Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

[4] ZION: THE SEAT OF DIVINE GOVERNMENT

Number four: Zion is the seat of Divine government, so go back again to “Zion, the city of the great King.” Out of Zion shall the government go forth. Out of Zion shall He rule the nation. Zion, the seat of His sovereignty and His government, where His throne is. I hinted a few minutes ago at the difference between Jerusalem and Zion. Zion, as I understand, is what Jerusalem ought to be; and Jerusalem is not always Zion, but Zion is what Jerusalem ought to be—the governmental center.

All the people of God are not the seat and center and expression of this government; and in the Book of Revelation, you will have something more than “the holy city, new Jerusalem.” You will have “nations walking in the light thereof.” You will have an extra circle. Yes, they are in the Kingdom. No, I am not now discriminating between the Church and the Kingdom. That is not my point, but I am saying that there are overcomers. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in My Throne.” That is Zion, but Jerusalem does not always conform to that, so far as the Lord’s people are concerned.

I think I had better leave it there, but, you see, this is a great difficulty with many. You present the ultimate, full thought of God for the Church, what God’s Mind is about the Church, the Heavenly Jerusalem, yes, you present it; but some say, “Look at all these Christians, one foot in the world and the other foot in Christianity.” But remember, there is such a thing as God having a governing people. It is one thing to be the citizen of a country, or even of a city, but it is another thing to be a member of the royal household. Do you see what I mean? Zion is the very epitome, the very essence, of God’s thought for His Church, to which the Church (as a whole) does not all approximate, but it, Zion, is this governmental thing.

Now at the beginning it was like that. The literal Jerusalem in Judæa of old was the center of the government of the land. You come into your New Testament, and you find that things move from Jerusalem. They move. You say, “Antioch becomes the new center, takes the place of Jerusalem”? Is that right? That is the way expositors put it, they make a geographical movement of it. Well, all right, you can have it if you like, but it is not true. Let us go to Antioch then and have a look and see what this is.

What are they doing in Antioch? There were certain brethren in Antioch and “they fasted and prayed, and the Holy Spirit said....” They are off the earth, they are out of the world, they have left things here, they are linked with heaven. And by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, the Heavenly Government is in operation. The Heavenly Throne is governing there.

No, it is not a board meeting. I do not know if any of you know the cartoons of E. J. Pace, but years ago in the Sunday School Times, he had a very good one. I think it was a humorous one, but very good. He called it, “The First Board Meeting of the New Testament,” and here it is: all the believers are gathered in a congregation in Jerusalem, and there are two big Hands with a big board in them. And this big board, this huge piece of timber, smashed down upon that building and “they were all scattered,” scattered throughout all Judæa, throughout all Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth; and he calls that “The First Board Meeting.”

No, the governmental center is not in Jerusalem literally and, no, not in Antioch literally. Zion is where heaven is governing and not men, where the heavenly councils are operating: “and the Holy Spirit said.” The Holy Spirit. That is what we have come to, or ought to have come to. I hope I have not offended any of you board members, you committee men, you church directors. No, no, we are coming to reality. Zion is testing, challenging our whole system. And here, at this point, Zion means:—it is that where Heaven rules, the Ascended Christ governs through the Holy Spirit, makes the decisions, gives the decisions, directs the courses. “Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto...” the board meeting has appointed them?—No, “I have called them.” This is Heaven acting, and that is fruitful.

[5] ZION: THE PLACE OF SECURED AND ESTABLISHED FELLOWSHIP

Number five: Zion is the place of secured and established fellowship. Now this is rather interesting, instructive. Go back to your Old Testament. When the hearts of the men of Israel turned from Saul to David to bring him back and make him king, what happened? The first movement was to Hebron, and there they stayed for seven years at Hebron. What is Hebron? Do you know the meaning of Hebron?—Fellowship, fellowship, that is Hebron. Now you can put that over a fellowship if you like, and call it Hebron, but let it be true of that fellowship. However, they brought David back and, first of all, made him king in Hebron. It was a partial thing. It was a movement unto fulness, but seven years in Hebron, seven years (spiritually interpreted) of securing fellowship. And after the seven years, up to Jerusalem to Zion; and the values of Hebron are now centered in Zion, i.e., Zion is that in which the true fellowship of the Spirit is established!

You have got to read the rest of this section of Hebrews. See the marvelous fellowship that is there. What have we come to? Even “to the spirits of just men made perfect.” We are come to a marvelous fellowship in heaven. “To hosts of angels,” in fellowship with the angels; fellowship with “the spirits of just men made perfect”; in fellowship with “Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” It is fellowship that is in Zion, heavenly fellowship, heavenly fellowship. And you know quite well if you just get a little taste of heavenly fellowship, it is heaven.

Some of you have come from far places where you have little or no real spiritual fellowship; and whatever other values there may be about convocations, I have always found that one of the greatest values, even more than the ministry, has been these lonely pilgrims coming from far and near in the songs of ascents up to Zion, and finding that heart-ravishing fellowship which has sent them back to their lonely places feeling and knowing: “Well, I am not alone after all, I thought I was alone. I was Elijah looking for a juniper tree to say, it is enough. Oh, Lord, take away my life. I am the only one left. But I discovered that there are seven thousand in Israel!” Fellowship is a marvelous thing. That is Zion in truth. “Ye are come.” Oh, that we might always live in the good of that, and in our loneliness and isolations and exiles know that our fellowship is in heaven. It took seven years to get that fellowship, and then established in Zion.

In Zion. Well, what is it again? It is the fellowship of Christ being in His right place and His full place. David is now in his right place, and in his full place, for which God chose and anointed him. He is there: Our Greater David in His place, right place and full place—and wherever that is true, that is Zion. And it is not Zion unless it is like that.

[Shammu]

[6] ZION: THE GROUND OF OUR SPIRITUAL FESTIVITY

Number six: Zion is the ground of our festivities. I have almost said this in what I have just said. What does it say? “Zion, the city of our solemnities.” That is the phrase in Scripture, “the city, the place, of our solemnities.” What did that mean? It was the great feasts and festivals of the people which they had in Zion. God had ordained this people should be a festive people. Now this portion in Hebrews says that is what we have come to. We have come to numerous angels in festal array. The city of our festivities. Need I say any more? I believe this, I know this, that if you have anything that approximates to Zion spiritually, anything that is really and truly spiritual Zion, however small it may be, you will have a feast of good things. Where these things are true, where these five things that I have mentioned are true:

[1] A people in the good of the Complete and Perfect Work of Christ
[2] The Supreme Victory of the Lord
[3] The Place of His Dwelling
[4] The Seat of Divine Government
[5] The Place of Secured and Established Fellowship

where these things are true, you will never be hungry, spiritually hungry. The Lord will see to it that there is plenty there. You will not be miserable, but full of joy! We need something more than religious picnics: we need Zion’s spiritual festivities.

“Hosts of angels in festal array.” I do not know that I understand that altogether, but I think I can glimpse it. My, when the angels see Zion, how happy they are! How glad they are! There is certainly joy amongst the angels when you have things like this. When they look at a spiritual Zion, they put on their festal garments and say, “This is it. This is it.” The angels rejoice. Perhaps that is an imperfect interpretation: I do not know, but I am sure it is a part of it because we register this when we have anything that approximates to Zion in this way. Zion’s fellowship and the King really in His Place of Governing—we register heaven’s feeling about it and say, “My, this is good”; and we no longer condemn poor old Simon Peter. We fall into the same wonderful and glorious trap. We say, “It is good to be here.” Let us never go away from this place again. “Let us make three tabernacles.” We sang, just before this ministry this morning, about the warring world below. We have got to go back to it, but may we go back with something of the joy of Zion, the city of our solemnities, spiritual festivity. I must leave that then and come to the last thing about Zion for this morning; and this is only the first fragment in the whole section. There is another one which will probably take the whole of our time tomorrow, number eight, but that is not coming now.

[7] ZION: THE PLACE OF OUR SPIRITUAL FRANCHISE— I AM REGISTERED IN HEAVEN, I AM A CITIZEN OF HEAVEN

Number seven: Zion, the place of our spiritual franchise. Is that a difficult word, idea? Now if you do not know what I mean, I remind you of Psalm 87: “The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” Then the psalmist picks out those places in the world that men boast of. “I was born in Philistia. Think of that.”—“I was born in Tyre. Think of that! I am a Tyrite. I am a citizen of Tyre.”—“I was born in Ethiopia. Think of that!” The psalmist (you can almost hear and see his joy) the psalmist says: “But this man was born in Zion, it shall be said. Of Zion, it shall be said, this man was born there.” Something absolutely superior. This man is a citizen of Zion, he is born there, his name is registered there, and the psalmist concludes that whole survey, comparison, and contrast with: “All my springs are in thee”—All my wellsprings are in thee. The place of my franchise: “I am registered in heaven, I am a citizen of heaven.”

“Our citizenship, says the apostle, is in heaven; from whence we look for a Saviour.” “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” We have been “born from above” [always correct the translation]; not “born again,” but “born from above,” that is something more than born again. Not only have we been “born from above” and our names “written in the Lamb’s Book of Life”; not only that, that is glorious, but you have the franchise. Paul boasted of his freemanship: “I am a freeman born,” and they all had to yield to that, even the Roman Empire had to bow to that, a freeman born. The poor centurion captain had a bad time when he heard that. My word, his life was at stake for having put chains on a free man. Our citizenship is in heaven, our franchise is in heaven, we are “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.” This one was born there at Zion, in Zion.

I must leave that with you, I do trust it is not just a lot of either interesting or even fascinating Bible teaching, but this is a challenge: “Ye are come to Zion.”

Lord, help us to see what we have come to, what we really are in the Divine Thought. The Lord make this true of us, wherever we may be, and of the little companies with which we may be related and connected, that it is in this true spiritual sense, Zion indeed!

Lord, make this more than teaching and doctrine and truth and Bible exposition. Do put the challenge into it, into every one of our hearts, is this true of me? Am I a citizen of Zion? Are these things real in my life? Help us to attend to it. Answer our prayer, for the Sake of Thine Own Glory and Satisfaction in Thy Son, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - “The Controversy of Zion”

Dear Lord, in no formal way, no mere custom, but in a very deep and strong consciousness of need, we pray. We must pray. We are this morning allowing ourselves to be put under new responsibility. If Thou shouldest Speak, as we have asked Thee to do, then the Words that Thou dost Speak will judge us in that day. We realize that it is no small thing even to allow ourselves to hear the Lord Speak, but, Lord, it is a matter of capacity also. We cannot understand unless the Spirit of wisdom and understanding gives us the ability. Things are going to be said which may be the truth, and we will not understand unless something is done by Thee in us. And we certainly cannot follow through in obedience unless Thou, Lord, dost do this thing. As Thou didst Say to a very beloved disciple, “You cannot follow Me now, whither I go you cannot follow Me now. You shall afterward.” That “cannot” is over us and on us. We cannot follow through unless, Lord, there is something done by Thee.

Now all this we bring, and what is true of hearing and obeying is just as much true of speaking. We are not authorities. We are not teachers. We cannot speak unless Thou, Lord, dost the Speaking. The anointing must do it. We submit ourselves that this time shall be an anointed time, a Holy Spirit time, in both ways and all ways. It shall be the Lord this morning. Grant it that the Glory may come to Thee and any fruit may accrue to Thy Glory. In the Name of the Lord Jesus, we ask this, Amen.

We return to continue with that first fragment of Hebrews, chapter twelve, verse twenty-two: “But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”—“Ye are come to Mount Zion.” Now for this morning, I want to link that fragment with one or two other passages of Scripture. First of all, back in the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter thirty at verse eight: “Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.” And then will you turn to the Second Psalm, and I want you to read this psalm, perhaps we will begin at verse six. “Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion. I will tell of the decree: the Lord said unto Me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee.”

Now you keep that psalm in mind, please, as we go on. All the rest of it, from that verse and before, take a glance; but I want you now to turn to the Letter to the Romans, and to your great favorite, chapter eight, at verse nineteen: “For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him Who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Now I am leaving that and going on to verse twenty-nine: “For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren: and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.”

Now between those two portions that we have just read, we have this, verse twenty-two and twenty-three: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, the redemption of our body.”

We are occupied with what we have come to, “Ye are come,” and we have been thinking about Zion, the Zion to which we are come. We have said seven things about Zion, seven things to which we have come, constituting this position; and I come to the eighth this morning, which is of very serious and solemn moment. I feel that if the Lord gets His Word through this morning, very largely (so far as this ministry is concerned) the conference may hang upon it. It is the most practical issue in this whole consideration, position,—what we have come to in coming to Zion. Here, as you note, in this passage in Hebrews, Zion and Jerusalem look to be synonymous. “You have come to Zion... to the heavenly Jerusalem.” In this whole section, you are not dealing with different things in these various matters of dimension. This is all of one. It is all one thing. Here Zion and Jerusalem come together, are spoken of as being one, and that gives us our starting point for this present consideration.

Zion-Jerusalem: the Storm Center of the Nations

Zion, as the heart of Jerusalem; as the very essence of all that Jerusalem was intended to be; as the real spiritual meaning of Jerusalem; the concentrated point of all that Jerusalem represented; Zion-Jerusalem, in history and in the nations, has always been the storm center, the storm center of history, the storm center of the nations. Of course, it would take a long time for us to even look generally at the history of Jerusalem. You can do that at any time, but how many sieges, how many investments, how much was Jerusalem the object and center of world attention and concern! Again and again and again, eyes were turned toward Jerusalem, for Jerusalem’s destruction, for Jerusalem’s wiping out, for Jerusalem’s possession. A long, troubled history is the history of Jerusalem, even to our own time. It is a world center of conflict and controversy. That fact everybody recognizes. Zion, what the prophet calls, “the controversy of Zion.”

Zion-Jerusalem has been a controversial object in history and in the nations all the way along. It is extraordinary. You wonder, “Why? It is not such a wonderful city, is it? It is not so great. How long would it take you to walk across it, or even to walk around it? What was it, and what is it? Perhaps it is a better specimen of world cities today, so far as structure is concerned and modernization. But what was it and, even now, what is it?” How can it compare with London, New York, Paris, and any of these others you might mention? They might be centers of attraction, truly. There was a tremendous battle in our own lifetime to get hold of London. Oh, if you had been in the battle of London, you would have known. Fourteen months, day and night, without cessation, a city bombed, fired upon, attacked, assailed. If you had been in that, and seen it happening, great areas going up in dust and smoke, you would have said, “Well, London is an object. It counts for something.” Of course, most of you people know nothing about it in that way. I hope you never will.

But Jerusalem,—what is Jerusalem? What is that? Not once or twice in a lifetime, but right through the long history of centuries there has been a controversy over Zion; and if you look closer and look into it more carefully, you will come to see this—that Zion, or Jerusalem, was always a sign. It was a sign. There was a significance attached to it, and the significance was not its temporal aspects of buildings and structures and economies and so on. Why, Babylon could go far beyond all that. But Zion’s significance was a spiritual thing, for you notice this: whenever the spiritual life of Jerusalem, as representing the people, the nation, whenever the spiritual life was right; whenever it was a matter of right standing with God; Jerusalem was in the ascendancy. Attack if you like, let the hoards of Babylon, or Assyria, come against Jerusalem and encamp. There is a Hezekiah inside! There is a people inside who are right with the Lord! waiting on the Lord! crying to the Lord! making the Lord their trust! And so much the worse for Assyria, for Babylon. In a night, their hosts are wiped out by the Angel of the Lord. When things are spiritually right, it does not matter how fierce, forceful, and great the assault—the antagonism—they stand, they come through.

But from time to time, it was not like that inside. The spiritual state was low. There was declension. There was wrong. The standing before God was not right, and then Jerusalem was always in weakness, always in fear, always in dread. Weakened from the inside, spiritually it could not stand; and at last, at last, after more than one successful assault, or breaking down; at last, simply because of this poor, low, spiritual condition, Jerusalem is destroyed. Finally destroyed, that is, robbed of its place in the Divine economy and purpose. Zion is a sign of a spiritual condition. It has always been such a sign, a barometer of spiritual life.

[Shammu]

 It is absolutely useless, dear friends, to refer to tradition and say, “Well, God did this in the beginning, and this is the place where the oracles of God are found and the temple of God is and the great tradition of Israel as the chosen people. It is here, and we rest on that.” No, tradition will not support now. History will not support now. Institutions will not support now. It seems as though God has no regard, at length, for temple or ark or altar or priesthood. He cries through the prophets: “Away, away with you. I want none of your sacrifices.” Isaiah 58. What a chapter! “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice.” Then, what follows? “Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways.” “I will have none of it, says the Lord. I will have none of it. These are not the sacrifices I want. This ritual is not what I am after. This traditional system is not what I desire. It is a spiritual state.” And only on that can the Lord associate Himself, ally Himself, to Zion.

I am saying that Zion has always been a sign of spiritual condition, and that has been made evident by whether there was ascendancy—ascendancy, the support of God—making them superior to every adverse force; or whether they were a shame among the nations, a reproach among the nations. With the prophetic element pointing on to something else, as is always so in the prophets, you have Jerusalem crying, crying the great heart cry: “Woe is me. Woe is me. All ye that pass by, all ye that pass by, have pity. Have pity, all ye that pass by.” What a tragic situation for Zion. A shame amongst the nations! And these two things, ascendancy or shame, glory or dishonour—right at the center of history and the nations—are bound up with a spiritual condition, are dependent upon a spiritual condition.

You know, there is a lot to be gathered into that statement, dear friends. But if you look again at this letter to the Hebrews, you will see that we are come to Zion. We are not come to some thing, some religious thing, some tradition, we are not come to historic Christianity—if I may put it that way—we are come to a spiritual situation which is calculated to startle us. Oh, we say, “We are in the day of Grace. This is the dispensation of Grace.” True! Is the Letter to the Hebrews on any other ground than the ground of Grace? Surely not, but do you know that in this letter the most awful things in the Bible are written? “How shall we escape [we, we escape, we Christians, we believers of this dispensation] how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? ...our God is a consuming fire... it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.” This is said to these people, these Christians; and other things like that are said. But I am pointing this out, that this letter is written in the day of Grace; and it is a day which brings into view not some new Christian system, not the formation of a new Christian tradition, but a spiritual condition, without which everything else is as nothing. You have come to Zion, yes, but you have come to the controversy of Zion. You have come, we have come, to the great battle of Zion; and it is a spiritual battle. Where it is then. WHAT A BATTLE! That is the background of it all.

Well, now, I do not want to make you glum. I see your faces are getting a bit heavy, your chins are dropping, and you would think I am getting back to Sinai from Zion, but no, no, as I have said, this is a very solemn time. You are going to have a lot of teaching this week. It is not going to avail one little bit if there is not a corresponding spiritual position. So having said that and laid that as the background of all, it is the battle—the controversy—of Zion. And, what is the nature of this controversy? Let us look at one or two things about it, and I am working toward a very, very vital thing, which I trust we shall reach before we are finished.

What Is the Nature of the Controversy?

The nature of the battle? What was the nature of the battle with Israel, centered and represented by Zion-Jerusalem? It was the battle in relation to a calling and a vocation. They were called by God, they were chosen by God, they were an elect race [you see why we came to Romans eight], an elect race, a chosen people, in history on the earth they were the elect of God. Chosen and called and separated, what for? Just to be saved? Just to be different? Just to be that? No! for a vocation, a calling, a testimony in the world, a testimony among the nations. They were called for a mighty, heavenly vocation on the earth, to reveal God! what God is like! the reality of God! the glory of God! the holiness of God! the power of God! A vessel of testimony among the nations, to the nations—to the world. Zion, as we have been saying, is that which represents God’s full thought for mankind. The fulness of God’s thought is vested in, centered in, Zion, “the city of the Living God.” And because of that, the battle starts.

In history, Zion was the city of David, God’s anointed king. And do you notice the history of David? Up from birth... up? It looks like down and out... but, no, steadily, steadily up. Let all the forces of Saul and his malice, his devil-driven soul, be concentrated against this young man,—and what that young man suffered! You know the story. He seems to be a marked man, [as we say, I do not know whether you have the phrase in this country] “a speckled bird.” He seems just right from the beginning to be a marked man. The devil had put a mark on that man and was watching him, pursuing him. Poor David cries: “I am like a pelican of the wilderness... a sparrow upon the housetop.” Oh yes, he is the object of a fierce and furious, relentless malice, meant for his undoing. But he holds on his way, steadily; not because he is so strong, for there were times when David broke down: “I shall now perish,” I shall now be killed. He resorted to some subterfuges, was a man of like-passions with us, very human; nevertheless, through it all, whether it is in the land of the Philistines by compromise (a mistake from which God sovereignly delivered him) or wherever it is—in the cave of Adullam, in the wilderness driven hither and thither for his very life—wherever it is, his spiritual course is on and up, spiritually. It does not look like it outwardly, but on and up until eventually anointed, David comes to the place of the anointing, the throne; and Zion is the place of the consummation of that history of Divine election, Divine choice, Divine [dare I use the word in these days] foreordination. He is there, on the throne. He is in the place of the full thought of God, and that is centered in him. Zion is the place of the absolute sovereignty and Lordship of God’s anointed. That is Zion, and we are come to Zion. We have been saying this: there is Another Greater than David that is here, and there is another Zion greater than that is here. But it is on that point, dear friends, just focused upon that one inclusive and consummate point of the Absolute Sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ that all the conflict rages and is centered.

[Shammu]

THE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY: THE ABSOLUTE LORDSHIP OF JESUS CHRIST

You turn to your New Testament, you know their message, as they went out into the world that then was, everywhere their message was, “Jesus Christ is Lord: we preach Jesus Christ as Lord.” That brought them up against Cæsar, and all the Cæsars, because Cæsar said: “I am lord.” The Roman Empire said: “Cæsar is lord,” and they worshipped Cæsar; and the argument, contention, accusation, was—“These men are preaching another king but Cæsar.” Ah, yes, that is where the controversy was, on this one thing: the Absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. The controversy of Zion is on that point ultimately: God’s Anointed.

Now you see why we read Psalm 2. “Why do the nations rage?”—Raging nations, we are coming to that in another connection shortly. The raging nations, the kings of the earth, gathering themselves together against the Lord and against His Anointed. “Let us cast their bonds from us, let us get rid of them. They are a menace, a menace.”—“Yet I have set My King upon My Holy Hill of Zion.” I have set My King! The raging, the storming, the controversy, focused about the Anointed One, in the Anointed One, God’s Anointed.

But you notice, it was not very long in the New Testament, you only reach in Acts what is marked off mechanically by chapter 4 (and I have said this often, it is a very good thing to wipe those things out and read straight on, blind to the chapters), and you notice when you read chapter 4, as it is marked, you reach a point in the controversy, the controversy of Zion,—oh, the battle is on! The battle is on, the forces of evil and the forces in this world have set their mark upon this Anointed One and the proclamation of Him; and when they are at work killing James and imprisoning Peter, the Church meets, Zion gathers, Zion gathers. And what do they do? They quote the Second Psalm. They quote the Second Psalm to the Lord. “Lord, Lord,” and then they quote, “Why do the heathen [or the nations] rage, and the people imagine a vain thing... against the Lord, and against His Anointed?” They quote it, and what happens? What happens? “The King is in His Holy Mount Zion”: He intervenes, He intervenes. Oh, yes, Herod seems to have scored a great success in killing James; and he is so pleased with himself, and the people are so pleased with him, it seems he is going to do the whole business. He takes Peter and puts him in prison. That is all right. So much the worse for you, Herod. What is the end of that story? He was eaten of worms and died, and the next sentence: “But the Word of the Lord grew and multiplied.” There is the Holy Hill of Zion and the One Enthroned because there was right standing with God then. So they quoted Psalm 2, meaning that time has no place in this, geography has no place in this; but wheresoever there is a true representation of Zion, there may be assaults, seeming successes of the evil one and his powers, yet, the issue is with Him Who is in Zion. The issue is victory. God has set His Holy One upon His Holy Hill Zion. The Anointed is there.

THE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY: THE WORLD SPIRIT AGAINST THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS

Now, dear friends, you are listening to all this as Bible exposition. Perhaps I do not know what you are thinking, what your reactions are; but I know what I am after. I am after something, and I hope you will move with me to the object that we are seeking to reach. If we have come to Zion—and you have, perhaps, been very pleased with the seven things about Zion and have been saying, “Oh beautiful! oh, wonderful! oh, glorious! yes, Zion. Let’s sing more about Zion. Let’s have it as the city of our solemnities. Let’s have some festivities!”—all right, all true, but you have to meet number eight. If we have come to Zion, we have come to the controversy of a spiritual position on the part of a people, the controversy of history over this people in union with the Ascended Exalted Lord. It is a controversial matter in this universe. Principalities, powers, the world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits, all focused upon one thing: the denial of the Absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ; and the Church is the custodian of that testimony. That is our calling. That is the vocation of the people of God, to be that testimony. Against that the battle rages. All that is of the enemy forces is against the testimony of Jesus: a terrific battle is on for “the testimony of Jesus.”

Well, that is the focal point of it, but then the battle, mark you, not only is in the atmosphere, so to speak (it is there, that is its realm, the heavenly places, the atmosphere, in a sense an abstract thing); but notice again, as in the type in the Old Testament, so in the spiritual reality in the New, this antagonism has its media, its vehicles, its channels, its means. And what is it? It is the world spirit. The world spirit, this evil world in its spirit.

I do not think we have really grasped what the New Testament has to say about this world. This world: it is an enemy of God. It is an enemy of all that is of God. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” In a great cry from the heart of the Lord Jesus, the prayer just before the Cross is: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, the geographical sphere that is called the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil” one who rules in it. No, this has not registered yet upon the Church. The world spirit—I think you must know something of what I mean.

You see, in the Old Testament, it was these world interests, world forces, the world, that was all the time against Zion. If you had asked them why, they would have had to sit down and think hard. “Why is it that we do not like that silly little city? Those people—who are they, what are they, why don’t we like them?” They would have had difficulty in answering their own question, but there is something sinister behind it all. Those sinister intelligences know something. What do they know? They know what the elect is called for, and in the long run the enemy knows that the elect is going to be his undoing. He is going to lose his world power, his world title as prince of this world. He is going to lose it all at the hands of this One in Zion and through that corporate expression of His Sovereignty, His Lordship.—That Zion we are come to. He knows that, and if you are related to that, I am going to comfort you by telling you, “You are a marked man; you are a marked woman”; and do not succumb to second causes and say, “It is my landlord. It is this and that and something else.” Oh, that may be the vehicle and the medium, but there is something much more sinister than that behind it all. Our wrestling is not with flesh and blood, landlords, or anybody else, in the ultimate issue. Committees? Organizations? No, there is something behind all this. The world spirit. The world spirit.

I remember that Dr. Campbell Morgan in his lecture on the Letter to the Corinthians simply said this: “The whole reason for those conditions in Corinth—so shameful, so terrible, from which you turn from some matters in disgust and shame—it is because the world spirit in Corinth had got into the church.” Well, there you are. The battle is with the world spirit. As in the old literally, so now in the new spiritually. I need not dwell upon 1 Corinthians, need I? The world spirit? The wisdom of this world: the apostle is up against that. The conception of power in this world: he is up against that. “The wisdom and the power of God are Jesus Christ,” he says, “as Lord.” All right, that is another line. Let us go on, and this is the final phase to which I so definitely want to get to this morning. It is what Romans eight, the parts we have read, brings us to as the very sum of all this that we are saying about the controversy of Zion.

[Shammu]

THE NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY: THE WHOLE CREATION TRAVAILETH, GROANETH?—FOR THE ELECT

The tumult of the nations. Psalm 2, of course, is the nations rage, the kings of the earth gather together: tumult in the nations. And the reason for it? Why the tumult in the nations? Is there anybody here this morning who would not agree with me when I have said the nations are in tumult just now?! Was there ever a time when the world, almost in its entirety, if not in its entirety, was in tumult as it is now? Tumult, not only in the peoples and the nations, but convulsions in nature. We have never had it like this, have we? All these convulsions. I do not know how much you are in touch with it, but somehow or other we know about it. The earthquakes, the famines, a disruption of seasons, and what not. There is, and it is the best word for it: “convulsions in the nations.” Romans 8—“The whole creation gro-o-aneth.”

“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.” There is an integration in a groan. It is integrated by this travail in the whole creation. “And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting...” Waiting! The creation is groaning inwardly like this and travailing, if we had a spiritual ear to hear, groaning with us for something. It is subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by the will of Him Who subjected it. What is it groaning for? What is this travail? To bring forth something, and what is it that is to be brought forth? Note the rest of the passage. The elect!

You come on that section, that great controversial section of Romans about predestination, foreordination, the election. Now do not come to me about that. I am not having anything to do with these systems of predestination or the rest of it. What I am saying is, there is such a thing as God’s elect hidden, hidden in the nations. God knows. You do not know. I do not know, and I cannot tell you who is elect and who is not elect. God knows. They are there hidden, and within such there is this spirit of travail, longing, groaning: “Oh, that this vanity, void, not attaining, would be removed; and we should emerge, come out, be born.” The travail should precipitate.

There we touch the heart of things. What are all these convulsions in the nations about, and in nature? As we are moving toward the end of the dispensation, why this tumult, convulsions? Why? Because God has something here that is not wanted here by this world and its prince. It is something like Jonah in the big fish. The moment or the hour came when the big fish said, “Oh, look here, what have I got inside? What is this that I have got?” And the fish got a most awful attack of dyspepsia. “Oh, to get rid of this. I will never be comfortable until I have precipitated this that I have got inside. Let me get rid of this. Let me get this out.” Of course, under the Sovereignty of God, he makes for shore “and vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” And I can think when that fish turned back into the sea he said, “Oh, there, now I feel all right. He is gone. He is gone.”

Now am I exaggerating, imagining, but come back with me, to Israel in Egypt. What is happening? Convulsion after convulsion in Egypt. Convulsion, under the Sovereignty of God, yes, so that steadily, gradually, persistently, Egypt is coming to the place: “Oh, won’t it be a good day and a good thing when we get rid of these people.” You notice what happens at the end? “They were thrust out”! “They precipitated them, they vomited them out”; and I suppose although Pharaoh’s army pursued to bring them back, the many (if not all) in Egypt said, “Thank God, they have not succeeded and brought those people back again. We are rid of them, and it is a very good riddance.” Now, that is not interpretation. No, there is a people in there, God’s elect, and sooner or later the place where they are will want to get rid of them. “They are a menace, a menace.”

But come over to Babylon, they are there. The elect are there. We have not very much to indicate, but we have Daniel and his three friends; and we must conclude that they were not the only true ones in Babylon. There is Ezekiel. There is a remnant in Babylon. God has a people. He is doing something through seventy years, and then the seventy years are completed and what happens? The Prophet Isaiah cries, chapter forty-three: “For your sake have I sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles.” And how did it happen? Belshazzar has his feast, the hand writes on the wall: “thy kingdom is divided, and removed.” That night was Belshazzar slain, how? Cyrus and his army went stealthily through the night, moved along the wady, the valley, the dry valley, through, into Jerusalem, underground, and to use the phrases of the prophet: “had broken in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron” and come up in the middle of Jerusalem. Slain Belshazzar— “For your sake, for your sake, because of you, the elect, I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles,” their high ones. The people inside are a menace to the world, but they are the object of all God’s activities —world convulsions, if you like.

And I believe, dear friends, as we get nearer to the end when the Church is to be extricated, these convulsions are significant, very significant, that the day of our emergence is near. You remember the phrase in the literal Greek, the words of the Lord, the prophetic words of the Lord, about “the end.” He says, “The tumult of nations, men’s hearts failing them for fear” for the terrible things which are coming upon the earth (Luke 21:25–26); but the literal there is not “distress of nations,” the literal Greek is “no way out for the nations.” No way out for the nations. Oh, my word, is that not true today— they are trying to find a way out; and there is no way out for the nations. But then note, when that time comes: “Lift up your eyes, for your Way out draws near.” Your way out—there is a way out for the elect when there is this investment.

[Shammu]

Involvement in the Controversy of Zion: Intense Spiritual Pressure

Well, you have got the teaching now. “You have come to Zion.” I wonder, I do not know, of course in the smaller world of the New Testament, it may have been true under those persecutions and martyrdoms, I think it was; but the world is such a much bigger world now than then, this great world compared with the little world of the Roman Empire then—I wonder if there was ever a time in the history of this world when the saints were going through spiritual pressure more than they are now? Spiritual pressure. I am not talking now only of outward persecutions. Some are in that, but even here, at this time, this week, dear children of God said to me: “I never in my life knew so much spiritual conflict, spiritual pressure. It sometimes gets unbearable, intolerable. I wonder how I am going to get through.” Many of you may not know anything about that. If you do not, do not worry at the moment. But if you do know that, dear friends, and some of us do, we have never in our lives— and some of us have a long life with the Lord—known such intense and almost naked spiritual pressure. At times it does seem to get to the point where we will break, where it seems we will break. Many dear children of God all over the world write to me on these terms about this. What does it mean? You have come to Zion —that is what it means. Leave your theology of election and predestination. Leave that—that will not get you anywhere, only into trouble and confusion; but take the fact that God has a people in this world, in the nations, hidden in the nations, whom He knows.

“The Lord knoweth them that are His.” He knows them, and they are of the greatest interest to the devil. They are marked, and they are involved in the controversy of Zion. If you would like to leave the word “Zion,” if that creates mental pictures, leave it, forget it, see the meaning—the spiritual meaning—of something that is standing for “the testimony of Jesus,” that is standing for the Absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ, that is standing for the true vocation of the Church! A people like that are not going to have an easy time. I am sorry to say that to you, but we have been told that this week very, very pointedly.

But here it is, and you will go back and perhaps there will be troubles, difficulties, this kind and that, family, business, what not; and then you will say: “What has happened to me? What has gone wrong?!” On the contrary, it has all gone right. Oh, I wish we could believe that. If what I am saying is true, it is the controversy of Zion, the conflict over something very precious to the Lord, because Zion was very precious to the Lord in history. Read the Psalms. Something very precious to the Lord is being challenged, combatted, by all the forces of evil, nakedly and by every kind of means; and this is the explanation of the present convulsions. The prince of this world and this world spirit and system, knowingly or unknowingly, is sick of us. The nations are closing their doors, driving out those who represent the Lord. The world is narrowing down its scope for what is of Jesus Christ. It is pressing in. The explanation?—It is the time of “The Way out for the Church.”

Of course, it is a false hope on the part of the world. It may have been true that the Egyptians were very glad when those people had gone. They got a rest for a time, but it did not last very long. It was a transient thing; their later history was a bit troublesome. Babylon may have felt a bit more comfortable when that remnant had gone back to Jerusalem, but it did not last very long. “I have brought down....” The Lord destroyed Babylon, as He destroyed Egypt. And it may be that when the Church is gone, the prince of this world and his kingdom may say: “There, they have gone. They are out. Now we can have it all to ourselves.” But, if you notice, the context of that is they do not have it to themselves very long. Then there comes the judgments. The judgment of this world is just waiting until the Church is out, and that time is drawing near.

I think I have said enough. I could say much more as to the aspects of this conflict, the means used by the enemy to try and undo this testimony, to try and destroy Zion. The means used? Well, one is confusion. These evil powers and spirits are spirits of confusion. They always were. There never was a time, I venture to say, in the history of this world, when there was more confusion, and confusion in Christendom, in Christianity; and it is brought down to the least local expression of Zion. Confusion. Is it true? Is it true you do not know what to do? where you are? how to answer? what it means? Spiritual confusion invading everything that is on this earth —confusion.

There are spirits of corruption to defile, to defile— corruption. There are spirits of deception. Was there ever a time when there was more deception? Everywhere, deception. Oh, I dare not stay with that, dare I? But here it is, the things that are misleading, that are assuming a divine complexion, that are false, that are a lie, they will not last. They will have their day and cease to be. The roots, the seeds of their disintegration, are in them. In the semblance of good and right, there is falsehood—deception.

There are divisions. No end to this, no end. To the last two of the Lord’s people there will be this attack to divide, to get us apart somehow. Yes, in the Church universal, an attack to split up; in the local churches, yes, division, and division following division; and in the family, and in the two—husband and wife. We are in a battle! It is a terrible thing to say, but you know however much there may be of love and certainty that the Lord brought you and your wife together, or you and your husband together, very often there is a battle over your fellowship. Is that saying too much? But it is true. A battle, misunderstandings, can come in there and divide and isolate. Anywhere! Anywhere! The spirits of division are at work today, and the slogan of their forces is “divide and conquer.” It depends on the ground on which you are standing. If you are standing on natural ground; on doctrinal ground; on theological ground; on interpretation ground; if you are standing on any of those grounds, you will not hold together. You will not hold together. If you are standing on the ground of Christ only, and His Lordship, that is the answer.

Now I close with this: Zion is very precious to God, for the reason that His Son is His Appointed King on His Mount Zion. Ah, there is a great love of this testimony of Zion. It is for His Son’s Sake. You and I must have His Son’s Sake as the motivating part of all our ways. “Ye are come to Zion,” but you have come to an involvement in a great conflict! So, help us, God.

We just ask Thee, Lord, that all the authority which has been given to Thee in heaven and on earth may cover, encompass, and embrace what has been said here this morning. Thou knowest it is not easy. It is a battle even to get it out; but, Lord, we need to be protected. The Word needs to be protected. We trust Thee, Lord. We trust Thee and all the Mighty Virtue of Thy Blood to Protect, for the Glory of Thy Name, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - Zion: the Embodiment of the Spiritual Values of Jesus Christ

Lord, we are subjects of Thy pity, of Thy compassion; and this morning we do not even know what to ask of Thee, for we perhaps do not really know our truest need. We think we know sometimes. There are things which are very real to us as needs; but, Lord, it is true Thou knowest all the truest need of our hearts, and only Thou knowest. According to Thy knowledge, speak Lord—make it personal—make it individual—as well as collective, that while Eli did not hear the voice of the Lord, even in the tabernacle, there was one who did. Pick us out for speaking this morning. As Thou didst call, “Samuel, Samuel,” may we be called by name. May we know the Lord is speaking to us. Do not allow our minds and thoughts to be diverted onto other people or we shall say that is something for them. But do keep it directly, where afterward, we can truly say, “The Lord has spoken to me.” Now for all that is needed, Lord, in us and for us—for this, do that by the wisdom and the power and the grace of Thy Holy Spirit. We ask it, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

By now I think you know that there is a book in the New Testament which is called the Letter to the Hebrews, and I am going to read again from this book this morning. We are getting very near to the end of this time of gathering, of ministry, and I feel that it is very necessary for things to become very definite and concrete and that we should at this time expect the Lord to be focusing things on very clearly defined issues.

But once again, let us read at the beginning of this letter, chapter one: “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by diverse portions and in diverse manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds; Who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the Word of His Power, when He had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” And again at chapter twelve, verse 18: “Ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched”; verse 22, “But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”

I could almost wish that we forget that word Zion, as such, if it represents a subject. We must look through Zion because, you see, what we have in the beginning of this letter is “God hath spoken.” In Zion? No! God hath spoken through Zion. God hath spoken in His Son. If we have used the Old Testament name, which is always a type and a symbol, we have used it to help us by gathering up all the historic associations of that name in the Old; but let us remember, it still belongs to the “not.” As to a name and as to a place and as to a thing, a mountain and so forth, it belongs to the “not.” What belongs to the “but” is what lies behind that name Zion, its spiritual value, its spiritual meaning, its spiritual lesson. And if we were asked, “What is that, what is its spiritual value, its spiritual meaning?”—we have got to come back and answer: “God has spoken in His Son, ...He has spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things, through Whom He made the worlds.”

God has spoken. Now, how has He at the end of those times spoken? The speaking of God from a certain point in history on to the end is “in His Son.” Is it necessary to clarify that and say His speaking is not “about” His Son?—not the teaching, the doctrine, of Christ, but the Person—in the Person! He hath spoken in a Person. Do try to get hold of that, dear ones. It is in Him, in Christ, that God speaks! Now let us try to break that up for a few moments.

Zion, if you are going to use the name, is in representation the fulness of Christ. That is what this letter is about, fulness and finality in Christ. And Zion, as a name, represents that. The fulness of God’s Son—that is Zion; and that fulness is God’s speech for and in this dispensation. God’s speech is the fulness that is in His Son.
God’s Speech Is the Fulness That Is in His Son

Now you remember when you go back to the beginning of the Old Testament and God has intervened in the history of this earth in what is called “the creation,” it all begins with that word “God”—“In the beginning, God.” In the beginning, God. And then what? God spake. God said, “Let there be light” and so on. God spoke and out of His speaking everything came. You come over to your New Testament and although the Gospel of John is not arranged first, that is, chronologically (and for quite a good heavenly reason, the Holy Spirit’s wisdom), the Gospel of John really does stand at the beginning because the other three gospels begin on this earth in history, they begin at Bethlehem in Matthew and Luke or, as in the case of Mark, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. But John overleaps all time and goes right back to the dateless beginning, and he opens with this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... and the Word became flesh.” Here in this new beginning of a New Creation, of a new order, the “but” era, God speaks the Word.

We have heard something this week about “the Logos.” I am not trying to add, and certainly not to improve, but I am going to say a little more about that. As you know, “the Logos” is “the Word” there in John, “In the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was with God, the Logos was God... and the Logos became flesh, tabernacled among us.” In the beginning was the Logos. Of course, John has taken that word from the Greek, which in the Greek world had its own particular meaning.

[1] THE WORD, THE LOGOS, WAS DIVINE THOUGHT:—THE MIND AND THOUGHT OF GOD BEHIND EVERYTHING ELSE.

First of all, in the Greek mind, the word “logos” meant “a thought, something in the mind”: that is where it begins, “the thought” or, if you like to make it general, “thoughts.” Logos is, first of all, thoughts or a thought. Then, keeping to the Greek, “logos” is “the expression of the thought,” the thought put into expression. It may be words, but it is what is in the mind expressed, given expression. That is the content of “logos.” It may or may not go beyond that in the Greek, but in the Bible it certainly does.

It is true that “Logos, the Word,” was Divine thought, something in the mind of God first before ever there was expression or utterance. Something that was the mind of God. “In the beginning, in the beginning was the mind, the thought, of God.” What a large world that door opens up. You have got the whole of our New Testament there, the mind and thought of God behind everything else. But then, that mind and thought of God was expressed, was given expression. “God said.” Out of His thought, out of His mind—God said. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians: “God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts.” God said, by expression. And what happened? Ah, that is the point. That is “the Word, the Logos.”

[2] THE WORD, THE LOGOS, OF THE LORD IS A DIVINE ACT:—WHEN GOD EXPRESSES HIS MIND SOMETHING HAPPENS, IT IS A FIAT.

You see (and follow me closely now for I am going to perhaps be exacting on you for concentration for a little while), when God expresses His mind, it is not something just in language, in verbiage, in diction, but something happens. Whenever God spoke, and whenever God speaks, something happens. God’s speaking according to the Bible is always an act. “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” The Word of the Lord is an act. In Hebrews, you come to chapter four: “The Word of God is quick, powerful, sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow,” and so on. God’s Word is an act. It is a Fiat, something happens. God’s thought put into expression resolves itself into something that was not before. You can never be the same after God has spoken. Even if you were to refuse it, resist it, that has been a crisis. So Jesus will say, “The word which I spoke, that will judge him in the last day.” They shall judge you, and me, in the last day. If you do not believe in Me, the words that I speak, you will have to meet those in the last day—because this is something not just said but something put into the universe which is a crisis. The Word of God is a crisis. The Word of God is an act: “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”

[Shammu]

[3] THE WORD, THE LOGOS, IS A PERSON:—THE MIND, THE EXPRESSION, THE ACT OF GOD BECOMES INCARNATE, IT IS IN A PERSON.

But that does not exhaust the word “Logos” as used by John and as “the Word of God” in the Bible. There is a third aspect to the Word. True, it is the thought, the mind or the mindedness of God. True, the Logos is the expression of God by which something happens. It is the act of God, but then the third aspect of Logos Is Its Person. It takes up its residence in a Person, it becomes personal; in other words, it becomes Incarnate. The mind of God, the expression of God is Incarnate. It is in a Person. Any encounter with Jesus Christ is a crisis. Any encounter with Jesus Christ is meeting God. God was in Christ. It is an encounter with God. It is not just what Jesus says, although that is an expression of the mind of God in words, but, it is a personal encounter that has to be. In the first place, it is not an encounter with what is written, not an encounter with words—it is an encounter with a Person. “The Word became flesh,”— Incarnate.

So, let us go over again the third aspect of the Logos: the incarnation of the Divine thought in a practical issue in history, in an act, in a Fiat; it was an act of the Incarnate and Glorified Word of God. Ask Saul of Tarsus whether his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road was a Fiat. The whole dispensation answers that very loudly. This is the Logos. “God hath spoken in His Son” —Who is the embodiment of His Mind, Who is the expression of That Mind, Who is the incarnation of That Mind. And this whole Letter to the Hebrews is just an analyzing of that or a summing up of that: God speaking, God speaking In His Son! God speaking in His Son; and all which follows that, from chapter one at its beginning right through to the end, is just the exposition of God speaking in His Son. You must read the Hebrew Letter in the light of that. God is speaking.

So when you come to Hebrews in chapter twelve, at this section from verse twenty-two onward, what have you?—You have the gathering up of that speaking of God in His Son and concentrating it. And if you break up the section, you will see it is a concentration of what is true about the Person of the Lord Jesus; and you must look at Zion like that. It begins there. “Ye are come to...” well, we say “Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem...”?—No! that is symbolic language. We are come to the Son of God in all His meaning. God speaking in His Son: the thought of God expressed, the thought of God Incarnate, Personified, so that “Zion,” as a typical word or name, is the embodiment of all that.

God speaks, or in the Old Testament God spoke in Zion. He spoke out of Zion. You go through the Psalms and you go through Isaiah’s prophecies, especially the last chapters of those prophecies, and refer to them again. You go through them presently and see how God is speaking out of Zion. It even comes to this: “The Lord... shall roar out of Zion” (Joel 3:16). God speaks out of Zion; in other words, out of His Son, hath spoken in His Son. Now, having stated that, what is the heart of all this, according to the statement at the beginning? “God, hath at the end of these days, in these times, in this time, hath spoken in Son.” How? How?—Sonwise—“In Son.” The absence of the definite article “His” before the word “Son,” the absence of “His” in the original text, does not make any difference, because the very next statement is: “Whom He appointed Heir of all things.” So this Son is His Son. We note that and pass on.

The Governing Law of God’s Speaking Is Sonship

The governing law of God’s speaking is sonship,— sonship. That is the thing which governs God in all His speaking. Sonship. And as has already been said, sonship is not a beginning thing. It is a final thing, it is an ultimate thing. Here is Romans eight again: “waiting for our adoption,” the manifestation of the sons. The end which governs all God’s speaking in Christ is sonship. If you would like to change the word, it is “adoption.” It is put at the end. Sonship—adoption, is an end, an object, toward which God is moving by the speaking in His Son.

By birth, we are children: by adoption, we are sons. And it is just here that we must remember there is a difference between the spiritual conception of adoption and the secular. Someone holding a little baby yesterday, not of the family or even of the same race, said, “You see, I have adopted her.” Oh, no, that will not do here. That is not the scriptural conception of adoption. As you have been told, the scriptural meaning of adoption is someone already in the family by birth who has grown to maturity and then comes the day of maturity, the coming of age, the celebration, the festivity, the coming of age day, when the father takes his own child, now mature, puts the toga on him, invests him with the symbols and insignia of authority to be as the father in this world. Everyone meeting that adopted son has to reckon with the father. He is, in effect, the father. He has been adopted or, the word really in Hebrews is, placed. Placed in this position of responsibility because of maturity. Now we will have to come back to that from another standpoint as we go on.

What I am saying is that this is the end to which God is working. His beginning is begetting. His beginning is birth from above, bringing in a family. But, mark you, even in the born child there is the spirit of adoption. The adoption has not come yet, but there is the spirit of adoption. That is what Paul says, in essence, in Romans and Galatians: “because we have the spirit of adoption we cry, Abba, Father.”

I think once when I was here before I told you what that really means. What does “Abba” mean? Why put the two things together, is it just two words of different languages?—“Abba” in one language, “Father” in another. What is it? “Abba” is the quality, not the relationship, it is the quality of a child, a little child. And when a little child turns to its Father and says, “dear Father”—you have got “Abba.” It is a heart relationship. Abba—dear Father. There is something very close, very intimate. It is a mark of spiritual infancy. Of course, that is the first thing we lisp, is it not? When we are really born from above, we do not say when we go to pray: “Almighty Most Terrible and Fearful God. . . .” Our first lisp is, “Our Father.” That is the beginning of the Christian life. We have the Spirit of adoption, although we have not come to the adoption yet. That is coming if we allow the Spirit of adoption to develop us for adoption. That is the whole course of the spiritual life.

[Shammu]

ALL THE DISCIPLINE OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD IS GOVERNED BY THIS ONE OBJECT: SONSHIP.

Well, that is all here, and I am saying that the final object toward which God the Holy Spirit is working is what is called adoption, sonship. It is governing everything, it is governing everything. It is the end which is brought to bear upon the whole course. What is God doing? Well, Hebrews will tell you. All the discipline, all the discipline of the child of God, of the children of God, is governed by this one object—sonship. So you have: “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, for whom the Lord loveth (His children) He chasteneth, He disciplines. He scourges every son to be set by Him, to be placed.” That is the discipline of the Christian life. “And what child, or what potential son, is he who has no discipline, whom the Father chasteneth not?” As you know, the writer uses a very strong word about such. They are not true sons, they are illegitimate children who have come into a false position, if they be without discipline.

There is a tremendous revolt against discipline in this world, throwing off of authority and all control, all government, all discipline. There is a revolt against it everywhere, especially in youth. The Word says that is how it is going to be at the end: “disobedient to parents” and so on. This does not at all go well for God’s final purpose of a family, not of infants but of grown sons, chastened for eternal responsibility. God’s final purpose, grown sons chastened for eternal responsibility—governmental position in the Kingdom in the ages to come. There is so much about that in the New Testament. That is Ephesians. Discipline, for that. Dealings of God with us in this way for that!

Oh, look again at this illustrated. If you want, look again to the history of Zion. What a disciplined thing Zion was. God was having no nonsense with Zion. God was tolerating nothing less than His full thought in Zion. When Zion deprived Him of what He had brought Zion into being for, He then set Zion aside, showed that He had no longer interest in that as a thing. He disciplined Zion. Read again your Psalms. Read again the prophets. They are all concerned, as we shall show, with Zion. What discipline! What discipline! Through the years, and finally the seventy years of exile while in captivity, what discipline of the people of Zion.

Shall we just look for a moment at Isaiah. I did say a little while ago that as you look at the last chapters of Isaiah, you will find these final chapters are all concerned with Zion. Let us look, shall we, at chapter sixty-one, for we are very near the end of Isaiah when we come to sixty-one. Or you can go to sixty, if you like, where it reads, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” But go on to sixty-one: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me... the Lord hath anointed Me....” And here again it is the twofold interpretation. Zion is here pointing on to the other One Who used these very words and applied them to Himself.

Now to chapter sixty-two. (Cut out the numbers sixty-one and sixty-two, the chapter divisions being artificial.) “For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness [yes, remember your Amplified, until her right standing with God, until her right standing with God] go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth... nations shall see thy righteousness (thy right standing with God), and all the kings thy glory.”—“I will not hold My peace” until that happens. This is the cry of the prophet, and you can go on in these last chapters of Isaiah and find it is there; and what I am going to come to in that very connection is this, that Zion was the burden, the concern, the heartbreak, of the prophets.

Prophetic ministry always focuses upon Zion. The work of true prophetic ministry (whether in the Old or New Testament) relates to this Divine thought that is enshrined in this word “Zion,” as we have it in the Letter to the Hebrews, to have this amongst the nations, this expression of the fulness of Christ in sonship in a corporate body. That is the end toward which God is working and carrying out all His work of discipline.

I do want to apply this in a practical way. You see, we, rightly so, perhaps, are concerned with the work, what we call the Lord’s work, concerned with evangelism, getting souls saved. Nothing wrong with that! That is all right! Do not think I am undervaluing that. The work of preaching and teaching, and having meetings and conferences and all that which we can compass by this word or phrase, “the work of the Lord,” we are concerned about that. Very much concerned about it. Perhaps you ministers are very much concerned about your ministry, that is, the next address that you are going to give, and you are filling up your notebooks now. You have got a congregation in view. The work of ministry, of evangelism, or whatever else may come within that term, “the work of the Lord,” perhaps you are very much more than anything else concerned with that. Perhaps in your concern you say: “We must be in the work, we must be given to the work.”

Here my brother is going to forgive me because as I have said, I am trying to focus this thing right down. We have been having something in the evening meetings that I consider to be the very essence of the Lord’s interests. It is the same thing that I am talking about only in other language: “the overcomer,” the essence of the Divine thought and intention in Zion. Our brother has been laid on his back for many weeks, and we should not have got that if he had not been; and some of us know that the Lord sometimes sees that it is far more economical to take us out of “the work” than to keep us in it, to lay us aside from all our busyness for Him to get the essence of things. He is after the essential, the intrinsic. Men are after the big. Pragmatism governs so much of Christian work. I venture you do not know what I mean by that word, “pragmatism.” It means if a thing is successful, then it is right. That is shallow thinking. The devil has got a lot of success, is he right?! Many things are apparently very successful, growing, increasing, and everybody says, “My, that is the thing.” Is it? That is pragmatism. If a thing is successful and popular and everybody is flocking to it, it must be right.

All right, then. What of Jesus of Nazareth? How they flocked, they followed. He told why. Why? He said, “...because you did eat of the loaves and fishes, because you saw the signs and wonders, and a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after signs,” and they flock for that. But, but—this is short-lived. Short-lived. Presently they are all forsaking. They are being sifted out. He is being left alone. All the marks of success are being withdrawn from this world’s standpoint, and, at last, is this a successful movement with Him hanging on the Cross? Is that pragmatic? Well, we know today!—No, no, a thing is not necessarily right because people are flocking here or there, crowding, rushing; not because a thing seems to be gaining much ground and becoming big, not necessarily. Wait for that. Wait through the tribulation and then you will get “great multitudes, which no man can number.” But that is not pragmatic in this earthly sense.

You see what I mean! There is the discipline, the discipline of being sifted down from the husks to the kernel, from the chaff to the wheat. And “wheat corn is bruised,” says the Prophet Isaiah. Wheat corn is bruised, it is bruised. He is after the true genuine bread, and the constitution of that is something that has been ground to powder, has been bruised. Does this explain something to you, your own history?—It is very true, it is the Word, you see.

Therefore there is this section in Hebrews about sonship, “the chastening of the Lord,” chastening of the Lord, and chastening for every one of us may mean something different. What would be chastening to you would not be to me, but what would be chastening to me would not be to you. You can get away with lots of things, but the Lord knows where to find you out, where you cannot get away. I might be able to force myself through something on sheer natural soul force. I do not know whether that is true now, but it might be. Perhaps in the past it has been true, but the Lord knows just how to chasten me, and He knows the thing that is chastening for me and, perhaps, for no one else. Oh, do not just bring that word “chastening” into a narrow definition. It is the thing that “gets” us individually, finds us out. It is the thing, which to me, is real discipline.

There are some nice, very patient, forbearing, longsuffering temperaments, and, you know, they can be spoken to and treated ill and they do not ruffle a bit, they just go on. But with someone else, the Lord brings a rather awkward person into their home and, my word, that person is disciplined. See what I mean? Chastening, discipline, is what it means to us individually. But whatever that is, and you may say, “Well, why does the Lord do this with me? Look, He does not do that with all these other people. They are getting away with it”— “until I went into the sanctuary of God” and saw things from His standpoint. “The Lord is dealing with me and letting off all these other people in that way, but He has got me.” Do I revolt and say, “It is not fair. The Lord is not fair, He does not do this with other people.” Oh, no, this attitude will not do. He is focusing upon this end, this sonship matter, for adoption for eternal responsibility. Get hold of that, and we will go on.

[Shammu]

TRUE SONSHIP: WITHIN A SENSE OF DESTINY—“THE CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE.”

With Zion again in the background of our thought, let us pick out one more thing about Zion. I expect you well know that in the blood and constitution of a true Israelite, a true Hebrew, a true Jew, in the very constitution and blood, there is a consciousness or sense of destiny. Their thought is: “We are the chosen people, and we are chosen for God’s purpose and intention. It is not something that we have taken on as an ideology, as a philosophy, of our existence, it is in our blood.” They cannot get away from it. It is themselves. It is like that. A true Jew, citizen, and child of Zion has this inwrought sense and consciousness of destiny. It is the reason, the ground, of why they have been able to suffer so much, why they could go through their persecutions and survive, why they could endure so much. It is not because they make up their minds, not just the strength of their will, it is something born in them, part of their very being, it is elemental to them that they are a people of destiny. They hold on to it, they cling to it, they are still at the wailing wall. It was born out of this; however, that belongs to the “not.”

Here we are with the “but,”—“we have come to Zion.” And we have come to Zion in this sense: there is by right, if it is a true citizenship in heaven, “this one was born there”; if it is a true child of God, there is something about such a true child of God that although they may not define it, they may not know even the Scriptures about it, within them they have this sense of destiny that—there is some purpose governing our salvation, there is some meaning beyond our present comprehension for which we have been called, there is something in us in our very constitution that says, “called according to His purpose.” A sense of destiny, this is essential to Zion. This is what the New Testament is all about, and this is what this Letter to the Hebrews is all about. This is true sonship.

Now, we do not like these ideas, we do not like this language, but with the Jews, the true Jews, there was this element in them of “selectiveness.” You do not like that language, do you? Selective, something separate, something different, something other, something not general but particular. The inwrought consciousness of being called and chosen for something, which we call destiny. And only that will keep us going through the discipline, only that will keep us going through the suffering, the adversity, the perplexity.

Have you not been as I have, more than once and more than twice, at the point where you would have despaired. Been left to yourself, you would have given up, and gone out, and taken another way, and even washed your hands of Christianity. Have you never been pressed? Well, if you have not, all right, thank the Lord; but there is such pressure. Even Paul, with all his wonderful experience and knowledge of the Lord, came to a point where he said: “I was pressed out of measure, ...I despaired of life.” Paul? You despaired?! And you are always telling people not to despair. You were writing about the God of hope, and you tell me you despaired? And you told people to be in the ascendant, on top, and you say: “I was pressed beyond my measure.” Yes, all right, perhaps you do not know all that, perhaps you know a little of it, but the children of Zion are kept by something. They are held by something. It is this indefinable something which we call “destiny.” There is a hold on us that will not let us go. There is a grip upon us that even when we say we are going, we cannot go. Even when we come to the depths of despondency, we do not go out after all. We do not. We decided to, but we do not. No, it is not something to analyze and put into a system of teaching, doctrine, but it is some deep reality that is holding us. We are children of destiny, “the called according to His Purpose.” Oh, if you want a little Bible study, I would like you to go through and underline that word “according, according as, according to.” A marvelous word that is with Paul. It is all according to something. Zion was elect, chosen, separated, made distinct, because of destiny—its great purpose: and there was that in its very constitution, in the very blood, in the very blood, a sense that “There is something beyond, unto which we have been called.”

Now I am coming back to the prophets. The prophets were supremely concerned with Zion, just because of Zion’s destiny. Oh, how burdened they were about Zion, and, of course, in their case, their burden and their concern for Zion was the recovery of Zion. Zion had lost out. Zion had ceased to be what it was called to be, what God intended. It had lost out, and so the prophets are all concerned with the recovery of Zion and Zion’s testimony. That is prophetic ministry.

Oh, prophetic ministry. What do you mean?—foretelling? foretelling events? All right, if you like to have that, you can. But the real essence of prophetic ministry is the recovery of the fulness of Jesus Christ which has been lost. It is a recovery and a reinstating of the testimony of Jesus in the Church. That is true prophetic ministry, and do not bring prophetic ministry down to this and that and something else. The gift of prophecy. What is the gift of prophecy? Only foretelling? It may be that, or it may never be that at all and still be the gift of prophecy. The gift, the function, the anointing, of prophecy is the recovery of the full testimony of Jesus, the recovery ministry that does not have that as its objective, clear and strong and definite, is not prophetic ministry. The prophets were thus burdened. Read Isaiah 43 again in the light of that.

Test Everything By Its Eternal, Spiritual Value

Well, now, we come near the end of this morning. Again then, Zion is the embodiment of the spiritual values of Jesus Christ. Underline that word “spiritual values.” Test everything, test everything by the spiritual values. Test everything not from the standpoint of pragmatism at all but from the standpoint of its spiritual, which means, its eternal value. The ministry of anyone, my own or anyone else’s, is not going to be judged by the number of conventions or meetings at which we speak and the amount of Bible teaching that we give—it is never going to be judged by that. Understand that. You may have your diaries full of engagements, preaching engagements; you may be on the way of a very, very busy Bible teacher; you may be very busy, and you may have no time for anything else; and yet, with all the sum total, it is not going to be judged, dear friends, by how much you have done in that way. It is going to be judged by its eternal, spiritual value; what the essential spiritual value is when this life is gone, when I am gone, when you are gone, when all the teachers are gone, and we arrive in heaven and discover what was taken up then in our lifetime and is there. “The things which are seen are temporal,” in the preachers and the teachers and the conferences. “The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” And that is the standpoint of Zion, the essential spiritual value of everything.

Are you, dear preachers, teachers, really burdened in heart that every bit of your ministry shall have a spiritual, eternal value? Not the address, not the address! No, it is not whether my address is successful, accepted, or not. It is what is the spiritual, lasting value from eternity’s and heaven’s standpoint of anything. Surely our ambition ought to be that when it is all over here, when it is all over, when there are no more conferences down here, no more ministries and addresses down here, and we all gather above, our ambition is to find there people who say: “Look here, I would not be here but for what the Lord did in me through your ministry.” That is it, is it not? Oh, focus upon that, for Zion is, let me repeat, the embodiment of spiritual values. Not a place, not a sect, not anything temporal. That is not Zion. Now it is the concentrated and intrinsic values of Jesus Christ. That is Zion.

[Shammu]

God’s Jealousy For Zion

Upon what note shall I finish this morning? Well, with all that in view, of course, the right note would be God’s jealousy for Zion. Prophets shared the jealousy of God for Zion. The Lord said: “I am jealous for Zion, with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath. I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.” Where is God’s heart set? Not on any temporal expression of the old Zion. That is the “not.” But God’s jealousy, God’s concern, God’s wrath, relates to the true, intrinsic, spiritual values of His Son Jesus Christ. He is focused upon that. He will look after those spiritual values. He will look after the spiritual values. That ought to comfort us in the ministry, especially. See, people may repudiate, may discredit, and may go away and leave us. All right, that discipline is pretty hard. But wait awhile, perhaps in their own lifetime, they will come back or they will confess: “Look here, I got something from you which has been my real salvation. I did not recognize it at the time, but I know now that what you were saying, what you were doing, was the thing which has become my deliverance, my salvation, in the time of trouble.”

Well, it is like that. God will look after the spiritual values if you are concerned more with spiritual values than building up something big down here. That is where His jealousy is. Sooner or later His wrath will be shown from Zion. In that sense, the enemies will have to bow, they will have to surrender. As in the eternity, “every knee shall bow, and tongue confess.” All the enemies of Christ are going to be very much humbled. God is going to roar out of Zion. Well, let us be quite sure that it is Zion in this sense: “Ye are come to that, to Zion.” Let us leave it there for now. The Lord interpret. We pray:

We do pray that, Lord, this very hour may be used by Thee to produce those essential eternal values. Not just be an hour with ministry, more or less appreciated, but that there may be something wrought, something planted, something put inside us constitutionally, that shall appear in heaven and in glory as the Divine fiat, the Word, the Word of God, which did something. So help us. Seal this time then, in that way; forgiving all mistakes and errors and faults in the human, and take charge of Thine Own Interests, for Thy Name’s Sake, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 6 - A Final Shaking

Lord Jesus Christ, we seek Thy Face. It is written, “The Light of the Glory of God is in the Face of Jesus Christ.” Oh, Thou, Who didst forfeit, for that one terrible moment, the Countenance of Thy Father in order that we might never come there, that we might be received and abide in the Light of the Countenance of God, do this morning bring us into that very blessed inheritance through Thy Cross. The Face, the Countenance, the Towardness, the Unforsakingness of God. May this indeed be a time within the Veil when we dwell in the Light of the Countenance, the Face of the Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, in all that great and wonderful meaning, we now seek Thy Face. As we wait on Thee, show us Thy Face, Lord. For Thy Name’s Sake, Amen.

In this final hour of this particular ministry, it is necessary to seek special grace to gather up and concentrate all that has been said throughout this week. But I think, perhaps I should say I feel, that the leading of the Lord is to gather up and concentrate all with one part of this letter to the Hebrews before us. As the letter is drawing to a close, we reach that part of it which is marked as chapter twelve; and it is in verses 25 to 28 that it says: “See that ye refuse not Him That speaketh.” —Remember, the beginning is: “God hath spoken in His Son.”

See that ye refuse not Him That speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused Him That warned them on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from Him That warneth from heaven: Whose Voice then shook the earth: but now He hath promised, saying, “Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven.” And this word, “Yet once more,” signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe.

The significance then is a kingdom which cannot be shaken, as we have been trying to see and show. The significance of this letter for the present time is the “yet once more”; that is, in this dispensation which has come in with Christ, the shaking firstly of the earth side of things and then the shaking of the heaven side of things.

The earth side, I think, had a special reference to what was just about to happen in old, traditional, historic Judaism. This letter was probably written in the year 69. I cannot be positive about it because all the expositors and scholars are divided about who wrote it and when it was written. To whom it was written exactly, you need not worry about that; but I am fairly sure that it was related to what the Holy Spirit knew was about to take place in the historic Judaism and earthly Israel. The probability is that this letter was written in the year 69, and you know what happened in the year 70. If that is true, it was a very short distance from the writing of this letter to the destruction of Jerusalem which was so utter, so terrible. Some of you, you pastors especially, will have read Josephus; and if you have, the section on the invasion and destruction of Jerusalem is one of the most terrible things you can read in history. It took place in the year 70, when everything in that Jerusalem was devastated and desolated and the Jews scattered, as Peter says, “throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” and everywhere else. The earth side was certainly shaken, not only shaken but brought down and devastated; and from that, it has not yet recovered. There is no temple. There is no integrated Israel on the earth. That is the earth side, and this is the prophecy, as you know, taken out of the Old Testament that this would happen.

It is interesting, very interesting, significant, and instructive, to go back to the setting of that prophecy (which we are not going to do) to see the setting of it in the history of Israel, to see the conditions that were arising in the time of Haggai. The prophecy is taken up, brought right over here so many, many years later, and applied to the situation which is reached in this letter to the Hebrews at that crisis time: the shaking of the earth. Of course, it applies particularly to the shaking of the earthly Jerusalem, the earthly Israel. We say that and leave it, but that is only half of the statement: “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth (and the earth side), but also the heaven.”

So in the light of what the Lord has been saying this week and in the light of this letter in its full content, we are surely right in saying that Christianity, which is the other side; if you like, the heaven side, is going to be subjected also to such a shaking. Maybe we will not be far wrong if we say it has begun. It is on, it is proceeding, it is spreading. However, you may feel it has not reached your country yet. Well, if you are talking of merely material things, of outward economies, there may be few symptoms of it as yet; but spiritually, it is world-wide. It is the shaking of Christianity, the shaking of what we may call the heaven side of things, as different from the historic, earthly Israel.

But the point is that there is a universal shaking to take place in the economy of God; in the sovereign ordering of God, a universal shaking. What for? Here it says in order that there shall be nothing left but what God Himself has established. Note the little phrase: “As of things that have been made.” Who made them? Who made them? Things made. The things that God made, has made and established, are the things and the only things which will ultimately remain, and the shaking is for that.

Now this letter is a comprehensive comparison and contrast (or discrimination) between the passing and the permanent, between the temporal and the spiritual, between the earthly and the heavenly. That is the Letter to the Hebrews. That is what we have been emphasizing all the way through—the “not” any longer. A comprehensive “not”: “Ye are not come.” And the “But”: “But ye are come.” Two great comprehensive orders, economies, sovereignties, whatever you may call them, this whole letter has to do on the one side with the things which are transient and not abiding; and on the other side, with the things which are permanent and which remain “that (in order that) the things which cannot be shaken... [here is your “that” again] ...in order that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.” This is the comparison and contrast, or discrimination, that is made by this letter as a whole.

[Shammu]

 Here, as a kind of parenthesis, let me put this. It is important for us to remember that this letter was written to a people who for a long period had held the position of a people whom God had taken out of the world to Himself, showing that it is possible for such a people to miss the way. It is possible for such a people to make their position an earthly one, just an earthly one, or make that position earthbound. And that is the pulse of this letter, not to Israel only but to Christians. This is the “on-high calling” letter. This is the heavenly side. This is the New Israel which God has taken out of the world to Himself and for Himself; but through and through this letter runs this reminder that a people who were like that for so long, taken out for God to God, did in the end miss the object, miss the way, did not arrive. Chapter three is all on that. “They did not enter in, they perished in the wilderness.”

Oh, dismiss your chapter divisions and see chapter three. There you have the people who failed to enter in, who perished in the wilderness. “They could not enter in” is the word, “because of unbelief.” That is chapter three, but chapter four opens, and you are not far into chapter four before you have this: “the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” I am not going to launch out on that; but the point is, that in the wilderness where they perished, it was because they did not discriminate between soul and spirit. They did not understand the doctrine, of course; and, in effect, they lived in their souls.—That is, they lived in the self-life, the self-direction of everything: how this affects us, what we are going to get out of this, what this means in our interests. The self-life is the soul-life. The spirit is not that. The spirit is unto God, is the God-life.

However, this cleavage was not made in the wilderness; and although they had come out by such a mighty work of God, and become God’s people, and were separated unto Him, yet because they persisted in what we now call in the New Testament terms “soul-life,” because as the people of God there was no discrimination between the soul-life and the spirit, because there was no clear-cut between the two as of a “two-edged sword,” cutting both ways, up and down, because there was no clear-cut between the self-life and the life of the spirit, they perished in the wilderness. And do you tell me that that is not a possibility for Christians? That is the point of the letter, you see. Dismiss the division of chapter three and four as simply mechanical divisions, and pass right on and say, “Why did they perish in the wilderness? Why did they not enter in?” Why? Because there was not this clean-cut between self and the Lord, between soul and spirit.

Soul and spirit, this is a large matter about which we have heard too much. I think there is too much talk about that just now. It has become a very fascinating subject. You will never capture people more quickly and mentally than when you begin to talk about soul and spirit. It is a very interesting, mental subject; it is most fascinating. I am coming to the place where I want to talk about the things and not the names, the meaning and not the language or the terminology; however, that is by the way.

Now, you see, what I am saying is this letter was addressed to a people who for a long time had held the position of a people separated unto God, but who eventually missed the way and lost the inheritance, lost the meaning of their separation, because of the earthbound. Judaism—earthbound, and God says, “I will shake” that, “I will shake” that earthboundness, and “I will shake” it so devastatingly that there will be no temple and no Jerusalem and no headquarters for the nation at all, the whole thing will be smashed. “I will shake” that earth side, and He did, and has done that, and it has gone on all these centuries.

But He does not stop there. Then He goes over to the other side: “I am going to shake this other thing, too—this Christianity.” It came in from heaven, the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, but what have men done with Christianity?—brought it down to earth, made it earthbound, made it something. The Lord, foreseeing that, prophesies: “I will shake” that also, “I will shake” that also, and Christianity as a merely earthly system, will go into the melting pot, it will go into the fire, and only that which is really and truly heavenly, of the Spirit of God, will survive and come out.

You see the force of this letter?! Hence, if you go through this letter, you will find that it is divided along two lines: the line of precaution, of warning; and the line of resolution. Now here is a little Bible study for you. You go through and mark the nine times in which the word “lest” occurs. “Lest.” First, “Let us... fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short....” “Lest.” Nine times that word “lest” is used through the letter. Trace it and see its context. “Lest, for this reason...; lest, for that reason....” Nine times “lest” gives precaution and warning. And then, ten times you have “let us”; and connected with that phrase, “let us” is an admonition to resolution, to be resolved. No use, you cannot take anything for granted about this. You are not going to get there by drift, and that is the first “lest.” “We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we... let them slip.”—“Lest by any means you drift away, drift past.” That is the real language. You drift, and the picture behind this language is a picture which is a very simple one but very, very clear in its implication.

I used to be a yachtsman in Scotland, and we would go out on our day’s sail; but the most anxious moment, the most tense moment, was when we came back to pick up our moorings. If the tide of the current was flowing strongly, and if the wind was high, there would be a chance of missing our moorings. You have got to take off your power, take down your sails, get your head toward the mooring; and then everybody would look toward the one with the boat hook-up in the bow, someone lying down flat on the deck with outstretched hands to take hold of that mooring and to grab it and hold it, because the tide or the current flowing would even pull you into the sea if you did not hold tight. Here was tenseness. The peril was that you would miss it and drift past it; and there were rocks over there. You could drift past. You could miss and drift, carried by the tide or the current or the wind. Oh, it was a tense moment. You got it and held on and were able to pull the boat up on the moorings and make fast. Then the tension is gone. “We have reached home. It is all right now. Everything is all right.” Now that is the picture here which is actually used. “Lest we drift past.” Drift... drift... drift. “Lest.” Here is caution, warning!

All this is presented (and, oh, what an all it is!), this fulness and finality in Christ brought in with verses one and two of chapter one. And all that fulness and finality is in this letter, the great inheritance, a tremendous “all”; and the first warning is—“You could drift, you could drift; you could be carried past and carried away by the current, by the present breeze.” Now Paul puts it in another way: “carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness,...” That is the same thing. That is an illustration of the “lests,” and there are nine of them. “Lest we drift,” (etc.), and over and alongside of that is the exhortation “Let us”—“let us hold fast, let us lay hold, let us go on.” And I am just going to put another fragment in because I think it is illuminating, it may have a point of application, “lest,” because of the deceitfulness of sin, we are subverted.

[Shammu]

The Deceitfulness of Sin

The deceitfulness of sin.—Have you ever thought about that? What is the deceitfulness of sin, if the word “sin” is a comprehensive word? Now do not narrow it down to one of its meanings. Sin has many aspects. It works in many ways. You can call this sin and that sin and something else and a thousand things sin. Yes, but they are only aspects of the one thing. What is the meaning of the word “sin” in the Bible? Missing the mark, missing the mark. You may miss it because of this or that or of many things, but in the end it amounts to this: you have missed the mark. Sin, comprehensively, is “missing the mark.” It is the deceitfulness of sin to subvert you from the mark, from what Paul calls “the mark for the prize of the high calling—on-high calling.”

“Missing the mark,” the deceitfulness to subvert. You may ask, “What do you mean by that deceitfulness?” Well, for me, at the moment, for this purpose this morning, it is policy in the place of principle. There is nothing more subverting, more spiritually injurious, than policy—being politic. Oh, how I have seen tragedies in the life of godly men, servants of the Lord, on this thing. I know men brought face to face with God’s full purpose, but they had a position in the Christian world; and this full purpose requires a lot of adjustment as to position, adjustment as to relationships. “If I do that, my large door of opportunity for the Lord will be closed; if I do that, I will lose my influence for the Lord; if I take that way, maybe I shall be involved in much that will mean loss for the Lord, I am someone responsible for an organization that somehow or other has got to get support, and now, if I take such and such a line as has been indicated, I will lose my clientele. I will lose my financial support.” That is policy, politic, alongside of what God has indicated; and the issue is, “Will I trust the Lord to look after what is of Him. I am no longer interested in anything that is not of the Lord, but if it is, can I trust the Lord to look after that while I obey Him, go His indicated way, or shall I hold on to my place of opportunity, open doors, and influences for the Lord and take this other course?”

Do you see what I mean?—The deceitfulness of missing the mark, and I have seen more than one tragedy, that after years (it is so manifest to everybody) that man has missed the way. That man was meant for something more, something other. The Lord meant something for that man, but policy came in and he argued for his policy that it was in the interests of the Lord. The deceitfulness of sin, and this letter says, “You can be subverted by the deceitfulness of sin: policy instead of principle.” Does that fit in anywhere? Yes, it is necessary, you see, to pinpoint all this teaching.

The Shakeable and the Unshakeable—the Ultimate Thing Is the Measure of Christ

So here we come back. Hebrews, the Letter to the Hebrews, is a statement of what is abiding and permanent as over against what is passing and transient; and does not that matter? Surely it does supremely matter! The shakeable and the unshakeable. The New Testament is comprised of twenty-seven books, and most of them were written to combat some form of a universality of effort to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. Would you like me to repeat that? Most of the New Testament was written to combat some form of a universal effort to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. That is a statement which is very comprehensive, and you have got to break it up and apply it to each book of the New Testament. “Oh,” you say, “what then? Were Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and Acts and on written to combat something?” Yes, and when you take that as the key, my word, are we not in a combat in Matthew? Is not the Lord Jesus in a combat in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John? It is an atmosphere of combativeness, of conflict, of antagonisms. In Acts, is that true? And so you go on with the letters. Here is some form in each one, some form of this universality of effort, to destroy what had come in with Jesus Christ. The New Testament is a comprehensive countering of a many-sided attempt to subvert the Church and pervert the meaning of God’s Son. In that statement, you have got your New Testament in its real meaning; and do try to get hold of it, dear friends, in that way.

Now, the chief point of attack in this comprehensive or universal effort has always been, and still is, the measure of Jesus Christ, the measure of Christ. The enemy forces say: “We must, in the first place, keep Him out altogether, give Him no foothold.” That is the battle of the ages and of the nations. As soon as you bring Jesus Christ into a vicinity, trouble arises, conflict begins. You must keep Him out. Oh, look how it was with Paul as he went from city to city. He is hardly there, hardly said anything, and look what happens. I do not know how much he had said in Philippi—what he had said he said to just a little handful; we do not know exactly how many were by the riverside, outside the city—and he went into the city, not preaching as far as we know, not raising issues as far as we know, but the devil knew. The devil had possession of that damsel, that priesthood, the priest-woman of the temple; and how subtle are the words spoken: “These men are the servants of the Most High God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” Why, the devil is preaching the Gospel; it looks as though the very devil himself is glorifying the Lord Jesus! Ah, there is something very subtle here, as the issue shows. But the point is, from the unseen world where the real intelligence of the significance of Christ is recognized, is possessed, there is this combativeness coming in wherever that which is representative of Christ, or that which is Christ in effect, arrives. There trouble arises at once. The thought is, “Keep Him out, keep Him out; and if He has got in, drive Him out. Do everything to drive out what is of Jesus Christ if He has got anywhere at all.”

But then, that is not all. The plan is not only to drive Him out, but to subvert those who are His embodiment there. The plan is to subvert, to deceive, to turn aside, to bring in false teaching, false Christian ideologies, that which is “other” in its essence, that which is not essentially Christ, something put on to Christ, Christ plus, Christ plus, something put on. There are many things which are being imposed upon Christianity with all good meaning, but they are not the essence of Christ. That is the point of attack. The attack is in some way either to prevent, to force out, or to limit the measure of Christ. And do you know, dear friends, that it is the measure of Christ which is the governing thing. Not only that Christ has got in, but the measure of Christ. That is Ephesians. The ultimate thing is the measure of Christ.

The measure of Christ, and if you were to use that word “measure,” you are always transported to Ezekiel. The end of Ezekiel, what is it? It is the temple. Now I am not putting any interpretation on that, whether that is going to be literal and the Old Testament sacrifices restored. You can have your own interpretation about that, I am not touching that; but what I have there is that when the temple does come into view, it is a Heavenly Temple, and the Heavenly Messenger has His measuring line and taking the prophet round about—“he took me around, he took me in; round, about, in and up”—how detailed, how meticulously detailed that is with every point, every fragment, every iota, given a measurement. It is according to this measure, this Heavenly measuring reed or line. It is measured by that. Its place is only by reason of its having that measure; and I believe that stands right at the heart of the Letter to the Ephesians and the New Testament and to this Letter to the Hebrews.