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The Horizon of Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from messages given in 1961.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Christ: God's Horizon

Chapter 2 - The Greatness of Christ

Chapter 3 - The Spirit of Servanthood

Chapter 4 - Christ's Temptation and Victory

Chapter 5 - The Transfiguration

Chapter 6 - Crucified Through Weakness

Chapter 7 - The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus

Chapter 8 - His Ascension and Glorification

Chapter 9 - The Day of Pentecost

Chapter 10 - His Coming Again

Chapter 1 - Christ: God's Horizon

Our meditation in these days is going to center in a concealed word in two passages in the book of the Acts; concealed because it is not literally translated in our version. In the tenth chapter of the book of the Acts, and verse 42: "And He charged us to preach unto the people and to testify that this is He which is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead."

In chapter 17, verse 31, "Inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness in the Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead."

You will have noticed that the word repeated in both of those passages is the word, "ordained." In the original language, which could hardly be translated correctly into ours, it is the Greek word 'horizo' from which we derive our English word, "horizon." So that the twofold statement here in that concealed word behind our word "ordained" is that God has made His Son, Jesus Christ, the Horizon of all His interests and activities.

We, therefore, are going to be occupied with Christ as God's Horizon.

Everything Horizoned by Christ

And everybody knows what the horizon is - the farthest limit of vision. It is the ultimate range of things. Wherever we may go in this world, on any of its sides, we are still confronted with the horizon which limits everything to itself and within which everything obtains. And here we are told in precise language that what the horizon is to this earth as the ultimate limit and range and content of everything, God has made His Son in His eternal counsels. Christ - God's full range and ultimate limit and complete content of everything.

And although that word only actually occurs twice in the New Testament, what it means, what it conveys, is found everywhere. One very inclusive and impressive fragment alone would indicate that to us from the letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verse 16, "For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." There is the horizon, the range, the scope, the sphere, and the fullness; and Christ is that.

He, as the horizon, reaches back to the past eternity before the foundation of the world. He touches, as the horizon, the creation of all things. He reaches on unto the ages of the ages. He reaches up and embraces all heavens. He reaches down and touches all things here on earth in this creation. He is God's fixed and appointed horizon. The Bible has a great deal to say about Him as such. He is exclusive. Outside of Him, God has no eternal interests. Whatever is outside of Him, God's concern, as we shall see, is to bring it into Him; as far as it can be brought in. Ultimately, He is exclusive of all things. He is inclusive: "In Him are all things" in the appointment of God.

That is the great fact! It may not do more than make some impression upon your minds, but that will certainly not be a sufficient justification for our being here. We are here in order that the Lord may bring to our hearts something which perhaps has never come to us of what it means that Jesus is God's horizon. That is a new, and I trust, mighty apprehension and revelation in our hearts of the meaning of Jesus Christ.

And I would say here, right early in this time to all, and especially to the younger Christians, that ultimately everything for us is going to hang upon our apprehension of the Lord Jesus. We have got to refocus our hearts and minds upon Him. There are many things related to Him. The peril is ever present of making related things something in themselves.

We have a great occupation - the matter of salvation, our salvation, and the salvation of others. We cannot be too greatly concerned with that, but there's no little weakness in our evangelical concerns due to the fact that perhaps we put more emphasis upon salvation than upon the Saviour. That is, we can detach salvation and make it something in itself: a work, an interest, a concern, an enjoyment, and much more, and detach it from the Saviour.

We may be greatly concerned with the Church. We have tried hard to make it clear that the Church is, after all, but the expression of Christ, its Head. But the peril, again, is of being taken up with the Church as some thing: the teaching of the Church, the existence of the Church, the purpose of the Church - all about the Church. And the Church looms larger than the Lord Himself very often. Oh, that is the peril. It is like that. My own strong feeling is that the Lord wants to bring us back to the Person of His Son, to see all things in relation to Him and in the light of Him: for all things are horizoned by God's Son.

When we take up our Bibles, and thoughtfully read, meditate, study, we find that the Bible focuses attention upon two or three main things.

It focuses attention upon the Mind of God, before and behind the creation, and shows us that everything that God has done in the history of this world from creation, has been an expression of His own Mind; a Mind which represents a character, a nature, a kind of creation, a kind of Being - and to have that put into real, living representation and manifestation. God started His work, so far as this universe is concerned, to be an expression of His own Mind.

The Bible then focuses attention on the next phase and stage, what we may call:

The Rift and the Rupture in Heaven and Earth.

Something went wrong. We are not going to state again or go over the ground of what it was or how it was, we are going to come to what it issued in, we are all agreed on this: that things are all wrong in this world. They are all wrong! There is very little that is right in this world. We are confronted with that all the time. In ourselves things are all wrong in people, in world affairs, in creation. We say, 'This is not how it should be.' We say that about it. Something has gone wrong, resulting in a conflict, a controversy, a warfare, a strain, an antagonism of forces within ourselves and without; unrest, discontent, dissatisfaction! All this says, something is wrong, terribly wrong; things are not right.

We all agree with that and that is being forced upon us more and more as we go on in life like that. Something happened which destroyed the harmony, the unity, the beauty, that primal content which has far too short a space in the record at the beginning of the Bible. The Bible focuses upon that; the rift that took place and has persisted all down the ages and is becoming more and more manifest in this creation - a disrupted, disintegrated, and conflicting realm.

What was it that happened? Without speaking of the persons involved, and the acts which they committed which are on record, what was it that happened? And it is the answer to that which encompasses the whole Bible, and comes to its full expression in our Lord Jesus, and in Christianity, rightfully so.

What was it that happened? Man and all things were created in God, in Christ His Son. That is what the Scripture says: not only by Him, and not only for Him, but in Him. He was the horizon. He was the sphere. He was the compass. He was the range. All things were created in Him, all things were in Him. There was nothing, at one time, outside of God. That rift and that rupture, we are told, we are informed, did two things, or one thing in two realms. In heaven, in heaven a body of created beings fell out of God. Fell out of God, left their first estate, left their place, left their sphere; they broke away from their Divine horizon and sought to set up a horizon of their own. That disruption came, came down into this world, and we speak of "the fall."

And I suppose when we speak of the fall, most people think of falling into sin. That is quite true. But the fall, dear friends, was first of all a fall out of God. Out of God! The language is very picturesque, symbolic, it may be literal, that need not concern us for the moment, you need not worry yourself about going over there somewhere into the east to try and discover where the Garden of Eden was. The language pictures this: that when that thing happened, that rift took place, the horizon came between God and man. And man was outside God's horizon; he's outside. He's outside, whether it be the garden or whatever it is, the fact is, he is outside of the place where God is. He is out of God. God is inside a certain sphere, and within that sphere is God's horizon, and man has fallen out of God. An awkward way of putting it, I know, but perhaps it is the most forceful way. Man, with those other created beings, fell out of God.

Man, as we find him since then, is 'out of God.' He is out of God! He is outside. Two, two spheres altogether; he has fallen out.

Now, the Bible takes up that situation, and along one line, it shows us God at work persistently, all through the ages, giving Himself to one thing: to get man and things back into Himself. Into Himself, He is their home; their right place, the place of their adjustment, their cohesion, their peace. He is their place; just their right place. And you see all the way through the Bible, God at work trying, working to get everything, and man in particular as the key to everything, back into Himself. Into Himself!

On the other hand, the Bible is one continuous revelation of what it means to be outside of God. What a terrible thing it is to be outside of God. What forces there are at work, terrible forces in this universe, which started up this thing in that great rupture and work to keep men out of God, to hold men and things away from God, to make their horizon the horizon of men and things. That is their kingdom: the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of death, the kingdom of sin. God is not there; that is outside of God.

But the Bible is a terrible revelation of what it means to be outside of God. And without being misunderstood, may I say that the Bible is still being written in those terms. The Bible interprets a larger history than it actually, literally covers. What we have seen in our lifetime, and are seeing today, is just what a terrible thing it is to be outside of the horizon of God, in the realm where all things are not in Him.

Now having got that broad outline, you at once, if you have been following closely and thinking, will leap to something! You will probably have already grasped the tremendous significance of a little phrase, occurring in its different forms some two hundred times in our New Testament: "in Christ," "in Christ," "in Christ Jesus." I want to say to you, (and I do trust that you are studying your Bibles) that if you are really doing Bible study, may I say to you that here is a twofold line of the most profitable reading of your Bibles, your New Testaments. First, to note how often, how many times, that phrase occurs in the New Testament. Oh, how I would like to be able to take a whole hour now with it, I'm not going to, but that's a little bit of work you can do. How often it occurs: "in the Lord," "in Christ," "in Christ Jesus." Go from book to book and search it out, gather it all up, I say you will be tremendously impressed with this. This must mean something very great; it has such a large place. And then, alongside of that, notice the manifold connection of that phrase - the many things with which it is connected. The saints are in Christ Jesus - believers, individually. The Church is in Christ Jesus. The churches are in Christ Jesus.

And so on and on it goes, with this manifold connection, "in Christ." I say again, there are few things that would be more profitable to you than that, if you will do it. That is the characteristic definition of true Christianity: "In Christ." In Christ - that is Paul's definition of Christianity. There may be a lot of things within that compass, but that defines what it is to be a Christian: "in Christ."

Now we are going to follow that, as the Lord enables us, along three lines. Firstly, that is:

A Distinguishing Definition.

The very phrase itself carries an implication of a division: that and those in Christ, and that and those not in Christ. It distinguishes; it cuts the human race in two. It cuts the human race in two, divides mankind - those in Christ and those not in Christ, outside of Christ. It is distinguishing. It makes the great divide, the great difference. "In Christ" all God's interests are centered and focused. If we are in Christ, we are in the horizon of God. We are there as the result of this age-long persistent effort of God to get this returning to Himself.

It is no small thing to be in Christ. God has been at work at that all through the ages. He is at work at that now in our time, and we come right into that reaction of God from the rift, which put man outside of Himself. And we are in Christ today because God has done it. That is what God wants, He has been working at it, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. His workmanship - it is the work of God to be "in Christ."

He is at work in this world in all His patience, longsuffering, forbearance, infinite patience, putting up with so much until He has come to the limit of His possible action - to bring the last one into Christ, horizoned by Christ, then the rest. The day in which He will judge the world in righteousness in the Man Whom He has horizoned for judgment - Jesus Christ. It is distinguishing, and that makes the great difference. That may sound very simple or even elementary, but I have got this in my heart at this time. The Lord wants to take account, not only of those Christians who know Him and have been on His way for a long time, but of those who are early on the road. For this one thing, dear friends, not that you should have a lot of teaching as teaching, but that you should really know your foundation, your position, of where you are, and why you are where you are, and what it means to be where you are, on which side of the horizon of God you are, and why God wants you within that Horizon of Christ. May He bear that in upon your heart very strongly. It is a distinguishing phrase and definition, "in Christ."

I say again, if you will only look at the connections of that phrase, you will take a deep breath or let out a deep breath and say, "My word! My word! All that? All that is bound up with being in Christ and on the other hand, to be lost by not being in Christ." This is the motive and dynamic of evangelism: to recognize what Christ means in the eternal appointment of God and what it means to be outside of Christ. This is the dynamic of a true Christian life. I do hope that before we get very far, we shall begin to see the nature of being "In Christ" and what that means. It is the greatness of Christ in God's eternal intention but I pass from the distinguishing definition to the descriptive definition. It divides, it distinguishes, it separates, but it describes, it explains, because "In Christ" we come into something, Someone, altogether different from any other created person or being.

Of course, most of us know that, the longer we go on in the Christian life, we in Christ are very different creatures. That is the reality of our Christian experience; how completely different our Lord is from what we are, and what we are from what He is. Have you discovered that a bit? He is unique in the creation. There is not another like Him. He is one Universal Representation of the original full thought of God for this creation, and for man, out of which thought man and the creation fell, but now He is the One in Whom that full Mind of God dwells: "In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form".

God's Mind, God's thought centered in Him. He is the Horizon of God, but He is utterly different. That does not need stressing, perhaps, we know enough; we shall know more as we go on. On the one side of our spiritual experience, there is this divide, there is this divide between what we are by nature, the natural man, and what Christ is, and what we are intended to be "In Christ."

Now, there I must go back. Leave that for the moment and enlarge our range of thought. There was a point in history when God moved again in a very definite, precise way to secure this return to Himself: into Himself. It is returning to God. I wonder if you have noticed how many of our Bible words, with which we are so familiar, begin with that little prefix "re." Re-turn. That is something for the second time, coming back to where you were. Re-pent. Re-deem. Re-concile. Re-new. And so you go on. "Re-" means for the second time; over again, coming back to where you were before; leaving the ground where you are. Re-turning, you have turned, turned again, back into God. I am saying that God took this step in the great return movement to which He had committed Himself when He fastened upon a man named Abraham.

Abraham, the first of a race, first of all to show what it means to be "In God." That is the explanation of God's choice of the Hebrew nation; to show to the universe what it means to be "In God." And so God laid His hand upon the first of that race and brought him out of his horizon, which was not God's horizon, and brought him into the horizon of God. He began and pursued His activities with the man himself and then with his seed. You know, Abraham was called "Abraham the Hebrew". The Hebrew... and perhaps you know that the word "Hebrew" means 'the man from beyond, the man from the other side.' He has come from one realm into another, from beyond, into here. And the 'here' is where God is, and where God is going to be at work. We cannot help our minds leaping on to the Lord Jesus - "I am not of this world. They are not of this world." They are "born from above" - people from beyond, "born from above" - their true character and nature.

But then you notice what God does with that race; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and on.

What does He do? He puts every one of them into a history of deep discipline.

Deep Discipline

And what is the discipline? What is the nature of the discipline? For there is no doubt about it, these people went through discipline under the hand of God. Look at Abraham, his life was a life of discipline under the hand of God. Isaac and Jacob, there is no mistaking it; Joseph, Moses, David, and the rest, from one standpoint, it is a life of deep and continuous discipline. And what is the nature of the discipline? It's perfectly evident if you think about it, it was to undo a certain conception, and to build up an altogether different conception of life, of purpose, of vocation. Keeping to the positive side, what was the discipline of these men, and of Israel, the Hebrew race? It was to inculcate, to constitute them on the principle of service. Serving - to inculcate and develop the servant spirit for God. Man fell out of God when he sought to be something other than the servant of God. Satan fell out of God when he said, "I will be equal with the Most High" - sought to be other than the servant of God.

Servanthood is the key to the Bible: subjection, submission, consecration to the will of God, meekness, humility. Not the master: "My brethren," says the apostle, "be not many masters". Not the Law: "They lord it over you..." over God's heritage, that's not Christ, not God. Look at Abraham. God's disciplinary activities with Abraham were all along this line, to inculcate in him the spirit of service. When you come to the climax, the climax of his offering of Isaac, what is it? Complete subjection and submission to the will of God without a question - obedience unto death. "In thee, in thy seed, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed". That is what God is after, but the way, the way to that universal blessing is this way of discipline in relation to servanthood. The most difficult thing for human life since that thing, that poison of self-importance, self-sufficiency, self-aspiration and ambition, and all the aspects of self came in from Satan, the most difficult thing is a spirit of service. And I ask you: has the spirit of service almost gone out of this creation today? Who will be gladly a servant today? No, either individual or collective masterhood, supremacy, ascendancy, control; servanthood is going out, and it has been very largely lost in the Church. However, that's going well ahead.

Notice it then with these men that founded the Hebrew race and nation, then notice it in the race. "Moses My servant" that is the great title of Moses, isn't it? The servant of the Lord. "Oh, but Moses was a leader! Moses was a commander, Moses was almost a dictator." No! God says, "Moses, My servant." "Now Moses was the meekest of men..." And so all these dealings with the race, with the nation, as we see them through the Old Testament, are all bent upon this: to make them the servant nation, the servant people... to God, for the creation.

Those great chapters in Isaiah as you know, have two aspects. They do refer largely to Israel: "Jacob My servant, Israel My servant." The great servant chapters. We know that they point on to the Great Servant, but we haven't got there yet. Here it is, this is the focus: servanthood and discipline unto service, unto servanthood. Breaking down something, destroying something that has come in: the pride that came in, the selfhood that came in, the natural life which we all are and all its aspects of self. The undoing of that is God's work. God goes to infinite pains to do that.

Dear friends, this is not only Israel's history; not only the history and experience of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the rest. It is your history and mine. What concerns us most is not what happened to Abraham, but what is happening to us. What is it the Lord is doing with you and with me? What is it? What is the key to it? In general, this is it. We are going to show in particular as we go on what it is, but in general it is this: the undoing of that terrible, pernicious selfhood which came in in the great rift and put man outside of the horizon of God. The undoing of that on one side, and the building up of this other, and to be a universal blessing, a channel of universal blessing in service to God as yokefellows. A yoke is always the symbol of the humblest service. The humblest service, the service of a beast, of an animal. Subject....

Oh, what a lot of light that throws on the little, little word to Saul of Tarsus, "it is hard for you to kick against the goad". Yes, kicking against the goad - the ox under the yoke, kicking against the goad - we all kick against this goad of being servants in the yoke, in harness. It is an irk to our natures. The sooner you let go, surrender, submit, the sooner you'll come into the orbit of God, into the Horizon of Christ. For that is what is in the Horizon of Christ, just that. Read again then, your Old Testament in the light of that. Light just floods in when you see it in this way. Here is the discipline of a nation in relation to a Divine purpose: to serve, to serve God, to be the servant of God. Not with honour in this world. Not with reputation here. Not with popularity and acceptance - "despised, and rejected of men... crucified through weakness". Who in nature likes that? That is the story of the Old Testament.

Dear friends, that is where Israel as a nation broke down and went out of the Horizon of Christ. Out of the Horizon of Christ! It is a terrible thing to see Israel as a nation outside of the Horizon of Christ during these many centuries and today. Outside of the Divine Horizon. How terrible! Why? Israel broke down on this one thing: Israel assumed a position that God never meant them to have - asserted themselves as being 'the people.' Pride came into Israel.

Hear the prophets! Hear the prophets, is not this the cry, the complaint of the prophets to their countrymen: resistance, rebellion, stubbornness, the stiffnecked, the superiority, the pride, the arrogance? Out of place.

God, through the prophets, sought to call them back into Himself, to have them within His horizon. But no, the verdict of the prophets is, "Ye will not, ye will not, but ye say 'we will.'" And when it came to the final issue, when the Horizon Himself appeared, they took their position outside of the Horizon of Christ and have suffered the consequences. Israel failed because it left its great, holy vocation of servanthood and lost its sphere of Christ. It's a warning. "Abide in Me," says the Lord. "Abide in Me." "Abide in the Lord."

I must close because the morning hour is gone. I am just coming to Christ Himself as the Horizon, to see Him as defining that sphere, that realm in His Own nature. I will leave that for later, but let me close with this. Encompassing the creation, the world, humanities, the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of darkness: "The whole world lieth in the wicked one" "The god of this age" "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience... The prince of the power of the air..." and so on, we are all encompassed by nature, by that - pressing, pressing in all the time - these evil powers. And more so, more so surely now as the end draws nearer than ever. How busy, how active, how fierce they are, how relentless, how unresting, and within that by nature, is man, the natural man, governed by that sphere. Now within is the Horizon of Christ - "in Christ."

Dear friends, our battle, the battle of the Christian life in prayer, in watchfulness, the battle of the Christian life is not to allow a crossing over of this into that. In other words, to watch carefully the point where we in our natural life could just step over into what is of Christ, bring ourselves in there, assert ourselves in there and violate the Horizon of Christ by our, our life, our nature, what we are, intruding into the realm of Jesus Christ.

If you note your New Testament, it is all about that. Corinth is all that isn't it? And not only Corinth, in the more conspicuous and violent form of its expression, every letter has something to say about this: the crossing of the horizons of the natural man and Christ - the failure to preserve that clear distinction, definition, and demarcation. We ought to be so sensitive in spirit that if we in word, in word to one another, speak not according to Christ, we know it and have a bad time about it. Anybody who can injure and hurt another Christian and not have a bad time and have to go to the Lord about it, well, there's something very, very seriously wrong with that person.

If we are abiding in Christ, we can't do that sort of thing. We just cannot act or speak other than according to Christ without the Spirit at once making us know it, we have crossed the line. We've crossed the line, we have brought in nature, where nature has no place in Christ. To be in Christ is to be different. To be in Christ is to come under discipline in this way, the discipline which undoes something and sets it aside and builds up the other and keeps it preserved before God. Sorry to stop there, but you've enough to get on with.

The Lord hold us unto His goings.

Chapter 2 - The Greatness of Christ

No-one who was here this morning would expect, or be happy, if I were to seek to traverse the whole of the ground which we covered then. It had to be full and comprehensive to lay a foundation. We shall henceforth break it up into smaller fragments. But, to remind you and to gather in fresh comers, let me repeat that what is before us both by actual words in the New Testament were not so translated, and by many comprehensive statements Jesus is declared and defined as God's Horizon for all of His purposes, interests, and activities. The Horizon meaning the farthest range of God's vision and the inclusive sphere of God's interests and activities. As I have said, that word in the original language actually occurs in the New Testament, God has horizoned everything by His Son.

What does that really mean and amount to? Well, just this: that God's Son, our Lord Jesus, is set by God the Father as the norm, the representative of what will eventually be universal. The universal will be an expression of the Son of God. Everything within that universal horizon will take its character from Him. To Him, to it, He will give what is true of Himself. He therefore must be very great; if it is to be Christ universal, beyond Whom there is nothing, because He is the Horizon. You know quite well that although you may stand at a given point and see the horizon as you advance toward it, no matter how far and how long, be it thousands of miles, the horizon is still ahead of you, and just as much ahead of you; you cannot get beyond the horizon on this earth, in this world, in this creation.

So, when God has things ultimately as He intends to have them, the whole sphere will be found as an expression of His Son; a manifestation of His Son. He is in all things to be preeminent. He is to fill all things and all things are to be summed up in Him. He is the sum of God's intention. How great is this One Whom we call our Lord Jesus! The object of this time therefore is twofold: that we may receive a new and a fresh impression of the greatness of our Christ; and that we may learn what He is like, to which likeness God has destined us to be conformed.

I have said He is the norm, the representative of what will eventually be universal. Therefore, therefore Jesus - and I use that word as the New Testament uses it when He is called "Jesus"; in the New Testament the reference is always to His earthly life and work: His humanity. Jesus must have within Him, within His own Person, and within His own work, all the features and factors of what will be universal eventually.

Whenever you touch Him, you are not touching something limited, something confined. You are touching that which is going to expand to the full dimensions of the eternal ages and eternal conditions. Have you ever tried (it might be a useful occupation, but I will pronounce failure and despair upon it right away) have you ever tried to put Jesus into any one of the human categories known to us? We know the various human categories. The human race is divided up into these. We can say of people: he, she, they, belong to a certain category. It may be a category of disposition, of temperament, of sex, of nationality and race, of language, and so on and on. The categories of humanity are many. Have you ever tried to confine Jesus to any one of these? Have a try!

We would say to the person who lived in a certain time in this world's history they would certainly not be suitable to the life and conditions of our day. They were alright for their time, but they just would not fit into our time. People of our time would not just fit comfortably into the situations of so many centuries ago. There is a category of time. Can you put Jesus into any one of these? I say your effort will be a total failure. The most remarkable thing about Him is that He makes an equal appeal to men and women. He has the strength on the one side, the tenderness on the other. The courage on one side, the sensitiveness on the other. We can go on like that. He has outstripped every age and generation. He is bigger than any time in this world's history. He is not only different from, but above every kind of human being. This One is equally suitable to east and to west, to north and to south equally, equally suitable. He just fits in as much in the Orient as He does in the West. There is something about Him that is not true of any other person in creation.

We said this morning He is unique. He is above all categories, and yet, He fits in and suits every category. He is as much the friend of the illiterate and ignorant and uncultured as He is of the educated. It is this comprehensiveness of Christ in character, in character, not only in Person as God, but in character, that makes Him God's Horizon for the whole creation eventually - The Universal Representative.

Now, this morning, we referred to the Hebrew race as taken out from the nations of this world, and begun in Abraham "the Hebrew" or 'the man from beyond.' And we pointed out that God's dealings with that nation were dealings in discipline: with Abraham the first, with Isaac, with Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and all the other representatives of that nation. God's dealings were dealings of deep and drastic discipline with one object in view: to make them and that nation His servant people in this whole order of creation - to be His servant instrument to show what He is like; to bring Him into this world; to make His character known, and to establish that character as the governing thing amongst men.

Abraham the Hebrew, the man from beyond, was a stranger, a sojourner all the days of his life; a pilgrim, someone not only who came from outside, but remained outside all his days. While inside, yet, outside always. The race was that. Israel - a stranger, pilgrim, sojourning people, "not reckoned" to use Balaam's words, "not reckoned among the nations". Not reckoned among the nations, and that was a costly way; a way of breaking down all self-importance and self-sufficiency, all arrogance and pride, everything of that kind. A despised and a rejected people. It was of Israel, in the first place, even if it had the prophetic content concerning the Lord Jesus, that Jeremiah cried: "See if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, all ye that pass by." Why that? The undoing of something to bring God alone in; the undoing of man, the undoing of all that self-fullness, that complete emptying. The most perilous and disastrous times in the history of that people were when they became something in themselves with self-sufficiency, superiority, pride. That was the day of their disaster; whether it be in their representative kings, and leaders, or ultimately in themselves.

Now, that is a repetition, but get hold of it because it leads us to Christ. Christ is the sum, the sum of all the discipline and purpose of discipline in Israel. He was of the seed of Abraham. He belonged by birth and genealogy to that race. It is no contradiction to what we have said about His being above the race. He came into it, and coming into it, He took up in Himself all that purpose of God for servanthood along the line of discipline. I wonder if you have seen that the life of the Lord Jesus from beginning to end was a life of discipline; a deep and terrible discipline. He touched the deepest note in that aspect of human weakness when He said, "The Son can do nothing of Himself." What a contradiction and contrast to human nature as we know it that says, 'I can, I can do it, I will do it, I am good for that.' That is the pride of man, that is the ambition of man, to be able to do it, to be it. In God's own Son, there is this tremendous negativing of all that, even the Son, even the Son can do nothing of Himself. With a repetition in order that you may really grasp this: Jesus is the sum of all that purpose of God through discipline that we see in Israel from beginning to end.

With that, let us break it up. It has many parts. Perhaps we shall only touch on one or two this afternoon.

See the object, what God is doing in this discipline in Israel, and then in its consummate form in His Son, in Jesus. What is it? To make the servant, to produce the servant of God, to constitute servanthood.

Servanthood

Look then at His beginnings; at His beginnings in this world, on this earth.

See the principle taken up, inwrought in His very birth. Take His mother. We are on very delicate ground, very delicate ground indeed, when we speak about the mother of Jesus, for more than one reason. "A virgin", says the Scriptures, "shall conceive in the womb and bring forth a son". The angel of the Lord appeared unto the virgin Mary. In our times of low standards, low standards of morality, when these finenesses and sensibilities are so lowered and degraded, it may not be easy for us to understand, really understand, what that meant to Mary. Do you see that she was immediately confronted with a social stigma? A social stigma. She tried to evade that when Joseph took her away in secret. Social stigma. Do you see her personal dilemma? If she was pure, unsullied in mind, in heart, and cherished as any true, noble woman ought to be, that unsullied state of mind and heart, what a dilemma for her to be found in that state! And then, what a religious predicament. For, mark you, from the standpoint of the Law of Moses and the Jewish rulers, this, this is visited with stoning and death. This childbearing out of wedlock is culpable, is criminal in Israel.

You remember, the Jewish rulers brought a woman to Jesus on one occasion, taken in adultery, and they said, 'according to Moses, she ought to be stoned.' Here is the religious predicament, and she had to face all that alone in the secret of her heart and come to a decision. What a costly way! I am no Romanist, no place for the worship of the virgin Mary, but maybe we have lost something, something by our fear of that. At any rate, I suggest this to you: as something in Israel by which way Jesus was to come into this world, which was a deep, a tremendous, and almost terrible renunciation, self-emptying. No grander thing has come from human lips in the light of all of that than, "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word". Is that the servant spirit? Is that the spirit of self-emptiness, of self-abasement, of utter surrender, submission, humbling? Humbling? Surely it is. That was the vessel and the vehicle with that character through which Jesus came into this world. On that principle. What was true there, what was true there was a governing principle for the rest of His life. This is called ecclesiastically 'the annunciation.' It may be that, I prefer to call it the renunciation where she was concerned - a letting go and a giving up of everything that might be cherished from this world's standpoint, to accept something Divine, something heavenly. What a perception! What a vision! What a seeing through all this earthly, human, to the Divine. Jesus takes that up from His very birth.

Look again at the circumstances of His birth. He is the Lord of Glory! That is a scriptural title, "The Lord of Glory." Again, He is "the Lord of Life," "the Prince of Life." He is "the Eternal Son of God," Who could say in very truth, "Father, glorify Thy Son... glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." Then, again, it can be written of Him, "Who subsisted in the image of God... equal with God." All that, and no place in the inn, no palace, no house, no home, no bed, no nurse, no attendants. How true are the words, "He emptied Himself."

What an emptying, what an emptying. That's it: emptying! God, in this discipline, this emptying. This One would never be able to say, 'I was born of distinguished parents, I was born into and brought up in a palace and a noble home.' No, nothing of that. "He emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a bondslave." There we are, right back at this, the discipline to get the servant spirit; something of such price and value to God. Something that has got to fill the whole universe in the end. That! And His servants shall... what? Be waited on, of course! No, shall serve Him. Shall serve Him.

And for the present, the last: the thirty years.

The Thirty Years

It is the undisguised disappointment of Christendom that we have so little knowledge of those thirty years. How many people have tried to build up something, to fill in that time and explain. Why those silent years with only one very brief break at the age of twelve? Then disappearing again from twelve to thirty into hiddenness and silence. Thirty years! A period in which every boy and every young man acquires his abilities, his qualifications for life, for life's ambition. A period of training that will give a place in this world when it is completed. Some kind of equipment and qualification to take a worthy place amongst the people of repute in this world. That is the thirty years.

If you haven't got something like that when you are thirty, then you will have to get very busy to try and get it. But normally, that is the period, that's the period out of which you will come with either your degrees, your diplomas, your abilities, your training. For Him - silence. For Him - no such things, so far as we know. And by His after life - silence and hiddenness. What is happening? What is happening, can we, can we tell? From the greater context it is all in keeping with the abiding principle of God: the discipline, the discipline of the negative. Is there any greater discipline in your life, dear friends, than nothing happening? That suspense in waiting, God seeming to be doing nothing. Do you know anything about that agony? Going alongside of a consciousness that God surely meant something better than this, God had a greater purpose in life than this. I say, that's discipline, isn't it? Yes, the discipline of everything that is true about our humanity.

I don't call a person a normal human being who has no concern about their lives, no concern to be worthwhile and to do something worthwhile. That is not a man. That is not a true human being. For God to stay for a drawn out period and keep everything in suspense, waiting day in and day out, the awful monotony... Man has many, many times revolted. The Old Testament speaks about those who revolted because they had no changes. How we must have some changes. Monotony is an awful affliction, isn't it? Well, thirty years of waiting like that. What is God doing? If this is not emptying of self, I don't know what is. If this is not to inculcate an absolute subjection, submission to God, understanding or not understanding, the deepest perplexity and bewilderment. Active in spirit, never passive and careless, active in spirit and yet, and yet God not bringing out His purposes to clear light. That is suffering for the soul: submission, the servant spirit to become the very nature and constitution of things.

Well, it was true of Him, and if we want the confirmation that it was true in His case, we look into our own spiritual history. The infinite agony of long drawn out suspense and inaction and waiting and patience. What a large place patience is given. Even at the end of the Bible, the patience of Jesus Christ is the mark of the saintly souls. We know this is true; but to have the explanation, the explanation, there is, on the one side, what you might call, if you like, the negative; but God knows it is a very positive kind of negative, this. It is an agonizing negative: the emptying, the weakening, the helplessness. There is the other side, the will of God pre-eminent, absolutely dominant, surrendered to. That is what heaven is going to be made of! That is what the ages to come are going to display! When God is all, and in all.

But that is not just something in the Bible, that is the disruption of the human soul to get there, it's like that. Jesus came out of His thirty years with nothing; no academic distinctions, no status or references from men. He, rather, came out with many handicaps. "Jesus of Nazareth, can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" was a by-word, a slogan with a handicap to any young man thirty years of age, stepping into His life work. Yes, handicaps.

Well, has this helped you to see that Jesus did take over all the historic discipline of God in Israel to make Israel His servant? And that the greatest tragedy in history is that at last Israel broke away from that and sought to take the power into its own hands and repudiate the Son of God - it put itself outside of the horizon of God - outer darkness. I am not going to try to explain or argue what the Lord Jesus meant by that, "outer darkness: there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth" and this for the sons of the kingdom. But I can clearly see that during the past two thousand years, that has been Israel's lot: weeping, wailing, and the gnashing of teeth - outside of the horizon of God, in darkness, outside, darkness.

What a challenge and an appeal to us, dear friends, what a challenge... perhaps an interpretation of God's dealings with us. It all comes back to this: God takes these pains, infinite pains with us, breaking, emptying, humbling, weakening, taking away our own ability to do and accomplish and attain, in order to bring us to the place where His will is pre-eminent; and in the doing of His will, He can show Himself to the world, to men. It is through people like this. You'll never see the Lord Jesus in the arrogant, bombastic, self-assertive, self-sufficient kind of people who can do it, forcing themselves always into position and assuming something that God has never given to them of position. That is not the Lord Jesus. No, "He made Himself of no reputation."

There is God's end. It's very practical. It's very real. Of course, there are a lot of Christians who won't have it. When you go to the seaside, you see three kinds of people. People who keep to the dry land, to the shore, and have a nice, happy little time building their sand castles and what not; very happy. There is another class who take off their shoes and go into the shallows and paddle. If peradventure, by accident, a wave should catch them above the ankles or to the knees, well, they are soon out and back on the dry land. They are not having any of that. Enjoying themselves in the shallows and they won't accept anything else.

There is a third class who strip and go right in, and out, and soon begin to realize that they are having to cope with forces that are more than human forces. The further out they go, the more their resources of strength and endurance are drained and taxed. If they get far enough out, to the sea, it becomes necessary for them to draw upon resources that are not in themselves at all.

A lot of Christians are going to keep to the dry land and have a happy time, and they are not going to have anything that interferes with their happy, pleasant, Christian life. There are those who will just get into the shallows and have a little more, but as soon as things begin to get difficult, they debunk; they are back again, they are out of it. There are Christians who will plunge into the depths of the Lord and make discoveries of resources beyond their own, in Christ.

Maybe there are those classes of people here this afternoon, but I am speaking to the third class. You have gone out with the Lord, committed yourself to the Lord, and said: 'it is to be all for the Lord.' You are in the depths. Your resources are taxed, perhaps beyond measure and endurance, but it is out there that you are going to make your discoveries, those discoveries that are going to be the stock and trade for the business of heaven; going to be the resources that are going to be in Christ alone, for serving Him here and hereafter. This is service. This is the way of service, but this is horizoned by Christ Himself. He is not only the scope, the sphere; He is the content of it, the nature of what is found within God's Horizon.

May we have grace to yield to Him, to be conformed to His image.

Chapter 3 - The Spirit of Servanthood

Through the day, we have been occupied with a consideration and recognition of the great truth revealed in the Word of God: that God the Father has appointed His Son, our Lord Jesus, to be the Horizon of all His interests and His activities. "Horizoned" meaning the uttermost bound of His concern and the inclusive sphere of His activities. We saw this morning in a somewhat comprehensive laying of the foundation for these hours, that that word "horizon" occurs in the New Testament, although not in our translation. It is translated, (and we quite sympathise with the translators) the original word is translated, "ordained" - "Whom He ordained." That is repeated concerning the Lord Jesus, but the word is the word "horizon" - "Whom He made the Horizon."

We are not going to spend any time on the definition, but we are going to get on with what is contained in that, we are seeing that God has made His Son the ultimate range and bound of His purpose in this creation. But God has also made His Son the character, the norm, the representative of how things are to be universally when God reaches His end: "Christ, all, in all." This afternoon we commence along the line of how and on what grounds God moves toward that end.

We saw God moving into this system of things by laying His hand upon a man, Abraham, to make him the first of a people who were to be for Him in His desire, the repository of His full blessing for all men. And how, from the time that God laid His hand upon that key man, that generic man, he to begin with was brought into a history of deep discipline under that Divine hand. On the one side, the discipline of undoing. Undoing - a continuous and oft-times terrible undoing, to bring the man to the place where all he had was God. On the other side, constituting him positively on those principles which are to obtain and govern in the universal state of things to which God is moving.

We saw Israel under the hand of God, in discipline, to be made God's servant people.

God's Servant People

The principle of servanthood governing everything, all God's ways with them: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and all the other representative ones were dealt with on this principle of servanthood - utter, complete yieldedness and brokenness before God. That was the way.

It's not difficult with the most superficial glance, to see these men on their faces before God. If we want the key to their lives, that is the key! With all their faults, their errors, their mistakes, their wrongs, and sometimes their gross evils, the one thing of God in their history, in their lives, which kept them under His hand was that they were men down at His feet - broken men, emptied men, humbled men, men on their faces.

How true that was of David. We may have many things to say against David, but the thing that God takes note of is that he is a man on his face before God - worship, adoration, surrender. In every controversy that the Lord had with him, he comes down; he comes down on his knees and so became a part of that vessel God was seeking to form for His service.

This afternoon again we brought this over into the case of the One in Whom all the history of Israel in discipline was summed up, Who took it up in Himself in fullness, in Whom this principle of utterness, of abandonment to the will of God comes to perfection: the Lord Jesus.

We looked at His beginnings on this earth, and the vessel by which He came into this world, the virgin Mary. We saw the greatness of the cost to Mary to accept that vocation, and how the last word, after weighing it all up, after facing all that it involved - the social stigma, the personal dilemma, the religious crisis - she came out: "Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word". And out of that spirit, that attitude, Christ came into this world and was born. We may say by that the spirit of servanthood was found in Him by the very nature and method of His birth.

We further saw the circumstances of His birth. All those conditions around Him at that time, in that event, which were anything but the conditions of a lord, of a king, of a great one, of one of importance and reputation, name and standing - all to the contrary. He has come in as a Servant on the lowest plane of human life; and from that moment onward, His life was one long discipline by reason of that law: servanthood. We went on then to the thirty silent years to give that explanation which has so often been sought, as to why thirty years should be spent in hiddenness and silence, and apparent nothingness: learning subjection, submission, patience, faith in God when God is doing nothing, and all that. You see the law of Divine service as the way toward that end when all God's universe shall be filled with that spirit: His servants shall serve Him. The last word.

Now this evening we take the next step.

The Baptism of the Lord Jesus

Another great example of this same thing, before we can come to Him, His baptism, we must look at His forerunner, John the Baptist and apprise, as far as we can, the situation at that time. There is little doubt but that it was a situation of concern. Multitudes went out to John, multitudes went out to John, so many, that when Jesus challenged the leaders of the nation with His question, "The baptism of John, was it of heaven, or was it of men?" They said, "If we say, 'Of heaven' then, 'Why didn't you believe him?' That's our predicament. If we say: 'Of men' we fear the people: for all men believe that John was a prophet..." All men!

They went out by their multitudes to John at the Jordan. Why? Well, it may be that there was a movement of the Spirit of God at that time, what we in our times might call a revival. But quite evidently by their going out in their hordes, there was a concern about something. Perhaps a weariness of things as they were, a sense of frustration, that upon which the Lord Jesus put His finger when He said, "Come unto Me, all ye, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" - weariness and frustration, in quest of some answer. Further, evidently a real sense of sin. A real sense of sin, it says, "They went to John to be baptized of him in the Jordan, confessing their sin" confessing their sins; a sense of sin.

And we know from his message, that was the heart of things, his message was concerning the remission of sins. The remission of sins. That was the situation and the state of things, in brief.

But look at John. John, with all the apparent success of his mission, a ministry that you might think that multitudes, multitudes going out signified tremendous success of that movement. With all the apparent success, John was labouring under a sense of limitation. He betrays it. He betrays it: "I indeed baptize you in water...there cometh One after me Who is greater than I...He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire... Mine is, after all, a limited kind of thing. What you need, what I need, is that greater, greater thing." He preaches the remission of sins and they confess their sins, and he baptizes them unto remission of their sins. Then, he lifts up his eyes and beholds Jesus and says, "Behold the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world! I can't do that. I may have crowds here, but mine is not a cosmic salvation. Mine is not a whole world salvation. After all, it's but limited. It is this One; this Lamb of God Who will expand this whole ministry of salvation, forgiveness, remission, and expand it to the whole world!" That's the horizon; that is the horizon, you cannot get outside of that. You get tied into that.

But note again John. What was the principle of John's life? Was it not servanthood? Remember that John the Baptist was the sum and climax of all Hebrew prophecy. The last of the prophets of Israel. "There hath not risen," said Jesus, "a greater than John the Baptist". That is saying a tremendous amount when you look over the Old Testament. In him is summed up all the meaning of the prophets of the Old Testament; he is the climax of that. And what was the meaning? Servanthood. Servanthood, every time, all along the way.

And look at John! John I think is the most beautiful and impressive picture of a servant. They sent their representatives to ask him who he was, "Art thou he that should come? Who art thou? Who art thou?" What an opportunity! What an opportunity, what a lot of men would snatch at that opportunity. "Why, don't you know that I am Elijah who was to come? Don't you know that I am fulfilling that prophecy of Malachi, 'He shall send His messenger before His face'? Do you know who I am?" No! "I am a voice crying in the wilderness, a voice... I, but He - I must decrease, but He must increase. I do this, but He will do so much more." As forerunner and harbinger of the Christ, he is so governed by the spirit of service, of servanthood, he brings Christ in on that. He brings Christ before men on that! "I... decrease." "He... greater than I." If you hear any loyal servant talking like that, any pure-hearted selfless servant talking like that, even in this world, "Why, I after all am only an employee, I'm only a servant, it is My Master that is the Man. He is the Man; He is the One. If you want to know anything, you go to Him. If you want to see how things ought to be done, you go to Him." That is the true servant spirit. We haven't got a great deal of it in the world in these days, but that is it isn't it? And that is John the Baptist. The great servant of the Lord whose service is constituted on this principle of self-abnegation, self-abasement, self-humbling, self-emptying. "I am not... I am only... I am only a voice."

Well, to be less than that, of course, is to be silent. But just to be a voice is the positive side of service. There is the door, the door for Jesus. John was the door. John opened the door and let Jesus in and that is the kind of thing that the door is.

Now, we pass to Jesus Himself and His baptism. We have quoted, "They went out to John and were baptized of him confessing their sins." John must have had to listen to a great many tragic and deplorable stories, "confessing their sins." What a build up there must have been on Jordan's banks of confession of sins. It doesn't do to allow our imagination to carry us away in this, but it says that: "confessing their sins." Imagination could make us say, here's this man coming and confessing, perhaps to robbery, perhaps to this and that, and the whole crowd coming, confessing their sins. And that's the setting and that's the situation and Jesus steps right into that, and asks to be baptized with the rest. Confessing their sins, and Jesus, coming with them, joining in with the sinners and their sins, and saying, "Suffer it to be so now."

John had sufficient perception and discernment to see that this is not one of the rest of the crowd; it is a different one. He is not like these others and he would have prevented it and said: "No! No! I have need to be baptized of Thee and comest Thou to me?" That's the discernment; but Jesus insisted. Jesus insisted: "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered Him." Jesus, Jesus, this sinless, spotless Lamb of God, without blemish. Without blemish, stepping into the place of the sinners, amongst the sinners.

But John sees in Him more than that crowd, he sees the world: "Who taketh away the sin of the world". More than all these terrible stories to which he has had to listen; all these confessions which have poured into his ears, the whole world's sin. The whole world's sin! This thing multiplied ten thousand times ten thousand. The whole world. Jesus stepped into that, the horizon is set for sin. Is sin universal? Is sin only the sin of those who confess it, or is it the whole world? We know what the answer to that is, and that is the horizon of sin. And Jesus, the Lamb, the sin-bearing sacrificial Lamb, encompasses the whole range of sin. That is His service to God.

That's His service to God, but, but look at the cost! Look at the humbling, the emptying for Him, He knew Who He was. He could later say, "Which of you convicteth Me of sin?" challenging, and yet, as such coming right down here, for the sin of the world, emptying Himself, "being made sin, He Who knew no sin." That is the spirit of service. In Israel we have seen the many types and figures of that in priests and sacrifices, bullocks and lambs. And here is the One, Who did what all the millions of those sacrifices could never accomplish, "To take away the sin of the world." The world.

What is it that I am burdened to impress upon you? This, dear friends, is so patently, according to the Word of God, the way, the way toward that great universal issue when all things shall take their character from Christ. It is the costly way, the way of emptying, of suffering, the way of accepting charges. Very often, we may be called upon to accept charges which are false. The New Testament tells us so. When there are thrown at us those things which would put us in a false light; they are not true about us, and we are not allowed to open our lips, we are not allowed to give an answer. This Lamb of God was silent in the presence of the false witnesses; all the false charges He knew so well. That is the spirit that leads on to: "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him". It leads on to: "All authority has been given unto Me in heaven and on earth". There is your horizon of Christ in redemption. We are not surprised are we, that when He took that position, He accepted that in the spirit of the true servant-Man. Immediately the heavens were opened. The heavens were opened. The horizon was, so to speak, pressed back to the uttermost boundaries. And the heavens were opened and the Divine Voice was heard attesting, "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased".

Now, that is what happened in His case, the heavens were opened over Him; a clear way right through, right through to heaven, to the Father, God. "My Son, My Son." All earth bounds were broken. All the limitations of a sinful world's horizon were broken through. Heaven was opened. What is in His case, is what God is working toward for this whole creation: an opened heaven! That's where you finish your Bible, isn't it? "He carried me away to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven." The picture which follows is the picture of a people under an open heaven. That was secured when Jesus took His place with the world's sinners and sin in His baptism. And I say, what is true in His case is what will be true when Christ in those terms is reproduced in His people. It is true, this may sound like teaching, but it can always be put to the test.

When the Lord Jesus comes into any life, into His place in any life, call it what you will: conversion, new birth, when He comes in, is it not true that our consciousness is that the dome has been removed from over our heads between us and God, and heaven is opened? "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." When Christ comes into His place on this ground: that He is the norm and the representation of what God is going to have, and as such, coming into our lives, there is an open heaven and the inward attestation of the Spirit. The Spirit begins His sealing of us as children of God.

I am not going to try to carry you further this evening. All this, I do not know how far, how much all this is registering with you. I can tell you that, so far as I am concerned, it is not studied teaching. It comes out of a quest to know what it is the Lord is trying to do in our lives! What is it? Is He doing anything? He must be, because things are so strong, so real - sometimes so terrible. Spiritual experience is something which we cannot get away from. It is not just all calm, quiet and negative nothing. It is upheaval, it is discipline, it is challenge, it is trial, it is testing, it is suffering, it is adversity. What is God doing? That is my question and I am sure it must be yours. I have sought the answer and this I believe to be it.

As through the Old Testament, as in the case of His own Son, as in the case of the Apostles, note it: as in the case of the Church and the churches, it is not long after the Lord comes into His place, that you find that this rupture and rift and conflict is set up in furious antagonisms in spiritual consciousness.

It is all under the hand of God: He is permitting it and allowing it. If God is over all, if He is responsible for all, if He is Lord of all, we have got to settle that. Settle that: He is either Lord or He is not Lord - no halfways over this. If He is, then truly as God said to the devil over Job, "You can go so far. I give you liberty up to a point. I give it to you, I allow you - so far." As truly as that in our case, the Lord permits, gives tenure to the forces of evil.

What is He doing? He has introduced this historic discipline, on the one side, to bring us into weakness, into weakness - the thing we do not like. The thing we like least of all things is to feel weak. It's one of the most amazing things a man like Saul of Tarsus should say that he glories in weaknesses. Glories in weaknesses!

Feel weak? "Yes, He weakened my strength in the way to know emptiness." You haven't got it in yourself, if the Lord does not provide it, you are finished. That kind of thing on the one side is going on in Christian lives. On the other side, is it not true that where that has its way, the Lord has given His way something of the character, I say, the beauty, the other kind of strength, that is, Christ's begins to show itself. An influence. An influence... Oh, for a mighty influence to go out from our lives, for us to be an influence for God in the heavens. The building up of something positive of Christ - it's the other side. This is the interpretation.

We have yet much ground to cover. We see it in other connections in the life of our Lord. But this, again, is enough to put our feet on the way of God's work, and God's purpose, God's method, God's end.

There is no doubt about it that when God reaches the end that He has set, it will be this kind of Christ that is met everywhere. You are not going to strut about heaven as little lords, and important people. I discern that when we really reach the end, we will be saying, "It is all of His grace. It is all of His grace. It's all due to the Lord. It is the Lord, just the Lord." And that is how it will be for eternity. It is the Lord! He will be our occupation and our theme of praise.

Chapter 4 - Christ's Temptation and Victory

Christ as God's Eternal Horizon of all His interests and activities - we began these meditations by noting that the Bible focuses everything upon a primal rift and rupture in heaven and then on earth - before the creation of this world, and then after the creation. We do not get far into our Bibles before we are confronted with that situation. First, there is an antagonism in the universe, and then that antagonism is introduced into this world. From that point, the Bible opens up and pursues its course to the end where all that is seen to have been dealt with and settled and removed and all in Christ.

We are shown that the cause of that universal rupture in heaven and on earth was insubordination to the will of God; a will rising and opposing itself to the will of God: "I will exalt myself" - independent action, breaking away from the government of God alone. All issuing, we are told, from a desire for superiority, for preeminence, for ascendancy, for power. All these things, which we find all through the Bible, and through history, are the evil brood of pride, arrogance and conceit; first found in the great archenemy, and then man poisoned by him with the same things. After seeing that, we noted exactly what it was that happened when that revolt took place, when that course of insubordination and independence was adopted both in heaven and on earth.

What happened was that those concerned in it, involved in it, implicated, a party to it, victimized by it, fell out of their place in God. Up till then, originally, there was but one realm: one realm of unity, of harmony, of concord. From that time there became two realms and God brought forward at that point His Horizon. The Horizon within which the full restoration was to be made, in which the original harmony and glory was to be found, in which all that evil was to be destroyed, and that Horizon was His Son. His Son, He became that bound, and mark, and demarcation between what is in God and what is not in God, what is of God and what is not of God, what is like God and what is unlike God. God established that Horizon in His Son. Everything henceforth of God and for God, was to be Horizoned by Christ. That we have seen.

His Son, then, being what the horizon is to this earth in the natural, was made the measure, the range, the scope, and the limit of God's interests. And, moreover, His Son was made the character, the nature, the constitution of all that which was eventually to be the range of God's eternal presence. Before we go a step further, it might be as well if we indicated something of the significance of that for ourselves.

We are all familiar with, aware of, convinced of there being a rift in this universe, a rupture in relationship between heaven and earth, between God and the devil, and the two systems and orders that they respectively represent. We know that this is not something objective only, but it is all about us; it is everywhere, but we know that it is within ourselves. The more we know of our own human hearts, the more we know there is an inborn antagonism. It only needs to be given sufficient occasion to show itself.

Perhaps, first of all, in the simple form of its beginning in the Bible, it is a question about God, just a question. And from the entertaining of the question, the development of this whole system of complexities, until antagonism, enmity, shows itself that it goes on. But it is already there in the nature, in the race of Adam. I say we are aware of it, but have we recognized sufficiently, have we really grasped other than mentally, the great implicates of that for our time? I do not mean for the moment in the world; it is there so patent, so obvious there. Oh, the futility, the heartbreak, the exhaustion of all in this world, apart from Christ, to try and harmonize this universe and bring about a state of complete accord. There is no more desperate and heartbreaking business, one feels infinitely sorry for the men whose lives are given in that work. They are destined, and doomed to failure. Every bit of machinery set up for that, breaks down and becomes a contradiction in its very name. United Nations, what a misnomer - disunited nations, and so on. But that is not what I am thinking about.

Have we really, dear friends, grasped within our very beings, the significance, the real meaning of the Church of God, the Body of Christ? For many Christians, it is but a teaching in the New Testament: very interesting, maybe fascinating. But this that we have in the New Testament about the Church, about the Body of Christ, meets right back with that primal rupture in this universe, that division. And this Church, the Body of Christ, is chosen of God, intended by God, to embody His Son in the destruction of that.

Hence, immediately you get really, truly - not mentally, not doctrinally, theologically - but truly onto Church ground, Body ground, you are in the conflict of the ages, beyond any other kind of conflict, this is the conflict. And this same one who brought about the rift in heaven amongst the angels, and then brought about the same rift on earth between God and man, is set on this thing as on nothing else, to deny that in Jesus Christ that work is undone and that mischief is repaired.

Hence, the battle of fellowship. And whenever the enemy can succeed, succeed, (and I think that he succeeds as much by getting people to adopt Church truth mentally, and then violate it spiritually) he laughs, he laughs at Calvary. He laughs at the Christ. He laughs at the Church. He congratulates himself that his original work was not so much in vain. It's like that.

Oh, we are involved and we ought to recognize that when the revelation of the Church comes in through the apostle Paul, and is documented in the greatest document that has ever been given to humanity, you find yourself right there in the conflict with principalities and powers, hosts of wicked spirits, concerning the Church. That ought to enlighten us, it ought to set us on our feet, it ought to be a great warning to us! We are not in a teaching. We are not in a doctrine, though it be a very great doctrine and teaching and truth. We are in the desperate battle of all the ages. It is a matter of God having appointed His Son to be the Horizon within which all that primal revolt and rift and rupture is finally to be undone. You and I were to abide in Christ, and we are not to get out into the natural man, though it be a more glorious testimony to the truth of Christ as Head and His members as His Body.

Are you tired of Church truth, tired of doctrine about the Body of Christ? You say you know all about that, but God have mercy upon you. The enemy will play havoc with you if you have not in your heart recognized that that thing which happened in heaven and on earth is here present today as the battleground. The battleground.

Well, that being the setting of everything we have seen, then there follows that two-fold work of God right through, right through from the beginning. On the one side, God's discipline unto undoing. Whenever God got hold of anyone in line with His ultimate purpose in His Son, that started up in that life or in that people, the discipline: the discipline of undoing. Undoing! And I can offer you on that side, no happier prospect, dear friends, than this: that if you really do come into line with God's purpose, on one side of your being you are going to be undone and utterly undone. You will cry, the time will come when you will cry, "Woe is me! for I am undone... Oh wretched man that I am!" That is one side. The discipline of God must mean that. The undoing of that in which there is an antagonism to the will of God, independence of life and action - a contradiction of the absolute oneness and harmony of Christ in His Body. That is one side.

The other side is, and thank God there is the other side, the reconstituting on the Divine basis according to the Divine nature. These two things go on in any true Christian life. On the one side: weakening, emptying, undoing, bringing down, making more and more aware of helplessness and impotence. That, yes. On the other side: Christ becoming more and more the Life, the Strength, the Wisdom, the Everything - horizoned by Christ.

Now, this is foreshadowed. This is all foreshadowed in God's choice of Israel and His dealings with Israel as His chosen people. You must study the Old Testament in the light of Israel from that standpoint. They foreshadowed of this, how God did discipline, did break, did undo, did bring down, did humble that people. On the other side, how He sought to bring in that which is according to His own mind. We have referred to some of these men like Abraham, Moses, and David. We should refer to David again; these two things are so apparent in his case: very human, very human with all the weaknesses of the poorest humanity in himself. Yet, God could say of that man - the marvel of it is ever astonishing - "I have found David... a man after Mine own heart, who shall do all My will."

Well, you see the two things in his life as an example and representative of the whole nation in God's thought. On the one side, a man broken, a man broken, humbled, down with his face before his God. A man who even when he is guilty of the saddest and most tragic defections, goes down before God in penance. Those psalms of penance; those cries from a broken heart, there they are - they're terrible psalms, those psalms, of a man broken before God because of his own sin. "My sin is ever before me... My sin is ever before me... Create in me a clean heart, O God; renew a right spirit within me" and so on. On the one side, that essential side, discipline, discipline and self-emptying. On the other side, what a lot of Christ we find in other psalms. They are just full of Christ, aren't they? His great prophetic, messianic psalm, coming out of his own heart. He has entered into the experience of Christ very deeply. The very words that the Lord Jesus used in His passion came from David first, came through that broken heart. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"

There is so much of Christ that comes to us through David after all. And that is just it, breaking to make room for Christ. Christ is God's Horizon, and on the basis of Christ, on the line of Christ, God works in the life of every committed child of His. Every committed child, He may not be able to do what He wants to in many lives because they are not committed. But this is what happens when we are: "In the fullness of the time... God sent forth His Son." The full embodiment of all this history, and the full embodiment of all that is to be universal in kind, in nature, in constitution, when God reaches His end. Notice certain very distinct features of the earthly life of Christ. The first is so clear. His life in God, His life in the Father - absolute committal and absolute subordination. From the beginning, from the very beginning He takes up this undoing work of all that mischief. It is in His Person that He does it, this perfect subjection to the will of the Father. In other words, He is in the Father, He is in God, and He abides in Him.

Another thing that is so clear as you read His life here, is the lifelong and many-sided effort of the adversary to get Him out of His place in God. To get Him out of that position which He had and get Him as the Last Adam, where he got the first Adam: out of God's Horizon. Out of God. I say, everything was concentrated upon that by the adversary and evil powers, getting Him to move out of His right sphere in God. You will see that in a moment as an example.

But the third thing is also very clear, that is His full victory by His uttermost, bottom-most yielding to the will of God in the Cross, of the infinite cost of Calvary. Which cost, you and I however much we come to understand through years here, which cost we shall never know until eternity reveals it, what Calvary meant as cost to the Son of God. But by that infinite cost, His complete victory.

His Complete Victory

It is written by the apostle that "the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" and so often, if we have given it any thought at all, we have thought of Him doing something objective. We must remember that whatever there was in the objective realm, it was done in His own nature, it was done in His own heart. It was done in His character - He destroyed the works of the devil in Adam. He destroyed the works of the devil in heaven in the rupture, in this completeness, this perfection of heart for the will of God! No divided heart, no divided heart, and because His heart is whole and His heart is one, and it is kept one through every form of testing and trial and adversity and temptation - maintaining oneness to the last breath, "Father, into Thy hands I commit My Spirit." He has undone in Himself the works of the devil in His own person!

Now, that leads us to the next step in His earthly life for a little while on the temptations of the Lord. Yesterday, we were occupied with His birth and its connection with the primal thing. And then to His baptism with the same connection. And I say it's very important that you do not just take these as incidents in the life of Christ on the earth, but that you relate them all to one supreme thing. So they are, really. And then we come to His temptation in the wilderness and that these are all of a piece of one thing in their meaning and relationship.

You have to see how closely connected the temptation in the wilderness was with His baptism. With His baptism; these are part and counterpart, two sides to one thing. In His baptism, coming up out of the water the heaven was opened and the Spirit, the Spirit lighted upon Him. And the voice out of heaven said, "This is My Beloved Son." The Spirit first of all: the anointing, the anointing, that was the basis and the dynamic upon which, from that moment of committal to the will of God in His baptism, He was going to live and build His work, walk, and do everything: in and by the Spirit.

But what was the significance here of the Spirit coming upon Him at that time, resting upon Him and taking up His abode in Him? Was it not the establishment of this very link with the Father as Man, as the Servant of God, the Son of Man? He has accepted a basis of dependence, accepted a law of submission, and the Holy Spirit came and established that link, that union in the Son of Man with the Father. The Spirit formed that union, created that union, established that union. It is a matter of being joined to the Father in the Spirit, not now in His Deity as the Eternal Son, but now as Son of Man in His mission, His work for our redemption. The attestation of sonship coming upon that, the Spirit forming the link, establishing the union; and then the attestation: "My Son. My Son."

At once, you must throw your eyes right back to that universal rift; it goes right back. His baptism and His temptation take us right back there: the Son established and appointed as God's Horizon for the undoing and for the doing in this universe. "My Son," the One eternally appointed and designated to be this sphere of Divine activity. It goes right back there, and it goes right on progressively in time and consummately in eternity, reaches right on to the ultimate nature and relationship with God of the redeemed, the children of God, sons of God, by the operation of the Holy Spirit beginning in new birth. Now, that is perhaps the most glorious truth that ever a mortal could know. That ought to be the most glorious thing which you and I know: "In Christ," as sons of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, with all that is bound up with that from eternity to eternity.

But dear friends, that is the most terrifying thing to the adversary. That is the most disconcerting thing for the adversary. There is nothing of which he is more afraid of and in terror of, nothing that rouses his ire, his animos, more than that. He sees in that relationship, that relationship sealed by the Holy Spirit with the Father, of the Son and the many sons whom He is going to bring to glory accordingly, he sees in that the final undoing of all his work at the beginning and through the ages. In that union it is all undone. If that goes on, then - hopelessness, futility, frustration is written large over all that Satan's done before the world was, in heaven and in earth, and after creation and has been doing and is doing now, through the ages. It is all undone if this, if this relationship between the Son of Man and the Father becomes the relationship between a whole race, a redeemed race and God, on the basis of sonship through the Eternal Spirit. Hm, no wonder then, there is conflict on this ground. It is good to be able to pinpoint, put your finger upon the meaning of things.

And so you come to:

This Temptation in the Wilderness

It is impressive, it is only Mark who really does give us the full force of what happened. Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. Mark, who is more original than the others as you know, more original, and we believe that Peter had a lot to do with the writing of the Gospel which bears Mark's name. And Peter was one of the most intimate associates with Christ and this story of the temptation could only have come from Christ Himself, for no one else was there. And He must have given it, therefore, to His most intimate associates. And, coming like this to the most original of the records, Mark says, "Then was Jesus driven of the Spirit into the wilderness." Driven to be tempted of the devil. The Spirit Who had come upon Him in anointing, now girded Him and compelled Him to move to the wilderness to be subjected to this universal trial. Universal, because it is sonship which is at the heart of it. "If Thou be the Son... If Thou be the Son."

You see, what the enemy in those temptations was trying to do was to thrust a wedge between Christ and His Father - to put this Last Adam outside of God's horizon as he had done with the first Adam; to get Christ to move, to act, to proceed in independence, without reference to the Father, and without deference to the Father - to get Him to act of Himself. That is the root of the temptation, to get Him out of God. Out of God, you see, that is it. And if you don't understand that, well, you have much spiritual experience yet, you will if you do not understand that all the activity of the enemy is to get in between us and God - is it not? Some how... some how to get in between us and the Lord; to thrust the thin edge of the wedge in and then drive it home until we are away from the Lord - apart from the Lord. That is what he is doing and that is what he tried here in the wilderness. It was this whole matter of abiding in God. Abiding in God! That was the battleground: living in God - living out from God - and not, not even using God-given powers for personal ends. It was a long test. A long test.

Evidently the Lord, for forty days and forty nights, was going over all that was implied by the step that He had taken, the vision that He had received. He had committed Himself in His baptism, committed Himself to the will of God: to be utter for God. He had there seen by the Spirit the vision of what that meant in the end. He understood the meaning of sonship.

Now then, now then, the vision was going to be subjected to great testing, and He apparently for this whole period of forty days and forty nights, was giving deepest consideration to what was involved, what His step meant, that step of commitment. It was not, mark you, until the end of the forty days and the forty nights that the devil came to Him. "Then, Satan came." What has been happening all that time? Well, I can only conclude, He has committed Himself to something and this wants facing up. This needs to be understood. There needs to be a real apprehension of what it means.

You know, dear friends, it is true to the Christian life, if you take any step of committal to the Lord, if you are given any vision of the Lord's great purpose, and you commit yourself to it, it is not long before you are subjected to the most terrible testing on your vision. On your vision! We shall see in another connection how that applied to others, but here it is Christ. "Then, came the devil." A long drawn-out consideration, contemplation, weighing-up, and of course, abiding by His undertaking, but alone. Alone. No one else here, no one else near. A sense of consciousness of evil about... evil. Perhaps, perhaps a sense of God being far away, "then cometh the devil..." then cometh the devil!

And we have these temptations. I am not going to dwell upon the first, we know it so well. In His hunger and exhaustion, His weakness of body, "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." That is where it begins: 'Use your own God-given powers for your own selfish ends, for your own salvation, for your own good.' Quite a right thing to do; quite legitimate: save your life. Save your own life. You hear the Lord Jesus later saying, "He that saveth his life shall lose it." 'Save your life! It is the right thing to do. Why throw your life away?' Well, ask any truly, committed and consecrated servant of God, who have gone out, perhaps to distant lands, and laid down their lives - why? And not only that, anywhere, if this is the cost of the great purpose of God: the undoing of the work of the enemy, "He that saveth his life shall lose it: he that loses it for My sake shall find it." 'Save your life, it is the most legitimate, proper thing to do. Why waste your life?'

The question is, does the Lord want us to lay down our lives? Not what reason says, not what men say, not what the devil says, but does the Father ask us to pour out our lives? To let go our life. Is not that the great principle? The basic principle of this ultimate universe of people, people who let go their lives, who counted not their lives dear unto themselves, but poured out their lives in the will of God. It does not argue for any foolhardy, presumptuous actions, but this must come in the way of our relationship with the Lord.

The second temptation, and it has to be so hurried, and I think, dear friends, the only way to rightly and adequately measure the force of the second temptation is to read a part of Scripture. The second temptation, "Then the devil taketh Him up to the pinnacle of the temple, and says, 'If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down.'" And then, the subtlety of it all, "It is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee; to keep Thee in all Thy ways." He quotes Scripture to back up his temptation from the Bible.

What did this mean? I say, the only way to understand it adequately and rightly is to read something. I'll tell you, I'll read it from the new translation, I think it makes it a little more vivid. Here it is:

Then they led Jesus away to the High Priest's house, where the chief priests, elders, and doctors of the law were all assembling. Peter followed Him at a distance right into the High Priest's courtyard; and there he remained, sitting among the attendants, warming himself by the fire.

The chief priests and the whole Council tried to find some evidence against Jesus to warrant a death-sentence, but failed to find any. Many gave false evidence against Him, but their statements did not tally. Some stood up and gave this false evidence against Him: 'We heard Him say, "I will throw down this temple, made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands."' But even on this point their evidence did not agree.

Then the High Priest stood up in his place and questioned Jesus: 'Have You no answer to the charges that these witnesses bring against You?' But He kept silence; He made no reply.

Again the High Priest questioned Him: 'Are You the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?' Jesus said, 'I AM; and you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven.' Then the High Priest tore his robes and said, 'Need we call further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What is your opinion?' Their judgment was unanimous: that He was guilty and should be put to death.

Some began to spit on Him, blindfolded Him, and struck Him with their fists, crying out, 'Prophesy!' And the High Priest's men set upon Him with blows. Meanwhile Peter was still in the courtyard downstairs. One of the High Priest's serving-maids came by and saw him there warming himself. She looked into his face and said, 'You were there too, with this Man from Nazareth, this Jesus.' But he denied it: 'I know nothing,' he said; 'I do not understand what you mean.' Then he went outside into the porch; and the maid saw him there again and began to say to the bystanders, 'He is one of them' ; And again he denied it.

Again, a little later the bystanders said to Peter, 'Surely you are one of them. You must be; you are a Galilean.' At this he broke out into curses, and with an oath he said, 'I do not know this Man you speak of.' Then the cock crew a second time; and Peter remembered how Jesus had said, 'Before the cock crows twice you will disown Me three times.' And he burst into tears.

When the morning came, the chief priests having made their plans with the elders and lawyers and all the council, put Jesus in chains; then they led Him away and handed Him over to Pilate. Pilate asked Him, 'Are You the King of the Jews?' He replied, 'The words are yours.' The chief priests brought many charges against Him. Pilate questioned Him again, 'Have You nothing to say in Your defense? You see how many charges they are bringing against You.' But, to Pilate's astonishment, Jesus made no further reply.

At the festival season the Governor used to release one prisoner at the people's request. As it happened, the man known as Barabbas was then in custody with the rebels who had committed murder in a rising. When the crowd appeared asking for the usual favour, Pilate replied, 'Do you wish me to release for you the King of the Jews?' For he knew it was out of spite that they had brought Jesus before him. But the chief priest incited the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas rather than Jesus. Pilate spoke to them again: 'Then what shall I do with the Man you call King of the Jews?' They shouted back, 'Crucify Him!' 'Why, what harm has He done?' Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, 'Crucify Him!' So Pilate, in his desire to satisfy the mob, released Barabbas to them; and he had Jesus flogged and handed Him over to be crucified.

Then the soldiers took Him inside the courtyard and called together the whole company. They dressed Him in purple, and having plaited a crown of thorns, placed it on His head. Then they began to salute Him with, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' They beat Him about the head and spat upon Him, and then knelt and paid mock homage to Him. When they had finished their mockery, they stripped Him of the purple and dressed Him in His own clothes. Then they took Him out to crucify Him.

We need not go further. 'Cast Thyself down on the pinnacle and what will happen? You will avoid all that. You will find acceptance in your nations. You will become the popular speaker of the times. You will gain a great following! No Cross will come Your way. You can have it all without paying that cost.' Did Jesus know what was coming? We have many evidences that He knew what was coming to Him. He knew the Bible. He knew the Old Testament described all this. He knew it. He knew what was coming His way. Oh, the temptation... the effort to get in between Him and the Father's will, for eventually He says, "The cup which My Father giveth Me, shall I not drink it?"

"My Father's will..." What does it mean? Well, in the balances on the one side: popular acceptance, and on the other side: complete rejection. On the one side: a cheap, a cheap and easy way, and on the other side: the most costly path. On the one side: a reputation amongst men, and on the other side: despised, despised and rejected of men. On the one side: the temporal - position, status, acceptance, and emoluments, and on the other side: with the loss of all that is the eternal fullness. On the one side: Himself, just by Himself, and on the other side: the world. He could save Himself, but what about the world? What about the world? That temptation was just for His own personal interest. The refusal of it was for the sake of the world. From the local on the one side, to the universal. 'Compromise!' says the devil. 'Compromise for success! Compromise and you can have it.' Isn't it strange how when anybody refuses the cost of going on with the Lord in His full way and purpose, and chooses the less, the devil gives them a lot! Do you notice that? They get on in this world, it's the other people who have a difficult time, the people utter for God. The devil just gives them quite a lot: prosperous... if only, if only you will serve him and go his way. For the time being he will pay you well, but God help you in eternity! That was what confronted the Lord Jesus.

The third temptation, I dare not stay to speak about, I have gone on too long, but mind you, he showed Him all the kingdoms of this world and said, "All this I will give Thee, if Thou wilt but worship me." Oh, it is out now! The cosmic secret is out, that is what he is after. That is what he's after, what he was after in the great rift; to win everything over to himself, to worship him in the place of God. That has been the thing all the way through. Now it is out. The devil is in desperation, he has betrayed himself; he has let out the ultimate secret.

The principle, we repeat, in every message of the ultimate fullness of God is the principle of self-renunciation. The renunciation of this world, of this life, of all self-interest and self-position - for the Lord. For the Lord! Always have that positive objective for the Lord, in the will of God. Go to many a monastery, and they will tell you that they are living on the basis of renunciation of the world. But it is negative, the whole thing is negative; it is not for the Lord. But that is the principle: in the will of God. No compromise, no letting go of ground, no acting on independent ground, but standing firm by God's help, standing firm on the ground of our union in the Holy Spirit with the will of God. That is an abrupt end, but you can see far beyond what I have said.

Chapter 5 - The Transfiguration

Especially for those who join us for the first time in this conference, let me say that we are, in these gatherings, moving within God's eternal appointment of His Son, our Lord Jesus as the "Horizon" - the utmost range of all His activities and His interests, to comprehend everything in His Son and to make His Son the nature and character of everything. This was established before the world was.

This Divine decision was the cause of an upheaval: first in heaven; a revolt and a rupture which brought its repercussions into creation, to man, and had its fruit there in the rupture in earth between man and God. God commenced in history to move on the line of His Son in spiritual principle and law. The Old Testament is a record of God so moving. On the one side: by discipline to undo the mischief, and on the other side: to constitute according to His own mind. The Old Testament closes in failure. The people chosen and dealt with on that Divine purpose failed God.

And then, in the fullness of the times, God sent forth His Son made in the likeness of sinful flesh, the embodiment of all His thoughts and intentions, and the expression of His own Nature to which He will conform all those who come into the way of the Son, the way of a complete repudiation of all rebellion, of all departure, of all insubmission and insubordination. The way of the Son is utter capitulation to the will of God.

God will proceed with His two-fold work in a new spiritual nation in this dispensation, not an earthly nation this time, but a spiritual nation. We call it the Church, or the New Testament calls it the Church, leave the title for the moment and see it as this new people chosen by God to be the vessel in which all His thoughts, as summed up in His Son, are to find expression. And in the end, the whole creation will manifest the nature of His Son, to be entirely governed by that character. That, in brief, in a very few words, is what has occupied us now for these two days.

We have been latterly looking at some of those epochs in the life of the Lord Jesus, which are related to this great purpose of God. They are like a series of mountain peaks: the birth - touched by heaven, the baptism - touched by heaven, the temptation in the wilderness - reaching far beyond the wilderness and this earth, out into the cosmic realm of the prince of this world.

Tonight, we come to the next peak: the transfiguration. We must note that from each of these peaks, the next one comes into view in related sequence. That is, when you contemplate the birth of the Lord Jesus, its meaning, purpose, nature, and associations, it is not difficult to foresee that the time will come in the life of that Child when a great act of renunciation, a great act of committal, a great act of utter yieldedness to the will of God on redemptive lines will come about. And so surely, the baptism is related to the birth as the sequel of the birth. The baptism is His full and complete committal to the will of the Father. From that point, by the descending Spirit upon Him, to abide upon Him, to rest upon Him, He was bound as a bondservant to the will of the Father. It is not difficult to see from that peak of the baptism that it is all going to be very definitely challenged. The sequel, the sequel to that committal is going to be conflict and not only personal conflict, but cosmic conflict. The whole world and its surroundings are going to be involved; kingdoms of this world and their ruler will become involved in this committal of the baptism. And so, in quite natural sequence, from the baptism we move to the temptation in the wilderness.

The issue of that, we read, was: "Then Jesus returned full of the Holy Spirit, in the power of the Spirit" returned from the wilderness to take up His work to which He had there committed Himself, the battle for which He had initially gained the victory. It was not the end of the battle. It is impressive that the end of that temptation is then, "the devil leaveth Him for a season." You can almost see the devil defeated, crestfallen, looking over his shoulder and saying, 'But I'll be back again; I'll be back again.' So it was, many times, right to the hour of His death on the Cross. The battle was started.

Now we come to the transfiguration, as the next mountain peak. You will like to have the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of the Gospel by Matthew open before you. You will want to check me up as I go along, for there it is. The transfiguration is not an isolated incident in the life of the Lord Jesus, it is a link in the chain, and it must be seen from the standpoint of the temptation. You cannot understand rightly and sufficiently the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus, unless you do view it in light of the temptation in the wilderness; because, for one thing, the transfiguration was a climax. It was a climax and it was also the beginning of a new phase. There is a very real and true sense in which, at this point, so far as He Himself was concerned, it could have been the end of the journey. He could have gone through into glory. We will come back to that again in a minute.

This is the climax of all that has preceded: it is Christ glorified. That is the climax, the end. That is the ultimate issue of birth, for which He was born, of committal for which He so utterly surrendered Himself, of trial and temptation, conflict and suffering of soul. The climax had to be glory, so far as He Himself was concerned; and if it had been just Himself, that would have been the end of His earthly story. I am saying you have to see it in another context and connection as the beginning of a new phase as well as the end of one. The new phase is not only personal - it is a way that He need never have gone for Himself.

Well, let us look at this. It is a great pity that these chapters are divided into sixteen and seventeen, only for convenience, but certainly very inconvenient for understanding. They ought to run right on without any break. And it is to be noted that the three writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all record this, and all put it at the same point in the life of the Lord Jesus, and all give the same associated features. They do not do that about everything, but in this they do. And there is, therefore, something to take account of in that fact. Do you notice how the thing begins?

It begins in verse 13:

"Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, 'Who do men say that the Son of Man is? Or that I, the Son of Man is?' And they said, 'Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.' He saith unto them, 'But who say ye that I am?' And Simon Peter answered and said, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.'"

Everything for the future hung upon Who Jesus was. That is basic to everything, the key to everything, and He knew it. And until that was established by Him, and that was settled, He couldn't go any further.

Who Jesus Was, Who Jesus Is

"Who do men say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" There is a very, very deep reason for that seemingly strange question. No one else in the human race dare talk like that. What would you think of any man who said, 'Who do you think I am?' 'Who do people say that I am?' 'What do you say about me?' Well, we just would not tolerate it, would we? No, but He could do it because He knew how much hung upon their recognition of Who He was. Everything! God had made Him (and He knew it) the Horizon of everything.

It is very necessary therefore, for those who are to be within that Horizon to know the identity and the character of the One Who forms that Horizon. Something has got to be done that is going to survive a terrible ordeal. You'll see that in a minute. And the only thing that will survive the ordeal through which they were about to pass, and through which all of us will have to pass, is the real inward knowledge of Who the Lord Jesus is; an adequate knowledge, a clear and definite knowledge. If we have any doubts about Him, we will not survive if we are not clear on this matter. It may sound foolish to be talking to Christians like this, but you'll see in a minute that there was a very, very good reason for talking to these disciples like this. At the moment the point is that He had to challenge them on this matter as to His Person; had to draw out from them a committal; a confession and a committal. Simon got it by revelation, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Very well, very well.

Notice what follows immediately. The next step:

"From that time Jesus began to show unto His disciples, how that He must go up to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. And Peter... took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, 'Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee.'"

Peter was saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Nothing like that could happen to You!"

Now, here is a terribly, disconcerting thing on the part of the Lord. He has drawn out this confession. He has established Himself in His identity with them as the Son of the living God, and now, in this most disconcerting way, right at that point, He begins to talk about going to Jerusalem, and being treated in this shameful way, and being crucified. It is quite clear that the very pronouncement itself challenged the confession and went right to the heart of this declaration. The Son of the living God, into the hands of men, to be treated like this! How could that be? How could it be? It was a terrible shock to these men, make no mistake about it, such a shock that Peter lost his morale. So he took Him, and began to rebuke Him. It was such a shock that Peter at that moment fell out of the Lord, into the way of the devil.

"Jesus turned, and said unto Peter, 'Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.'"

What a fall! What a shock it must have been, after having made a confession like that, to have this stunning statement about Jerusalem, and what would happen there.

"And after six days, Jesus taketh with Him Peter, Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart: and He was transfigured before them."

How gracious! How merciful! How redeeming! How saving! How confirming!

Shall we pause and put something in parenthesis, something we said this afternoon in another connection? How often it is when a committal has been made to a challenge from the Lord, a surrender to His will, to His way, to His purpose, that submission and that acceptance of the will of God - a position has been taken, a stand has been made, and we have declared ourselves. Declared ourselves. How often it is, that here comes something so soon afterward that is absolutely disconcerting, so that the vision fades. All that, all that which came from the open heaven - "flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven" that which came by way of an open heaven seems to have come into eclipse. Now the whole picture has changed; the glory, the wonder and ecstasy, to suffering and sorrow and disappointment and loss. And we would say, "Tragedy! Was it all true? Was it all right?"

Now dear friends, this is very true to spiritual history. It is true to individual spiritual history, and it is true in the history of the Church and the churches. God gives a revelation, a vista, a presentation, He opens up heavenly revelation concerning His Son and there is a reaction of acceptance, of embracing, and committal, of testimony. And then there comes a phase and a period, the features and characteristics of which are so difficult and so dark that you wonder if ever it was the truth, if ever it really was God's truth at all, or have you not accepted some illusion, something which for the time was very wonderful, but now... is it right, is it all right?

Have you gone that way? A time when you seem to be just disintegrated, torn to pieces, you don't know what to say. You think this is all wrong, like Peter, "This is all wrong! It can't be right. It is so contrary to what we were led to expect, so altogether other than the vision that we embraced. The wonder, the glory of the Lord Jesus, why, it broke upon our hearts as from heaven and we committed ourselves. And now, and now... has it all gone?" The dark clouds gathered over it and you are asking questions as to the past, whether it was right, whether it was true, whether it was of man or just yourself and your own response. Every revelation of the Lord Jesus will be sooner or later subjected to a tremendous test under trial, the trial of seeming eclipse, when you can doubt it all.

Now, what is the point of the transfiguration? Calvary is not the end. The Cross is not the end. The darkness, the shadows are not the end. The testing and the trial and the suffering, the eclipse of everything is not the end. The end is glory! The end is magnificence. The Lord Jesus just puts the transfiguration off. God the Father puts the transfiguration there. I don't know that the Lord Jesus went up into the mountain knowing that He was going to be transfigured. He just withdrew into the mountains. One of the writers said it was for prayer with His disciples and while He was there, He was transfigured. But God took this in hand, to show that although there must be this pain of the Cross, this terrible thing as represented by Jerusalem, all that was centered in Jerusalem. That is not the end! It is not the suffering and the shame and the reproach that is the Horizon of God. It is the glory of His Son! His Son glorified. On the way to that, you may go by Calvary, but the end is transfiguration.

And do not forget, dear friends, that this transfiguration of the Lord Jesus has a counterpart in believers. Paul, writing his second letter to the Corinthians said, "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory." The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says the same thing in other words, "We see Jesus crowned with glory and honor... bringing many sons to glory." Peter, so many years after this, wrote his letters. He has got through the darkness now, through the clouds, through the shadows, got through all the perplexity, and he said, "And this voice we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount... and there came from the excellent glory such a word..." He sees it all clear now, not beclouded by the Cross. The transfiguration is there, not only as an isolated incident or epoch in the life of the Son of Man, it is there as representing the "Horizon" of God for all His redeemed ones, transformed and transfigured and glorified with His Glory.

Let us believe, let us ask the Lord to strengthen us to believe, that if all that to which we did commit ourselves - in the full belief that it was heaven's revelation to us - has passed into the shadows and the clouds, surrounded with questions and difficulties and seems no longer to be so gloriously real as it once was, there is a meaning in this phase, but the end is not this phase: the end is the glory, the mountain top of transfiguration. Christ transfigured is the Horizon for God's redeemed creation! Nothing less than that, whatever may intervene in the meantime.

But here, while that ultimate Horizon is brought into view as glory, the way to its realization is the way of the Cross.

It is the Way of the Cross

It cannot be otherwise. But this is something to note: when you or we really do get something from God, it really does come from God, if it could truly be said that "flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father" - if it is not just a mental apprehension which will not stand up to the ordeal, it is not just an acceptance of and assent to some doctrine, some truth which will not carry us through, but if it can be said truly, if it is a fact that the thing came from God to our hearts, right from God the Father, something is done. Something is done and there may be a period of dark eclipse, deep sorrow and suffering and perplexity and bewilderment, but that something done will survive. It will come back again.

Look at Peter as representative. He got it from the Father, but the very story of Jerusalem thoroughly threw him off his balance, disconcerted him, broke him to pieces, and then, the fact of the Cross. It's an awful story isn't it, we read it this afternoon, that story in the court of the high priest, the so-hard denial, the forsaking, it is a terrible story. The ordeal is a terrible one. The Cross is something most devastating to the natural man, but something has been done, put within, that is going to come up again out of that depth and survive. And Peter will forget the intervening darkness, and the mount of transfiguration and his own spiritual position will be linked. "And this voice we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount," and there is no reference at all to what came between to Jerusalem. He is himself on that spiritual mount, or on that mount spiritually now. You read his letters; full of glory, full of glory and full of grace. It's like that, something has been done. This is, this is why the Cross must come in, or one of the reasons why this devastating experience must come, to find out and prove that God has done something in us.

If you and I can go back upon anything that we in the past have called a revelation from God, something shown us by the Lord, and we can just throw it overboard and write it off and say, 'Well, that belongs to the past; it does not hold good any longer.' Let it be understood that that never came into us by revelation of the Holy Ghost. You cannot, you cannot depart from something that God has done in you. No matter what the trial, the testing, yes, the devastation; of pain, perhaps long drawn-out, you cannot depart from it, it is something done. It is yourself, it has become a part of you! You cannot say, 'Well, I have left that now' or 'I have gone beyond that now' or 'That is something that I once thought was very good, but I can dispense with that now.' Nothing that comes from God, even though it might be in first stages, elementary things, on which you have got to move forward, nothing in the future cancels out anything that God has done.

So, I see this man crying with his committal and confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And then I see that same man broken, shattered, devastated; and then I see that man afterward: transfigured. The thing that was done on that mount has, perhaps not in his consciousness during the ordeal, has nevertheless, survived the ordeal. That is how it must be.

Oh, do take that to heart. Do take it to heart. It will be the test of reality, whether it has been real, or imitation, artificial, something less than revelation into our very being. Can you give it up? Can you let it go? Can you discard it? Can you write it off? Can you write it down? Then God Almighty never revealed that to your heart. It can, it will hold fast, though it may all seem to have gone, it will come back with glory. This is the foundation which is laid deeper, deeper than our human frailty; deeper than Peter's human frailty. Say all that you like about Peter, and his weakness and breakdown and all that, yes, it is all true, all true and Peter would be the first to confess and admit it, but something has been done deeper than human frailty. Thank God! If it were left to us, it would be a poor look out for the truth. God must do something that is stronger than all the forces in us and outside of us and triumph.

Now then, we close. And you can see in the last phase of this transfiguration the great principle coming up again. The great principle of the Horizon and its realization. We have said that had it been for the Lord Jesus Himself personally and alone, that could have been His way into glory. Other men, on lesser ground have gone into glory, the two men who appeared with Him on this mount. Moses had not seen death when he had gone into glory, went into glory. Elijah was caught up in a chariot of fire. They went in, but they never made anything perfect. They went away with their work still imperfect. They had their personal reward of glory. Alright, it's quite good to have a personal reward of glory, but at that point, when He could have gone through, and you know that some translators translate that word, "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despised the shame" some translate it, "Who instead of the joy set before Him, endured the Cross," and whether the translation is correct or not, the fact is there, at that very point when on His own account, by His own merit, in His own right He could have gone through... the glorified Son of Man. He turned around from the glory and came down. You know what was there, at the foot of the mount don't you? A world in suffering, in sorrow, in misery, a devil-torn world. He turned round and came down, renounced the glory again. He said, 'No' to the open door into heaven for Himself, and in effect said, 'I cannot accept that Alone. I must bring many sons to share it with Me. I must go down, for that is why I came. God's Horizon is not Myself individually and personally.' It never is with any of us. God's Horizon is mankind to be brought to glory.

So He came down, accepted the Cross, accepted all that shame and that sorrow, that ignominy. We are more amazed every time we read the story of His trial and death and all that accompanied it and then think: "This is God Incarnate! This is the Lord of Glory! This is the Prince of Life! This is the Eternal Son of God!" Oh, it is beyond us. But why? Simply because He knew that He had not come for His own glory, He had come for the glory of His Father, which was to be manifested in the mankind that He had made. God had made man and God is not going to be satisfied to have all men as they are. He will only be satisfied when men are glorified. Men can refuse to be glorified and accept God's Horizon, they can refuse Christ as God's realm and sphere and miss it all.

And you and I, dear friends, are called, says the Word "unto His Eternal Glory." And that is where the Father will be satisfied; "and having committed Himself to the will and pleasure of the Father," He has come down from the mount of all personal satisfaction. That is the principle, the servant-spirit for the Father, for men. The servant spirit, shall we be formed with it, we repeat, when the great end is finally reached and all things, as the Word says, are gathered together, summed up in Christ, when God reaches that end where everything is not only Horizoned as a range, but as a character by the Lord Jesus. The chief, the chief feature and characteristic of heaven will be this abandonment to serving one another and serving. That is what it will be.

I like to think that it is be like that, that it will be like that, with everybody thinking of what they can do for somebody without any thought for what they are going to get out of it, either praise or exaltation or reputation or reward or anything else, just abandoned to the interests of one another all the time, for the Lord's sake, for the Lord. This is foreshadowed in the Word. We are told to begin that now, everything as unto the Lord, in the Church as unto the Lord.

Well, may the Lord bless His Word.

Chapter 6 - Crucified Through Weakness

The second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, at verse 4. "He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God. We also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him through the power of God."

"He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God." Here, in one brief concise statement, is gathered all that the days from what we call Good Friday to Easter Monday represent. On the one side: the Cross, "He was crucified." On the other side: the Resurrection, "He liveth by the power of God." And then the statement is carried forward into the life of believers.

The principle and the experience of the Lord Jesus is transferred to Christians: "We also are weak in Him, but we shall live through the power of God." He was crucified through weakness. This is the Cross at its very lowest and deepest level. It is indeed, a picture of utter weakness. We cannot read any of the accounts of the trial, the condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus without being impressed with His apparent helplessness and impotence and weakness; so it does appear and seem, and yet this is not the statement, mark you, that Jesus was crucified because the adverse forces were too strong for Him; that is not what it means. That is not what it means when it says: "He was crucified through weakness"; it does not mean that those forces, be they human, be they of the world, be they satanic, were too strong for Him.

This statement of His being "crucified through weakness" contains the profoundest secret of God's way of redemption and victory. We shall not understand it and we shall not understand anything in the Bible if we do not see it in its largest setting and context. I want to say that to you, it is a very important key to anything in the Bible, for there are very few things in the Bible which can be taken by themselves. We have to see everything in its main setting and connection. And here is an example - a great example - of that fact.

What is this profound secret of God's method in redemption and victory? What is the great, the full setting and context of this statement about His being "crucified through weakness?" It is this, nothing less than this: it is Almighty God operating in a great reverse movement in this universe.

The Cross of the Lord Jesus is God Acting in Reverse

Now, you don't know, perhaps, what that means. If we go back again where we have been several times in these days, to that great disruptive, disorganizing, disintegrating movement amongst angelic created beings, of which the Bible tells us when one of the superior angels made a bid for power in heaven, made a bid for authority in his own right, set himself to be an independent, self-sufficient center of a movement, head of a movement, and evidently made his thoughts and ambitions known among the angelic hosts with the result that he gained a following there. Many fell to his scheme and entered into complicity with him to take the power and to be independent of God by being a law unto themselves, to have it in themselves and not to have it in God and from God.

That revolt disrupted heaven's harmony, the harmony in the universe. We are told late in the New Testament of: "the angels which kept not their first estate, but are reserved in everlasting chains." That is what happened, and that is when it happened. What happened? Just that, it was a bid for power, to take power out of God's hands and to have it in their hands, to forsake the position of being dependent upon God and, being independent, to make a course of their own without reference to God. It was a revolt against the Throne.

Being cast out of heaven, being cast out of heaven that leader came into this creation. We know that with that same evil ambition, he injected the idea into the mind, into the thoughts of man, and in effect said, "Look here, why should you be bound and limited by obligation to God, by dependence upon God, and have to have everything by reference to Him? Why not be a law unto yourself? Why not be as God? Be as God - knowing, and therefore being able to do, having the seat of things in yourself and not in Him. Take things into your own hands and assert your independence!" That is the meaning of it, the heart of it, the nature of it. And what had happened in heaven was repeated on earth. Man fell to the tempter, to the suggestion, and Adam took himself out of the realm of God and fell into another realm which was not of God.

Now you notice the whole principle, the whole nature and motive of that, of that two-fold movement was a quest for power - a quest for power on the part of "the evil one" and man, a way of independence and rejection of Divine authority. And there is a long and terrible history connected with that beginning. The whole history of the human race is just the history of man seeking pre-eminence, man seeking superiority, man seeking to have in himself what alone belongs to God. It is man hating anything in the nature of submission, subjection, subordination, - hating authority - the quest for power.

Are we not seeing that in our own time? Are we not seeing that in our own lifetime with a most terrible result? It just seems that there can never be a movement in this world but someone will try to go one better. It is so nationally and internationally. It is so socially. It is a part of human nature. In the social world, someone sees something that someone else has, wears, or possesses in some way, and they imitate, but try to go one better. It is like that. All the terrible story of criticism; criticism, denouncing, defaming, reproaching; is just, after all, the working of that in human nature which must put down the other one in order to get on top. It is a horrible thing in this universe. And everywhere that thing is at work, that nature. It's just this, this spirit of power politics in every realm. What a fight there is today internationally, just to be ahead of the other one; ahead of the other one and above the other one, and there is no end to that! There is no end to that except the end, the end of the destruction of the race; the destruction of the race, God's creation, the spoiling of the earth. The enemy knows what he is after, what he's after: to spite God in the spoiling and destroying of His creation.

That is the setting and the context of this. God is not going to fight the enemy on his own ground. And one of the laws, mark you, of the Christian life is just this: you cannot meet carnality with carnality. You may not fight spiritual battles with carnal weapons. You must not give what is given to you. These are two different realms with God altogether. And so we come to this, "He was crucified through weakness." In the Cross of the Lord Jesus, all that evil thing which arose in the heart of Lucifer, and did its mischief in heaven and then produced its fruit in earth, all that evil thing of ambition and pride and quest for power has got to be undone. It's got to be undone, destroyed. "He was crucified through weakness..." it is the picture, the picture of man absolutely emptied of all selfhood in terms of self-sufficiency, self-strength, of power in himself. That is one side.

Now, we have noted in these gatherings that that has ever and always been God's method with those who have come really into His hands. There is one principle, one law, one truth running right through the Bible, right through the Old Testament, that whenever and wherever God took up a vessel and an instrument by which to show forth His power, He did not make something according to the standards of this world in greatness and importance. He proceeded to empty that vessel and to bring that vessel to the place of absolute and utter dependence upon Himself. Study all your Old Testament characters in relation to God in the light of that. Study Israel in the light of that, just that: it is a great weakening, emptying, discipline to take away all self-confidence, all self-sufficiency, all self-assurance, all the power and the authority from man himself. So He did with Abraham, and all who followed; just that. God's law of all His activities was the law of emptying of all self-pride: for the reason that we have seen, He is going to destroy and undo this mischief. That is the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, we come to the teaching of the Lord Jesus.

The Teaching of the Lord Jesus

Well, His teaching is all on that line. All on that line, you are not allowed to turn on your persecutors and give them what they give you. Indeed, you have got to give them just the opposite. Just the opposite! You are not allowed to vindicate yourself, stand for your own rights, seek to preserve your own reputation and show that you are as good as the other. You are not allowed to do anything like that. All His teaching is of that kind. His warning in His teaching is always that His servants, His disciples, His followers will have to go the way that He Himself went - despised, "despised and rejected of men" despised! And being despised, not answering back. His teaching, His example in life and in death, this is the heart of that amazing but marvelous silence when "as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." As a Lamb led to the slaughter unresistant.

From the story of His encounter with some of those who tried to trap Him and corner Him and worst Him by arguments and questions, it was not in self-defense in those cases. We know quite well that He could bring forth an argument, or a case, or an answer that would send them all out in perfect shame. Perfect shame! How? Again and again, He just did it very simply, very simply. They were trying to ensnare Him, "Is it right, is it right to give tribute to Caesar?" You see the trap, don't you? The trap that they had set for Him. Well, you know His answer, "Show Me a coin. Whose superscription is this?" "Caesar's." "Caesar is stamped upon the coin? Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; to God the things that are God's." They are silenced.

We could go on with those things. He could very, very skillfully and effectively have made out a case for Himself and put both the Jewish authorities and the Roman authorities to complete shame if He had been so disposed. But He was silent. He was silent. He knew that for this purpose He came into the world, that this was the will of God for Him. And He would make out no case by which He might escape this thing. Something has got to be undone, that temporal power in Rome, that religious power in Israel, oh, it was a mighty power in this world. It looked as though it was more powerful than He, the Son of God. See the Jews, the Jewish rulers playing with Him, playing with Him, mocking Him, having carried out their trumped up charge and case, and passed their sentence upon Him. They, as it were, tossed Him into the hands of Pilate, the Roman leader who began to taunt and play with the Jews in return about Him. But here was the victim apparently, the plaything of this world power on both its sides: the religious and the temporal. Apparently, the plaything, the pawn, and deliberately, deliberately letting them do it. He is going to destroy that power on both its sides. He is going to bring down that authority to the very dust. He is going to humble that thing beyond recovery. To do it, He cannot do it on the basis of man's strength and power and sufficiency. Not at all! All that must be emptied out because He is there in His Cross the representative of this Satan-governed, dominated, energized humanity, when He is made sin.

And in Himself, as we have sung in our hymn, what a hymn that is: "through weakness and defeat," through weakness, on that side He is going to do it. He must empty all that out in Himself and be crucified through weakness. But He lives by the power of God. There is all the difference of two realms, two realms between the great power of Satan, the great power of this world, the great temporal powers, the power of human strength and sufficiency - there is all the difference between that and the power of God. And room has got to be made for another kind of power to come in.

You know, dear friends, if you have any spiritual experience at all, that while you hold on, God stands away. While you will not let go, He stands apart. While you are in strength, the Lord just lets you get on with it. It is never until you let go, until you yield, you surrender, you subject yourself to the will of God in whatever it costs that God steps in and undertakes and does the thing. It is a law of the spiritual life. It comes right home too, we know it to be true. Some of us have fought to have our own way. We have stood for what we wanted, and we have known that in those times they were the times when the Lord was not by any means with us. And He was letting things take their course until we came to despair and yielded to God. It was then that things changed or began to change. That is the principle, you see, of the Cross: there is a strength in us that has got to go in order to make room and way for the strength of God. "He was crucified through weakness" in order to undercut, undercut and empty out all that which had come into this cosmos, that invaded this creation, from this usurping power, the usurping power of Satan. Undoing it. Oh, that is the context. You cannot understand the Cross until you see it related to that eternal issue. And then, on the other side, He lives by the power of God. He lives by the power of God!

We said with our opening statement, that here is the Cross at its lowest and deepest level, touching bottom, the utter weakness. How the picture changes in a very short time. In a very short time the power of God comes down from heaven and begins operations by completely converting and transforming the first members of the Church. The men, who up to that time had resented, with all their soul, resented this idea of weakness. He spoke of being put to death, it was an intolerable idea, an intolerable idea! And when He was crucified, they were offended, and stumbled that He had suffered defeat and undoing. This was something inconceivable and unimaginable. The whole of this human nature rose up against such an idea, and conception of such a thing: "If that happens, then the day is lost. If that happens, everything is gone."

But look at them on the day of Pentecost, when the Other Power, not of man but of God comes down. That is a wonderful chapter, the fourth of Acts, isn't it? "And when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned men..." well, they just had no explanation, no answer. They were completely defeated in every attempt to explain and understand. But the men, have got the secret: "This Jesus, Whom ye crucified, and Who was crucified through weakness, this Jesus, in His Name!" What a revolution in these men that now, now it is not their own strength, it is not their own authority, it is something from heaven and it has completely changed their standard of values, their ideas about power. And they go out into this world and meet it on both its sides: the religious system of Jewry worldwide in its hostility to their Lord and Master, and the temporal worldly power on its pagan, heathen side and its antagonism. They meet it full force and overcome it, not by human strength often in the direst weakness in every way, temporal, physical, where they could never naturally stand up to the situation at all; yet this power comes through. And on they go, and the world is overcome, the power of Satan is broken. It is another power, not the power of man, and it has come along the line, along the line of this emptying and weakening of that old Satan-dominated creation where the principle of self-sufficiency has been altogether undercut.

This is, dear friends, but an explanation of spiritual experience. We have said it so often. So often. Are you, are you a candidate for power? Are you in quest for power? Do you ask for power? Is that word and that idea of power, a great, a great idea for you? Oh, the tragedy, the tragedy of a misconception of power. So many pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Holy Spirit is mightily powerful, but their prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit is to make them in themselves something, a great preacher, a great missionary, a great Christian worker or something like that; with a reputation of their own. If the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and me, and into you and me in terms of power, He is going to empty us first of all of all our own strength and reputation. Make no mistake about it. You must study the lives of these apostles again, and the chief of them, the apostle Paul in the light of that great truth. The power of God did rest, did encamp upon these men. But look at their idea of themselves, their estimate of themselves and see how they will all the time, all the time be keeping this thing not only before their own eyes, but before the eyes of everybody else: "that no flesh shall glory in His presence" that the glory shall be His alone, and not one iota attributed to man in any way: intellectually, emotionally, volitionally, in any way whatever man is not going to have his flesh ministered to in the things of God one little bit by the Holy Spirit. It is going to be of God, and all of God; and all the glory is going to be of God. Now that is the law of Christ crucified and Christ risen. And now it is transferred to us, to the Church, to the believers, and we also are weak in Him.

I've said it before today, that there was probably no man alive who, more than Saul of Tarsus when he was that, had this ambition for power. You can see him: he was just after power, asserting himself, taking things into his own hands, being the authority to bring everything down under him. And there was no man, after he met Jesus Christ and came into the power of His Cross, who more, if as much, exemplified being "crucified through weakness." What a change, what a change in that man.

But have we any reason to question that the power of God worked in and through that man? Why, the power that worked in and through him two thousand years nearly ago is still working through Paul. In our own lives, the same power comes to us through his ministry. Yet, it's a power that over-reaches time, over-reaches all limitations, it is the power of God. It is a costly way. This is what the Lord says, "Except a man..." He means when He says, "Except a man take up His cross and deny Himself," Himself!

Now I could make difficulties for our friends from other countries with their language if I changed it and said "Deny His self" but we English know what that means - His self. That is really what the Lord meant. His self life, His self-hood, to say, "No!" To say "No! Negative that! You are not going to come in, you are not going to dictate, you are not going to order My course. Any self-interest, any self-hood: no! I deny you a place and any right. It is the Lord and the Lord only Who is to be in the place of Lordship: dictating, determining, directing, supporting, supplying! Mine is a life not of dependence upon anything that is in My self, but utter dependence upon Him."

And the nearer we get to the Lord Jesus in the depths of the Cross, the lowest depths of the Cross, "crucified through weakness," so the nearer we get to the power of God. The power of God.

I think I have said enough about this passage, there it is. We are confronted with tremendous forces, great power all around and within. That power which is evil will win, will gain, will succeed just in proportion, just in proportion as we live outside of Christ, just in proportion as we live on the ground of our own self-hood. That power will be defeated and neutralized just in the measure in which we live on the ground of Christ "crucified through weakness," and living by the power of God.

Chapter 7 - The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus

In the sequence of our meditations through these days, today we arrive at the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Last night we were occupied with His Transfiguration; it may be that some of you will think that the next eminence, the next peak, the next epoch in the course of things should be the Cross. But if you will think again, you will see that the Cross has been present in everything that we have said and has been throwing its light and meaning down the past on every part of the way. We have been moving in the light of the Cross all the time. The Cross also carries forward right on into eternity its values. You can never get away from the Cross; it stands above everything. So that we are not at the moment giving particular and exclusive consideration, we are letting the Cross direct all our thoughts in every connection.

We come to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, a vast and comprehensive matter with limitless aspects. It is not our intention to try to cover or even to touch upon all that ground. In these days we have one inclusive object before us: it is to see God's Son as God's universal Horizon, range, and character for all things within which Horizon, God has concentrated His whole attention in purpose and activity: the Son of God, the 'Horizon' of the Father for all men.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus brings that Horizon very clearly into view, perhaps in a supreme way. There are three main aspects of it. One has a very clear and evident change in condition and position of Christ by resurrection. As the outcome of that, in the second place, the essential meaning and nature of the Church as the vessel of His resurrection life. And in the third place, in resurrection Jesus is the representation of man as he will be when he enters into the full meaning of that resurrection in body as well as in spirit.

A Changed Condition and Position in Christ by Resurrection

This is different from all other seeming resurrections, which were not resurrections, but resuscitations. We have those who were brought back to life from death in the Old Testament times, but theirs was not a resurrection, it was but a resuscitation. They were the same people afterward and they went back to the grave.

We have some in the New Testament who were brought back from death, like the widow's son in Cana, like Lazarus, but they were the same afterwards, the same people; and they went back to the grave eventually. That was not resurrection. Jesus is unique in this. He is not the same and yet, He is the same. There is His identity: the same. There are things about Him that can be recognized as the same Jesus; and yet, there is a difference, a very great difference in Him. He is not just a spirit, He has a body that can be touched and handled, in it are borne the marks of His death, His crucifixion, which can be seen and touched. He can eat and drink with them. These are marks of the same Jesus, and yet how different. How different! Doors may be closed and barred for fear of the Jews, and He is in the midst, suddenly. It does not seem that He appears and disappears, He is just present and absent. And so we could go on with the change, with the difference - a difference which means everything for us and for the redeemed.

Now, because our time is very limited, I want to resolve all this into one or two quite definite, clearly defined matters. They are quite obvious, things that are very apparent in the New Testament. What is this? The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is always spoken of as the supreme demonstration of Divine power. To use the words of the apostle, this is "The exceeding greatness of His power... which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead." The power which exceeds all other power. It was in the power that lay behind the resurrection of the Lord Jesus that the apostles and the Church gloried. Paul spoke of the power of His resurrection. Christ risen is therefore the embodiment of Divine power in its superlative expression.

The greatest power known in creation outside of Christ is the power of death. No one can deny it, it is there. The great battle in every realm of man, both physical, moral, and spiritual, the great battle in the creation and in nature, is always with death: to overcome death, to subject death, to hold death back. That is true, we know it. The greatest power outside of Christ is the power of death. You may labor and spend your whole life, as many of our brothers and sisters here in the medical field are doing, to stave it off, to keep it back, to postpone its triumph, to overcome it for the time being, but they all know, they all know that in the end, they are going to be defeated. It's a poor look-out for some of you doctors, you are going to be defeated men and women in your whole life work by this thing that you are fighting - death in the physical realm.

Some of you work on the land, and you know that is what you are up against all the time. Your whole life is having to be given and poured out to keep this death at bay, to keep it from gaining territory and swallowing up your life work. It is a battle, is it not, everywhere.

And we know it in our own selves, not only physically, but we know it morally, the awful conflict with some force that is seeking to bring us down morally, to crush us down, to press us down, so that our morale is broken. And as for the spiritual realm, if there is a conflict in other realms, we know it here. All the time it is this terrific force of death in this universe with which we are having to reckon, which is the realm of our encounter. And all that, as we know from the Bible, and know from our own natures, and from the deeper meaning in creation, is the fruit of sin, the fruit of evil. It is an evil thing - death - not only encountering an abstract force, we are encountering something evil, something that wants to spoil, to mar, to destroy beauty and joy and everything that is good. It is evil this death.

That is all outside of Christ, and it does give tremendous meaning and force to this: that in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that mightiest force in this universe has been destroyed, has been nullified, has been overcome! As on the one side of human history death is the most powerful force in creation because of sin, there is another side to human history and that is the side that the New Testament describes and defines in that one simple phrase of two words "In Christ." In Christ there is a greater power through His resurrection than this terrible thing that is everywhere outside of Christ. That battle, that unceasing battle, that unrelenting battle of the ages, was entered into by Him in His Cross; and "through death He... destroyed him that had the power of death." It is resurrection that triumphed and is brought out for all believers.

The testimony of Jesus raised from the dead is that the most powerful adverse force in this universe has been destroyed in Him and by Him personally. That is why there is always such an inspiration, such an uplift, such a wonderful sense of release, when in the Spirit we dwell upon His resurrection, singing the songs of resurrection, reading the Scriptures of resurrection, speaking together of the risen Lord. It is no mere historic thing, no mere feast of the religious, the ecclesiastical calendar, no mere annual observance, but for true believers an experience. And when, in the Spirit - in the Spirit not just in the letter, not just in the history, but in the Spirit we dwell upon Christ risen, something wells up in us: a new hope! And we know exactly how Peter felt and what he meant when he said, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

And if ever there was a man on this earth who needed to know that, it was Peter. A living hope, for the last picture of him in the Gospels before the resurrection is of a man going out and weeping bitterly over the utter mess that he had made of his life. A living hope. A life completely transformed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is a power to do that. It's a power.

And then the next thing that is so clear in this Resurrection context is that it was a mighty release and emancipation for the Lord Jesus Himself. He had said, 'How am I straitened, pent up, limited until it is accomplished.' The One Who from eternity knew that His significance was of universal virtue and value, that He was to stand related to the whole race and creation for its good and value. The One Who knew Who He Himself was in His very Person, a universal Person, comprehending heaven and earth. For He has not come into something new by His resurrection and ascension when it is said that all authority in heaven and in earth had been given to Him, that was His eternal right. That was what belonged to Him forever. He has received it through His Cross for men. For that is the range of His Person. But here He is, pent up in a few miles of a little country no larger than the country of Wales itself. Pent up to all the limitations of earthly manhood, time, distance, and so on, groaning, groaning for the day when His great world ministry could be launched, and He could be launched upon it. 'I am straightened' He said, 'I am straightened'.

Do you know anything about that in your own little way? What on earth it is to be confined and restricted to a limited sphere and line, when you have a large concern and a large heart, and yet, you are pent up? How you groan for the day to come when you may be released from all that. And some of you today are there just groaning in your limitation, and your release: sharing the sufferings of your Lord in that matter.

But His resurrection was His emancipation, His release, and what a mighty release it was! What did happen exactly? Well, of course, it was His personal release, we know that; and in those forty days of His Resurrection, we are able to discern something of what that meant. Time no longer matters. He is here, and He is there, without any time limit. It took Him days to get from one point to another before, but He is before them in Galilee after His resurrection. "I go before you," He said, "to Galilee." And you may be quite sure that those men did not lose any time in trying to get to that appointed rendezvous. No, they were making for it, just as truly as those who dragged their weary way to Emmaus after His death returned to Jerusalem as runners in a marathon. The distance became as nothing by this new heart begotten in His resurrection. Well, they were making their way to the appointed place, but He said, 'I'll be before you.' 'I go before you,' and He was waiting for them every time.

Distance is nothing and not only the mileage of a little country, but we know it to be worldwide, universal, around the earth. We know Him to be here this morning, but He is just as truly there in China, in India, and the remotest part of the earth at this very moment! He is released. Time and distance have been destroyed in the resurrection. What a blessed inheritance that is for us. We haven't to wait for Him in a certain sense. He is ever present!

But while it was His personal release, His personal physical release, it was the release of the Life that had been pent up in Him. What a mighty Life was in Him! You only have to go to your Gospels again, and you see that it does not matter how many people there are in need of Life, how many places are calling for Life, He can give it; give it with impunity, give it prodigally, give it without any sense of impoverishment. The Life that is in Him is touching death in all its forms of disease, of infirmity, even unto death itself. He is the Life-Giver!

And yet, and yet, how limited during those three years and a few months, the Lord, the Life that was in Him, so full, so strong, is released, released for all mankind, released for the whole world as a spiritual power to be received by all who will receive it. A released Life! Isn't this what He meant when He said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself, alone" and He said, "I am alone. I am alone."

There was no more lonely Person in this world than Jesus, even with thronging, throbbing crowds around Him, He was alone. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone." It remains alone, but if it dies, what happens? Its life is released into many another corn, to an ever-growing harvest to cover the earth. And that is what happened. The mighty Life in Him was released in resurrection and in that release the change, the wonderful change took place from the local to the universal, from time into eternity, for this is the Eternal Life, from the temporal to the spiritual. It's a great change in the resurrection, a many-sided change.

All this we are prepared to accept as true of Him and much more. And much more. We believe it concerning the Lord Jesus, but the challenge of this has got to be met by us individually and collectively. I have said that the second thing is:

The Real Vocation and Nature of the Church as His Body.

And what is the purpose of a body in any case, in any kingdom of a body? It is to contain, express, and give forth the life isn't it? The essential vocation of the Church. And when we speak of the Church we must not just lose ourselves in some visualized body of people. We must remember that we are members of His Body, according to the Scripture, individually, and what is intended to be true of the whole, is intended to be true of each member, of each individual. And this is the challenge: that there should be and there can be, if we are going to be true to all that Christ risen means, there must be about us something that corresponds to Christ risen. There must be an eternal value in our lives, not something just for an hour or for a time, or for a life here, an eternal value about us that we mean something far bigger than this life. There is something in us that is far greater than this life and time; and time has no power over that 'something.' Shall I correct that and say over that 'Someone' - Christ in us and we in Christ, moreover about us individually and collectively, and this is the test: there must be something of that great reality which is beyond the confines of our own little circle.

Any true expression of the Church, of Jesus Christ, the Body of Christ, in any locality, should really have a universal significance, not living unto itself, not turned in upon itself, not just occupied with itself and its own spiritual building up and activities, but always as a channel, a vehicle of this Life beyond itself. That is a glorious possibility!

Look again at your New Testament and you will find it is like that. Churches in certain areas had a testimony and a ministry that was spoken of far afield. The apostle said, 'I have no need to speak to them about you and what is going on among you, already they know! It's got there; it's got there!' Oh, it's a glorious release this. It must be like that, friends! God save us from being less than the resurrection of the Lord Jesus would make us in Life.

I am not speaking now of any literal movement about the world, that is not possible for the majority of you, but I am saying this: that there should be something coming from all of us which is super-local, that is beyond ourselves, and beyond our little circle that is a ministry of Christ without these limitations, eternal and universal in value. It is true when you really get in a spiritual and living way onto the basis of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, it just works like that. You haven't got to advertise. You haven't got to publish. You haven't got to write it up. You haven't got to do anything by way of propaganda in the business sense. You haven't to do any organizing to get it out, making plans and launching enterprises. The New Testament knows nothing of that. It is what somebody has called the 'spontaneous expression.' And it will be like that. All that we have got to be concerned with, dear friends, is to live on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the rest will follow. The rest will follow. The report will go out: "There is Life with that one, with those people. If you want to touch Life, that is where you will touch it."

Life - risen Life is the testimony of Jesus, and that Life knows no bounds now since it had its release in His resurrection. That is, let me repeat, the supreme vocation of the Church, the churches, and its members. But it is not only the power, not only the vitality, it is the very nature of that Life. The nature of that Life.

This is a Life which has met sin and conquered it!

This is a Life which has met evil and destroyed it!

This is a Life which has met the powers of darkness and put them out!

This is a Life which has overcome iniquity in this universe!

Therefore, it is a Holy Life. And if the vocation of the Church is to minister that Life and the universality of Christ's resurrection, the nature of the Church because of that Life should be purity, holiness - a Life, that does not, in its very nature, in its very nature, not by creed or doctrine about sin and sinfulness, but in its very nature revolts against anything unholy, unclean, "That you should be holy and without blemish" the Church which is to be presented - "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing..."

Dear friends, if we really do express Christ's risen Life in any company, that ought to be noted about us: "They are a people who will not allow, will not put up with anything evil. They will not countenance sin. They will not stand for anything questionable, anything doubtful. They stand as a people holy unto the Lord."

I close by reminding you of the third thing mentioned at the beginning. This is, of course, far from being a perfect realization in our lives, it is progressive with us.

It is Progressive With Us

If you can read your own spiritual history under the hand of God, if you are having a spiritual history that is, if you really are alive to the Lord, if you can read and interpret your own spiritual history you can see this very clearly. The one thing that you are being taught by the Lord or that the Lord is trying to teach you is that there is a Life in you that is superior to your own life, and that has in it all the vitality, the energy, the potentiality of a complete transformation of you! It is very remarkable, as you look again into the New Testament and see that while this resurrection Life and power was so marvelously at work and manifested, it was always over and against a background of human frailty. God saw to that. God saw to that! Here you have no, no "big people" as the world calls them. If they had been big, they are going to be made very small when they get here. Some of them have been big. Saul of Tarsus had been big in his own realm. And others have been like that and the Lord sees to it that there are no big people with great reputations that the world is going to take any account of in this realm.

Oh, how Christendom is astray on this thing, always wanting to tack on labels of importance to its representatives, its servants, its ministers. And the more degrees that you can put behind the name: well, the better for Christendom. The more of the honors that can be associated with the person, the honors of this world in achievement and qualification, well, the better their standing. The Lord knows nothing of that, will have nothing of that. I suppose the apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, could have graduated with the highest honors in any university because he has defeated all the intellects of the ages. And they are still trying to get the better of him, and they can't! No, but what does he, what does he think of himself, what has the Lord done with him? "I glory in infirmities. I glory in weaknesses; for when I am weak, then I am strong." What a change, it's over against the background of this Divine activity to make the vessel know its own infirmity and weakness and limitation that this power is manifested. That ought to comfort us, but there it is. There it is, so clear. It is a progressive thing. We have got to know the power of this resurrection over our physical infirmities. We have! We may be in great physical infirmity and weakness and suffering, in agonizing limitation physically and yet God by His Life can come in and carry through in complete triumph in anything that He wants to accomplish. That is the great fact about the apostles. That is the great fact about the Church in its history: a Life that is so manifestly, so obviously a Life superior to all human strength and all human weakness.

Dear friends, take this to heart, we are not just to give way and succumb to our infirmities and say that they rule and they govern and they dictate. If the Lord wants something - and maybe there are times when He doesn't and therefore Divine Life will not come to us - but if the Lord wants something, if that is in the will of God, there is Life for it when we are in utmost weakness and limitation, for us to lay hold of. I take it that Timothy was a delicate young man, Paul said, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine oft infirmity" and he was, apparently from other things, not robust, perhaps in any way, and so to him the apostle says, "Lay hold on Life" lay hold on Life - something that we must learn to do: "Lay hold on Life" over against this background of infirmity.

But this is progressive, we do not learn this all at once. We learn it through the years more and more. Perhaps our feebleness, on the one side, increases as the years go on, but it should have a corresponding or a super abundance of that Other Life. It should be like that, showing that as we grow in weakness, that that Life is quite capable of coping with all those conditions, and well able to do it.

But this progress has a glorious consummation, a glorious consummation: the resurrection of the Body. That marvelous fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, when that is reached, a great transformation of the Body takes place in the final stage of resurrection and all these infirmities go. Then, then Christ risen and all that Christ as Eternal Life, as Universal Life, as Limitless Life, will be displayed in the sequence. We are moving towards the great destiny and consummation of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus in a Resurrected Race. We read again our own spiritual history and we shall see that the Lord is moving us onward, ever onward, along this line of knowing Him and the power of His resurrection with that goal ever in view of man in the full expression and enjoyment of Christ risen from the dead! The Lord keep us moving that way.

Chapter 8 - His Ascension and Glorification

We are too far advanced now in the matter which the Lord has brought to us for this season to do anything in the way of review and recapitulation, that would take the whole morning itself. But for the sake of those who have joined us this morning for the first time, just let me intimate that what we feel the Lord has brought us to take further and fuller account of at this time is that He, the Father God, eternally designated His Son, Who is now our Lord Jesus Christ, to be the 'Horizon' of all His interests and activities; the horizon in two senses: the range and scope of those interests and activities, and the nature of everything that is of God. He appointed His Son to be that 'Horizon.' The word is found in the original language of the New Testament, although not translated into our language as 'horizon,' yet it is there. Our English word 'horizon' is derived from the Greek word 'horizo' but apart from the word itself, the Bible is just full of this very matter, and the New Testament brings it very clearly and very fully and very definitely into view.

So we have been moving within the compass of Christ as God's 'Horizon' in measure and in nature. A little phrase in its various forms so many times occurring in the New Testament: "In Christ," is our key. After having spent some time in taking a general and comprehensive view of what this means, we came to the point where that 'Horizon' was definitely and in Person introduced into this world when God's Son came forth from God, from heaven, to take up all this inclusive and comprehensive will and purpose of God.

Latterly then, in this time we have been occupied with the great epochs in the life of the Lord Jesus with their significance. Like the peaks of a mountain range, each one having its own meaning, but each one bringing the next into view and all in the range of being parts of a whole. When you have gone from peak to peak, or seen the whole, you have seen what it means that the Lord Jesus is the 'Horizon' of God in those epochs, in those mountain peaks. We have three remaining for the three gatherings today, if the Lord wills. This was not planned. I did not know how it was going to work out when the Lord intimated this to me as the thing for this present time. I did not plan it or work it out or organize it, it was only through the night hours of this past night, that it became quite clear to me that it was these last three peaks that were to occupy us today. So, it comes quite fresh from fellowship with the Lord.

And this morning, after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with which we were occupied so much yesterday, with all its marvelous, and far reaching, comprehensive meaning, we come to the next which is His Ascension.

His Ascension

Perhaps it is not made so much of as His birth, His death, His resurrection, and yet I want to say at once that this is not a lower peak by any means or in any sense than the others. Indeed, I think we may be climbing all the time when we come to this eminence of His ascension, we do indeed rise to a great height, spiritually as well as doctrinally and literally. For you will know, those of you who know your Bibles at all, that the ascension of the Lord Jesus is almost invariably joined by His glorification. The two are rarely apart. Indeed, His ascension itself is sometimes called His glorification, His being glorified. And His being glorified was upon His ascension to the Father, and that link, that union of the two things, gives very rich value to His return to heaven.

It may surprise you to know that there are at least thirty references to His ascension in the Word, perhaps you think that there ought to be more. Well, you probably will be able to find more than that, I am saying at least there are thirty references to it, which gives it a very large place in the Word. It is, of course, the climax of the cycle of His mission and His work which He undertook: the first stage, phase, step of that cycle was His incarnation, moved round steadily, and this is the climax of that great undertaking on the part of the Son of God. His mission and His work find their glorious issue in His ascension and glorification.

Now it is for us this morning to take note of some of the things, only some of the things, which are embodied in His exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. And we can say immediately that inclusively and comprehensively it is the Horizon enthroned: enthroned in the place of complete Government for everything, established above the world and above the heavens, set there, fixed and given the place of all authority in heaven and in earth.

It is an Enthroned Horizon

You have seen the Horizon in humiliation, in weakness, in conflict, in suffering, in death, and so on. But now He, as God's Horizon, is enthroned at the right hand of God. This puts great emphasis upon that word "enthroned." This is a governmental matter.

We have said that it is a distinguishing matter. It distinguishes between those "In Christ," and those not in Christ. The words: "if any man be in Christ," there is an 'if ' attached to that. It is possible not to be "in Christ." It distinguishes. "All we, all we who were baptized into Christ." That is a 'we,' a certain people, it refers not to everybody. It is a distinguishing definition. It is not only a classifying definition, dividing the human race, it is a definition which is descriptive: a 'kind' of people, a 'kind' of realm, a 'kind' of nature, which is "In Christ." But then, it is a governing definition, this is on the Throne of authority and it is under this Horizon that everything is going to be dealt with, judged, and destined, glorified or doomed. It is on the Throne, and you are not going to get away from that ultimately. The authority is with Him by the Father's appointment in heaven and in earth.

Well, that is, of course, the inclusive fact: the Horizon is now enthroned. But within that there are several other things quite clear: His ascension, His exaltation, His glorification, He is inclusively victory enthroned. Victory enthroned! And again, from that high peak, what a range comes into view. The far back look to the original point where the Father made Him the Horizon. Going right back there, you see that from the point of His Glorification. And you see that which has so much been kept before us in these days, that great rebellion and revolt in heaven which tore God's universe in twain and struck the great discordant note into the harmony of everything. It brought in all this terrible history of conflict, of strife, of disharmony because of a revolt which had its repercussions in earth when man, like the fallen angels, became implicated and consented to it. Then there arose the necessity for undertaking the settlement of that whole thing in one tremendous battle. And that thing itself, in its nature and source and universal consequences, even the very purging of the heavens themselves as well as the earth, the answering of that challenge and the settling of that controversy was undertaken by the Son of God.

In His incarnation, from the very beginning of His life on this earth, we find Him in that realm of conflict between heaven and hell. Heaven is very much in evidence at His birth, but so is hell. So is hell. The murderer from the beginning is very much on the scene to cut that Life short at its beginning, if possible. And from that moment onward, that evil thing was continuously active in many different ways to destroy the Son of Man. He undertook that conflict, that battle, that issue, to settle it. From the standpoint of His glorification, you look right back to that far distant beginning of things, you see how the battle was taken up from the beginning and this is the issue: He is on the Throne. He is glorified. He has triumphed by His Cross. He is the Victor in the universe of God. It is the 'far-back' look from the Throne: victory enthroned. It is the 'far-around' look, for the whole cosmos, as we have just said, was involved in this. When we use the word "cosmos" it is not just a fancy word, it is the larger than the earth definition and description. It includes the earth, but it moves out to all that encompasses the earth.

To you and I, the Lord's people who have any spiritual sensitiveness at all, we know that our conflict is not only with flesh and blood, it is not only with material things in this world and on this earth, but we are in touch with inimical forces which are in the very atmosphere. Indeed, that is the realm of our greatest conflict. At times there is nothing naturally or temporally to account for it, it just descends upon you like a sense of evil, adversity in spirit, trial, a spirit, a mind. Sometimes it comes upon you in your very body and there is nothing really to account for this. Well, you know all that to be very true.

That is the cosmic realm and range of this evil work. It is universal in a sense; touches everything, embraces everything. It is a very remarkable thing this, I dare to stay just this moment with it. I expect you have noticed, dear friends, that as you move out into this world, if you are really a child of God and really seeking to live your life "In Christ," you can move into spheres and realms where you are not known. It isn't that people know who you are and all about you, but you just move in this world and you are conscious that you are a suspected person; that you are a speckled bird. You feel that they do know something about you, and yet, they don't. And the more you stand to represent the Throne of the Lord Jesus, the more you stand to represent this Horizon of God, this ultimate verdict in this universe as centered in Christ exalted, the more consequential you are spiritually, the more you will be surrounded and compassed by a sense of suspicion for which there is really no reason as far as you can tell. A sense of suspicion: you are not accepted, you are doubted, there is something about you; just that.

And it is a horrible realm to live in if you do not live in the Lord and abide in the Lord, well, you are just broken by it or crippled by it or paralyzed by it. Is that true? It is very true. The more spiritual you become, the more you will be isolated by this world and by the forces that govern it. It is all around, just all around, everywhere, but that Throne is the enthronement of a cosmic victory in every realm; in the earth and in the lower heavens, He Himself triumphed in His Person. Yes, He said, "I have overcome the world, I have overcome the world." And it is written of Him that He "stripped off principalities and powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His Cross" for, undoubtedly, the Cross of the Lord Jesus sees the universe gathered together against Him: men and devils - the perfect rage at that Cross against Him. In the whole realm of that, the range and scope of that, He triumphed and has taken that triumph back. His exaltation means the enthronement of His cosmic victory all around, but from the same high point you can look on and back and around and on, and you can see from there, how it is going to be universal when God reaches His end through Christ's complete victory.

That is not just poetic, fitted to the vision language, we keep to the Word. You know quite well that the book of the Revelation gives a very large place to that forward vision of the Lamb in the Throne and what things are like: absolute and universal victory in that throne! We will come back to that again later.

It is victory enthroned. That wonderful twenty fourth Psalm and the sequence of those Psalms is very, very impressive. Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Psalm 23, a shepherd's song, coming into the house of the Lord at the end forever. Psalm 24, what? "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord mighty in battle." That is the ascension and exaltation, the Lord mighty in battle. The enthronement of victory is His ascension, His exaltation, His glorification. We leave that there.

In the next place, it is His redemption enthroned.

Redemption Enthroned

We saw on Saturday night, when we were considering His Transfiguration, that this glorification, entering into His glory, was an immediate possibility for Him on the Mount of Transfiguration if it had only been Himself to be considered. If it had only been His own faithfulness to God, then the transfiguration was His, not only for that hour, but forever. But it was not for Him alone, and so He turned away from the glory, the open door into the glory, and came down from that mount to work out redemption for man, in order that man might be taken up to that mount to be with Him there. Redemption is enthroned. The great final symbolism of our New Testament in this matter speaks of a Lamb in the midst of the Throne. A Lamb in the Throne. That is a very striking and impressive symbolism.

It is almost thread-bare, but I venture to say it again, that when John wept that no one was found worthy to unloose the seals and open the book, the heavenly messenger said to him, "Weep not; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah... hath overcome to undo the seals" John said, "I turned to see, (and what he meant was he turned to see this 'lion') and when I was turned behold a Lamb." Well, it is symbolism, but it is very striking symbolism. The Lion is the symbol of power, of ascendency, of authority, of dominion, the king of beasts. The Lamb - the very symbol of yielded weakness.

Well, we have dwelt much upon that in these days. But here, that Throne is symbolized by a Lamb, and we know the history of the lamb in the Bible, always a type of redeeming grace, redeeming blood. What a mighty redemption was accomplished by a lamb, by a lamb. Let us just glance back into Egypt, and see day after day, week after week, all the power of Egypt as a mighty world power of that time being drawn out, drawn out, drawn out, right up to the ninth, the ninth point of those judgments. It is still holding out, how great is this power to resist, to hold on, to refuse to yield. All the judgments and all the plagues, nine times, and still, and still it is unbroken. And the tenth: relenting, relenting, coming to the point where it is well-nigh exhausted and broken, what a power this is! And yet, and yet still, still holding on even after the tenth, not to let go, if possible, to retain something of a hold. Pharaoh said, "Go but leave your cattle, leave your little ones." Still you see him holding on.

But what did it and broke all that power? It was the Passover Lamb. It was the mighty sign of the Blood. The Lamb did it, exhausted all the resources of this world and drew them out and finally broke them. The last thing was the Lamb, and where the issue was settled. When the lamb was slain and the blood was sprinkled, that night the issue was settled.

It is a picture in history, a very vivid and impressive picture. Redemption! The New Testament gives the spiritual interpretation of that history, as well as much more Old Testament history, where it is through the apostle, who puts this whole thing into one little phrase or sentence, which includes this Horizon, mark you, "And hath translated or transferred us out of the authority of darkness, into the kingdom of the Son of His Love." Into His Horizon from that horizon: redeemed from the authority of darkness, Egypt, and Pharaoh, and that empire is but a figure and type or a shadow of this great earth authority of darkness in which you and I by birth are found to be, and all men are, but that Throne, that Throne and that Lamb on the Throne speaks of redemption from the authority of darkness. Psalm 68, as you know quoted in Ephesians 4, touches this in a picturesque way, "When He ascended up on high, He led His captivity captive." That, belonging to Him, which was in captivity, He took out of that captivity and made it His captive.

Well, that is where most of us here, if not all of us here today, stand in experience. He, because He is there in that position, has led us, as captives of the authority of darkness, out of that authority, redeemed us from that and made us His captives, which we are very glad to be, very glad to be redeemed from the authority of the darkness.

Then, this other phrase, "redeemed from all iniquity." The Lamb has redeemed us from all iniquity. And most of us, when we have seen that word, and heard that word, and used that word, have restricted and confined that word "iniquity" to a kind of state of things. That is: defilement, uncleanness, sinfulness, evil in nature and the nature of things, and we speak of that as iniquity. Perhaps it is a strong word, carrying the matter of sin to its farthest point, iniquity. But let me remind you, dear friends, that that word "iniquity" in the Bible has even a greater context than a state. Of Satan it is said iniquity was found in him. Iniquity was found in him. What was that iniquity? Just what the word means in its root, "iniquity" in the Bible in its root means: "rebellion against God." That is the ultimate meaning of iniquity. Iniquity is that. That is sin at its farthest point: rebellion against God. It was found in Lucifer, "iniquity was found in him" and that is iniquity, it is not only the state produced by that, but it is the thing itself. But there is through his interference with man and man's consent to him, there is now in the nature and constitution of every being in this creation something inimical and at enmity with God.

Many, of course, won't agree with that because they are not aware of it. They would say, 'Oh, I am not against God. I would not fight against God.' But we are a company of Christians, and if we know anything at all about spiritual history it is this: that we can be so tried, so tested, so up against adversity, as to be at least very near the point of raising a question about the justice, about the kindness, about the love, about the fairness, about the faithfulness of God. Perhaps Christians know that better than anybody. Am I saying a terrible thing? Well, if that is not true of you, do not worry about it. Those of us who do know something about the tremendous conflict with the evil that has come into our own nature through Adam, know quite well that our real battle is to maintain a solid faith in God under the deepest adversity and suffering. And to raise no question at all about the love of God, to raise no question about His faithfulness, to raise no question about His promises, all His promises. That is the battle realm. There is iniquity in us, in our nature, enmity and rebellion, it is there in the seeds; complicity with Satan in his revolt against the Throne. "And hath redeemed us from all iniquity" - the Man Who brought us out of that realm. He brought us out of that realm of revolt, of rebellion, that kingdom where the rebellion is established. "Translated out of the authority of darkness, into the kingdom..." and listen to the words, "into the kingdom of the Son of His Love." From rebellion against God, to love for God after the kind of His Son's Love for Him, redeemed from, and redeemed unto: "and hath redeemed us unto God by His blood." Redeemed unto God!

Man was God's. Creation was God's. It was made for Him, belonged to Him; by eternal right we all belong to God. God's rights are that He should have us as His own! We went out from God's possession, from God's realm, and became possessed by another master and went into his slavery, into his thralldom, into his government and kingdom. But the Lamb, by His blood, has redeemed us unto God again. "You are not your own... you have been bought with a price." We are the Lord's by redeeming blood, redeeming grace.

I hurry on to the next, and near the end of this enthroned redemption. Thank God redemption is in the Throne, it's going to govern, it's going to govern and then:

Man's Perfection is Enthroned in the Person of the Lord Jesus.

It says of Him that He was made perfect through sufferings. "I must walk," He said, "today and tomorrow, and the third day I must be perfected; I shall be perfected." Made perfect through sufferings. Not only morally, but spiritually perfect, for the word is a bigger word than that. It means 'made complete; made whole with nothing lacking; no division, absolute.' It's the same word as you probably know, this word 'perfect' is used in very simple, every day connections in the Gospels. For instance, the little word, descriptive word about the fishermen by the lake, it just says, 'but the fishermen were gone out in their boats and were mending their nets.' The word "mending" there is exactly the same word as "perfect" - making complete; mending the holes. The thing was torn, the thing was broken, the thing was not whole; there was something lacking and all that. And that is the word that is used about what happened to the Lord Jesus, and what is going to happen to us. All that is lacking is going to be supplied. All that is broken is going to be mended. All that is wrong is going to be righted, and it's been done in Him. It's been done in Him. He is perfected as the Representative Man of the new creation and man's perfection is enthroned in His Person. Enthroned! And a Throne that can never be shaken, a Throne that can never be undone. That perfection is established there in Him.

You know, our glorification in the New Testament is not in the future tense always. Sometimes it is: "If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him," that is future. But you know, when you get into the realm of eternity, outside of time, into the heavenly realm, outside of the earthly; into the Divine realm, outside of the human, it is not in the future tense: "Whom He justified, them He also glorified." That is past tense: "Them He also glorified." It is something done. In the Lord Jesus, our glorification is secured and established beyond a doubt and a question, if we abide in Christ it is going to be.

Man's perfection is enthroned. There are one or two features of this. He is enthroned there as without spot. It says, "Who offered Himself without spot unto God." Without spot unto God. That brings, of course, the priestly and sacrificial features into view. The priest himself had to be blameless. Had to be blameless. The priest himself had to be an expert in the matter of finding fault if he could, in a right way, don't take that in the wrong way. But you see, the sacrificial lambs were taken from the flock and they were put aside for some days, for some days, for fourteen days. During which period, the priest had to keep a very close eye upon those lambs, watched with the most diligent scrutiny, day by day, to see if there were any signs of any blemish in the lambs for sacrifice. Never did any creatures have a more critical eye upon them than the eye of a faithful priest, who had this conscience of what was worthy of God must be flawless, and without blemish. The priest had such a conscience and consciousness of spotless holiness as being the only thing worthy of God, so the lamb and the priest had to be perfectly one in this: without spot, without blemish, without blame.

The Lord Jesus took both those capacities as you know, of the Priest and the Sacrifice. He, Himself, had this very, very keen sensitiveness and awareness of evil and what was evil; and a deep, deep intolerance of it. And He Himself corresponded to His own office, for He as the Lamb, as well as the Priest, was without spot and without blemish. He offered Himself: a Priest offering Sacrifice, and offered Himself to God without blemish. And He was accepted, and that spotless unblemished Sacrifice, that sacrificial Lamb is in the Throne. That Lamb not only had to pass the eye of earthly judges, but had to pass the eye of God, swift to discern any mark whatsoever of evil, and He passed that scrutiny of heaven and God, and was accepted. And this is the virtue and the value of that for you and for me, He is still the High Priest. He is our High Priest and He ever lives to make intercession for us. That is good, that's good, but on what ground does He make intercession for us? He makes His intercession on the ground of His own perfection. He offers His own perfection to God for us and says to the Father, "Accept Me for them, cover all their imperfections by My perfection." He intercedes. It is, again, a pictorial word. It does not make it literal, if you think of Him as somewhere there, kneeling down before the Father and actually praying for us. Maybe, but there is in the presence of God, an answer for our sin in a sinless One. There is governing in the Throne, a mighty perfection and sinlessness for us. Oh, thank God for that! Where should we be today but for that? Any hour of any day, where would we be if He were not standing interceding in-between God and us with His own perfection? I like to think of it like this: there is that perfection, and here am I imperfect and there is God in what He is. And I do not come through to God in what I am, that One stands across the path with His perfection. And when I come into Christ, into Christ, I am justified in Christ Jesus. I am righteousness in Christ Jesus. I can satisfy God "In Christ." He is the Horizon of my perfection. He is working that out and He will perfect that which concerneth us and make complete what He has begun.

Well, we have already said that in the Throne, man is glorified. He is there as glorified Man, as the Forerunner, "whither the forerunner has gone," the Author of our salvation and appeared on our behalf. He is there as glorified Man, and may be and truly is there as the glorified Son of God. "Glorified with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was" but there is the added glory now, the glorified Man - Son of Man - the token, the standard, the representative of all those who are found in God's Horizon at last - Horizoned by Jesus Christ!

The Lord, make His Word precious to us and help us by it.

Chapter 9 - The Day of Pentecost

Except for what may arise as to our past consideration as we proceed, it is quite out of the question now to go back over all that ground, we just have to move on with the last fragments of this great, comprehensive matter as God's Son appointed by the Father to be the "Horizon" of all His interests and activities. We have been seeking to see something of what is within the Horizon of Christ and in these later times we have been with Him on those epoch peaks of His mission and work, from His birth onward - those high points which represent so very much of the Horizon of things for the creation.

This morning we were with Him in His ascension, exaltation, and glorification, trying to glimpse something of what that means for believers in time and in eternity. There remained but two of those eminences, those high peaks. We take the next and the first of the remaining two this afternoon which is Pentecost. Undoubtedly an epoch, undoubtedly a very high point in this great movement of God in Christ, it is the absolute corollary of the resurrection and the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. All that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and all that His exaltation embodied and meant, would be wonderful facts and wonderful truths, but apart from Pentecost, they would be in heaven, and they would be objective to us all, quite outside of us, matters to contemplate and dwell upon, perhaps with some pleasure and gratification, but still things in themselves and in Him. But Pentecost meant, and means, that all those things true in Him and summed up in Him in exaltation and glory, and all their meaning, is brought down here again into this world, not to be objective but to be subjective: to be inside believers and the Church. What Christ risen and glorified meant by Pentecost, was made to become the mighty dynamic of Christian life and the Church's mission.

When we were thinking about the resurrection, those of you who were present will remember how we underlined that feature of His resurrection, which was His emancipation, His release, His liberation from all the limitations under which He had labored, and groaned, and suffered while He was in His pre-resurrection body. All those straitnesses were removed in His resurrection. He, Himself, was set at liberty for the whole universe - a new position, a new range altogether. Pentecost, or the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Day of Pentecost, became the dynamic of that emancipation in the Church.

The Dynamic of Enlargement

The great Horizon had expanded in the resurrection. He was cramped and confined before then, mainly to Israel and to Israel's land. In His resurrection that is no longer true, the Holy Spirit came to bring believers, to bring the Church, into that expanded Horizon of Christ's universality.

The Church, you will notice, was given no option about this matter; we're given no choice in it. The Church became in its personnel individually and in its collective or corporate character, expanded by sheer inward force and compulsion. The force as of a mighty rushing wind had the marvelous effect of, on the one side, causing the grave clothes of those people to fall away, just as the grave clothes were removed from Lazarus. And on the other hand, they found themselves being, by compulsion, by force propelled, compelled, constrained to move into realms that they had never contemplated and to accept dimensions that had never occurred to them, never been characteristic of them. It was just something that was at work like a mighty, expanding power within them working against all their limiting traditions, against their nationalism, against their racialism, against their own geographical limits, against all their religious barriers. They never intended it to be so before, they were jealous over these things, very jealous over these things, and for what was personal in their own interests, but you can see very clearly when the Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, that the barriers between individuals went down. There were rivalries, even jealousies, trying to outbid and outdo one another, even while they were disciples. There was a competitiveness between them. All that went. There was no trace of it on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came. They had forgotten that. They are now parts of a whole, members of one another, dependent upon one another, being supported marvelously by one another.

Peter is standing up with the eleven. He had been a very independent man up to that time, always running ahead of the eleven and thinking he could do better than the eleven. And here he is, and here they are, with everything that had made them merely and only individuals, gone. They are enlarged in themselves, and beyond themselves. Their personal "Horizon" had expanded.

And then together, we can see the movement: Jerusalem. Yes Jerusalem! And naturally in their own natural souls, Jerusalem might have been the beginning and the end of their Horizon, but we see the Spirit just forcing them beyond, and ever beyond, and out. The Horizon into which they have come by this compulsion from heaven has expanded beyond all national, all racial, all geographical, and all religious limitations and barriers. It is embracing the world. Embracing the world. It took the Holy Spirit to do that, but that is what He did. The Lord Jesus had given them a world commission to all nations, to the whole world, but even He knew that the commission waited upon the Holy Spirit to make it a dynamic reality. The commission was not in their hands. It was in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

Now, there is a very important thing for us to bear in mind. I have said it affected them individually, but it also affected them in relation to other believers, other disciples of the Lord. This is a real challenge to us personally. We are too little, friends; we are too small; we are too petty, paltry. Perhaps we know it. Perhaps we are suffering from it. We know that that is the trouble with us. We are far too limited in ourselves and by ourselves, limited by our own natures, constitutions, temperaments, our makeup - just limited and cramped. There is frustration in ourselves. And we are apt to view everything and anything that comes our way in the light of how it just affects us and how it affects us personally. The Holy Spirit has come to make us much bigger people than we are naturally, to expand us to the full dimensions of Christ, to enlarge our capacity. The only hope for our enlargement is the Holy Spirit. But the sure answer to all our smallness and pettiness is a very real experience of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He will do it!

I suspect this is what the apostle found when he went to Ephesus and met that group of disciples. Indeed, this is what the record, the incident, seems to clearly indicate. On arriving and talking to them, seeking fellowship with them in the things of the Spirit, with his so large capacity and so large knowledge of Christ, he felt that there he was in some kind of straight-jacket; he was pent up; these people were a locked-up people. He just could not get away with anything very much of the Lord, spiritual limitation oppressed him. "What is the matter here?" he would say, "I can't speak freely of the things of the Lord Jesus. They do not seem to know what I am talking about. They can give me nothing back; it is all one-sided. I cannot breathe here, I am just pent-up, what does it mean?" Then in his exercise he lighted by spiritual discernment and perception upon the secret of it. And then, straight as a dart, he put the question to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" meaning that the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit does not make for a situation like this. And of course, he'd found the mark, his dart had found its target and they said, "We do not so much as know that the Holy Spirit is, or is given." There you are, you move, don't you, from that point where explaining, interpreting, instructing and praying with them, that this lack should be remedied, "The Holy Spirit came upon them," it says.

You move from there to the letter to the Ephesians, and you see that in the letter to the Ephesians there is a great deal about the Holy Spirit and His work in the Church. And what you are in there is the biggest, the largest, the greatest thing in God's universe: Christ universally expressed in the complete Church. A marvelous range, is that letter! This is the issue, so far as Ephesus is concerned, of that crisis, that crisis, that day when they came into a very real knowledge that the Holy Spirit had been sent from heaven, and been sent to dwell in them. What enlargement of them individually and together, by the Spirit.

The Church is too small. What is true of the individual, is true of the Church wherever it may be found in local expression or in the world. It is too small in its spiritual capacity, in its spiritual Horizon, and in its spiritual dynamic - occupied with itself. It is what the great enemy of Christ in all His fullness is ever trying to do: turn inward and narrow down the Horizon, and bring in to limitation and self-occupation - always trying to do that. Every movement from heaven which has, in its first effect, resulted in an expansion to the full dimensions of the world, has sooner or later been assailed by this thing: to become something in itself - crystallized and resolved into something in itself, occupied with itself. The Holy Spirit is against anything like that. Here it is, its dynamic to come to that, to expand.

Dear friends, if we have to resort to expedience to make the Church 'missionary' as we call it, or to stimulate missionary interest, we are beginning at the wrong end. Some of us have had a lot of experience in this matter. We had some perception of the will of God for the world, but in our lack of experience and enlightenment, we set up missionary committees and missionary counsels, and invited missionaries to come and try and create and stimulate missionary interest. We did that for years. Very interesting, a lot of people got very interested and very active, but the fruit of it in actual spiritual enlargement was very little indeed. It did not produce very much either in missionaries or in real spiritual dynamic.

We know that crisis, that deep and drastic crisis through which the Holy Spirit found His way. And from that time, from that time it was never again necessary to have missionary committees or counsels, or to invite people to come and try to make a missionary spirit. The thing happened, it just happened. It was a vision expanded, and the dynamic of a world passion and concern let loose and what had been local and sectarian and all the rest in limitation became spontaneously, without effort or organization, worldwide and universal in nature, and may I say, in influence.

No, we are beginning at the wrong end when we try to bring this about. The right end is Pentecost. The right end is the Holy Spirit, and then He takes over all the rest. You have to do the following, not the leading. He is ahead all the time as He was in the New Testament days, He was ahead of them all the time. He was calling on, while urging on.

There will be a great deal of wasted energy, wasted time, and wasted resources, if we begin at the wrong end. There will be no waste if we begin at God's End with the Holy Spirit as the dynamic of the risen and exalted Lord in the Church. Let Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ exalted, and Christ glorified come into us and into our churches, our companies, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Give the Holy Spirit His own right ground in Christ crucified and glorified, and we cannot, we cannot remain in smaller dimensions than the Horizon of Christ which is universal; we just cannot.

Now, that is a statement of fact, but it is also a test of spiritual life. You will know what your answer to it is. Perhaps your answer is supercilious, "We've heard all that before, we know all that." Perhaps your answer is critical. Perhaps your answer is disappointment with yourself, you question whether you know anything about this reality. Well, your answer may be of many kinds, but the answer to all your answers is you must be indwelt and absolutely governed by the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the enthroned and all-authoritative Lord Jesus Christ. That is the answer to every kind of limitation. And, dear friends, it is a mark of spiritual smallness when our course changes from the expansion to the narrowing and contraction, from the full range of the significance of Christ to something smaller and local. That is a loss of spiritual life, or it is a mark of there being little spiritual life. We could test that by the New Testament, but for the moment we'll refrain.

Allow the challenge to come, because what I am saying is proved by the Word. It is true that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever," so is the Holy Spirit. He has not changed in this matter in particular, that He is committed, and He is committed as utterly as the Son of God was committed to the Father for His will. The Holy Spirit is as utterly committed to the Christ to make Him the Horizon of everything; and no less an horizon than the Horizon of all nations and all peoples. So much then for the dynamic of enlargement.

The Holy Spirit in coming on the Day of Pentecost was, and is:

The Dynamic of Holiness.

The dynamic of a holy life in the individual and the Church, the symbol of the Spirit, perhaps more than any other symbol, as great as any other symbol at least, is that of fire. Fire; baptized in the Holy Spirit and in fire. He is the Spirit of burning. We have (I trust I can say we have seen) we have tried to point out what the Cross of the Lord Jesus meant to Him in the matter of the Divine loathing of sin, because of the awfulness of sin, of unholiness, the invasion of this universe by an unholy thing. Christ came to rid this universe of that unholy thing, that unholy power, and influence and nature. And to do that, all that His Cross, all that His Cross meant to Him was involved. Whatever you think or say about the Cross, the death of the Lord Jesus, ever remember that the deepest and uttermost point of that Cross is where it deals with evil, with sin.

Now, having, having by His Cross, stood against that evil in this universe and conquered it in His own Person and been Exalted in terms of holiness and spotlessness to God's right hand, the Holy Spirit came to bring that Christ, that Christ into believers, and into the Church in those terms. On the one side of the judgment of sin, the judgment of sin, the judgment of evil. Do allow this to be said again, open your heart to it. Don't close your heart because you have heard it so often or for any other reason.

We have all got to bare our breast to this truth. And one is speaking to you as much as anyone else and I speak of something that I know of this. Dear friends, if you and I are really indwelt and governed by the Holy Spirit, it is as the Spirit of holiness that is there to give us a bad, bad time when we touch evil. When we touch a realm in which the evil one has his control, when we touch something that is not Christ, not Christ, we ought very quickly to recoil, by the recoil of the Spirit in us, a "No! No! We have touched death. We have touched evil. We have touched something with which Christ is not in agreement." And in that reaction of the Holy Spirit in our sensitive spiritual consciousness, which we all ought to have, we ought, we ought at once to get away to the place of cleansing, putting right, of confession, acknowledgment, and pleading cleansing. Only by such a life of the Spirit's government within as the Spirit of holiness, will all the other values of Christ become manifested in us or in the Church. He must be present, on the one side in terms of the judgment of sin.

You remember, we had two, we had many but two to which we can refer, instances. The last book of the Old Testament, as the Old Testament closes and in closing that door, the door of that dispensation brings the new dispensation into view. Malachi uses words like this, like these, "The Lord is going to send the Messenger of the Covenant. The Lord, Whom ye seek, will suddenly come to His temple... but who may abide the day of His coming? For He shall sit as a Refiner... and He will purify the sons of Levi." It is difficult to see how that was fulfilled by the Lord's coming in His Birth, but there is no doubt about it that when He came in the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, that is what happened. He sat as a Refiner. And look at these sons of Levi. There they are in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, Peter, James, and John, and the rest. My word, these sons of Levi are purified.

The Holy Spirit takes up these matters of purifying like purifying fire. The sons of Levi, of course, are figurative or typical of the priestly nation, of what all the holy nation is called to be. Just as the Levites in the Old Testament were chosen as the first born to represent the whole nation, that is a symbolic thing. In the New Testament, it means those who are born of Jesus Christ are formed into a priestly nation: the sons of Levi. But this priestly nation and all its personnel has to come under this refining work of the Holy Spirit. And we will never get very far without that work - that work of the refining fire. I would like to stay with it because there is so much in the book of the Acts which illustrates this.

The other instance, of course, is what we have in the first chapters of the book of the Revelation. We know the state of the churches, for the greater part, in Asia. We know the defilements and corruptions that are mentioned there in the churches. And we know that this Messenger of the Covenant, this Lord, comes to them, as it were, suddenly and His eyes are as of a flame of fire; His feet are as burnished brass and in His hand is a sharp two-edged sword. He has come to refine the sons of Levi, because they cannot fulfill their great vocation in the nations with anything that contradicts the holiness, the purity, of that One Who is their Lord.

You notice that the least, the least spiritual church in the New Testament is Corinth; being the most carnal, is the most limited in every way. Paul appealed and cried, "We are not straitened in ourselves, we are straitened in you! We appeal to you: be enlarged! Be enlarged!" If only they were spiritually enlarged by the Holy Spirit, these divisions would cease, they're petty: strivings and quarrelings, rivalries among themselves, divisions, these lawsuits and all the other things mentioned which are unholy, they will go if the Spirit really gets His place and changes them from what Paul definitely calls them: "carnal": "Are ye not carnal? Are ye not carnal?" into the spiritual: "He that is spiritual." It is a contrasting condition.

What is holiness? We said this morning that it is not only a state, holiness is separation unto God. That is what it means. Alternative words are sanctification or separation. They are the same thing as holiness: a complete putting things apart and in their own realm: that belongs to what is outside of God and must go where it belongs, leave it there and come away from it; this belongs to what is in God, come over here and abide there. Separation: the great gap of the Cross between what is of the Lord and what is not of the Lord. That is sanctification. That is holiness.

I close for the present by pointing out that the Holy Spirit's coming was also:

The Dynamic of the Fullness of Christ.

That has been, of course, implied in all that we have said, but we noted in particular the characteristic of the Day of Pentecost is fullness isn't it? "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit" and beyond themselves, it says: "They filled Jerusalem with their doctrine, with their teaching" - fullness! In Him exalted and glorified all fullness dwells, the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form. "It was the good pleasure of the Father that it should be so." You have heard much and are so familiar with this phrase, "the fullness of Christ" but it is a characteristic of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is never going to be content with a partial and limited Christ in anybody or anywhere. If He cannot get on with His work of bringing in the fullness of Christ, He will leave you to it and go somewhere else, and go somewhere else and do it where He can and with whom He can. That is a testimony to a fact in the New Testament: Christ is, we are definitely told, eventually to fill all things, to fill all things, that He is, so says the Scripture, to be, "all and in all."

The Holy Spirit sets to work to make that true in every believer, and in every company of believers, and in the true Church worldwide. How did He do it? We refer to the words in Psalm 68 verse 18 and quoted in Ephesians 4:8, "When He ascended up on high, He led His captivity captive, and gave gifts among men." And the apostle advances upon the psalmist and adds, "And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers" - the Exalted Lord, by the Holy Spirit, providing the Church with all the ministries related to the fullness of Christ. Oh, how we have narrowed down these things: apostles, prophets, and what-not - church officers. No! The apostle, his function and his anointing is to bring the whole range of the significance of Christ into view. So he is on the move, on the move worldwide. He is no merely local figure. His is to keep before the Church and the churches and the individuals the fact that Christ is no little Person. Christ is worldwide and universal in His significance. That's his business, the apostle is everywhere seeking to bring into the churches, into believers, and the believers and the churches into the fullness of Christ! Apostles and prophets who are ever called upon as prophets, to keep before the Lord's people His own thought about His Son, that is the function of the prophet - ever to keep God's thoughts in view.

The Old Testament prophets had that as their function, and that is the function of the prophet. We need not think about these as classes and cults and professions or anything like that, it is a function. There must be, by the Holy Spirit, something working through some people who are keeping God's full thought concerning His Son ever in view. Apostles and prophets. Evangelists: it is a large thing, that, it is a path of fullness to bring in from the nations into Christ the unsaved by the evangels. It is a very large thing, that.

And then pastors and teachers, they go together. That is one title, not two titles: "pastors and teachers" in one function. What is their business? Not just to be all the time trotting around, trying to make Christians feel pleased with themselves and happy with their circumstances, pastors. No! Shepherding and instructing in relation to that into which they are called in Christ. All these gifts of the exalted Lord, by the Holy Spirit, are related to bringing the Church to the fullness of Christ. And you can test all ministries by that end. Is that what the ministries are leading to? Are people getting an ever, ever enlarging conception of their Lord? And are they being helped to come into that enlargement of Christ? That is the purpose of ministry, and if that is not the result, then there is something lacking as to the Holy Spirit in that ministry.

Well, that is enough, perhaps more than enough for most of us for the time being. But note then: the Holy Spirit came to bring that exalted and glorified Lord into a people on this earth in the terms of His risen enlargement and release, in the terms of His holiness of Life by His Cross, in the terms of His great universal fullness. May the Holy Spirit be real in every one of us in all these matters.

Chapter 10 - His Coming Again

For those who have joined us for this evening only, may I just repeat that we close our season around the Lord's Table with the special object of giving testimony to that wonderful Grace of God in drawing to Himself many out of different nations and peoples and tongues. Quite a few of those are represented in our gathering at this time. The meeting will not be prolonged for that, we shall seek to get through in good time for those who have to leave and travel.

Now, as from what I said this afternoon, that there were two remaining peaks on the Horizon of Christ to be considered, and from certain intimation in our singing this evening, I take it that you have arrived at your own conclusion as to what it is that we come to this evening as the final epoch, the final peak in the cycle of the mission and work of our Lord Jesus. That is:

His Coming Again.

There is a very real sense in which the coming again of the Lord Jesus, His return, horizons everything else. And we come to that conclusion from the Word of God itself. It may surprise some of you, though not those who know their Bibles well, that this matter of the coming again of the Lord Jesus is given a larger place in all the Bible than any other matter. You might like or want to challenge me on that, but I have said it quite deliberately. You may not be able to corroborate it from your knowledge, but there it is. It is really, in some form or another, mentioned through the Scriptures more often than anything else. And that fact, if it is true, if it is a fact, really does mean that this is the Horizon over everything: His coming again. Of course, it is not spoken of as that, but you can clearly see it in types, in figures, in symbols, in analogies, in parable, in song, in metaphor, in prophecy, in narrative, in doctrine, in exaltation and in appeal. Every one of those, and all of those, relate to the coming again of the Lord Jesus. It compasses the Bible.

You are hardly into your Bible, you are hardly into your Bible and a great, terrible thing happened in the garden, and is not finished before the Lord is saying to the serpent, "The Seed of the woman shall bruise your head, shall bruise your head." And while that was partially true in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, it has not been fully accomplished until He comes again. The Word is to the Church, "And God shall bruise Satan under your heel shortly." That "shortly" relates to His Coming. So this thing comes right into view in the beginning of the Bible, and you know quite well that the end of the Bible it is just that: "I come quickly, I come quickly." And all the way between Genesis and Revelation, we have this manifold intimation, suggestion, or indication that this is the end. This is the end.

Again you do not get far into your Bible, in the book of Genesis, before you get on to Enoch and his prophecy, "Behold, He cometh with ten thousand..." and so you go on. I am not going through the Bible, don't be worried about that, I am only indicating to you that this is the thing that Horizons everything and is, after all, the circle within which all the activities and interests of God are pursued and fulfilled, even unto His Coming.

In the next place, you will find that every fundamental doctrine of Christianity is bound up with "the Coming Again of the Lord." Redemption begun, is only consummated in His coming. Redemption has begun within the heart of believers from the first, through the centuries. It is to be completed in the completed Church and holy nation, and then in the creation itself, for the creation is to be delivered from the bondage in which it is found and under which it is groaning, and it will be at Christ's coming that the creation itself shall know its full redemption. And as a part of that creation "we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting... to wit" waiting... our own full redemption. And as the crown of our spiritual redemption, the redemption of our body at His coming. Redemption, which is a great doctrine through the Bible, is completed in this creation.

The whole doctrine of sanctification is given to us in the light of His coming. Why? Why should we be holy? Why should we walk before the Lord in holiness? Why the whole doctrine of sanctification? It is consummated at His coming, it is unto His coming. We have got to walk here in this life in the light of His coming. Some people think that it does not matter very much about now and how they walk, when He comes it will be all right, they will be completely changed willy nilly. But you know quite well that the weight of the Bible comes down upon this, "That he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." It is a motive for holiness, is the coming of the Lord, an object for sanctification.

Walking with the Lord is a great doctrine in the New Testament and in the Old. Walking with the Lord. And in a figurative and symbolic way, this is consummated in His coming when we: "shall walk with Him in white." That is symbolism: "walk with Him in white... given to the saints white raiment," that is the consummation of sanctification at His coming.

There is very much throughout the whole Bible about fellowship with the Lord in His sufferings. How much there is about the sufferings of the saints on this earth all the way along because they are the Lord's. Because they're the Lord's! They suffer in a peculiar way because they are the Lord's. We won't say "they", we suffer too, in a peculiar way, just because we are the Lord's. There is a lot we should escape if we were not the Lord's. A lot of people leave the Lord because they want it easier, and they can have it easier, less suffering, but to know the "fellowship of His sufferings," has a very great deal of Scripture linked with it - of encouragement, of comfort, of exhortation and so on.

At His coming, all this teaching, and all this experience of the sufferings of the saints, will be consummated, will be ended. "There shall be no more pain, there shall be no more sorrow, nor crying, nor death." His coming will bring the end to all suffering.

And so, one could go on with the many, many aspects of teaching in the Word of God, the great doctrines of the Bible, enumerating them, but you will see that in every one this is true: that every fundamental doctrine is in some way linked for its accomplishment, its consummation, and all its value, with the coming again of the Lord, and in that coming, all that will have its final fulfillment. All that the Cross means for Him, for us, for the Church, will be vindicated at His coming. There is partial vindication, He is seeing through the ages, through the centuries, something of the travail of His soul, but there is a great deal yet to be made up of the sufferings of Christ; and there is a great deal more for the Cross to do, and there is a larger vindication of His suffering and death, of His Cross, and that full vindication of Him and the offering of Himself will come to Him, and to us, who share His Cross, with His return. It is like that.

Then another thing about His coming, it will be then that the Church, that elect Body chosen in Him before the foundation of the world for a special purpose, will come into that special purpose which is:

Rulership Over This World.

We are so familiar with that concept, with that truth, but that is the crowning thing of the Bible record represented again in the high symbolism of the City: "The holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven." The symbolism is of the governmental center of this universe through the eternal ages. That City is nought else but the Church. At His coming the Church will take its place, the place which the prince of this world, the powers of satan, now occupy as the world-rulers of this darkness, the hosts of wicked spirits, "the prince of the power of the air." That place will be taken by the Church, it is to reign with Him. It is to govern with Him. It is to be over this earth in good, for good, in glory, in benefit - what the present powers are for evil and for hurt.

That is the calling, the vocation, and the destiny of the Church according to God's eternal election and the Church will, at His coming, enter upon the rule which Satan now exercises when he is cast out of the air, cast down into the pit and his rule is ended, and Christ in His Church will take that place.

We are called to that! And of course, we could dwell very much upon it and what it means, what it involves; how much of our present education is because of that calling and vocation in the ages to come. What a lot is interpreted by that, how we are being taught now spiritual ascendancy, how we are in the battle for spiritual ascendancy over the forces of evil. We are in that now. This is the consummation of all that will be when the Church takes its eternally elected place to rule with Christ in this creation. That will take place when He comes again.

Again, at His coming, the reign, the universal reign of righteousness and peace on this earth will be established. That for which men have striven and failed all through the ages, for which they are striving today, perhaps more than ever, and finding the frustration and the defeat and the problem of world peace, a state of righteousness, too great for them. And it will be so, it will be so to the end. But at His coming, the reign of righteousness and the reign of peace on this earth will begin. "Righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." It will be then that "this creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption," corruption into the glorious righteousness and the peace, which always follows righteousness.

At His Appearing

Well now, I could go on for a very long time on what is going to happen when He comes back, it is not my intention to do so. I promised you that we shall not prolong this gathering, but this note must be struck as the final and crowning note of such a consideration as that with which we have been occupied through these hours and these days.

Now these are all things which are taught in the Word of God, and you probably know them, with many others. But I do feel that it is necessary for us to come closer to this thing, because of how we are involved, not only in the glorious end and climax, but how we are involved in the final movement toward that end, that climax. And we are involved, but the Word of God indicates very clearly and very definitely some of those things which will point to the imminence of His Coming, the imminence of His Coming, that is, that "His coming draweth nigh."

I suppose we are very practically involved in some of the aspects of this matter, every time you get into your motor car or into an airplane, you are involved in one of the final things of this dispensation. I hope that won't frighten you, but you will call to mind that the Scriptures definitely state and prophesy that at the end, "many shall run to and fro." Was there ever a time when men are running to and fro in the earth as they are today? If a week passes without someone from one part of the world rushing to another part of the world to try and solve some of this world's deep problems, it is quite unusual. They are just doing it. New York, Moscow, London, India, "to and fro," this feverish movement, running to and fro. How descriptive that is!

The man who prophesied that probably never had any idea of jet planes or airplanes at all, or of motor cars and speedy vehicles, but the Lord knew. The Lord knew, and it is not just straining interpretation, imagining things, here we are! Our papers every morning are occupied with something of this: many running to and fro, implying, implying that there is feverish concern, feverish anxiety causing this tremendous activity, an intensification of activity in this creation and in this universe. And isn't that what's happening? That's what's happening. The speeding up of movement, the rush, and hurry, and anxiety, and strain. It is like that - this running to and fro, which involves us all in greater or lesser degree, in some way or other, that is the intensified movement of our time, it is something that is indicative that there is a hastening toward a climax. We might well ask the question, 'Where is this all going to end? Where is it going to end? If we go on like this, go on like this, where is the end going to be?' Well, the Bible says that that is indicative of the near approach of the Lord: "many shall run to and fro," and the next part of the statement is: "and knowledge shall be increased." No one needs to stay with that, what, in the last... five years? Ten years? The increase of knowledge, in this universe, deep secrets that have always been hidden there, brought out and become common knowledge now, things that some of us in our younger days would have thought were real fabulous fables!

We were told that this would happen, told this would happen, all this intensification of the increase of knowledge. How it has been packed in, hasn't it? Packed in, concentrated! And the Bible says that that is a mark that the end is near. The dispensation is coming to its end, and the end is the coming of the Lord. The intensification of anxious, excited, distracted movement, and the quest for knowledge, and knowledge that men would be well without. After all, it is only the full development and consummation of that bid for knowledge in the garden, "All right," says the Lord, "you shall have it, but you shall have it to your own undoing." And the end brings us to that: intensified activity.

Then the Bible tells us that another sign of the near approach of His coming will be the intensification of evil and godlessness. Again, that is not something that needs to be argued and labored. Things have got right out of hand. We just cannot, cannot understand it, why are youth, are youth, our teen-agers are just run amok in evil? Why young men, at twenty, are being sent to the gallows? Why are prisons becoming overloaded with criminals? And what is more, outside of them, and apart from the crimes, look at the godlessness!

I don't know how you felt on Friday, perhaps we are a bit old-fashioned, or we could be called a bit old-fashioned, but on this very Friday, which throughout all Christendom and in this so-called Christian country, things were just carried on without any thought whatsoever for what that day represented: business, trade, and everything else just as though Christ had never died, as though this day had no significance whatsoever. While we are not really greatly concerned to keep up the religious calendar and these things, we do feel that the remembrance is something which ought to be sacredly guarded. The godlessness, not only at such times, but on the Lord's own day, and generally, how iniquity abounds, how evil in this world is intensifying, how godlessness is spreading. Well, the Word says that is how it will be at the end: quite distinctly and quite definitely, an intensification of evil.

Again, the Word tells us there will be at the end an intensified ripening of the two kinds of seed. Well, there it is, on the sowing of the evil one, his seed is ripening, there is an intensification, "Let both grow together until, until, until the harvest." And the mark then, by which you will know, is the intensification of the nature of each; an intensifying process which will declare itself at the end. And while we are all here so easily able to discern the intensification of the evil seed, are we not today, perhaps as never before in such a large way, in the presence of this intensifying process where the children of God are concerned? It's like that!

Perhaps here in the west, we know something about it in our own spiritual life, in our own faith. Things are getting pretty, pretty severe, aren't they? Getting very intense for us. Spiritual life is becoming more and more difficult. The trial of faith is becoming increasingly great and strong and deep, and the Lord is proceeding with this intensifying process.

There was a brother here last night who spends much of his time behind the Iron Curtain, and he was telling me, having been there quite recently, he said, "A wonderful thing of God is being done behind the Iron Curtain." He said, "You will find a quality of Christians that you will never find here in the West." He said, "You may pity them and be sorry for them, but there is another standpoint. They have a knowledge of the Lord in their hearts that very few in this part of the world have. And it is all because of the intensely difficult situation in which they are found." That, in China, in Russia, in Siberia and elsewhere is ripening the saints.

While we may not be knowing the same kind of conditions and circumstances, I do not think, dear friends, that you and I who really do seek to go on with the Lord, are finding things becoming easier for the spiritual life; indeed, very much more difficult. We are being intensified by the very conditions, spiritual conditions at the end. And so it says, the two seeds will come to ripeness, to fullness by an intensifying process and strain, the trial of faith, the faith of believers. And all this, and much more, comes within the compass of a mighty intensified activity on the part of the powers of darkness to contradict all that is true of Christ.

Now, think about that. All that we have been saying about the Lord Jesus, put your finger upon one point only: "God raised Him... and set Him at His own right hand... far above all rule, and authority, and principality, and power, and every name that is named."

Do you ever, do you ever wonder how far that is true? May I dare say that? Just look at this intensified activity to counter and contradict the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus in this world! That is what is going on, simply to deny the truth that He is Lord of all and Lord of lords!

If you look at things, if you look at things and look at your own experiences, you might find plenty of ground to say, "Is He really on the Throne? Is He really far above all rule, and authority?" The devil seems to have a good deal of liberty and power; he seems to be doing very much as he likes. He is seeking to establish a great contradiction to the truth of Jesus Christ. And what is true in that connection is true in everything else. True in everything else! There can be found material for raising questions about everything concerning the Lord Jesus, if you are disposed to look for it, but this is what is going to happen. It is just what is going to happen. "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith on the earth?" There is a point in that question, for everything, everything will seem to contradict faith in the supreme and ultimate truths of the Lord Jesus.

Well, there it is, I do not want to dishearten you, but here it is. An intensifying movement in every direction and connection the Word of God says is a clear indication that the end is near. Perhaps the final phase is gathered into that one statement: "Woe unto you that dwell upon the earth for satan is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows his time is short..." because he knows his time is short: evil powers active in a way unparalleled, pressure from that realm as never before in history. He has got to be in a hurry; he has got to do a lot in a short time, because he knows that it is a short time.

Well, these are indicated signs that the coming of the Lord draws near. But we can't end on that can we? We can't close on that side, on that note. His coming, which is pointed to and indicated by all these things, is going to settle the whole question fully and finally and forever as to who is lord, as to where the truth is, and who are the Lord's, because you have these two glorious things revealed at His coming.

First of all, He is manifested; He is revealed in all the value and virtue of what He is and what He has done. But His coming is not only His coming in personal glory, it says, "When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believe." I always come to that statement with amazement, amazement and deep wonder. The principalities and powers of a higher order, intelligences that have been watching and are looking on, and form the great audience, and the great spiritual galleries of this theater, are going to point to the saints and say, "Isn't He marvelous? Just look at Him in what He is in them." "And marvelled at in all them that believe." That is what will happen when He comes. I am sure we are quite prepared to believe that, to accept that if we are going to be really glorified together with Him, it is going to be something for the angels and all the other intelligences to marvel at: you and I, being what we are, changed into His own glory, glorified together with Him. My! That is something to marvel at - "to be marveled at in all them that believe." We are crowned then. And, you see the very, very comprehensive, far-reaching and many-sided matter, the coming of the Lord can only just be pointed to and indicated as 'near at hand' by some of those very evident fulfillments in the Word of God. The Lord, give us joy in the prospect that His coming draweth near.