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The New Day of the Spirit

by T. Austin-Sparks

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1947-48

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Old Testament Taken Up in the Book of "The Acts"

Chapter 2 - The Man in the Glory

Chapter 3 - Abraham's Seed

Chapter 4 - Spiritual Israel

Chapter 5 - The Sovereignty of the Lord in the Spiritual Conflict

Chapter 1 - The Old Testament Taken Up in the Book of "The Acts"

"Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, saying... This is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel, And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy" (Acts 2:14,16-18).

Not one of us would have any question that Peter was speaking under the government and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Believing that, and having no doubt about it, it is very significant that he should have added something which looks like a quotation but which the prophet quoted did not say. Joel did not say "It shall be in the last days." Joel said, "And it shall come to pass afterward...." The phrase "the last days" is found in other prophets, but not in the passage from which Peter was quoting. It makes no difference to Peter's inspiration, but it gives a significance to which we should pay attention. Under the Holy Spirit's government, Peter used those words "in the last days." We have to know what the Holy Spirit meant, and, seeing that the application was to the time at the beginning of this dispensation, I think we are not wrong in concluding that He was indicating that a certain time and order had come to an end - the last days of that particular order had come, and now there was an afterward; in other words, a new day, a new age.

Everything in This Age Essentially Spiritual

If that is right, then the book which goes by the title "The Acts" is the book which introduces a new age; it marks the passing of certain days, age-days, and the arrival of a new day, a new age-day. But it not only marks that change, it sets forth the character of the new day. Among the many very important things which the Lord's people need to recognize anew is this - the real Divine nature of the new day which came in with that recorded in this book. The established and accepted title of the book is limiting and, to some extent, misleading. You must remember that the writer of the book never gave it that title. Luke, who wrote it, did not call it "The Acts," nor the "Acts of the Apostles," nor the "Acts of the Holy Spirit." He did not give it a title. If it had a title at all, it is in his introduction, and that purely by inference. "The former treatise I made... concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach," and the inference is that this is a further treatise of all that Jesus began to do and teach. I say, the established title, "The Acts," is limiting, and, to some extent, misleading for this reason - that it puts all the emphasis upon activity, and in so doing obscures the nature of the activity, the real character of what had been brought in, the very essence of things; that is, it very largely obscures the fact that this new dispensation is absolutely spiritual in every sense. We know how "the baptism of the Spirit," "the filling of the Spirit," all that is meant by the use of the word "Pentecost", has been taken up by men and interpreted in terms of manifestations, things that can be outwardly noted - activities, works, done in a certain kind of heat and enthusiasm and strength and assertiveness. You know what the general mentality is when mention is made of being filled with the Spirit. At once our minds leap to certain forms of manifestation. But that is not the basic thing. The basic fact is that something has changed altogether, and there is a new character given to the new age; and that is that, for this age, everything is essentially and absolutely spiritual.

First the Natural, Then the Spiritual

I think Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, has - not with this object in view but under the same Spirit's direction and inspiration - given a full summary of what this change-over really is. It occurs in a phrase in 1 Cor. 15:46 - "Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual."

First that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual. That is only saying, in other words, that the days which have gone were natural days, the days in which Divine things were manifested naturally, on natural grounds. They could all be grasped by natural apprehension: men could see, men could feel. All that realm of God's activity was possible of observation naturally; but now that has passed.

The Establishment of the Lordship of the Holy Spirit

"And it shall come to pass afterward..."; "afterward that which is spiritual." That represents a Divine order and an established economy in the arrangement of this world's history. First that which is natural in everything, afterward that which is spiritual: and this book (we will use its accepted title, "The Acts") is the afterward that is spiritual. And one of the most wonderful things is that this book comprehends the Old Testament and changes it right over into the spiritual realm. The fact that this new day as ushered in and set forth in this book is a spiritual day is shown in quite a number of ways in the book itself - pre-eminently, of course, by the fact that, as never before, the Lordship of the Holy Spirit is established. He, in sovereignty, comes and takes charge of everything in relation to Divine purposes. He assumes the custodianship of God's eternal purposes and takes them into His own hands - and that in a very mighty way. He does demonstrate that He has assumed charge of God's interests in His Son; and if you can withstand a mighty rushing wind (Acts 2:2) you can withstand that sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. But in other ways His sovereignty is seen - amongst them, the way in which the Old Testament is taken up and reproduced spiritually, in some matters reversed, in others transferred. We shall see that in a moment. Again, in the swift challenge at the beginning, which the flesh and the natural life met; the Holy Spirit is in charge, and He immediately demonstrates that here flesh must not encroach and the natural life has no place. In the case of Ananias and Sapphira it is shown that things are spiritual now and the flesh and the Spirit are in deadly combat. It is a new spiritual age that has come in, and here that which is natural has passed. First that which is natural; afterward that which is spiritual.

The Deepening Hiddenness of the Lord's Ways

Another thing not recognized as fully and clearly as it should be is the deepening hiddenness of the Lord's ways. Have you noticed this, that, whereas at the beginning there were manifestations in many directions, in many manners, plain and obvious, as you move through this book you find that the Lord is going deeper and deeper, and those things are not so obvious and conspicuous as they once were? Early in the book, you can bring the sick and just lay them on the ground, and the very shadow of Peter passing by heals them. But "Trophimus I left sick" (2 Tim. 4:20): "Epaphroditus was sick nigh unto death" (Phil. 2:27): "We despaired even of life: yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves" (2 Cor. 1:9), says Paul. The Lord's ways are getting deeper. First that which is natural; afterward, that which is spiritual. That opens the door to a very large field.

"The Acts" a Book of Spiritual Principles

Then there is the fact that this is a book of spiritual principles, not necessarily to be taken and imitated, but demanding that we know the principle which lies behind what is happening, and stand in possession of that principle. In that connection, let us remember that this book called "The Acts" was not written until all Paul's letters had been written and circulated. There had been some thirty-five years of missionary activity, preaching, and teaching through the Apostolic letters before "The Acts" was written, or before any one of the Gospels was written, and that to me is of tremendous significance. You see, they had received the teaching, they had the spiritual interpretation and meaning, and then they got the historical record of what happened. It would be good for us to stay with that alone as one thing for an hour. You can understand why Paul wrote to the Corinthians as he did about the manifestations. They were taken up by the acts, the happenings, the events, the outward things. He wrote to seek to get them to the inside of them, and to show that what mattered was not the things in the first instance, but the spirit behind, and that love is far more important than outward manifestations and gifts.

Well, you see, all this is a very strong foundation for this conclusion, that a new kind of day has come in, that things now are essentially spiritual. "Afterward that which is spiritual."

The Creations: Redemption by Resurrection

That is a general setting forth of the situation. Let us begin to get inside of that and break it up. We said that this book comprehends the Old Testament and does two things with it. It reverses some things, and it transfers others from one realm to another. I will explain that in a moment. First of all, this book comprehends what we have at the beginning of Genesis - the creation. The creation, as we have it in the natural in Genesis, is a work of natural redemption, the redeeming of a creation from corruption, from death, from chaos; and that redemption of the creation at the beginning of the natural was through resurrection. We can say quite truly that it was a raising of the natural from a death, from a grave, bringing it up in resurrection. "First that which is natural; then that which is spiritual." The beginning of things here in "Acts" is redemption through resurrection. The great note of "Acts," of all Apostolic preaching, is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Now you see a little more value in what I said just now about the letters having been written before. The people who would read the historic account of things in "Acts" had already received 1 Cor. 15 and the doctrine of the resurrection in Romans 6. They knew the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, that it was not only for us but included us, that we were raised together with Him, that a new creation was brought into being in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that we were begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet. 1:3). The fact of the resurrection is then set forth in the historic account as the great, all-governing reality. It is a new creation, it is a redemption that is in Christ Jesus. You break that up again and you see that inside of the redemption there is the means employed. Firstly, light and life - two great redeeming powers and influences. Oh, these representatives, the twelve - twelve is the number that speaks of representation - are themselves the embodiment of this. Look at them before Christ rose, and if ever men were in the dark they were - groping as blind in the darkness. See those on the road to Emmaus, and all the rest - dark, blind, despairing, and for them the atmosphere was filled with death. He had died; it was the end of everything. But look at them here! Why, truly, those who sat in darkness have seen a great light! They have emerged, the light has broken and, in Christ, has dawned upon their darkness; they see it all and they are out! Life with light has brought them into a new world, but it is spiritual light, it is spiritual life, it is not capable of being apprehended except in a spiritual way. People can listen, can see that something has happened to them, and still be unaffected until the same mighty influence gets to work upon themselves. It is something that is wholly and solely spiritual, and the flesh cannot take hold of it. Let Simon the sorcerer try to get this on natural grounds! He will find himself under terrible judgment (Acts 8:9-24). This is something which can be had only by the Spirit. It is light and life of a new order altogether; the flesh cannot enter into this. "First that which is natural; then that which is spiritual."

The Instrument of the Creations - The Spirit

The means - light and life. And then the instrument - "and the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the deep" (Genesis 1:2). We can say that the Spirit of God was the Executive of the Godhead in the redemption of the natural creation. Here, "Acts" brings in that Divine agent again; the Spirit of God bringing out of the dark and out of death into the new life of this new creation in Christ Jesus. It is spiritual.

The Object of the Creations - A Man

And then the object. What was the object of the natural creation? Unto what was it? Well, the object was man, a man whom God had in His eye, a man according to God's mind. Everything was brought into being, and the climax of all was man. First that which was natural - and it failed; afterward that which is spiritual. And here is the man in Christ, the new creation, and he is a new order of man. It is simple and elementary, but it helps us to recognise that we have come into a new day of a different character; it is spiritual now. This book has taken up the very beginning in the natural, and carried it over, passed it through, into the spiritual; and it is saying as clearly and forcefully as anything can be said, This is the true! The natural breaks down and fails, it is transient, it does not abide; the spiritual is eternal, established forever.

Place alongside that word from 1 Cor. 15:46 another one from 2 Tim. 1:10 "...our Saviour Christ Jesus... abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel." That is something for us to take hold of. We are all so conscious in this world and in ourselves of the corruptible side. Yes, it is there; but through the Gospel life and incorruption have been brought to light. One of the things said so early in this book is a prophecy taken from the Old Testament and applied to the Lord Jesus "It was not possible that he should be holden of death" (Acts 2:24). Why? Because the word had said "...neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). "Life and incorruption through the Gospel." And that life is ours; that life within us, in our renewed spirit, is the germ of a spiritual body which is at the other end of the course; first the natural, then that which is spiritual, and in 1 Cor. 15:46 the application is to the body. There are natural bodies - not that which is spiritual is first, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. "To each seed a body of its own" (1 Cor. 15:38).

Well, the object in view is a man who can never see corruption, an incorruptible humanity. Oh thank God that the Lord Jesus walked through this world for thirty-three years and was never in the slightest degree corrupted; although Satan and all his powers and agents, demoniacal and human, sought to corrupt that Divine One in some way, to ensnare and entrap Him into a taint, a corruption, He was never corrupted in any sense; He triumphed. He went through death and the grave itself and saw no corruption. Thank God, I say, for that, because He is the Firstborn among many brethren who will be indwelt by that same incorruptible life, and who will be eventually that humanity in God's universe for which the universe was created. An incorruptible humanity - that is the prospect. And that is the Gospel - something more than a gospel of just being forgiven; it is a marvellous Gospel that is brought to light. The object - a man; but that kind of man.

The Reversal of Babel

I dare not take all the fragments of the Old Testament that this book of "Acts" brings into view from the creation. Immediately, without any loss of time, it leaps over to what comes some distance on in the book of Genesis; and here it is not a transferring, it is a reversing. I refer to Babel. You remember what was said about Babel. "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech" (Gen. 11:1) and in that oneness they formed a confederacy to build their tower, to be independent of God, to make a name for themselves; to glorify, to deify a fallen, corrupted manhood. They challenged heaven in their unity, and God said, "Let us go down and there confound their language"; and there came confusion of tongues. He broke them up with His curse so that they understood not one another, and therefore could not work together, could no longer go on in their evil oneness. We know it very well today. Pentecost leaps right in there. There were gathered in Jerusalem that day men out of every nation under heaven. Their countries are tabulated; the Holy Spirit takes great care to see that they are all mentioned. And then a mighty thing happens, a miracle is wrought by the Holy Ghost and the diversity of the tongues of that great concourse is transcended in a moment, so that men exclaim with astonishment "Are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we, every man in our own language..." (Acts 2:7,8). What is the meaning of this? Babel is reversed. The declaration is made - through the victory of Calvary, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the curse is dealt with, and there is a oneness in the Spirit possible for all men, that they can understand the wonderful things of God. God has set His spiritual principle right there at the beginning in this most powerful way, and He has said in an acted principle that in Christ Jesus there is a universality of oneness of a heavenly and spiritual order which cannot be found outside; which is Calvary's answer to Babel.

Now, you do not interpret that naturally, but spiritually. People are always pressing for the natural interpretation. Tongues! Whatever God may do sovereignly in His will in that matter, the fact is this - that very often Satan has simulated that very work, and the result has been more confusion among the saints, and the essential law of oneness has not been established. The test is whether this brings saints into the realisation of their absolute oneness in Christ, or does this make more confusion? That is a very good test as to whether it belongs to that which is natural or to that which is spiritual. When the Holy Spirit really has His place and His way, He brings into a universality in Christ. It does not matter what you are naturally, of what nation or tribe or kindred or people or colour or language, it does not matter at all where you come from or what you are, whether of high degree or low; when the Holy Spirit gets possession, there is a universality in Christ, a blessed spiritual oneness, which is God's answer to the world and to the enemy; God's counter, through Calvary, to Babel.

I know the Church has a long way to go to enter into that, and how great the difficulties are in this matter of so many tongues amongst the Lord's people, all saying different and contradictory things; nevertheless, I hold to this basic law, that, if men were governed by the Spirit, they would say the same thing, they would arrive at the same conclusion; and it is only the intrusion of the natural - either natural judgment, intellect, taking hold of the things of God, or natural desires and inclinations and propensities and wishes and feelings - that results in this confusion of tongues among the Lord's people. If the natural life, mind, heart and will really did come under the power of the Cross and we came on to the ground where we are dead to ourselves and alive only in the spirit, we should be saying and thinking the same thing.

God has simple and very real - even if small and limited - testimonies where He has those who are led by the Spirit; He is able to say the same thing to them and the results are very fruitful. Desolation goes out and fruitfulness comes in when the mind of the Spirit possesses the children of God. They say the same thing; they are able to say - And the Lord said that to me as well! There is a lot in that.

Well, you see very early in this book a very big thing is taken up from the Old Testament and reversed. "First that which is natural: then that which is spiritual." The universality of the Spirit is declared. And, remember, with this goes the universality of the Church. The true Church is of this order.

And then, of course, in "Acts" we have the initiation of the universality of salvation; that is, initiation in the practical sense. Salvation is universal from the beginning, but here was the initiation of its outworking - for Jew and Gentile. Presently we move from Jerusalem up to Caesarea, and something happens in a Gentile company almost identical with what happened in a Jewish company - the Spirit falls, and that universality of the Spirit shows itself now in this, that God is no respecter of persons. All can be saved, Jew and Gentile. Salvation is inclusive; God has no favourites in the matter of salvation.

The Spiritual Principle Behind Achan and Ananias and Sapphira

Time permits us to touch on only one other thing, which is quite simple in itself. It is very soon in this book that we come upon that tragic incident of Ananias and Sapphira. We have now leapt a long way ahead in the Old Testament. Historically, there is much between what we have just said and this point, but no doubt here is a correspondence in spiritual principle. You remember Achan, and the Babylonish garment and the wedge of gold hidden in his tent. But that is not the whole point. When did it happen? That is the vital point. It happened when Israel had passed through Jordan, in which they, in type, for ever parted with the carnal life. The passage of Jordan in type was that side of their union with Christ which spoke of death to the carnal life which had been predominant in the wilderness. It had all been the flesh, carnality, all through those years, and at last that had to be done away with, lock, stock and barrel. Jordan drew the line between the life of God's people carnally and their life spiritually. Over Jordan, the Spirit of God takes charge as Captain of the host of the Lord, and is the energy of everything from that time onward, testifying to the fact that here the flesh has given place to the Spirit, and they are now typically on spiritual ground. Achan contradicts that, the carnal life breaks out again, and swift and radical judgment takes place. Because we pass into a new day, O Ananias and Sapphira, what you might have done when you lived in the flesh you cannot do now. That is the meaning. You have come into another realm, the realm of things spiritual, and having been buried with Christ and raised with Him, you are supposed to have repudiated all the work of the flesh and its ambitions.

"Acts" being a book of principles shows what God's full thought is for life in the Spirit. This is seen on both its positive side and its negative. Ananias and Sapphira are examples of the negative aspect, showing what the Lord's attitude is toward a calculated action in the flesh when against such the Spirit has been so manifestly in action.

This, then, is a solemn appeal for life on a higher level, but it carries with it a curtailment of certain liberties. For all the values of such a life may the Lord give us the required empowerment and grace.

Chapter 2 - The Man in the Glory

"And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above." Ezek. 1:26.

"And behold, six men came from the way of the upper gate, which lieth toward the north, every man with his slaughter weapon in his hand; and one man in the midst of them clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side. And they went in, and stood beside the brazen altar." Ezek. 9:2.

"And he brought me thither; and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate." Ezek. 40:3.

"And I heard one speaking unto me out of the house; and a man stood by me. And he said unto me, Son of man, this is the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever. And the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, and by the dead bodies of their kings in their high places" Ezek. 43:6-7.

"Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear." Acts 2:33.

"But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." Acts 7:55-56.

"I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven." 2 Cor. 12:2.

In our previous meditation we began to see something of what the book which goes by the title of "The Acts" brought in - that is, a new day, a new age, with an entirely new character: a day which, because of the advent of the Holy Spirit and His absolute Sovereignty in the realm of Divine things, is an age-day which is fundamentally and essentially spiritual in its nature and character. We began to see something of the content of that; and our occupation is with the deeper and fuller meaning of Pentecost.

The Spirit in the Books of Ezekiel and The Acts

Turning back to the prophecies of Ezekiel, no one who has read them needs to be told what a very large place the Spirit of the Lord has in them. A glance at your concordance will at once show you how large that place is. You see that the Spirit is constantly mentioned all the way through - the activities of the Spirit in sovereignty in all kinds of connections with Divine thoughts; and by that alone there surely is a basic link with the book of The Acts, for the same connection is registered by a glance at that book with the one word in mind, the Spirit; it is all the Spirit in the manifold activities of the exalted Lord, His continuation of doing and speaking. So we can say that there is a very close relationship between these two portions of the Scripture as part and counterpart; and it is in connection with some of the features of that that we are to be occupied now.

In our previous meditation we dwelt upon one point amongst others - seeing how the book of The Acts takes up comprehensively the Old Testament and gives it a new spiritual reproduction, interpretation, application, and in some ways reverses the order of the Old Testament. Here we have a grand example of that in the case of what is in the prophecies of Ezekiel. Amongst those things which we saw previously was this - the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the deep, hovering over the chaos, and then active as the Divine Agent of reclamation, redemption, resurrection, to bring in a new creation. The object of it all in the natural was seen to be man; it reached its climax in the man that was in God's thought. Carried over to the New Testament, we saw that when the Spirit of God came into action in this sovereign way, redemptively, re-creationally, it was all with a Man in view, the Man who is said to be the life-giving Spirit, the last Adam. "First... that which is natural; then that which is spiritual." "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam a life-giving spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45,46). The Man is in view.

The Moral and Spiritual Government of the Man in the Glory

Now let us recall the above passages with which we began. In Ezekiel, each of those which we read brought a man into view. There is no difficulty in interpreting the first of them. "Above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne... and upon the likeness of the throne was a likeness as the appearance of a man upon it above." Then we went over into the Acts. "Being... by (marg. at) the right hand of God exalted..." "I see... the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." A Man is in view. The correspondence between these passages is evident and in both cases the meaning is the same. You go back to the opening chapters of Ezekiel from which the above words are taken and you find all the Divine intentions and thoughts are being projected, the counsels and purposes of God are in view - the wheels and the living ones and the spirit in the wheels: Divine counsels, the purposes of God in motion - and they are all under the government of this One Who is upon the Throne. All these Divine movements in relation to Divine intentions concerning a people for God are all under the government of that One upon the Throne; and they go straightforward, they turn not as they go; they are not deviating, they are not hindered; they go and they go straightforward because there is One Who is in the place of absolute sovereignty, and nothing, however it may seem otherwise, can really divert His purposes. So in this book of The Acts; whatever happens which seems to be a diversion or a subverting or a hindrance or a contradiction, and however much it seems to be out of the straight way, is found in the end to be compelled, by a governing hand, really to reach God's end and fulfil it, and not hinder it. He is going straight forward. It is because of the Man in the glory. Yes, He is God's Son, very God, but that is not the line of our thought at the moment. It is the Man - "I see the Son of man..." As the Man He is the full embodiment of the perfection of God's thoughts concerning man that is ultimately to be, man that is eventually to occupy God's realm, and as Son of man He is installed, enthroned, established as the perfect model of how things are to be; and God is taking the straight course in the power of the Spirit to that end - to have things according to the Man in the glory. And that Man in the glory is not just officially, but morally and spiritually, governing everything to that end. If He were acting officially, of course, none of these contrary things would be allowed, no one would be able to raise a hand; but He is acting spiritually, and morally in His authority. I mean by that that you and I are not brought to God's end simply by those sovereign acts of the Lord in heaven which save us from all kinds of difficulties. Something has to be done in us, and therefore it must be spiritual and moral government that operates to conform us to the image of God's Son; so that, although there may seem to be hindrances and obstructions and difficulties - and there are - nevertheless, His spiritual government is producing spiritual ends in us which mean approximation to His own likeness. So it is by the Spirit that He governs, and not just as official, sovereign Lord. It is most important to recognize that it is a spiritual government, for it means that everything is spiritual. Ascendancy and triumph and arrival are going to be spiritual, not just natural - we shall not simply be brought there apart from anything that is accomplished in us. We are moving towards God's end by spiritual government within our lives, not merely by a sovereign hand upon us. I think that is quite clear, but it is necessary to say it as we go on.

Now, the point of this first presentation of the Man, both in Ezekiel and in Acts, is that the governing reality is One Who already embodies God's thoughts in perfection, and all government is in relation to Him. He, as God's perfect realisation, sits in the place of absolute authority and holds everything into the ends which God has purposed. There has to be, by the Holy Spirit, something of that accomplished in us if we are going to reach this Divine end.

"A Man in Christ"

I have taken up a fragment of autobiography from Paul because it is going to serve us greatly by way of illustration. "I know a man in Christ." Now, we believe that Paul was an elect vessel; in a very special way he was chosen of God for a special purpose; and when we look to see what that special purpose is - that is, what singles him out and distinguishes him even from the other Apostles - we are compelled to come down to one thing, that to Paul was committed a revelation of the one new man in Christ: "the church which is His body": the collective, the corporate, man. Then we see also that not only was that revelation and that ministry or stewardship committed to Paul in a specific way, but that it was passed right through his very history. It was something that was caused to go through him, right through his very being, and his whole life was brought by the Spirit of God on to the basis of that revelation and dealt with accordingly; so that Paul, in a unique way, became a representation for the age on earth of this thought of God - a man, the one new man, a man in Christ. He calls himself that - a man in Christ. That helps us to come back to Ezekiel and take these other three particular references to the Man.

The Man with the Inkhorn

We have seen the standard, the model, the representation, the inclusive One. We have seen that that is set to govern all the activities of God in a spiritual way. Now, break that up. The next presentation of a man is that of a man clothed in linen with an inkhorn by his side; and what is he doing? The One in the glory - for so we may speak: although it does not say this actually, this is the conclusion - the One in the glory is taking account of the state of things here, and especially amongst the Lord's people, those who bear His Name; and the state of things is said to be very, very much other than according to that Man. There is very little that indicates the Man in the glory here; that is, there is very little of the Lord's thought in any fulness that can be discerned. But the man with the inkhorn, clothed in linen - and we must not stop with all the details - is taking a note of everybody; he is singling out, he is listening, he is looking at faces, he is watching, he is looking inside of hearts, and whenever he finds a man who sighs and who groans because of the state of things, he puts a mark on him; such a one is a marked man before heaven. The man with the inkhorn is a Man from heaven, a Man here with the Divine thoughts, and where He finds a real heart exercise, a heart sorrow and burden, a sighing and a groaning because God has not got what He ought to have - all things according to Christ - He marks that as something of account.

"I know a man in Christ." Listen! "I... fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). That is in the spirit of what we are saying - a man with a great burden of concern and travail because God's thoughts are not found expressed amongst God's people, that is, Christ is not being reproduced in the spirit of His heavenly Manhood. This man in Christ on another occasion said, "My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you..." (Gal. 4:19). This is a man sighing and groaning because there is such a coming short of that Divine thought in the people of God. Such an attitude results from a work of the Spirit of God, and the implication is this, that Pentecost in its outworking - or the presence of the Holy Spirit here - will mean that those in whom the Spirit operates and has His way will never be able to rest short of God's full thought for themselves or for others. They will be deeply exercised and burdened and will be drawn into the travail of Christ, to fill up that which is lacking of His sufferings for His Body's sake which is the Church. This man in Christ is a marked man, he is marked from heaven as one whose whole heart is taken up with this great concern that what is there should be found here: that what is true of Christ, the Man in the glory, should be more fully expressed here in this new man, the Church, the Body. That is an operation of the Holy Spirit; and if you tell me that the Holy Spirit is having His way, and yet there is complacency with things that are not according to Christ, I say that is a contradiction; it cannot be. If you are perfectly satisfied with things as they are in yourself or in other believers, and have no real concern that there should be a full conformity to the image of Christ and that the whole Body should be brought to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ, the Spirit of God is not doing His work in you. Pentecost in its deeper meaning will produce that. The very fact that so soon after His advent the Church moved out as by Divine urge to seek the members of the Body and then to bring them into full conformity is proof positive that the Spirit of God is seeking to perfect a Body, a manhood, according to that Man Who has been revealed as in the glory. The man with the inkhorn signifies that - that the Spirit of God produces a heavenly concern and takes note of where that concern is.

The Man with the Measuring Reed

The next chapter, chapter 40, brings in the man with the measuring reed, and his appearance is as that of brass. He is in type but the expression of Christ, God's full measure, coming here to show where things come short, and to indicate where this is lacking and that is needed, and what the Lord wants as to His exact measure of Christ. It is what Peter called Judgment beginning at the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17), for brass typifies judgment. Paul also was very exercised about measurements. You know what he says about them; measurements as to the House, the Church, the Body; the length and breadth and height and depth; the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. All that he wrote and said on the numerous matters of the life of the Lord's people we must interpret in the light of this, that it is a matter of the degree in which there is a coming short of Christ. The Lord is very greatly concerned about spiritual measure, although His people are not so concerned; and this man is really Christ, the Man in fulness, coming down to be like a measuring rod beside His Church, and to say, This is where you are not true, and you must adjust; this is where you have excesses, and they must go; this is where you have deficiencies, and they must be made good. It is the Spirit of God at work all the time to see to it that in all details we are according to Christ, the Spirit of God working in relation to that perfect measure that is in heaven, the measure for this Body, for this collective man, in all its parts.

And then how detailed is this man with the measuring reed! He takes the prophet in and out and round about and up and down and through, and is measuring all the time. He measures the gate, the porch, the threshold, the court, every chamber; everything is measured. He says, in effect, that God has His thought for every part, the details matter to Him, and the Spirit has come to check us up on all matters of detail which relate to God's purpose in calling us in Christ. A man in Christ who is governed by the Spirit of Christ will not be lax and careless about anything, even the smallest things. But, while this may sound difficult, a high standard that could bring us into a good deal of burden, bondage and legalism, let us remember that the Spirit of God has come to accomplish this very thing - not only to judge but to do what is needful. That is the other side of Paul's great ministry; not only the pointing out of what comes short or what is in excess, but to say, The Spirit can make it all good - He is here to do that. That is why in Paul's letters to Corinth (particularly the first), where so much had to be indicated as disorderly, as not according to Christ, the Holy Spirit has such a large place. Yes, He is here, not just as the judge, but as the helper of our infirmities, to correct the wrong, to bring about conformity to Christ.

The Place of His Glory

Then in Chapter 43 there is the man speaking out from the place of the glory, saying "Son of man, this is the place of my throne where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever." Paul, the man in Christ, uses words which explain that when he says, "Unto him... be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 2:21), and, coupled with that, "a habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22). You can see the Divine thought. What is the place of glory where God will dwell? It is no place on this earth as geographically located or materially constructed. It is a spiritual sanctuary, a habitation of God through the Spirit. It is something which has been spiritually constructed, constituted and perfected, and His dwelling and His habitation will be there, and it will be the place of His glory unto all ages for ever and ever. What is it? In other words it is the realisation in a people of that conformity to the image of His Son. God, by His Spirit, is working to make us a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, for His own habitation. "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, ...and I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God" (Rev. 21:2-3); "...the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God" (Rev. 21:10- 11). This is none other than the corporate man in Christ perfected and glorified. That is a vision of Christ and what Christ means in the thought and intention of God. It is a revelation of that for which the Spirit has come, and an explanation of what the Holy Spirit is doing to get rid of all in us which cannot be glorified. Having brought life and incorruption to light by the Gospel, He is working unto that day when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal shall put on immortality, and death shall be swallowed up in victory, when the Church is a glorious Church where God Himself is found without restraint and in which He is worshipped in His universe. The Man in the glory, being at God's right hand exalted, established, settled, is the assured realisation of God's end. He cannot be there without His members. He cannot go on there alone. All the meaning of the presence there of Christ, the Son of man, would be stripped from Him if His Church never came there, made like unto Him; there would be no meaning in it at all. He is, after all, but the Firstborn among many brethren; He is bringing many sons to glory. The Spirit of sonship has come, not to try and do something, not with a hope that it may be; He has come in all the sovereignty of that One there, and it is going to be. Settle your faith in this. However many questions you may have as to yourself, however often you may despair in yourself and be on the point of giving everything up - and who that knows his own heart does not know the frequent temptation to do this? - yet there is no need for despair. There is another view, there is something else going on. The Spirit has come, He is within. He sees One at the right hand of God, and in spite of our despair about ourselves, in spite of the discouragement and impossibility that we find in ourselves, the Spirit of God is holding us to the Man in the glory, and going on with His work; and it is not until we abandon faith in the omnipotence of the Spirit of God that hope departs and despair settles down. While we will believe that the Spirit of Christ has come in all that omnipotence of the exalted Son of man, and is in us to do the work, hope springs eternal, there need be no despair. He is working in sovereignty.

I do believe that this book of The Acts, as it opens, says so loudly and clearly this one thing - that out from heaven the Spirit of Almighty God has come in sovereignty to see things through. Let Herod do what he likes, let the kings and the nations have their confederacies, let all conditions work adversely, let Satan and all his forces operate, the Church goes on and these very things are drawn right into the train of Christ's triumph and made to serve the Divine ends. The things which befall work out for the furtherance of the Gospel, and the very things which look like disasters and calamities prove, at long last, to be complementary things under the sovereignty of the risen Lord. The Spirit of God is in charge. Oh, that our faith may settle there and deliver us from our despair! There is a Man in the glory; the Spirit of God has come and has entered into us with just one object - to make all things abound toward the reproducing of that Man in us, in measure individually, and in the collective measure of the individuals in one glorified Body, Christ corporate. What possibilities! What a prospect! May the Lord give us a new vision of His beloved Son and a new heart confidence and assurance that He Who hath begun a good work in us will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 3 - Abraham's Seed

We are considering the deeper and fuller meaning of what came in on the day of Pentecost - the nature and order of an entirely new day in this world's history, that nature and order being essentially spiritual: a new order and character introduced by the advent of the Holy Spirit to constitute everything immediately spiritual; not indirectly and ultimately, but immediately spiritual.

The Voice of the Spirit the Governing Factor

One of the primal features of this new day is this - take careful note of it because it is the key and the basis of everything - that the voice of the Spirit is to be taken account of rather than what is going on in the religious world around. It is that which cleaves things asunder, puts things into two different realms in this book. With this new age we see on the one hand in the religious world that which claims authority with power, position and influence, which has established itself and taken possession, but which is shown to be something which is not according to the Spirit of God. On the other hand, over against that, we see what is brought out into such clear, manifest relief, that to bear and to take account of the voice of the Spirit of God may be, and very often is, another thing altogether. You recall Stephen's defence. You know that he comprehends the whole of this history. He starts with Abraham. "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham" (Acts 7:2). That is the beginning of this religious history, and he traces right through stage by stage until he arrives at the murder of the Lord Jesus, and he sums it up in one great declaration, sweeping away the whole ground of that established thing on the earth, and saying, as comprehending it all, "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit" (Acts 7:51). Something spiritual, a taking note of the voice of the Spirit of God, is something very different indeed from an established religious order on this earth, and very often runs directly counter to it. That is a strong statement but it is said in order that we may immediately get to the very heart of what it is the Lord is seeking in this present age - a people of a spiritual life who are governed by the Spirit of God, who take account of what the Spirit says, and are obedient and conform thereunto. It is a spiritual people God is after in this age, not religious people. Paul has built a very great spiritual structure upon this very principle. A large part of his letter to the Romans and the whole of his letter to the Galatians and of the letter to the Hebrews - whoever wrote that letter, I think there is little doubt that the influence of Paul is found in it and it comes altogether into line with the other two on this very matter - is occupied with the sole object of pointing out that traditional religion is one thing and life in the Spirit is another; that religion as here on this earth in all its forms may be one thing, while what is of the Spirit of God may be altogether another thing. That is what Paul set out to make clear, and he built this tremendous edifice upon this fact. If you read Galatians carefully in the light of that, you will see that that is what he is after - to divide between this religious thing and this other which is of the Spirit.

You notice that Abraham has quite a place in this book of the Acts. Note, for example, the following fragment:

"For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him" (Acts 2:39).

If you want to know what that promise is, you have to turn to Galatians, and you find at once it is linked with Abraham.

"...that upon the Gentiles might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:14).

"For to you is the promise." That is the word on the day of Pentecost, and it refers to the coming of the Spirit.

"...who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises" (Rom. 9:4).

Abraham has quite a place here in this book in relation to the Holy Spirit, the promise.

The Seed of Abraham

The first thing we see here is that the challenge of the new age, the new day and its meaning, was first presented to the seed of Abraham, and the nature of the challenge was that they should become a spiritual seed of Abraham as something more than a natural seed. The significance of the day of Pentecost is just that. Now by the coming of the Spirit a transition is to be made, a change is to take place. The natural seed of Abraham should become a spiritual seed of Abraham. There is a difference between the seed of Abraham and the children of Israel. The seed of Abraham is racial; the children of Israel is national. We shall speak about that when we come to the elect nation. Here the racial side of things, the seed of Abraham, is in view; but Paul makes it perfectly clear in his letter to the Romans and to the Galatians that those that are of the Spirit are children of Abraham, not those which are of the flesh. We have said before that Paul's letters were all written and circulated before ever the book of the Acts was written, so that the spiritual things were already there established in the teaching of the Lord's people, and the people were able to interpret this survey of the history in the light of spiritual things; and that is exactly what we are doing now. We have the spiritual interpretation of Acts right in our hands. We have the letter to the Galatians in our hands before ever we approach this book of the Acts, and what does it say? Well, the challenge to the seed of Abraham is that they are not established before God on natural grounds: they can only be established before God on spiritual grounds. What they are naturally is not what God is seeking, but what they are spiritually. "First that which is natural; then that which is spiritual," and it is that which matters. That is the object of the Lord - a spiritual seed of Abraham.

A People Not Numbered Among the Nations

We have much by way of illustration as to what God's thought was for this spiritual seed. He chose sovereignly in grace. You know how Paul argues that the law did not exist when God chose Abraham and his seed; that choice was not on the ground of law at all, not of works, not of anything that was in them or that they did or tried to do. It was just in His sovereign grace that He chose and marked them out; and the remarkable thing is that that nation has borne its own natural characteristics right through history which have never been lost. I remember the late Samuel Schor saying that in any part of this world he could always, without a word, detect a Jew, no matter how much the Jew had been absorbed into the nation. That is saying a lot. I think he used the phrase "a son of Abraham"; that was his way of speaking. The mark is there, something which distinguishes, embodying a spiritual principle which is brought out in this new spiritual race belonging to this age - but not now of Christians marked off by their physiognomy nor by their language, nor by their particular country. There is no doubt that the hand of God was upon Balaam, although he was not a very willing and joyous prophet under the hand of God; but the Spirit of God made Balaam say about Israel as he looked from the top of the mountain: "It is a people that dwelleth alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations" (Num. 23:9). There is surely a spiritual principle there that this spiritual seed of Abraham which has been brought in with the Day of Pentecost is a people distinguished from all other people, whether by physiognomy or not. I believe that if we are living in the radiance of Divine life, there will be something of it betrayed by our faces. At any rate, the world will know something if we are really living in touch with the Lord, and there will be a language which only the spiritual can enjoy and understand.

There will be those spiritual counterparts of the seed of Abraham, a people different from all the rest.

Now, the tragedy of what is called 'the Church' has so often been, and perhaps is more today than ever, that that distinctiveness is being lost. It seems today as if a set is being made in some way to remove all the offence and all the difference, and to get us near to people without anything that clashes, in the hope of winning them. Yes, that is what is going on in the religious world around; it is a conforming to this age. But what came in at Pentecost is fundamentally this, that this people of the Spirit are so utterly different in the very centre of their being, different altogether from all other peoples: and their power and influence lie in that fact. You cannot fit them in with other things, and it is not because they are awkward and difficult and deliberately irritate people, but there is that which, by reason of their spiritual constitution marks them off; and if they did but know it, this is the secret of their influence in the world. The progress and increase of spiritual life mean this, that the gap widens all the time between the children of God and those in the world who are not such. That is not to be taken literally in this sense, that we begin a mistaken system of hiving off, shutting ourselves up, getting out of touch. That is a wrong application of the principle. The Lord Jesus is pre-eminently our example in that He could move in any circle, and He did so deliberately - publicans and sinners, all classes - He moved amongst them, but His power over them, was in His basic difference from them. Let us be careful how we are caught in this great movement of conforming to this age. To conform is to lose spiritual power. Well, spiritual seed is what God is after, a spiritual seed of Abraham.

A Seed of Promise

What was that seed? It is said to be according to promise. The Apostle marks it out by that word "promise." He distinguishes thereby between Ishmael and Isaac. God never promised Ishmael; he was not the son of promise, therefore he never stood before God in the fulfilment of His thought and intention. He came into conflict with the whole thought of God. But Isaac was the son of promise. What does that mean? It does not mean that God just said, I will give you a son. The promise means more than that. It means that God had taken His place with Isaac, God had committed Himself to Isaac. He never committed Himself to Ishmael. A promise is something more than a verbal understanding or undertaking. It is a committal. I have given my promise, and my name, my honour and all my resources are involved. If I am a man of honour, then I am committed, with all that I have, to see that the realisation of the purpose in that direction is brought about. I am committed up to the hilt when I have given my promise. God was committed to Isaac, and that is why it was not possible for Isaac to be eventually swallowed up of death; he must be a child of resurrection. If he dies, God's honour is involved and goes down with Isaac. Isaac was the son of promise in that sense, that God was covenanted to him. "In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Gen. 21:12).

Now you know how Paul works that out in his Galatian letter, and it comes back into Acts. He works Acts out in his Galatian letter. Again, the seed of Abraham is not that which is natural, but that which is spiritual. "They that are of faith, the same are sons of Abraham" (Gal.3:7). They that are of faith are Abraham's seed. "He saith not, And to seeds, as of many: but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ" (Gal. 3:16).

God is committed to that spiritual seed, that counterpart of Isaac. He is that Son of resurrection. "...whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should beholden of it" (Acts 2:24). Why? Because God is bound up with Him, God is in Him, God is one with Him. And we are all children of Abraham in that sense by faith, and all sons of God through faith, in Christ Jesus (Gal.3:26). That is how it is worked out - the spiritual seed of promise to which God is committed, and which cannot therefore be engulfed of death, but must know all the Divine resource in the power of resurrection.

A Resurrection Seed

That brings in one of the major basic principles and truths of this spiritual seed, that it is a resurrection seed, and that its history is to be characterised by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I cannot lay enough emphasis upon that. It is not just a truth enunciated, it is the most searching and testing thing that you and I can have to do with - that, if we are the spiritual seed of Abraham in Christ by faith, we are called to have our whole history based upon this fundamental law - the power of His resurrection. It is something stated as a truth, but it is something to be taken hold of by faith. Again and again in the course of our history we shall be at the place where there is no hope but in "God who raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. 1:9) if there is to be any future at all. We shall come there, in our own spiritual history, we shall come there in our own soul life - that we are at an end of our resources, mind, heart and will. We may come ofttimes in our very physical life to the place where, if God does not do something, it is an end. We shall come there in the work of God - where everything seems to declare that this is the finish of the work, there is nothing more possible; but now is the occasion for the God Who raiseth the dead, the God of promise, the God of Isaac, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not just a Bible teaching. This is searching truth. We have to have our life based upon it and to believe it, and when it begins to work we must remember what is happening. I have no doubt that we have all accepted it as a truth, we believe it as something set forth; but when it begins to work in us, somehow we lose the whole thing. When we really do get to an end and say, This is the finish! we begin to accept it as the finish, we agree that all is finished. Instead of that, we should not trust in ourselves but in God. "Should not trust in ourselves" - that is negative. The positive is - "We ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should... trust... in God who raiseth the dead." That is very practical. It will find us out many times, if we are men and women of the Spirit.

Now, you say: That is extraordinary - I always thought if only I was filled with the Spirit, if I really knew the meaning of Pentecost, I should always be on top in the full flood of life; surely there is a contradiction? Not at all! This resurrection life works primarily and firstly in our spirit, and it is from there that we have got to come up in mind and in body. The real working of the Spirit is like that. You are waiting and crying for the Lord to come and touch you on the outside, to lift you, to quicken you. You are waiting for something to happen that you can sense somewhere in the circumference of life. Death is there in the realm of your soul, your mind, your sensibilities, your body, your surroundings; you are waiting for the Lord to do something there. No, that is natural, that day has passed in the order of God. You have to know a touch of life in your spirit. It may come by a word from the Lord. If you are called to the ministry of the Word you may be completely dry and dark and dead for the next bit of ministry which looms ahead, but when God's moment comes, the word of the Lord comes to you and from that moment the ministry begins to open out and you fulfil it; that is spiritual ministry. Or in any other connection the principle holds good - the power of resurrection begins in our spirit. We have to know it there, and then in faith move on that, and we find that mind and body come into line for all that the Lord wants. "First that which is natural; then that which is spiritual." That is the law of the Lord now; this is the "afterward" day. The day of the natural passed with the day of Pentecost; things were all outward until then.

You know how true that was in Israel's case. They had only to do something outward and God responded. But not now; you cannot get anything by law now. You can observe all the ritual, but you never get anything from God that way. This is the "afterward," it is spiritual; it is now a life in and by the Spirit.

To reinforce what we have been saying, let us remind ourselves of the fact that God never committed Himself in this matter of the promise of Isaac until the thing was utterly impossible naturally. The promise was never given until the whole situation was a natural impossibility. Ishmael - "first that which is natural"; but God is looking on, He has in principle something more in view, He is after the spiritual, and so He gave His promise to Abraham, and with it committed Himself, only when things were absolutely impossible naturally for the realisation of His promise. Are you prepared to accept that as a working principle in life all the way along? You cannot have anything more testing than that. It is very real, it is desperately real, so real that when you are in it you can do any desperate thing. It is so real that if you are not alive to this other side, if you do not believe in God Who raiseth the dead, anything can happen. But the God of resurrection comes in only when resurrection is the only thing possible; and resurrection is God's prerogative alone. This is a matter for Almighty God alone, that is all there is to it. Unless Almighty God comes in, then there is no prospect, no hope, whatsoever. That is a law of life for the spiritual; that is the nature of things in this new age.

The Sign of Circumcision

Now, God followed this up with a sign, an outward mark of a spiritual significance. He gave to Abraham the sign of circumcision. It became the mark of all the seed of Abraham, distinguishing them from all other peoples, and establishing a law. Let us be sensible about this, even if it is a delicate subject. It established a law that all the fruit of life from that time onward was to be wholly for God. That is the meaning of circumcision - to be wholly separated unto God. God was very meticulous about that. You remember that extraordinary incident in the life of Moses. Moses had met God in the bush, God had spoken to him about His intentions, and then God had commissioned him as the deliverer of His people, and Moses was on his way to fulfil his Divinely-given commission; and then you have this statement - "...the Lord met him and sought to kill him" (Ex. 4:24). An extraordinary thing that the man Divinely called, chosen and commissioned should be met by God with intent to slay him! God was saying, in effect: Yes, but, after all, nothing of it is possible; with all that vision, with all that purpose, with all that intention, it is all suspended until something has happened. And you notice what happened. It was made quite clear what the difficulty was - Moses had not circumcised his son; and when that was done, he went on and fulfilled his task. All the fruit of his life was to be held for God, everything was to be upon this basis, that the flesh is out of the way, and all is of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of the flesh, for God. Oh, what a history is bound up with that! Paul takes that up again in the letter to the Galatians and says in substance: It is not circumcision of the flesh at all in this new day; that all belongs to the natural, that belongs to yesterday; we have come into a new day, and now circumcision is circumcision of the heart where everything is unto God, and the flesh put away. Writing to the Colossians, he explains that when he says we were "buried with him in baptism" (Col. 2:12), and in that connection he says "...ye were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2:11). It is the Cross dealing with that self-life which will come even into the service of God, into a Divine, commission - that uncircumcised Philistine hand that will always be meddling with Divine things, even with the Ark itself. Yes, we are all capable of that. It is the peril that is always nearest to us of bringing our natural life in some kind of impingement upon Divine things, getting into the Lord's work ourselves, doing it ourselves, being interested in the Lord's things ourselves. It takes the Spirit of God in His perfect knowledge and understanding and insight to take the full measure of this self-life; we cannot do it.

But here is the point - this is the day of the Spirit, and those who are the spiritual seed of Abraham, who are now under the power of the Spirit, governed by the Spirit, will be made alive by the Spirit continually to that which is of the Spirit and that which is not. The more we go on with the Lord, the fuller and clearer will become our perception as to what is spiritual and what is natural, even in our Christian life. It is a whole life of education. Things that we thought at one time were quite all right, quite permissible, quite in line with the Lord's will, as we go on we come to find that even those things have come into a realm of question, the Spirit is not agreeing with them now. We have come to discover that He never did agree with them, but we were not enough alive to Him to know His mind about them. He deals with us as with children as long as we are children, but when it is time that we should leave childhood the Spirit begins to deal with us very drastically if we are going on with the Lord. It is this kind of people that the Lord is after in this age. Oh, what a difference it would make if all the Lord's people were really governed by this law of the Spirit of life in Christ, whose hearts were truly circumcised, that all the fruit of life should be wholly unto God; because this law of the Spirit is not outward, but inward.

I wonder if you are feeling the Lord touch your hearts in this matter? I am so anxious not just to heap words upon words and truths upon truths. I do feel the Lord wants to do something, not just to say things, and it does matter above everything else whether we are able to take account of the voice of the Spirit rather than to be actuated and governed by even the Christian and evangelical world around us. Yes, even in the evangelical world Christianity has become a very set thing; it has become fixed as an order, a system of things; you have to conform to it, and if you do not, well, you are not sound or you are in some way heretical. No, we shall not go wrong in being governed by the Spirit; but even there many good Christians may not be able to understand. Are you prepared for that? It is not conformity to a system of teaching or truths that is needed, but to be able to take account of the movement of the Spirit of God. That will not make us independent, a law to ourselves: the Lord will attend to that. But oh, it is more important than anything else in these days the Lord should have a people who know the Spirit, who hear His voice and follow Him; and all who do that will move in the same direction, will flow together. We said earlier that the reason for so much division and conflict is the fact that the Spirit is not Lord. Other things are Lord - Christian interests are Lord, interpretations are Lord, mental appraisements are Lord, all sorts of things have taken Lordship. Where the Spirit is Lord, we shall speak and think the same thing, there will be no mere individualism. I think I must stop there. Let us listen to what the Spirit says. Let us ask the Lord to make very sure in us that we are not being moved in our lives, in the course that we are taking, by what is religiously natural, but that we are really children of the Spirit and know the Spirit and are in conformity to God's thought for this present dispensation, true children of Abraham according to the Spirit.

Chapter 4 - Spiritual Israel

We are seeking to see what came in with the day of Pentecost, that is, the deeper and fuller meaning of what was introduced into this world on that day. We have been saying that it did mark a new day in this world's history. When we say 'day' we mean 'age,' a 'dispensation.' That is a big and difficult word: it simply means the order of things obtaining at any given time - that is a dispensation. What is the order and nature of things which was introduced on the day of Pentecost, as different from all other ages in the past, and as represented by the book which goes by the title of "The Acts"? Let me say again, that title, was never given to it by its writer. Many, many years after the book was written someone gave it the title of "The Acts of the Apostles," but Luke, who, wrote it, did not call it that. It is a very handy title, but it can be rather misleading, because it tends to confine attention to the things done, without an adequate recognition of the nature of what was happening, which is the important thing. That is what we are concerned with - the nature of things brought in to characterise this new age.

Now just another word. We have said before that this book of The Acts was not written until after all the letters of the Apostle Paul were written and in circulation. That is interesting, and, has a meaning. If you were to arrange the, New Testament in the order in which the books were written, you would have to change the common order completely and put Paul's letters before The Acts. That means something. It means this very thing that we are seeking to show - that all that is in the book of The Acts has spiritual meaning, is explained in the letters of Paul, and in other letters in the New Testament; and it would be very interesting if you could take the letters first and read them, never having looked at Acts - read them carefully until you knew what was in them, and then for the first time pick up the book called Acts and begin to read it. What would be the value, of that? I think it would be this. When you came upon certain things in Acts, right from the beginning, you would say: 'Oh, I understand what that means now - that means what Paul has said here and here in his epistles. I can see that it is not just something that has happened, but it has a meaning and I can see what that meaning, is.' That would be the value of it; and I take it that that was the value to those who got the book of Acts afterwards. They had the epistles and were able in the light of them to say: 'We see the fuller meaning of all that took place at the beginning now, we know what that meant.'

Before we proceed further with that let us say a word to explain why the books of the New Testament are arranged as they are. We say that men decided to put the books of the Bible in their present order, but there is surely another factor to be allowed for. I think the Holy Spirit was behind that. Why, then, is the book called Acts where it is, near the beginning? For this greatest and most impressive of all reasons - that you must have the Person before you can have the doctrine, because all the doctrine comes out of the Person and points to the Person and comes back to the Person. You see, it is the Lord Jesus Who is in full view when you begin to read the book of the Acts - the Lord Jesus risen, ascended, exalted, glorified - and everything has to be seen in the light of Him, as belonging to Him, as revealing Him, as explaining Him. The Person first; everything comes from the Person. And that is why this book is where it is, and we would all agree that the Holy Spirit had a hand in that arrangement. He is always concerned with bringing the Lord Jesus personally into the first place.

Now let us go on to a further opening up of this that is before us. We took at the outset a fragment from one of Paul's letters - 1 Cor. 15:46 - as our key to this whole matter, and we again note that this was written before the Acts. It was written and it was known wherever that letter to the Corinthians may have gone or wherever what was in that letter may have been made known. It was already known that this was said - "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual." Now can you not see how, in the light of that, what I have just been saying would be very true? It had been said "first... that which is natural." That belongs to all that is passed, all that has been. God made a material and natural creation - that is first. "Then that which is spiritual" - now a new creation which is spiritual. God did numerous things which could be seen and handled, but He did them with another thought in them which was not always seen. The first creation was in the natural realm. Now it is all in the spiritual realm - "then that which is spiritual" - and if these people who had had the letters picked up this book of The Acts and read it in the light of the letters they would see at once that it expressed that 'afterward' - that God is not doing things now as He did them in past days. He is doing them in a new realm, on a new principle, on a new basis. It is spiritual now; the Holy Spirit has come, and everything is of a spiritual value and significance.

In our previous meditation we got to the point of the spiritual seed of Abraham. In the early chapters of Acts, Abraham has quite a large place, and all that is said of him must be read in the light of the letters. But what is being said in the letters in relation to Abraham is that the true seed of Abraham is not that which is his natural seed, but that which is his seed spiritually by faith. What God is doing in this dispensation is to get a spiritual race. We said before that the seed of Abraham means a new race of people, a race of people taken by God and separated to be a peculiar people unto Himself. We have pointed out that this age sees that natural seed of Abraham set aside so far as concerns what God is immediately doing, but a spiritual seed is brought in, that is, a new race of which Christ (Who is not only the natural seed but also the spiritual seed of Abraham) is the Head, the first. I will not stay with that. I have to say that because it links at once with the next fragment.

Israel a Royal Nation

You will notice here with the introduction of this book of The Acts that another phrase is used - "Ye men of Israel." That is the word of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Israel comes into the picture; not only Abraham, the seed of Abraham, but Israel. We said before - and this is what we are going to open up a little more fully now - that there is a difference between the seed of Abraham and the children of Israel in this sense, that the seed of Abraham is racial; the term relates to a race; and, while the children of Israel are of that race, the term "the children of Israel" belongs essentially to a nation. In the race sense, the seed of Abraham is Isaac. "In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Gen. 21:12), and Isaac in type stands for the man of resurrection. By a miracle in a very true sense, Abraham received Isaac back as from the dead, and Isaac stands for resurrection. Now then, Peter says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. 1:3). You see, resurrection is a begetting, we are the children of God on the ground of resurrection union with Christ. That makes a race begotten in resurrection. That has to do with the term "the seed."

But when you come to "the children of Israel" you advance upon that; the term is not racial, it is national, and is connected with Jacob; not with Isaac, but with Jacob now, for it was Jacob whose name was changed to Israel, which name was taken over and given to this nation - "the children of Israel." But what is the particular significance? It is not birth, it is not just race that is involved. Israel is a prince with God. "Thou... hast prevailed," said the angel to Jacob on that night of Jabbok and Peniel. 'Thou hast prevailed as a prince with God' - that is the meaning of Israel. So this nation which includes the seed, which is the seed, means a corporate people - not so many individuals all born of one father but a collective people brought together in nationhood, who stand upon the ground of God's determination that they shall be the people who govern, who rule, who are in dominion. The prophecy concerning them was - "The Lord will make thee the head, and not the tail" (Deut. 28:13), and, while they were in right relationship with God, there was no nation on the earth that could stand before them. The mightiest nation of the then-known world and the mightiest king - Egypt and Pharaoh - simply went down because of God's destiny bound up with these people. No nation could stand before them. They were a royal nation in principle - that was God's thought. The children of Israel, sons of a prince with God who has prevailed - that was God's thought concerning Israel. It meant ascendancy above all the nations.

The Tragedy of a Lost Position

Well now, we do not find it like that in the beginning of the book of the Acts. Although it is - "Ye men of Israel" - there is the tragedy of a lost position and influence, lost spiritual life and power; but the Holy Spirit is come, and with Pentecost a new age is brought in, and with that new age a new house of Israel, a spiritual house of Israel. I am not saying that the Church is a spiritualised Israel. There is a great difference between a spiritualised Israel and the Church. I am not going to take time to explain that difference, but I mention it in case it should be thought that I am implying that. The Church is something unique. In the eternal thought and counsels of God it stands supreme, far above Israel after the flesh. There is, in one sense, no comparison between the Church and Israel. Even in the days of its restoration and glory which are to come, Israel will be but an earthly people; the Church will be something far above that. But what I am saying is this, that God has ever done His works, whatever they have been, with spiritual principles governing; and when He chose Israel after the flesh and constituted Israel a nation, He did so with spiritual principles and thoughts in mind, and it was because Israel never recognised those spiritual principles that the tragedy of their present setting aside took place. That is exactly what the Apostle is saying in the letter to the Hebrews. "Wherefore I was displeased with this generation" (that is, Israel in the wilderness), "and said, They do alway err in their heart: but they did not know my ways." They had not an inner perception of God's meaning, of what He was after, why He was doing this and that. They did not see the spiritual meaning of their deliverance from Egypt, they did not see God's meaning in the passage of the Red Sea, and in His manifold dealings with them in the wilderness. "They did not know, my ways." All they were doing was simply moving in a kind of mechanical way: 'Well, the order today is to march so we march; the order tomorrow is to stop so we stop. Circumstances today are such-and-such; we do not like them, we do not want them... Now things are a little better; we like this; let us have as much of this as we can.' They were governed by how things affected them outwardly, moving according to a programme imposed upon them, with no intelligence, no understanding, no enquiry or perception as to what God meant by it all. "They did not know my ways," they erred in their hearts. That is the statement about their history through those forty years.

Now, God had a meaning, God had thoughts in it all. We have come to see something of those thoughts. It is not my intention to take up all the history of Israel in its typology. I am after one thing - that is, by all these means to try to bring home to you, with the Lord's help, this one fact - that in the day in which you and I live, because the Holy Spirit is the predominant factor, God is after a spiritual state of things in His people, He is after a spiritual people; not just a religious people but a spiritual people. I want to try and show you what that means.

Recovery Possible through the Grace of God

Well, the children of Israel were, as we know, firstly an elect nation. That word "elect" is used by Peter and by Paul of the Church. "...elect... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Pet. 1:1-2); "Put on therefore, as God's elect..." (Col. 3:12). "Elect" - something which exists by the sovereign act of God and in the sovereign grace of God. That is a truth which lies behind Israel's history, but it is missed. It lies behind the Church which, in this dispensation, takes the place of Israel and (because it is a spiritual thing) far transcends the natural Israel. An "elect" something chosen in the sovereign grace of God. That is the foundation of things. We shall never be allowed to get away from this fact: it will be brought home to us increasingly as we go on in the Christian life: however long we may stay here on this earth, however much we may come to know of the Lord and His things, however large may be our spiritual measure, the one thing which God will make us know more and more is that we have our standing with Him on the basis of pure grace; that even after fifty, sixty, or seventy years of the Christian life, it is a poor look-out for us, but for the sovereign grace of God. We are so slow really to get the significance of that. He has given us Israel's history by way of impressing us with this spiritual truth. Israel never saw it, they erred in their hearts in this matter. If they had seen it, they would have been a broken people, but they were a proud, stiff-necked people because they never saw the grace of God in their existence; but the Lord has preserved their history for us. "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Rom. 15:4). I do not know how you feel when you read the Old Testament. Read the story, the different accounts of the forty years in the wilderness, and then read the prophets. Do you find very much pleasure in reading through the prophets? Do you enjoy Jeremiah? I cannot say that, just reading it as a record, I find very much delight in it. Then Ezekiel; then what are called the Minor Prophets. There is so much there that is not very pleasant to read. It is an awful story. Think of Hosea; there are beautiful things there, but, taking it as a story, an account of Israel's condition, how terrible! It is the most awful unveiling of human nature - the persistence, the inveteracy of human pride and self-will and rebellion. And God has never for one moment sought to cover it up and say, These are my people, hide all that, do not let it be known, it is such a disgrace. He has opened it all up; there it is all gathered up. Stephen recounted to the rulers of Israel the whole course of things from the appearing of the God of glory to Abraham. He went through the history and brought it right up to the slaying of Jesus Christ. He summed it all up in this - "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye" (Acts 7:51). That has been the story all the way through; and yet what beautiful things come out in the midst of that story, especially in that little book of Hosea! The broken heart of God which is never going to give this people up! "I have loved..." "I have loved...": and that is all there is to be said. 'My love is an everlasting love, when I love it does not matter what happens; I love, I go on loving.' Israel's is an awful story right up to the death of Christ, and it is a tragic story since. We need not romance about it, it still goes on. But there is a day still for Israel in the purpose of God, because He has loved; and love is only grace in action. I say often to myself; If the Lord will bear with so and so, if the Lord will hold on to that, there is hope for me yet! I find that comforting. We may be as bad as Israel; we could hardly be worse. If the Lord can go as far as He has with them, He can go even to our length! It is the grace of God. Remember that.

Grace Basic to Spirituality

And it has always got to be like that, the full consciousness that the grace of God is basic to everything; and that is the very essence of spirituality. Do you want to find a truly spiritual person? You will not find him proud, arrogant, self-sufficient, assertive. If you want to see the grace of God, you will see it in a Barnabas; and the name of Barnabas comes out particularly in connection with his letting everything go for his Lord's sake. "Having a field, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet" (Acts 4:37). Everything has gone for his Lord's sake; he is holding nothing for himself. Grace is humility, selflessness. It is the result in our hearts of the realisation of how great is God's love, and of how much we owe to His grace - that we have nothing to stand upon but the grace of God. That is true spirituality; we begin there.

It is the great thing about the children of Israel. How will they really come into ascendancy? This is the point. Who is a prince with God? What is the true spiritual house of Israel, to prevail with God? It is that which consciously rests wholly and solely upon the grace of God. Do you want spiritual power and influence? Do you want real spiritual ascendancy? Do you know how it will come about? It will come about by your breaking, as with Jacob. It will come about by your self-emptying. The weakness of so many is their strength; they are not broken, they are not utterly conscious of their dependence upon God for everything. That is the secret of spiritual prevailing. That is very simple, but it is very important. So the Lord would lead spiritual people through very deep ways, emptying and breaking and weakening and undoing, and turning them upside down and inside out so that they do not know where or what they are. All that they can say is - Well, the Lord is gracious, the Lord is faithful, I believe God, and that is my only ground of hope. People who get there are in the way of knowing the power of God resting upon them. This true spiritual Israelite, who had been a natural Israelite - Paul - said, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me... for when I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Cor. 12:9-10). That is Jacob translated into spiritual terms. It is important. You feel the Lord is undoing you, breaking you, emptying you. Do not think, as the enemy would have you think, that He is against you; He is for you, He is seeking to do something to lead you on. The way down, is the way up, under the hand of God. Elect according to grace, His sovereign grace.

The Power of the Name of Jesus

In that connection, do you not think it is rather remarkable that in the Holy Spirit's governing of the arrangement of this record in the book of The Acts, so quickly - in the third chapter - we come upon the lame man lying at the door of the Temple? He had been lame from his birth and had been lying at the door for many years. Why at the door? Well, you say, people going in and out would see and take compassion. I suppose that was the strategy of these who put him there; but there is something else in it. The man was a parable. No lame man was allowed to enter into the privileges of priestly service in the house of God, according to the law of Moses (Lev. 21:16-21). He was under an embargo; he must stay outside. I think it is very wonderful that we come on that so soon, because the appeal is to "ye men of Israel" - that princely people who were called to the position of highest privilege with God; and how are the men of Israel after the flesh, naturally, at the time when those words are addressed to them and when these things are taking place in the midst of them? Oh, they are in the position of that poor man. They may not believe it; they may be thinking very much otherwise about themselves; but actually and truly their position before God is that of a poor lame thing, unable to stand up before God and enter into His presence. Outside - that is their condition. Here is this poor lame man, who is said to be more than forty years old (Acts 4:22), representing Israel still crippled despite their forty years in the wilderness, unable really to walk straight, or to walk in the Spirit at all, helpless, living a life of impotence, spiritual incompetency, still outside. A great psalm was sung when they came out of Egypt, including a reference to entering into God's holy habitation. He had brought them out to bring them in to His holy mountain (Ex. 15:1-18). After long years they are not in yet; they are still outside the door of His holy habitation.

Now it is a new day, but it is a spiritual Israel, and so Peter and John proclaimed the name of Jesus to this man, and then taking him by the hand, said to him, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Have you got it? The spiritual Israel is that which stands in the authority of the name of Jesus, stands into all the power and virtue of that name. That is where your prince with God is, that is the Israel - one who prevails in the Name. Everything is in that name. We have a lot to learn about the virtue of the name of the Lord Jesus.

"Jesus, the name high over all,

In hell, or earth, or sky."

The all-prevailing Name constitutes an Israel after the Spirit indeed in spiritual ascendancy, and so this book of The Acts is just a record of their going forth for the sake of the Name, in the power of the Name. "In what name have ye done this? ...Be it known unto you all... in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth...." It was all "in the name." This is the new spiritual Israel - "in the name"; by the grace of God, in all the meaning of that mighty name.

They are the two first steps into the new age - the grace which hath appeared, and the name of Jesus which is above every name. I can imagine those saints at Philippi receiving Luke's record in The Acts and reading these chapters about the Name, and saying, 'Well, Paul wrote to us some time ago and said, "God... gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Phil. 2:9-10). Oh yes, we know about that name!'

Deliverance from the Self-Life by the Cross

The spiritual Israel is that which is delivered from its incapacitation through the flesh. It was the flesh predominant in Israel in the wilderness which kept it out of the land. It was the self-life asserting itself in all kinds of ways which simply crippled them. It was living unto their own interests that did it. Believe me, in the measure in which we are actuated at all by personal, natural or worldly considerations, we are spiritually crippled. That is unfortunately the story of the Church today. What is called the Church today has got very largely into the condition of Israel in the wilderness, and that is why Paul takes that very thing and uses it against the flesh that is in the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 10:1-12). There is a warning. It is taken up quite a number of times, as we know, in the letter to the Hebrews. "They failed to enter in..." (Heb. 4:6); the flesh prevailing, the Spirit was quenched, resisted. The truly spiritual people of God are those who have been delivered from that handicap of a predominant self-life through the Cross of the Lord Jesus; who have passed through the Jordan, baptised into His death and into His resurrection. That is the kind of people that the Lord is after - those who can go up and possess, before whom the forces of evil will give way, a people truly crucified to the flesh, a spiritual Israel indeed. This lame man came into the good of that; he rose up and leaped and walked and entered with them into the Temple, leaping and praising God. What a change! Yes, it was a new day, a new dispensation had arrived for him, a dispensation of Jesus Christ known in the power of the Holy Ghost. When we say the Lord is seeking today, in this dispensation, to have a spiritual people, we mean this.

Inward Government by the Spirit

Now, you can be a Christian, you can decide for Christ, you can give your life to Christ, to be His henceforth, and then everything of the Christian life for you may become something outward. A Christian 'goes to Church,' and reads the Bible, and prays; a Christian believes certain things - the inspiration of the Bible, that Jesus is the Son of God, and so on. This is what Christians do, and you may do it all. That is very largely the Christian life for multitudes. It is simply the entering into an already framed and moulded and fixed system of things - what you do or do not do because you are a Christian. That is not what the Lord is after. If you are what the Lord is after, of course you will believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and that Jesus is the Son of God, and you will pray and read your Bible; but you will not, by that alone, be what the Lord is seeking. What is He wanting? He is wanting you to have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you as your personal Teacher, to be as real to you as any human adviser or counsellor could be; that you may know in your own heart that the Lord Jesus by the Holy Spirit is telling you this and telling you that, and saying, Yes, to this, and No, to that, and you are increasingly coming to know that the Lord Jesus is not only a living Person in heaven, but a living Person in your own heart, and you are learning from Him inside. He may tell you through His Word, but you know it is more than mere words in a book; there is a living Person Who is saying something to you. You are increasingly coming to understand the mind of that Person, really gaining intelligence about the things of God. That is a spiritual person, and there is all the difference between just being a Christian in the way of things outward, and walking by the knowledge of the Lord in your own heart. I have said that simply for the sake of younger people, but there is not one of us who can do without that reminder. This is the age of the Holy Spirit's government. It is not, What is the thing that is usually done? What is the accepted thing? What do Christians do? What is expected of us? It is not that. Never for a moment are we, in the first place, to take our cue from an established Christian order and system; we have to go to the Lord. If everybody who came into the Church came in on this ground - that every step was something which the Lord Himself had ratified in their own hearts: they had not just taken it and accepted it because they were told they ought to: it was a living issue between themselves and the Lord - what a living Church there would be! That is the heart of what the Lord is trying to bring us to - we live in a spiritual age requiring a spiritual people, which means knowing Christ after the Spirit, by the Spirit, and knowing Him so increasingly.

We leave it there for the time being. The Lord has yet far more light and truth to break forth from His Word than those who know most ever imagined. Do not close yourself up and say that you know all truth, that you have got it all! You do not know anything yet! There is no one on this earth who really knows anything more than the beginnings of what there is to be known of Christ. It is going to take us eternity to know Him in His fulness. But He can give His fuller light to those who are spiritual, who are taught of the Spirit and alive to the Lord for Him to reveal more to them. May we be after this kind, a true spiritual Israel.

Chapter 5 - The Sovereignty of the Lord in the Spiritual Conflict

"Why do the nations rage, and the peoples meditate a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against Jehovah, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh: The Lord will have them in derision. Then will he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure: Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore be wise, O ye kings: Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve Jehovah with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all they that take refuge in him." Psalm 2:1-12.

"And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord, and against his Anointed: for of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint..." Acts 4:24-27.

We are taking account of the new nature and order of things, which came in for the age with the advent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost - a new spiritual order, the setting up and the establishing of the Lordship of the Spirit, the supremacy of that which is spiritual; the heart and the sum of the whole matter proving to be a revelation and a knowing of the Lord Jesus in a spiritual way. The initiative was with the Lord in heaven - "the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven"; it was a movement on the part of God Himself.

But we do not proceed very far in "The Acts" before we can detect the rumblings of a counter-movement from another quarter - the challenging answer to heaven on the part of the forces of evil and darkness. That storm gathers force and breaks with all its might in the seventh chapter, where we have the account of Stephen's testimony and death. The thing of which to take note is that in that chapter, at that point, everything is gathered up and focused upon a two-fold issue. We may say that all that has been implied, all that has been in the Divine thought up to that moment, is there crystallised and brought up as the double issue of the whole matter - heaven's object and hell's counter-attack.

We have earlier indicated how comprehensive was Stephen's survey, starting with Abraham, tracing history down through Joseph, Moses and Israel and the prophets, right up to the end of that dispensation, and finding its heading-up point in the murder of the Lord Jesus; and in that survey two things come out, or two aspects of one inclusive thing. One is that everything points toward the Lord Jesus and His absolute sovereignty, in the purpose of God. The other is the house of God, the sanctuary: it is the place of God's dwelling, where He is to be found. It is very remarkable how those two things are here in Stephen's summing up, and they are the two things which really provoked the trouble in that moment, or caused the storm to burst. In view of the way in which Stephen speaks firstly about the Lord Jesus and then about the temple, you can quite understand that his hearers would be very deeply provoked, and embittered.

The Conflict as to Christ's Lordship

Well, as to the Lord Jesus, what Stephen does is this. He goes right back and says that God in sovereignty moved to secure that which would lead right up to His Son, and in sovereignty He appeared as the God of glory to Abraham. Then it is not long before Stephen comes to Joseph, and what has he to say about him? Well, he tells very briefly the story of Joseph and the famine and Egypt, but what he is underlining is this, that Joseph's brethren were jealous. Then having said it, having touched the thing that he is after, he passes on and soon arrives at Moses, and then speaks of his going to his brethren in Egypt, being turned against and rejected, flying into the wilderness, being met by God in the bush, commissioned, and going back supposing his brethren would receive him. Says Stephen - "our fathers... thrust him from them." They rejected him, repudiated him. Again there rose up this inward antagonism and Moses suffered at the hand of his brethren what Joseph had suffered at the hand of his brethren. So Stephen goes on, and all the time he is underscoring this particular thing, the antagonism of the Lord's people to this and that and that which pointed to Christ. Joseph and Moses pointed to Christ. Stephen quotes a passage from the Old Testament, "A prophet shall God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me" - words used by Moses pointing to Christ; and they cast him out, they would have none of that. Then Stephen goes on and brings into review the rest of that history - Israel in the wilderness - and he says some extraordinary things. I confess that I do not understand some of the things that he says in this address. We will come to them in a minute, not by way of explaining, but because there is something there that is very startling.

But he comes to the prophets - "Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? and they killed them that showed before of the coming of the Righteous One." These prophets, as he indicates, were all pointing to Christ and what Stephen is saying comprehensively is this - that right from the beginning in the history of Israel there has been something inside Israel which was ground for the Devil to work against Christ and all God's purpose concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus: something there all the time, constantly cropping up, and the forces of evil using it and causing it to work in this way, that wherever the evil powers saw an inference, a suggestion concerning the Lord Jesus, they made their hatred manifest, it came out in expression. That is the awful spiritual history back of religious nature. You can be intensely religious, as religious as the most rabid Jew and Pharisee, and yet when it comes to the real issue of the absolute sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ there is something that is positively antagonistic. You see the issue in that matter is the issue between the flesh and the Spirit, seeing that this is now the day of the Spirit that has come; and when the day of the Spirit really comes in, then the flesh is dragged out and manifested and shown to be what it really is as something energised and actuated by the very powers of evil, although it may be most religious flesh. It is a most impressive thing that we never know what is in us until we are challenged on some point of the application of the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ; if you like to put it the other way, of the absolute government of the Holy Spirit.

The Spiritual Nature of the House of God

Then Stephen touches this other thing - the sanctuary. It is there that he says these extraordinary things which I confess I do not understand. He quotes from Amos 5 - "Ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan," and the question is asked, "Did ye offer unto me slain beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?" Then Stephen adds: "Our fathers, had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness." Is he implying that, while they offered sacrifices outwardly and ostensibly to Jehovah, in their hearts they were alienated and were really worshipping some other god? A terrible suggestion; but I do not know how you are going to explain this, otherwise than that Stephen is saying in connection with the main theme - 'You people, although you appear outwardly, supposedly, as the people of God, in your hearts you are really antagonistic to the Lord, and you always have been.' He sums it all up when he says, "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit." 'Even back there in the wilderness when you were supposed to be worshipping God, deep down it was not the worship of Jehovah; some foreign thing was in you all the time.' It was a terrific charge to lay against them. You can understand their gnashing their teeth. He passes immediately from the tabernacle to the temple. "But Solomon built him a house" - and that is all Stephen has to say about it, and dismisses the whole thing, seeming to say, 'Yes, but it did not matter, it was not the real thing.' "Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands; as saith the prophet, The heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet; what manner of house will ye build me? saith the Lord." It is remarkable with what brevity Stephen dismisses that great mass of the Old Testament which circles round the temple. What is he saying? 'Because God discerned inside of the people something which was so contrary to His mind, all the outside did not really count with Him; He is after something more than that.' We know quite well that the temple did mean something in the thought of God as a type, but that is another line. Stephen is showing that all that history really deep down was not spiritual history; it was in the realm of men's souls and natural life, and therefore it was not what God was after.

Now he brings the two things out. He brings Christ right out in absolute Lordship, affirms so positively that in spite of all that they had done: in spite of everything, right through their history, of antagonism to God's Son: in spite of all Satan's fury against God's Christ: He is on the Throne, He is exalted; and then by implication he says, 'God has another kind of house, the house He has been after, not made with hands, not the tabernacle in the wilderness nor the temple. But He has something now in which He is worshipped in spirit and in truth, where there really is that which He is after. "God is (a) spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24), and this house has now been brought in with Pentecost.' That is the implication. It is a mighty twofold issue that comes out with Stephen, and it is a marvellous turning point in the course of things. Everything has been heading up to this. Something is going to happen; you can see that from hell's side things will not be allowed to go on like this much longer, but in the sovereignty of God the bursting of the storm only serves to bring out with clearer and fuller view the two things upon which all is hanging - the Lordship of Christ and the spiritual nature of God's house. I love to see the Holy Spirit's sequence. Well, there are so many details that are fascinating and tremendously inspiring, but we cannot dwell upon them.

Sovereign Outcome of Satanic Activity

(a) Paul the Issue of Stephen's death

Stephen was one of the seven deacons chosen to deal with money matters. The Holy Spirit has other thoughts. When He gets things in hand, He is not finally concerned with money and serving tables. He has the Lord Jesus in view in the fullest possible way. The Holy Spirit lifts Stephen right out of the realm to which he was appointed, because He has bigger thoughts for him. Stephen is slain, with a testimony on his face, and on his lips the cry "I see... the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." The storm breaks, terrific persecution follows. They have tasted blood, and they are going to satiate themselves. The sovereignty of the Lord Jesus is riding upon this furious tempest of hell's outbreak, and in very simple and wonderful ways that sovereignty operates. We know one of the immediate results. That sovereignty of the Lord Jesus came with full impact upon Saul of Tarsus, who was standing by and giving consent to the death of Stephen. "Why do the nations rage, and the peoples meditate a vain thing? The kings of the earth... and the rulers take counsel together...." All that is taken up here in this movement of hell. But, Jesus is Lord! "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." That is not the natural Zion, that is the heavenly, spiritual Zion. "My king." "The Lord shall have them in derision." Here it is working out. Paul is brought in as the immediate issue of Stephen and he is the one who, more than anyone else, brings into view two things - the Lordship of Christ and the spiritual nature of God's dwelling, the Church.

(b) National Enmity Destroyed in Christ

But then in other ways the sovereignty of the Spirit is seen. The next chapter brings into view another of the seven deacons - Philip. Oh, the counter-movement of the Spirit to the movement of hell is now setting in. There is persecution, yes; and by the persecution, the believers have been scattered everywhere. Philip goes down to Samaria, and preaches unto them Jesus; and yet Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans (John 4:9). That was never intended by man, but God is getting His spiritual house in which there is not Jew or Gentile exclusively - nor either of them as such. It is a spiritual house, it is a heavenly house. And so the Spirit moves down to Samaria in this connection, and the Lordship of Jesus is proclaimed and is triumphant; and out from Samaria - think of the history of Ahab, of Jezebel! - out of Samaria members are gathered into the Body of Christ.

(c) Incapacity Removed by the Spirit

Then when things are going on tremendously in Samaria, the Lord tells Philip to go down to the desert. You know the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. Oh, I think it is grand! It is the underlying thing here that is so fascinating - to see this sovereignty of the Spirit underneath everything. Down to the desert; and then this man of Ethiopia, a eunuch. We are touching a delicate thing, but we are going to be sensible, and we are not going to pass it by because it is delicate. It holds something precious if you keep to the spiritual and leave the natural out. He is a eunuch, an Ethiopian eunuch, and he has been up to Jerusalem to worship God. Evidently he is a proselyte. When he got to Jerusalem, what would happen? He would find the door of the temple shut to him. A eunuch was not allowed to enter the house of the Lord, by the Old Testament command so, having got as far as he could get, a disappointed and dissatisfied man, a man after all still seeking, he has to turn back and go away home to his distant country. And the Lord takes Philip across his path. Why was not a eunuch allowed to enter the house of the Lord? Because there is a spiritual principle involved. A eunuch is an end in himself, a dead tree, one who cannot be fruitful. You cannot have that in the house of God. God's principle says, 'Nothing which is an end in itself has a place in My house; nothing which is unfruitful can have a place before Me. My house is the place of life, continuous life.' You have only to look at Isaiah 56 and you will see there the Lord's promise to the eunuch, "...neither let the eunuch say, I am a dry tree." You see the point. Leave the natural and come to the spiritual. Here was this man who was ruled out, incapacitated, forbidden, having no place in the house of God because of his condition. The Lord Jesus came across his path through His servant Philip. Philip took up Isaiah 53 and preached unto him Jesus. Then the eunuch said, "Behold, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? ...and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him" (Acts 8:36-37). He died to his death in the death of Christ; he died to all that he was by nature in the death of Christ, and, rising in the resurrection of Christ, he would be a fruitful branch with a new life, a resurrection life. There is something very precious there.

Why that story? Oh, we are occupied with this movement of the Spirit; the Spirit is saying something here all the time. He is stressing the way of spiritual fruitfulness. "First... that which is natural" - barren, unfruitful, impossible; "then that which, is spiritual," with all the tremendous possibilities of the new life in Christ. That is the inner history of the Ethiopian. "He went on his way rejoicing." Up to that moment he was a disappointed man, feeling his handicap. Is there anyone reading this who knows quite well and is feeling only too deeply that, because of what he is by nature, there is little hope or prospect for him, little chance of spiritual fruitfulness? This story is the story of a great hope for a man who was shut out of the inheritance, shut out of the house of God, for whom there was nothing because of natural condition, but who entered into all the blessed fulness and prospect of a new life, a new world, by identification with the Lord Jesus in death and burial and resurrection. He died to what he was by nature, and he rose to what he was in Christ. It is the story of how the Holy Spirit is making everything fruitful, turning the wilderness and the solitary place into a garden. That is the prospect here.

That is the new age. You are saying, 'Yes, that is very good; that is grand; it is there right enough at the beginning, but we do not see much of that now; why?' And that is the point - why? Why does Satan hold things up? Because he has got ground. Why do people not make spiritual progress? Why is there such limited fruitfulness? Why is there so much barrenness? Because there is ground for arrest. It is the ground of nature, and "the flesh warreth against the Spirit" (Gal. 5:17). "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost" (Acts 7:51). Now, what Stephen was really saying was this - 'You may not be conscious of it, you may not be deliberately meaning to war against the Spirit of God, but that uncrucified nature is there, at enmity with the Spirit of God, and that is the cause of everything.' We must come to the place where the Spirit really gets the upper hand, where that life of nature is truly subjected to the Spirit of God. Oh, I press this because I know so many people who believe in the Holy Spirit, who have all the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and they can work it all out systematically - the baptism and the filling and all the rest of it - but there is an immense amount of carnality, even in those realms. The point which arises is this, that if there is really going to be this life, this fruitfulness, this enlargement, this progress, this ascendancy over the power of the enemy, it is not going to be merely official and automatic, it is not going to be simply because we believe certain truths, and use certain phraseology and shout certain slogans about Satan being a defeated foe. It is going to be, and only so, as the Holy Spirit transcends our natural life - as our natural life is brought into obedience and subjection to the Spirit of God.

We have all got a strong natural life in some way. It may be in a negative strength, or it may be in a positive strength - and very often the negative is just as powerful as the positive. It may be a feigned kind of humility, an assumed meekness, but it is natural and it is self all the time - self-pity, always wanting to be taken note of because you are such a sorry creature: drawing attention in some way to yourself. That is a negative strength of nature, and it gets in God's way. We have to get this self, whatever it is, out of the way. We have to be occupied with the Lord Jesus Christ and not with ourselves - occupied entirely with Him. The Lord cannot do His work in us until we have a fixed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and an eye riveted upon Him. Immediately the enemy succeeds in turning us in upon ourselves he has broken our strength, he has the ground that he wants for our undoing and our barrenness. Whatever the form of self-life, it must go. First the Lord Jesus has to come in as Lord; then He can get on with what He is after.

A People Living in the Value of Divine Sovereignty

I have left a lot unsaid, but you will gather from what has been said what is in view - a people who are not merely believers objectively in the Holy Ghost, but who are subjectively under His government, in whose being His Lordship is established; in whom He can have His mind over their minds, His will over their wills, and His desires and feelings over theirs. But even then we may not see what is in the book of the Acts as we read it, because, after all, there we have the cumulative thing in a few chapters of vivid history, and we are impressed. If we had lived in those days we should have been far more continuously conscious of the forces that were against us than we were of the mighty sovereign triumph of the Lord Jesus, we should have had to wait till afterward to see that. And it will be like that with us; we shall be conscious of the enemy at work, difficulties arising, all kinds of sufferings abounding, but in due time we shall see the Lord triumph; we shall go into a deep experience but after a time come out and say, 'The Lord has triumphed in that, He has got something out of it.' That is the story - seeing the Lord getting His end through the very works of the enemy and the sufferings of His children. That is a life in the Spirit. The Lord give us to know more of it in experience.