Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

God Satisfied in Christ Jesus

But how was God satisfied? How was it possible for God to say, "My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17)? - God fully, completely, utterly pleased. Well, here is the simple course of the gospel. What happened at Jordan was that the Lord Jesus, stepping across the line from a private life into the public life of taking up the real ministry and work for which He came in the redemptive sense, figuratively recognised that the Cross was basic to it all, and everything would spring from that. So "then cometh Jesus... to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John would have hindered him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? But Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness" (Matt. 3:13-15). "To fulfil (to make full) all righteousness." How? On two sides, in two connections; the death side in Jordan, the life side beyond Jordan.

God's Satisfaction Extends to all Who Are in Christ

Everything that cannot be glorified must be buried: it has to be put out of God's sight once and for all; that is an established law. That is, everything that is not righteous, not in harmony with the very nature of God, must be buried. But it can only be buried after it has been judged and, being judged, has been proved worthy of death. Therefore, judgment having come unto all men to condemnation, and death having passed unto all men, for that all sinned (Rom. 5:18,12), the Lord Jesus in His own person in a typical way at the Jordan took the place of that entire sinful race. In a representative way, the judgment was borne by Him and was concluded - the judgment of what we are. As we said in our previous meditation, this was not the judgment merely of things we do or do not do which men so often regard as righteousness, but the judgment of what we are. "Him who knew no sin he made sin on our behalf" (in our stead, in our place): "that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21). Now, you may wonder why I am saying this to you who doubtless are the Lord's true children. Well, I tell you this - probably you know it in your own experience, but you will be constantly meeting it in the experience of others and your power to help them will depend entirely upon whether you are settled and fully assured in this matter - you will meet all the way through your life people who are the Lord's real children who are constantly assailed by uncertainty about their salvation, who are constantly found with their eyes turned in upon their own spiritual condition and absolutely paralysed by a question, a question which goes right to the root of salvation with them. That is terrible. Some of us have found it to be the one thing which has caused us more trouble in other people than perhaps anything else with which we have had to do. It is this matter of Satanic assault upon the faith of the children of God, very often encamping upon some physical or nervous trouble, or in other ways assailing to break down absolute assurance; and immediately the enemy has a foothold there he has destroyed testimony, paralysed service and put the glory out.

Always the glory goes out. Wherever you find that sort of thing, you find no glory. It is a terrible thing for the glory to go out - a terrible thing that, over a life which is redeemed and has accepted its redemption and known the Lord, there should be written Ichabod, 'the glory is departed.' Remember that is a thing which the Apostle Paul particularly found himself continually striving to circumvent. Why do we have such frequent references in the New Testament to Israel's breakdown in the wilderness? Come to that awful reiterated statement in the Hebrew letter - "I sware... they shall not enter into my rest" (Heb. 3:11, etc.): and then the appeal, "Today if ye shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts." This is not a 'gospel message' to the unsaved. Many sermons are preached to the unsaved on that - 'now is the day of salvation, today harden not your hearts'; but those words were taken out of the Old Testament into the New and used to believers, and again and again Israel's example in the wilderness is presented to believers as a warning, as a basis of appeal. Why? Were they not translated typically out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God's love? In type had they not come by the way of mighty, precious Blood? Were they not the Lord's? Yes, they were, but for them the peril was that the glory should depart.

Wherein lay that peril? It lay here, that their hearts were not set upon God's satisfaction but upon their own. This was the focal point of everything in the wilderness. They were constantly, in spirit if not in word, bargaining with God and saying in effect, 'If You will satisfy our desire and give us what we want, we will go on with You; if not, we will not go on.' So it was, when from time to time the Lord gave them their request, they were very happy, ready to go on a little further. Then He had to do something more. In the end God said, 'Enough of this; I brought you out for My satisfaction, for My pleasure, for My glory.' So, because they were bargaining with God, because it was always a matter of their satisfaction rather than His, the glory departed and shame stands written over that generation. Hence the Jordan has to be faced, and Jordan says once for all - fully, finally, overwhelmingly - 'It is the Lord; henceforth unto Him.' "We thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him" (2 Cor. 5:14-15).

God's Satisfaction to be Appropriated by Faith

Until that issue is settled, there is no glory, no possibility of glory. Glory demands that we recognise that in Christ not only were our unrighteous selves buried, but there was buried also any possibility of ourselves ever being righteous. You are willing to take your poor, wretched, miserable self and have it buried, but you are not always ready to take the supposed possibility of your ever being otherwise and bury it! You still walk round that wretched corpse, hoping it will produce some life! The only thing to do is to put it where God has put it - bury it! Oh, miserable Christian, get buried! Accept God's judgment and have done with it! In yourself you will not be any better when you have done that; you will still be that wretched self. But the point is that you must cease to have your eyes on that, and you must have your eyes on Another Who has taken your place. Yes, judgment and death are to be accepted; but are you listening to those evil voices that constantly suggest that God is judging you, a believer, for your sinfulness? That is how the difficulties, the trials, the strange experiences of life are represented to you - and it is most extraordinary what sensations and experiences the devil can give believers to make them think or feel that God has departed from them. This is the realm in which the battle of faith has to be fought against our soul sensations and the things which come to us. You can have the most wonderful proof one day that the Lord is with you and is using you and pouring Himself and His word through you, and at that time you have no doubt about it; and the next day you can have all the sensations that there is no God at all in your universe. Which of these two things is the fact? Was your earlier consciousness only an imagination, a bit of hysteria, or was it a fact? Is your sensation of the next day, the reality? Well, listen; these fluctuating feelings are not to be accepted as a true criterion. If God is judging your sinfulness, Christ came in vain. We are not atoning for our sins as believers; if we are, the atonement was not completed on Calvary, the work was not finished. Whatever may be the need of training and discipline and chastening by way of developing what is of God in us and making actual the setting aside of what is of ourselves, we are nevertheless, with all that, not atoning for our sins or sinfulness. That was done when one Man gathered us all into Himself and went down under the overwhelming flood of God's wrath. That is the gospel for believers. It is the gospel of the glory of the satisfied God. If you find anybody constantly reverting to their sinfulness, inevitably they have a bad time and you have to help them and be patient and sympathetic, understanding that there may be some background for this: but if you find a believer who persistently, over a course of months or years, reverts to that and undoes the atonement, just point out what they are doing. They have removed Calvary, they have undone in themselves the work of the Cross, they have taken the place of the Lamb of God in trying to atone for their own sinfulness. Are you prepared to do that? God forbid! Oh, let us really face squarely the terrific issues that are bound up with this matter of the accuser of the brethren finding a way in to the spirit of a child of God.

[Shammu]

God's Satisfaction Expressed at Pentecost

That is one side - Jordan on its death side. It is only on the other side, when Jordan has been passed through, that the heavens are opened and the glory is proclaimed - that is, God's absolute satisfaction is realized, righteousness is made full, and there is glory. Now that was indicated of course in Christ when the heavens were opened. When the first Adam fell, heaven was closed. In other words, Paradise was shut; there was no re-entry. When this last Adam took and bore away typically at Jordan all that the first Adam let in, Paradise was re-opened, heaven was re-opened, the glory was in view. That led right on to the transfiguration. But literally and actually all this was carried out at the Cross, as we know, and through the judgment and the Cross - the full atonement which He made, the "all righteousness" which He made full - the glory is immediately at hand.

Pentecost, then - issuing in the presence of the Holy Spirit in believers, the existence of the Church, the particular and peculiar nature of this dispensation, and the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth - is just the glory of the satisfied God Who has found, in that inclusive, all-comprehending Man, His own nature satisfied and His own object in creating man satisfied. God can say, 'I have secured what I want, what I ever needed, and having that, I can reproduce from it.'

The Spirit an Earnest of the Glory in Fullness

Thus the Holy Spirit comes; and notice what is written - "in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:13,14). What is the inheritance? - the glory of God in fullness. We have read of the glory of the Lord filling the tabernacle and the temple. Have you recognized that is where all Israel's fullness resided? It was there that Israel's satisfaction was found; the glory was there, it was from thence that everything came for Israel's life. In that place where the glory was, Israel's inheritance dwelt. Now, you know that little fragment in "Ephesians" where the Apostle prays that believers may have the eyes of their hearts enlightened that they might know (amongst other things) "what (are) the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18). In the Greek, "saints" is basically exactly the same word as the word used in the letter to the Hebrews for the "Holy of holies" (Heb. 9:3), so that the scripture just quoted may be said to relate to His inheritance in the 'Holy of holies'. God has His inheritance in the 'Holy of holies'; we have our inheritance in the 'Holy of holies'. The fullness of God's satisfaction, therefore the fullness of glory, is found there. The Holy Spirit has come as the Spirit of promise and as an earnest of our inheritance. What is that going to be? - the fullness of God in the Most Holy Place.

Come to "Hebrews". Where is the 'Holy of holies'? It is in heaven. The 'Holy of holies' of the tabernacle or of the temple was only a pattern of things in the heavens; the real things are in the heavens. So that our inheritance is in the heavens, where God's glory is full because God's satisfaction in Christ is absolute. What was at the heart of the 'Holy of holies'? - the ark of the testimony. When the ark was brought in the place was filled with glory. It portrays the Lord Jesus glorified in the fullness of the glory. And the Spirit comes forth to us, and we receive Him, as an earnest that we shall be where the Lord Jesus is and in the same glory with Him - our inheritance and God's inheritance too, for God will have His satisfaction when He gets the saints there. You see, God's inheritance is His Son, His first-born Son, and He gets that inheritance in His Son when He has Him in glory. Now then, many sons are to be brought to glory, and God's inheritance is found in those sons as brought to glory. Yes, glory is a place, but it is more than a place, it is God in full expression. Oh, is it possible that you and I are going to reach the place where God has unhindered expression of Himself in us? That is the gospel of the glory, that is this gospel that we are always talking about. What a marvellous thing it is! "The gospel of the glory of the satisfied God."

When the Holy Spirit comes as an earnest of our inheritance, of full and final satisfaction, what is our first sensation? It is one of wonderful satisfaction. But are we any different in ourselves? We shall learn very soon that we are not, but somehow or other there has come into us the feeling that this is what we were born for, this is what we have been after all the time. But is it just a sensation? Oh no, it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17), and the Spirit is the earnest of the heir's inheritance. He is, in effect, bringing God's satisfaction out of heaven into our hearts. That is the one thing in this universe which Satan cannot tolerate. He was in the glory once and knows something of what the glory means, but he lost it, and now he cannot bear to see anybody enjoying it; and if Satan can do anything at all to destroy the glory in your heart and mine he will do it. God's satisfaction - oh, God's satisfaction witnessed to by the Spirit in our hearts! Ought we not to be more satisfied with the Lord? Well, everything begins there. The Spirit Who came at Pentecost comes as an earnest of our inheritance.

The Church the Corporate Vessel of the Glory

Then, as the result of Pentecost, the Church immediately became the corporate vessel of the glory, that is, of God's satisfaction. If you have anywhere a true expression of God's thought about the Church you have a people who are living in the enjoyment of God's satisfaction, a people who have entered into rest, a people who are very, very satisfied - satisfied not with themselves but with the Lord. You will have that, amongst many other things. The Church is brought into being just to embody and to be the vessel of this glory of God, which is God's satisfaction as to His own nature. Therefore, when you come to a letter which has to do mainly with the Church, you have this exclamation - "Unto him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:21). "Glory in the church." The glory filled the tabernacle, the glory filled the temple: now it has filled something which is not a type but the reality. The glory is the satisfaction of God on the whole matter of righteousness, and you and I despoil our Church membership in the spiritual sense immediately we have any doubts about God's satisfaction. How can you preach about the Church while you are miserable and uncertain about your own salvation? You are denying the Church, and virtually putting yourself out of it in a spiritual sense, while you are in that condition. The enemy strikes at once at the Church when he gets any member doubting his or her salvation, having once known that salvation. It it a tremendous business. We are up against an awful thing: therefore this letter on the Church must inevitably head up to our wrestling with principalities and powers, world rulers of this darkness. You can talk about evil forces and go out against them in prayer, but do remember this, that if you have a question about your salvation the ground is taken from under your feet in fighting the enemy: you may say, 'I take up the whole armour of God', but the enemy is inside the armour and you are helpless. Talk as much as you like, you are beaten before you start fighting if you have a question about your salvation or about God's satisfaction with you in Christ.

The nature of this dispensation, then, is that it is the dispensation of a Church which embodies this testimony of Jesus.

[Shammu]

Effective Testimony Measured by Glory Apprehended

Then we come to the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. It is this gospel to which we have been referring. Everywhere we go we find people up against the sin question - the problem of getting on to good terms with God, of removing every ground in them of His displeasure. You may say that brings us back to the simple preaching of substitution and so on, but I venture to suggest that it is a great deal more than that. In our apprehension, that can leave us with something entirely objective. You will find in the Word of God - in the Old Testament by abundant typical proofs and in the New Testament by much direct teaching - that the effectiveness of our testimony depends upon the measure of our apprehension of the glory. That has to be borne out and made clear, but there it is. There has to be an impact upon the enemy that is more than a doctrinal impact. The doctrine may be absolutely sound and true, but Satan is never overpowered in that way. There has to be an embodiment of the doctrine, and, if you will allow it, there is a clear revelation that there are degrees of glory because there are degrees of entering into the meaning of the death, the resurrection, the ascension, the glorification of the Lord Jesus. It is something to be entered into, as distinct from the mere knowledge of historic facts, doctrines, truths. The Lord Jesus is in heaven, and we have to know Him in a heavenly way. We have to go to heaven to know Him, and we have to go now. A Church that clings to this earth and becomes an earthly thing is a powerless Church. It is only a Church which spiritually occupies its place in the heavenlies that can register anything upon this earth, and the measure in which you are emancipated from this earth and this world and are knowing a life in the heavenlies is the measure of your impact, your testimony upon this earth. A worldly Christian is a powerless Christian; a worldly Church is a Church stripped of power and of glory. The heavenly position of the Lord Jesus is something to be entered into and we shall take all our lives to enter into only a part of that. If you go on with the Lord under the hand of the Holy Spirit, you will find that you are becoming more and more in spirit a stranger on earth, and more and more things which are not here are becoming the things which are your life. That is not only a statement of fact, that is a test of your spiritual life. As we go on, the things which are above ought to become more and more our very being, without which we cannot live here on this earth; and in so far as that is true shall we have power against the enemy and in testimony.

There are degrees of glory resultant from the degree of apprehension of Christ, and the degree determines the power of world-wide testimony. That is only saying in perhaps a round-about way that in the beginning, in the book of the Acts, the world-wide testimony did count for something; there was impact; they could talk about men who had turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). There was a tremendous registration. Satan was mightily active, but he was beaten every time. Why? - the Lord's people had a great apprehension of the glory of Christ. By the Holy Spirit that glory had come into the Church and therefore the Church could minister like that.

Now this is but an attempt to point out what a gospel we have. Do you not agree that one of the greatest needs, if not the greatest, of our time is the recovery of the greatness of the gospel from its littleness and from its cheapness? - cheapness which is always offering something for the pleasure and satisfaction of those concerned in order to make them happy. That may be very good, but it is very cheap. Oh, there is something infinitely bigger than that! It reaches right back, before times eternal, in those counsels of God: it reaches right on to the ages of the ages. It is an immense thing - that the universe shall be filled with the glory of God, and that the vessel in which that glory is deposited and through which it is revealed and administered is the Church, "the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God." It is to that we are called. That is no small gospel. It is "the mystery of the gospel" and yet it is still "the gospel of your salvation."

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Glory of God's Sabbath

"The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God" (1 Tim. 1:11).

"The gospel of your salvation" (Eph. 1:13).

"The mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:19).

"The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the year of Jehovah's favour" (Isa. 61:1-2).

"And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.... And he began to say unto them, Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:17-19,21).

"And when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled..." (Acts 2:1, R.V.M.)

The Year of the Grace of the Lord

"The year of Jehovah's favour," or "The acceptable year of the Lord." A better translation is "the year of the grace of the Lord." That is what comes in with the gospel, what lies behind it, what makes it to be the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. The gospel is founded upon the year of the Lord's favour. "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me... to proclaim the year of Jehovah's favour." What is that year? It is taken from the Old Testament, from the book of Leviticus - "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his own possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you" (Lev. 25:10,11). Here is the year in which liberty is proclaimed, and here we have in Isaiah 61: "liberty to the captives." It is the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, and the fiftieth year becomes the year in which the good news goes out. "To proclaim liberty"; "the year of the Lord's favour." "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me" to proclaim that.

Then on the day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day - forty from the resurrection to the ascension and ten spent waiting in prayer - the Spirit came upon the Church, and the gospel, the good news, the proclamation of emancipation, was started out on its way to the ends of the earth. "Now when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled" - fifty, the year of the Lord's favour.

The Law of the Sabbath

Going back to Isaiah, we may remind ourselves that those prophecies, from Chapter 40 onwards, have to do immediately with Israel's return from the captivity. The people have been prisoners in captivity; now comes the proclamation of their liberty, the setting free of those that are bound, the acceptable year of the Lord for their return. But what lay behind it? You turn to the prophecies of Jeremiah, and you find him repeatedly referring to the reason for the captivity and saying that the land should have rest for seventy years to fulfil the Lord's Sabbaths. The people had broken the law of the Sabbath, not just the weekly Sabbath but the sevens of weeks and months and years. The land had not had its rest, the captives, the slaves, had not had their rest, their liberation. The people had been riding roughshod over the law of the Sabbath. You know what Isaiah 58 has to say about this - that they had turned His holy day into a holiday, doing their own pleasure therein. They broke the law of the Sabbath. That cannot be done with impunity because of what it signifies, and so they went into captivity, for seventy years - ten times seven. Ten is the number of responsibility; seven is the number of spiritual completeness. They were held responsible before God for this whole matter. Jeremiah reminded them of that again and again and, under the instruction and direction of the Lord, he declared that they should make good by seventy years of captivity. Then at the end of the books of the Chronicles, you have these words - "That the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king Persia, so that he made a proclamation..." The acceptable year of the Lord had come and they returned from captivity.

That is the history and that is the type, but you cannot say that obtains when you come to Luke 4 or to Acts 2. You have got away now from the historical or from the Jewish. That has served its purpose as a great illustration of how jealous God is for His testimonies, His ordinances, His Sabbaths. Israel is a great example of God's jealousy as well as of His grace.

Now we come to Christ, Who takes up that very Scripture and appropriates it, applying it to Himself, and says, 'Whatever was fulfilled in the case of Israel in their return from captivity when judgment was accomplished, here today you have a transcendent fulfilment of that in your very ears, for I am the Anointed One above all others, and the very purpose of My anointing is to proclaim, on the basis of judgment fulfilled, liberty to the captives.' He has just been to Jordan - this is the fourth chapter of Luke; the judgment in type has been put upon Him and He has gone down into death under the overwhelming billows of God's wrath: judgment is complete. Then He comes forth and declares, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me... to proclaim liberty... the year of the Lord's grace"; the gospel of the glory of the satisfied God, the blessed God.

Now we can understand the meaning of the day of Pentecost and of the day in which we are living, for it has turned out to be not a day of twelve or twenty-four hours but a dispensation. We often speak of this as the day of grace, the gospel day. It is a day that broke when the Lord Jesus rose from the grave and ascended to His Father and sent forth the Spirit, and that day will close when He returns finally from heaven. It is a long day, but this is the day of the Lord's favour in which this gospel of the glory of the blessed God is to be preached under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

But let us come again to this matter of the Sabbath lying behind it, for it is just there that the whole point of the satisfied God is found. When was the first Sabbath? - when the Lord looked on all that He had made and saw that it was very good, and He rested from His works. "God... hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work" (Gen. 2:3). "Ye shall keep my sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations" (Ex. 31:13). He appointed the Sabbath as an ordinance forever throughout all their generations, and made a Sabbath of days, and a Sabbath of weeks in the seventh week, and a Sabbath of months in the seventh month, and then a Sabbath of years in the seventh year, and then a Sabbath of multiples of seven years - forty-nine; the fiftieth, the completion of seven sevens. They all speak of this - God is satisfied, and because of that, you can go free. It is as though a prisoner is interrogated at the bar and an altogether satisfactory case is made out and answer is given, and the judge says, 'I am satisfied, you are acquitted.' Why are you acquitted? This of course, brings us to the letter to the Romans: you are acquitted because God is satisfied.

So the Lord Jesus gathers this all up into Himself and He becomes the personal Sabbath of the Lord, the beloved One in Whom God is well-pleased. When He is at God's right hand, God is satisfied, and the great amnesty is proclaimed - the gospel of the satisfied God - and we are given our liberty. You know all that happened in the Jubilee year. All slaves were liberated, all properties in bond had to be returned to their owners; freedom from every kind of tie and bondage was proclaimed, it was a time of joyful release. Well, there ought to be nothing more joyful than our gospel, and there ought to be no more joyful people than those who have such a gospel as we have. It is the gospel of the glory of a satisfied God.

[Shammu]

Christ God's Sabbath Rest

Let me stay one moment to touch further upon that matter of God's satisfaction giving character to the gospel, making it a glorious gospel. We said in a previous meditation that the word 'glory' in the Bible is almost invariably associated with the nature of God. That is quite understandable if you look at it like this. Usually, when you meet people off their guard, you can tell pretty much what kind of people they are. I mean this. If you meet a person with a guilty conscience, somehow or other that guilty conscience comes out at you, and though you may not know why, you have a sense that things are not right. You meet somebody who has something in the background of their life which is evil and there is a shadow over the face; you are conscious of the shadow. The more sensitive and alive to people you are, the more quickly do you know, in their presence and without a word, the state of their inner life. You register something that is inside - 'this person is not transparent, he is shifty, he must not be trusted.' You do not know why, you do not know their history, but you know that. By what comes to you from their presence you know what their life is. The registration may come in a variety of ways, leaving you with an impression, and when you get that impression you know your person.

God's nature is all righteousness, and therefore when you meet God, you do not meet any clouds, shadows, darkness, doubt, question, suspicion, uncertainty. All is crystal clear. It is a terrible thing to come really into the presence of God. You do not have to tell Him anything, you know that He knows; He reads you through and through, and absolutely truly. When the Lord Jesus was here, anything dark that came into His presence was immediately exposed. He did not have to say anything: He came into the place and the demons cried out, "Let us alone! What have we to do with thee?" (Luke 4:34). He might have said, 'I have done and said nothing to you; what is the matter with you?' Ah, He needed not to speak: He knew all men and knew what was in man (John 2:24-25), and men knew that He knew. The trouble all the time was that they could not bear His presence, they had to do something about it. The only thing to do for their own comfort was to kill this Man. He brings our sins to remembrance! He reminds us of our sin! Get into the presence of God, and it is like that. The glory of God is what comes out from God - the registration, the impact, the influence, that comes out from Him. He is all righteousness, and His glory is just that. God is all righteous, and He makes a demand upon all men that they too shall be righteous in order to have fellowship with Him, to stand in His presence, to abide the eternal burnings. Think of standing in the presence of such a God without flinching! That is the gospel of the blessed God - it is possible! We can kneel here and in perfect simplicity, without any question or hesitation, speak to that God and say, Father! We can commune with that God without fear, and abide in His presence in the glory which would destroy anyone who was not in Christ. This, I know, is quite simple and elementary, but it is the gospel of the glory of the satisfied God. It is not the message of the terror of a dissatisfied God, it is not the news of the awfulness of a holy God Whom we must fear and dread, from Whom we must stand back. No: the gospel is the good news of the satisfied God - of the year of Jubilee, the year of acceptance, the year of grace. He has found His Sabbath rest, His satisfaction, His good pleasure, the answer to all His desires, the perfection of all His work, in His Son, the Lord Jesus, and He has put that to the account of simple faith; and we, accepted in the Beloved, are proclaimed free and are given a proclamation of that same freedom to make to all captives. That is where you begin.

God's Righteousness in the Church

Now you notice that this is transferred to the Church. When you look at the Old Testament you find that so often the glory is linked with a dwelling place. "Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them" (Ex. 25:; and when the tabernacle was made, the glory filled it. The temple was the same - a place for a dwelling. Now pass from the Old Testament to the New. The statements about the Lord Jesus are well-known. He is the effulgence of that glory (Heb. 1:3). He is "crowned with glory" (Heb. 2:9). He is, to use the words of the psalmist, "the King of glory" (Ps. 24:7); or in Paul's words to the Corinthians; "the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:. "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father" (John 1:14). But then He goes to the Father, and the Spirit of glory (as Peter calls the Holy Spirit) is sent forth and comes and takes up residence in the Church. The Church now becomes the dwelling place of the glory, that is - remembering all the time the meaning of the glory - the dwelling place of God's satisfaction because the dwelling place of God's nature. Righteousness is there "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Rom. 3:22) - it is there in the Church, and the Church is glorified or glorious because God's righteousness is there by faith, and God is satisfied.

God's Rest in the Church

And the point is this, that if we are the place of the dwelling of the glory we ought to be people who know heart rest. God has come into His rest, He is satisfied, and the Church ought to be the place in which the rest of God is found. Now, if these things seem simple, do remember that the whole testimony which is deposited in this vessel depends for its effectiveness upon these factors. You begin with God's satisfaction or God's rest, and the testimony must be that the people of God are in the enjoyment of God's rest. So that the enemy's first activity against the testimony of Jesus, against the Church, is to bring strain, unrest, into the Lord's people. All who are weary and heavy-laden ought to find rest when they come amongst the Lord's people, and we contradict the very conception of the Church when we lose our heart rest. It is most important; it is a part of our gospel, a part of our proclamation. Believe me, if we were really, in our experience, proclaiming this rest - that is, if it were not merely heard but seen, recognized - it would be a tremendously effective thing, for what we are is a much stronger proclamation than what we say; and if the Lord can have people here and there on this earth who are perfectly satisfied with Him and enjoying His rest, who have found rest unto their souls, He will have a tremendous witness in the earth, because one thing which is the mark of Satanic working in this universe is the seething, restless dissatisfaction, the longing, the craving, that is never being met. The gospel of the glory begins here in the place where the glory is; and the glory is that God is satisfied, God has come to His rest and we have entered into that rest. It is something that dwells in the Church. The gospel has to dwell in the Church. It is the gospel of the glory of the satisfied God.

[Shammu]

The Lord Jesus A Priest-King

Now that again in turn lies at the heart of the fact that the house, the dwelling place, the Church, is a priestly dwelling. You remember that it was said that the robes of the high priest should be "for glory and for beauty" (Ex. 28:2). Well, in the eyes of God, of course, the mere dressing up in gorgeous garments had no value; the garments can only be typical of something very much greater. There is nothing you can do in the way of elaborate and gorgeous pageantry that can impress God - though it may impress men. And yet God said these priestly robes should be "for glory and for beauty." (The word 'beauty' could equally well be translated 'honour.') John 17 is the high priestly prayer. The Lord Jesus is going to the altar, the Cross, and then He is going to pass through the heavens and up to the throne, and the Apostle is going to say "We behold Jesus crowned with glory and honour" (Heb. 2:9). Peter used exactly the same words when, looking back to the Transfiguration Mount, he said, "He received from God the Father honour and glory" (2 Pet. 1:17). When was that? "And behold, there talked with him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease (or, exodus) which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:30,31). It is the priest in view. We cannot go back and talk about the priestly features of the exodus from Egypt - the blood shed, the blood sprinkled, the testimony against death. That is all priestly function. The point is, this is all gathered up in the Lord Jesus as High Priest.

The Way of the Enemy's Defeat

Then the second psalm again. "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." Jesus is raised, glorified and enthroned, set upon God's holy hill of Zion, crowned with glory and honour, a Priest upon His throne. What is the outworking of that? Well, the point that I have wanted to arrive at is this, that when that reality is in the Church, as it came to be on the day of Pentecost - Christ risen and enthroned in virtue of God's absolute satisfaction - then the devil's power is undercut. That is what comes out in Acts. If you go back upon that you reinstate the devil in power. I want to press this point seriously because one of the major end-time activities of the devil is to seek to bring the Church into a place where it cannot function, where it is neutralised in its power, its witness, its influence, because the mighty reality of God's absolute satisfaction has been weakened: or - to put that in the more positive way - where believers are challenged as to their assurance of salvation. Many of you probably have no questions or shadows on that matter, but I doubt whether you will get through to the end of your course without a vicious assault from the enemy to undermine your assurance. It may not come directly on the point of assurance of salvation; it may come in some other way to undermine your confidence in God, or even to becloud your certainty of God. That is, at heart, the nature of the battle of faith. We are not going to get out of the battle of faith till the end of the journey. Indeed, it will doubtless become more and more severe and acute. Faith is going to be tested more and more, and when it does survive and triumph there will be victory indeed.

And on what ground is faith tested? It is on the ground of our very relationship with God and God's attitude toward us. The concentration of the enemy's forces is upon that point - to interfere with our link with God.

What is our link with God? It is this - the Lord Jesus Christ, as the answer to God and to Satan for us. It will never be what we are in ourselves. If you are expecting a day to come when in virtue of what you are in yourself you can satisfy God, you are destined to an awful disillusionment and disappointment. The day will never come when we can satisfy God in ourselves, not even more or less. The strength of the Church is its faith in the Lord Jesus. The link with God is the Lord Jesus as God's satisfaction, and as God's answer to Satan, the Accuser.

How then can we really dislodge the enemy, undercut his power, destroy him in effect? That is a very big question. We are not going to defeat the enemy by big organisations and movements; he will soon get inside of those and turn them to his own account. We are not going to do it along any one of many lines which might easily be mentioned here. We are going to destroy the enemy in effect, and establish the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus in the kingdom of the enemy, only by a full apprehension of what the Lord Jesus is. Now when I use that word full, I underscore it several times because I feel that is the point to which we must come in these meditations. It is the measure of our inward apprehension of the Lord Jesus - of what He is - that is going to answer this whole situation. Therefore for disposing of the whole hierarchy of Satan and emptying the heavens of those evil principalities and powers, the Lord needs above all things, as His instrument and vessel, a people corresponding to Zion, that is, a people who are the embodiment of His fuller thought about the Lord Jesus to a degree that is beyond the average. Some people have gone further into what the Lord Jesus is, and in them something very much more of God's knowledge of His Son is found. It all amounts to this - the measure of Christ. It is one thing to believe on the Lord Jesus, to be converted, to be saved. That is a glorious thing as a beginning, but it alone will not take you right through all that you have to meet; and if you are really in the Lord's hands He will see to it that by virtue of need you are pressed into knowing more and more of His Son. It is the normal course of a true, Holy Spirit-governed Christian life that, in order to get through, a constant increase of Christ, a growing discovery of Christ, is necessary. In the end, the vanguard of the Church, the spearhead of the spiritual Israel, by whom the way will finally be made for the Church into the heavenly dominion and government with Christ, will be a people who have been wrought into Christ very deeply and into whom Christ has been wrought very deeply. They are a necessity to the Lord.

That principle is seen through the Scriptures in many ways. It is one to which the Lord will work - the raising up of a people who have come to some larger measure of what Christ is than is common among His people; and those who have only the lesser measure will need a people like that to get them through. Why does the Lord take one and another through such deep and trying experiences? Why is it that He does not allow some of His children to have an easy way and to be satisfied and gratified with elementary things? Why does He keep them on the move, never let them settle down? Why does He take them through these unusual and extraordinary spiritual experiences and cause them such exercise as multitudes of Christians do not have? Why is it? The need of the others - that is all. We know quite well that if any have been able really to help others, it is because they have gone through deep experience, they have pioneered this way, they have paid a great price for this freedom. It has been costly - but worth while if others can be really helped. It is just the outworking of the Lord's way. So He takes a people by strange ways, very deep and very high and very much outside of the realm of the ordinary, in order to fit them to be a peculiar people of value and usefulness to His Church.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The Lord's Need of a 'Zion' People

"Let mount Zion be glad, let the daughters of Judah rejoice, because of thy judgments. Walk about Zion, and go round about her; number the towers thereof; mark ye well her bulwarks; consider her palaces: that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death." (Psa. 48:11-14).

"Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King." (Psa. 48:2).

"They go from strength to strength; every one of them appeareth before God in Zion." (Psa. 84:7).

"I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto the house of the Lord. Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem; Jerusalem, that art builded as a city that is compact together; whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord, for an ordinance for Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord. For there are set thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David." (Psa. 122:1-5).

"Whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the Lord, for an ordinance for Israel," or, "for a testimony unto Israel." We have often pointed out that, in the Old Testament representation of Divine thoughts, Zion is that which fully expresses God's mind for His people. It is in Zion that are found all those features and characteristics of a people wholly according to the mind of the Lord. Zion is a representative word. Just as a little technical matter, we might point out that in some places in the Scriptures it is stated that the house of the Lord was there, but actually the temple was not on Zion at all, it was on Moriah. But what is indicated by that fact is this, that Zion really does stand for all the Lord's mind about His house. Moriah is in Jerusalem proper and greater; the house is there; the Church is there, if you like. But in Zion, the Church is what the Lord means it to be in thought. I wonder if you catch the significance of that? Viewed as a whole, the Church is not always in itself what the Lord intended it to be. Who, looking at the Church today as a whole, would say that it closely approximates to the revelation of it in the Word of God? Anyone who would say that does not know much about God's revelation of the Church. But God still cleaves to His full thought about the Church. He has not accommodated Himself to the situation which actually exists, and accepted it. He still holds to all that ever He thought and intended, and in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, He has that full thought. And then He is at work by His Spirit to gather to His Son a people, not distinct from the Church as a whole, not a separate body in reality, but a representative company, who really do satisfy Him at least more fully as to His full thought about the Church; and this is what is meant by Zion. That is the point we reached at the end of our previous meditation, and we have now come to the very heart of our subject.

That is what God is after - a 'Zion.' It is Jerusalem, but as the Lord would have it to be and not as it actually is. Oh, we could take up a whole mass of Scripture to bear that out; but you have only to look at that section of the Scriptures dealing with the return of a remnant from captivity, and you will see it there. It is a coming back, not to Jerusalem but to Zion, every time. "The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion" (Isa. 35:10); and the Lord says, "I am returned unto Zion" (Zech. 8:3). Yes, "I am returned to Jerusalem" (Zech. 1:16), but, "I am returned unto Zion," for Zion is what Jerusalem should be in His mind. "I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath" (Zech.8:2). Zion is God's whole thought as to what His people should be, and it is the focal point of Divine interest. In the New Testament there is a spiritual interpretation of this, a spiritual counterpart to the historical. "Ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" (Heb. 12:22). "Ye are come;" not 'ye are coming, ye are on the way, to Zion,' whatever you may mean when you sing 'We're marching to Zion'! We are come to Zion. That is the thought of the letter to the Hebrews - that we are come to something which in heaven is absolute, full, final. We have left the partial, we have left the figures, the types, the pictures of the Old Testament, none of which reached fullness and finality; they only led us so far and left us there, but now we have come to the end of it all. "God... hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son" (Heb. 1:2), and we are come to Zion. In His Son we are come to Zion - God's full thought in Christ. In New Testament interpretation, therefore, it is this - Christ, the embodiment of God's full thought concerning the Church, and a gathering into Him of those who satisfy that full thought, a gathering of a people to be a 'Zion' people. Now that is the basis of everything. Around that are gathered numerous things; if you want to know how numerous, sit down with a concordance and look up the word 'Zion.' That will give you a long task. Zion is a very comprehensive thought of God, with numerous aspects.

[Shammu]

Zion A Testimony unto Israel

We come to one of the main things connected with this desire of God. It is here in this Psalm 122. "Whither the tribes go up... for a testimony unto Israel." A people in Zion for a testimony, not to the unsaved in this case, but to Israel. It will go beyond Israel to the unsaved, but this is God's method - from the centre to the circumference and beyond; Zion, Israel, the nations. But here for the moment we are confined to the first reach of the testimony, from Zion unto Israel. Now, that that is true in principle is proved by remembering that it was an ordinance established by God. We are back at the beginning when Israel was constituted a nation. You have only to look at one fragment in the book of Deuteronomy - "Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose: in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles, and they shall not appear before the Lord empty" (Deut. 17:16). Now you would be wrong, of course, if you read into this passage in Psalm 122 that all Israel went up to Jerusalem three times a year, or even once a year. They could not all get into Jerusalem, to start with; they could get nowhere near to Jerusalem; but they went up representatively. All the males went up three times a year; Israel went up in representation, and when they came to Zion, well, there a number of things happened.

They came, of course, into a wonderful renewal of the realisation of the love of God. How? The High Priest was there with the names of the tribes on his breast in the breastplate. They were before the Lord in the high priestly love - the love of God in Christ bearing them all on his heart. On his shoulders, again, their names were borne - the strength of God in Christ sustaining them through their lives. They came into a renewed apprehension of the love and the strength of God on their behalf in the high priest.

Well, I dare not stay to say all the things that happened when they went up. We have a little taste of that when from the distances of the earth, the hard places, and the spiritually cold and lonely places, we come together like this and touch the love and the strength of God, and feel anew the oneness of the Lord's people. When we have been apart and have felt we were the only Christians on the earth - sometimes you do feel like Elijah, "I, even I only, am left" (1 Kings 19:14) - we come together, and all things go that are not true, and the real truths are strengthened, and it is all good. They came up three times in a year in representation, and they took back to all Israel the good of Zion - a testimony for Israel.

My point now is just this - they were a representative company in Zion; Zion was representative in the matter of a testimony. Can I put that more explicitly? A company came to what Zion represented, and that company had a testimony for all the rest of the Lord's people. When you grasp that, you can see one of God's sovereign ways. I wonder if you have thought about the course of things in the New Testament. You start with the day of Pentecost, and the following period, however long or short it was, when things were really in fullness, very satisfying and gratifying to the Lord; He was having His thought very largely expressed in those first days, months, or, it may have been, even a few years. But then things began to change. You find a lowering of the temperature, the standard is being dropped, mixture is coming in; it is found necessary to correct a lot that is wrong in the Church; things are not the same. And it would appear that that process went on and developed. But what did the Lord do about it? Did He say, 'It was very grand while it lasted, but they cannot stand up to this, they cannot meet this standard, it is quite evident that they will not be able to maintain the original level, so I must accommodate Myself to the situation and accept this lower level and try to be satisfied with it'? Did the Lord do that? He never did. The impressive and remarkable thing is this, that the Lord began giving ever fuller and enlarging revelation - yes, to a Church which was no longer what it was at one time. You come to these closing letters of the Apostle Paul's life. Who can stand up to their contents? Look at the condition, the weaknesses, the defects, the limitations of the Lord's people, and yet He goes on like this, simply piling it on. He is not accommodating Himself to smallness, He is not accepting the situation, He is answering back with more and more and more. And what is the point? If they will not or cannot all have it, some will, and through that nucleus, that representative company, He will keep the lamp of full testimony alight. Even when shadows creep into and over the Church, He will maintain a full testimony, even if it be only in a few.

And that is where you are in the first chapters of the book of the Revelation. The Church as a whole is far from what it was at the beginning and far from what God intended and had revealed as His mind, but He does not excuse and accommodate and accept. He comes right back with the full revelation and calls for the nucleus from all the churches. That is how God reacts. Why? For a testimony unto Israel, a representation for all Israel. Oh, do grasp that. Even if you do not understand fully what the Lord is after, it is for you to decide whether you are going to be with the general, nominal, ordinary, or whether you are going to be of Zion. That is a point we shall have to emphasize more perhaps before we have finished. But after all, this remains - what God is after is this which is meant by Zion, that is, a representative company who have a fuller testimony for all Israel, and who are in the good of it on behalf of others. That is the way in which the Lord seeks to meet the great need, by having amongst them some who are a satisfaction to Him and know Him in this fuller way.

[Shammu]

A Testimony to the Absolute Sovereignty of the Lord

"Whither the tribes go up for a testimony unto Israel." What testimony? What is the testimony? Well, the answer is Zion. That is the testimony itself. But what is Zion? Well, look at the history of Zion and you have the explanation of what the testimony is. In the first place, the testimony is to and of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord, and, in our own present meaning, the Lord Jesus. That is where the testimony begins. It is out from that that all testimony flows - the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus. Zion is "the city of the great King" (Psa. 48:2). Solomon lived in Zion, David lived in Zion. Look at the history of it very briefly. Probably you recall that the first mention of Jerusalem in Gen. 14:18 was in connection with Melchizedek, who was king of Salem - that is the first name of Jerusalem. Melchizedek was priest of the Most High God, but he was king of Salem. The very first mention of Zion or Jerusalem is in connection with kingship in relation to priesthood.

Then we move on, and we find that Zion was the citadel or the stronghold of Jerusalem in the hands of the Jebusites. It was called first Jebus, the stronghold of the Jebusites, and it was in the hands of the Jebusites through the whole period of the Judges and the reign of Saul and the reign of David in Hebron. But when all Israel came to Hebron to make David king and he was doubly established in his kingship, then he went up to Jebus. He threw out his challenge to his mighty men, "Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain" (1 Chron. 11:6), and Joab broke through; but it was such a stronghold as to be considered absolutely impregnable by the Jebusites, for they said, 'Why, the blind and the lame are sufficient to defend this!' Now that is not just a story, there is something wrapped up in that of tremendous significance where you and I are concerned. Believe me, the establishment of the Lord Jesus in absolute sovereignty is no child's play. Take it in His own case. What a tremendous thing it was to gain that absolute ascendency over all the forces of evil! What a grip the powers of evil had upon the citadel of man's soul, upon this world - such a grip as to make the enemy feel that his position was impregnable; and we know that there is something in that. Have you never been defeated by an enemy stronghold in a life? We have all come up against situations in individual lives in which Satan had such a purchase that it required something infinitely greater than the strength or the ingenuity of man to solve the problem. The problem of the deliverance of that soul, the establishment of Christ's lordship in that life or in that place, was no small thing.

But listen. Let us come away from the objective to ourselves; and this is the point for the present. We can sing our hymns, 'Crown Him, crown Him,' we can proclaim with strength and vehemence that Jesus is Lord, but it is just on that very point that all our own battles rage. Have you never been locked up in a controversy with the Lord, in a situation in your own life where the one issue was this - Is He going to be Lord in this? Have you never come into situations and circumstances where it looked for all the world as though the devil were in the mastery and had gained the ground and were holding it - as though he were lord and master? Are we not constantly up against things like that where it looks as though the devil and not Jesus is lord? It comes right home to our own spiritual lives as a tremendous test of faith. I am thinking of those experiences into which the 'Zion' people are brought which are not the ordinary experiences of Christian life, not the ordinary temptations and persecutions and difficulties of being a Christian, but situations which are much more deeply spiritual and involved, and sometimes their faith is tested right on this question - Is Jesus Lord after all? Look at the situation, look at the conditions, look at the forces which seem to be in control! Is Jesus Lord? I hope I am not scandalising anyone. You may not have had that experience. Well, all right, do not be scandalised and do not worry about it. But there are some who know what I am talking about, who have been there in the vortex of such spiritual trials and testings as to raise the issue as to whether the Lord is really Lord after all. Down in our hearts as a matter of our faith we believe it and we cling to it, but we are thrown about a good deal on this matter. We do not get through this easily. It is like that with Zion. The lordship of Christ is only established at great cost. It is only by terrific conflict and trial and testing that you get through to that place where in your own heart He is Lord; but when you are through, oh, something tremendous has happened and you are in a position where you know the Lord in no usual and ordinary way, and you have a testimony for people who are to go through similar trial, and you can help them because you have fought through terrific conflicts on faith as to the lordship of Christ. May that not explain why some of you are having such extraordinary experiences? You look at other Christians and you see them go through comparatively easily; they get what they want or what they think they ought to have, but with you everything is a matter of conflict, nothing comes easily at all. That experience may be explained by this, that the Lord has put His hand on you, with a view to putting into your life something of His lordship, and putting you into that lordship, in a way that will make you a peculiarly useful vessel and servant for Him. Some of you have been through it and know it is true; some of you may be going through it now.

Isaiah, the great prophet of recovery, the great prophet of Zion as the ultimate issue, went through some terrific testings, and his family came into his experience, and he gave his children names expressive of his deep experience. "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders" (for testimonies) (Isa. 8:18). His very family was engulfed in the deep and terrible experiences through which he went, because he was a prophet, not to the nations alone, but specifically to Zion. You see the place of Zion in the second part of his prophecies. This is very true, that Zion - that is, the company who come to be of greatest value to the Lord in representing His mind - will have to come to the place where the sovereignty of the Lord is something established on very solid ground. It is not doctrine, teaching, theory, historic fact, that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God: not something that we study from a book: but something that has been wrought into our very being by the bitterest way and the deepest experiences, so that our knowledge of Him is no ordinary knowledge, but is for a special purpose. Oh, the temptations while we are going through! What ground there is for the enemy to play upon when the Lord is putting us through those fires! But you see, Zion is something wrought in the fires. First of all it is the testimony unto Israel as to the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

Let me conclude that for the moment by saying again that there is a very great need today for the Church to be recovered into the place of the absolute lordship of Christ. Its impact upon this world has very largely been lost, and the reason is that the Lord Jesus has not His place as absolute Sovereign. All sorts of things have come into the place of the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ - that is, of the complete government of the Holy Spirit. Councils and committees and boards and anything you like but the exclusive government of the Holy Spirit. But the Zion way is a costly way, it is not an easy way at all; that is why it has been surrendered and easier things have been put into its place. It is not easy to wait for the Lord, to have your government entirely by the Holy Spirit. It is a difficult way, and it tests you out as to whether you are going to put your hand on things - whether like Saul, the man of flesh, you are not going to tarry for the Lord, but to take things into your own hands. It is along those lines and in those ways that the whole question is raised - Is He Lord? The Church has not been prepared to pay that price, and it has lost its testimony. The Lord recover that testimony for the Church in the midst of the Church!

[Shammu]

The Testimony of a Life Which has Conquered Death

Now the next thing about this testimony. "And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that covereth all peoples, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He hath swallowed up death for ever" (Isa. 25:7-8). In this mountain, Zion, the testimony is to the complete triumph of the Lord over death, the testimony of a life which conquered death. It comes out of His absolute lordship, it is a part of it, but it works out in this way - where the Lord gets a 'Zion' people, there you have an unusual testimony to life. The thing we must ever keep before us (I state it simply as a fact without any exposition now) is that if you get a people who are what Zion means - coming into God's fuller thought as in His Son - the thing that is found when you meet them is life. Oh, I tell you that I cherish this aspect of the testimony very, very dearly and very greatly. To me it means almost everything, that we shall be maintained in life - not merely a people who have a specific teaching, a lot of light and a lot of truth but as dead as anything can be. (And it can be like that: you can have a marvellous amount of truth and be quite dead.) But whether the teaching is understood or not by the people who come, we want that the first thing they shall meet and register shall be - What life there is here! Not, what teaching there is here, but what life! In such an atmosphere you get a tremendous lift-up, you find yourself re-vitalised. Yes, death has been swallowed up. That is the testimony; that is part of the testimony unto Israel, and who will say that the Church as a whole does not need to know in some new and mightier way the power of His risen life? Is that not just what is needed? That is really what many are after. They are trying to get it in great organized movements; they feel the need of life as a mighty reaction against the death that has come in. It is not for us to judge or criticise, but we can say this, that this life can never be manufactured. It can never come by great efforts. It is the uprising of the risen Lord where He has room and capacity; and room and capacity are only made by travail. You have to suffer unto this life. You cannot get it cheaply, you cannot work it up and produce it by any means of man. It can only come as out from death by resurrection. It costs.

The Testimony of Abundant Provision

Then in verse 6 of Isaiah 25 we have this - "In this mountain will the Lord of hosts make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." "In this mountain;" "for a testimony unto Israel." Here is rich provision. If the Lord gets a people really into His full thought, they will not be a people who are merely existing on starvation diet, hardly able to make ends meet, just managing to keep going spiritually; and as for having anything to give away...! Oh, yes, conditions are like that in many places. You would not credit the number of letters that come to me from all over the world in terms like this - 'I cannot find any spiritual food anywhere, there is nothing to be found in this whole district; we are starving.' I am not exaggerating when I say that in the course of a year I could fill volumes with that sort of thing - the cry for food from the Lord's people. Here is the picture and it is not an imaginary one, it is tragically true. But, thank God, the other side is equally true; there is a feast of fat things when you are in the way of the Lord's full thought and are prepared to pay the price - the price of being for Him an instrument; not a price for salvation, but, a price for vocation to serve Him. Then you can have a table well-filled, a feast of fat things, with abundance for yourself and plenty to give to others. Oh yes, it is true, there is no want, no lack; there is abundance, an overflow, in Zion, "in this mountain."

A Testimony of Revelation and Enlightenment

Then finally, "He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering that covereth all peoples." That simply means that the testimony going out is one of revelation and enlightenment, where people who sit in darkness are made to see. The word to Zion here in Isaiah is, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee" (Isa. 60:1). That is to Zion. But what is the counterpart in the New Testament? I think it is in those final letters of Paul for the Church. Look at "Ephesians" with the word 'glory' in your eye, it is notable what a large place the word 'glory' has in those prison epistles. "The glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." Arise, shine! In this mountain, in Zion, in a people wholly abandoned to God's highest and fullest interests, there is given a ministry of enlightenment and revelation, the taking away of the veil. This is the testimony unto Israel, God's spiritual Israel. "Whither the tribes go up for a testimony." All that we have to do is to ask the Lord to give us the energy of heart, the diligence and purpose, to go up to Zion - all that means spiritually - to have the highways to Zion in our hearts. "In whose heart are the highways to Zion" (Psa. 84:5). This way which leads to Zion is a heart matter.

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - The Vocation of the Church

"The gospel of the glory of the blessed God" (1 Tim. 1:11).
"The gospel of your salvation" (Eph. 1:13).
"The mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 5:19).

We were speaking in our previous meditation about the testimony in Zion, "...whither the tribes go up for a testimony unto Israel". We saw that "the tribes" do not mean the whole of Israel. "Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose" (Deut. 16:16) - a representation in Jerusalem, in Zion, for a testimony to the rest everywhere, wherever they were. And Zion is just that - a representation of God's mind on behalf of all His people; something fuller apprehended by some not necessarily chosen for it, but who choose it, who are prepared to pay the price for it, who are prepared to go the journey; and in them is found God's mind in greater fullness for the rest of His people.

A Prevailing State of Need

I want to bring you to another passage of Scripture in the prophecies of Isaiah.

"Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait for the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwelleth in mount Zion" (Isa. 8:16-18).

"...and they shall look upon the earth, and, behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and into thick darkness they shall be driven away. But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Isa. 8:22-9:2).

The particular verse that I am lighting upon is verse 18 of chapter 8. The whole section gives you the setting for this verse. The Lord's people in general are not seeing, that is, they are not seeing the great revelation that God has given concerning them and their glory and their vocation. Will you challenge that today? It is not a criticism, it is not a judgment, it is one of those things that we very much dislike saying. It is so easy to find fault and point out bad conditions; you can go on like that for ever. One would very much like never to have to do that sort of thing; and yet you are up against it all the time. The Lord's people are not seeing the greatness of His purpose in Christ, the vastness of that which has come from the eternal counsels. They are seeing so little, and a great many of them are not willing to see - that is the further tragedy. They are satisfied, they do not want any more, and many are suspicious and prejudiced and shut up; they will not have it, the Lord has not a clear way. Again, there are many who will not pay the price - not the price of their salvation, but of what it means to go on to all the Lord's thought. That price is the price of popularity and acceptance with men, of large doors of opportunity, prestige, and such things. That is a very general situation.

A Prophetic Instrument - 'For Signs and Wonders'

In such circumstances, what will the Lord do? He will bring into a company a prophetic instrument. In the case before us it is the individual, the prophet, to begin with; He will bring into being a prophetic instrument, that which will represent His thought - for you know quite well that the title of the prophet is "Son of man", and that is a phrase which always means representation. (He occupies the aspect of man-form in the cherubim or the four living ones; man-form - representation, Son of man.) He knows God's mind for His people, he has the thoughts of God in fullness. In a day of shadows and darkness and declension, God will bring into being such an instrument - and we are thinking of it in the corporate sense now. It has ever been His way. He will deal with that instrument in a strange way. There will be nothing normal in its experience, nothing ordinary - you might say, nothing straightforward. It is a strange, mysterious, and altogether extraordinary way that the Lord takes a prophetic instrument. See what He told these prophets to do - all sorts of extraordinary things! Ezekiel must lie for many days in the sight of the people, first on his left side and then on his right. And the people looking on say, 'What is this man doing? He is mad!' But all that is constituting his message. The way of a vessel for this purpose is not a straightforward way, as men call it. It is an unusual way. The experiences of such a vessel are all off the usual lines, and the people concerned very often cannot be understood. You can write up some things about the work of God and the instrument of God's work, and it is all clear and straightforward. But God gets something like this - and you cannot explain it. All sorts of questions are going round - 'What are you doing? What are you? What are you after? We don't understand.'

And every issue of that instrument is an indication of the particular purpose for which the instrument is called. "I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel". Here is a vessel, and the children represent all the aspects, the outworkings, the issues, of that vessel. How am I going to explain that to you? In the case of a vessel that is held by God for this particular purpose, every means used, every method followed, every piece of work that is done, will be in keeping with the Divine thought at the root, and will be an indication that this is not something ordinary, but something extraordinary, unusual.

Having said that, I have touched a spring. I am sure that many of you are seeing a long way ahead, but I shall have to explain it. Please do not think I am criticising. I recognize this - and let me say it again with great emphasis - that God employs different means and instrumentalities for different purposes, and you must not try to conform every instrument and vessel that God takes up to one mould, one purpose, one idea, one direction. When the Church, as the Church, failed to fulfil the Divine function of carrying the gospel to the unenlightened, God raised up vessels to do it, and so you have many institutions; and not one of us would dare to say that God never employed them, that they are outside of His thought and consideration. We should be saying the utmost untruth to hint at such a thing. He has used and He does use them, and many other things too He has employed for His purposes; but it does not mean for a moment that He has departed from His one true, essential, original thought as to how and by what means things ought to be done. He will always come back, if He can, to make the Church His vessel, and any other means will only go so far. If it is going to fullness, it will have to come back to His original idea. Do not let us think that the things which God has used He has not used, and that they are all false and wrong. But when God does seek to get that vessel which is essentially related to fullness, you will not find that He deals with it in the same way as He deals with others, and you will not find that He allows it to employ the means and the methods that others are allowed to employ. Here the thing itself and all its activities, its issues, its sons, its offspring, will be signs of something - signs of some essential nature and character, something very much nearer to the thought of God. They will signify that and they will be signs and wonders. Signs - yes, they signify something that God is doing and is after; they will all point to that. Wonders - yes, they will all be in the realm where it is utterly impossible to man; and that is one of the things that make all the difference.

[Shammu]

'All of God' - A Costly Vocation

When God gets that which comes most closely into relation with His full thought, He will put it into a realm where man can do nothing, and everything associated with it will say, 'It is God alone, it is only the Lord, no man can account for this. Look and see if you can honestly trace this at all to any man or men or people.' Look at the thing. Is it something with names, titles, influence, status, and all that is so commonly associated with a 'successful' work? No; this is of God or it is nothing. No great names, no great people, no great natural gifts, no great or outstanding human qualifications; weak, in itself helpless, foolish, often having to say, 'I do not know'; shut up like that, just thrown right back upon God, and if it is going to be anything at all, it must be by the Lord's doing; if it is not of the Lord, there will be nothing. You can only account for it on that ground, that it is of the Lord. The Lord originated it, the Lord has kept it going, and the Lord is doing it. "I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders". There is something about this which is inexplicable on any human ground. That is how it is going to be, it must be, if it is going to approximate most closely to Christ.

I have John 5 before me as I speak. Here is Christ, the full embodiment of Divine thought, in Whom the perfection of those eternal counsels is centred, Who is to be the expression of God's mind in utterness. Hear him say, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner... I can of myself do nothing". But listen, the One Who says that, immediately goes on to say, "As the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to whom he will". You can account for that on no other ground than God. The Son can do nothing; God raiseth the dead; He gives the Son to do what only God can do. That is the principle we are getting at. We cannot get beyond Christ in utterness as to God's mind, and yet He says, 'Nothing out from Myself - it is God.'

Then Isa. 8:18 is quoted in Hebrews 2:13 and put right into the mouth of the Lord Jesus. "I and the children whom God hath given me". He has taken up the principle, and if you look at the context of that statement in Hebrews 2 you see it is this, that the children conform to Him, take their nature from Him. Now what is it? "I and the children whom God hath given me are for signs and wonders". Oh, is Christ a sign? Why, in John's Gospel everything that He did was a sign. And what was it a sign of? "Many other signs... did Jesus... these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:30-31). It was a sign that God was here in this One. "And wonders"; and what is the essence of a wonder? Why, this cannot be attributed to anything or anyone but God. Read John 9, and note the issue. The poor fellow whose eyes the Lord opened could not understand these wise people and their logic, their reasoning. "He opened mine eyes... Since the world began it was never heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing". 'Don't you see this must be God? He must be something more than a man.' And that is why they cast the man out - because he made Jesus God. That was the effect of the signs and wonders - 'it is only the Lord!' Ah yes, that is the nature of a vessel, an instrument, which is going to serve the heart of God's purpose. That is a very costly way. You will have nothing usual. Oh, how we long to get things straightened out and have a straightforward course! Yet we know quite well we are never going to have it. We are never going to have our affairs running without a difficulty. Other people with their family life - how easy-going it is! Everything for them seems to go evenly, but our affairs never go just on that straightforward track; there always seems to be something in our situation we cannot cope with, it is beyond us, and unless the Lord handles it we are in the most awful and hopeless confusion. I wonder how many people can accept that as being right - that is how it should be and how it must be, and (the Lord help us!) how it always will be if we are really committed to the basis that everything is to be of God. May it not be - and I speak with experience in this matter - that the Lord is trying to say to us, 'Why do you not capitulate to that and take a positive attitude in acceptance of it? I am waiting for you to do that. You are trying to alter it, to get out of it, you are rebelling, fighting against it and if only you knew it you are all the time frustrating the very thing you are seeking. Why don't you recognise that a situation like that is absolutely essential to My intervention so that achievement will come not by your cleverness, your ability, your acumen, but by a miracle every time; it will be God?' Ought we not to try to face this - that we are called into a realm where God deliberately plans that we should live on the basis of His deliverances, and where we are not allowed to get through on the level of the ordinary. Here again, though, is a peril. We must not become unpractical, and simply sit down and wait for the Lord to work miracles for us. We must do our part, as far as in us lies, and cooperate with the Lord in every practical way that is open to us; but even so, we shall often find that we shall never get through apart from a very real intervention of the Lord in such a way that when we are through it is manifest that it was not our effort that brought success but the Lord's working. The testimony will be - 'it was the Lord's doing'.

[Shammu]

The Need for a Definite Committal

I wonder if what has been said has helped you at all. It helps me. The difficulty for you and for me is going to be to accept this and put our feet down on it. The Lord must present His mind in greater fullness to His people, and He must have that through which He can present it. He is seeking to get that more and more. But there comes a point where all of us have to have a transaction with the Lord about it. You can go away and be an 'ordinary' evangelical Christian if you like. You need not go right on with the Lord, but you have to risk a good deal if you say No to Him. You will come to the time when you will look back and say, 'I missed God's best'. But I do not want to frighten or drive. We are here just to give what God has shown us of His greater fullness of purpose - and we are as yet only in the shallows of that vast fullness: but, so far as He has shown, we have to speak it. He must show it. "Son of man, show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be..." (Eze. 43:10). Be what? The rest is with the people to whom it is shown. Are we of the number of those who will accept and yield to what He shows? Again and again in some more acute form the question arises as to whether we are going on in this costly way. We are required to face this and to make a decision before the Lord in our hearts as to whether we are going on, whether we are going to stand with Him for the fullest expression of His thought, or whether we are going to decide on some lesser course. There are plenty of arguments to induce us to take the easier way if we are prepared to listen to them. 'Most other Christians take the easier path, and God uses and blesses them. What more is required?' All I say is this - if you have good reason to think that the Church today as a whole is in the good of the greater revelation of God's purpose in Christ, if you are sure they are, then go the way of the majority; but if you feel that there is something more needed - the Church needs something, you need something more - well then, it is going to cost. You will be saved all right if you put your faith in the Lord Jesus, but that is not the point. You will not lose your salvation, but you may lose the prize. Salvation was never anything earned, but there is something called the prize (Phil. 3:14). We are not going to say what that is at present, but we are called to face the question whether the Lord has not got something more that He wants for His people and that He would give through us, having given it to us: or (to put that in another way) something into which He would bring His people because He brought us into it in experience, in life. Is that so? Well then, we are all of us up against a crisis, I as much as you. Let me say this from my own heart, that I personally am quite frequently brought up against this crisis as the cost of this way of the Cross is pressed home. I have to stand back and say, 'Well, what was the basis upon which I started in this way?' What was the basis upon which we started? Was it not on the basis of John 5? It was a thing we were always talking about. We did not know all it meant by a long way, but we said quite definitely, 'God wants something here on this earth which declaredly and manifestly can do nothing for Him out from itself. We will give Him a chance to do it all, that no one will ever be able to say, This is due to any man's great gifts or to this people's outstanding qualifications and qualities. If ever there is anything at all, the only explanation will be that the Lord did it.' That was the foundation, but how that gets pressed home as you go on! It is a challenge all the way along, and it comes up in ever new situations, new expressions. 'Are you still prepared to stand on the ground that it is just the Lord or nothing at all? If the Lord does not come in in an altogether new way, you are finished!' Are you prepared for that? There is a mystery about this, the mystery of the gospel. It is not a matter of terms. This is where many have made a mistake; they think this mystery is a matter of phraseology and truths - 'It is the truth of the Church,' they say, and all that sort of thing. Oh, brethren, God save us from that mistake! This ministry cannot be fulfilled along the lines of terminology. There is a mystery about it; it is the mystery of revelation, something deep down which you cannot explain by getting commentaries on the subject and collecting all the data about it and then giving it out. That is not it, that does not work. It may be the same phraseology, the same ideas, but it does not produce the same results. You cannot explain the mystery of what is of God. It is a deep, hidden secret of God Himself. That is a tremendous challenge. I say again it is a very costly way, and it is for us to say, and, as is necessary, to say again and yet again, 'I can have no other way, I must go on with God, whatever the cost.' The Lord help us to that position.

[Shammu]

Chapter 6 - The Glory of Life Triumphant Over Death

Reading: Isaiah 8:16-9:2.

"Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwelleth in mount Zion."

Let us be reminded that we are here concerned with fullness; it is that which governs all that we have to say. When, of course, that matter was in view in the days of the prophets, it was a question of recovery of the fullness of Divine thought and intention. We in our time correspond to that, but in the book of the Acts it was not recovery that was involved - there were all the principles of fullness clothed with much that spoke of actual fullness. You have things there very much as the Lord desired and desires to have them, but all too soon the radiant morn passed away and a new period came when the need was for recovery; and as you move on in the New Testament you know how true that is. Arriving at the first chapters of the book of the Revelation, you find them occupied with the recovery of something that is lost. In all but one or two cases, the Lord has to speak of things that have gone, a state that has been left behind. It is recovery that is in view. We are in the time when the question of recovery is before us, and therefore we are in the time when the prophetic principle and function are operating - that is, when a vessel of prophecy is proclaiming that which was from the beginning as God's thought concerning His people.

The Testimony in Zion Summed up in Life

Now we saw in our previous meditation something of what Zion stands for - sovereignty, fullness, light, glory. If we look for one thing which includes all these elements and features of Zion we find it gathered up in the one word 'life.' By that, of course, we mean Divine life. So the testimony in Zion is basically that of life, a particular life, a life utterly and altogether different from any other life. We are going to follow on what we said in our previous meditation, with life as our interpreter.

Divine Life a Nature

Firstly, this life is a nature. Now throughout these messages we have been speaking about the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, of the satisfied God, and we have been saying that glory is the nature of God shining forth, manifested, expressed. That Divine nature is given to us in the eternal life which we receive in new birth. It is a nature, something planted within which has Godlikeness inherent in it. Of course, I am not meaning that we have planted in us Deity. Is it necessary for me to say that? But I am saying what Peter said - "...whereby he hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). It is in the life of which we are speaking that the nature resides. It is always subjective-objective, that is, we have this life in God's Son; we only have it in ourselves in so far as we have Christ in us. We do not become Divine, and no Divinity degrees can make us so! We are not great 'Divines,' and never shall be. It is an essential part of what we were saying earlier that we do not become that. This vessel will always be something which attributes everything to God, therefore in such a vessel He will have people who in themselves are very imperfect. You will never be able to talk of them as great in themselves. They will be very human people, and the very mark of their humanity will be their utter dependence upon the Lord for any bit of goodness at all. They will know that if there is anything in them at all that is of any worth, it is because the Lord is there, because Christ has come in. But saying that, and keeping that in mind with all that we say, we repeat that we have given to us the uncreated life of God, Divine life in Jesus Christ, and that life is the nature of God. That life does not sin and will always be our correction, whatever our own life does and whatever our own nature does. That is why the Lord's people who make mistakes and go wrong have a very much worse time in themselves than anybody else. They have a standard set up in them and they do not get away with things, because there is within them that which is a sinless life. If ever we raise the question of sinless perfection, we shall never be able to say it of ourselves; it can only be said of that other life that is given to us. But of that life it can be said.

God starts with that mighty potentiality of holiness, that mighty dynamic of His own likeness. He plants it in us at the beginning of our spiritual experience and Christian life, and it has in it all the mighty possibilities of God Himself. As it has its way, as we yield to it, complying with its demands, recognising its laws as we recognise the laws of our natural life, only so shall we come to fullness of spiritual health; but, given that, the result will be a Church which has the glory of God. "Unto him be the glory in the church... unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:21). "He... showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God" (Rev. 21:10-11); the glory which is the nature of God in the very life of God which is given to us. Is that too elementary for you? It is the first thing that we must recognise, however.

[Shammu]

Divine Life a Method

The second thing is not, perhaps, quite so common in our knowledge and recognition - that this life is a method. We have often said that God's method is the biological and not the mechanical. Man's method is usually mechanical, even in the work of God. He makes a machine, he makes a 'Philistine cart' - some apparatus for the work of God, something outward, a framework. That is man's way of doing the work of God. With God it is always the method of life. When He is going to do something, His method is to implant life from Himself there. That is His basis, His method. Is He going to develop something? - it will be by life, and only by life and the increase of life.

Simply, it means this, that the real spiritual growth of the Church, and development and expansion of what is of God, will depend entirely upon the measure of Divine life present. That is God's method; for all purposes, that is His method. The one great thing that the enemy is out to do is to hinder that life from getting in. If he cannot do it in open campaign, by direct activity, he will do it by either deception or counterfeit - perhaps they are both the same thing. I mean this - there is a very great deal produced in the work of God which is not life. It is nothing of the sort. It is enthusiasm, it is zest, it is interest, it is strong emotion and feeling and the overflow of natural spirits worked up, drawn out, fed and ministered to, and it goes by its own momentum, and it has to be kept going from the outside - you have to give it more and more and more. God's method is inward - His own life; and when He gets a way for His own life, there is no need for any of these externals at all, the thing just goes on.

You have it like that in the beginning, in the book of the Acts. When things are as the Lord would have them, life solves all the problems, meets all the needs, gives all the directions; life, of course, not as abstract but in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of life is a mighty intelligence for direction and counsel and guidance. If you are alive in the Spirit, and you are praying on an issue, you know by the witness of life whether the thing is according to the Lord's mind; and on the other hand you know quite well that the Lord is not interested in it because the thing just does not live in you. That is spiritual intelligence, that is having your senses exercised to discern good and evil (Heb. 5:14). That is a matter of function resulting from life. You go the whole way round in the work of God and you find that is the secret of everything. Things to be done at all or not to be done at all, things to be done now or not to be done now - any question whatsoever - it all resolves itself into a matter of life in the Spirit in believers and in the Church. Well, again, that is elementary.

You know quite well, and the devil knows quite well, that the greatest secret of success is life. 'So let's have a semblance of life.' says the enemy, 'in order to triumph by death.' And he triumphs very often with his great weapon of death by getting for a time a semblance of life and then letting it go, so that people are not ready to try again. 'It is all a myth, it is all false', they say; and he has doubly killed, and the last state of that thing is worse than the first. God has the true secret. Now the testimony of Zion is there, the true life of God, not only as a nature and a power, but as a method. If we are concerned with the work of the Lord, the point upon which we shall fix all our attention will be this, that life is having full, clear way in us and in all concerned. That of course will necessitate on many things, the application of the Cross to get them out of the way, but that is something on which I am not going to dwell for a moment. I am simply saying that this Divine life is God's method; it has always been.

Divine Life a Law

Then it is a law. Paul calls it "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:2). Now, what is the nature of this life, this law? The law of life is that it is spirituality which is the first and final standard of God. That is the law; not by any other standard does God judge a thing. He judges entirely by spirituality. That is a very searching thing. You can have all the framework of the truth and yet with a total absence of spirituality; having it all, it may be a beautiful and clever and masterful presentation of things, but still hollow. I have heard a perfectly masterly presentation of the letter to the Ephesians which, if you were spiritual, left you cold and dead. Why? We can carnally present Divine things by the sheer cleverness of our own brain and strength of our own soul appeal. We can come right into the picture with Divine things and be the force - the force of brain and the force of will and the force of emotion - and it may for the time being seem to be a marvellous exposition of the Scripture; but after all, what has it done? It can be like that - carnal. Was it not John Bunyan who said that the greatest peril that he knew was that of Divine things carnally handled? Spirituality is God's standard. It may not appear to be so clever, but it will go much farther. Our measure before God is just the measure of our spirituality, our spiritual life. What we count for is determined by our spiritual life, nothing else.

And what is spirituality? Well, God is Spirit; it is just what the Lord is, that is all; the measure in which the Lord is met in us, the measure in which it can be seen that the Lord is getting the upper hand with us, subduing us, getting on top of us, taking our place. Oh, that is testing; we all fail there; we often fail terribly. I am not saying that we should never fail; that would be to discourage you far too much. But I am saying this - that if we are growing spiritually, the same old failures ought not to be just as dominant now as they were; we should not now be fading at the same point, in the same way, as we did; the Lord is becoming more; that is spirituality. Do not think of spirituality as some abstract high-flown thing somewhere up in the air, in words and kind of talk and ideas and sanctimoniousness and intensity - things that are, after all, just mental. That is not spirituality. There is a false spirituality that is an utter deception. We know of people whose 'spirituality' has made them superior to the Scriptures - the Scriptures are no longer the basis of the government of their life. It does not matter what the Bible says - 'the Lord has told me to do this,' they say; and yet there is a Scripture which directly contradicts what they are doing! You may say that is extreme, but it is only the issue of a false spirituality which begins somewhere.

Remember that true spirituality is a matter firstly of character. Is the Lord met? Is the registration in the main that of the Lord? Well, the law of life is spirituality; it is spiritual life because it is God's life.