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Right Standing With God

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from messages given in Holland in 1969.

Contents

Chapter 1 - What We Have Come Into in Christ

Chapter 2 - The Eternal Thought

Chapter 3 - The New Creation

Chapter 4 - The Great Change

Chapter 5 - The Controversy of Zion

Chapter 1 - What We Have Come Into in Christ

I just want to lay a foundation and read from the first chapter of the gospel by John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Verse 14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Then over to the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1, “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.”

Now I feel that in these times of being together the Lord wants me to speak to you about what has come in with Jesus Christ and what we have come into by the coming of Jesus Christ. My own strong conviction is the greatest need of the Lord’s people in this time is to know Him in a fuller way. The Lord Jesus is so much greater than ever we have thought. And probably you know that there is a law in the Word of God and that law is that we shall only grow spiritually according to the measure of our knowledge of Christ.

The Holy Spirit, if He has His way in our lives, will take very great pains to bring us into the full knowledge of Christ. It is the business of the Holy Spirit to do that. All our experiences under the hand of the Holy Spirit are intended to bring us into some fuller knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

Now, perhaps I am going to disappoint some of you when I say that it is not going to get easier as we go on. When we first go to school we learn a, b, c; that’s quite simple. One, two, three... that’s not difficult. But when we come near to the time of graduating, our lessons are made much harder. It is much more difficult to know, it calls for all our strength and endurance to learn. In the spiritual life it’s like that. The farther we go with the Lord the deeper the lessons become so that as we go on with the Lord, we find that He makes things more difficult for us.

You perhaps think that if only you were grown up in the Lord, it would be much easier; the Christian life would be much more simple. Let me tell you that it is just the other way: Christian life becomes more and more difficult the further we go. The oldest saints often have the darkest times.

You must remember that after thirty three years the Lord Jesus came to the place where in His last words, He said “Why, Father? Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” His darkest hour was at the end. He was just coming through to the glory then. And, as we say, the darkest hour is before the dawn. Now perhaps you think I’m not much of a comforter! But the knowledge of the Lord is a wonderful thing, to know the Lord is a great compensation for all suffering. If you are having a dark time, just say to yourself “I am going to learn something more of the Lord through this” and that will be a great compensation for the suffering.

Well, that is the comforting beginning, now we’ll come back to our subject for this time: it is the knowledge of what has come in with Jesus Christ and what we have come into in Christ.

You know we have come into two contradictory things. I wonder if you have noticed this? Right through the New Testament there are two words constantly recurring. Those two words are: ‘not’ the other is, ‘but’.

Not... But

And those two words stand over two great systems. A whole world of things is gathered into each of those words. And that is what came in with Jesus Christ when He came into this world. On the one side He said, “Not”. On the other side He said, “But”. That will make a very helpful study for you if you want to trace those two words. We shall only be able to touch it very simply but you will understand what I mean as we go on.

The first “not... but”, relates to the Person of the Lord Jesus. You notice the first name by which He is called, the name which He had before this world was, in that dateless time called the Beginning... who knows when that was? The worlds were made by Him who was the Word. So He existed before the world. And away back there His name was “The Word”. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.”

What is a word? According to the Bible this word means four things. Of course outside of the Bible some of these things are true, two of them are true outside of the Bible and two of them are not true outside of the Bible.

First of all, a word comes from a thought. That is, if you are mentally sound, you think before you speak and when you utter words you have already thought something. I say mentally sound people do that, but a lot of people speak before they think! They never thought what they were going to say; a lot of words come out and there’s no thought behind them! But if you are sound in mind, you think before you speak so that a word first of all is a thought.

And secondly, a word is a thought expressed. When you speak you express your thought. Those are two things which are universally true but three and four are not universally true but they are true when it is God speaking so that with God in the third place, a word is an act. With God, His Word is a fiat. He spake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. With God His Word is an act. By His Word the world was created. Well, you know the Bible has a lot to say about that, when God spoke something happened. It was not just a word that went out into the air. It was a word that had an effect. That is how it is when God speaks, “My word shall not return to me void, it shall accomplish the thing whereto I sent it.” You’ve got the three things? The Word is a thought. The Word is a thought expressed. The Word of God is an act of God.

What is number four? The Word becomes a Person. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. This is the name of Jesus Christ, the Word of God. He is God’s Thought, He is God’s Thought expressed. He is God’s Thought as an act. He is a work of God. He is God’s Thought in personal form. He has come into this world in all those four meanings.

Forgive me repeating this, I do want you to get it clearly. The presence of Jesus Christ in this world was first of all God’s eternal thought and then He was God’s thought expressed, and then He was the act of God. I ought, of course, to stay a long time with that.

Do you not see that when Jesus was here, without speaking sometimes, something happened. He came into a place and demons cried out. He hadn’t said anything but they cried out, “I know Thee Who Thou art, the holy One of God, art Thou come to torment us before our time?” His presence was an act of conviction. You have many other illustrations of that.

There is an effect about the presence of Jesus Christ and then this fourth expressed in power is in a living Person. It is not just an abstract thing it’s a living Person. That is what has come in with Jesus Christ. But to what does that Word relate? To what does God’s Thought relate? To what does God’s Thought in expression relate? To what does God’s Thought in expression as an act relate? And, what does God’s Thought in expression as an act result in personally? Does this sound very technical? Well we haven’t got there yet, God’s Thought in that Person relates to the kind of man that God intended all men to be.

Jesus is

God’s Thought Concerning Mankind

That is why the Thought ends in a Person. After that you have all the New Testament about our being conformed to the image of His Son. The Word says we are being transformed into the same image. John cries, “When we see Him we shall be like Him”! The end of God’s Thought is a kind of man.

Now we come back to our two words, “not... but”. You go on in that first chapter of John, it says He came unto His own things and His own people received Him not, BUT, “not... but”, to them that received Him, gave He the right to be the children of God. And then a little further, “which were born not of bloods, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God”. Not, not, not... BUT. You see the point? With the coming of God’s Thought in the Person of Jesus Christ one kind of man is set aside. The whole of that race in Adam, the coming of Jesus says, “Not that any longer”. And His coming says about another kind of man, “But this kind”. That’s where it all begins and you know that in the third chapter of John that is developed.

I’m always sorry that they divided the chapters between two and three in John because undoubtedly what is our chapter three follows on from what is chapter two. You notice how chapter two ends? It says that Jesus would not commit Himself to men because He knew what was in man. He knew what was in man. Of course that is the natural man and He would not commit Himself to that kind of man. Now, of course, you say that must be a very bad man! If the Lord will not have anything to do with that kind of man as he is, he must be pretty bad. Is that how you think?

Well, let’s go on. How does chapter three begin? “Now there was a man... named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews”. You’ve got the link? He would not commit Himself to that kind of man! He knew what was in man. “Now there was a man... a ruler of the Jews, named Nicodemus...” Later the Lord will say to Nicodemus, “Art thou a teacher in Israel?” A teacher? A man of intellect, a man of high position, a man of influence, a man greatly respected amongst men. And this man comes with all that he is by nature and by education, he comes with all his position and all his training, he comes with all his devotion to the Lord God, a very religious man, and he begins to talk to Jesus. He says some things by way of compliment to Jesus, he calls Him “Rabbi” that is, teacher. And he says, “We know that you’re a teacher sent from God, no man could do the things that you do if you were not sent from God.” Now they’re good things aren’t they? Surely Jesus is going to commit Himself to this man! Surely He’s got the best specimen of a man in Nicodemus.

What does Jesus say? “Oh Nicodemus! I’m so glad to meet you! There are so few fine men like you in the world, I do admire your learning!” None of that. He does not commit Himself to that man. But He says, “You must be born anew. You must become another kind of man Nicodemus. With all that you have, you were born of blood, you were born of the will of the flesh, you were born of the will of man, but you’ve never been born of God. Not that man, but this man: that which is born of God. The wind bloweth where it likes, you hear the sound thereof, but you don’t know whence it cometh or where it goes. There’s a mystery about the wind that natural wisdom cannot explain. So is everyone that is born of God.” You know I’m quoting the Scripture all the time; not that man at his best, but this one born of God. That man at his best is not God’s original thought. The man that is born of God and is God’s thought is a different kind of being.

I’m going back again, everybody here knows that the Bible is divided into two main divisions, what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament. That division is not just an artificial division. That division is not just a historical matter. That division is something very much deeper and greater than that; it’s a spiritual division.

I think we are all prepared to write “Not” over the Old Testament. You remember how the Old Testament finishes? After all that God had done, and what a great all that was... the last book of the Old Testament speaks about His own people robbing God and God saying, “You are cursed with a curse”. Surely we will write “Not” over the Old Testament! Not that. No, never again that.

We open our New Testament and the four first books of the New Testament present us with a Man. The four gospels are the presentation of a Man. There has never been a Man like this before. This Man is different from all men that have ever been. This Man is presented to us in this four-fold way.

Now, having said that, I dare not stay to deal with the four gospels; they all have some differences from each other. Some of them have the same things, some of them have different things. But all of them end at the same thing. Every one of them has one thing in common; whether it is Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, they all head right up to:

The Cross.

It seems as though that was what was meant, these writers cannot get away from it. Whatever they say, it leads to the Cross. The Cross really ought to be placed between the two testaments because the New Testament in its beginnings, leading up to the Cross just says this one thing: all that this new Man represents, all His teaching, all His works, all His Person, can only come into human experience when one man is put away and another Man is brought in.

The Cross of the Lord Jesus is the great “Not!” to a whole kind of man. It is God’s “Not” to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is failure, failure, failure everywhere. And you close the Old Testament with failure. The New Testament introduces God’s success, God’s great success in His Son, Jesus Christ. That is not theory is it? You would not be in this room tonight if that were not true. You and I are here tonight because Jesus was a success! And we ought to be His successes. So I say that whatever the gospels hold, at the end they say this is only possible in man by way of the Cross.

The Cross is the eternal setting aside of one man and the Cross on the other side is the introducing of another Man after God’s thought. Now I suppose I should finish; when we get into eternal things time seems to go very quickly!

Can you just visualize a cross, draw a cross in your mind, one arm stretching backward and the other arm stretching forward, then draw a black line right down the middle of the cross. And let that one arm point backward to your Old Testament and see that that ends in the Cross. I’m going to prove that to you before I’m through, I think. Oh thank God for that great “Not” about the Old Testament! Our hearts ought to be full of joy over that “not”! Do you wonder what I mean? Well, we are not under the Law! And the Old Testament is the Law. We are under Grace... not under Law, but under Grace. The Cross is the divide between the two. That dark line says that’s an end of all that and this is the beginning of all this, all that we have in the New Testament.

Do you see what has come in with Jesus Christ? Do you see what we have come into in Jesus Christ? It is the first “not... but”. There’s a hymn that we sometimes sing, it runs like this, this is the first line of it: “Not what I am, oh Lord, but what Thou art”. That’s the Gospel isn’t it? That’s the end of the Old Testament: condemnation, judgment, ending in a curse... by nature I belong to that. In myself, that’s where I am, but “not what I am, but what Thou art”. I am now not in myself or in Adam, I am now in Christ and in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation.

That is only the beginning, you’ll see a lot more not’s and but’s yet. But you see the first one relates to man, the man as he is in himself. God’s saying, “Not that man”. He relates to the new man, quite another man. By faith we are in this new Man, accepted in the beloved. Not that, but Him.

I trust that this is the Word of the Lord, not just a thought, not only a thought expressed, but a thought as a work, taking personal form in us. We leave it there for now and thank the Lord for what He has brought in by His coming.

Chapter 2 - The Eternal Thought

It is probable that some of you were not here with us last evening. I would like therefore, to say that what we are going to think about this afternoon is following on what we were doing last evening. You will understand that there has been something before this, but I will do my best to link you on with that so that we can just continue.

The thing that the Lord has laid on my heart for this time is that which has come in with the Lord Jesus. That is, what it was that came into this world with the Lord Jesus; what He brought in with Him, and therefore what we as Christians have come into in the Lord Jesus. It is just the crisis which was reached when Jesus came into this world. It was a crisis for all time. I am more and more convinced as I travel about the world that there is a very great need of recovering the true meaning of Christianity. Even Christians everywhere do not understand what they have come into. I believe that ninety percent of all our troubles are due to that. If we went to the Lord with many of our troubles and asked Him to tell us why it is we’re in this trouble, He would just say, “Well, this is just exactly what I told you; you have not understood what I told you.”

Now, let me illustrate it in this way. When we were young (of course that’s a long time ago for some of us!) there was a game that we used to play at our Christmas parties. All the people present would be formed into a big circle and then one person at the beginning of the circle would whisper in the ear of the next person something. You know this game? And that person would say it to the next person, and so it passed right round the circle. And then the last person would have to say out loud what they had received. And of course there was a great deal of laughter. The thing had gathered a lot of other things as it went on, or it had lost a lot of things. And when it comes out at the end you hardly recognize what was said at the beginning.

Now evidently you know that game. I think that’s like Christianity. Of course Christianity is not a game. It’s a very serious business. But it’s been passed on around great circles through many generations and as it has gone on, it has lost something. It has gained a lot of other things and you can hardly recognize now that that is the original thing. People have just said what they thought they heard. Men have given their own interpretations and here today we have a Christianity that is not the original. Indeed, many Christians have a Christ who is not the original Christ.

Now I am not saying that that is true about you; of course, you are all right! Are you all right? Do you not need to be put right about your Christianity? Do you not need to have Christianity explained to you? Is there not something to be recovered? Is there not something to let go? But it’s just that that we’re occupied with in these days. And if you think this does not apply to you, I can tell you that the one who is speaking to you knows how true it is, I’m always getting into difficulties with the Lord. Does that sound very terrible? Sometimes I almost have a quarrel with the Lord, “Now Lord, are You quite sure You’re right in what You’re doing with me? Are You quite sure that You’re right in the way You’re leading me?” And He just says, “Go back to My Word.”

Shall I give an illustration? A few weeks ago I got very discouraged in ministry. Oh, how difficult this work of the Lord is! What a lot of difficult people! What a lot of difficult problems. And all our teaching seems to get such a little way... And so I went to the Lord, I said “Lord, I think it’s time I retired. I think I have done enough. Now Lord, will You excuse me? Pass it on to others and let me finish my days quietly.”  Well, of course you may say, “Well, poor chap. He’s in a bad way.” So I talked to the Lord with my trouble. Then early in the morning I opened my Bible and what did my eyes come on? There it was, straight between my eyes: “Preach the Word!  Be instant in season and out of season.  Reprove, rebuke and exhort with all long suffering.”  There it is in the Word. We get into our troubles because we get away from the beginning. When we come back to the original Word, the Lord has the answer for all our problems.

Well now, having said that, let us come back to our subject. You know last night we were in the Gospel by John, we’re going to say a few more things about this Gospel. Of course I expect that people who come to conferences know their Bibles so that it is not necessary for me to tell you what is in the Bible. My work is to try to explain what is in the Bible, because you know your Bibles I have the ground laid for what I have to say.

Now, to begin with you know that the Gospel by John is the eternal Gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke are the Gospels of history. They begin with the birth of the Lord Jesus, or in the case of Mark, the beginning of His earthly ministry. They are historical Gospels. When you come to John, you get outside of history. You’re going to come into history, but you begin outside, right back in the eternity past, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.” Then history, “Through Him, by Him, all things were made” but John’s Gospel from beginning to end is set in the eternal. Please try to remember that as we go on.

We were saying last night that the name given to the Son of God as “The Word” is an eternal thought. A word begins with a thought. That thought was in the mind of God then the word is an expression of that thought. Here in this Gospel behind all that is written we have eternal thoughts. You must always, when you’re reading this Gospel, look behind the thing that is written. You will see how important that is as we go on.

Here we have in this Gospel then, the eternal thoughts of God. To what does that eternal thought of God relate? It relates to people whom He desires to have as His children. In other words, the eternal thought of God relates to a kind of being called “man”. You notice how the Gospel goes on – He, the Word, came to His own things, which He had made, of course, “All things were made by Him” John has just said. He came to the things which He had made, which were His own things, but the people who were His own received Him not. He had made man, He came to man, and man received Him not. But to as many as did receive Him, to them gave He the right to be children of God.

I’m tempted to stay with that word “right”. In the Greek it is “authority”; a legal authority. To be a child of God is to have conferred upon us a legal authority. We are not illegitimate children, we are true sons with all the rights of true sons. Do you see what that implies? No one but these born of God have divine rights. All the children of Adam have lost their rights, they have lost all that they ought to have as God’s children. As children of Adam we have no claims upon God whatever. But those who receive Christ have all those divine rights restored to them. Later on an apostle will put it this way: “We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.” That means that all our rights as sons of God have been restored in Christ. That is something of what we have come into in Christ. That is something of what has come in with Christ. But that is only by the way... let us go on!

This eternal thought of God which took expression in Jesus Christ is the thought of “not” to an old kind of man. Jesus Christ says “No!” to a certain kind of man. All the children of Adam now lie under the great “No!” of God. I’m speaking to your experience. If you know anything about having the Spirit of Jesus Christ, one side of your spiritual education is just this: inside of you the Holy Spirit says “No!” to a lot of things. You speak in a certain way... do you get away with it? Or do you not very soon feel something inside of you saying, “No, not that way.” Of course it is not all negative, but for the moment we’re dealing with the negative. The Spirit of Jesus Christ says “No!” to a whole kind of man and what we have to learn in Christianity is that to which Christ says “No!”.

Jesus Christ crucified is the end of a kind of man. Of course, that is representatively as representing this kind of humanity which He came to put away. So the coming in of Jesus Christ says “Not!” to a whole kind of man but in Himself, in Himself He is God’s “But!”.  He is God’s great “Yes!” as to man. I suppose it is not too often that we enjoy the “Yes!” we have a lot of experience of the “Not!” I find a lot of Christians who seem to enjoy the “Not”! I wonder if you know what I mean... Oh, how difficult it is to get a lot of Christians to forget themselves! They’re just about as miserable as anybody could be but they’re always hugging their miserable selves. They seem to love to talk about their misery. When they pray they’re always telling the Lord what miserable people they are, “Oh Lord, what a poor thing I am. Just look at me Lord. I’m no good”. And they just cling to that – you can’t get them to give it up. They almost love to be miserable.

And so the Lord doesn’t do anything. If He does anything at all He says, “Well, you know that’s what I told you two thousand years ago and I have never changed My mind about you. It is your miserable wretched self that I put to the cross because I knew how miserable it is!” We do not enjoy the “But” enough. But it does work this way, if we do something that pleases the Lord, we know it inside. We know that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is saying, “Yes, that’s right.”  That is the way of peace. That is the way of joy. It’s this Christ Who is the difference in us. And I repeat: our whole spiritual education is to learn those two sides of Christ, to learn what Jesus says “No” to.

I must stay here a minute. The thing that is surprising me so much today is how very little many Christians know of this speaking of Jesus inside. It’s not true here, but it is true very largely especially in our young Christians in these days. They can behave; they can dress; perhaps I ought to say not dress! They can get themselves up and in the Word of God there is a definite statement about that and yet these young Christians don’t seem to know what is in the Word of God. Shall I cite a Scripture? Here is the Word of God: “Let your women adorn themselves in modest apparel.”  You know, I think modesty has left this world very largely. Of course this doesn’t apply here, but I’m speaking about a principle. I look at many of these Christians and I say, “Where is the Lord in them? Why is not the Lord putting His finger upon this and that and saying: Not?”  That is what He came into this world for - to bring in an altogether new order, an entirely new order of consciousness.

Now we come to the Cross of the Lord Jesus and we were saying last night that the Cross of the Lord Jesus stands between two distinctly different orders. On the one side the Cross says “No” to a whole creation. I do not think it was just a happening when Jesus died that darkness came over the face of all the earth. Heaven closed its light. What did that mean? Or do you just read it, you say, “Well when Jesus died, the sun hid its face. There was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.” But what did it mean? You have gone back before the creation. What do we find before the creation? “And darkness was over the face of the deep.” The work of God had not begun in creation. In the death of the Lord Jesus, we’ve gone right back. The work of God in the new creation has not yet begun until Jesus rises from the dead.

Everything is put back into darkness with the death of the Lord Jesus. Everything will come up into light and life when He rises from the dead. It is not a very clever observation that the Gospel by John begins with exactly the same word as the book of Genesis begins with, Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God”;  John 1:1, “In the beginning the Word” God. In the beginning God. Therefore, John is the spiritual counterpart of Genesis. What Genesis was in the natural creation John is in the spiritual creation. So that when we come to John’s Gospel, we are on the line of a new creation.  What is the crown of this creation? The crown of the old creation was man. The crown of the new creation is Christ. A new Man.

Now I’ve got out into a tremendous realm, and I must somehow break it up.  We’ve already been here nearly an hour. So I come to one very important point. I think I yet have a little time in this conference to say some more.

I’m going to ask you a question. Now you'll have to think hard, you'll have to put a cold towel around your head: What is the supreme issue in all the Bible? What does the whole Bible amount to in one thing? Of course there are thousands of things in the Bible, but what does the whole Bible relate to? There is such a thing. What is it? [Interpreter says:] The new creation is it? No. The birth of Christ in the church? No. The glorification of the Father? These are all related... Now He has received the promise? No. That is Christ? No, they're all related! The Cross? No. That’s related, it’s a part of it. The whole world full of people who all know the Life of the Lord Jesus? That’s a part of it. The New Jerusalem? Well I think you're all over the place! Of course all these things are right, but you have not got to the point yet.

What is the one all-governing thing through the whole Bible? Now I’ll tell you: Right standing with God! How can man have right standing with God?  We have a word for it, haven’t we? It’s the great word, it’s the word “righteousness”. Of course that’s a theological word. That’s a word of Christian doctrine. Oh, but it is infinitely more than that! From Genesis to Revelation the one question is: right standing with God. There is God, He is over all. God... perfect in holiness - perfect in every way! How can man stand in God’s presence on right ground and say, “I have a right to be here before God”? That is the meaning of righteousness, it is right standing with God. Is not that your concern? Every day this question arises - being right with God, being able to stand up before God and say “I am quite right. There is no fault that God can find in me.”

Isn’t that tremendous? You see, because Adam sinned as he did, he put the whole race out of God. The whole race in Adam has no right standing with God. Our New Testament says “There is none righteous, no not one!” Put it in this other way: there is not one who has a right standing with God. That’s the issue of the Bible. How can that be changed? A tremendous thing, isn’t it? Oh, what a marvelous thing if you and I were able to say, “Today I can stand before God without any condemnation!” Do you think that’s too much, too much even to think of? No, that is what Jesus came to do! We are made accepted in the Beloved One.

“Let us draw near in full assurance of faith.” The whole Gospel is just this: that the righteousness of God is given to us through faith in Jesus Christ. Right standing with God is given to us through faith in Jesus Christ! Then of course you at once begin and go back to the other side of the Cross again and say, “But what about my sin? What about all my faults and my failings? What about all the things that I do wrong every day? Is that not a contradiction?” Well you don’t know your New Testament if you think that’s a contradiction! The Lord has never said anywhere that you and I are perfect in ourselves. But He has said that we are perfect in Christ! In Christ we inherit right standing with God and this becomes the battleground of the whole Christian life. What is the nature of the battle of the Christian life? The battle is with the one who wants to get us onto the ground that is not right standing with God.

The devil tried to get in between the Lord Jesus and His Father and he will try to our very last breath to get in between us and the Lord Jesus. He is the great accuser of the brethren. You have only got to do one wrong thing and the devil will jump in at once and he will seek to bring you under condemnation, to bring you onto the ground of judgment again - remove you from your right standing with God by faith. This is a tremendous spiritual battle and the battle of the Christian is to keep on his own right ground in Christ.

You make a mistake - you do something wrong - what are you going to do about it? Well, what about that? You have two things that you can do.  You can listen to the devil and you will say, “Well there you are, just the same all over again.  Salvation makes no difference!”  Something goes wrong in your life, you get some trouble, you have some suffering, what is the next thing that happens? You don’t hear a voice, but you feel a voice, and that says, “That’s because the Lord doesn’t love you. That is because the Lord has left you. That is the punishment for your sin.” You know where that leads, don’t you? The Christian life is full of cul-de-sacs. You know what that is don’t you? Somewhere up here that leads nowhere - a dead end. And if you want to get anywhere you’ve got to come out.

Elijah got up one of those side streets. He threw himself down under the juniper tree, and he said, “It’s enough, oh Lord, take away my life! I’m no better than all the others. I’m a bad, worthless fellow.” What did the Lord do? Did the Lord get under the juniper tree with him, saying “Poor, old Elijah! I’m very sorry for you.” No, the Lord didn’t do that and didn’t say that. He said, “Come out of that Elijah. We’re going on! We’re not going up side streets. We’re not on a dead end. Come out of your cul-de-sac.”

Now, if you listen to the devil talking to you about your sufferings or your sins, that’s where you will be. What is the other thing you can do? Oh no, you will not say “that wasn’t sin, I was not wrong.” You will not begin to excuse yourself. You will say, “That was wrong and Lord, I’m sorry for it. Forgive me! Put that under the blood of Jesus.” Then what happens? The Lord says, “All right, come on, we’ll go on.”  Of course you don’t hear it like that, but you know it’s true. That is the battle of the spiritual life.

Now there’s so very much more that I want to say about this, but I think you’ve had enough for this afternoon. Do you see what has come in with the Lord Jesus? Are you beginning to see what we have come into in the Lord Jesus? We have just got on to the line of the new creation. Where does the new creation begin? It begins with a man who is now in right standing with God. We inherit that in Jesus Christ. It is our birthright - to stand right with God because we inherit His righteousness. That little phrase does mean so much to me. I hope it means as much to you; the righteousness of God which is ours through faith in Jesus Christ!

Don’t you agree that we Christians need to understand our Christianity better? The devil is making a lot of trouble for us because we don’t understand our Christianity. Well this is only the beginning, may the Lord make this mean something to us.

Chapter 3 - The New Creation

We were speaking about right standing with God. We have pointed out that the whole Bible has to do with this one thing. All the things that are in the Bible from the beginning to the end have to do with standing right with God. We have seen that the whole race in Adam does not stand right with God. Therefore, by nature we are all wrong people. Christians know that best. They know quite well that naturally we are wrong. Not only that we do wrong and speak wrong, but we are wrong. Our natures are wrong. We have no right standing with God. That is, as we have seen, the meaning of the word “righteousness”.

But Jesus came into this world as the right Man. He is the right Man, He has right standing with God. You should read the gospel by John in the light of that. John’s Gospel especially, shows us how Jesus had a right position with His Father. So, there is a wrong man and a right Man. I think it was Martin Luther who said that Jesus is God’s right Man. Well now, this evening we’re going to be occupied for a little while with the Right Man.

There are two things with which we begin and we are in the Gospel by John. First of all, the Son of God is presented to us as God’s thought concerning man. He is immediately brought into view as the personal expression of God’s thought concerning man. Everybody will agree with that! We would all say, yes, He is the right Man.

The second thing that comes out in this Gospel is that what is true of the Lord Jesus as Man, is to be made true of all the children of God. The Gospel is that God has made His Son the ground of our right standing with God. The apostle Paul put it this way: that He, Jesus, is made unto us Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption from God. Is there anything more that you want than that? Made unto us wisdom; righteousness... right standing with God; sanctification; redemption. He is made all that to us. We, therefore, are to be made like unto God’s Right Man.

Now this afternoon we just pointed out that John’s Gospel begins just as the book of Genesis begins: “In the beginning God...” and we know that that beginning was of the creation. The beginning of the creation was God. Now John says about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, that all things were created by Him, through Him and unto Him and without Him was not anything created that has been created; so that He is the beginning of the creation. Now John takes up those very words and takes them from the natural creation and puts them on the spiritual creation. He applies them now to what Paul calls the new creation in Christ Jesus. And there Paul says, “If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation”. Let me repeat: the new creation man is to take the image of God’s ideal Man. So John sets us on the course of the new creation and I think this evening we shall only be able to speak about perhaps one feature of the new creation.

You’ll notice this thing: the new creation, the spiritual creation, follows the course of the old creation in principle. That will become clear immediately. Now we look into this Gospel by John. What do we find? We find that first of all John introduces the new creation and he makes Jesus Christ the first Man of this new creation. And then right through this Gospel John tells us what this new Man is like.

What are the features, the characteristics of this new creation Man? And as I speak I want you to just remember that you are supposed to be that. We are not only speaking about something that’s in the Bible. We are not only speaking about some great system of truth. We are speaking about men and women and I suppose we all come into that category! Is there any other category here tonight? And you’ll remember when God created man He created women also, but He called them both “man”. So you women are men! You cannot just step aside and say, “Well, he’s talking to the men”. We’re talking about ourselves. If we are children of God we are looking at our own portrait and we’re going to ask ourselves, “Well is that true of me? Am I like that?”

What is the first thing in the creation? Do you remember? “In the beginning God... God said... Let light be.” The first thing about the old creation was light. Now look at the Gospel by John. Just pick up the first chapter of John’s Gospel, do remember that John did not write his Gospel in chapters. It was many, many centuries afterward that a Frenchman made out the chapters. Of course it’s very useful but sometimes it’s misleading. When John wrote his Gospel he wrote straight on without any chapter divisions. He did not write a chapter on one subject and then another chapter on another subject and then another chapter on some other subject. He was writing about one thing. And as he went on he was just developing this one thing. It is very important that you should recognize this.

John, when he wrote this Gospel, was a very old man. All the other apostles had gone to the Lord and John had spent some time at the end of his life in exile on the isle of Patmos. We do not know exactly how long he was there, but he was there long enough to write the book of the Revelation. I think he was there much longer than that for he wrote his Gospel after he had written the book of the Revelation. I’m not saying that he wrote the Gospel on the isle of Patmos, but my point is this: John had had a very long life and a very full life. He had been with Jesus all the time He was here - that is, while Jesus was teaching and working - and he says at the end of his Gospel, “If all the things were written down that Jesus said and did, the world would not hold the books”.

Now, John had all that and in his exile he had had plenty of time to think. He was very much occupied with all that he had come to know. This Gospel of John’s which was the last writing of the New Testament, contains all this that John had. That is, behind this Gospel was all this great knowledge that John had. These are not just things that he wrote down. This writing is full of a tremendous knowledge, spiritual knowledge; a knowledge which God had given him.

I’m saying this because we must realize that there’s very much behind everything that John puts down here. There is so much more of meaning than John put into words and what we have to do is to get into the meaning. Now, having said that, we come to his Gospel and this presentation of God’s Right Man. What is true of the Lord Jesus is to be made true of every child of God.

Now, you are familiar with this Gospel, I expect you could tell me what is in it. Could you tell me what is in chapter 1? All that is in chapter 1? Chapter 2? Chapter 3, yes Nicodemus, we know all about him! Chapter 4 yes, the woman of Samaria, we know her. And so we could go on with the chapters. Well, let us get into this more deeply.

I’m going to take one line. John takes more than one line, he takes first of all, the line of the works of Jesus; what he calls “the signs”. We all know that that is John’s particular and peculiar name for miracles. John says that these miracles were signs. None of these works of Jesus were just things in themselves. They were not only meant to show what power Jesus had, they were meant to teach some deep spiritual lesson. And that lesson is concerning this new order of mankind. Well we’re not going to follow that line, there are eight signs in John and if you know anything about Bible numbers you will at once recognize that there’s something in that. Why should John, seeing that there were works enough to fill books that would fill the whole world, why should he only choose eight? Not only eight, but eight! Well, I’ll leave you to work that one out.

I want to get on with the other line, it’s the line of the words that John used. John selected special words for his purpose. We have seen what his purpose is, the new, right kind of man. Now he chooses words in relation to the right kind of man. I don’t want to give you too much detail, as it is I want the whole week for this conference! But there’s this technical point: John uses far fewer words than any of the other gospel writers. John’s vocabulary in this gospel is smaller than Matthew, Mark or Luke. John seems to have been definitely confining himself to a few special words. If his words are fewer, they are more weighty than all the others put together.

What are his words? I think as I mention them you will agree with what I’ve just said. They are mightier words than anywhere. Light. Life. Truth. Knowledge. These are a few of John’s special words. Now we are just going to use what time we have left on that first word. We are going to speak about new creation light. I’ve asked you to look at the first chapter of John, would you like to put a mark under the word “light”? If you do, it will seem to blot out everything else. Of course we ought to read it, but that word “light” is everywhere in that chapter and it is connected with the Lord Jesus.

Light

Now John, after chapter one, is going on to show that a characteristic of this new creation man is heavenly light. There are three words in John which have the same meaning: Light, Knowledge, Truth. We will not deal with them all in particular, but we’re going to speak about spiritual light.

The birthright of a child of God is heavenly light. John will take great pains to show that outside of the Lord Jesus, the world is in darkness. And he will show us that even religious Israel is blind. They’re all in darkness. They’re all away back there before the creation where darkness was over the face of the earth. No one outside of Christ, be they very religious Nicodemus or anyone else, is in the new creation light.

The second word: knowledge. In this book the phrase “to know” occurs fifty-five times. I’m not going to give you the number of times each of these words occur, you can make them out, it will be a nice little study for you: how many times does “light” occur right through this gospel? How many times does “truth” occur right through this gospel? But there is only one other word that occurs more times than the word “to know” and that is very interesting. The word which occurs more times than any other, is the word: “world”. “The world” occurs seventy-eight times. It stands over everything else and: “The whole world is in darkness...”

Well, let us leave the word “light” for a minute, come to this word “to know”. We are trying to get at the nature of spiritual knowledge. Although the word “to know” occurs fifty-five times, it does not always mean the same thing. There are two words in the Greek translated “to know”. I was just fascinated as I studied these two Greek words, I got down to the fifty-five times of the word and then I found that they divided themselves into two; two groups.

Two Categories of Knowledge

One category of this Greek word means knowledge which you have by being told. Knowledge which comes to you by observation. Knowledge which you have by reading and that may even be reading the Bible. Quite a lot of people know what is in the Bible. They can tell you just all that is in every book of the Bible. They know because they’ve read it, or they have heard by lectures. That is the kind of knowledge that they have. Now that kind of knowing is here in John’s Gospel. That is objective knowledge.

But there is the other group which is subjective knowledge, knowledge that you do not get by information but knowledge which you get by revelation. It is to that knowledge that the Lord Jesus referred in John when He said that when the Holy Spirit was come, He would take the things of Christ and show them to you. How does the Holy Spirit show the things of Christ to us? How does the Holy Spirit show us this right Man? Not by information but by inward revelation. The apostle Paul calls the Holy Spirit a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ.

I'll give you a very interesting illustration of this, we go back here to John the Baptist. John the Baptist comes up in chapter one of John. John the Baptist is speaking about Jesus. He says that, “There comes one after me, the latches of whose shoes I’m not worthy to unloose”. Now note: John said “Whom I knew not. I knew him not.” ... “John, what are you talking about? Jesus was your cousin! You knew that Jesus was alive, He was in your very family circle, and you, John, are saying you’re thirty years old and you didn’t know Jesus? What do you mean?” Now you and I may find that a problem! Jesus was the cousin of John after the flesh and John is saying he didn’t know Jesus. Ah, but the people of those days knew what John meant because he chose this special word, not knowing naturally, by information as in the family, but he used this other word: intuitive knowledge, spiritual knowledge.

John knew Jesus, he knew who Jesus was, that is as to his own family and cousin, but he had not yet come to the knowledge that Jesus was the Son of God. Then John says this, “He that sent me to baptize, the same said unto me, Upon whom you see the Holy Spirit alighting, that is He.” Holy Spirit knowledge is different from natural knowledge. Don’t you think that is an interesting and very impressive example of two words, two kinds of knowledge? Natural knowledge and spiritual knowledge. They belong to two different worlds. Natural knowledge is just the knowledge that you have by information or relationships. Spiritual knowledge is that which you have by revelation of the Holy Spirit in your heart.

If you'll read through John and watch the Lord Jesus, you will be impressed with how He knew things. John says about Jesus, “He knew what was in man” that was not because He’d been to college and studied humanity. In the universities of America they have a faculty called “Human Relationships”. That is not the kind of knowledge that Jesus has about man. He knows man in an inward way. He looks at a man and He knows what kind of a man that is, what that kind of man will do, what you can expect of that kind of man. He knows it all. He knew Nicodemus. He knew Pontius Pilate, and Pontius Pilate knew that He knew Him. He knew Herod, yes, He knew... but He knew by spiritual knowledge.

How did He know the life history of that woman of Samaria? You know, you remember how He made her tell her story, He said to her, “Go call thy... husband”. She said, “I have no husband.” “Thou hast rightly said I have no husband, thou hast had five husbands and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” How did He know that? I don’t think He’d ever lived in the town of Sychar in Samaria. Now you see what I mean.

The Lord Jesus of course, was perfect in this way; perfect in spiritual knowledge. He was taught by the anointing Holy Spirit. We are not like that perfectly, but every true child of God right from the beginning should have that faculty of spiritual knowledge. And it works on this ground: we should know inwardly what belongs to the wrong man and what belongs to the right Man. We spoke about this this afternoon, the Holy Spirit in us tells us what is of Christ and what is not of Christ. I must try to illustrate what I mean and yet perhaps to do so seems to imply that you haven’t got any spiritual knowledge; but it won’t hurt to illustrate in a simple way.

There are some things that stand out in my own life in this matter. I came to the Lord in a very real way when I was about seventeen years of age. I had a very real experience of the Lord. I was full of His joy but naturally I was a young man who always liked to make a joke of things. I liked to say something funny about everything. That is, I liked to make people laugh. So if there was anything that I could turn into a joke, I did it. Now, I came to the Lord and then I went on the Lord’s Day to the Lord’s table; first real Lord’s Day table and I partook of the loaf and the cup. The service closed. We went outside. The first thing that I did when I got outside was to make a joke to a friend of mine. I got him laughing so much that he didn’t know what to do with himself! But when that happened, all my joy went. It was as though I had lost all my salvation.

I felt so bad that I went home, I got on my knees and I asked what had happened to me. And it came to me so clearly, “You had been handling the most sacred emblems, you had been occupied with the things of most solemn meaning, you’d held in your hand the symbol of the Body of Christ and a symbol of the blood of Christ and a few minutes afterward you could be carrying on like that! These two things don’t go together.” Well I got that right with the Lord, but I learned a life lesson.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying it is wrong to be joyful, but you know what I’m saying. That belonged to the old man who does not distinguish between what is natural and what is spiritual. And the Lord is against mixture. There’s a lot in the Bible about that you know, the Old Testament will tell us something about that, “Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass”. Ox is a clean beast and an ass is an unclean beast. “Thou shalt not wear a garment of wool and cotton”. Mixed! Wool makes perspiration and perspiration is of the flesh. Cotton is the white robes of righteousness. God says you must not mix these things up; God hates mixture. That ought to be one of our earliest lessons in the Christian life.

Much later in life I had another experience. I was now a preacher and I was making up many sermons. I really did belong to the Lord but one day I got my sermon ready and I thought that a certain quotation from a certain writer would give a real point to my sermon. So I got on with my sermon, started to preach, then at a certain point I introduced my quotation and the bottom fell out of everything. It was as though I was just left to myself. I struggled to finish the service. I went home and asked the Lord what was wrong. And before the Lord I went over that sermon and noticed the point where everything went wrong, where the Lord left me alone. It was that quotation. The Lord said, “Where did that come from?” And I thought oh, it was So-and-so who wrote that. And that man was a rank modernist; he did not believe in the fundamental things of the Christian Gospel; I am not with anybody who uses that stuff. You see the point?

Well the point is this: that the Holy Spirit can teach us, He can make us know what belongs to the wrong man and what belongs to the right man. John in this gospel draws a distinction between that knowledge which comes by the letter and that knowledge which comes by the Spirit. “The letter killeth, the Spirit maketh alive”.

Well, my time is gone for tonight. I cannot give you spiritual knowledge. I cannot make you know the Lord in this way. I can only tell you the truth. But this is our spiritual education as disciples of the Lord who are being taught by Him. One of the great lessons of our new creation is this: learning to know the Lord spiritually; learning to know the things of Christ in our own hearts and not just by reading or hearing. This is the true light. The Lord Jesus demonstrated this when He gave sight to the man born blind in chapter nine. What did that man say afterward? “I do not know this and that. I do not know. But one thing I do know, once I was blind now I see. I know that!” But that’s the result of a miracle, that is supernatural sight. So the Lord demonstrated the truth of heavenly light for a new creation.

What can you do? I cannot give it to you but I can tell you that this is the truth of God and God’s purpose is that it shall be true in us: “Grant to me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ”. You will find that you are brought into a realm that is inexhaustible. You will see far more at the end of a long life than you’ve ever seen before. I will leave it there for the present.

Chapter 4 - The Great Change

I think we will begin this morning with the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1 at verse 1: “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.”

There is a very true sense in which those words are the focal point of the whole Bible. You will notice that everything that has been before leads up to this point and everything that was to be afterward begins here. This statement represents a tremendous change.

First of all, it is a change of time. In old times, you notice the words, in old times, at the end of these times - it is a change of time. It is also a change of God’s method. That was how God did things in old times; now His method is changed. This is how He does things after those times. Then this whole letter will tell us how God worked in old times. It will bring into view all God’s ways in the Old Testament. It will refer to Moses and Israel and all that came in through Moses and now it says: that is finished. In many different ways and paths God worked and spoke in old times. Now that is all finished and God has commenced in a new way. It is an entirely new method of God which begins at this point.

It is because Christianity has not recognized the nature of that change that it is in so much trouble. Christendom is in trouble. It is doing everything to try to save itself. All these great organizations in Christianity - the ecumenical movement, the world council of churches and all these things - are an effort to save Christianity from collapsing. Christianity in general is breaking up and these movements are to try to keep it on its feet.

Within Christendom in general there is what we call ‘evangelical Christianity’. And that also is in trouble - many conferences, many discussions, many books - oh, so many things to try to get evangelical Christianity out of trouble! Perhaps you don’t agree with that. Well, you haven’t seen very much of Christianity!

Within evangelical Christianity there are other believers. They also are disappointed with evangelical Christianity. Many of them are leaving the churches; they’re meeting in little groups in homes. They are disappointed. I have many letters from Christians in different parts of the world who say, “We’re disappointed with the churches, what shall we do?” Do you know anything about that? It’s a very widespread situation. These are hungry children of God who are not being fed.

Now all this is very largely due to failure to understand this great change. A thoughtful reading of the New Testament will make us very clear that some change is taking place.

We have been dwelling in the gospel by John. It is almost impossible to read the gospel by John without seeing some big change is taking place. It is not only the account of things that Jesus said and Jesus did but all this represents a big change that is taking place. There is a movement going on from one position to another. There is a whole system of things which is passing away and an entirely different system is coming in.

The “not” is very clear and the alternative “but” is very clear. Not what has been, but what is now. Now that governs, as we have said, the whole New Testament and I think this letter to the Hebrews is a wonderful summing up of that great transition.

There are two things in this letter which are related to this big change. You will know that in this letter a great emphasis is upon going on unto full growth. The word is: “Let us go on!” It is the letter of going on, going on to the fullness of Christ, going on to the full growth of the spiritual life. This note is struck so strongly: go on! And that emphasis relates to leaving what belongs to the past and going on into what has come in with Jesus Christ.

We shall only go on as we recognize the change that has taken place with the coming of Jesus. We shall only go on as we understand this great transition, as we know where we are in God’s eternal activities and those eternal activities are now focused not in a system but in a Person. All that is contained in that little phrase, “Hath at the end of these times spoken...”

I’m going to ask you, are you concerned with going on to full spiritual growth? If you are, let me say to you that it depends upon how much you understand this change that has taken place.

Now, this letter was written to people who were in danger of coming to an end that God never intended. Before you get to the end of the letter you will come upon something very impressive. You will come upon two great crises. The crisis in the history of the old Israel... you will find a prophecy from the Old Testament taken over and applied to the present.

This letter was evidently written just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews. In the year 70, as you know, Jerusalem was invaded and destroyed. The temple was destroyed, all the temple services were brought to an end and the people were scattered over the world. And that has remained like that for two thousand years.

Now the prophecy was, “I will overturn, I will overturn. Yet once more and I will overturn”. Now that has two aspects, first of all the earthly aspect, the things of the earth were going to be overturned and brought to an end. That was fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem. The word was: “I will shake the things that can be shaken”. But then there was the other half of the prophecy, not only the things of the earth, but the things of the heavens shall be shaken; a heavenly system which has been brought down to the earth will also be shaken. The first happened in the year 70. The second is happening today.

I wonder if you notice what is happening, we have said that Christendom is in trouble. It is trying to keep itself together, it is trying to save itself from collapsing. But all these efforts will be in vain. The thing is going to break down, God is going to shake it. Everything that can be shaken is going to be shaken says this word. Now, the word is: Who is going to stand when everything is shaken? That applies to us; this great shaking is going on, we’re losing our confidence in much that is in Christianity. We’re asking many questions about Christianity.

A leading servant of God said to me a little while ago (he has a worldwide knowledge of Christianity) he said, “If I did not know the Lord for myself, I would wash my hands of Christianity.” This thing is breaking up. Do you agree with me? Is it true? Well if you knew, you would feel like this.

We’ll come back to this letter. Firstly, to go right on to God’s fullness and secondly, to stand firm when everything around you is breaking up, depends upon the message of this letter or the message of the New Testament. What is the message?

There is a great change that has taken place by the coming of Jesus Christ. I wonder how far I am carrying you with me? Do you not see that this whole world system is breaking up? I don’t know what your morning papers are like but I know our papers in England every day bring some kind of fresh disintegration. Not one day comes and goes without some fresh trouble somewhere. It’s in industry. Of course in Holland you don’t have industrial troubles! Do you have strikes? Well they’re going on everywhere. I have heard about what happened in Amsterdam a few days ago in the student world. Isn’t it strange that this thing is happening in the student world in every country? There it is in England, here it is in Holland, there it is in France... all over the world this student trouble is taking place. When I was young we had nothing of that!

Industry, education, the social life, the breakdown of moral standards in social life; perhaps you don’t have divorces in Holland! Perhaps you don’t have any of this terrible moral situation... but I can see that you do. The whole moral system is breaking down. Yes, in every sphere this world is going to pieces. God is shaking everything and He is also shaking a form of Christianity. A little boy was asked the other day if he would like to go to the moon. “Yes!” he said, “I think I would like to go to the moon.” “Why would you like to go to the moon?” “I would like to get away from my three sisters, they’re awful!”

Well, you see, everything is upside down, but here it is. A whole system in this world, including Christianity, is going to be shaken and we in our time are seeing this taking place. That is the setting of this letter. You know how the letter finishes, “Wherefore receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken...” What is this new thing that has come in with Jesus Christ which is going to endure forever? That wants more than two or three meetings to answer it but let us try to do what the Lord enables.

A whole new system has come in with Jesus Christ and this new order is a spiritual and not a temporal order. It is the order of the kingdom of heaven and the order of the kingdom of heaven is a spiritual order and not a temporal order.

Now do you see what Christendom has tried to do? The Roman church was the beginning of this: setting up a temporal, earthly order of Christianity with an earthly city, with an earthly system, a system of priests and ritual and all these things; an earthly system of government, so that it is a temporal government and how terrible it has been! Rome dominates all those who belong to it and has sought to dominate this whole world on a temporal basis.

Well, perhaps you don’t agree with that, you in this country would not have that! But you know, that kind of thing has come into all Christianity. Do you notice that the development of Christianity has become more and more an earthly thing? The buildings; they’re earthly things! The orders of the church are earthly things. Christians are always trying to organize something on this earth, trying to bring something here into this world that you can see with your natural eyes and will impress you with Christianity by what you can see, a big organization here.

And then from the general thing to the particular: there is a great movement going on to try and form New Testament churches. Everywhere there is this effort to form churches, to form churches on a New Testament basis. In other words: to imitate the New Testament. Do you know all imitation is artificial? You cannot imitate the original! All your imitation will be artificial. This is a very great mistake: trying to form New Testament churches.

The apostles never tried to form churches! Think about that. “Oh!” you say, “But they did! They went everywhere forming churches!” That is just where everybody is mistaken. Churches were born, they were not made. They were not turned out of a factory; they were born out of heaven. They were not made by man’s hands; they were begotten by the Spirit of God. They were not by man’s intention, but by the spontaneous action of the Spirit of God.

Were you made a Christian by some other people? Were you born again because some people “borned” you again? No, if you’re a true child of God you say, “No, God did it. Whatever God used, it was God who did it.” And what is the Church? It’s only the body of those who have been born again.

You cannot form New Testament churches. They have to be born. They have to come in spontaneously by a work of the Spirit of God. But Christianity says, “We must have a church here, and we must have a church there.” Well, that’s what they did in Israel. In every city they set up a synagogue which was a carrying on of the temple service. The synagogue in every city pointed to the temple in Jerusalem and they said, “This is a representation of that”. So you have synagogues everywhere. Christianity has taken on that idea. Well, I think I’ve said enough about that.

We’re talking about this tremendous change that came with Jesus Christ. Do you remember when He was speaking to the woman of Samaria, He, with her, brought in one of these fundamentals: “not - but”. There was a point in His conversation where He referred to spiritual things - shall I say: religious things - that’s how she thought of it. And she said, “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet”. Very clever... trying to switch the thing off from herself to something else: “Oh, I see this is a religious man. Alright, I can talk religion... ‘I perceive that you’re a prophet, our fathers worship God in this mountain’” pointing to Mount Gerizim where the Samaritan temple was. “You Jews say that men ought to worship God in Jerusalem” meaning the temple in Jerusalem.

What did Jesus say? “Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh and now is, when not in Samaria, nor in Jerusalem...” Not... nor... but! Not, but. “God is Spirit: and they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The hour now is! The great transition has come. The great crisis of history is here and the change is: not all that system at all, but now and onward, a spiritual order.

Not... But

An hour of great change in the whole history of things: the transition from the whole historic Jewish system, to Christ. Paul puts this very thing into another word, he says, “The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” This temple in Samaria is temporal, it is earthly and it will go. This temple in Jerusalem is temporal and earthly and it will go. And it did go! It has gone. But the things which are not seen are eternal.

Dear friends, we have been brought into a great heavenly order which is not seen on this earth. We know that we are in something that is not of this world.

Now we follow over into the New Testament. In this letter to the Hebrews, we shall presently come upon a wonderful gathering up of this great truth. In chapter 12 verses 18 to 24 you have one of the greatest instances of “not - but”. Let us look at it.

“For ye, ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and to the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them; for they could not endure that which was enjoined, If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake...”

All that comes under the “not”; “ye are not”. Verse 22 begins with “but”!

“But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, and to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel.”

If you put a line under “not - but” there you have this tremendous change from Sinai to Zion. At Sinai the whole earthly system came in for Israel and now that is at an end and a new heavenly system has come in. Have you realized that one Israel has given place to another?

Have you realized that a thing has happened that Jesus said would happen? Jesus said to the rulers of Israel, “The kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruit thereof.” That is, bringing forth heavenly fruit.

The big conflict over this, as you know, is represented in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. That letter is another letter of the great transition. It is the fruit of what the apostle Paul had seen when he saw Jesus Christ. Paul said, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me” and when Paul saw Jesus Christ as God revealed Him, it changed his entire conception of things. What nothing else in all this universe would have done - that is, make Saul of Tarsus, the rabid Jew, a minister of Jesus Christ - nothing in this universe would have done that but he saw Jesus Christ and he saw what Jesus Christ means in the eternal system of God. And that did this very thing.

So we come to this letter to the Galatians chapter 3, verses 7, 9, and 29. What is Paul saying there? “They which be of faith in Jesus Christ are Abraham’s seed...” Oh, what a change! Saul of Tarsus boasted, “I am of the seed of Abraham, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Jews” and “They which be of faith in Jesus Christ are Abraham’s seed...” He is not a Jew who is one naturally, he is a Jew who is one born of Jesus Christ. What has happened? An old Israel has passed away and a new Israel has come in with Jesus.

You go to the end of the letter to the Galatians, chapter 6 and in the closing of the letter Paul wishes God’s blessing upon the whole Israel of God. But do you notice the connection? In Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek. The old Jew has gone out! We are all one new man in Christ. This is God’s new Israel.

The Israel of God

Now you’re able to see what Jesus was doing, He spoke about the kingdom of heaven. Israel had claimed that the kingdom of heaven was theirs. “Yes, the kingdom of heaven belongs to us!” said Israel. Says Jesus: “The kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you and given to another.” And Israel’s hope was the Messiah. All Israel’s thought was about the coming Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah, not only of Israel but the whole Israel of God. You know that the word ‘Christ’ is just the Greek word for the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ and ‘Christ’ just means ‘the Anointed One’.

So you have a new heavenly kingdom and a new heavenly Messiah Who said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And how does this new kingdom begin to function? Why did Jesus choose twelve apostles? Because there were twelve tribes of Israel and the number twelve in the Bible is just the number of government. It is the number of Israel and Israel was intended to be the governing nation amongst the nations. Jesus has transferred the number twelve from the old Israel to the new. So He has chosen twelve apostles. You’ll find them right at the end of the Bible in the new Jerusalem.

Ah, but there’s something more. When Moses went up the mount to receive the whole earthly system for Israel, he took seventy elders with him. He left them at the foot of the mountain, but there were seventy of them. And Jesus chose seventy to send them out to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. Is it necessary for me to go on with this? You see the point: with the Lord Jesus a new Israel has come in, a new heavenly spiritual system.

Friends, I’m in trouble, it’s this thing: what am I going to do with a new Jerusalem? What am I going to do with Hebrews 12:18-24? That you are come to mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God... what am I going to do with that? Of course in my mind perhaps there’s much more than is in yours, I have got the whole history of mount Zion opening up in my mind, the same as to the history of Jerusalem, and I see that that whole thing is transferred to this new order. “You are not come to mount Sinai... you are come to mount Zion”. What is that?

Do you remember the history of Zion? Zion was that stronghold of an enemy which David snatched from the enemy’s hands. And David made that his city from which he ruled all Israel and he made it the place where God had His dwelling. Can you transfer that to Jesus Christ? By a tremendous conflict Jesus has captured this thing from the enemy. What is this thing called “Zion”? It is in this room! You and I are children of Zion.

I love that little eighty-seventh psalm, do you remember what David says there? “His foundation is in the holy mountain, the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob... I will make mention of Tyre and Philistia and Ethiopia”. And what David means is these people say, “You know, I was born in Tyre! That great and wonderful city, Tyre. My name is on the register of Tyre. I’m a citizen of Tyre.” “But of this man it shall be said, he was born there...” And the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than Philistia or Tyre or all the dwellings of Jacob. Hebrews 12, “We have come to the church of the Firstborn whose names are written in heaven.” Our names are in the Lamb’s book of Life. We are citizens of a heavenly city, you have come to Zion; greater than all the cities that have ever been.

When the shaking comes Jerusalem will go, and Rome will go, and Babylon will go. All these great names of cities will go with the shaking of God through history. But our citizenship is in heaven and you’ll never shake that. “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem so the Lord is round about His people from this time forth and forevermore.” You come to Zion and we want many hours to talk about Zion, but this is all transferred to the Lord Jesus - what has come in with Him.

Of course in this world people don’t know what important people we are! If you were to say to people of this world, “You know, I’m a citizen of the most important City that has ever been or ever will be.” They would look at you... you don’t look like that!

Back to John, John 17. Jesus is praying, “I pray for the men whom Thou hast taken Me out of the world, they are not of the world even as I am not of the world.” No, the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem are not known here. And yet they are known, for we must come back to the City. What is the heavenly Jerusalem? Paul says the Jerusalem that is beneath is in bondage. But the Jerusalem which is above is free! What do you like to sing? Have you got a hymn in your hymnbook which says, “Free from the law, oh happy condition”?

Now back to Galatians, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.” Citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem which is above which is free and which is our mother; children of freedom! Well I mustn’t remind you of the context of those words of the old Israel in bondage.

Well, first of all the heavenly Jerusalem is comprised of the people who have been set free. The second thing about Jerusalem is that it is the seat of government, the center of government. Oh, here’s a revolution. Go back to the book of the Acts, they have been given the commission to go out into all the world, “Go into all the nations and preach the gospel.” What did they do? Well, they said, “We must have a committee. We must make a board of directors and we must have our board meetings with our agenda. And we must decide what we’re going to do and how we are going to do it. We’ll do all this in our board meeting.” Did they do any of that? You cannot find a trace of it in the New Testament. What did they do? They had a prayer meeting. They got into touch with heaven, the government which is there, and as they prayed the Holy Spirit said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul unto the work whereto I have called them,” not “You have appointed them.” I had better not say any more about that. Do you see the difference?

No, Jerusalem which is above is the center of the government for this dispensation. There is no headquarters on this earth. The headquarters of all divine operations for this dispensation is in heaven. We are to have our government and direction by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Jerusalem is the center of heavenly government.

If we are citizens of Zion, of the heavenly Jerusalem, we’ve got to receive all our direction from heaven. We have got to be governed in all our ways from Above. Well, there’s a lot more to be said about that. I’m going to finish on one other thing for this morning.

Jerusalem is the centre of influence for the world. You go back to your Old Testament and you look at Jerusalem then, you will find that the whole world of Israel was influenced from Jerusalem. The one thing that every Israelite desired was to go up to Jerusalem. And Jerusalem was reaching out with its influence over the whole Jewish nation. Jerusalem had a great influence in the world.

And you know that in a sense that is true today. Although the Jews today have not got the old Jerusalem, the idea of Jerusalem has a great influence upon Jews in every part of the world. They want to rebuild Jerusalem; they want to go to Jerusalem. It has such a grip on them. Their lives are governed by Jerusalem. Transfer that to the heavenly Jerusalem, get rid of mental pictures and grasp the spiritual meaning.

Dear friends, as citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, it ought to be affecting our lives here. Heaven ought to be influencing us now. What is one of the first things that comes to you when you become a child of God? Surely it is just this, “I don’t belong here any longer. I belong somewhere else and all my heart is going to that somewhere else. I am seeking the things which are above, not the things which are upon the earth. I’m living in the light of heaven. Heaven has a tremendous grip on me.” The new Jerusalem is the centre of a great influence and this is the way in which other people will know of our citizenship. It will not be because we sing hymns about going to heaven; it will not be because we say “Well, we’re going to heaven.” They will know because heaven has come to us!

We have an influence in this world that is not of this world. That is what we are here for. Well, we’ve only started on Hebrews 12:18, “Ye are come to mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God...” I don’t know whether we’ll get any further than that today, but I hope you’re seeing something: the great thing that has come in with Jesus, the great thing that we have come into because Jesus has brought it in.

Chapter 5 - The Controversy of Zion

We pick up things this afternoon where we left off this morning. Therefore, I turn you again to the letter to the Hebrews, verse 1: “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son Whom He appointed heir of all things.” Will you just remember that last clause: “His Son Whom He appointed heir of all things.”

Now to chapter 12 and we’ll just begin at verse 22. We have seen all the things which are gathered under the word “not”, you are not come unto quite a lot of things. “But ye are come unto mount Zion and unto the City of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”

Now will you please turn with me right back to the Old Testament, to the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 34 at verse 8: “For it is the day of the Lord’s vengeance, the year of recompense in the controversy of Zion.” The controversy of Zion... please remember that especially.

Chapter 31, Isaiah chapter 31, at verse 4: “For thus saith the Lord unto me, like as when the lion growleth  and the young lion over his prey, if a multitude of shepherds be called forth against him, he will not be dismayed at their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight upon mount Zion...”

Will you just pick up the fragments: ye are come to mount Zion; the controversy of Zion; the Lord of hosts shall come down to fight on mount Zion.

Now to the book of the Psalms, the second psalm, “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure: yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”

I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion... Whom He appointed heir of all things... and, ye are come to Zion.

This is the Word of God. It is not my word, this is in the Bible, it is in the New Testament. It must mean something and it is for us to find out what it means. Ye are come to Zion, not you’re going to come to Zion. Not you Jews used to come to Zion, but: you Christians have now come to Zion. You, here in this room this afternoon, have come to Zion. It is not the old Zion, the Zion of the Old Testament. It is the new Zion. You are not come to that but you are come to this. We did try this morning to see something of what Zion means.

Zion, of course, is the true Church and the true Church is the City of the living God. The true Church is the place where Jesus Christ is Lord. Wherever Jesus Christ is truly Lord amongst a people, that is Zion. But I put a circle round that word “true”. The true Church. All that is called the church is not the true Church. What the Word is speaking about here is about that true Church. You notice in this whole statement it says you are come to the Church of the First born ones, that is, the truly born again ones, born from above. And it goes on to say, “Whose names are enrolled in heaven,” and only heaven knows whose names are enrolled there. I think we shall get some surprises when we get to heaven, we shall look at some people, we shall say, “You? Here?! How did you get here?” Alright, we’ll leave that.

Now the point for this afternoon is this controversy of Zion. You will notice that the terms “Jerusalem” and “Zion” are interchangeable. They are used as though they were the same thing. If there is any difference, it is this: Zion embodies the intrinsic values of Jerusalem. It is as though all the true meanings of Jerusalem are gathered up into Zion. The old Jerusalem of the Old Testament is an illustration in principle of the new Jerusalem of the New Testament. Of course, as we have seen, it is a transition from the earthly to the heavenly, from the temporal to the spiritual, from the time to the eternity.

This New Testament Zion is a heavenly thing; not an earthly thing. It is a spiritual thing and not a temporal thing. Well, I think we all understand that. But we look back at Jerusalem... do you know Jerusalem has been an eternal thought of God? God has always had Jerusalem in His mind as a thought but the earthly Jerusalem never fulfilled the thought of God. It was only a type of the heavenly Jerusalem.

I wonder if you have ever noticed a rather impressive thing. When the Lord got Israel out of Egypt, and got them through the Red Sea, right there they sang a song. And do you notice what the song says? “He brought them out that He might bring them unto His holy hill.” Already, many, many years before ever they came to Jerusalem, God had it in His thought. But even then the earthly Jerusalem never fulfilled the full thought of God. Even Abraham looked for a city but he never found it. And he looked beyond time to eternity, he saw in his spirit that eternal city of God Whose builder and maker is God.

Now let us look at the old Jerusalem as a type of the new Jerusalem, the old Jerusalem as a type of what we have come to. Do not get mental pictures of some place in the future. We sing hymns about marching upward to Zion, we’re on our way to Jerusalem. Well, that’s not Scriptural! We have come to Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem.

Looking at this earthly Jerusalem, one thing about it impresses us very much: its long history of conflict. Jerusalem has always been a point of controversy. It’s always been a trouble in the nations. How very many times Jerusalem has been besieged! How many times the nations have come up against Jerusalem. Sometimes they have destroyed it, sometimes the Lord has defeated them, but it has always been a point of controversy.

Controversy in the Nations

Jerusalem seems to have been the storm center of history. But Jerusalem has always been a sign of spiritual conditions. If the spiritual condition of Jerusalem was right, Jerusalem was in the ascendant. No nation could overcome Jerusalem when they were spiritually right. It was when the spiritual life of Jerusalem was wrong that Jerusalem was overrun. The history of Jerusalem has been like a spiritual see-saw. If the spiritual life of Israel was low, Jerusalem was in weakness. If the spiritual life of Jerusalem was right, the spiritual Jerusalem was on top. I hope you’re collecting all these things as we go along because they’re coming to our message.

This battle over Jerusalem has been a lifelong battle and it has been a battle, therefore, over spiritual life. Now, you are, we are, come to Zion and this thing that we have come to in Christ is a point of tremendous controversy. There is a great battle on over the heavenly Zion.

I suppose most of us Christians know that we’re in a spiritual battle, of course if you don’t know anything about that then I have nothing to say to you this afternoon. Is there anyone here this afternoon who knows nothing about spiritual warfare? When they have come into Jesus Christ, they have come into a real spiritual battle. Is that true? I think we are knowing something about that. What does it mean? Just what Zion means. The nations rage, people are moved, it’s against Zion. “Yet have I set My King upon my holy hill of Zion... Whom He appointed heir of all things.” Oh, that opens a large door!

There was one who said, “I will exalt my throne in the heavens, I will be equal with the Most High.” In other words, “I will sit upon the holy Zion. I will be heir of all things. I will be the prince of this world.” You know who that one was, the Bible tells you, that was satan before he fell from heaven. Because God had already appointed His Son heir of all things, anyone who challenged the place of God’s Son had to be cast out. And so satan and all those who were with him were cast out. But they have never given up the fight for that place. They, if they can by any means, are going to occupy the place of the Lord Jesus, they are going to capture His place in Zion.

What does Zion mean then? Let us change our language: what does the true Church mean? If we are of the true Church by heavenly birth, what do we mean? We just mean that we are an abiding menace to the evil power. The controversy of Zion is this: who is going to be above all in the end? Who is going to govern all things and fill all things in the end? That’s the occasion of the warfare.

The Word of God shows us that it is the Church united with Jesus Christ as its Head which is going to govern this universe. The Church is going to take the place that the evil powers now have over this world. You see, the Word is, “The appointed heir of all things.” That doesn’t leave anything for anyone else. Satan therefore, stands to lose everything. And if the Church comes to the place that God has appointed for it in Christ, satan’s going to lose everything. That, then, is the controversy of Zion.

What is the nature of this warfare? What is it that is against Zion - this true, spiritual thing, this true heavenly thing, this true eternal thing - what is the nature of the conflict? How does the enemy work to defeat Zion? First of all, he uses the carnal nature of man. What do we mean by carnal? Well, of course the first letter to the Corinthians tells us what that is.

There are two things in that letter, these two things are over against one another: the carnal – the spiritual. These two things are in conflict. Now, what is the nature and meaning of the carnal? And in this way we are all more or less carnal, we are all less or more spiritual. What do we mean by that? Well I’ll tell you very simply. Do you have any difficulty in accepting and believing in the superiority of the spiritual, the far greater importance of the spiritual to the natural? Do you have any difficulty over that? Is it not man’s very nature now to want to see things, want to feel things, want to handle things? The greatest difficulty of the natural man is to believe that the spiritual is far greater than the natural.

This natural way of our nature is always wanting to put something up on this earth that we can see. Our natural idea of success is how big a thing is. Just how much people can say, “Well, look at that! That’s a success!” So a material thing on this earth just satisfies the natural man, the flesh. The natural man just must have something that he can see. He must have something that he can feel! He must have a demonstration of things. He must have signs and wonders. He must have manifestations. There’s a lot contained in that isn’t there?

Oh, how we Christians just love to have demonstrations! If you have signs and wonders and things that look like miracles, well, that’s success; we say, “Now this is it!” That’s a real characteristic of the natural man and we are meeting more of that today than ever before. The Corinthian church was the most unspiritual church of all. And the mark of its unspirituality was its love of demonstrations - this natural life which loves to see and feel something... which loves to point to something on this earth and say, “Now you see, that’s a success! That is really a big thing.” And how difficult it is to believe that something quite small may after all be the more real thing than anything else.

The Battle

The battle for Zion is the battle between what is spiritual and what is carnal. We’re all in this battle and this is something that you must remember: the further we go with the Lord, the older we are in the true Christian life, the less the Lord satisfies our natural life.

When we are little children spiritually, the Lord deals with us as little children. And how do you parents deal with your little children? The little child says Mummy or Daddy I want so-and-so. And if they will only say it often enough you will give it to them just to keep them quiet; just to please them, because after all, they’re little children... In the early stages of the Christian life that is how our Father deals with us.

The apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, “I could not, could not speak to you as grown men but as little children,” and a mark of their being little children was that the Lord gave them many spiritual gifts. He gave them the gift of tongues, the gift of healing and other gifts. Oh, these are very nice things for little children, they satisfy the little child’s life and Father just gives them.

You grow up and see what happens! When we are coming to full growth we find that we have to live by faith and not by sight. We have to believe God because He is and not because of what He gives us. The older we get spiritually, the less the Lord deals with us as little children. He deals with us as grown men. Paul said, “When I was a child, I behaved as a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child. When I became a man I put away childish things.” But that sets up a good deal of conflict doesn’t it?

Oh, the Lord is not doing what He used to do, “There was a time when I seemed to have only to ask the Lord and He gave it to me, oh, it was so wonderful... What has happened to me? I pray and the Lord doesn’t seem to even hear me. I ask the Lord for a lot of things and He doesn’t give them to me. What has gone wrong?” And the conflict is on. A real spiritual battle isn’t it, why the Lord is dealing with us like this.

You know we’re in Hebrews still, “God dealeth with you as with sons,” not children. The New Testament draws a clear distinction between children and sons. Children are the little born again ones. Sons are the grown up ones. God deals with you as with sons. And these people to whom this letter was written were having a very difficult time and this letter was written to try and help them in their difficulties because God was dealing with them as grown Christians.

I wonder if I’ve said enough to make clear what the controversy of Zion is in the first place. Is this not true: the real battle is between our natural life and our spiritual life, between my old man and my new man, between my earthly life and my heavenly life. That is the controversy of Zion because it is all concerned with our spiritual life because Zion is a spiritual thing and it is this spiritual thing that is going, in the end, to take the throne. The controversy of Zion... first between the natural and the spiritual.

The second thing, between:

The Traditional and the Spiritual.

Where do we Christians who really want to go on with the Lord find our greatest difficulty? Am I going to say a very terrible thing? We do not find in the first place that our greatest difficulty is with the world. True spirituality has its battle mainly against traditional Christianity.

When the Lord first showed this to me and I went all out in heart for something really spiritual of the Lord, something really heavenly, I thought - I foolishly thought! – “Why, then all the Christians, the evangelical Christians, will take sides with me! My, they will be inviting me to speak at their conventions, to preach in their churches! I’m sure this is what they want!” There was no more foolish man on this earth than I was then! I found that the doors of all the churches just closed! I found that all the suspicion and misunderstanding and the opposition came from traditional Christianity.

There’s no doubt about it, we may as well be perfectly honest; if we are going right on with the Lord, we are not going to find that traditional Christianity supports us. Rather will it be against us and all the misunderstanding, all the misrepresentation, all the suspicion; all that, will come from the Christian church. You’ll not be able to do anything but what they’ll give a wrong interpretation to it. Well, I could tell you a lot about that, but it’s very true.

Well, aren’t we still in the Bible? In the New Testament you have this controversy of Zion, but it is between true Christianity and Judaism. If the apostles thought that Judaism was going to come alongside of them, they made a very great mistake. Judaism was the traditional religion. It was deeply rooted in history. It had a long history and this is the thing, and the Jews said, “This is it.” Now look at the conflict between the apostles and Judaism; between the new Israel and the old Israel, between Christianity and established religion.

The apostle Paul gives us several long lists of the things which he suffered. He was in prison often, he says he was beaten with rods. Oh, we read the story of his journeys from city to city and country to country and the Lord had said to him that in every place persecutions awaited him. Where did it all come from? It came from traditional religion. It came from the Judaizers. It came from the old Israel. Everywhere that he went they followed him and stirred up trouble.

You know, traditional Christianity can be a very, very strong thing against spirituality. If you’re really going on with the Lord they may put you out; cast you out as an evil thing. This is the controversy of Zion.

Then we come to another aspect of this controversy. That is:

The Conflict with the World.

I wonder if you see what’s happening now. Do you notice that missionary work as it has been, has almost come to an end? It has been turned out of China. It has been turned out of Russia. It is being turned out of India, it is almost impossible for a missionary to return to India now. This is spreading over the world. It is becoming more and more difficult for the Gospel of Christ to go out; that is, in the way that it has been for hundreds of years. It seems that there’s a great power at work to bring an end to the testimony of Jesus, to bring an end to the true spiritual Church.

If the Lord brings together a little company of true believers, something very precious to Himself, a real representation of Zion, does not the enemy set himself to break that up; bring in every difficulty to bring that thing to an end? There’s a great world power against what is of Jesus Christ. The world is not only a place, it’s a spiritual thing. It’s a spiritual power which is against Christ and against all that represents Christ and we are in that battle.

There’s another aspect of this which is very interesting. This controversy of Zion spoken of by Isaiah is very interesting. Well, let’s go back shall we, to Egypt; Israel in Egypt for four hundred years. When the Lord had got Israel to a place where He could bring them out, what happened? A whole series of convulsions began in Egypt. Everything in Egypt began to work in a way where it was being torn to pieces. A great battle was going on. We say a battle against Pharaoh and the Egyptians but the Scripture says against all the gods of the Egyptians. Behind Pharaoh and the Egyptians there was a spiritual system and that spiritual power was keeping Israel in bondage. Now to get Israel out, all these tremendous things began to happen in Egypt. Egypt was being thrown into confusion, was being broken up; just convulsions taking place. Out of all that the Lord brought Israel.

Do you know the same thing happened in Babylon? When Israel had gone into captivity in Babylon and they were there for seventy years, the word of the prophet was this: “For your sake I have sent to Babylon and have brought down all their high ones.” Now you look at the story of the return of Israel from Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar... wonderful, great, important man in his own eyes, Nebuchadnezzar who said, “See this great Babylon that I have made!” Alright Nebuchadnezzar... Belshazzar... Darius... Ahasuerus. These are all the “great ones” and the Lord overthrew every one of them; a whole series of destructions, a whole series of disintegrations. Why was it all? What’s the explanation? God has a people there and to get that people out, He will throw whole empires to destruction.

What about today? All that was the old time controversy of Zion... why all the convulsions in this world today? Are there convulsions in this world? Are there convulsions in nature? Are there convulsions in industry? Are there convulsions in education? In society? Why, this world is in a state of convulsion. Is it true? Why? God has a people... and He is going to get that people out. But it is a tremendous battle to get people out. The whole world power of satan is against this people being taken out to Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem the spiritual Church, to come to the place of government.

God has a controversy with the nations and He is in battle with the nations because of this people. It’s very true. Well, if you read your Bible, your New Testament, you will see that just before the Church is raptured to heaven there is a tremendous and terrible state of conflict on this earth. “Woe unto you that dwelleth on the earth because satan has come down with great wrath because he knows that his time is short.” His time is short! What time? The time when he has power over this earth, it’s going to be taken away from him. It is going to be given to this heavenly people.

I think the Lord is dealing with this world very much as He dealt with the big fish that swallowed Jonah. I think the fish had a bad attack of indigestion! The poor fish said “Oh, let me get rid of this!” and so the fish spewed out Jonah and I think that’s how it is in the world. The world is being troubled by us. Zion is a nuisance to this world and this world and the prince of this world says, “Let’s get rid of them!” It’ll be a fine time when we are spewed out! Of course satan doesn’t mean that, he just wants to get rid of us out of his world. But when we do go out it’ll be an end of his world. We are not going out onto the earth, we’re going out to glory, so the word is, “Lift up your heads your redemption draweth nigh”. But what is the immediate context of those words? Distress of nations. The Greek is: “no way out for the nations”. Lift up your heads, your way out draws near. The statement is, “Men’s hearts failing them for fear,” fear of the terrible things which are coming on the earth. Then, the Lord says, your way out is near. In the meantime it’s the controversy of Zion.

You see dear friends, true spiritual life is a very vital thing. Going on to full growth as this letter says, is a tremendous thing because the letter finishes upon receiving the kingdom which cannot be shaken. That word “kingdom” just means “the sovereign rule”. The sovereign rule which cannot be shaken. We are come to that. But see, it all bears down upon the spiritual life and the controversy of Zion is the battle over spiritual life.

Now, though it’s taken two men to say all that, it wants hundreds of men to say it all. Our difficulty is just to get it all over. But I do trust that in these few hours we’ve had together, the Lord has shown us something. I trust that you have been able to see what it is the Lord is after. This is not all just objective teaching, we are in this spiritual battle; it is the battle for Zion. That is the battle for that which is going, in the end, to take the kingdom and reign. The Lord help us to go on. Amen.