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Into the Mind of God

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1965.

Vols. 43-2 through 44-1.

(The following is a series of morning messages given at the 1964 conference in Switzerland.)

Contents

Chapter 1 - "A Vessel... Meet for the Master's Use"

Chapter 2 - "Called According to His Purpose"

Chapter 3 - "He Wrought His Work on the Wheels"

Chapter 4 - "To Be Conformed to the Image of His Son"

Chapter 5 - "We... Beholding... The Lord Are Changed Into the Same Image"

Chapter 6 - "Another Vessel"

About the Conference

Chapter 1 - "A Vessel... Meet for the Master's Use"

"These were the potters... there they dwelt with the king for his work" (1 Chronicles 4:23).

"But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (Isaiah 64:8).

"The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought his work on the wheels. And when the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel" (Jeremiah 18:1-6).

"And (thou) shall say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again" (Jeremiah 19:11).

"And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in" (Matthew 27:7).

"And they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me" (Matthew 27:10).

"But the Lord said unto him (Ananias), Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15).

"Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" (Romans 9:21).

"And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers; as I also have received of my Father" (Revelation 2:26,27).

This is a small selection of the Scriptures which bear upon this one matter of the potter and his vessel, and the one thing which arises from them is that every vessel made by the potter is an expression of his mind. When you look at any vessel made by an intelligent potter you look through the vessel and see the mind of the one who made it. There is a thought in the form of that vessel, and that, of course, is especially true of God.

You may know that pottery has a very long history, and we are now in possession of pottery that was made six thousand years ago. Men were making pottery before Abraham was born, and, as we have seen, it has a very large place in the Bible. I had a long list of other passages of Scriptures on this subject, but would not trouble you to look at them.

Let us first look at some of the general features of the passages which we have read.

Firstly, God is represented as a potter.

Secondly, humanity is represented as the clay.

Thirdly, Israel is represented as a vessel chosen by God for a purpose on the earth.

Fourthly, the Church is represented as a vessel chosen by God from eternity for a heavenly purpose.

Fifthly, individuals are spoken of as vessels. Some individuals, like the Apostle Paul, are chosen for a special purpose.

Sixthly, the pattern of God's vessel is His Son, Jesus Christ. The Scripture says that the Church is "foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29), so that His Son is the pattern to which God is working.

Seventhly, the intelligent worker on the wheels of the potter is the Holy Spirit. He is the driving power of God's purpose.

Eighthly, the wheels themselves are the wheels of circumstance and experience.

Well, those are some general things coming out of these Scriptures, but, as we are laying the foundation for our consideration, we will now come close to the Bible.

We read a verse in 1 Chronicles 4 which referred to the potter's field, in which there was the potter's house. The potters lived there, in that field and in that house, for one thing only - to make pottery for the king. The kings - David and Solomon - evidently kept a large band of potters, and the many vessels used in the king's house which were of clay were made in that field. It was to that field and to that house that the Lord sent Jeremiah. David and Solomon had gone long ago, but the potter was still busy in his house in the same field. There were evidently very many potters in the days of David and Solomon, but when we come to Jeremiah it seems that there was only one potter at work.

That potter's field had a very tragic history. Our passage in the Gospel by Matthew tells us a very sad story. The potter's field was still there, but the potter's house and the potters were all gone. Judas betrayed his Master for thirty pieces of silver, and when he discovered what he had done, he went back and threw the silver at the feet of the rulers, who said: 'This is the price of blood. We cannot give it any place in the sanctuary.' Then they had a meeting to consider what they should do with the money... "and they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field". That same potter's field, which had come right down through history and had had a glorious day, was now bought with the price of the Blood of Jesus Christ. That had been prophesied by the prophet Zechariah. The price of a servant, of a bond-slave, was thirty pieces of silver, and that was the price that they put upon the Son of God. What a tragic end to the potter's field!

When we come to the prophecies of Isaiah there are quite a number of references to the potter and the clay, and we read the final one. Israel is saying: 'Thou art the Potter and we are the clay.' I expect you know what is the message of the prophecies of Isaiah - the message of Divine sovereignty over Israel and the nations. Those prophecies began with the great vision in chapter six, when Isaiah said: "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up." Uzziah was one of the great kings of Israel after David and Solomon, and when this greatness was dead the prophet saw another greatness - "the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up". When all earthly government fails, the government remains in the hands of the Lord. When the sovereignties of this world die, there is a sovereignty that never dies. The Lord still remains sovereign over all things.

When you go on to Jeremiah that sovereignty is concentrated upon this chosen people, Israel. Here it is a matter of God's rights in this particular people... "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter?" The Lord has absolute right to do as He wills with His own people. When the Lord says: 'I have chosen you', that is not only His initiative, but His absolute authority. When the Lord chooses a vessel, that choice carries with it His absolute authority. That sovereign authority will work for the vessel, or will work against it. It depends upon whether the clay will yield to the sovereignty of the Potter. If we yield to the mind of God, His sovereignty will work for us, but if we resist, that sovereignty will break us. We cannot get away from the sovereignty of God. That can be a very wonderful and blessed thing, but it can also be a very terrible thing.

When I have said that I have just given you the whole of the prophecies of Jeremiah. You may not like this book and if you had your choice you would perhaps select Isaiah before Jeremiah, but if you will read the book of Jeremiah with this one thought in mind it will be a great inspiration. Over the book is written: 'Cannot I do as I will? saith the Lord.' No one can argue with God. No one can challenge God's right or question the will of God. God says: 'I am the Lord. I will do as I want to do.' That will be a very good thing for all those who are on God's side, but it will be a very bad thing for those who are in opposition to Him.

Well, that is the book of Jeremiah in a word.

You pass through the sovereignty of God in Matthew 27 - the sovereignty of fulfilled prophecy in the potter's field - and you come to the ninth chapter of the Book of the Acts. There the Lord is saying to Ananias about Saul of Tarsus: "He is a chosen vessel unto me." Here, then, we have the principle that God does choose certain people for certain special purposes. Such vessels may have to go through many sufferings and afflictions, but if ever the sovereignty of God was seen in the life of a single man, it was in the life of the Apostle Paul. We said that God's choosing means God's authority, and sooner or later our attitude toward chosen vessels will prove to have been our attitude toward God.

We pass from Paul as a chosen individual vessel, and we come on to more common ground which brings us all in. We would not put ourselves in the same category as the Apostle Paul, and would hesitate to think that we are chosen vessels to fulfil some special purpose in history. Of course, that may be true of some of you - the end will tell whether it is true - but whether it be true or not, when you come to the second letter to the Corinthians, you are on right ground. Remember: it is to Corinthians that the Apostle is writing. Thank God, then, for the message to Corinthians! To all the Corinthians, and to all like them, the Apostle says: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7) - and what earthen vessels we are! We are very poor clay indeed, but the Word is: 'In this poor clay, these earthen vessels, we have a treasure, and the excellency is not our excellency - it is the excellency of God.'

"We have this treasure" - as one version puts it - "in vessels of fragile clay." I wonder what was in Paul's mind when he wrote that! You may get some idea of what he was thinking about if you look at the context. He gives a list of all the things that the vessel has to endure, the many persecutions and the trials that the vessel has to go through, but although it is a vessel of fragile clay and has to go through everything that would be calculated to destroy it, it is not destroyed. It just goes on burning because of that treasure within it.

You know, Paul only had the Old Testament as his Bible. Has your memory lighted upon what may have been in his mind? There are a lot of references to the Old Testament in this letter to the Corinthians, but in this case I think perhaps he was thinking about Moses and the bush which never burned. Any small match put to it might have consumed it and if you had passed by the next day you would have seen nothing but charred ashes. But this fire went on and on and on and the bush was never consumed. The earthen vessel had a treasure in it: it was the Lord. Come what may, if the Lord is in the vessel, it will not be destroyed. The testimony will go on. So Paul says: "We are... pursued, yet not forsaken."

We pass from that to Paul's letter to Timothy, and there he says: "In a great house there are... vessels... some unto honour, and some unto dishonour"... 'If a man will separate himself from those vessels unto dishonour, he shall be a vessel unto honour' (2 Timothy 2:20,21).

Here, then, the Apostle introduces the great law of separation from everything that God cannot accept, and says: 'If you do that, you shall be a "vessel... meet for the master's use, prepared unto every good work"'.

Therefore we are called to be vessels suitable for the use of the Lord, and our suitability depends upon our separation from all that which is not honourable to the Lord.

We have only one remaining reference: that in the Book of the Revelation. "And he that overcometh... to him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers." I do not pretend to understand what that means, but it does seem to say this: That there will be a people who will be like a rod of iron, by which the rebellious nations shall be broken to pieces like a potter's vessel. I say that we cannot understand that, but there it is in the Bible, and what it says is just this: That in the end the nations which have continued to reject God, who have resisted all the patience and love of God, who have known of Him and have refused to have Him as their God, will be broken to pieces like a potter's vessel, and the instrument that God will use will be those who are here called 'the overcomers'.

That is a very broad survey of something of what the Bible says about the potter, the clay and the vessels. It is only a beginning, the laying down of a foundation, but do not allow your anticipation of what is yet to come to rob you of the value of what has been said. You have a lot of empty pages in your notebooks yet, but do not be so anxious to get them filled up that you do not go over what you already have. We are not giving just Bible teaching, but are working our way into the mind of God. There is a lot of instruction in what has been said, a lot of comfort and encouragement, and a lot of strength to be taken from it, but there is also much warning. We are not only occupied with teaching in the Bible. We are in the presence of the revealed mind of God and to come into that is a great responsibility.

Chapter 2 - "Called According to His Purpose"

"But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (Isaiah 64:8).

"Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand" (Jeremiah 18:5,6).

Our governing thought is that the vessel made by the potter is an expression of the mind of the potter. It is not just something in itself, but it expresses a thought. So we resume with God represented as a Potter.

God took this conception Himself: it is not an idea given to Him by man. It is God who has the clay in His hands and who is working it according to His own mind. He is therefore occupied with a definite purpose: He is working to have a vessel for Himself, and the vessel is something which He chose before ever He put His hand to the work. The principle which the Apostle Paul embodied is a principle which governs all the work of God. The Lord said to Ananias (of Paul): "He is a chosen vessel unto me" (Acts 9:15), and Paul himself said later: "It was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb" (Galatians 1:15). And that Apostle makes it clear to us that all who are called in Christ Jesus are foreknown and chosen by God. It is the Apostle Peter who says that he is writing to "the elect... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Peter 1:1), and that elect was scattered abroad throughout "Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia".

Now this subject of 'election' is a very difficult one, so let us say something that will have the object of getting rid of some of the difficulty.

Every truly saved soul ought to have at their salvation a sense of divine destiny. A consciousness of vocation comes with the consciousness of life, and everyone at new birth ought to feel: 'Now there is something to live for! Now I feel that there is a purpose in life.' Everyone who professes to be a child of God but does not have that consciousness is not a truly born-again child of God.

This is true of every part of the creation naturally when it is right. How busy are all the living creatures on this earth! They have a sense that there is something they have got to do with their life. Look at the little ants on the ground! They are very busy! It is as though their very life depended upon their getting something done. And when life is right it is always like that. If you like to go outside of this building today you will meet a number of wasps and you will prove that what I have said is true. They are going to get something done and are not going to be easily discouraged.

Purpose is a characteristic of life, and if that is true in the natural creation, it is much more true in the spiritual. It is possible to be dead while we live; and that simply means that we have lost the sense of a purpose in living. Have you noticed that when faith declines the consciousness of purpose also fades? Faith and purpose always go together. Little faith means little purpose and large faith means large purpose.

Now we are not given any option in this matter, for it is just a matter of life or death. If we have life we have purpose, and if we have no life we have no purpose. That is because of the divine sovereignty in this matter, and it is all bound up with this matter of election, because God has chosen us for a purpose. The vessels which this Potter makes are not just for ornaments. They are not intended to be put on a shelf for people just to notice, or not to notice. God makes His vessels with an object.

You cannot explain the divine sovereignty in this matter, so you had better give up trying! When God says: "I have chosen thee", He does not invite us to explore the reasons why, nor does He invest the elect with omniscience. Indeed, He does not allow us to investigate His reasons for what He does. As a matter of fact, He makes it more difficult for the elect to understand His acts than anyone else. The clay is not allowed to ask the potter: 'Why did you choose me, and why did you make me like this?' The vessel is not permitted to say to the potter: 'Why did you choose me for this purpose?' God just does it, and He does not allow us to ask any questions as to why.

Hard-and-fast systems of doctrine in this matter often lead to spiritual death, because they put the unsearchable, infinite wisdom of God into a little man-made box. It is very true to experience that hard-and-fast doctrines about election and predestination often lead to death. Those countries where a rigid doctrine of predestination rules are usually the most spiritually dead. You can have Protestantism without life, and you can have 'reformed theology' without life. The reason is that men have put this infinite, unsearchable wisdom of God into a box of fixed doctrine.

The chosen vessel becomes the instrument of a divine wisdom which surprises the vessel itself. Sooner or later that chosen vessel is full of one question: 'Why did God choose me? Why did He call me to this work? He ought to have chosen anyone but me! I am the most unsuited for this kind of life and this kind of work.' That was true of Moses. When God would send him to Egypt, he said: 'Oh, if you can send by anybody, do so, but not by me.' When God chose Jeremiah, the latter said: "I cannot speak: for I am a child" (Jeremiah 1:6). A prophet, whose one business it was to speak, felt that it was the one thing he could not do. Divine choice is a very extraordinary thing, and it is not always the thing that we would like or would choose that God calls us to. When we are young we have perhaps a great idea of being in the Lord's work, and we leap to it very eagerly as though we can do it, but when we get older we feel more acutely our dependence. It is then that we discover that naturally we are not fit for it, and many of God's chosen vessels have had to be kept in the work by the very power of God itself.

You see, it is God's own sovereignty in His choice, and the point is this: It is not the vessel, but the purpose for which the vessel has been chosen.

What is it that unites us as Christians? Now listen to this: It is not salvation, nor redemption, but it is God's power in salvation and redemption that unites us. It is the common consciousness of all believers that they exist for a purpose and that God has saved them with a great purpose in view. This is a very important thing to remember. We may all be saved, and yet we may all be divided. We may all be redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus and yet remain just individual units. But see what a uniting power there is in everybody feeling that they are called to a purpose! They are united by one common vision. There were plenty of things to divide the people in the days of Nehemiah, for they all had their natural and personal interests, and the enemy was doing everything he could to divide them, but they were all mastered by one purpose - the building of that wall - and that common vision and purpose defeated the enemy at every turn.

To return to the words of Peter: We do not have to be always all together in one place to be so united. Peter said: 'To the elect who are scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.' It is one elect in many places, united because of one consciousness of divine purpose in life.

Well, that has to do with God as the Potter. Whether we understand it or not, God acts in sovereignty when He calls us to Himself.

I believe most strongly that this is the point where the mistake has been made. Election has been made a matter of salvation when it ought to have been made a matter of purpose. We are not predestined to be saved, but are predestined, through salvation, to come to God's purpose. Election has more to do with purpose than with salvation - salvation is only on the way to purpose.

Israel was God's chosen nation, elect among the nations, and was brought out of Egypt by the virtue of precious blood. When Israel failed of the purpose of God in their existence, they defeated all that had gone before. It was the purpose of their redemption that justified their continuation as God's vessel, and when they lost their purpose they lost their place.

Dear friends, we are "called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

Now much of what I have said is perhaps difficult for you to understand, but it is very important, and it leads to the other things which are not quite so difficult.

Let us walk back to the potter's house with Jeremiah, when the Lord says to him, and to Israel: 'Am I not able to do as I will with My people?'

The first thing that arises, then, is God's ability to do what He decides to do. Supposing we now put ourselves in the place of the clay and are told that God has called us into a great eternal purpose: We are to become an expression of the very mind of God. What is your reaction to that? I think the best thing we could say would be: 'Well, I don't want to disbelieve God, but I don't think He will be able to do that with me. Forgive me, Lord, if I seem to be without faith in You, but I don't think You will be able to make a success of me.' The Lord just answers: 'Am I not able to do what I decide to do? Do you mean that My power is so limited that I cannot do what I make up My mind to do?' God's choosing carries with it God's power to do that for which He chooses. 'Yes, but Lord, I don't doubt Your power to do what You want to do, but how are You going to do it? I just do not see, Lord, how You can do it with me!' Or it may be: 'Lord, I just don't see how You are going to be able to do it with that person. He is a perfectly hopeless man, and she is a perfectly hopeless woman.' And the Lord answers: 'Do you mean that I have not got the wisdom to do what I have decided to do?' God's power and wisdom accompany His choice.... 'Very well Lord, I don't see how You can do it, but go on.'

Then the Lord begins to work, and He comes on some difficulty in the clay. There is something that is just not yielding to Him, that is not suitable to His purpose, and a crisis arises. It seems as though things come to a standstill, and then we say to the Lord: 'I told You so, Lord! You have got the wrong man. You see, You have got hold of the wrong piece of clay. I tried to tell You that You had made a mistake.' And that does not happen only once - it happens again and again through our lives.

But look at the potter in the potter's house! Look at his patience with the clay, and his persistence, and then look at the people to whom he was speaking. Think of Israel! Apart from ourselves, Israel is the greatest example and demonstration of the patience of God through history. I know what you are thinking! When the vessel that the potter was making was marred, he made another vessel. But I will ask you a question: Was his new vessel made with new clay or was it made with the old clay? The answer to that is given to us in Paul's letter to the Romans, chapters nine, ten and eleven. There Paul says: 'Yes, it is true that the original Israel was marred in the hands of the Potter, but out of the original clay He takes a remnant' - and this is the impressive thing - 'and that remnant is according to the election' (Romans 11:5).

God's work is not all in vain, for in the remnant He sees His full thought realized and expressed. There may be a lot about us that tries the patience of God, but He will never give us up - until we say that we absolutely refuse to go on with Him. But who shall ever say that God's patience is exhausted?

No, dear friends. If God has really called us, He knows what He has called. He knows all that has to be done. His wisdom and His power are very great; His patience and His persistence are just wonderful, and the potter's house tells us that God is triumphant at last.

I think I had better leave it there for the moment. There is very much more to come later on, and there are some things of very great importance in this connection. If you are really the Lord's you can settle this question that you have been chosen. Has God drawn our hearts out to Himself? That settles the whole question of election. Have you really some desire toward the Lord? Where did that desire come from? The one thing that we sometimes have to fall back on is this: 'Lord, I did not create my desire for You. With all my weaknesses and all my failures, You have done something in me so that I cannot do without You.'

Let us just settle, therefore, that God has chosen us according to His purpose and that sense of divine purpose must really govern our lives. Let us have faith in God that He has the power and the wisdom and the patience to realize what He has chosen us for.

Chapter 3 - "He Wrought His Work on the Wheels"

"The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought his work on the wheels" (Jeremiah 18:1-3).

We are seeing that God Himself has taken the place of a potter and is at work forming a vessel for Himself. His work has a very special and definite purpose in view, for the vessel which He is making is a chosen vessel, that is, it is governed absolutely by His sovereign will and purpose. He will have this vessel, and nothing, and no one, can deny Him. The supreme idea connected with this vessel is that it is designed to serve a special purpose throughout eternity. There is an eternal thought in the Mind of God which He is going to realize and express in this vessel, and all believers are called according to this purpose. So what we are concerned with at this time is to be led into that divine thought.

There are two vessels presented to us in the Bible, and yet these two are one in divine purpose. There is Israel, which was called to be an earthly expression of the divine Mind, and was chosen from among the nations for this particular purpose: to set forth the Mind of God on this earth in history. On the other hand, there is the Church, spoken of in the New Testament as "the elect" (1 Peter 1:1). But the Church was chosen from eternity for a heavenly purpose, not only an earthly one. Israel was for an earthly and 'time' purpose, while the Church is for a heavenly and timeless, or eternal, purpose.

Now we, of course, are called in relation to this eternal purpose. In this present dispensation God is mainly concerned with this Church. It is being gathered out of all the nations for a great purpose in the ages to come. At present it is in the process of being formed, but at the end of this dispensation it will be completed and will begin its eternal purpose.

The Lord is continually rebuking us in relation to one thing: that is, that we make everything of this life and of time. We think that this life is everything, and therefore we have quarrels with the Lord because we cannot understand Him. For instance, the Lord does a deep, deep work in some life and brings that one into a very real knowledge of Himself. We draw our conclusions from that and say: 'The Lord is going to do something very wonderful in this world through that life.' All our hopes and expectations are bound up with that one - and just at that point, when we think they are ready to do some wonderful thing for the Lord, He takes them away; and we get into trouble with the Lord over that. We cannot understand why He does that kind of thing, but He has done it very many times. The Lord is working, not for time, but for eternity; not for earth, but for heaven. All that the Lord does with us here in time is related to the purpose of the ages to come.

We had better settle this matter very quickly. Nothing in any one of our lives will be completed in time. We shall never reach the end in this life, and only eternity and heaven will make our life perfect. Just when we think that we might be useful to the Lord, He takes us away.

This is the supreme idea of the Church, and we must recognize that it is in course of formation. Nothing is going to reach an end in our lifetime. I think we had better settle that, because it touches the heart of many of our problems.

In our summary of all the references to the potter in the Bible, we said that the driving force of the Potter's wheels is the Holy Spirit, and it is very important that we should all be perfectly clear and certain as to why the Holy Spirit has come into this world. There are many aspects to His work, but what we must guard against is regarding any one aspect as the whole. It is possible to draw a circle round the Holy Spirit and over that particular circle write the word 'MUST'. 'It must be like this. If it is not this, then it is not the Holy Spirit.' So we put the Holy Spirit into a box of doctrine. The New Testament makes it very clear that we must leave the Holy Spirit out of boxes and in the open.

But when we have said that, we have to realize that there is an all-inclusive work of the Holy Spirit. However many aspects there are, there is only one purpose, and that has two things in it. In all His different works the Holy Spirit just moves along two lines, and these two lines ought never to be separated. The one line is revealing Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit came for this precise purpose. Jesus said so. He is here for the specific and inclusive purpose of revealing the Lord Jesus. Now there is a peril associated with that word 'revealing'. Many people think that they just have to sit down and let something come to them. Sometimes the Holy Spirit does show us something while we are praying or are meditating quietly, but most of you have not the time to become monks or nuns. We have not the time nor the opportunity to be recluses. This does not mean that we must not have our times of prayer, because while we talk to the Lord in prayer, it ought to be a time when the Lord talks to us, but in these days of so much busyness and activity, it is very difficult to be quiet and meditate. Many of the Lord's people do not hear Him speaking because they do not give Him an opportunity. They are too busy to listen to Him. so we cannot put too much emphasis upon the necessity for being quiet sometimes.

When we have said that, and said it very emphatically, for there is no real substitute for prayer and there is nothing that should be allowed to take the place of the Word of God in our lives, we must recognize that the revealing of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is a very practical thing.

Many of you will agree with me when I say that we have learned more about the Lord Jesus by experience than in any other way. If we have committed our lives entirely to the Holy Spirit, we must realize that everything that happens to us has a lesson in it. Each of our experiences is intended to teach us something. You see, we come back to our favourite text: "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). There is no experience which can come to us as children of God that is not capable of teaching us some lesson. The very sovereignty of the Holy Spirit demands that it should be so. Our going out and our coming in under the Holy Spirit will teach us something. There is a sovereignty over all the ways in the life of a child of God. That does not mean that all our ways are right, but if they are wrong the Holy Spirit can teach us something. However, the point is that the revelation of Jesus Christ comes very largely through experience. We come to understand the mind of the Lord by experience, and that is one of the Holy Spirit's main methods of revealing Christ. We ought never to take a holiday from the Holy Spirit.

The other line of the Holy Spirit is conforming us to the image of Christ. You can see these two sides in the potter's house. The clay on the wheel is going through experiences, and they may be very difficult for it to understand. The potter may give it a hard blow, or he may use the strength of his hands to bring pressure upon it, or he may gently work it with his fingers. The clay goes through many experiences. Well, the experiences are not everything. You may not understand them, or know what the potter means by these various activities. Many of them seem to be difficult, but the potter is not just doing this because he wants to. He is not doing something hard just because he wants to be hard. Be patient and watch, and you will see that something is taking shape: a vessel is being formed. In the end there will be something which has a design in it. "He wrought his work on the wheels." He did not just put some clay on the wheels and knock it about - he wrought his work.

To use a New Testament phrase, the Lord is "working in us that which is well-pleasing in his sight" (Hebrews 13:21), and you all know so well what is the design: "For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29) - the revealing of His Son by the Holy Spirit, the working of the Holy Spirit by experience and the perfecting of the vessel which is the image of God's Son.

I want to stay just for a little while with one other aspect of this formation. When the potter puts the clay on the wheel it is composed of a great multitude of particles which could just fall apart at any moment and the clay come to pieces. They are individual particles. But do you notice what is happening on the wheel? By pressure and manipulation these particles are being pushed together so that they are losing their independence and becoming parts of one whole. If the particles could speak, they might say: 'Well, I don't think I like this idea. I am being robbed of my independence and am having to accept a life in relation to other particles. I don't think I like that other particle. I would sooner have some other kind of particle next to me, and here is this potter making me live with other things that I don't like! "Oh, for the wings of a dove! Then I would fly away and be at rest!"'

The Potter is forming a body, a vessel, and every part of this vessel has to come into vital relationship with all the other parts. He never consults our likes over this matter, never says: 'Now, would you like to be here and have So-and-so put next to you?' You see, this is one of the great factors in divine sovereignty. The Lord never consults our wishes in this matter, because one of the great manifestations of His grace is going to be in our ability to live with people we do not like.

I wonder what you would do if you had the choice of your relationships! But the Lord does not give us that choice, for this vessel is called, says the Apostle Paul, "to the praise of the glory of his grace" (Ephesians 1:6). It does not want much grace to live with people whom we like, but it does take a lot of grace to live with some people. This is the formation of the Holy Spirit - the relatedness of the particular particles of the clay in the vessel is through His discipline.

And yet there is another aspect of this. The Lord very rarely puts together two parts which are exactly alike, but He does put parts together so that they can be the complement of each other. This is divine wisdom.

Have you ever asked any questions about your physical body? Have you ever asked why you have two eyes instead of one? Why you have two ears and not only one? Why you have two hands and not only one, or two legs and two feet? Why is there duplication in our bodies? Well, see how you would get on if you only had one leg! You would very soon lose your balance, for you need the other leg to keep you balanced. You put one foot forward and, unless you are just going to hop along with much difficulty, you must have another leg to come up and help. Of course, there are some people who, not having a second arm or leg, have learned to use the one very well, but that is not natural, and they must often feel the loss of that other limb. There is always some weakness and some lack. Well, if you like to try, you can put this to the test. You can go out from this place (I don't want to see you do it!) and try to get along with one leg. Do you see the point? God has constituted our bodies on this principle of mutual helpfulness, the one member making good what is lacking in the other.

When I was a little boy I used to be taken to church and, not being very interested in the sermon, I had to find some little ways of getting through that awful long time. One of the things I did was to see how much I could see through one eye, and then how much I could see when I closed that one and looked through the other. I found that I had only half a life when I used one eye! You see, my nose was like a line, and when I closed an eye I could not see very much on the other side of my nose. It was the same the other way, but when I used both eyes I could see everything. Well, of course, that is just a boy's silly little game. If I closed one eye I did not see some of the things I did not want to see!

We need the two sides to make a perfect life, so God has given us two eyes, two hands, two legs and two feet, and each side contributes something to the other side.

Here we are back with this vessel that the Lord is forming. All the particles, while retaining their personality, are to become one vessel.

There is one thing that I feel I must say before we conclude. The real formation of this vessel is taking place in heaven. We are always trying to get a perfect expression of the Church on the earth, but we shall never do it. Make no mistake about this! You will have to learn this lesson sooner or later.

At the end of the Bible this vessel is represented as the new Jerusalem and is seen coming down out of heaven. All the ages have been occupied in forming this heavenly vessel. Nevertheless, what is heavenly has to become more and more real in us while we are here. We shall never know what the Lord has been doing with us until we get to heaven, but when we do see all the meaning of His work with us here we shall be very surprised. There is a larger meaning than we can see in those words of the Lord Jesus: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shall understand hereafter" (John 13:7). Why it is that the Lord puts us together as He does: why has He called us to live in certain relationships which are not what we would choose? The full explanation of that awaits us in heaven, but that does not mean that we have to wait until we get there to express the relationship. It is a mark of something being wrong spiritually when members of the Body of Christ separate themselves from other members. Our great peril is to live an independent spiritual life. There is something of a Thomas in most of us. You will remember that when the others were together enjoying the presence of the Risen Lord, Thomas was not there. Fellowship is a spirit before it is anything else. It does not necessitate our always being together in one place. It is a very precious thing to be able to be together as the Lord's people, for many of them live a very lonely spiritual life. Nevertheless, fellowship is a spirit more than it is geographical. When the Apostle said: "Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit " (Ephesians 4:3), he was not only localizing that. It is an exhortation to the whole Church, scattered over all the earth - "giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit". It is the "unity of the Spirit" - fellowship is a spiritual thing.

Now the Potter, by the energy of the Holy Spirit, is seeking to form a heavenly vessel, and the formation is a progressive day-by-day expression of the Lord Jesus.

Chapter 4 - "To Be Conformed to the Image of His Son"

"And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it" (Jeremiah 18:4).

We are going to consider the next movement into God's Mind as represented by the potter's work but before we come to that I just want to add a brief word to what we have said earlier.

We were speaking about the pressure of the hands of the potter, and saying that one of the effects of that pressure is to bring each particle of the clay very close together, so that they do not remain individual parts, but become parts of one complete whole. Now, while there are many more things that could be said with advantage about that, there is just this one thing that I want to add.

We have spoken of the final triumph of the potter with the clay, and it is a mark of his victory that the parts are pressed closely together. But let me explain what I mean. You are very well aware of what the enemy is trying to do with God's vessel. His great work is to break up that vessel, to scatter and disintegrate it, by persecution and all kinds of methods, but in that divine sovereignty the very work of the enemy is being made the pressure of the hands of the Potter. Our hearts are more united today with the hearts of the poor persecuted people of God in China, in Russia and in other parts of the world than they have ever been before. We are praying today as we have never prayed for all the scattered and persecuted people of God, and, while outwardly it looks as though the vessel is being broken to pieces, inwardly it is becoming more and more united. All the parts of the vessel are becoming more closely knit together in the spirit, so that the pressure is having just the opposite effect to that which the enemy wants it to have.

We find that there is some special blessing of the Lord upon international gatherings, and one of the chief blessings is the wonderful fellowship that we realize we have. This is not a fellowship that is made by our coming together, but it is already present and is only expressed by our being together. So this is a triumph of the Lord over all the disintegrating efforts of the enemy. I trust that you are going back to all your lonely places the stronger for realizing that you are not alone. That will be one of the Lord's triumphs over a great deal of suffering.

Now let us come to our next step in this matter of the movement into the Mind of God. We have lifted out of Jeremiah that verse which speaks of the vessel being marred and made again. Of course, historically this related to Israel, which was the vessel that God was forming at that time. Israel was the clay in God's hands out of which He was seeking to make a vessel for His glory, but Israel resisted the will of God and He had to crush that clay out of shape and begin again to make another vessel as was good in His sight. We will come back to that later.

The principle is of much wider application. If Jeremiah 18 was confined to Israel alone, then we have no right to be here this morning. Our only justification would be that we are trying to be students of history. However, the principle is of much wider application than Israel - it applies to the whole human race, as much to the Gentiles as to the Jews.

The clay is humanity as a whole. God began to make a vessel of humanity, but it was marred in the hands of the Potter, so He set Himself to make another vessel, and we know that He is now forming His new heavenly vessel of the clay out of all nations.

To return to Israel: When Israel broke down, nationally and historically, God brought in the spiritual and eternal Israel, and now at this time, in this very place, He is at work on this other vessel. God is now forming a spiritual Israel in the place of the earthly and temporal Israel.

The first thing God has done is to reveal the pattern of His vessel. I think it is a very wonderful thing that in this dispensation God has commenced by showing His pattern. The pattern has been set before us - and this is the whole meaning of the Incarnation of God's Son.

And yet, while that is so true, it requires the work of the Holy Spirit to make us see the Pattern. He was in close touch with men, yet they did not see Him. They did not know nor understand who and what was this One who was moving in their midst every day. He was not recognized by the world, and it was with great difficulty that even His disciples had any conception of what He was. It was not until the Holy Spirit came that they began to see who it was that had been with them all that time, and then not only did they begin to see who He was, but what He was. They not only saw the Person, but they began to see the meaning of the Person. They came to see that He was a great Pattern, so the Holy Spirit revealed in their hearts not only the Person but the Pattern.

But the Holy Spirit went further. It would be a terrible thing for us if our eyes were opened to see all the meaning of Jesus Christ. If the Holy Spirit revealed Christ to us we might fall down in utter despair. We would say, like Peter: "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." However, the Holy Spirit began to make the Pattern real in the disciples. To use the so well-known words of the Apostle Paul, He began to 'conform them to the image of Christ' (Romans 8:29).

Those two things are essential to our coming into the Mind of God.

Now let us come immediately to the Pattern. You may never have wondered why we have the four Gospels at the beginning of the New Testament, for they were not the first of the New Testament writings. Some of the Gospels were written well after the Apostles had written their letters. But you see, the Holy Spirit had this matter in hand, so He placed the Person before the corporate expression. So we will look at the Person who is the Pattern.

First of all, the Man Himself is presented. Where do the Gospels begin with the presentation of the Man? Perhaps you have noticed that the Gospel by Mark, which was the first of the Gospels to be written, begins with Jesus at thirty years of age. Matthew and Luke may tell us a lot about the earthly birth and childhood of Jesus, but the first one to present this Person begins with Him as a full-grown man. And the first thing that is shown to us about Him as the Pattern is Jesus coming to the Jordan to be baptized by John.

That represented a very great crisis in His life. At that point He stepped across the line which lay between His private life and His public life, between Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth and Jesus the great Servant of the Lord. At that point He stepped out before heaven - the 'heavens were opened'; before hell - because Satan would begin at once to react; and before all men. And, as it were, before the whole universe, He took His position with God. He made His utter committal to God. On the one side there lay all that this world could offer, all the kingdoms of this world that Satan could give Him, all the realization of human ambition, all the experience of the satisfaction of the natural man. On the other side of His baptism there lay suffering, persecution, loneliness and death. The Jordan was a grave, and in going down into those waters of baptism He died to all that which lay on the one side and accepted all that lay on the other.

This is the comprehensive and inclusive meaning of baptism. It is the repudiation and death to one whole realm of things, and the acceptance of all that is involved in the other realm.

So Jesus came to Jordan. John would forbid Him, and sought to discourage Him by saying: 'No, this is not for You. It may be for the crowd, but it is not for You. It may be important for a lot of people, but it is not important for You.' Jesus simply said: 'Let it be so, John.' He would allow no argument to turn Him away from this committal. The best arguments of His best friends would not turn Him aside. He said: 'This is what I have come for, and I am going through with it.'

Is it necessary for me to stay and apply that? This is the Pattern revealed, and it is what goes to make up a vessel. Many, many Christians do not get very far in the Christian life because this thing is not as absolute as it was with Jesus. What does baptism mean to you? Is it just something in the Bible that you are told to do? Is it some part of the ritual of the church? What really does it mean to you? Does it mean this - an absolute committal to God for all the future and all that it involves? That is the pattern, and we shall never come to the full expression of the Mind until this first thing is settled.

The first thing in presenting the Man is His Baptism, and, as I have said, that has to be a testimony before heaven, before hell and before men. I do not think heaven is very interested just in formalities. The angels are not looking eagerly at anyone who is just going through a bit of ritual. If Satan is interested in anything like that, it is only because he wants to laugh. He says: 'Poor creatures! I will prove presently how false it all is.' And I do not think people who really think have much interest in a merely formal kind of ceremony. But when it is after the character of the committal of Jesus Christ, the whole universe is really interested. If anyone like the Lord Jesus is determined to go through this thing and the enemy cannot stop it beforehand, he will, as in the case of the Lord Jesus Himself, come soon afterwards.

This is just the first thing concerning the Pattern, but let me say at once that it is not just a matter of being baptized or not being baptized. No baptism ever makes us wholly the Lord's. You might be baptized every year and it make no difference. It is a way that the Lord has given us of showing where our hearts are, and a matter of where our lives really are: whether we are wholly committed to God.

May the Lord find every one of us to be like Himself in this matter, and in being wholly committed to God may we be "conformed to the image of his Son".

Chapter 5 - "We... Beholding... The Lord Are Changed Into the Same Image"

"And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it" (Jeremiah 18:4).

(So we are occupied at this time with the second vessel being made by the Potter. The first vessel, Israel, was marred and broken and, for the time being at least, has been set aside, and God has taken up the business of forming a second vessel, which is the heavenly and spiritual Israel.

Now we have been speaking latterly about the pattern of the new vessel, and this pattern is the Person of God's Son - we are "foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29); so that the Lord Jesus Christ is the pattern to which God is seeking to conform us. We have seen the first movement in this new formation, that is, we have been with the Lord Jesus at the Jordan for His baptism, and we have seen that in His baptism He stepped right out in an utter committal to God.)

We turn now to the third chapter in the Gospel by Luke and read from verse 21: "Jesus... having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased."

You will notice that the anointing of the Holy Spirit went with the baptism in water, and there is an essential connection between these two. In His baptism Jesus had stepped completely off the ground of the self-life and had taken the ground of the heavenly life with God. This position was witnessed to immediately by heaven - "the heaven was opened" - and was attested by His Father. Jesus was attested by the declaration which the Father made and by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and it was impossible for that to happen until He was on the other side of baptism. The Holy Spirit is never given to the life of the flesh. In the Old Testament it said that the holy anointing oil should not be poured upon man's flesh (Exodus 30:31,32), and the whole life of the people of Israel carried a symbolism of this fact. If you had gone amongst those people then you would never have found anyone wearing a short skirt, for both men and women wore long skirts, and their heads were covered. Their very dress was a symbol of the fact that their flesh should not appear before God.

Now I am not saying that this has to be literally the case in our time, but there is a good deal that symbolizes the refusal today to accept the laws of God. Both men and women seem to think that the more flesh they show the happier they are.

Well, of course, this is symbolism, but it points to a spiritual principle. Right through Israel, from the high priest to the smallest child, the garments were long. They were regarded as God's anointed nation and the anointing oil could not come upon their flesh.

In the baptism of Jesus Christ the life of the flesh was entirely repudiated. To use the words of the Apostle Paul, He had symbolically "put away... the old man" and, in rising out of the water. He had "put on the new man" (Ephesians 4:22,24). That is, He left earthly ground and took heavenly ground with God. There was a link between His spirit here and God in heaven.

You may think that is an unnecessary remark, but the Holy Spirit has put a very small fragment in here. It says: "Jesus, having been baptized, and praying"; so that, on this side of the grave, He was united with heaven, and, that being so, He received the anointing of the Holy Spirit. These are very important things for us to recognize. They are vital to our union with Christ, and they set forth the essential connection between baptism and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The normal sequence would be that both happen at the same time; that is, there ought to be no lapse between the meaning of baptism and the receiving of the anointing. That was normal in the New Testament. There were one or two exceptions, but they were not the normal thing.

The point is that you and I ought to follow up as quickly as possible with this matter. I think I would be right in saying that what has become the normal is a division between these two things. My own experience is the experience of many of the Lord's servants: there was a gap of years between my baptism and my coming to know the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and that gap meant a great deal of limitation which was only removed when I came into the knowledge of the anointing.

What I am trying to say is this: We should never regard the beginning of our Christian life with baptism as just something in itself, and that later on we are to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit. From God's standpoint there is no such thing as a second blessing. I have been asked if I have received the 'second blessing', and my reply is: 'No. I have come into the first blessing.' It should be like that.

Well, if we take the Lord Jesus as our example, these two things really are inseparable.

But, even if it takes time, I must try to make this helpful to you. You will understand that I am not here to try to give a full explanation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. However, because baptisms are going to take place today; there are those who have said: 'Oh, I wish I could be baptized again! I did not understand when I was baptized all that I see now. Should I not be baptized again? Should I not bring my baptism right up in line with my present knowledge?' Well, if we were to adopt that procedure, every bit of fresh knowledge that you received would require a new baptism! If when you were baptized you really meant to give your life to the Lord, and your heart was right with Him, then God knew all that it meant, even if you did not. I do not think anyone could have known much less about the meaning of baptism than I did when I was baptized. I wanted to belong to the Lord and to go on with Him, so I was told that I ought to be baptized. There were other people who wanted me to be baptized more than I did myself so, in my simple way, I just yielded to their wishes. The only thing was that I wanted to love the Lord. Years afterwards I came to understand a great deal more about the meaning of baptism, so I went to the Lord about whether I ought to be baptized again, and He just showed me that it was not what I understood but what He understood, and that into the first simple step that I took He put all the meaning of that step and said 'I will lead you through your whole life into the meaning of that simple step.'

I hope that is helpful. Of course, it would be another matter if you were not definitely saved when you were baptized.

I think we must leave that there and return to our Pattern: These are the first things that have been shown in the Pattern: the meaning of baptism as changing our ground, leaving the whole ground of the flesh and taking the ground of the Spirit, and, by so doing, coming under the direct and complete government of the Holy Spirit. By doing this we become marked out by God - "This is My beloved son". Thus we are distinguished by heaven and amongst men as being in a new relationship with God. It is a very important thing that every Christian should be a distinguished Christian.

When we went out to the Far East this year and arrived at the airport in Manila, we were given a little card by the airport authorities and on it were three letters: V.I.P. 'Very Important Person'. Of course, that was not true, and was just a courtesy on their part, but it may serve as an illustration.

When Jesus stepped on to that new ground after His baptism God gave Him that ticket: 'Very Important Person', and that was what He was in the eyes of heaven, though not in the eyes of men and of this world.

Now, do you notice the first thing that distinguished Jesus as heaven's Very Important Person? "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Matthew 4:1). If men did not recognize who He was, hell did. Satan said: 'This is a Very Important Person', and he paid Him very great attention all His life. At the end of these temptations in the wilderness it says: "He (Satan) departed from him for a season" (Luke 4:13). It was as though Satan said: 'You have defeated me now, but I will be back again' and how true that was!

Heaven's Important Persons are known by the enemy, and he will do everything he can against that anointing. He will do it by persecution, or he will try it by deception. There is no numbering of the ways in which the enemy tries to counter that anointing. But it is the anointing of the Holy Spirit which gives us our importance - we are not important in ourselves.

Now I think we can leave Jordan and go on. That is the Man presented, the first view of the Pattern that has been shown. From that point the Pattern is described, and that description is all gathered up in a very simple phrase, spoken by the lips of Jesus: "I AM". That means that He is the all-inclusive representation of the Mind of God. Jesus Christ as a single personal reality encompasses all the original intention of God. He is personally universal. We have often said that when God reaches His end, in everything that we shall see and touch, we shall see and touch the Lord Jesus. What a glorious state that will be! You will meet me and I will meet you, and yet we shall not meet one another - we shall meet the Lord Jesus. All the difficulties that we find in other people will be gone and we shall just meet the Lord Jesus. He will be everywhere and in all things. "A great multitude, which no man could number" (Revelation 7:9), and yet one all-comprehensive Person, the Lord Jesus. He is universal, timeless, without beginning and without end. He speaks of the glory which He had with His Father before the world was (John 17:5), and the Word is that that glory is to be in Him "unto all generations for ever and ever" (Ephesians 3:21). He is universal and eternal, and yet He comes down into history. This One of whom we are speaking as God's Pattern, or Vessel is all that.

Just before we finish let us look at a three-fold declaration that Jesus made about Himself. The words are so familiar to us: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). He did not say: 'I have come to show you the way, to tell you the truth.'

"I am the way." That is not the Pattern's idea, doctrine or theory: the way is a living Person. You can have all the doctrine and all the theory, but not be in the way. Difficult as it is to explain, this is what it means:

It is not by coming into the teaching of Jesus, but by coming into Him Himself that you come into the Mind of God. Being 'in Christ' means that you have been introduced into the very Mind of God. When we come into Christ we are introduced into the Mind of God. But that is only an introduction. We are being introduced to one another here at this time 'This is so-and-so' ... 'Oh, I am glad to meet you' - but no one imagines that that is all there is to know about that person. There are some people you can know all about in five minutes, and after that they have no more to give you, but there are others whom it takes a whole lifetime to know. It is one thing to be introduced to Christ, but it is going to take all eternity to know Him. He as a personal reality is the full embodiment of all that God has to give us. The Apostle Paul did not say at the end of his life: 'Oh, I do want to know more about Christ!', but he did say: "That I may know him" (Philippians 3:10).

So Jesus says: I am the Way. If you want to come into the full knowledge of God's Mind, you will find it in Me. It will be a matter of knowing Me more and more' ... "I am the way... no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).

"I am the truth." Again, it is not what Christ says, not the teaching of Jesus. That may be important, but what He is saying is: 'I am personally the truth.' All the truth of God and heaven has become a personality, has become embodied in a Man. When He says "I am the truth", He is saying 'I am unique. There is not another like Me. In the matter of the truth I am the first and the last. I am the beginning and the end.' He is the unique presentation of the Mind of God, the exact expression of the Father. If we want to know the truth, it can only be in a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus.

"I am the life." What a vast amount that comprehends! This takes us right back over the ages to the very beginning, and on to the consummation. God has comprehended everything in one thing. Is it the way, with all that that means? Is it the truth, with all that that means? All this is gathered into divine life. It was the original intention of God that man should have eternal life, and should share with Him His own life, but not one man of all the vast multitudes that ever lived on this earth had that life until this Man came and gave it. "I came that they may have life" (John 10:10) ...John says: "The life was manifested" (1 John 1:2). He is the life and "he that hath the Son hath the life" (1 John 5:12) - not the teaching about eternal life, but the Person Himself. You see, He is God's Pattern.

So we repeat: the Pattern is a Person who is shown to us by the Holy Spirit. There is one test as to whether we have seen this Pattern. We may think we have seen because we have a lot of Christian truth, but there is one, and only one, proof that we have seen the Pattern. I use the words of the Apostle Paul: "We... beholding... the Lord are changed into the same image" (2 Corinthians 3:18-AV). The proof is that as the years go by we are becoming more like Christ. It seems all too slow, but it just must be like this - that more of Christ is being manifested in us as time goes on. That would be the only justification for our being here in this way - not that you have a lot of notebooks full of notes (whatever you are intending to do with them - it might be that you are going to preach all this to someone else, but that will not justify your having come here). The only justification will be that, having seen the Lord, we will be more like Him.

May the Lord make it like that!

Chapter 6 - "Another Vessel"

"Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought his work on the wheels. And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it" (Jeremiah 18:3,4).

We have reached the point in our meditations which is represented by that little clause "another vessel". When the clay of Israel refused to accept the Pattern of God as represented in Jesus Christ, it was broken on the wheel. And that is how Israel is today. It refused to accept God's Pattern and therefore, being marred, it was broken on the wheel, and God turned to make another vessel, of which He could say: 'In him I am well-pleased'... "a vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it".

The vessel, then, that God is now making is according to Christ, and this time He is going to succeed. The end of the Bible shows us the vessel perfected and glorified.

Before we go further with this Pattern, there is a general word to be said. It is important for us to realize that God always had only one vessel in mind. He never did intend to have two vessels, one spoiled and the other good. The whole of the Old Testament contains the mystery of Christ. He is hidden everywhere in it and, in reality, God was working through all those centuries on the principle of Christ. The fact that the Old Testament closes in failure only means that the earthly representation failed. The heavenly intention never did fail, so that if God has to set aside one earthly expression, He is going on with His eternal thought. God's intention concerning His Son did not begin when Jesus came into this world. Christ had been in the mind of His Father from all eternity and was appointed to be the Pattern before ever this world was created.

You must remember that the only Bible the first Christians had was the Old Testament, and Christ said that everything in that Bible concerned Himself. He said: "The Scriptures... these are they which bear witness of me" (John 5:39). He took up all the writings of Moses and the prophets and "interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27), and Peter says that it was "the Spirit of Christ which was in them (the prophets)" (1 Peter 1:10). So that if you had lived in the early days of the Church the only Bible you would have had would have been the Old Testament. But it would have been your Bible. If we ask for a Bible today we get the Old and the New Testaments together, but if Christians in the early days asked for a Bible, they were given just the Old Testament. Jesus used the Old Testament for Christians, and so did the Apostles, whose business was simply to show that the one Person in the Old Testament was Jesus Christ. All the outstanding features in it point in some way to Christ. It is God's book. He wrote it, and in His Mind there is only one object, and that is His Son.

So, in the outstanding persons of the Old Testament you have to see some feature of Christ. Was it Abraham? Well, we have been seeing how Abraham leads us to Christ. Was it Moses, or David, or the prophets? It was Christ about whom they were all speaking and whom they were representing in some way.

Let us take one simple illustration. Before the New Testament was written, during those wonderful movements in the early days, Philip was in Samaria, where God was doing a great work. The Spirit told Philip that he was to leave Samaria and go down to the desert. We might just say, by the way, that it seems a strange thing for the Lord to lead someone away from what was a very evident piece of His work to a desert. If Philip had not been a man utterly committed to the Holy Spirit, he would have had an argument with the Lord. He would have said: 'Lord, You sent me here to Samaria and You have proved that that was right. There is a great work of the Holy Spirit going on here, and now You tell me to go to a desert. How on earth can there be a revival in a desert?' The Lord does strange things, but the end of the story shows that He was right. Perhaps you would choose to stay in Samaria, where things are happening, and you might not like the idea of going down to a desert, but it might be that the Lord has something in that desert which is bigger than Samaria: Not only a town, but a whole new nation was touched in that desert. Well, that is just by the way.

You know what happened when Philip went down to that desert. He was looking round and wondering why he was there when he saw something coming from a distance. When it got nearer to him he saw that it was a chariot with some men in it. The Spirit said to Philip: "Go near, and join thyself to this chariot" (Acts 8:29). Again Philip was obedient to the Spirit, and as he got near to the chariot he heard the chief man in it reading. He looked at the man and saw that he was a dark-skinned Ethiopian, but as he listened, he said: 'I know what it is that that man is reading. He is reading out of my Bible.' So he said to the man: "Understandest thou what thou readest?" The man was reading from Isaiah 53, and he said: "How can I, except someone shall guide me? And he besought Philip to come up and sit with him... And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture, preached unto him Jesus" (Acts 8:31,35). I think this settles all arguments as to whether Isaiah 53 related to Jesus!

This is an example of how the Old Testament, as their Bible, was used to preach Jesus. There is something here which always amuses me. Philip preached Jesus out of Isaiah 53, and the very next thing the Ethiopian said was: "Behold, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" (Acts 8:36). Please turn to Isaiah 53 and tell me where it mentions baptism! You will read it a hundred times and, on the face of it, you will never discover the word 'baptism'. There is only one conclusion that we can draw. That chapter is about the death, the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and Philip must have said to this Ethiopian: 'To be united with Christ means being united with Him in His death, His burial and His resurrection.' The man believed and said "Here is water..." I always think the next phrase is significant: "And they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him" (Acts 8:38). Well, I leave that with you, but the fact is that that Ethiopian was baptized on Isaiah 53. That is just one instance of what we are saying. Whether it is the great persons in the Old Testament, or whether it is the central nation in it - Israel - or whether it is particular places, like Jerusalem and the Jordan, or whether it is special objects like the tabernacle and the temple, the fact is that in some way they all point to Jesus Christ.

So we come back to this: that He, God's Son, is the Pattern for the vessel, and we have commenced -and only commenced! - to study that Pattern.

Now just a further word about the beginning of the showing of the Pattern. The first thing about this Pattern is the mystery and the miracle of His birth from heaven. It is such a mystery that all the great brains of theology cannot accept it. I suppose the main point of controversy about the Lord Jesus is His virgin birth, but if you set that aside you reduce Him to the level of an ordinary man. In His very origin He would be no different from other men. I say again: many of the great brains of theology have decided against that birth. Nevertheless this has been, and still is, the great point of controversy, and this is an example of the fact that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God... and he cannot know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

The birth of Jesus Christ is a mystery and a miracle. At Christmas-time we see all sorts of things set up which are called 'the Nativity'. There are some animals in a stable, a man and a woman with a little baby, and we are told: 'That is the Nativity.' There was never anything more false. Bethlehem was never the birthplace of the Son of God. He was with the Father before this world was (John 17:5). Bethlehem was only the point at which He came out of eternity into time. His nativity was not in Bethlehem; it was in heaven. He repudiated His earthly father and mother and always spoke about "my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10).

Do you notice that when Luke wrote the genealogy of Jesus, he said of Him: "being the son of Joseph" (Luke 3:23), and then he protected that by putting into brackets "as was supposed". This was just what man supposed, but it was not true. He never was the son of Joseph.

What has this to do with us? This is the Pattern. The beginning of every Christian life is on the same principle as that of Jesus Christ. The Christian is not of time, but of eternity - thus the Apostle says: "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4). Our coming into relation with the Lord Jesus is only our coming out of eternity into time, out of heaven into this world. Where is your true nativity? If you were asked that by people of the world, you would say: 'I was born in France.... in Switzerland... in England.' If you were to say: 'I was born in heaven', the world would look at you and say: 'You are a funny creature!' At best they would say: 'What do you mean? I don't understand.' Jesus said of Himself: "I am come down from heaven" (John 6:38) ... "I am not of this world" (John 8:23), and in that sense He is the Pattern. We do not belong here, and the consciousness of that ought to be growing stronger all the time. As we have said, there ought to be a mystery and a miracle in the life of every child of God.

I am not sure how your Bibles put this, but I am sorry that in the English Bible the words of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus are put as they are, although in the Revised Version there is a correction in the margin. In the old Version it says: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). That is quite good, as far as it goes, but what Jesus really said was: "Except a man be born from above". The real beginning of a Christian's life is from above, and not from beneath. Of course, dear friends, you and I have to learn the meaning of this all our life, but we just state the fact and leave it there for the moment.

The next thing that we must come to in the Pattern is what we may call 'the take-over of the Holy Spirit'. That which is born of God is taken over by the Holy Spirit. I do not want to make difficulties for anyone, especially for our young people, but for those who know their Bibles, you will remember that there is always associated with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus the idea of sonship. Now it was when the Lord Jesus came up out of the waters of Jordan that He was attested the Son of God. Be careful! I am not saying that it was then that He became the Son of God - He was the Son of God. But on the resurrection side of the Jordan heaven attested Him the Son of God, and the Apostle Paul says: He "was declared to be the Son of God in power,... by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4-AV). There is a spiritual sense in which that was the new beginning.

Then do you notice what happens immediately after? The Holy Spirit from heaven takes over.

Now the Church went down into the Jordan when Christ was crucified. It certainly did go down into death. But when Christ was raised from the dead the Church began to live again, or, anyway, move toward life. It was like the dry and scattered bones of Ezekiel's vision beginning to move together. Something is happening in those forty days after the resurrection - there is a sound of movement amongst the dry bones. Then "they were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1) and the Holy Spirit came upon them. Although the Church was an eternal thing, it was born historically on the Day of Pentecost. The eternal had now come into time, and the mark of the birth of the Church was that the Holy Spirit took over. I am very careful when I use that phrase: 'He took over'. The Holy Spirit took everything out of the hands of men into His hands. That is why it is said: "A sound as of a rushing mighty wind" (Acts 2:2 - AV), and you know that when you get into the grip of a mighty, rushing wind, things are taken out of your hands and you just have to go where the wind is going. So Jesus said to Nicodemus: 'The wind blows where it likes, and you cannot tell the wind where it is to blow.' Some of us heard the wind coming down the mountains last night, and if you had been in the course of that wind it would have been silly for you to say: 'Now, wind, don't blow this way. Blow the other way.' You just have to go the way of the wind and accept that it is the master. "So is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).

What did this mean in the case of the Lord Jesus as the Pattern? It meant that all His acts, His words and His ways were governed from heaven. There was a mystery about it. People could not understand why He did what He did and why He did things in the way in which He did them. They certainly could not understand His words. Apparently He was like other men, and that was their problem. As they looked at Him they did not see anything different from the other men around. He was Himself as a man, but He was also someone else, and something else.

Now, when we become mastered by the Holy Spirit we do not lose our personality. We remain ourselves and we can be distinguished amongst one another because we are all ourselves. And yet we are someone else. There is another who is different from what we are. In a sense, there are two personalities about us. There is what we are naturally, but there is someone else - what we are spiritually. So it was with Jesus: He was two beings, so to speak. Under the government of the Holy Spirit we are more than ourselves, and that is how it was with the Lord Jesus. When people met Him, they met more than Him, and if we are according to the Pattern that is how it must be with us. How I would like to spend a lot of time on that! May I remind you that Abraham was more than Abraham, Moses was more than Moses and Elijah was more than Elijah. When you met Abraham, Moses or Elijah you met all Israel.

You see, "none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself" (Romans 14:7). As the Lord's people we represent something very much more than our individual life: we represent all the people of God. We are bound up with the whole life of the Church, and the vessel that God is making is the Church as a whole. It is the whole Church which constitutes the one vessel that God is seeking to form, so that our lives are intended to be a part of a much bigger whole. That truth, of course, involves us in a great responsibility.

Now, if you look into your Bible, you will see that that is exactly what it meant when the Holy Spirit took over. On the one hand, these people, Apostles and others, were just themselves. They were not changed into angels or into disembodied spirits. They were just themselves. Peter is still Peter - and yet they represent something very much more than themselves. They have become greater than themselves, and that is what the Holy Spirit will do for us.

These are just some features of the Pattern. There are very many more, but I must leave it with you to go and learn 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 - "A Vessel... Meet for the Master's Use"

Chapter 2 - "Called According to His Purpose"

Chapter 3 - "He Wrought His Work on the Wheels"

Chapter 4 - "To Be Conformed to the Image of His Son"

Chapter 5 - "We... Beholding... The Lord Are Changed Into the Same Image"

Chapter 6 - "Another Vessel"

About the Conference