Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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The Man God Has Ordained
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - God's Standard

Reading: Revelation 1:1-18.

“…He hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness in THE MAN WHOM HE HATH ORDAINED; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31, marg.).

It will be with that little phrase, “he will judge the world… in the man whom he hath ordained”, as our key, that we shall consider this wonderful revelation of the Lord Jesus which forms our preliminary reading. “The man whom he hath ordained.” Let us look for a few minutes at one or two of those words.

Firstly, “He hath appointed a day”: that is, He has fixed, or established, a day. Into that statement the whole book of the Revelation is gathered. When John said: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”, he said more explicitly: “I became in the Spirit”, or, “I found myself in spirit, in the day of the Lord”. God “hath set forth, or fixed, a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness”.

And then, “in the man whom he hath ordained”. That word “ordained” is a very interesting word. It is the Greek word from which we get our English word “horizon”: it means, basically, to set bounds or limits, to mark out a defined or determined realm. In this passage, the Man is the realm, the marked out limit, the defined sphere in which God will judge the world. It is suggestive that the phrase in the original Greek is, literally, “IN the man”. (Compare 1 Cor. 6:2: “if the world shall be judged IN you”.) Everything is to be brought for its judgment into the realm of what this Man is. Everything and everyone will be judged according to the significance of the Man whom He has ordained.

We shall come back to that presently, but it may be helpful just to have said that much as to these two words. There is a day, and a very crowded day, coming, as this book of the Revelation shows, and it is the day of a Man: that is, in which everything is to be tested by that Man, according to that Man — the Man whom He hath ordained.

Now we come to this book of the Revelation, and to this first chapter in particular. I say no new thing when I say that the books of Genesis and Revelation bound the history of this present world. One is the book of the beginnings; the other is the book of the endings. The one is the first, the other is the last, and it is there that the Lord Jesus, the Man whom God has ordained, embraces that whole history, and says: “I am the first and the last”, “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”. “I am the Genesis and I am the Revelation. I am the beginning, the Alpha, and I am the end, the Omega”. This whole history moves by phases, shorter and longer, and the first phase, which, so far as its record is concerned, is gathered into a very short portion of Scripture, the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, ends with a man and the tree, the tree of life. From that point another phase commences. At that point what is called “the fall” takes place, and an entirely new phase begins. The first phase brings us to the man and the tree; the last phase, in the book of the Revelation, brings us — in the first chapter to the Man, in the end of the book to the tree. These two things are governing all history. What they signify embodies and embraces the whole of the history of this world. We shall confine our attention, at this time, to the man.

The Conception of Man

There are several things that we have to note about the man. First of all, there is God’s CONCEPTION of man. What is that conception? In the words so familiar to us, it is: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. So the conception of man is God-likeness. That is all-governing with God; that is all-governing in all God’s dealings with man. It is that which comes out pre-eminently in the book of the Revelation as the consummation of God’s dealings with man. That is the thing which lies behind all these movements of God in relation to man — God-likeness. If we miss everything else, let us hold on to this: because in this is found, and out of this proceeds, everything else. God’s concern with man is HIS LIKENESS.

God is not concerned in the first place, or in any very important way, with doctrine, with teaching, with Christian work, with our many-sided activities. These all may follow and have a place, but they are all very subordinate. They have a far smaller place with God than they have with us. With God they are only related things, they are side-issues. With Him, the one all-important and all-inclusive thing is His own likeness. What matters to Him about all our teaching, about all our gatherings, about all our works and activities, is the measure in which His likeness appears as the result. Nothing else counts. We do not gather together for teaching, doctrine, “conference meetings”. Let this be established at the outset. We gather together, if we are in line with the divine desire, in order that there may be in us more likeness to God, as He judges everything in the Man whom He has ordained — IN the Man, not by the Man; in the Man, in what that Man is.

That is the conception of God. Let us ask the Lord very much that He will lay strongly upon our hearts, and keep it ever before us, that the thing that matters, from A to Z, from Alpha to Omega, from beginning to end, is that God’s conception and purpose, in giving us a being at all, is HIS LIKENESS — an expression of Himself. This must be an adjusting factor in our mentality, in our conversation, in our teaching. We must not be taken up with efforts to get the church according to a certain technique and order and conception. Our message must not be the message of the Body of Christ as a truth, as a doctrine, as a procedure. All these things come within this encircling conception. What is the Body of Christ for, if it is not to express what Christ is like? What is the church for, if it is not to manifest the presence of Christ? This must adjust our thoughts, our ideas, our teaching and our talk. The thing about which we have to be concerned is — not this and that aspect of truth — but: How much is the Lord seen, recognised, understood, as to what He is like?

You know that that is the key to the Word of God. The whole Word of God is occupied with this: What is God like? On one side there is the constant implication, or at least inference: “God is NOT like that, God is NOT like that, God is NOT like that — but God IS like this”. In the days of the Lord Jesus, the whole idea of the most religious people — the Jews themselves, and all the Jewish rulers — was a false conception of God; and the Lord Jesus in their midst was, by His very presence, His very nature, as well as by His teaching and His activity, saying, “No, God is not like that; God is like this”. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). And see how He clashed with popular religious ideas as to what God was like. Yes: “Not technique, not truth, doctrine, but ‘our likeness’”, says the Lord.

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The Principle of Man

The next thing is what I am going to call the PRINCIPLE of man. What is the principle we find when God has made man and set him forth? The principle is that the man is a standard man: he represents or sets forth a standard. He is not just a being, but he is a KIND of being. He is not just holding an office; he is a PERSON. God did not make a drawing of His thoughts or paint a picture of His conceptions; He made a man. He did not make a working machine to set forth the operation of certain laws; He made a man. And that is a standard to which God would work, which God would impress upon His creation, His universe: that what that man is should be found, as it were, emanating or issuing forth and pressing upon everything, and that everything should be conformed to that man. As you see the works of that man and the expressions of that man’s being, you should know what kind of a man he is: just as, in every sphere of life, in a home, in a garden, in a business, if there is a man about — not a feeble caricature, but a MAN! — you find that that particular sphere, in which the man exercises his influence, bears the impress of that man. You can trace the man here — see what kind of a man lives here, works here, moves here. You know the man by the impress of his hand. He is, in his sphere, the standard of things.

And that is a principle in man. There is a principle about man that he is a standard set forth by God: everything is to take the impress of that man, as a standard; is to come up to a certain level. That man must not let things down. That man must not allow things to lose character, to lose form, to become a shapeless mass. He must see to it that everything comes up to that express full thought that is found in the man God has made.

The Vocation of Man

“Let us make man… and let them have dominion” over this and that — over all things. The VOCATION of man, according to God’s intention, is dominion, government. And when you come, in the light of the whole history of man, to look into this vocation, this governmental idea of God as to man, you find that it has three aspects.

It begins with himself. That is quite clear, as to Adam. It is quite clear all the way along that God holds man, in the first place, responsible for the government of himself. Everything else proceeds from that. All that the New Testament has to say about self-control — a poor translation of the word — is just that. It all begins with government of himself.

Then, in the second place, it extends to the world — and, mark you, man’s government of the world depends upon his government of himself. It extends to the government of the world. But do not get false mentalities about that. Government of the world is not temporal government, to begin with. It was with Adam, and it will be eventually, but this is a spiritual thought. We remember all that is said by John about “he that overcometh the world” (1 John 5:4,5). This Man whom God has ordained said: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We will not take time just now to define and explain what is meant by “the world” in this connection, but perhaps it is not necessary. Do you find the world something to be overcome? Is there not a spirit — is there not an order, a nature of things, a way, a mentality, a disposition — that we speak of as “the world”, “the way of the world”? Yes, and you know what a great force that is to be overcome. It is a spiritual thing, dominion over the world; and there will be no government of the world in any more literal sense, later, if there is no government of the world in a spiritual sense now.

Then, in the third place, this government reaches to the heavens. It is found to affect, to be related to, spiritual forces beyond man — outside of man and outside of the world. It is in that realm that this government finds its ultimate and supreme expression.

There is no need for me at this point to take you into the New Testament with those three connections: government as to our own souls, as to the spirit of the world around us, and as to the forces of evil, of darkness, working through both. That will probably come out more fully as we go on.

The Testing of Man

The fourth thing is the TESTING of man. Here we have to repeat that man was not just an official, but a morally responsible person, and the whole issue of his moral responsibility was the question of FAITHFULNESS: faithfulness to God, faithfulness to the divine conception, faithfulness to the standard God had set up as to Himself. There are many aspects of self which are forbidden, but there are some aspects of self which are right, and self-respect is one of them — that right kind of self-respect which marked Nehemiah: “Should such a man as I flee?” (Nehemiah 6:11). That is moral dignity, and man was tested as to his faithfulness to God — faithfulness to himself in the highest sense, to the dignity of his own being in God’s thought, from heaven’s standpoint. It was not self-importance — you know what I mean — but faithfulness to his vocation to govern for God. Faithfulness was the ground of testing.

And with a view to that testing, you can see the play of spiritual forces: the permission of those forces of evil, of Satan, the tempter, the adversary, the deceiver, to come and play upon this man to test him as to his faithfulness. Note that it is the play of SPIRITUAL forces, through the WORLD, upon the SOUL, regarding the VOCATION, involving the destiny. I want you to get those phases. The play of spiritual forces: in the testing of man unto his approving, unto his establishing. The play of spiritual forces through the world: it is through the world, in the first place, that you and I will find our testing. That world is a very comprehensive world. Upon our souls: our reasoning, our desiring and our deciding. Through the world, upon our souls, regarding our vocation: to rob us of our divinely-appointed governmental function, to rob God of His intention to make man His ruler in the creation and in the spiritual world.

Yes, it is that vocation that God has in view. Do not forget it. Do not let the point be missed through my imperfect way of expressing it. I have to put it in this way, but do not look at that — do not just hear it as words, as things said. Do you not see what the enemy is after, as he plays with his evil forces upon your souls through this world? If God did not have this meaning always in view, He would shut you up in convents and monasteries, He would keep you in conferences all the days of your life; He would set up hostels and say, “Live there! Never go out of doors; look at the world from behind a grill!” — but He does not. He puts you in the world, and you are all the time wanting to get out of it into “spiritual work”, into “spiritual service”, to have a Bible everlastingly under your arm or on your desk. But He drives you into the world, and there you are, under testing by the forces of evil — by His permission — in relation to spiritual government: of yourself first, then of the world spiritually, and then of the spiritual forces behind the world. That is what God is doing.

[Shammu]

The Destiny of Man

The fifth and last thing here is the DESTINY of man. Our destiny is all involved — and what a destiny it is! What is it? The destiny is GLORY. Perhaps that does not help you very much. It sounds abstract. What is glory? First of all, in its essence, it is the shining forth of the divine nature: it is what the Bible calls immortality or incorruption. Christ “brought life and incorruption to light” (2 Timothy 1:10): that is glory — where there is nothing left that is corrupt or can be corrupted. That is the destiny of man.

And when it is like that, when there is the shining forth of the divine nature, it is a most potent thing. You and I have not grasped the tremendous significance of some of the statements about the appearing of our Lord. Saul of Tarsus went down, smitten blind, as one paralysed or dead, when this “Man whom He had ordained” appeared before him on the way to Damascus. John “fell at his feet as one dead” (Rev. 1:17), and the Scripture declares that by the manifestation of His coming or presence He will bring to nought the lawless one (2 Thess. 2:. This is not just light, a blaze of light. This is a nature — terrible, unendurable: to wickedness, to sin, to evil, destructive; but, for the man after His heart, incorruption, glory. We shall be glorified together with Him (Romans 8:17). Even our bodies will be bodies of glory, because no corruption is found in that resurrection body. “Conformed unto the body of his glory” (Phil. 3:21).

The destiny is the thing that is involved in God’s permission to the enemy to put us through severe testing. It is that that is bound up with our being put by the Lord where we are in this world — not only as to location, but as to atmosphere, in a condition of things so inimical to God, so unlike God, where Satan has his power.

Everything Recovered in Christ

Now all this — the conception, the principle, the vocation, the testing, and the destiny — is what we have in the first chapter of the book of the Revelation. You notice the one designation given to Christ in that chapter is “son of man”. “I turned to see… I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man” (vv. 12,13). Here we have THE Man, the perfect Man, presented, embodying all that of which we have just been speaking. He embodies God’s conception of divine likeness in a Man. He embodies the principle of man, as a standard — God will judge the world in that Man. In virtue of what He is He will bring everything to judgment. It is all being judged, not only by Him but in Him, by what He is. Here He is presented as the standard.

Again, here is the Man in full possession and exercise of His vocation of government. Further, He has been tested and approved. Tested in obedience unto death, yea, the death of the cross — “I became dead”; approved — “Behold, I am alive for evermore”. Let us recall Acts 17:31 again: “He will judge the world in righteousness in the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead”. He was subjected to the test of ultimate faithfulness, an obedience unto death; He was approved after utter testing — God raised Him from the dead. Here is “the Man”. And, lastly, the Man is in the glory. He has reached His destiny — glory. This is what we have in this chapter: a Man — THE Man — answering to God’s thought, of God’s appointment.

In the fall it was all this that was lost. The conception — divine likeness — was lost. The principle — the divine standard — was lost. The vocation — government — was lost. The approving through trial was lost. The glory was lost. But in the Man it is all won back, it is all recovered. And I close here by just putting my finger upon the glorious significance of some of John’s words in this chapter. “Jesus Christ... the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever” (vv. 5,6). Remember, John wrote that prelude, that introduction to his wonderful book, after he had received the whole revelation. He says, in effect: “I am going to write down all He has shown me: but oh, in the light of all He has shown me — ‘unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and… made us to be a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father...’!”

What is the significance? All that was lost is recovered for us by that love and by that blood. He “loveth us”. He by His blood has “loosed us” from all that came in by the fall. In Himself He has recovered it all, secured it all. Now He is the representative One, the Son of Man, and
“In Him the tribes of Adam boast More blessings than their father lost”

That is why John was so exultant. He might have put this at the end, but he puts it at the beginning. Terrible things are going to be revealed, but he begins with a shout of exultation. It is a terrible thing that has happened, but it is a glorious thing that has followed: therefore “unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom,… priests unto his God and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever”.

“In the man whom he hath ordained.” You see how Christ compasses everything, dominates everything, determines everything, becomes that realisation of God’s original conception and purpose in man, and the standard to which God by His Spirit is working — yes, actually working in us, and using the very forces of evil through this world to do it. There is no God-likeness to be attained unto except in the midst of a hostile world. The greatest victory of all is to walk in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah in white raiment.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - A Presentation of the Man

Reading: Revelation 1:12-17; Acts 17:31.

In our previous meditation, we were occupied with the fact that it is IN a man that God has determined to judge the world, and we were seeing something of God’s conception of the Man whom He has ordained to be the sphere and standard of His judgment. Now we are going on with that in a closer analysis, according to the characteristics of the Man as they are presented in the portion we have just read.

But first of all, I would seek to draw you strongly into the living present purpose of God in so speaking to us. I am so well aware that this can all be teaching, ideas, “truth” in a technical sense. Unless we are very careful, it may just remain that, and have no great effect upon us. We tried in our first message to bring everything into the realm of practical spiritual value, by pointing out the basis and background of all God’s thoughts, purposes and dealings with man, as found in the original divine conception, when God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”. The first, the constant, and the final intention of God is to make man LIKE HIMSELF. And the test of everything is just there — how much we are like the Lord. It matters quite in a secondary way (and, apart from this, it matters not at all) how much teaching we give or have, or how much we do, if, governing and surrounding it all, there is not the one essential condition, that we are like the Lord and that our hearts are set more upon that than upon anything else; not upon the work, not upon the teaching, not upon the success of our efforts in Christian activity, but simply upon being like the Lord. In the end that is going to be the determining factor as to how far we have apprehended Christ, how far we have understood Christianity, how far we have gone on in the spiritual life. All that matters is that people should be seeing in our lives, in a growing way, WHAT THE LORD IS LIKE, that there should be coming into view — maybe all too slowly, maybe in all too small a measure — something of the likeness of the Lord in us. In all that follows in these messages, I do want that you should realise that that is the thing that matters — it is all unto that.

Now, if God is set upon having man like this and He still is, for He never, in Adam’s failure, abandoned the intention to make man in His own image, after His own likeness — if it is like that, with all the resultant purposes which we mentioned in our previous study, it is necessary for the Lord to show us something of what He is like. We must see what the Lord is like in order that, seeing, we may adjust to that, and then commit to the Spirit of God and press toward that attainment. So, when we come to this next part of the first chapter of the Revelation, the Man presented in His characteristics, we have the answer to that need. What is the man like that God is seeking, and has already secured in this Man — the standard, the model? What is he like?

Just one more word. In the light of what we were saying earlier as to God’s intention for man, in likeness to Himself, fulfilling a tremendous vocation and then coming to eternal glory, in that we have the interpretation and the explanation of the spirit and attitude of the apostle Paul, as we have it expressed in the third chapter of the letter to the Philippians, where, “counting all the gains as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord”, he says that he “presses toward the mark for the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus”. It drew him out in that exhaustive way, in that utter way, that complete abandonment. “Not that I have already obtained...”; “but one thing I do...”; “if by any means...”. It is not that Paul was seeking salvation, but that he had seen the meaning of Christ as God’s standard and God’s goal for man. He had seen what the “on-high calling” was — namely, to fellowship with Christ in the position which had been given Him by the Father.

So, you see, it is something rather important that engages us at this time — far more important than information and instruction in the Bible. It is nothing less than our very destiny, according to God’s fullest intention. It is what God means in our having a being at all — and it is possible for us to fail in this, to miss it.

Christ God’s Horizon

Let us now come, then, to this section in Revelation 1. Here is the Man who, as we said in our previous meditation, has been tested — tested down to the utter obedience of the death of the cross. “I became dead” — He was approved by His perfect faithfulness; and as the seal of His approval He was raised — “I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death.” “Now I am in a position of absolute authority over all the forces which have been set against the fulfilment of God’s purpose.”

“I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev. 22:13). That must be set at the beginning of this contemplation. “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” In that word in Acts 17:31, “the man whom he hath ordained”, the Greek word “ordained” implies “the man whom He has made His horizon, His scope, His sphere, His circumference, His set bound”: and in the Alpha and Omega you have the bound of God, the beginning and the end. Christ governs everything from the beginning to the end; nothing is going to escape Christ, nothing is going to escape God as to Christ. That is very important; we may come to that later in a more particular way. But let it be understood that God sums up and ties up everything in Christ. There are many people who believe in God, who would call themselves “God-fearing” people, but they leave out what Christ means, and they will not get through, they will not escape. God has made Christ the ordained one, the horizon of everything. Everything from God’s standpoint is horizoned by Christ.

[Shammu]

The Son of Man

Now, having established the setting, the sphere — “I turned to see the voice... And having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man”. “Son of man” — that is governing. We are not going to get away from that, the Son of man. I need not remind you how often that title is used of Him, and how in the great majority of cases it was used by Himself of Himself; but it is helpful to remember how it came to be used in the first place. The title “Son of man”, as used by the Lord of Himself, was first introduced at the time when He was rejected by the Jews.

Prophetically, this is quite clear from the Psalms. In the second psalm, you have the “heathen raging”, “the rulers taking counsel together” “against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us”. Then comes the response of the Lord in heaven to their rejecting, their casting out of the Anointed: “Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee”. Now that was quoted, as you know, in the prayer of the church in Acts 4, when it is mentioned that Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Jews and the Gentiles, combined to kill the Lord’s Anointed, and heaven responded again.

From Psalm 2 to Psalm 8 is not a far cry. In Psalm 2 you have the rejection of this Anointed One in the first place by the Jews. In Psalm 8 you have: “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him but little lower than God, and crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands.” Adam never was the son of man, so in no full sense can it be made to apply to him, except prophetically and symbolically. When the Jews had rejected Christ as the Anointed and combined with the Gentiles and the rulers to cast Him out and to strip off His bands from them, He is brought back, not as the Jewish Messiah, but as the Son of man, which universal title went far beyond Israel. All men are gathered into that.

“I became dead.” That is the story of their rejecting and their casting out, their thinking to have done with Him. Here He appears at the beginning of the book of the Revelation: “I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore”. “I saw... in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto a son of man” — not the Jewish Messiah, but the Son of man — universal representation, inclusion.

It is MAN — that is the point — the MAN whom He has ordained. Do keep this all the time very much in mind, that what we have here is not only related to and bound up with Him as an isolated individual. He is representative of the corporate man whom God is taking out of the nations to bear His Name, and the things said here about Him are the features of that corporate man, as well as of every part of that corporate man, every individual man and woman. Keep that in mind, otherwise you will be looking at this objectively only, and it will not register anything in your own heart.

Let us now look at Him as He is given to us in John’s account, fragment by fragment.

A Garment Down to the Foot

The first thing is: “Clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle”. “A garment down to the foot.” All I am going to say about this, because it is so largely reiteration, is that this is not the priestly garment, but the governmental garment. It is the garment of the governor, of the lord, of the judge. It is the Son of man in the full place — “down to the foot” — in the full place of authority and government. It is man representative in government, corresponding to what we said in our last meditation. “Thou madest him to have dominion.” The very purpose of man’s creation is that he might have dominion. I simply remind you that in the letter to the Hebrews, where Psalm 8 is quoted — “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” and so on — that is linked with: “Thou crownedst him with glory and honour” (Hebrews 2:7). “We behold him... Jesus... crowned with glory and honour” — just answering to the original intention of God.

A Golden Girdle at the Breasts

“Girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle.” The girdle is, as you know, a symbol of strength for action. This One is in action, that is quite clear, and He is girded with strength for action, invested with authority and endued with power for this administration. It is a golden girdle, depicting or symbolizing the divine nature. And “girt about at the breasts” is His faithfulness to the purpose and will of God — His love, His faithful love. He is called in this book the “Faithful and True”. (Rev. 3:14, 19:11).

These are spiritual features. Let us get away from the symbolism to the spiritual meaning, for we are involved in this, we are included in this. In this Son of man we are included, and if the purpose which is realised in Him as representative compasses us, includes us, the point is that THESE are the features which make up the purpose, THESE are the conditions which must obtain if God is going to reach His end in us. This is going to be applied to the churches, and here is the statement of the background against which God is working. What it amounts to is this: Here is God’s inclusive thought, mind, standard; you are called with this great calling — this is the on-high calling. You have got to come into line with that, into conformity to that. What is true in Him has to be true in you, the individual, and in the corporate, the church. “Girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle”. There is to be a heart devotion and faithfulness to the revealed thoughts of God concerning His people, concerning ourselves. There has got to be the strengthening of us by the divine nature to stand as God’s administrative instrument to the world. There must be a heart strong with faithfulness to what is according to God — gold-girdled breasts mean a heart strong in its faithful love and devotion to what is of God. We have got to be found there.

You can have all sorts of things as Christians, all sorts of Christian things; we can have all the things that the churches had, and yet find the finger of condemnation upon them, saying, “It is not good enough, it will not do, it does not justify; with all that, I cannot let you off”. We can be very devoted to a teaching, to a movement, to any Christian work, very busy indeed in all that sort of thing; it may be very interesting or we may even be giving ourselves, pouring ourselves out to it; and yet behind it all there may be lacking some real love for the Lord Himself.

I would like to press that. It is so possible for us — oh, God forgive us, we have all failed so terribly in this matter — it is so possible for us to be poured out in the ministry, and yet to be slipping up all the time on things that are not pleasing to the Lord, our hearts not girded with the strength of a great faithful love to His thoughts. The enemy is always trying to counter our testimony by getting us to be in some way a contradiction, to be inconsistent. You find nothing like that in this One, nothing of that contradiction and inconsistency. His heart is wholly girded with faithful love to His Father’s thoughts and will. Is there not a place for us to come to the Word of God a little more and see whether, after all, with all our Christian activity and devotion, the Word of God is not against us on many things?

[Shammu]

White Head and Hair

“His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow.” What is this? Well, there are two things here. In the first place, there is the mark of all time extended, exhausted, lived out. There is such a thing, of course, as premature grey-headedness; there is such a thing as becoming grey-headed or white by reason of something abnormal; but the normal grey-headedness or white hair is a mark that time has been lived out, has been covered or is being encompassed and exhausted, and for a white-headed man to be in full vigour is a testimony to the fact that he has defeated time and all that that means. In this description of the exalted Christ, therefore, the whiteness means that all that belongs to time or corruption has been destroyed. This One is not a victim of time or time’s conditions, of this world or this world’s corruption: He outlives it, expands it, triumphs over it. Time means death, sooner or later; death means corruption triumphant. But this One is in full vigour, girded with strength and authority and standing forth. The further description is the picture of one in full vigour, full of energy. This is not an old man worn out. This is a young man, in youth, in vigour — and white-headed. He has defeated all that time represents, death and corruption overcoming. His white hair is not a mark of old age. It is a mark of eternity triumphing over time. He is as the “ancient of days” (Dan. 7:9).

What is the spiritual value of that? Well, you see, it means this, that the man according to God will have vigour to the end, will have spiritual energy to the end. I do not know what you feel about that, but I am in revolt against finishing up in exhaustion and emptiness, having no more to give to the Lord’s people because I am too old. There may be a challenge along that line, but my spirit revolts against that. “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14). We read that “the path of the righteous is as the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18). This does not imply that circumstances get easier, that the way becomes simpler and less complex, that the path becomes more and more cheerful. No, it does not imply that at all — rather the reverse. But I do believe it must mean that inwardly, while the “outward man is decaying”, the “inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). That is something to claim, to lay hold of — to beat time.

So let us stop looking for sympathy by saying we are getting old. We do far too much of that. The white hair of the exalted Christ is a mark of corruption transcended in moral perfection, and that is a mark of energy.

Eyes as of a Flame of Fire

“His eyes were as a flame of fire.” Here again there are two things. The eyes are the seeing organs and faculties, and this — as is borne out by a lot more that follows in this book — speaks of spiritual intelligence and knowledge. Later you will come upon seven spirits of God. That is the perfection of spiritual intelligence, if you look at the context. And here we have the eyes, the organ, as a flame of fire. The fire searches, the fire tests, the fire finds out, and the One here is in a state of active knowledge. He is finding out. God will judge the world in the Man whom He has ordained, and it will be because of His perfect spiritual intelligence and the power of it.

That is not so remote as it may sound in a statement like that. When we come face to face with the Lord, with the Son of man, we know that He knows. We do not take that as a theory, as just truth. We cannot come into the Lord’s presence and be alone with the Lord without knowing that He knows. It is no use excusing ourselves, it is no use arguing, it is no use covering up, it is useless to try to get round it. You know that He knows what you are not wanting to uncover. You are set in the light of His countenance and you cannot get away from it. His eyes not only see, but they search. They not only know, but they test. They are not merely organs, but there is something about these organs that registers on you, and you know you have to answer to the Lord. It is well for us to recognise that.

But let us still remember that this Son of man is representative. Would it not be grand if our life, our testimony, our ministry, were like this — that those whom we meet, and those who hear us, have to say, “How did he know all about me? Who has been telling him?” — and they will not believe that no one has been telling and reporting and passing on. Oh, that it might be like that in our ministry, that people have to say: “No one could have known that about me but God; that is God who has spoken to me and dealt with me. No one knew that, that was something hidden in my life from everybody else. God only knew that, but it has been dragged out into the light.”

That is the meaning of “His eyes were as a flame of fire”, and God would have something like that about us. There being those other features which have been mentioned, this should be one of the consequences, that our presence has the effect of making sinners uncomfortable, making sin incapable of remaining hidden, bringing things to the light. It will mean trouble — nevertheless it is very much better than pouring out words in addresses and teaching and nothing resulting. Oh, that God might be more in our lives to bear this flaming witness against iniquity, against sin.

The eyes are linked with the other features. The eyes are connected, for instance, with the heart: for this kind of thing — these eyes as a flame, this witness, this knowing and this effecting — is by way of a pure heart. The pure in heart see God (Matt. 5:. Effectiveness of witness is based upon purity of heart.

Feet Like Burnished Brass

The next thing here is: “His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace”. Feet speak of our goings and our ways. They are the means by which we move. And what makes us move, what makes us go? There are some people who have no reason for many of their movements. They just go running about all over the place without any rhyme or reason, without any sense at all. There are a lot of people who just move by impulse. The Lord Jesus never did that. Sometimes people tried to persuade Him to move, and He would not — they could not get Him to move; sometimes they tried to get Him to go one way, and He went another; sometimes they tried to stop Him from going — and He would go.

But in His goings, His movements, His refusing to move, these feet of His were governed by a certain incentive and motive. Motive should govern our movements. Why did you do that? What is your motive? This is very searching. Why did you go and live at so-and-so, in such-and-such a place? You found a nice house there, very comfortable surroundings? Why? Either your motive is the Lord’s interests, or it is your own. Why do you go to this place and that? Why these movements in your life? By what are they motivated? What is the incentive of your life?

Now, in the case of this One, this Son of man, you can see in His walk here on earth the motive and the incentive which governed. It was not the judgments of men, not the interests of the flesh, not the prizes and appeals of this world, not the shunning of suffering. He moved only under the mighty incentive of His Father’s will. His feet were purged in the furnace as to their motives. The strength of His goings, like brass, was the strength of the divine approval, because His heart was set in the ways of the Lord. Irresistible are His goings, strong because pure. Tested and tried are His motives. The Lord bring us into line with the Son of man. In all our motives and incentives, our objects and our interests, the things which influence us this way and that way, where we go, how we go, may He bring us more fully under the government of His Spirit.

[Shammu]

A Voice as the Voice of Many Waters

“His voice as the voice of many waters.” I think the meaning of that is quite obvious. It speaks of power, commanding power. You cannot stand against a flood — everything has to yield and go with it. They said of Him when here that He spoke “as one having authority” (Matt. 7:29). There is a QUALITY about His speaking. It is not only the volume, the sound as of many waters, but there is such a quality about it. It is, in other words, not just the force of His voice; it is not that He is shouting; it is the character, the quality of it. He speaks, and because He speaks out of a pure heart, out of this utter devotion to the will of the Father, out of this life which has no motives or incentives other than to be well-pleasing unto God — because He speaks thus, He has the support of heaven and nothing can withstand Him.

I believe our witness, our testimony, our ministry, would be much more powerful, persuasive — irresistible — if we were more like the Son of man. That is what I am getting at. If you and I want to speak with influence, with power, to speak so that something happens, it must and can only be in so far as there is Christlikeness behind the speaking, if what is said is true in the life. This matter of speaking with power is very practical. It is by the Holy Spirit in a crucified and risen man. “I became dead,... I am alive...” A crucified and risen man is the vehicle of this speaking to such effect and with such power. On the day of Pentecost, they were truly crucified and risen men; in a very real way they had been crucified with Christ and were risen together with Him; and a voice that is going to carry weight has got to be the voice of a crucified and risen man or woman. If it can be detected, when we speak to others, that there is self-glory influencing us; that, as we speak, we are influenced by any motive, any interest, any consideration other than the glory of God, the pleasure of the Lord; if it is not true, and manifestly true, in our speaking, in our preaching, in our teaching, in our talking to others, that we have been crucified to the flesh, that ours is a risen life with the Lord: if that is not true, there will be no power in our testimony, no power in our words. Power in speaking arises only from this spiritual experience of being crucified with Christ and raised together with Him.

Seven Stars in His Hand

“He had in his right hand seven stars.” The stars, He says later on, are the angels of the churches, those who have influence and power in the churches. A star is that which governs or is supposed to govern, to govern in the night. It is a subordinate governing instrument, subordinate to the sun and moon, and here the stars, these angels — whoever they may be, whatever they may be; we will not stay to discuss that — represent the place of authority, the governmental position, which is held in the church. He has them in His right hand, and the right hand, according to the Old Testament, is a symbol, first of all of honour and then of power. Honour and power — the two things go together. His authority to deal with the matter of government and influence is because of the honour and the power of His moral position.

A Sharp Sword out of His Mouth

“Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword.” We know from other Scriptures what this two-edged sword is. It is the Word of God; its action is for laying bare, for discovering. His Word is a Word that lays open, lays bare and gets down to the inner recesses of our thoughts, our motives.

A Shining Face

“His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.” The countenance sums up everything. It is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. “The sun shining in its strength.” You may put up your parasol and it will destroy it! The sun shining in his strength knows no resistance, no restraint. There is no shrinking in timidity and fear on the part of the sun. There is no shame that makes it want to veil its face. There is no uncertainty about the sun. There may be about the weather! — but there is no uncertainty about the sun. He is forthright, he is downright. He has no reason to shrink, to hold back, to be afraid, to be timid. There is boldness, there is assurance, there is certainty. I think that is what is meant by the sun shining in its strength. It is terrible when you get right into the real strength of the sun. The sun shining in its strength. It is terrible when it does not say, “I am very sorry, I would not do it if I could help it”; it just does it! There is certainty, definiteness, positiveness about the sun shining in its strength.

God needs His church like that. He desires that it should be possible to say of it: “There is no doubt about it with them, there is no question where they are concerned; they know the Lord! If you touch them, you will get a positive note; you will find something that gets rid of all your doubt, all your uncertainty, all your questions.” Oh, for lives like that! There is so much of the deviation and the “shadow cast by turning” about us. One day you will find us all right and the next day you will find us all wrong. For a little while we are shining, and then our sun has gone in. You never can be sure how you will find some people, as to their spiritual life, from day to day.

This Son of man is not like that. It is a wonderful thing to go to those parts of the world where, when you get up in the morning, you do not look out to see if it is raining. You never do it. You know that, for the greater part of the year, as sure as the day comes the sun comes, and it shines. For a large part of the year in those parts of the world you do not talk about the weather. You know quite well that the sun will be there before you, if you are not very early, and that it will go on. Oh, for our lives to be like that — sure, certain, reliable, trustworthy, to be counted upon, positive, definite, real. “The sun shining in his strength.” It is one of the glories of God that there is with Him “no variableness, neither shadow cast by turning”. In all this, remember, it is the Son of man to whom we are to be conformed.

The Effect of Seeing Christ

And finally, the effect. “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead.” Now two things must be linked together. John commenced by saying: “I was in the Spirit”. He finished this presentation by saying: “I fell at his feet as one dead”. What is the effect of this contemplation? What is the verdict? If you are in the Spirit, there will be an effect in the contemplation of Jesus Christ. There must be something as a result. “I was in the Spirit... I fell at his feet as one dead.” What do YOU say about this? I am not saying that my presentation is as good as John’s, I am not saying that I am as inspired as he was, but we have been contemplating the same Lord, we have been seeking to bring Christ into view — His excellencies and glories and what He means for us. Can we be other than deeply affected? Is there not something challenging that brings us down inwardly before the Lord? “Am I not found out? Am I not smitten? Do I not realise how altogether short of this I come? Do I not see that it is unto this that the Lord has called? Am I not moved to make my calling and election sure? Is there not the inspiring of something of that ‘one thing I do... I press on toward the goal’ (Phil. 3:13,14)?”

What is the effect? What is our verdict? A mental judgment upon the subject, the subject matter, the presentation? What is it? We have failed — I have failed, you have failed — if we are not touched deeply in our hearts over this and come down before the Lord to make the necessary adjustment. If we are not moved with a new incentive to be like Him, it is all a failure. God forbid! If it is not so with you, will you ask the Lord to use the sword, the two-edged sword, to lay bare?

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Sealing of His Brethren

“...In whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, — in whom, having also believed, YE WERE SEALED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT OF PROMISE, WHICH IS AN EARNEST OF OUR INHERITANCE, unto the redemption of God’s own possession, unto the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13,14).

Sealed with the Holy Spirit

I want you to note at the outset a very important little word: “Ye were sealed WITH the Holy Spirit”, not by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the sealer, but the seal. God the Father seals, and the seal is the Holy Spirit. The value of that is that the sealing is not a matter of some feeling, some experience in the realm of our senses. The sealing is definitely the receiving of a Person for indwelling.

The apostles were very careful and very particular as to this divine consummation of saving faith. They never left anything to chance. If there was a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, if there was a declaration of the acceptance of Him, the acknowledgment of Him as Saviour and Lord, they never allowed it to stop there. If a report came that some had turned to the Lord through the preaching, they went to verify and to see that the thing was sealed, and for them the consummation of that saving faith, that faith unto salvation, was that they received the seal of the Holy Spirit. You notice here that, although it is in Ephesians, which goes so much beyond beginnings, it is connected with “having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, — in whom, having also believed” (heard the Word and believed), “ye were sealed”.

Now the enemy will allow anything short of that. He will allow you to have a lot of sensations, to make a lot of declarations, sign a lot of papers and cards, and go out to a lot of penitent forms. He will allow anything short of this particular thing, and it was there that the apostles were making so sure, not accepting anything less than this, that these people definitely and positively did receive the Holy Spirit as a Person to indwell them. “Ye were sealed by God with the Holy Spirit of promise as an earnest of our inheritance”. Well, that is all bound up with this little word “with” — with the Spirit.

Then come these two words which are word-pictures — “sealed” and “earnest”. “Sealed with the Spirit as an earnest.”

The Effect of a Seal

(a) The mark of reality

What is the nature and effect of a seal when it is put upon anything? I think it has several meanings and several effects. First of all it is the mark of reality; that is, of security. It introduces this element: “Now, that is that! That is a real transaction, that is a definite act. Something has happened that is very real — you cannot get away from that.” In the New Testament, when this sealing took place, when they received the Spirit as a seal, it was precise, it was real, it was definite; it was lifted entirely out of the realm of vagueness, indefiniteness. It was a mark about those first Christians which was unmistakable. The seal gives that character to the life: that is, the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a Person makes everything very real — it makes for an unmistakable addition to the life that has to be noted, taken account of. From that time, if it is a genuine thing, there is nothing vague about that one’s Christian life, nothing indefinite.

(b) The mark of certainty

And then the seal is the mark of certainty. When we receive the Spirit, when this seal is set to believing faith, there enters in something that is very positive in the life. We have certainty; that is, we know. That positive note is struck so much by John. “The anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you” (1 John 2:27). That does not mean that we are exempt from instruction in the things of God, but it does mean that we do not need that anyone should tell us we are saved — we know. “We know that we have passed out of death into life” (1 John 3:14). It is the seal of security and certainty.

(c) A mark of distinction

And another thing about a seal is that it brings a resemblance. When we put a seal upon a thing, that seal bears a mark. It may be the Great Seal of the realm, it may be a family seal, a business seal, a personal seal — an initial or monogram. It bears a mark, has a character; it distinguishes that which is sealed. And in the same way the Holy Spirit gives a certain mark, a certain character, a certain resemblance, a certain design to the life. He brings in this mark of the Lord.

These are very simple things, but this is the outworking, the immediate result, of receiving the Spirit. You have only to look into the book of the Acts to see this borne out. “They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). They knew the seal, the likeness; they saw the mark, the design.

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“An Earnest of Our Inheritance”

“An earnest of our inheritance.” Of course, in ancient times this was a very well-known thing, as it is today. It is the legal pledge of a commercial transaction. In old days, if a man was buying a piece of land, he was given by the seller a handful of the earth of that land as an earnest that he was to have the whole, the whole was his by right, it was his inheritance. The word “earnest” is the Greek word arrhabon (Hebrew erabon), which means a surety, a pledge, such as an engagement ring; that is, I make you a promise, I commit myself; this is a token. That is the word that is used here of the Holy Spirit. He is the pledge, He is the promise, He is the token of all the inheritance which God has for us in His Son. “An earnest of our inheritance”; the “Spirit of promise”.

“An earnest of our inheritance.” A little earlier the apostle has said, “in whom also we were made a heritage”. A little later he will speak of God’s inheritance in the saints, but here he is speaking of our inheritance; not God’s inheritance in us, but our inheritance in God. This letter to the Ephesians has a very vast sweep. It looks right back to past eternity, and tells us of the great purpose of God from before times eternal, before the world was, “the eternal purpose”; it tells us of our election, “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world”, and it tells us unto what; and then it sweeps on through time, through the ages, on to the eternity future, and shows us the realisation of that purpose and that election — and what a glorious picture is brought into view of being “unto the praise of his glory”, “the glory of his grace”!

The word “glory” here is the key to it all. I am quite sure that you have been impressed with the fact that the New Testament is so futuristic — not just in the prophetical interpretation of the Bible, but in the sense that the writers are always looking on. Whatever they are doing, they are looking beyond this life. They have their eyes filled with a wonderful future. The apostles are full of that, straining after that; their teaching is concerning that all the time. They are seeking to bring the believers, the saints, the church, into the mighty inspiration of a glorious hope, a marvellous future, and this letter to the Ephesians, perhaps more than any other, brings into view that great future realisation of eternal purpose and calls it our inheritance — that to which we are heirs, through the grace of God, in fellowship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

But my point in saying this is that this is not just some glorious presentation of ideas, or even of truths in words. How shall we know that it is not a beautiful story? How shall we know that it is not just the production of men’s imagination? How shall we know that it is not just wishful thinking? How shall we know it is not just a dream, a beautiful dream? How shall we know that, having given up everything in this world and abandoned all interests here for this, we shall not at last find that we have made a mistake and have lost both worlds? How shall we know that this is true? And the apostle answers all such questions and says, “You can know in a very real and practical way right here and now — in as practical a way as it is possible to know anything. You can know it right inside yourself!” And I venture to suggest that that is a more real way of knowing things than any other way. I am not always certain of you, you are not always certain of me — but I am perfectly certain of what goes on inside of me! That is the real thing. And so the apostle says, answering all questions as to whether this inheritance is a solid thing, whether this eternal purpose is a real matter: “He has given us the Holy Spirit as an earnest”.

A Positive Sense of Purpose and Destiny

This is borne out very clearly and precisely, inasmuch as when we receive the Holy Spirit, when we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, the first thing that results is that He gives us a positive sense of purpose and destiny. He lifts life out of unreality and vagueness, and we become conscious that there is, after all, some real purpose in our being on this earth. Whatever we may have felt before, as to its having been a matter of chance, or as to there having been anything accidental in our coming into this world, a mere fragment among the teeming multitudes: now it is as though we — individually insignificant as we are in ourselves naturally — are, in a right sense, somehow characterized by a tremendous importance. I mean that rightly. A meaning, a significance, is given to us; we feel that we are bound up with some tremendous thing. When the Holy Spirit comes in as the seal and the earnest of our inheritance, a sense of positive destiny takes hold of us. We know we are linked on with something. You can test yourself by this, as well as testify to the truth of it.

And then the Holy Spirit gives us a positive urge and incentive towards something. We become aware that we are apprehended — there is an urge in us, there is an incentive, there is a pull; we are gripped, we are being drawn on, led on; and that is the explanation of all our reactions. If we lapse, if we get slack, if we cease to press on, presently we shall have a bad reaction, we shall realise that something is lost, we are losing out; life has lost something: we must see to this matter. The Holy Spirit has linked us with that purpose, and He is the incentive within us, the urge, the dynamic.

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A Progressive Understanding of God’s Purpose

And then again the Holy Spirit gives us a progressive understanding and knowledge of the purpose. It should be characteristic of every Holy Spirit-indwelt life that there is a progressive, increasing understanding and knowledge of God’s purpose, the purpose unto which we are called. It was this that governed the apostles in the writing of their letters. They were “moved by the Holy Ghost”. They spoke and they wrote “as they were moved”, that is, “as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost” (2 Pet. 1:21). The word-picture here in the Greek is of a crowd, a surging crowd, moving in a certain direction, and here is one life standing by, that suddenly finds itself caught up in the crowd — and what is the good of trying to resist that? It has simply got to let itself go, be borne on with the multitude. That is the word that is used here. They were borne along by the Holy Spirit as they wrote and as they spoke. And what was it they spoke and wrote about? It was about this purpose — explaining, informing, giving growing knowledge, as they received it from the Holy Spirit.

The same Holy Spirit will do that in us. There is something very wrong with a life — a Christian life — which, after a given time, is no better instructed on God’s purposes in salvation than at the beginning; something very wrong. The Holy Spirit is there for that very purpose. Growing intelligence is a mark of the Spirit within, as the earnest of our inheritance.

Our Responsibility to Honour the Holy Spirit

Then we are brought by the Holy Spirit, as the earnest of our inheritance, to face the responsibility of His indwelling. Here we have such words as: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30). Our responsibility is to cherish the Holy Spirit, to honour the Holy Spirit. We read so much about “walking in the Spirit”, “walking by the Spirit”. What does walking in the Spirit mean? Well, it means, in the simplest of language, first of all that we recognise and acknowledge the Holy Spirit. That is the first simple thing — to walk in the Spirit is to recognise the Spirit and to acknowledge the Spirit; not to ignore, not to affront Him; to give Him His place of honour and right and then to obey — to yield to the Spirit and to obey.

And the Spirit within us is mainly very quiet. When the Lord speaks by His Spirit within, He speaks very gently. I have for many years tried to train myself to recognise His voice. We expect tremendous impressions, a loud voice, something that we cannot mistake, and my experience is that the Lord very rarely speaks like that until He has to, that His Spirit is gentle, and if we really were being led by the Spirit, we should be attuned to a very, very quiet voice, just intimating something. How easy it is for us to go on and pass it over, to ignore it, because it is so gentle — and yet when we look back we have to say, “Oh, what a pity I did not take note of that very simple, gentle little touch of the Lord — I would have been saved such a lot!”

We should never need to have our ears trained if there were shouting going on all the time. But the ear is trained by having to listen, and this inner ear of “hearing what the Spirit saith” must be an ear that is attentive, an ear that is inclined, an ear that indicates the attitude of our hearts. If someone is speaking, I can be perfectly careless and preoccupied and looking round, but if I realise that what the speaker has to say is of very great importance, I am all attention, showing the state of my heart. “He that hath an ear, let him hear.” This is what walking in the Spirit means — inclining, being set upon knowing all that the Lord has to say and give.

The Need to Press On

I close just by reminding you that the meaning and value of an earnest, of a token, of a promise can all be lost if you do not follow it out to its fulfilment.

The man who received his handful of soil had the guarantee that the whole field was his by right of transaction; but supposing he just carefully preserves the handful, without following up and pursuing the transaction, and taking possession and turning to account his inheritance? The handful is no good to him at all! What it signifies is all lost, nullified. I knew a couple who became engaged, with an engagement ring given, and they went on — one year, two years, three, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years. They were never married! They were engaged all those years, but the transaction was never completed. We are not, of course, appealing for hurried engagements and hurried marriages! But the point is: do let us follow up — do not let us make a fiasco of this thing. We have the earnest, we have the Spirit as a seal and earnest, but we have not yet got all that is meant, all that is included; and we can miss it all — even while we have the earnest we can miss it all — if we do not follow up, if we do not pursue, if we do not go on.

You know the place of the many “ifs” in the New Testament. “If we hold fast... unto the end” (Heb. 3:6). You know the great urge of the Word that we should go on. “Let us press on...” (Heb. 6:1). Why? Oh, it is not enough to have believed, and it is not enough even to have received the Spirit as an earnest. We must follow on to make good all that is represented by the earnest, to possess all that is included in the guarantee.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The Spirit's Work in This Dispensation

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth”. (John 14:16,17).

We are going to think about the dispensation of the Spirit. This is not something apart from what we have been considering hitherto. I think we shall see how this matter of the Spirit is a part of that greater vision that the Lord has been bringing before us — the Man in the glory. In our last study we were for a little time occupied with the subjective side of this matter of the Spirit — receiving the Spirit as an indwelling Person, the seal and earnest of our inheritance. We shall now look at it from the other side — the objective side of the Holy Spirit and His work.

Let me say here at once that, while the subjective side of truth is of very great importance, as a source of strength and light and help generally to the spiritual life, the objective side of revelation is usually the more joyful side. If we are feeling ourselves to be in need of more joy, I doubt whether we shall find our need supplied by more subjective occupation. Our need will be met by objective occupation — by turning outwards and viewing the Lord’s provision for us, as in Heaven and as here, altogether apart from our own inner attainment unto it. It is this matter of attainment that is the trouble with us, and so, although we may not find the same inward teaching value in the objective side, I am quite sure we shall find a great deal of inspiration and uplift as we contemplate for a little while those activities of the Holy Spirit out of His own sovereignty.

“The Acts” Covers the Dispensation of the Spirit

Here, then, in the passage from John that we have read, the Lord Jesus points to that event so soon to take place as He was going, the advent of the Spirit. “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter” (or “Advocate” — neither word is an exact translation), “that he may be with you for ever (for the age), even the Spirit of truth”. He indicated an age, or, to use the other word, a dispensation — the dispensation of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit has inaugurated a dispensation and has taken charge of it. That comprehends everything. The book which goes by the title of “The Acts” — certainly only in a subsidiary way the acts of the apostles, primarily the acts of the Holy Spirit — is a book which covers the age or dispensation of the Spirit from first to last.

You may argue with me that the book only goes as far as Paul’s imprisonment and leaves him there. I repeat, it covers the whole dispensation. That will be shown quite clearly before we are through. Actually, as to time, the book only covers about thirty years. All that took place as recorded in this book was crowded into something round about thirty years. How do we arrive at that? Well, the ascension of Christ was about 33 AD and the last letter written within the compass of this book was written about 64 AD. So you see all that is here is within that brief time.

“The Acts” a Book of Principles

What a crowded thirty years it was! What a seed plot for a dispensation, a whole dispensation! And that is exactly what it is — a seed plot. This book of the Acts laid the foundation of the whole dispensation. The dispensation was to rise out of and upon what took place as recorded here, and so the book is a book of principles for all time. The meaning of this is that, while it is not at all necessary for the Holy Spirit, at any other time in the dispensation, to repeat Himself in exactly the same form, nevertheless He will always act on the same principle. If you read this book and see what is here, as “acts of the Holy Spirit”, you will have to come to one of two conclusions. Either that the Holy Spirit is not the same today as He was then, because the things that are recorded as the normal and ordinary happenings no longer happen. Or, that what is here embodies a principle, and whether the form of its expression is repeated or not, the principle remains intact.

Take the simple example of Ananias and Sapphira and their sin against the Holy Ghost. I venture to say, with very little fear of contradiction, that there are many in the church today who are guilty of a like misdemeanour, a like sin; seeking to hoodwink the Holy Spirit — forgive the word — seeking to deceive the Lord, seeking to cover up a double life. There are many who are positive contradictions to a life under the government of the Holy Spirit, whose lives are an affront to the Spirit of truth: there is a lie. But in how many cases does the same thing happen as happened with Ananias and Sapphira? I suppose we should be involved in very serious legal trouble if it did! It would not do for any Peter among us today to pick out such people, with the result that they instantly fall down dead and have to be carried out as corpses! The Holy Spirit may not do things in the same way physically, but He has established a principle that, if any Christian lives a double life, if any Christian is living, acting, practising inconsistency, a lie to the Holy Ghost, their spiritual life is seriously at stake, and they will become corpses in a much more serious way than physically. There are a lot of “corpses” in the church — dead people — because of something that is an affront to the Holy Spirit. We cannot continue to deceive the Holy Spirit and at the same time maintain spiritual life. That is the principle.

So we could go through this book, indicating that it is a book of principles. We have to say all the time, “Now, are we to expect a repetition of the form of the act of the Holy Spirit in every matter, or are we to look to see the principle that is involved?” For when we find the principle, and lay hold of it, we find that the principle works; whatever may be the external form of its working, the principle works. May that not be a key to the very difficult subject of the gift of tongues? It is there. Are we to say that that manifestation is to follow in that same form, universally and invariably, throughout the whole dispensation, or are we not to conclude from the book of principles, and from the full way in which the principle was established at the beginning, that in the Spirit there is a universal spiritual language which you and I speak, and we understand one another in that language of the Spirit — not necessarily literally in a tongue; that Pentecost sees the triumph over Babel — the destruction of that cause of division — in a spiritual way, so that, in Christ, all nations and tongues and languages and peoples understand the language of the Spirit? We know we have something in common: spirit speaks with spirit. We may not speak one another’s language, but somehow there is a concord and a flowing together, and it is so often more easy, even in the spoken word, when you are spiritually one, to understand things of the Spirit than to understand natural things. There you have a principle.

So the Acts is a book of principles, and it is for us to look at it and say, “Now, what is the principle in this?” Do not let me be understood as saying that the Lord does not sometimes exactly repeat His actions — He does; but not as a normal and general rule. He has shown us, by very clear, positive examples, what His principles are, and He would say to us, “If I do not smite you dead for that lie, do not think that I condone the lie, that I am any less against the lie than I was in the fifth chapter of the book of the Acts.”

[Shammu]

The Spirit Providing for the Whole Dispensation

Now, the next thing is that, in providing this book, God has provided for the whole dispensation. I said that, although its actual history according to time was gathered into about thirty years, yet this book covers the whole dispensation, and it does so by way of its provision — through that which it provides. The Holy Spirit gave in those thirty years all that which was to be the church’s life and light for the whole dispensation. That needs no argument. We should not be meditating today on the record of those thirty years, and deriving spiritual life and benefit and instruction from it, if that were not true. The Spirit provided, then, for His own full dispensation — provided Himself with what He would need right to the end of the age; and He is using it still, not acts only, but utterances. Let us then look at this work of the Spirit, this acting of the Spirit, as we have it here.

The Spirit Bringing the Church to Birth

First and inclusively, His act was that of bringing the foreknown and foreordained church to birth. He reached right back to the eternal counsels, right down to the hiddenness of past ages, and He brought from the eternity past and from the hiddenness of the ages the church foreknown, foreordained. Sooner or later we shall find that, in the course of this record, He gives His own explanation of that. But here is the act, bringing the church to birth. In the light of its eternity past and future, what a mighty act that was! In the light of those eternal counsels of God, in the light of the meaning and calling of the church, what a great thing it was to bring that church to birth, to bring it out into actual being on the day called the day of Pentecost. Yes, He at once reached back to those counsels before times eternal and took up the purposes and intentions of God in and through the church, and brought them into the church to which He gave birth, to which He became the Spirit of life on that day.

I said He reached down into the hiddenness of the ages. I am not one of those who hold that there is no church in the Old Testament Scriptures. I am agreed that it was not recognised; agreed that they did not see the meaning of what was going on in themselves as a people. Oh, yes, I am agreed that there was no revelation of the church in Old Testament times: but not agreed for a moment that there is no revelation of the church in the Old Testament ages to the church in this age. With the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment now, we can see all the eternal principles relative to the church hidden in the Old Testament Scriptures. They are there; we can see them now. And the New Testament uses the Old Testament Scriptures to explain and illustrate the church. Strange things are said about some of the Old Testament Scriptures, that might well be thought to be straining them, making them mean what they do not mean, unless the Holy Spirit had shown the mystery. “Mystery” simply means something that was there but hidden. You cannot hide a “nothing”, a something that does not exist. If it says that it was hidden, it must have been there to be hidden. But now at the end of those ages it is brought to light. And so the Holy Spirit uncovered the mystery hidden from the ages or in the ages, and brought out the eternal counsels of God when, by sovereign act, He brought the church into being on that day, at that time. That was no mere happening; there was nothing casual about that: it was a sovereign act of the Spirit.

The Spirit Directing the Church’s Movements

Then we find that from that point He proceeds in the directing of the church’s movements, that being the object with which He is concerned. Having brought it into being, He assumes charge of its movements. Here is a wonderful story of the sovereign activity of the Holy Spirit to make the church move — and moreover to make it move as it would not move, as it would refuse to move, as its prejudices would forbid its moving; but He sees that it does. If it does not do so spontaneously and voluntarily, it will do it under compulsion of circumstances. He has taken up this matter of directing the church’s movements for the age. This obtains with the Holy Spirit as much now as it did at the beginning.

The Spirit Ordering the Church’s Constitution

Next we see Him arranging and ordering its constitution: wonderful sovereign acts in the choosing of men and the giving of ministry, gifts in persons, selecting, choosing, bringing forward. It is as though the Spirit reached out His hand, and, where men would not have looked, where men were afraid, fearful, put His hand on this one and on that one; and they had to come forward, they had to come into place, and they had to be taken into account. The Spirit has said so; the Spirit is doing this: you cannot refuse Saul of Tarsus and keep him out, however bad his record is.

In other cases He is ordering the constitution of the church. He is seen giving the gifts of the ascended Lord and establishing the functions by means of those personal gifts. It is a matter for the Holy Spirit what ministry men fulfil in the church. It is not for us to select our ministry, either its kind or its place; it is not for us to choose what we are going to be in the work of God; it is not for us to say what kind of ministry we are going to engage in: “I am going to be an evangelist”; “I am going to be an apostle” (if you like you can use the word “missionary” in its place — it is the same word in another language); “I am going to be a pastor, a teacher”. That is not given to us at all, thank God; that is with the Holy Spirit.

And every other gift and function is the Holy Spirit’s matter, entirely in His sovereign hands, and that is a thing set forth here. Would to God that men would keep close to this book of principles and not try to do that for which they are not qualified, and to which they are not called, by the Holy Spirit. There are many misfits; many have to give up because they find the Lord is not taking them through, is not with them in it. There are many who are trying to do that for which the Lord never called them. It works too the other way: there are many who are not doing, simply because they do not feel qualified to do so. They have not recognised the principle that it is not on the basis of any ability of our own at all, but by the Holy Spirit. He can take up the most unlikely and make functionaries or functions in the church. Both negatively and positively this whole matter is seen here to be a matter of the Holy Spirit’s sovereign ordering of the constitution of the church.

[Shammu]

The Spirit’s Sovereign Use of Every Agency

Then, further, we see the Holy Spirit using all agencies in relation to the purpose of the dispensation. This is grand — this is where I think objective contemplation is so inspiring and helpful. Would to God we had a more ready apprehension or grasp of this: the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, not only in the church through this dispensation, but as wide, as far, as all-embracing as the Throne of the exalted Lord Jesus. And here you see Him using all agencies, heavenly agencies. In this book you have a record of angelic activities: the ministry of angels co-operating with the Holy Spirit. In the letter to the Hebrews, we are told that we are come to “innumerable hosts of angels” (12:22). “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?” (1:14).

Now see one beautiful little example of co-operation between angels and the Holy Spirit. It is in the tenth chapter of Acts — the record of Peter on the housetop in one part of the country, and the sheet let down from heaven, and Cornelius in another place, 35 miles away, seeking the Lord for light. Peter is a man who knows the Holy Spirit: therefore the Spirit can speak to Peter. But Cornelius is not yet in the dispensation of the Spirit experimentally. He has not come into the realm of receiving the Spirit yet. That is coming soon, that will not be long: in three days it will happen, but not yet. Therefore an angel comes to him. He cannot understand the Spirit yet, but he can understand angels. A beautiful co-operation. But do not think that the Holy Spirit is confined to spiritual people, or that spiritual people have only the Holy Spirit. They may have both the Holy Spirit and angels, for Paul, who certainly knew what it was for the Spirit to speak to him, was able to say: “There stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I am, whom also I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul” (Acts 27:23,24). But here, in this incident of Peter, is a heavenly system at work in co-operation with the Holy Spirit, and this is soon to happen again and again. My point is this, that the Holy Spirit has all agencies of a celestial order at His service, co-operating with Him; all heavenly resources are at His command.

Then we also see how the Holy Spirit is making use of earthly agencies, people and things — very often of those that are inimical, unsympathetic, hostile. He just uses them, that is all. And behind them there is the sub-earthly, the diabolical. Oh, what a record of forces of evil at work this book contains: the spiritual hosts of wickedness, the adversary himself, working through things, working through nature, working through people. What is the Holy Spirit doing? He is just using them. They mean it for evil; He makes it work for good. Of course, that is easily said. In actual experience, we do not always look at it like that. It is the last thing that we do, when we are up against some terrific position of the enemy, to say, “That is all right! This is splendid! The Holy Spirit is going to turn this to glorious account!” We do not do that. But this book is a record of the sovereignty of the Spirit, using all agencies, heavenly, earthly and sub-earthly, unto the purpose of His dispensation. He has taken charge. Is that not helpful? That is what I mean by objective apprehension.

The Spirit’s Provision in the Matter of Revelation

Next, we see the inspirational work of the Holy Spirit making provision for the whole dispensation in the matter of the revelation of the church — the church’s nature, the church’s vocation and the church’s destiny. The Holy Spirit has taken up this matter and is here seen giving progressive instruction, by inspiration, as to what this thing is that has been brought in by birth on the day of Pentecost — what is its vocation, what is its destiny.

The progressive aspect of this fact is a most helpful one. We probably know that, although the letters of the New Testament are arranged in our Bibles in a certain order, this is not the order in which they were written. The order in which the Spirit has sovereignly arranged them for us is the progressive spiritual order, the right spiritual order. For students of the New Testament, and for merely informative or academic purposes, it is quite helpful to have the New Testament in the chronological order. You can actually buy a New Testament bound up in the order in which the letters were written. The first is Thessalonians, and so on. But the Holy Spirit has had a say in our having it in the order in which we do have it. It is quite clear. You cannot get anywhere until you have got Romans. Everything else will wait until what we have in Romans is established as the beginning, the very genesis, of the new creation. And it is quite as much in order to have Thessalonians at the end, its chief theme being the coming of the Lord. And if you look you see that each letter as we have it, represents one step further than the last. It is in the progress of things — spiritual progress. You would not want to have Ephesians before Corinthians. It would be terrible if, after reading Ephesians and Colossians, we then had to drop right down to Corinthians — that awful contradiction; but, with the letters in the order in which we have them, we say, “Well, here is Corinthians, and this is not how it ought to be: we must get out of this on to higher ground!”

So the Holy Spirit has brought about this order, given it to us by His sovereignty as a progressive revelation of the church’s nature, of the church’s vocation and of the church’s destiny. For the whole dispensation He inspired the providing of this light, this truth, this revelation of God for the church. Men of God wrote “as they were moved by the Holy Spirit”, and there is far more in that than I have been able to point out. The most enlightening, the most instructive matter is to see how the Holy Spirit puts things in order — to see the order in which He puts things as He gives His revelation.

[Shammu]

The Spirit Relates Everything to Christ

Finally, for the present, we see in this book of Acts how the Holy Spirit relates everything to Christ. While He, the Spirit, is the worker, while all that is here is the expression of His energy, His activity, He is keeping Christ in view all the time. He is not speaking of Himself; He is keeping Christ in view and relating everything to Christ. He is relating to Christ in a threefold way.

Firstly, eternally. He makes it perfectly clear that God’s purposes, His vast, great, wonderful purposes, were all settled in His Son before ever this world was. Before this world was, He summed up all things in Christ, He centred all things in Christ. The Holy Spirit makes it perfectly clear that all things relate to Christ eternally.

Secondly, incarnately. What is before is subsequent. It is all heading up to that great consummation, and all things are gathered together in Christ, related to Christ incarnately. (This is the point at which I think this falls into line with our first two meditations in this series — the Man, the Son of Man, and how this Man gathers up all things into Himself.) He is made man, becomes man. The Holy Spirit keeps the Man in view — “the Man Christ Jesus”. In the seventeenth chapter of this very book of Acts we have: “He hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained” (verse 31). There is another fragment very much like it in the tenth chapter (verse 42). The Holy Spirit is keeping everything related to Christ incarnately as the Son of Man, God’s Man.

And then, in the third place, exaltedly: for what the Holy Spirit is always careful to point out is that God raised Him, God exalted Him, God gave Him the place of supreme exaltation and glory — “crowned Him with glory and honour” — and everything is related to Him as there. He it was who filled Stephen on that memorable occasion, when Stephen, “being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). By the Holy Spirit Stephen saw Christ exalted at God’s right hand. Everything is related to Him as exalted. The Holy Spirit quotes the Psalms — the inspired Psalms. How the Holy Spirit brings in all that He Himself has before provided! See how He uses them through inspired men. He draws in the Psalms concerning the exaltation of the Lord Jesus: “Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet” (Heb. 1:13). “Therefore being at the right hand of God exalted...” (Acts 2:33). That is the work of the Holy Spirit, to keep everything related to God’s central object and interest and concern — His own Son.

Our Responsibility in Relation to the Spirit’s Sovereignty

All this robs us of every bit of ground for being introspective. All that has been said is a provision for rejoicing. If this is true, what a wonderful confidence it brings — this contemplation of divine sovereignty. And yet remember that there is another line running parallel — the line of our responsibility in relation to the Spirit’s sovereignty. The Spirit says very often, Go here, go there, do this, do that. Then responsibility comes in to respond, to obey, to be in subjection to the Spirit, to be completely yielded to Him; and that is all embraced in one principle at work all the way through. The Spirit’s ground of sovereign activity, so far as the church is concerned, is the ground of the cross — the application of the principle of the cross all the time. Unless the Lord’s children, even these apostles, will allow a further working of the cross, the Holy Spirit, as far as they are concerned, is unable to go on. He must bypass them, He must take up some other instrument.

Yes, responsibility is there, even in sovereignty. Do not let us, in our joy of contemplating the sovereignty of the Lord, think, Oh well, we can sit down and it does not matter — He will do it in spite of everything. So far as the church is concerned, and that means you and me, there is a responsibility running alongside of the sovereignty of the Spirit: the call for yieldedness which is the principle of the cross, the setting aside and putting to death of self-will, self-interest, self-assertiveness and everything that is of self. All that is of self must go under the power of the cross, and the Spirit goes on (and only goes on, where we are concerned) on that ground — the ground of the cross. That is how He makes the cross work for us unto glory: whereas those outside the church, who do not accept the cross, find that the cross is made to work for their undoing, their destruction. Herod knew all about the cross, but he refused to be subject to it. He set himself and his own interests in opposition to it, and he was destroyed out of hand. For its enemies, the working of the cross is death, but for us it brings to glory, by the sovereignty of the Spirit.

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - The Process of Reproduction

Reading: Acts 10:1-11:18.

The New Creation Man in Process of Formation

Acts 10 follows on what we were considering in our last message. It concerns this particular dispensation or age of the Holy Spirit, and the specific object which the Holy Spirit has in view during this age. We can put it in one phrase — the formation of the new-creation man. This chapter is a phase in that formation, and therefore a phase in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

It is a remarkable chapter. Much that is in it can only be explained in the light of something very much bigger than the conversion of an individual. Not that the conversion of an individual is a small thing, by any means, but it would have been very easy and very much more simple just to have sent a preacher to Caesarea to proclaim the Gospel there, so that this one man heard it and got converted. Things like that were happening; that in general was what was taking place.

But there is a tremendous amount of — if I may use the word — “paraphernalia” about this that actually happened. It is something quite “extra” and extraordinary, even for the general movement of the preaching of the Gospel in those days. That an angel from Heaven should visit the man, that the Holy Spirit should speak to Peter, that there should be these strange accompaniments of the sheet let down and the voice speaking, and many other strange features and factors, all indicates that this incident must be set in a realm that is more than the conversion of an individual, however important that may be. It is a part of a great dispensational movement: all the forces at God’s disposal in Heaven and on earth are brought into a “combined operation” in relation to this matter, for the man in the case is not just a man — he is a representative.

If you think that that needs proving, you have only to look further into this book. You can see that this is a phase, and the outstanding phase, of all that is happening. You have only to step back two chapters — and remember there are no chapters in the original record, it is one continuous narrative — step back into chapter 8 of our arrangement, and you have that extraordinary matter concerning the Ethiopian. Here was this man, holding a position of great power in the palace of the queen of the Ethiopians, who had been up to worship, and was now going back — a dissatisfied man. On his way back to Ethiopia, back to his seat of influence and activity, he has to pass by way of the desert; and the Spirit — the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit — speaks to a servant of God, named Philip, in Samaria. Great things are happening in Samaria, very important things are taking place there, much is going on under the power of the Spirit, but the Spirit touches Philip and says, “Now, go down toward Gaza, the way of the desert.” And Philip obeys. He is at the disposal of the Holy Spirit; he has no arguments and no personal objectives. There is nothing contrary about him — he is yielded to the Spirit. He obeys, and is brought into touch with this outstanding man, this representative man, this man who is right at the heart of everything in Ethiopia.

In chapter 9 we meet with another man, even more outstanding than the last. Saul of Tarsus was undoubtedly an outstanding man in every way. Whatever we may think about his persecutions, we must remember that he did it in all good faith. For him it was conscience; he was being utterly conscientious. Yes, he was an outstanding man, and again, a representative man — a representative of a nation and a great nation, a man who had a place right at the very heart of things in that nation. And the same mighty movement of Heaven comes to him and lays hold of him. There are big things happening in relation to individual men.

And so we come, with the straight course of the narrative, to what we have in chapter 10. Here is another man. He is away up in Caesarea, the capital of the country, the very stronghold of Roman influence. All that Rome stood for was centred there. This man holds a place of power, position and importance right there, and so an angel and the Holy Spirit, as we pointed out previously, co-operated in relation to the winning of this representative man.

So we have an Ethiopian, a Jew, and a Roman: men representing nations of no small significance and influence. This is no ordinary thing. What is it all about? Well, as I have said at the beginning, there is a “new-creation man” in process of formation. Out of this dust of the earth God is forming His new corporate Adam after the image of the One that He has in His own presence, in the likeness of His own Son. A new creation is in process of formation, and it centres in man — in a Man — and that Man is in the glory. But that new creation man that is being formed after the likeness of the Man in Heaven is corporate — the collective man after the likeness of THE Man, the last Adam.

Well, the new creation man is firstly Christ, and you notice how everything circles round Peter’s words — “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God” (Acts 2:22). And then in chapter 10, verse 42 — “He charged us to preach unto the people, and to testify that this is he who is ordained of God to be the Judge of living and dead”. That word “ordained” is the word with which we commenced our first meditation in this series. It is the Greek word from which we get the English word “horizon”. We may perhaps think of Christ as marking the horizon of everything with God.

So everything here is within that horizon. The Holy Spirit is working within the horizon of Christ, the new creation Man, the last Adam. He is the new creation personally in God’s very presence, but then He becomes the new creation Man dominantly. He is governing everything here — not officially, but by His likeness. It is the likeness of this Man that is governing everything. God is working by the Holy Spirit to bring about something after the likeness of this Man, a collective man in the image and likeness of this individual perfected Man before God. And this Man is dominant, in the sense that His character dominates all the activities of the Holy Spirit: that is, the Holy Spirit is in action to bring about a collective reproduction of this individual new creation Man. Dominating the activities of the Holy Spirit is what Christ is as man, according to God’s mind. Then follows, of course, the collective side of this, and that brings us here to these representative people.