest fellowship that can be had with Him is found in fellowship with His sufferings. When Abraham was obedient to the Lord's command: "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest", he certainly did reach the point of absolute fellowship with God, who Himself gave His only begotten Son.

Abraham had been called upon to make many offerings in his life; many sacrifices had to be made from the day that he left his own country, but there was no sacrifice like this one, which touched him at the point where it cost him more than anything else. This was more than all the other sacrifices, and so, at last, he stepped right into the heart of God.

That Scripture which we read from the Letter to the Colossians - with many others like it - makes it very clear to us that we are called into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. This is not His sufferings which were atonement for sin; there is never any atonement about our sufferings. But leaving that aspect out, it is quite clear in the Word that we are called into the fellowship of His sufferings. The sufferings of Christ are a gift to His people. The Apostle Paul says: "To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer in his behalf" (Philippians 1:29).

Jesus offers us the cup and says: 'Will you drink of My cup?' While it is the cup of remission of sins - and we would grasp that with both hands - He also says: 'This cup is fellowship in My sufferings', and too often our hand is very slow to take that cup.

I think I have told you before of an incident I experienced in India. We were gathered at the Lord's Table and there were two very fine young Indian men sitting in front of me. I explained what was the meaning of the cup and the loaf, and then everyone rose to receive them. These two young men rose, and, having explained what the cup meant, I offered it to them. They both hesitated for a moment - they were weighing this matter up - and then one of them bowed his head and accepted it. The other shook his head, as much as to say 'No, I cannot.' One went out of that meeting with much joy in his face, and the other went out with his head bowed and no joy.

Fellowship in the sufferings of Christ is something that is offered to us as a gift, and it is always fruitful. The sufferings of Christ are always fruitful sufferings. We could not get many more people in here this morning, but this packed room is a testimony to the fact that the sufferings of Jesus are fruitful sufferings, and we know that this could be repeated thousands of times all over the world today. And we have a picture in the Word of God of how it will be in the end: "Ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands... a great multitude, which no man could number" (Revelation 5:11; 7:9). Indeed, the sufferings of Christ are fruitful sufferings.

Although we may not always feel it to be so, fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is the way of fulness of blessing. Did you see what followed those words to Abraham about offering his only son? "And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore" (Genesis 22:15-17). Fellowship with Him in His sufferings is the way of fulness of blessing. There is always a second time with the Lord. The first time was: "Take now thy son... and offer him", and the second time was: "Because thou hast done this thing... in blessing I will bless thee." The Lord commits Himself to those who commit themselves to Him. You can see that in verse 16 of this chapter, and here is one of the many 'I wills' of the Lord. How often the Lord says 'I will' to His people! It is usually some blessing, but here it is Himself. The Lord gives Himself to those who share His sufferings.

But this blessing is not just a personal thing for ourselves. See how extensive this blessing was! 'Abraham, however much you may be blessed, you will not just be one by yourself. Many, many others will come into blessing because you have shared My sufferings.' It must be like that, because God is like that. If we want to be a blessing to others we must accept fellowship with our Lord in His sufferings, and if we will accept it, we shall certainly be a blessing. The Word of the Lord is not 'I will bless thee' only, but 'I will make thee a blessing.' The Cross always cuts deeper channels in our lives, but God does not cut deeper just in order to leave it like that. It is in order that there may be more room for His fulness.

It is a universal law in all creation that increase only comes by travail. You may think this is rather a depressing note on which to finish a conference! I am sorry if it seems like that, but I cannot offer you any other way of blessing. There is no other way of coming into that fulness which we all desire, so this is not a message of despair. God only knows how much it may cost us, but where there is cost there is preciousness, that which is precious to the Lord. Paul says: "I... fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake." May we have grace to take the cup and go forth to suffer, if needs be, for the sake of our Lord, because it is not only the sufferings of Christ: it is the joy of Christ.

About the Conference

The following report of the conference in which these messages were given, was printed in the November-December 1964 edition of the "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine.

AESCHI (SWITZERLAND) 1964

There is a spiritual fellowship constituted by the ministry of this little paper which can never be more than spiritual. That is, it will never be possible for the readers in so many parts of the world to meet in one place at one time - until we are in glory. But we feel that it may be a ministry of Christ to you all if we tell you something of what is experienced when a representative gathering takes place, as in the case of Aeschi 1964.

Through many years, there has always seemed to be a special blessing from the Lord on times when - out of the nations - His people gather together. These occasions so much savour of the goings up of the tribes of Israel in olden days as they sang their "Songs of Ascents" converging upon Zion.

The meeting after long separation and - often - isolation; the discovery of so much unrealised mutual experience; the sharing of the inner history of His dealings; the song and prayer together; and the prepared feast of heavenly food; all combine to result in new vision, renewed strength, and holy inspiration to leave the mountain-top for the valleys and plain again. So it has been - in the Lord's goodness - once more this year in Switzerland.

As to the place: Aeschi is a village in the Bernese Oberland, some three thousand feet (1,000 metres) above sea level above the Lake of Thun. Below, in full view, lies that lake, stretching from Thun to Interlaken. In the early morning of a Lord's Day there spring to mind spontaneously the words:

"Oh, Sabbath rest by Galilee;

Oh, calm of hills above,

Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee

The silence of eternity,

Interpreted by love."

Above, and on either side of the village, stretching to the horizon, are the mighty mountains of the Oberland, with their year-round snows and green valleys.

The Lord has indeed given us an ideal spot for these gatherings in the last seven years. Not the least of the blessings is the Christian co-operation of the proprietors of the hotel in which we accommodate the main part of our conference guests. In addition, we exhausted all other available accommodation round about, and at meeting times we were crammed to capacity. This will raise a serious question should it be that another conference is considered.

As to those attending: some ten or eleven countries were represented, the largest contingent coming from France.

Now, perhaps, you are impatiently waiting to know about the ministry.

We started each day with "Prayers" at the breakfast-tables. A brief message was given before prayer. This ministry was shared: Mr. LAMBERT, Mr. WARKE and Mr. SPARKS taking it. Then we met for the morning session at 10.30 o'clock. Throughout the conference Mr. SPARKS had as his morning theme: "Into the mind of God". While many Scriptural references to the 'Potter' and 'vessels' were used, the basic one was Jeremiah 18. The governing thought was that the vessel being made by the Potter is an expression of the mind of the Potter, so that all the experiences of the clay and the sovereign activities of the Potter are related to a Mind which will be fully seen in the being and service of the vessel - progressively now - and consummately in the ages to come. It will be appreciated that, for six full mornings to be occupied, much ground was covered. The afternoons - with two exceptions - were free from any arrangement.

Then the evening sessions throughout were occupied with the theme: "Into the heart of God". This led us by the eight stages in the life of Abraham from the repudiation of the world to that climax of oneness in the passion of God in the offering of the "Son, whom thou lovest"; in which the final step into God's heart was taken, and God was able to say "My Friend".

The two afternoons referred to above as 'exceptions' were: one when we went together in coaches to Grindelwald, so that the good of the country could be enjoyed, especially by those who were new to the country.

The other was a surprise to us all.

Without any expectation or hint of the matter, we were asked if it would be possible to have a baptismal service, as someone who had come to the Lord at Aeschi the year before was concerned to give that testimony. When it was known that the enquiry had been made, another let it be known that he was only waiting for such an opportunity. After seeking for facilities for this service of testimony, and letting it be known that it was definitely in view, two others came forward with the same request. Thus, on the Friday afternoon, we set out again by coaches to a distant small town where the Pastor had placed his church and baptistry at our disposal, and did everything possible to help. We packed the chapel, and not many will forget the so precious and blessed time of life which we had. This was a high-light of the conference, and we were all filled with joy.

Our two Lord's Day mornings saw us gathered around the Lord's Table. At these times there was a stream of spontaneous worship from many present in their various languages. Truly a testimony to the "One Loaf", the One Body, and the One Life.

All the ministry was given in three languages: firstly in English, and then interpreted into German and French. The hymns also were printed in the three languages. This created no confusion in the praise, and the singing was a very inspiring part of the conference.

This conference, although triumphant and full, was not gone through without conflict. That is not something at which to be surprised, but the forms taken by the conflict are rarely the same, and can gain some strength from their unexpectedness. However, we are not aware of anyone being able to say that Aeschi 1964 was not in life or power.

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - Oneness With God in His Repudiation of This World

Chapter 2 - Oneness With God in a Crisis Regarding the Natural Man

Chapter 3 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything

Chapter 4 - Oneness With God in the Heavenly Nature of Everything (Continued)

Chapter 5 - Oneness With God in His Purpose

Chapter 6 - Oneness With God in His Method and in His Power

Chapter 7 - Oneness With God in His Passion

About the Conference