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  WRITINGS OF F G PATTERSON
  by F.G. Patterson
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A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by F.G. Patterson,
compiled for study and devotional reading.

  Chapters: 73

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 00.00. Patterson, F. G. - Library
    2. 01.00. A Chosen Vessel
    3. 01.01.     The Vessel in The Potter: The Potter in The Vessel
    4. 01.02.     The End of Man’s History
    5. 01.03.     The Vessel Called: The New Man
    6. 01.04.     The Vessel Set Free
    7. 01.05.     Why Did God Permit the Entrance of Evil?
    8. 01.06.     The New Man
    9. 01.07.     The Vessel Emptied of Human Strength
   10. 01.08.     The Purpose of God in the Vessel
   11. 01.09.     God in the Vessel.
   12. 02.00. Lessons for the Wilderness
   13. 02.01.     Initiatory Lessons
   14. 02.02.     Initiatory Lessons
   15. 02.03.     Preparation for the Journey
   16. 02.04.     Preparation for the Journey
   17. 02.05.     The Threefold Chord of Praise
   18. 02.06.     The First Three Days in the Wilderness, etc.
   19. 02.07.     “By-paths and Straight Paths”
   20. 02.08.     The First Three Days on the Journey
   21. 02.09.     The Two Trumpets of Silver
   22. 02.10.     “The Trumpet And The Rod”
   23. 02.11.     “The Water of Purification”
   24. 02.12.     Nazariteship Amongst The Uncircumcised
   25. 02.13.     Nazariteship Amongst the Uncircumcised
   26. 02.14.     “Greater Works”
   27. 02.15.     The “Ribband of Blue”
   28. 03.00. The Church of God etc.
   29. 03.01.     Christ “Head over All the Assembly, which is His Body”
   30. 03.02.     “The House of God, which is the Assembly of the Living God.”
   31. 03.03.     Christ Amongst the Candlesticks
   32. 03.04.     “Him That Overcometh”
   33. 03.05.     Our Present Condition and Our Hope.
   34. 03.06.     The Church in the Glory; and the Father’s House.
   35. 04.00. The Lord's Host.
   36. 04.00i.     Introductory Remarks.
   37. 04.01.     Part 1.
   38. 04.02.     Part 2.
   39. 04.03.     Part 3.
   40. 05.01. The Ways of God
   41. 05.02.     Table of Contents
   42. 05.03.     Introduction
   43. 05.04.     The General Scope of the Dealings of God.
   44. 05.05.     The Past History of the People of Israel.
   45. 05.06.     The Times of the Gentiles, and Their Judgment.
   46. 05.07.     The Calling of the Church, and Her Glory.
   47. 05.08.     The Corruption of Christendom.
   48. 05.09.     The Judgment of Israel and the Nations Introductive of the Kingdom.
   49. 05.10.     The Glory, or Kingdom.
   50. 05.11.     Satan Loosed for a Little Season, the Great White Throne, and the Eternal State.
   51. 05.12.     Conclusion.
   52. S.     Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren
   53. S.     Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren
   54. S.     Correspondence on the Training of the Children of Believers
   55. S.     Correspondence: State of the Saints Under Promise, Law, and Grace
   56. S.     He will swallow up death in victory
   57. S.     His will" - "His work
   58. S.     Is the Christian in Adam or in Christ?
   59. S.     Paul's Doctrine:
   60. S.     The Doctrine of the Church
   61. S.     The Forty Days After the Resurrection
   62. S.     The Forty Days of Moses on Mount Sinai
   63. S.     The Forty Days of Nineveh
   64. S.     The Forty Days of the Flood
   65. S.     The Forty Days of the Lord's Temptation
   66. S.     The Forty Days' Searching of Canaan Part 1
   67. S.     The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit
   68. S.     The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 2
   69. S.     The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 3
   70. S.     The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 4
   71. S.     The Red Sea and the Jordan
   72. S.     The Vine.
   73. S.     The Water of Purification."

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  CHAPTER 1: 00.00. PATTERSON, F. G. - LIBRARY
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Patterson, F. G. - Library

Patterson, F. G. - A Chosen Vessel

Patterson, F. G. - Lessons for the Wilderness

Patterson, F. G. - The Church of God

Patterson, F. G. - The Lord’s Host

Patterson, F. G. - The Ways of GOD

S. Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren

S. Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren

S. Correspondence on the Training of the Children of Believers

S. Correspondence: State of the Saints Under Promise, Law, and Grace

S. The Forty Days After the Resurrection

S. The Forty Days of Moses on Mount Sinai

S. The Forty Days of Nineveh

S. The Forty Days of the Flood

S. The Forty Days of the Lord’s Temptation

S. The Forty Days’ Searching of Canaan Part 1

S. He will swallow up death in victory

S. His will" - "His work

S. Is the Christian in Adam or in Christ?

S. Paul’s Doctrine

S. The Doctrine of the Church

S. The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit

S. The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 2

S. The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 3

S. The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 4

S. The Red Sea and the Jordan

S. The Vine.

S. The Water of Purification.


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  CHAPTER 2: 01.00. A CHOSEN VESSEL
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A Chosen Vessel “The Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel
unto me” (Acts 9:15).

F G. Patterson.

London: G. Morrish

Contents Chapter 1: The Vessel in The Potter: The Potter in The Vessel Chapter
2: The End of Man’s History Chapter 3: The Vessel Called: The New Man Chapter 4:
The Vessel Set Free Chapter 5: Why Did God Permit the Entrance of Evil?

Chapter 6: The New Man Chapter 7: The Vessel Emptied of Human Strength Chapter
8: The Purpose of God in the Vessel Chapter 9: God in the Vessel


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  CHAPTER 3: 01.01.     THE VESSEL IN THE POTTER: THE POTTER IN THE VESSEL
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The Vessel in The Potter: The Potter in The Vessel

Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the
wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
potter; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make
it (Jeremiah 18:3-4).

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel
unto honor, and another unto dishonor? (Romans 9:21).

It is of immense interest and profoundly instructive to us, to trace the history
of souls in the word of God. Not only does this interest grow upon us in
apprehending His dealings with “men of like passions as ourselves”; but in such
a study we learn what God Himself is, in His unspeakable goodness and mercy: One
who never withdraws His gifts, nor repents of His calling; and who never falters
in His purpose until it is accomplished fully; in vessels “which he afore hath
prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called; not of the Jews only, but also
of the Gentiles.” In all this work His sovereignty shines conspicuously. Nay, He
would have us accord to Him His own place in this; who “works all things after
the counsel of his own will.” He has a right to do as He pleases, which man has
not. Man would seek to bind God to certain laws of his own, and so fetter His
sovereign will, as to refuse that He should act outside them, but once we know
that all our blessing hinges upon His absoluteness — and that this absoluteness
is pleased to display itself in mercy, in which He delights — all is changed. In
fact, beloved reader, we are shut up to this in God. We have no more right to
claim our soul’s salvation from Him, than we have power to change places with
Him on His throne of glory! We may have grace given to surrender this supposed
claim; to put ourselves before Him, conscious that He has a right to do just as
it pleases Him. We may find, too — nay, we shall find, that our very title to
mercy is the absence of any! and that rest of soul is found in His nature itself
— which, had He not been pleased to reveal to us, in Christ, we never even would
have known.

He was pleased to create a world, to set it revolving in space amongst the
countless orbs which shine in the heavens around us. He was pleased to allow sin
and death to enter that fair scene. Who can reply? He was pleased to choose and
to call a people out of it, and to permit them to destroy themselves, while He,
with long suffering, bore with them “till there was no remedy.” He was pleased
to send His Son to endure the cross and bear His wrath. Who was before Him in
all this? Not one! In all things He wrought He permitted; He ordered; and it is
He who challenges the stubborn heart which would say “Why doth he yet find
fault; for who hath resisted his will?” It is He who deigns to stoop to the
reply, “Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing
formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?” (Romans 9:20).
Have we ever stood in the potter’s house, and beheld him, as he wrought on the
wheels? The workman takes the lump of clay; he presses it to the wheel ; the
wheel revolves before his eye. Where now, (let me ask) is the vessel? It is in
the mind of the potter, before it is formed: the design is there. His fingers
shape the mass before him: gradually it grows up before his eye: gradually the
thought in his mind is transferred to the clay, and it rises up before him, and
the thoughts hitherto unexpressed, grow into the vessel which his fingers mold.

He sees a flaw; an imperfection in the clay. Others, beholding, have not
detected it, as with the artist’s eye. He crushes the clay, under his hand into
a shapeless mass again. And again his fingers mold and fashion it into his
design. Again, and again defects appear. Again and again the clay is reduced to
a shapeless mass, until at last it rises, in perfection of design before him;
his eye surveys it with satisfaction and pride; and he removes it from the wheel
to take its place with the choice things of the earth around. Where now is the
potter? Where was the vessel before he began? It was in the potter! Where now is
the potter? He is in the vessel All that his mind designed and wrought is there
seen. The vessel is fit for that which he had intended. And this is the history
of the soul. The clay is in the Potter’s hand. His fingers fashion it, and it is
marred; the clay needs more of His patient manipulation and skill. It is not yet
smooth and even, nor pliable to His hand. He crushes it time after time. The
perfect vessel stood before His mind and purpose ere His hand had taken the
clay, and placed it on the wheel. But when all is done, He has transferred His
thought with unerring skill to the clay; the Potter is now seen in His
handiwork; and it is a vessel of mercy, which He afore has prepared for glory.

How important, as these crushings take place, is the need of the interpretation
of these skillful workings of the hand of the Potter! How often are the lessons
misunderstood; or not apprehended at all! In the history of souls in the Word
these actions are seen; the results are reached. In them we read the history of
His dealings with our own souls, and the handiwork of God. We look then for the
lines of beauty, resulting from His hand; we yield ourselves to the things which
happen; we see the end of the Lord: we know how it is that all things work
together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to His
purpose. As a Potter (Yatsar) the Lord God took of the dust of the ground, in
the first creation; and fashioned it into a man; and then “breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” But the vessel was
marred. Again the divine Potter takes of the same lump, and puts forth afresh
His skill, and forms a vessel of mercy, for eternal glory: a new creation in “
Christ.”


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  CHAPTER 4: 01.02.     THE END OF MAN’S HISTORY
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The End of Man’s History “Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?”

There was but one man on earth, (once a child of Adam) who could say, “Be ye
followers together of me” (Php 3:17); and this without any qualifying word. This
man was the apostle of the Gentiles — Saul of Tarsus; afterwards called Paul. In
this he does not speak to us as an apostle, armed with the power and authority
of Christ; but as a Christian-the leader or representative man, of the whole
profession of Christianity; than whom none knew better when to assert and to
prove his apostolic office, nor better how and when to lay it aside. He lays it
aside here in this remarkable expression, as well as in the epistle generally,
in which it is found.

There are other passages where he uses language apparently of like significance,
but to which he adds some qualifying words: “Be ye followers of me, as I am also
of Christ”* (1 Corinthians 11:1, etc.). But the difference is very great, even
without entering on the meaning of the words in the original tongue. In this, he
is inculcating the surrender of all things for another’s wealth: this Christ
ever did, and in this he followed Him. But in that (Php 3:7-14) he runs the
Christian race for the goal, casting all behind his back, and looking to “win
Christ, and be found in him,” to be like Him in full conformity! He runs to
attain all, at the end. This Christ never did. He surrendered all indeed; but
never ran to attain, for He was always Himself — whether here or on high.

{*This verse belongs more correctly to the close of ch. 10 and of the line of
truth there spoken.}

I need not dwell on the fact, which is of course clear; that whether asserting
his apostolate, or laying it aside, his writings have each and all the same
authority, as the word of God. These fine and touching distinctions will only be
the more valued, when apprehended by the spiritual mind.

Let us look then upon him as a Christian; a heavenly man; a vessel of mercy; a
“chosen vessel unto me”; as the representative, or typical man, of the whole
scheme of Christianity; a vessel filled with the Spirit, who can say, “Be ye
followers together of me, and mark them which walk, so as ye have us for a type”
(typos).

First of all, let us see the moment, in the history of the world, when the
“chosen vessel” was called. This imparts great significance to the manner and
method of his call; as well as to the state of mankind at that moment, out of
which he is separated to Christ.

We will refer first to the parable of the fig tree, planted in the vineyard —
used by the Lord Jesus in Luke 13:1-35. The hour of Israel’s judgment was fast
approaching; yet their eyes were such as “see not.” They had made their Lord
their “adversary” (Matthew 5:25; Luke 12:58) in rejecting Him, and He counsels
them, if even so, to agree with their adversary “quickly, as thou art in the
way,” lest when the end came the adversary would deliver them to the judge, and
the judge to the officer, — the officer to the prison; from which there was no
escape till the last mite was paid. Talking of judgment thus, some mentioned a
partial one which had fallen on those Galileans who had been slain by Pilate.
They spake of it as of the ordinary news of the day, and with the not uncommon
thought, that a special visitation of such a kind from God’s hand, only marked
those upon whom it fell, as deserving it beyond their fellows. They deemed that
such was the sign of God’s outwardly and manifestly governing the world, so that
they could approve or understand. The Lord at once applies this to the
conscience of all around; as also the case of the eighteen persons on whom the
tower of Siloam fell; saying that judgment would now be universal, and not
partial, and that unless they repented, they would all likewise perish, not
merely those of their brethren whom they were bringing up for His judgment.

He then speaks the parable of the fig-tree, planted in the vineyard (Luke
13:6-9). This was a picture of what was passing around at the moment, and of its
end. For three years the Lord had come, in His ministry, seeking fruit from His
fig-tree — and finding none, He saith to the dresser of the vineyard, “Behold
these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find none; cut it
down, why cumbereth it the ground?” Here was the sentence in righteousness. The
fig tree was not only fruitless, but mischievous, “a cumberer of the ground.”
But grace said, “Let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it and dung
it; and if it bear fruit, well; and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it
down.” This extra period of trial was the fresh ministry of the Holy Ghost sent
down at Pentecost; and ended with the martyrdom of Stephen, when they finally
refused Christ in glory. This closed the history of Israel, as of man under the
dealings of God. This extra year of grace was marked by every sign and pleading
of the Lord with His people, until refused. When we open the Acts of the
Apostles (Acts 1:1-26), we find the Lord Jesus in resurrection amongst His
disciples. Their hearts still lingered over the hopes of Israel-uncertain as to
the end. “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” He
replied, “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father
hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost
is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem and in all
Judea, and in the uttermost parts of the earth.” In the enactment of the laws of
a country-when a statute becomes obsolete — the circumstances having changed
under which it was given-the legislature repeals the old law, and then enacts a
new one adapted to the fresh condition of things. When the Lord had sent out the
twelve to preach the kingdom of heaven to Israel (Matthew 10:1-42), the mission
was confined and narrow. He was “a minister of the circumcision for the truth of
God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers” (Romans 15:8). All the
promises to Israel were fulfilled in Himself. Their mission was “Go not into the
way of the Gentiles,”-there was yet no word for them. “And into any city of the
Samaritans enter ye not.” This mongrel race, half heathen, half Jew, had no
promises from God any more than the Gentiles. But,” said the Lord, “Go rather to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” They were the objects of this narrow,
but necessary and preliminary mission. And yet it did not even embrace all
Israel, “For they are not all Israel, who are of Israel” (Romans 9:6). Nay,
“Into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy”!
Narrowed up thus, was this mission, to the worthy ones — the godly remnant of
the people. But the nation having refused Jesus, and His atoning work having
been accomplished on that cross, where His own people had placed Him by Gentile
hands, all was now over on the ground of promises to Israel. But Christ had
risen; triumphant over all His foes. The boundless grace of God was set free to
bless all men in righteousness through His work on the cross. The old enactment
of Matthew 10:1-42 must now be changed. The sphere was too narrow for this grace
to flow out; and as His footfall grew lighter, as it were, as He neared the top
of Olivet, He turns round to a lost and ruined world of sinners — giving His
disciples in the breadth of His heart, their new and fresh enactment. They were
to begin at Jerusalem, where faith was dead: they were to carry the mission
onwards to Samaria, where faith was corrupted for centuries; and to the
uttermost parts of the earth, where there was no faith at all! And the grand
answer to every state of man would be found in a risen Christ, of whom they were
witnesses. May we not say that these three concentric circles give us the key to
the Acts of the Apostles, in the twenty-seven chapters which follow? The mission
began at Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-47; Acts 3:1-26; Acts 4:1-37; Acts 5:1-42; Acts
6:1-15; Acts 7:1-60); it went out to Samaria (Acts 8:1-40), and to the uttermost
parts of the earth, in principle, as to the whole creation, with Paul, in the
chapters which follow, to the end (cf. Colossians 1:23).

These were His last words on earth His farewell words. “When he had spoken these
things while they beheld he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their
sight. And while they looked steadfastly (atenizo) toward heaven, as he went up,
behold two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of
Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up
from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into
heaven” (Acts 1:9-11). The special year of grace was to be ministered to the
fig-tree: the Lord would not therefore yet take them definitely out of their
Jewish hopes. These “men of Galilee” have their eyes diverted from the heavens
towards which they were gazing. They were to keep their eyes downwards on the
earth: Jesus would “so” come again to them; outside the cloud He would be seen;
and His feet would stand upon the mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4), from which
He had just ascended in their sight. This would be His coming to Israel, with
the ensigns of the kingdom, and earthly glory.

They could not yet see (by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven) the inside of
the cloud, which Stephen saw, when, filled with the Spirit, he saw the heavens
opened, as he steadfastly gazed (atenizo) into it. All then was over finally,
and instead of angels diverting his eyes from the heavens, as in Acts 1:1-26,
the Holy Ghost directs his eyes to heaven, as the sphere to which he now
belongs, and Jesus, first sustaining him in the hands of his murderers, receives
his spirit, and all closes with man on that ground for ever. In Paul we will see
further still, how he takes his origin from the glory of God, now seen in the
face of Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost was sent down from heaven in Acts 2:1-47.
The witnesses — in Acts 3:1-26 — Peter and John, go up to the temple “at the
hour of prayer, being the ninth hour.” A certain man was daily carried, and laid
at the “Beautiful” gate: a cripple from his birth; who begged his bread. This
was the picture of Israel. “Beautiful” as was the spot where they were, they
were like this lame beggar, and had never really walked; and were bereft too, of
Israel’s blessings of “basket and store,” of “silver and gold.” Their history
now, as under probation had closed, for the man was “above forty years old”
(Acts 4:22). Once there lay a paralytic at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-47)
for thirty and eight years (the time of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness,
until the brazen serpent was uplifted for them, in Numbers 21:1-35) — their
history was not then fully told, as in John 5:1-47. But now all had closed (Acts
3:1-26) as far as they were concerned. Forty years spoke of their moral end as a
people under the old state of things. But that “ninth hour” had witnessed
another prayer, from the heart of Jesus on the cross, and darkness had covered
the whole land, from the sixth to the ninth hour (Luke 23:44) — the “hour of
prayer” and of the “evening sacrifice” too (Daniel 9:1-27). At that hour Jesus
had committed His spirit to His Father, and the veil was rent from the top to
the bottom. Judaism was over; God was fully revealed; man’s sin had come to its
fullest height, as he there stood face to face with God. But the sins of His
people were borne at that moment, and the throne of righteousness eternally
satisfied.

“Silver and gold have I none,” said Peter, “But such as I have I give thee; in
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” And immediately the
“lame man leaped as an hart,” and he entered the temple “walking and leaping and
praising God.” God was ready, through Jesus, to do this for the whole nation of
Israel, had they then received His Son, and bowed in faith to His name.

Peter now addresses Israel (Acts 3:12-26), offering them, on their repentance
thus, that the Christ they had refused would return from the heavens, and that
the times of restitution of all things of which the prophets had spoken, would
come, and the nation would be fully blest. The answer to this is in the
following chapters. In Acts 4:1-37, they put the two witnesses in prison — and
in Acts 5:1-42, the whole twelve are also put there. Then in Acts 6:1-15; Acts
7:1-60, Stephen, the last great witness, summed up their history as the
rejecters of every deliverer God had ever sent. Joseph, they had sold into
Egypt: Moses, they had asked “Who made thee a ruler and a judge?” They had slain
the Just One, as their prophets had foretold; and now they resisted the Spirit
of God! A broken law; stoned prophets; a slain Christ; and a resisted Spirit
closed the tale. As they “stopped their ears and ran upon him,” they were like
the “deaf adder, that stoppeth her ear” at the voice of “charmers, charming
never so wisely” (Psalms 58:1-11). Stephen’s spirit passes away to Christ; and
Christ, standing and ready to return, now sits down at God’s right hand, waiting
till His enemies are made His footstool (Hebrews 10:1-39).

Saul of Tarsus, then a young man, was present at Stephen’s death, and “kept the
raiment of them that slew him.” The Sanhedrim was becoming effete and old. Its
energy, hitherto fiercely waged in vain against the cross, was growing feeble,
when this young man came upon the scene. One of great learning and unspotted
life — and probably of the highest caste amongst the Jews, excelling all amongst
his people in the religion of the Pharisee; with perhaps the finest energy given
to man — he had been welcomed by the great Sanhedrim of Israel, and entrusted
with authority to extirpate the religion of the Nazarene! With a zeal for the
God of his fathers beyond all others at that day, he stood by when the final
stroke was put to the rejection of Jesus, in the stoning of the proto-martyr
Stephen. And lest the murderers should be impeded, by their long Eastern
garments, he “kept the raiment of them that slew him,” and “consented unto his
death.” The whole Christian assembly was then broken up in Jerusalem, and
scattered everywhere, “except the apostles.” Saul must now carry out his
commission elsewhere, and Damascus was to have been the next scene of his zeal.
But before I refer to this, I would note the touching grace which shines out in
the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

During the past history of Israel, God had sought to find a response in their
heart, under the culture of His hand; whether, as under the law, or the
prophets, the Baptist, or Christ. All had failed: there was no answer in their
heart either to the thunderings of the law, or to the pleadings of the prophetic
ministry; nor had the grace of Christ drawn forth other than the cry at the end,
“Away with him; crucify him.” The final witness was seen in the church, formed
at Pentecost, and the voice of the Holy Ghost proclaimed the “wonderful works of
God.” This followed, as we have seen, till the seventh chapter of the Acts
closed the trial that sought for good out of Israel’s heart, or for an answer
there to perfect goodness in the heart of God. Now the turning-point had come;
and it would be no more sought to produce good from man’s heart; but to put good
into it by a new ministry inaugurated in the conversion of Saul. But there was
still something to be met which God would not pass over, and this we find in
chapter eight of the Acts of the Apostles. A child of Ham had traveled a
toilsome journey across the deserts of Africa, from the abodes of Cush, and with
a burdened heart, to “Judah, where God was known” (Psalms 76:1-2). He had heard
of the God of Israel, and of the Holy city where He might be found. Up to this
the stream of mercy from God’s throne had been poured forth upon Jerusalem. But
Jerusalem, refusing the “sure mercies of David,” had diverted the stream. Still,
it had not ceased to flow, though its course was changed. It turns its course
now to unclean Samaria, and onward still, till it reached the deserts beyond.
There, this Ethiopian was seen, returning to his own land, with his soul
unsatisfied, for Jerusalem’s day had passed; she “knew not the day of her
visitation.” But God is “a rewarder of those that diligently seek him,” and this
seeking heart shall not have sought in vain. Philip draws near at the Spirit’s
bidding, and hears this man read the prophet Esaias. Neither wealth nor
learning, nor worldly place, had given him the riches he was about to
find-treasured in the book which he had brought away from Jerusalem. Philip
began at the same scripture which he read, and “evangelized to him Jesus.” The
Person who alone could satisfy his soul was found, and he goes “on his way
rejoicing.” Ethiopia had not stretched out her hand in vain to God! (Psalms
68:1-35). God did not change His governmental ways in placing the race of Ham
under degradation (Genesis 9:1-29), in the blackened skin of the negro race: but
while leaving all questions of government as they were, He makes — not the face
— but the heart and conscience of the negro as white as snow, by the blood of
the Lamb!

I read this chapter, in this light, as a parenthesis: thrown in between the
first notice of Saul at Stephen’s death, and his journey to Damascus (Acts
9:1-43). It is, beloved, as if God would say, even when this solemn scene of
martyrdom had closed for ever the ground on which He would have dealt with
Israel; and when He was about to “cast them out of his lap,” and to inaugurate a
new order of things — as if He would say, if there be a seeking soul in the wide
earth, even the child of a cursed race, that soul shall not seek Me in vain. I
am a rewarder of all that diligently seek Me. But when I come to Saul I find the
other side, illustrative of this new departure from the old ways; and in him is
exemplified the word — afterwards written by his own pen — “I am found of them
that sought me not” (Romans 10:1-21).


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  CHAPTER 5: 01.03.     THE VESSEL CALLED: THE NEW MAN
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The Vessel Called: The New Man “He is a chosen vessel unto me” (Acts 9:15).

We thus see the moment in the history of the people and of the world at which we
have now arrived. All had closed up for ever in the way of grace presented to be
received by Israel, and of Israel’s testing to prove what man is.

We must now see more than this in Saul, who comes in, not as a member of the
chosen race, the seed of Abraham, but on the common ground of man, “dead in
trespasses and sins.” Therefore in him we find embodied the sin of man as a
race, in all its varied answers to the dealings of God.

We may possibly know that after God had tested man in paradise, and man had
fallen, He tested him out of paradise as a sinner (whose back had been turned
against God) for four thousand years. These trials, in broad lines, were first,
by his conscience which he received when he fell, and he became lawless and
unclean. Then under the Law — and he became a law-breaker; then by the ministry
of Jesus in grace, whom he had crucified and slain; and lastly, by the Spirit of
God sent down from heaven – whom he resisted. This was, with many details, the
history of the probation of man.

If we now turn to a passage in 1 Timothy 1:15-16, we read, This is a faithful
[or trustworthy] saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I
obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth the whole [tihv
Tcetoav makrothumianv] long-suffering for a pattern [or delineation] of them
which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.

Here he plainly occupies the first place, as “chief of sinners”; as the man,
too, in whom the whole long-suffering of God was displayed; and as the pattern
for all who should follow in the faith of Christ. This is worthy of our marked
attention. Mark well the expression — “the whole long-suffering!” This embraces
that great period between the fall of man-his departure from God at the first,
when driven out of paradise — until that long-suffering absolutely closed in the
rejected ministry of the Holy Ghost (Acts 7:1-60).

God’s long-suffering since then is on other grounds (2 Peter 3:9; 2 Peter 3:15).
He has not counseled (µh me boulomenos) that any should perish; but that all
should come (or be afforded a place) for repentance. And again, “The
long-suffering of our Lord is salvation.”

But, in Saul, outwardly spotless in life, we behold the man who could say:

1st, “I have lived in all good conscience unto this day.”

2nd, “Touching the righteousness in the law [I am] blameless.”

3rd, “I verily thought I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus
of Nazareth.” And,

4th, when the martyr Stephen charged the Jews, saying, “Ye do always resist the
Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, so do ye,” Saul was there, and Stephen’s
murderers placed their clothes at his feet, while he, consenting unto Stephen’s
death, kept the garments of them that slew him!

Here then we see the embodiment of the whole long-suffering of God in a man,
immaculate, outwardly, as he was. Yet, while, with conscience inviolate, and the
law’s righteousness fulfilled, as far as he himself knew — he persecuted Christ,
and with murderous zeal, resisted the Spirit of God: yea, more, a man who could
claim, by the Spirit of God, to be, in a superlative manner, the chief of
sinners. Because, in his mighty energy, he had undertaken a task, never
surpassed in purpose by another, to wipe out the name of the Nazarene from the
earth, as a man wipes a dish and turns it upside down!

Armed with the powers of the Sanhedrim, such as they were, and breathing out
threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord,” this “cumberer of
the ground,” this fruitless Pharisee, doing evil on every hand, proceeds on his
way to Damascus, and God’s hand laid hold of the axe, and with one stroke cut
down the tree! It had cumbered the ground too long — doing mischief to all
around. But now, let us, with retracing steps, examine the grounds of the
attitude of Christ to him as presented in this scene. His cross was “the
judgment of the world: ” man had placed Jesus there with wicked hands. It was
the reply of his heart to the perfection of goodness in God. It was that in
which “the thoughts of many hearts were revealed.” The heart of man was there;
and the heart of God. The heart of Christ was there; and that of the poor
convicted sinner; as well, too, as were the hearts of those who truly loved
their Master; but who, when Satan’s power — the power of darkness — was over the
minds of men, forsook Him and fled away. But the moment Christ expired, the veil
of the temple was rent in twain, as if God was waiting until that moment
arrived, to shew that the judgment was so fully borne-that the distance between
Him and a world of sinners was gone-that He could now come forth and kiss the
prodigal in righteousness; and impart new life to the tree which He had cut
down, while yet it cumbered the ground. Three days afterwards the tomb where
Jesus had lain was rent, to shew that He who had removed this distance was also
gone. But now (Acts 9:1-43), He rends the heavens and comes forth, proclaiming
afresh His true and God-given name of “Jesus” — Jehovah the Savior: “I am
Jesus,” the Nazarene, the Savior of My people from their sins.

Saul, and those that were with him, were journeying onwards to Damascus, with
letters to the synagogues, that if he found any of “the way” (tip q 66ou) he
might bring them bound unto Jerusalem. At this time Christianity had no name. It
had come into the world, but was not of it, nor of its ways. It was not Judaism
with its ceremonies, instituted of God, though now corrupted by man. It was not
heathenism, with its orgies of uncleanness and abomination. It was a strange and
heavenly thing, governed by no principle that governed the world. And it had no
name; but was termed “the way.” Several times in the Acts do we find it so
named.* {* Acts 9:2; Acts 19:9, Acts 19:23; Acts 22:4; Acts 24:22.} Of one heart
and one soul, and with great grace upon all, there was, in the hearts of those
who had been cast out of all on earth, a heavenly purpose, a courage and joy
which was not of man. The martyr Stephen, when being crushed to death by the
stones of the multitude, could kneel down, and with yearning of soul for his
slayers, and without one thought but for their blessing, pray for them, and
looking up steadfastly to heaven, commit his spirit to Christ and pass away. Let
its disciples be scourged by the rods, and with their feet fast in the stocks,
and their bleeding backs on the cold ground of the innermost prison-they would
sing praises to the Lord at midnight, instead of murmuring at their lot. Others
could count it all joy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. What name then
could be found for such a creed? There was none! And therefore it was called
“the way.” And indeed, we may add that it never got its name, till the mocking
and witty Antiochians named the disciples “Christians” first, in their city.
Called such in sarcasm by man, it was accepted by the Spirit of God from that
day. Still, as yet it had no name; and Saul, with his company, bent upon its
extermination, turned towards Damascus to find out any there that were of “the
way.” In a moment all was changed. “At midday O King,” said the apostle, long
afterwards, “I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
sun, shining round about me, and them which journeyed with me. And when we were
all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the
Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus,
whom thou persecutest” (Acts 26:13-15).

Here was the solemn end for his conscience, the terrible reply. Christ and Saul
were face to face! Saul, in the full flush of energy, in enmity and violence
against the Lord; and He, with the calm and touching reply of One whose very
answer speaks of mercy. “I,” and “Thou!” Personally, individually, alone, and
face to face, were Christ and this persecuting and injurious man: this “cumberer
of the ground”; the dread devaster and waster of the church of God. “I am
Jesus”: His mission fulfilled on earth; and in the brightness of the glory
above, only seeking such objects as Saul, to display the virtues of salvation!
Speak, Saul; let thy voice be heard; the day has not come, when those who refuse
to answer now will be “speechless!”

“And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” It
is not now the answer of another who knew not his own heart yet — “ Lord, I will
go with thee,” etc. Nay, that was the will of man. It is rather, “Lord, what
wilt thou have me to do?” This soul was converted to Christ. Here was the will
of man broken; the will of God alone allowed. This was the instinct and
out-speaking of obedience-the first characteristic of the new man. The old tree
was cut down to its roots; new life was implanted, through the quickening voice
of the Son of God — and at once it struggles for action, even before his
conscience was at rest: nay, even while his soul was in an agony.

Blind for days, with the glory of that light; blind to all around, that he may
see only what was within his own heart, no food nor drink passed his lips for
three days: his soul in anguish might say, “Out of the depths have I cried unto
thee, O Lord.” All this was produced in one little moment, and now to be made
good in his soul by a gospel, dating from the throne of God; a gospel by which
is declared the Father’s estimate of what His Son has done, when He had died,
and risen, and ascended on high: the gospel of the glory of Christ. This son of
Benjamin — ravening “like a wolf,” at midday-soon shall “divide the spoil.”

“They led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.” There, in the
isolation of repentance, in the house of Judas, in the street called “Straight,”
upon his knees in prayer-so real, that the Lord calls attention to it in that
touching interview with Ananias, in the words “Behold, he prayeth” — this was
the second characteristic of the new man. Here was prayer — the expression of
dependence, at once heard: this, too, as well as the desire of obedience, before
his soul had found rest, or peace with God. But Ananias — is he prepared for
this full expression of mercy to such as Saul? Could he understand the new wine
of this gospel of the glory, which could come forth and lay hold of such as he?
Nay; he remonstrates, “Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he
hath done to thy saints in Jerusalem, and here he hath authority from the chief
priests to bind all that call upon thy name.” He cannot but suppose that all was
a mistake. Impossible that one like this could be thus laid hold of, as a suited
vessel to display the fulness of mercy. Saul himself is astonished. Even he
would plead, “Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them
that believed on thee and when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also
was standing by, and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them
that slew him” (Acts 22:19). The Lord’s reply to Ananias was this: “Go thy way,
for he is a chosen vessel unto me . . . for I will show him how great things he
must suffer for my name’s sake.” And Ananias went his way, and entered into the
house, and putting his hand~ upon him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord has sent me,
(Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest) that thou mightest
look up, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.

Here we have the gospel, carried by Ananias, from the Lord to Saul, removing the
fear of God which had filled his soul; speaking peace to his troubled
conscience; withdrawing with a tender hand the barbed arrow of conviction; and
the Spirit of God is now received by Saul as a seal of this message of mercy.
His eyes, which had hitherto been blinded to all but the darkness within, are
now enabled to “look up” (anablepses) to the source from which all had come — to
the very face of Jesus Christ in glory.

Ananias then receives him by baptism: “And straightway he preached Christ in the
synagogues, that he is the Son of God.” This was a true conversion: the turning
round of the whole man: the breaking of his will. The features, too, of the new
life, the new man, are at once expressed: peace with God learned, and the Holy
Ghost, sealing all home to his soul; and he could say, as more fully afterwards,
“I believed, and therefore have I spoken,” as his voice is heard preaching
Christ in the synagogues of Damascus. This was the call of this “chosen vessel
unto me.” Separated from the people of Israel, as well as from the Gentiles
(Acts 26:6), by his conversion from the glory of God on high, where Christ was;
he is sent forth to be “a minister and a witness both of these things which thou
hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee “to make
known on earth, as sent from Christ in glory, all that he knew of Him who was
there. Heavenly in his birth, and heavenly in his testimony, he is the pattern
of all who should believe on Jesus afterwards, even from that moment, to life
everlasting. Every believer since that day, has taken his birthplace from that
glory. The condition of Christ at any moment, determines that of all who belong
to Him; whether as incarnate; or risen; or ascended to the glory of God. Such
have to bear witness that they belong to that scene, and to Him who is there;
they have to witness that they have been taken out from the people or from the
Gentiles, as neither of one, nor of the other, but as heavenly men, who have,
like him, to be shown what they must suffer for His name’s sake, while living
in, and passing through a world which rejected Him.

What a wondrous thought, that it is no good that God is seeking from man! He
seeks rather those, who may be the more fitted to display that mercy in which He
delights. To “make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which
he had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called, not out of the
Jews only, but also out of the Gentiles.”


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  CHAPTER 6: 01.04.     THE VESSEL SET FREE
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The Vessel Set Free

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus bath made me free from the law of
sin and death” (Romans 8:2). The guilt of a lifetime is often learned by the
convicted soul, in an incredibly short space of time. Drowning men, who have
been recovered, have said, that like a flash of light, their lives stood out
before them; and the forgotten sins, which years before have been committed,
seemed in one moment to rise before them, in their terrible category. As the
language of “Moses, the man of God,” it would be: “Thou hast set our iniquities
before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance” (Psalms 90:1-17).
The dead conscience awakes, quickened under the convicting rays of God’s light,
and in a moment we stand before One who told us all things that ever we did.
When this is so, excuses are of no avail: no palliation is offered now. A man
finds his soul laid bare, in the presence of infinite holiness. Hitherto, the
conscience may have been asleep, with no thought of guilt, unless the vague
sense that all is not well. Or the conscience may hitherto have been uneasy, yet
no defined sense of guilt be there. Doubtless, Saul of Tarsus quailed before the
words, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” The natural conscience
of man feels this pricking and goading at times: its zeal and ardor is forced
and unreal. There are compunctions in that principle which sits in judgment upon
men’s actions (which conscience does), and though it be sought to silence its
voice with freshened zeal, it never rests. Were there no prickings of the
natural conscience in Saul of Tarsus, when with upturned face, shining like an
angel, the martyr Stephen gazed into the heavens, his body shattered by the
stones of the multitude, and commended his spirit to Jesus? Were there none,
when those pale faces of some who loved their Lord and Master-to save
themselves, and those they loved, from prison and from death — blasphemed His
name, compelled to it by this violent man? (Acts 26:11). Ah, “the way of
transgressors is hard,” and it was so with Saul. Yet, while natural conscience
takes knowledge of these things., it does not follow that the soul is converted
to God. Nay, rather, natural conscience drives a man away from Him. It drove
Saul to greater excesses than before. It drove Adam away from God to hide under
the trees of the garden; until his conscience felt the power of the word —
“Adam, where art thou?” Then it was awakened, and he stood before God a
convicted sinner. It drove Saul to seek to hide his real state under the
religious zeal which hitherto filled his soul. But when the voice of Jesus
reached him in his mad career, his guilt stood forth in its terrible intensity,
as he was brought to bay. And when he was allowed to read his own soul’s guilt
in the presence of God, where no excuse could avail, then his conscience was
purged and set at rest. But with him at this time, there may have been no
question of his nature raised. This is not the question which comes foremost in
the history of souls. The efforts to avoid the evil, and perform the good, to be
well pleasing to the Lord, which follow true conversion, bring out this in its
true and terrible depths. Saul has now to pass through this stage of the soul’s
history, for his own deliverance, as a saint; I do not dwell here on the fact of
its necessity afterwards for helping others — but as a vessel of mercy, which,
from such a state, must be set free.

Probably during the three years, in which he “went down into Arabia, and abode
at Damascus,” it was, when this took place. On this I do not dogmatize: but it
was a needful process, whenever it occurred; and the result of it we find in the
experimental learning of his nature, through the bitter anguish and exercises
detailed in Romans 7:1-25, much of which doubtless he had to learn
experimentally for himself, as also the many lessons which he learned for the
sake of other souls.

Here I would remark, that the experience of the closing verses of this
well-known chapter (Romans 7:14-25) have a wider and larger significance, than
perhaps many may be aware of. It is so framed by the Spirit of God, that no
exercised soul, however deep may be its experience, and under whatsoever
dealings and dispensations it is found, but may find expression in some way for
that which it is passing through. In some cry or other there recorded, it will
find what answers to that which it endures; though doubtless its full pressure
could not be known until the light of Christianity had shone. I do not enter
upon its details. Many have done this: some with lasting profit for many more.
But I judge that it reaches far behind the exercises of a soul under the law, as
expressed in the “ten words.” The natural man may have lived — “touching the
righteous that is in the law, blameless,” yet with his soul still unawakened. In
overt acts its prohibitions had never been broken. But they never touched the
tree — the root of “sin” within! There was one of its commands which reached his
inmost soul at last: the command which said, “Thou shalt not lust,” and when
that commandment came, expressing the holiness of the law, “sin revived, and I
died.” “Sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of
lust, for without law, sin was dead”; it lay dormant; or unprovoked within his
soul; until its unholiness was thus revealed.

Human nature fallen, too plainly speaks on every hand, not to have discovered to
us the fact, that the moment a prohibition comes home to us — from the earliest
childhood to our latest breath — at once is kindled within us the desire for the
very thing which it forbade. A thousand instances and examples might be
presented to prove this. But there was “Law” in Paradise — before man fell, and
man was a responsible creature before he broke away from God: he was responsible
to obey the law-prohibiting his eating the fruits of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil — before he became a “transgressor.” God had revealed His ways
to him, as a Giver, in the largest and widest munificence. Nothing was withheld
from man. The ten thousand tributary streams which contributed to his happiness
in Eden, spoke of a God who would withhold no good thing. “Of every tree of the
garden thou mayest freely eat”; proclaimed the freeness and fullness of no
niggard Hand. The man was to enjoy it all freely. One small interdict prohibited
the eating of the fruit of one tree: a tree which marked a responsibility which,
when accepted, would only entail evil: “In the day that thou eatest thereof,
dying, thou shalt die.” It was that, in observing which, he expressed that his
will was subject to God who had placed him there, and surrounded him with every
creature blessing. This is the principle of law. An interdict will always prove
a will in the person addressed, either subject or insubject to another. The
smallest interdict is sufficient for this. It is the way to discover whether
another is subject to you or not. If insubject, the authority of that other is
refused, and as a consequence two wills are opposed, the one to the other: while
the man that is tested, owns in conscience, that God has a right to be obeyed.

Now Satan did not begin by calling attention to the blessedness with which the
man had been surrounded: nor to the character of God as “giving all things
richly to enjoy.” Rather does he seize upon the prohibition calling attention to
the interdict alone — “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the
garden?” whereas, God had said, “Ye shall eat of every tree.” The grand
master-stroke of the serpent was, to instil lust into the soul, and distrust of
God; to cast a suspicion on the fulness and freeness of His nature to bestow.
This was the poison of the serpent, which has permeated humanity ever since that
day. It was done before ever there was a sin committed. The devil had stepped
in, and sown distrust in man’s heart; creating a suspicion in the soul; and
separating man and his Creator by the loss of faith in Him. This is what men do
between each other now-a-days, to reach some end they have in view. I dare say
they may not perhaps think so: but the largest portion of the sorrows between
men, or even between brethren, are caused by some hint, behind backs; or some
whispered story, to which the heart of others is ready to lend an ear; which
causes distrust to spring up between souls. Distrust engendered, dislike
follows, but more especially in the one who has wronged the other. It is
exceedingly hard to trust a heart you have wronged. “A lying tongue hateth those
that are afflicted by it”; and “He that repeateth a matter, separateth very
friends”; and “He that did his neighbor wrong, thrust him away,” etc. These
passages (kindred in their character) are but the workings of this principle of
evil. Hence the true saying, “The injured may forget; the injurer, never!” To
restore man to perfect confidence in God: and to meet the outrage on His nature,
was the work of Christ at the “end of the world.”

Man, then, was a responsible creature before he fell. Distrust of God and lust
were instilled into the soul of the woman. Will was put forth against: God — and
in the case of Adam, high-handed will (for “he was not deceived” (1 Timothy
2:12); and man fell. A breach, as wide as the poles, came in at once between God
and man; an abyss, impossible to repair, or to recross. Man became as “one of
us,” said the Lord, “to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). This he never can
unlearn. He never returns to innocence again.

What, then, is “to know good and evil”? It is something which is said of Godhead
too; “as one of us,” we read “to know good and evil”! It is to sit in judgment,
and pass sentence, on good or evil which we find in our own souls. Of David the
king, it was said, by the wise woman of Tekoah, “as an angel of God, so is my
Lord the king, to discern good and bad” (2 Samuel 14:17). This in reference to
the decisions of judgment. So of Solomon in 1 Kings 3:9; so of Israel,
Deuteronomy 1:39; see also Hebrews 5:14. This is the work of conscience: to take
know-ledge of the evil practiced by a will opposed to God; to sit in judgment
upon it, and to condemn: and, alas! to apprehend the good, while opposed to it;
to approve of it, without the power to perform. This was fallen man with a
conscience. Responsible before he fell; distrusting God; and transgressing in
will His command. An ability, even when fallen, to pass sentence upon his own
actions, by the knowledge of good and evil: good that he had not the power nor
desire to practice, and evil that he was not able to avoid! Then, at last, he is
driven out of the presence of God; for he had lost his place on such a ground
for ever. These three things marked his state. Distrust of God; sin committed in
that distrust; and his place irrecoverably lost. These three things are reversed
by the gospel. His confidence is restored by faith in Him as a Savior; his sins
removed, which had been committed in distrust; and he is brought into a new
place in Christ before Him. The soul when thus awakened, finds these great
primal enmities which separated between God and man, wrought upon, in deep and
solemn exercises. The sense of responsibility as a sinner who had eaten of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, at enmity in his mind by wicked works;
the knowledge of good unfulfilled, and of the evil of his nature exposed;
powerless, too, for all but evil ; the sense, in some measure, differing
according to circumstances, of good in God Himself; and a responsibility to set
itself, as it supposes, right with Him. These things are forced on the soul in
terribly bitter lessons.

Nothing in man’s words can equal those of the soul’s anguish in Romans 7:1-25.

I am carnal,* sold under sin; for that which I do, I allow not: for that I
would, that do I not; but what I hate that do I. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do
it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

{*There are two words in the original tongue for “carnal” (sdrkivos and sarkiko
) the only difference being one letter. They are found in 1 Corinthians 3:3 and
Romans 7:14, and elsewhere. One word is applied to the standing of an awakened
[quickened] man, still “in the flesh,” that is, having the sense of his
responsibility, as a child of Adam, and no deliverance before God. This is
Romans 7:1-25. The other is applied to saints, whose practical state was not
spiritual: they “walked as men” (1 Corinthians 3:1-23). This latter is opposed
to the normal state of a saint as a “spiritual” man. We find in the context (1
Corinthians 2:1-16, 1 Corinthians 3:1-23) the “natural,” the “spiritual,” and
“the carnal man.” The first a man merely with a natural soul unquickened: the
second, the normal state of the saint; and the third, the saint walking after
the flesh. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing:
for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find
not. For the good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that
I do. Now if I do, that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that
dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I would do good, evil is present
with me. For I delight in the law of God, after the inward man; but I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.

Mark, reader, this struggle between “good “ and “evil,” by a soul under the
sense of responsibility, or, “in the flesh.” Yet it is not his guilt which
troubles, but his state The deep anguish not only takes in all this, but goes
back to the first spring of departure of man from God. All the roots of its
being are laid naked, and open, before Him with whom it has to do. How varied
are the ways of God to lead the soul into this struggle; that it may learn to
struggle no more ; that it may learn that every effort, every trial, every
struggle, as long as they continue, are only the more distinct proofs that it is
not yet arrived at that point where, when ceasing to struggle, it surrenders;
and then only finds, that this surrender; is liberty. It is then set free.

I forbear here, to deduce examples of these exercises and their end, as found in
the word. Many are to be found there; many, too, may be interpreted every day by
scripture, as they are seen in the people of God. The discovery of an evil
nature, by a saint, suggests at once, that it should be subdued. The desires and
longings of his renewed soul, when felt by him, suggest at once, that they
should be gratified; and that God had implanted it there to that end. The sense,
too, of responsibility, that both these suggestions should find their answer
somehow, lays the ground of this painful struggle. It is not conflict, properly
so called, at all. It is the effort which only ends in defeat, more painful
still. It leads into captivity, but does not set free. But when deliverance
comes — not victory (victory would be my own meritorious act, deliverance that
of Another), it comes as a double deliverance — answering to the “good” which it
found itself incapable of producing, and to the evil which it was impossible to
avoid. The soul must be able to look up, rejoicing in liberty with God, and it
must be able to look down into its own heart, and be able to produce the good
which it longed to perform, and have power over the working of a sinful nature,
the flesh,” within.

Here it is that we find a defect in our souls. Many have got that liberty which
enables them to look up to God: they can say, “All there is well.” But are we
all free from the power of the evil within, when we examine our own hearts? Nay;
the very joy and thankfulness which the soul experiences in being free in
looking up, makes too often careless, alas! about the other. This may be through
ignorance; indeed, it may frequently be so. We need to be taught that there is a
freedom of the soul, which is filled with the Spirit, in which it may walk each
day absolutely apart from all the workings of the flesh, or the desires of the
mind: such a liberty, indeed, as if there was no evil to combat there at all-a
freedom which brings forth fruit to God.

It is not that there will not be conflict to the end of our pathway here; it is
not that “the flesh” will cease to be an occasion of constant watchfulness. Nor
is it that “sin in the flesh” can ever cease to exist, while we are here on
earth, though “condemned” when Christ died. But let us remember Paul’s path as a
saint, a vessel chosen to God; one who walked in such a way (and in this he
would join others also), saying, “It is God that worketh in you, both to will
and to do according to his good pleasure!” It is no more then, “the good that I
would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do.” Nay, the “willing”
and the “doing” are accomplished by souls set free; vessels in whom God can
work, and wield according to His good pleasure. For what, beloved reader, is a
vessel? Suppose you placed one on the table at your side, have you not two
thoughts in your mind as to its use? You place it there to hold what you put in
it; this is one thought. Then the other is, that it may be held by the hand of
another. Had it a will or a motion, these uses would be hindered. And so with
God’s vessels of mercy; they must be will-less, and motionless too; they are to
be filled with that which He puts in them, and to be held and used by His hand.
It is only in the measure that our wills, our motions, our thoughts, are set
aside, that we are really vessels; and, as such, fitted and meet for the
Master’s use. But this is not our present subject. Here we are discussing the
deliverance of the vessel, so that it may be free in soul with God, and free,
too, from the workings of the will of the flesh, and have power to bring forth
fruit to God; that on the one hand it may realize its place “in Christ,” and on
the other, that “Christ liveth in me.”

I remember, years since, visiting at the bedside of an aged saint. We spoke for
some time on general things as Christians. I asked her if she had ever thought
of Christ who was in glory, ‘living’ in her weak body, on its bed of suffering?
I have not forgotten the strange look she gave, as the thought flashed upon her
mind, for the first time, as it appeared to me. “Ah,” she said, “Christ living
in me!” It seemed a wonderful revelation to her soul: the body, as the vessel —
so much in the power of this, that Christ, not self, lived. “Nevertheless I
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Is not this even a greater thought,
though the converse of that word of Paul, “To me to live is Christ”? The latter
was the motive of his life-the spring in his soul; the former, the result of
this, “ Christ liveth in me.” This is freedom indeed. “The law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free.” We speak of the law of gravitation, the
law of nature. We mean the natural tendency of each which governs its actions;
as the apple falls to the ground: it does not rise when disengaged from the
tree. This thought in its own character, is here. That “law,” — the tendency in
which it must move — “of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free.”
It lifts the soul out of that other law of sin, that which governs the nature of
the flesh; and also, that law of death. It has become the law — the natural
issue, of life, which He breathed on His own when He arose — a quickening Spirit
— the second Man — the risen Lord.

Thus, may we not say, the soul finding its responsibility — “under law,” as
having eaten of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” — passes through
these deep lessons, that it may discover experimentally, the depths of a ruined
nature — “the flesh” — which sprang up in man’s heart when he broke away from
God. But now set free, it finds too, that it has reached in Christ, the “Tree of
life”: the “law of the spirit of life” in Him, setting it wholly “free from the
law of sin and death.” Free, too, in that two-fold way which we have in measure
discussed. Namely, free in soul in looking upward at God; free to enjoy in the
present, and in hope, all that He is. And free from the workings of “the flesh”
within. Self is ignored, and the life lived in the flesh is lived by the faith
of the Son of God: that is, faith in Him as object, and power, and all. The
springs and motives of such a life do not spring from self, but from “Christ”;
and thus only bring forth fruit to God: being filled with the fruit of
righteousness, which is by Jesus Christ, to His praise and glory.


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  CHAPTER 7: 01.05.     WHY DID GOD PERMIT THE ENTRANCE OF EVIL?
========================================================================

Why Did God Permit the Entrance of Evil?

“By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Romans 5:12).

Before examining God’s ways further with “a chosen vessel,” it will be
profitable to examine the testimonies of the word as to the “new man, God’s “new
creation,” in Christ Jesus, which is thus being developed in the vessel of
mercy. The terms “old man” and “new man” are very definitely used in scripture.
I judge that neither term can be used of an individual as such. That is, an
individual could not say, “I am the old man”; nor, “I am the new.” The terms are
generic and comprehensive, embracing — the first — all that we were “in Adam”;
and the second — all that believers are “in Christ.” Nor do I find that
scripture will allow us to say that we have the “old man” in us — while it
teaches most fully, that we have “the flesh” in us to the end; if it works, we
read “with the flesh (we serve) the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). These terms will
come out more fully, as we proceed with the examination of the truths now before
us.

One great and important question here arises, reverting to the condition of man
as first created of God. That is, the solemn question of the entrance of moral
evil into this world. How frequently is such mooted by the sceptic; and as
frequently found without reply, in the mind even of the believer in Christ! The
question is Why did God permit the entrance of sin? Why leave it a possibility?
And in this is embraced the entrance of death by sin.

How immensely important to possess clearly an answer to this stupendous
question; one that will leave the infidel without excuse, and, at the same time,
settle firmly in divine truth the minds of those who believe. I do not here go
further than its entrance into this present world on which we live. For we know
from scripture that sin had already entered the universe, possibly through
Satan’s rebellious fall, once an “anointed cherub” (Ezekiel 28:1-26). Nor do I
comprehend the fall of the angels that had sinned, and who are reserved in
Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4), until the judgment of the great day. I confine the
question to the entrance of sin into this world; and that of death — its
consequence — having passed upon man — the race of Adam alone. Death may have
been, and was possibly, there — even in this world, in its previous periods of
change, during the ages and cycles which had passed prior to its having been
shaped by God’s hand, in the six days’ work, into an abode for man.

I accept what is now pretty well known by the student of the word, that in the
term which opens the book of Genesis — “In the beginning,” as well as in the
next clause of the verse, God has left it open for the possibility of millions
of years to have elapsed since that “beginning” was, when God created the
heavens and the earth; and thus time sufficient was allowed, to form the strata
of the earth, as it is now found, before the work of the six days was
accomplished, in the varied ages which had passed, and through the many
catastrophes which had probably taken place. For we read in the next clause of
the verse, that the earth (not the heavens), was without form and waste (tohu),
having probably fallen into chaos. God had not created it in this state, as
Isaiah testifies (Isaiah 45:18). “He created it not waste” — the same Hebrew
word as used in Genesis 1:1-31.

We are aware that there are traces of death to be found in the fossils and
petrifactions of extinct animals, of species now unknown, in the strata formed
by the ages gone by. This is admitted most fully; but it does not interfere with
our present question in any wise.

I take therefore, the statement of Romans 5:13, as the basis of the great
question now before us: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” The
first part of this important passage confines the entrance of sin to this world;
and the second limits the passing of death, as a consequence of sin on man;
without noticing, in the former case, the possible entrance of sin into other
spheres; and, in the latter, the fact of death passing upon other than the human
family.

Let us now turn to Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-25, where we have the account of
the creation of man, And Elohim saith, we will make man [Adam] in our image,
after our likeness, and they shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and
over every reptile that is creeping on the earth. So Elohim created the man
[Adam] in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him; male and female,
created he them.”* {*Translation of Gen. 1 from the Hebrew, by G. V. Wigram.}

There are two distinct words used here by God, very different in their
signification; they are “image” and “likeness.” Another has given valued
thoughts on the use assigned to each, to which I would add some remarks. How
accurately this usage is maintained throughout the word of God, is amongst the
wonders of its perfections. The word “image” is sometimes, in human language,
used to signify the likeness in one for another; as one would say, ‘such an one
is the very image of his father’ — meaning that he is an exact likeness; but
this is not the way it is used in general, in scripture. There it is used,
rather in speaking of that which is set to represent another, without having any
reference to its being like or unlike, in features, or otherwise, to the person
represented. As we read of Christ being “the image of the invisible God”
(Colossians 1:15). And man being “the image and glory of God” (1 Corinthians
11:7), etc.; the word image being here used, as fully representing another, as
the image of Jupiter, of Caesar, etc. Now “likeness” is different from this: its
meaning is simple and readily understood, as describing a person being like
another, that is, having the same traits of character and features, etc. The man
was created then in both these ways. He was set as the great center of an
immense system, fully to represent God, as His image. The dominion of the vast
system was his. All created things were under him. All intelligences, his wife
included, were to look up to him as God’s representative in that sphere. God
alone was over him; all else being subject to man. But he was also in the
likeness of God. He was pure as his Creator made him, he was very good: he was
sinless too, absolutely without evil: he was from God, to be for God, and thus
like Him, and fit, therefore, to be His image — to represent Him; and to be the
center to which all should look up; and with an intelligent will; his choice
also was free. But again we ask, Why did God leave moral evil a possibility? Or,
in other words, why permit the entrance of sin? Could He not have created a
being, which could not fall? One who could only do what was good and right? The
answer is plain. Because, if He would create a glorious creature — man, after
His own image, and in His likeness, free to choose either good or evil, and not
a creature governed by a mere chain of instinct, as the birds and beasts around
him — He must leave the entrance to him of evil, a possibility, though not a
necessity.

If man, as God created him, could not choose evil, then he had no choice at all:
and he would be no more virtuous in doing good, than the mere animal which
follows the instincts of its nature. And because, in such a case, he must do
good, he would be no more virtuous in doing so than they.

Either God must refrain, — we write the words with reverence — from creating
such a being, of this high and glorious order of existence, with a free choice
and will; or He must leave the question of evil a possibility to him. Alas, for
the result! of which a fallen race speaks with such terrible reality. He chose
the evil and refused the good; and the moment he exercised his choice he became
a sinner. Man, created in the image of God, fell from that pinnacle of eminence,
never to be restored to it again. Fallen Adam begets a son in his own likeness
after his image (Genesis 5:3), while unfallen Adam had been created “in the
likeness of God” (Genesis 5:1).

Observe, in all this there was no thought of man being holy: nor could it have
been said as afterwards of the “new man,” that he of Him, was “created in
righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:24). God is holy — absolutely
so. But holiness is relative, inasmuch as it supposes evil to exist, and implies
absolute separation from it. This could not be said of man, as God created him.
He was pure, and perfectly good, but evil was not for him in existence, until he
chose evil, when presented in the form of a temptation, and thus he threw aside
the authority and will of God, who had given it to him. So of righteousness,
which also presupposes the existence of evil.

How everything in the sinner now depends on his will, in having to do with God;
his salvation and all, depend upon the surrender of his will to Him. “Ye will
not come unto me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). And “Whosoever will, let
him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). Now Christ is said to be
the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); the “image of God” Himself.
(2 Corinthians 4:4). This is because he fully represents God; but He is never
said to be in His “likeness”; simply because He is God Himself, therefore not
merely like Him. But it is said that He came in the “likeness of sinful flesh,”
and rightly so; because He was not sinful flesh at all. See Romans 8:3.

He too, had His own perfect will; and while tested to the uttermost in life and
in death, it was always subject to God’s. “My meat is to do the will of him that
sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). This obedience and subjection
found its perfection fully in death. He “became obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross” (Php 2:8). Mark, He was not subject to death, as the first
man, through his sin. With him it was the penalty of disobedience, and the
ending, by God’s sentence, in death, of will in him to the uttermost. But it was
there that the perfection of Christ’s surrender of a perfect will in obedience,
shone out most fully. Or rather, may we not say? the perfect blending of a
perfect will in Him with that of God, in obedience unto death itself.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 01.06.     THE NEW MAN
========================================================================

The New Man “Created in righteousness and holiness of truth” (Ephesians 4:24).

We now come to the New Testament, where we find a gradual unfolding of God’s
ways as to the new man”; indeed, we may say a new kind of man altogether from
the first man. I would just draw attention to some of the salient points which
are found there in the three great epistles, which, taken together, would give
us the completeness of God’s thoughts, and His purposes in the new creation in
Christ. I refer to Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians. The first of these
epistles unfolds in detail, the moral closing up of the history of the first
man, as fallen, under every advantage, and after every trial from God whether
without law, as being proved lawless; or under law, as a law breaker, and this,
subsequent to the possession of privileges and advantages, which were before the
special dealings of God took place in a separate people. The end of the trial
and time of testing was, when Christ came and was refused. “All (now) had
sinned,” in looking back, and “come short of the glory of God” — the measure
now, and standard by which all would be judged. Man had been set up in
perfection as a creature, and had fallen; could he now meet the burning rays of
God’s glory? On this, as on all other grounds, all was now over, with the old
man for ever. God must now either end that man, whose will was set up against
Him, by judgment in righteousness: or reveal Himself in sovereign grace through
righteousness, in virtue of the work of Christ. I do not here, of course, enter
upon this work of the cross, and the death, and resurrection of Christ; only
looking at it, as the means, whereby God would close morally for faith the
history of man in righteousness, and begin His new creation in His Son — as head
of a new race. The section of the epistle in which God first shows how the race
was all under judgment, and guilty before Him, ends in Romans 3:19.We then find,
immediately following, in Romans 3:20, etc., how the righteousness of God is now
manifested for the sinner, in God’s raising up His Son from death and setting
Him on high; and not against him, as standing in his own responsibility. And
this, too, “by faith in Jesus Christ,” personally; and “by faith in his blood,”
as the means by which the righteousness of God was vindicated against sin. He
thus stands in perfect justification from all his guilt. But his state as a
sinner in the first Adam is not thus ended. When we pass that section which
deals in all details with his guilt, and which ends at Romans 5:11, we are
introduced to the manner, in which our whole state is dealt with, and closed in
the death of Christ. We read in Romans 6:1-23, Our old man is crucified with
him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not
serve sin.

There is nothing in the Romans about the “new man” in any wise. But there is the
crucifixion of “our old man” fully set forth, in order that the body, or
totality, of sin might be set aside. The nearest approach to anything positive
on this head is found in the expression of Romans 7:1-25. “I delight in the law
of God after the inner man, ” but it goes no further. While fully closing up the
questions of our guilt and state, it goes no further, but while showing Christ
risen, the believer is not said to be risen with Him. For this, we must have the
next step, in the Epistle to the Colossians.

There is in Romans a new will shown as either struggling against the old — the
flesh, in Romans 7:1-25; or else, when the soul is set free, walking in “newness
of spirit,” and “newness of life.” Romans gives us therefore, the crucifixion of
“our old man” with Christ.

Now Colossians stands between Romans and Ephesians in doctrine. In the former,
man is seen as alive in sins; the heart is going out after all its lusts
unhinderedly. What then, must be done? He must be brought down into death — the
death of Christ — to have his history closed: “Knowing this, that our old man is
co-crucified with him.” In Ephesians, we have man “dead in trespasses and sins,”
and consequently another kind of dealing must come in. Unlike the Romans, where
he must be brought down into death, because alive in sins, life must come in
positively to quicken a dead soul in that condition, and to raise him up out of
it; and all must be a new creation in Christ Jesus, who is in heavenly places.

Colossians, therefore, as we might suppose, would take in both sides-dead in
sins, and alive in them. This it does, looking back on our Romans condition, and
looking forward to our Ephesians condition in Christ Jesus. Therefore we read,
“In the which (sins, etc.) ye walked when ye lived in them” (Colossians 3:7).
And we also read, “And you, being dead in your sins,” etc. (Colossians 2:13).
The saint therefore, is looked upon as “dead with Christ” from the elements of
the world, as well as dead to sin, and dead to the law; and also risen with
Christ, and though not sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, he is seeking
those things “above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.” He is,
therefore, down here on earth. This being so, he has not reached his new place
with God in Colossians, though he is suited to the place as in life, and as
risen with Christ. He has a new status, but not a new place. We would not
therefore find, here in the epistle, the “new man” spoken of as in Ephesians.
Indeed it is remarkable, that when it is apparently spoken of in Ephesians
3:1-21, it falls far short of the full thoughts of Ephesians 4:24; different
words being used in the Greek original; and the word man (–<2DTB@H) being
omitted altogether (Ephesians 3:9).

We have, therefore, a different word for “new,” used in Colossians, as compared
with Ephesians. In the former it is <X@H; in the latter 6"4<`H: the latter
signifying what I may term familiarly by the graphic expression ‘brand new!’ a
kind of man never seen or heard of before;23 while the former would be entirely
new, but does not imply a new kind or genus, as the latter would.

We find, however, that the knitting up of both scriptures, Ephesians 4:1-32 and
Colossians 3:1-25 is done by the Spirit of God in remarkable wisdom, by the use
of these two words, being found in the construction of the verbs, “renewed “ in
Ephesians 4:23, and Colossians 3:10; that in Ephesians being compounded with the
“new” of Colossians; and that in Colossians with the new of Ephesians 4:24
Wondrously wise are the scriptures of our God!

We may also here notice what is still the more striking and instructive, namely,
that the word “putting off” is quite different in each epistle; in fact, there
is no affinity at all between the words in Greek. In Colossians we have a word
which signifies “passing out from under,” or, “being divested of” something; as
a garment. Jn Ephesians we have not this, but its being absolutely “laid aside,”
or “laid down.” I might take off my garment in one action; and I may also, by
another action, lay it aside when I have taken it off. We shall presently
understand the reason why it should be thus in each epistle, coupled with what
we have seen already.

There is an illustration of the use of these two words in the LXX of Leviticus
16:23, where Aaron, having finished the work of the great day of atonement,
clothed in the white linen garments, first “cuts off” those garments, and then
leaves them in the tabernacle of the congregation. I would also refer the
English reader to Acts 7:58, here the verb of Ephesians 4:24 and translated
“putting off” — which should be, more correctly, “laying aside” — is used by
Stephen’s murderers, who “laid down” their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose
name was Saul; and also to Hebrews 12:1, where the same word is translated “lay
aside,” as to “every weight,” etc. In fact, while Colossians gives us the
subjective side of the “new man” (what is practical life in which the saint
lives here while walking on earth), Ephesians gives us the objective side of the
“new man,” as showing us what he is on high. Colossians being rather Christ in
us. In Romans, therefore, we find “our old man crucified”: in Colossians the
“old man parted with,” and the subjective side of the “new man.” While in
Ephesians we have the old man wholly “laid aside,” where we are seen as all that
we are in Christ — the objective presentation of the full ‘brand-new’ man: an
absolutely new creation in Christ.

It is not Adam innocent, nor Adam fallen, and righteousness under law, but a
positively new creation.

It has been noted that the 6"4<`H: of Ephesians 4:24, and the <X@H of Colossians
3:10, are characteristic of each epistle. In Ephesians it is a new creation in
contrast with an old; in Colossians it is a practical new life in which we live;
though the care is taken to show that it is a new thing entirely, formed of God.

We may read Ephesians 4:21-23, thus: “If so be ye have heard him, and in him
have been instructed, as is truth in Jesus (namely) your having laid aside,
according to the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to
the lusts of deceit. But be made new [that is, absolutely new] in the spirit of
your mind. And your having been invested with the new man [that is, the
brand-new thing] which is after God, [or, according to God] having been created
in righteousness [not innocence] and holiness of the truth.” This “holiness of
the truth,” stands in contrast with the “lusts of deceit” of Ephesians 4:22. The
deceit of the serpent having produced the lusts of the heart at the beginning;
and righteousness being the basis of God’s new creation, he is formed — created
— in it, and in holiness (absolute separation from evil) of the truth, which has
begotten him. As to the passage in Colossians corresponding and filling up on
the practical side, we may read: “Your having been invested with the new” (<X@H)
he does not write “man” (—<2DTB@H — this word only being used of the full
absolute thing in Ephesians 4:1-32 — “which is continuously being made new
toward perfect knowledge, according to the image of the Creator of him.”

Now remark again, that in Colossians we have “Christ” as the example of all for
the new (man). Your life is hid with him in God (Colossians 3:3). The characters
of Christ as the elect of God, presented as forming and practiced (Colossians
3:12-13). The word of Christ is to dwell in him richly (Colossians 3:16). In
fact, as Colossians 3:11 states, “Christ is all, and in all.” While in Ephesians
it is “God, ” and the nature of God is presented as the standard of all. The
“new man” there is created after God (v. 24). He is to be an imitator of God
(Ephesians 5:1). To walk in love (which Christ showed fully) and walk as
children of light — God’s two essential characteristics, what He is (Ephesians
5:2; Ephesians 5:8).

Again, we have more: we have in Colossians the “image of him that created him.”
In Ephesians we have rather “likeness” to God Himself pressed (6"JV 2,`<).

Here, therefore, we come back to these words as at the first, “likeness” and
“image”; the new man of Ephesians being morally like God — seen in his true
place as in Christ in heaven and as objectively presented to us there in Him.
Therefore, when we come into the practical life — the subjective side, in
Colossians 3:1-25 we have “image,” because there he walks on earth at the
present, but is morally to represent God, who was fully represented in Christ
Himself, and who is “all.”

Then again, as to the exhortation of each epistle connected with the “new man.”
We find in Colossians 3:9, “Lie not one to another.” There it is the practical
life. But in Ephesians 4:25 we have, “Wherefore having laid aside lying, speak
truth” to each other. Here, with the old man who has been laid aside, goes the
thing itself-lying. Not merely is the exhortation, as in Colossians, to refuse
the practice of it; but the thing is looked upon as gone here, and the
exhortation takes the positive side, exhorting to speak the truth, etc., as in
the other parts of the context in the epistle. There alone, too, have we the
conflict of the saint in its true and only measure. Satan is again on the scene
in a special way, to oppose this man of a new creation, as at the first he did
in the old. On this I do not enter here.


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  CHAPTER 9: 01.07.     THE VESSEL EMPTIED OF HUMAN STRENGTH
========================================================================

The Vessel Emptied of Human Strength

“Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of
Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:1-21). In another connection, which
we may hope to refer to again, the apostle Paul writes thus: “We have this
treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not from us” (see Greek). I cite this now with reference to the end of the
verse. God never gives intrinsic power to His saints. “God hath spoken once;
twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God” (Psalms 62:11). If this
is important in the lives of the saints, how much more, if I may draw a
distinction, is it for those who are called upon to serve in the word. Yet in
every service and in every action in the lives of God’s people, the power of God
is needful, that they may walk and serve and work and toil in the energy of the
Spirit, and in the expression of the life of Jesus in their mortal flesh. For
this end, another character of discipline takes place after deliverance is
known. This may be more or less spread across their lives, but one absolutely
needful to produce that condition in which the power of Christ works: which is,
as we read, “made perfect in weakness.” The object of this discipline is not
easily distinguished at first by the majority of saints. It is more often
divined and felt by those who serve outwardly in the word, than in the ordinary
pathways of the people of God. It frequently happens, too, that it mixes itself
up with exercises before deliverance is known, and is not easily separated from
these, in the analysis of the soul’s history. However, although we may confound
them experimentally in ourselves, scripture distinguishes them most clearly. It
is only as we grow in the apprehension of the word, and of the mind of the
Spirit there, that we are able to give to each its place and its true
interpretation. We only know in part, at best, while here; but when that which
is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away; and then
shall we know even as also we are known.

Saul had served amongst the saints for some years, before he was separated to
the work to which he had been called. This took place formally and definitely at
Antioch (Acts 13:1-52), where he was sent forth by the Holy Ghost on his first
mission amongst the Gentiles; but going, as he always did, “to the Jew first.”
We find this mission described at length in Acts 13:1-52 and Acts 14:1-28. The
vessel had been prepared in quiet, and now in going forth into that wider
harvest field, he needed special dealings of the Lord to strip him finally and
fully from every thought of quasi strength in man. The very success of the work,
and the power of God manifested towards souls, needed corresponding dealings to
countervail the tendencies of the flesh. It ever seeks to intrude, and hinder
the work of God. Often, in apparently insignificant ways, its intrusion is felt
by one’s self or by others: like the “dead flies” which “cause the ointment of
the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor.”

It is therefore to be expected that special dealings of God should be discerned
distinctly at the opening of this great world-wide service of the apostle,
commencing here. After the early part of the work is described, and that at
Antioch in Pisidia took place (Acts 13:14, etc.); he now leads the band of
servants, first to Iconium (Acts 14:1, etc.), and from thence to Derbe and to
Lystra. Here he was stoned, and drawn out of the city, as they supposed him to
be dead. I refer to this to connect this moment with what he reveals of his life
in 2 Corinthians 12:1-21.

Having no visible proof of his being called to serve the Lord, like Peter and
the rest, who were appointed by Him in life; he must prove, as all true ministry
must from that day, its divine origin by the effect of it upon souls.
Consequently his ministry was constantly called in question. The servant must
expect this now-a-days also, as a consequence, when he seeks to serve according
to God’s mind, and as following in the line of those gifted from Christ in
glory. This took place in a very painful manner at Corinth. The jealousies of
others so wrought against him there, where the chiefest of his work had been
accomplished, that he was forced to speak of himself very prominently (always a
painful and trying subject), and to tell of services, of toils, and of sorrows,
seldom (perhaps never) equaled by those of any other man. The folly of others
gives us here a glimpse of an unparalleled life of devotedness to Christ and the
church. “Are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool, I am more; in labors
more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths
oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I
beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a
day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in
perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in
perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,
in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” etc. (2
Corinthians 11:23-27). This is what he had done for the Lord! But what had the
Lord done for Paul? “It is not expedient for me, doubtless, to glory, for [yap]
I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 12:1). And
here he discloses what had happened to him “above fourteen years ago.” The scene
at Lystra, when he was left for dead, was more than probably the moment when
what is recorded here took place.* {*I see no reason to question the chronology
of the Authorized Version here.}

If 2 Corinthians 11:1-33 gives a history which might clothe Paul with honors,
and give grounds for him to boast: 2 Corinthians 12:1-21 gives us a dealing of
the Lord which reduced him to “nothing.” No doubt it was necessary that the
leading man in the Christian course should be introduced into things which it
was not lawful to reveal. It was needful, too, to strengthen him in a special
way — giving him to realize, above others, what was the portion of all: the
possible state for every saint to enjoy, though, in the state of things,
unspeakable also. But to follow this, and consequent upon it, the discipline
came which had the effect of emptying Paul of every vestige of human strength,
reducing him to the condition of a will-less, powerless vessel, so that he might
be fitted thus to be wielded and used by the hand of the Lord who did so.

“It is not,” said he, “expedient for me, doubt-less to glory, for I will come to
visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew [hoida] a man in Christ, above
fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I cannot tell ; or whether out of the
body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
And I knew such a man . . . how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard
unspeakable words, which it is not possible for man to utter. Of such an one
will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in my weaknesses.”

Here was the realization given him of all that he was, both as a man in Christ,
and of the sphere of blessing where his portion lay; and of those things which
he heard there, which human language could not express. The measure of this
common portion of all His saints, may be realized variously by each; but the
portion is the same for all. Upon this I do not enter. Each, too, may minister
in part of that which he consciously possesses. But if so, the special dealings
of God ensue to check the evil of the flesh, which according to the measure of
the revelation rises pari passu with its abundance. This discipline is suited
and adapted to each several soul. This is the reason why, I doubt not, that all
speculations as to what was the nature of Paul’s thorn in the flesh, end in
nothing. God has wisely seen fit to leave it untold. Were it made known, we
would have perhaps settled that it was not ours, and then have left it there. To
have left it untold, gives us to see that there was a great principle of God’s
dealings, seen in this man’s case, but applicable to all. Each would have his
suited “thorn”: the very thing that would counteract his natural tendency; and
so act as to strip him of every pretension to power, and break any fancied
strength of man.

We see this on every hand, we see it better in our own soul’s history. For it is
not always that another is permitted to know the secret thorn which rankles in
the breast, such as that we would give the world to remove, ere we know the “end
of the Lord.” He presses home the “stake” (ax6.Xo*) which pins us to the earth,
as it were, in very powerlessness. You see this at times, for instance, in
incongruous marriages. The soul is worn away, especially in a sensitive,
spiritual mind ; and there is no earthly power which can change the sorrow, and
heavenly deliverance is withheld. Again, there is a child whose conduct breaks
the heart of a parent: every measure fails to deal with him, and the “thorn”
rankles deeply in the wounded heart. It may be that some disgrace is permitted,
as to which the soul feels that death were easier to bear. It may be that
slander has stung the soul with deeper pain. There may be, too, some human
weakness, which renders the afflicted one an object of pain to those who love
him, or of ridicule to others. Such as these, and the many sorrows of the way
are used of God as the “thorn” to curb the energy, to break the strength of
“man.” Circumstances, friends, relations, health, good name, all are touched by
Wisdom in this holy discipline of the soul. These things in the hand of God are
like the river banks which on either side guide the stream of waters which flow
between them; rendering the waters useful and fructifying, which, if flowing
onwards without these guides, would devastate all around, in-stead of bearing a
blessing on their bosom. How often have we not thought what good Christians we
might have been if circumstances were different; in short, if the banks which
carry the river were broken down. Nay, these are the wise dealings of our God to
keep us just in the channel and path where we are, to shine and glorify Him.

Like Paul of old, when the “stake” was driven home, we may cry to God, even
thrice, as he: Take away this thorn, this terrible hindrance to the work of
Christ, this feebleness of the vessel, this sapping of energy, this hindrance to
service, this cruel “stake” from which the soul struggles in vain to be free.
But no; there it remains, until we find, in the acceptance of its bitterness,
the occasion of a strength which is not of man, but the emptying us of fancied
human power. We learn our powerlessness, we feel that struggling is but in vain.
Yet here the secret of strength is found: but not of man, not our own. The Lord
comes in. He finds the vessel bereft of strength; prepared for that power with
which He can wield it. He finds that condition which it is His to use. “ And he
said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in
weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather boast in my weaknesses,* that the
power of Christ may rest [“tabernacle over”] upon me.” “The surpassingness of
the power is of God, and not from us.”

Those who serve the Lord outwardly in the word, know in measure these things.
They know well, much as they may be blessed, and valued too; what bitter lessons
they have to learn in secret with the Lord. Never could they be explained to
another ; yet they are but the emptying of fancied strength in man. No true
servant but will find this out for himself; he will recall those moments, when
death was working in the fragile vessel, that life might work in those to whom
he ministered. Yea, he begins to find how good these lessons are, that made room
for a power working which he is conscious is not himself, not of man; and that
when, outwardly calm, he felt the abject weakness of his own heart, his Lord
might step in and give him victory.

It shows that the stoning occurred first at that time.

{*It is not “infirmities” but “weaknesses” in which he glories.}

Thus, then, is the vessel brought by the hand of the potter, often through
bruisings and breaking and crushings on the wheel, to its true and blessed form
in which God can work Himself alone. When the vessel would say, “not that we are
sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency
is of God”: and again, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the
excellency of the power may be of God and not from us. Forcible and striking
this is: he does not allow that the power would be ‘from’ God, as something
apart from Him, and conferred or imparted to us. Nay, but it is divine, and yet
inseparable from Him who works; it is “of God” — and yet not ‘of us,’ as not
only negativing the thought that it might be so; but the word he uses still more
strongly emphasizes this: that the power is of God and not from us.

There is a “threefold cord” which must be found in the saint if he would serve
his Lord aright: the motive, the energy and the end. At times the motive may be
right and the end also, but the energy may be but the human vessel working out
(as it supposes) the things of the Lord. All three must go together, and this is
the object of this disciplinary process that all may be of God, and not of man.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: 01.08.     THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN THE VESSEL
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The Purpose of God in the Vessel

“For the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Because [it is] God who spoke light to shine out of darkness who hath shined [or
‘lit a lamp’] in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the surpassingness of the power may be of God, and not from us (2
Corinthians 4:6-7).

Marvelous purpose in God! To light a lamp within us, and so deal with us, that
He may reduce the vessel to a transparency in His hands, in order that the glory
of God shining in Jesus on high, should shine out so that His people may be
God’s lanterns in a dark and Christ-rejecting world.

Some have referred to Gideon’s lamps and pitchers (Judges 7:1-25), as if there
was an analogy here to that scene; but there the lamps shone out only when the
pitcher was broken: not so here. The vessel is rendered transparent, if I may so
say; all the hindering element of flesh is so attenuated that the “treasure”
possessed by the vessel may shine forth undimmed. The circumstances through
which the vessel was passing at this moment, all working to this end, are worthy
of our deep consideration. They enter into all the texture of the teaching which
flows from God to us in this epistle. Indeed this is ever so in the ministry of
the New Testament times. The vessel is passed through the trial or exercise,
whatever that may be, and the heart thus trained; the affections formed by these
things; the man himself so sustained and supported of God in the sorrows of the
way, that “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” He has drunk the
living stream at the fountain head of all, in the eighth day of heavenly power
and blessedness in Christ. His thirst has been quenched by Christ. And so his
inner man — the mind, the heart, the soul, the whole vessel, becomes the medium
of those streams of refreshment to others, which have consoled his own soul in
its sorrow. The Father of mercies has filled it with all His consolation in
Christ-so full, so blessedly full, that it overflows and the stream passes on in
living power, fructifying those in the desert sands of the world where his path
lies.

Fourteen years, after what we have already spoken of, had passed: scene after
scene of his labors had been traversed; and during the successful work at
Ephesus (Acts 19:1-41), news had come of the sorrows and sins of those in
Corinth, who had been the objects of the labors of Paul. He had written to them
a letter (1 Cor.), his heart full of anxiety, but teaching, largely too, what
was needful there. The mighty energy of God’s Spirit had sustained the vessel
for this service, and, then it was despatched by the hand of Titus. At this
moment the enemy had come in, in terrible power at Ephesus (Acts 19:1-41), and
the infuriated mob, moved by the spirit of idolatry, had made the insurrection
which we learn of there. Paul, after the manner of men, might have said he had
“fought with beasts” there. He had like to be torn limb from limb by those whom
Satan led at that moment in terrible power. So terrible was the moment that hope
was gone, the jaws of death were all but reached, and his spirit passed into the
state of one who had “the sentence of death” in himself, and he “despaired even
of life.” (2 Corinthians 1:8).

Here was a moment for the soul! A living man, whose life was so real before God
that God, as it were, might have said: Such a real man as Paul must learn all in
power himself; his purpose is to bear about in his body the dying of Jesus;
well, then, he shall be helped in this. He shall be delivered to death for
Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may be manifest in his mortal flesh. This is
ever God’s reward to those who seek to live in the power of what they teach and
know. But at that same moment a deeper anguish filled his soul. The energy of
the Spirit had waned, in which he had been sustained when he wrote to the
Corinthians. A reaction came. Titus was gone. There was no recalling what was
past. We love those to whom we have ministered in the church of God more deeply
than others. There is a link formed between their souls and ours, which even the
glory will not efface (cp. 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). What bitter pangs does the
heart feel when, in any way, the enemy’s power comes in to sever this bond. We
look upon them as lost to us; the joys of fellowship with them destroyed. He
wrote in the greatness of his service, and with the truth of the Spirit from his
pen. But now the reaction came. He feared he had lost the beloved Corinthians.
How will they receive his letter? Was it too hard, too severe? In deep exercise
he repented having written it. “I did repent,” said he, speaking of his tried
heart’s exercise (2 Corinthians 7:8). A greater death than that of the body,
which seemed to have impended, was now felt; his soul died within him, as it
were, in the bitterness of his sorrow. Some have passed through this kind of
death: it must be known in measure to be understood. He could not rest in his
spirit at a great and prosperous work at Troas, but went in search of Titus,
that his soul might be relieved (2 Corinthians 2:13).

Pressure after pressure at the hand of the potter, for he was but the clay upon
the wheel; growing up under the skillful eye and hand of the Master. All these
varied trials fell at one moment of crushing soul-death on this vessel. God was
attenuating the opaqueness which still remained, that the light might shine
forth with brighter power; that the Treasure of his heart might be more clearly
seen, that His purpose in the vessel might be unhinderedly manifested. At last —
God which comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of
Titus” (2 Corinthians 7:6). God “delivered us from as great a death” — as from
the fury of man at Ephesus. What a moment of soul-comfort which now followed!
“We were comforted in your comfort; yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we for
the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all” (2 Corinthians
7:13). Well can he say, “O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart
is enlarged.” He can pour forth his heart’s teaching. He is unhindered in his
joy.

What a moment for the true servant! What a moment for the people of God! Little
do they know how the servant’s heart is hindered in the ministry at times: how
the springs of God are dry to them because of their state: then the servant has
to learn fresh lessons of death working in himself; and his brightest words
become dull, because the Spirit of God is grieved, and hearts are dull of
hearing. He must be a rebuker to both servant and people, instead of rivers of
refreshment in a thirsty land. But what was this Treasure which he possessed?
Strange casket was he for such, also one which would not conceal but permit its
full display. The context will explain. It does so, first by recalling a moment
in Israel’s history which laid the ground of it in the nature of God there first
made known — in sovereignty, displayed in mercy.

Israel’s history had run on under pure and living grace, from the day when God
called Moses to be a deliverer of His people, at the backside of the desert in
Midian, until, as a delivered people purchased and redeemed, they drank the
waters from the smitten rock at Rephidim. Many a time did they abuse this living
stream of grace, and murmur against Him who poured it forth.

Then came the giving of the law to Israel, which was only accepted to be broken.
Thus all relations, whether of grace or law, were destroyed, grace was abused,
and the golden calf was the answer to their word, “All that the Lord hath spoken
we will do.” Moses goes up from that scene saying, “Peradventure I shall make an
atonement for your sin.” He returns, and separates himself from the guilty camp
of Israel. Then, in the touching interview which followed, and at his cry, “I
beseech thee, shew me thy glory,” the Lord retires into Himself — He stands upon
a sovereignty which can do as it pleases. He alone can say, “I will,” and none
can hinder. “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy.” This is the manner
in which His sovereignty will be displayed, “Because he delighteth in mercy.”
And Moses comes down from the mount, with the second table of the law in his
hand, the skin of his face shining with the brightness of this fresh and suited
name: “The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, abundant in goodness
and truth.” Sovereign mercy was the foundation of this relationship of God with
Israel. But now we come to Paul in 2 Corinthians, and there we find that
sovereign mercy is the basis of the gospel of the glory, which in a special way
he names as “Our Gospel.” (2 Corinthians 5:3).

What, then, was the gospel? Was it different from that of the other apostles?
For by it was communicated “this Treasure” to Paul, who stands here as the
representative man — the pattern to all coming after. Mercy, sovereign and free,
shines in this man’s case more fully than all, as we have already seen. He would
tell us so, saying, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received
mercy, we faint not.”

Christ had died: God had “made him sin for us, who knew no sin.” God had
abandoned Him who had trusted in His God. He who had taught others to trust in
Him was Himself forsaken, and the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?” attested this; and was the mocking taunt of His foes, “He trusted in God,
let him deliver him now if he will have him” (Matthew 27:43). We see no
righteousness in this. But we see that “The righteous Lord . . . hateth
iniquity” — and His Son having taken that place must take all its consequences.
It was God’s righteous judgment against sin which we see there.

He was taken from the cross and placed in the grave. The soldiers sleep as they
guard the tomb: they became as dead when the angel of God descended to roll back
the stone where the dead had been laid. But Christ had risen. He was not there.
The tomb unsealed, the grave-clothes unmoved, pointed to the mighty fact that no
grave could hold the Son of God.

Some days elapse, when we see another sight. On the Mount of Olives, perhaps
some five hundred disciples stood, and from their midst a Man ascends to heaven,
out of their sight. He is saluted there by God in righteousness as the Author of
eternal salvation; the Establisher of righteousness against sin, for “the
righteous Lord loveth righteousness.” The Father gives Him the Holy Ghost afresh
for others-and out from the glory comes the message, which afterwards arrested
Saul of Tarsus, that this righteousness of God was so vindicated by the Son,
that God set Him on His throne, and the news is sent forth from the heavens that
God’s righteousness could now be displayed for man, a sinner, in salvation-and
not against him in judgment: that all who submitted to Jesus, the Nazarene,
should become God’s righteousness in Him.

“Our Gospel” dates from the glory of God. It comes forth as a ministration of
righteousness, and of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:8-9): no more the ministration
of “condemnation” and “death.” It shines out from His face who accomplished the
work, and whom God seated on His throne — the witness of His estimate of the
work which He had accomplished. The “Treasure “was this. It was all that was
thus brought forth from the glory of God, as found in Christ there; and as
possessed by the vessel of clay.

Then came the attenuating process, by which the vessel would be made the medium
through which it should shine. The light was taken in through exercises of
conscience; and shone out through the exercises of his heart. The “life of
Jesus” must be made manifest in the earthen vessel (2 Corinthians 4:10); out of
it the faith of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:13 and cp. Psalms 116:10) must be
expressed; and the hope of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:14) must actuate the heart.
And the momentary lightness of the affliction, through which it passed, only
worked to enlarge the capacity and give in result a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory. The eye was fixed on the unseen and the eternal: the
seen and temporal was passing away; and even if the earthly tabernacle — suited
to the present passing stage — were dissolved, a building of God, a house not
made with hands, was sure; and if Jesus came — all that was mortal which
remained would be swallowed up of life (cp. 2 Corinthians 4:1-18; 2 Corinthians
5:1-21).

This, then, was the purpose of God with the earthen vessel; this the process to
reduce it to all that He desired. The light of the glory in the face of Jesus
shone in the holiest on high, and on earth the light of the lamps shone over
against the candlestick to cause its beauty to be seen.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: 01.09.     GOD IN THE VESSEL.
========================================================================

God in the Vessel.

“The sentence of death” (1 Corinthians 1:10). “The power of his resurrection”
(Php 3:10). The passages at the head of this chapter present two principles
which the vessel of God’s choice must practically learn. They are not confined
to the Christian interval alone; but have been the lessons, variously taught,
and more or less intelligently learned by the elect, at all times, and in all
dispensations; though the clear, doctrinal meaning was not known until New
Testament times.

They are, as we may speak, in a certain sense, correlative. The vessel is taught
experimentally the first of these; and in the same way he finds the second
working in him. What has “the power of his resurrection” to do with aught but a
dead man? Surely nothing! Therefore if death works in him, life works also in
him in the power of resurrection. This power is of God alone.

These are the great lessons set for every saint while here. The measure in which
they are learned is quite another matter: as is also the soul’s apprehension of
the lesson. But oh, what conscious power is found, as the soul learns to hold
the cross, to every motion of human life which works in his body! to bear about
in himself the sentence of death, morally or physically, that he should not
trust in himself, but in God who raises the dead. Then death works in him, and
life towards others. The former principle — “we have the sentence of death in
ourselves” — is preparatory to the desire “That I may know him and the power of
his resurrection.” And this will be seen as we examine other cases in scripture,
“written for our learning.” The history of the “father of the faithful” will
help to this end. In Abraham’s path we are introduced to one, and the dealings
of God with him, in whom we see the gradual unfolding of God’s lessons for the
soul, before the doctrine of these things is developed to us in the New
Testament scripture.

Like ourselves in our measure, he had to pass through all in an experimental
way, to reach the perfect end. With the saint in the New Testament, did he but
accept what is there taught, it would be with him that the place where others
ended he would begin. But the state of soul, and the power of the flesh, and the
deceivableness of our own hearts, are such that we must, alas! learn, too, all
the lessons in an experimental way. In Paul we see one who learned these things
practically, but with much difference from ourselves. Speaking for oneself, and
perhaps for others, we learn them through failure, in which we experience (more
like Peter) the extricating ministry of Christ. Paul’s case differed much, for
in him we see rather the true heart taught, the singleness of eye met, so that
he had more of the preventive or preserving ministry of Christ, rather than the
restorative or extricating, while, at the same time, he was passed through
circumstances of varied kinds that the lesson might be experienced in his own
soul. We see failures in his life, but they were few.

We all experience, in a sense, the threefold way in which God revealed Himself
to Abraham. He was called by the “God ofglory” (Acts 7:2). He was sustained by
the “Almighty God, ” and all was provided by “Jehovah Jireh. ” This was his
history as a saint. But all was not revealed to him at first: the flesh had to
be broken, fallen nature exposed, law had to be tried and found fruitless for
faith, promise had to be rested upon, and then the fruit of accomplished promise
had to be surrendered for the power of resurrection on Mount Moriah. Until this
came he never was really and fully a worshiper, nor did he ever know God by that
new name, “Jehovah-Jireh.” I do not dwell much upon his earlier history. He did
what true children of God do also, until they learn otherwise. He saw, when
called of God at first, that which it was God’s will should be done or
possessed, and he assayed to realize and accomplish it in the strength of man.
All fails, and then at last God does by him what he assayed to do himself. The
end in view was right and the motive was right, but the energy put forth was of
“man.” He had not yet taken “the sentence of death” to himself, nor had he
learned “the power of his resurrection.” Was not this so with Moses when he
assayed to deliver Israel? With David at Ziklag? With Peter in the judgment
hall? Each was tried, each sought to do that which was right and of God; but the
energy was of man, and God did, at the end, by each one the same things which
each had assayed to do themselves. We see this every day around in the history
of saints. We know it in our own. Often, too, we have seen, in the first
freshness of soul in a young saint apprehending the truth, a deeper and more
spiritual recognition of the will of the Lord than at later times in his life.
He may have turned aside from the performance of it, or he may have sought to do
it in the power of man, thinking that because it was right and of God he should
do so. Years after the thing is done (if there was no failure or turning aside)
by God Himself in him. Or, if failure supervened and — turning aside, it was
forced upon him through sorrows and trials and breakings of the flesh, and of
the will of man which had come in to hinder.

You see it, too, in those that have assayed to serve in the gospel or in the
church. The energy of the heart which pushed forth the young man as a servant,
fails, he breaks down, he is coldly received, or the like. If there is gift from
Christ, the thing was right and of God; but the energy was self — unbroken.
Painful lessons followed (than which there are few more so), but if we watch
that man’s after history, if he walk with God, he will come forth brightly in
useful service to the Lord: God doing by him what he assayed to do himself in
vain. In Abraham’s case we will examine the moment when he was enabled to take
home “the sentence of death” to himself in the “sign of circumcision” (Genesis
17:1-27), thus learning the fruitlessness of flesh, and to be cut off from
himself in the things of God.

Nearly fourteen years had passed since the birth of Ishmael, this son of the
bondwoman: this effort of the energy of man to accomplish the thoughts of God.
He was born and was brought up in Abraham’s house for twice seven years. All
seemed outwardly promising for the time; but Abraham had trodden for those
fourteen years a path which was self-devised. These years are passed over as a
blank in his history — utterly unrecognized. And oh, how many histories of God’s
saints will be found a blank by-and-by! The power of man was seeking to further
the things of God. But this he must discover, in one short interview, in which
his whole path and his Ishmael are totally ignored; not by words, indeed, but by
the simple revelation of God Himself — the almighty One who was all-powerful, in
contrast with quasi -power in man.

Let me ask my reader has he ever known cases analogous to this? Has he not seen
with an enlightened eye lives of apparent usefulness — and this, too, in ways
supposed to be of God — blown upon in one moment by some truth flashing upon the
soul, which judges all? How multitudinous are the paths that would fade into a
mist as one flash of divine light is shed upon them! Yea, even those which are
based upon the word of God and His known will in the truth, not to speak of the
ten thousand paths and ways of supposed service, which have no warrant from it
at all: the former done in the strength of man and worthless, the latter I care
not to analyze, so worthless are they. And when Abram was ninety years old and
nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God
[El-Shaddai] walk before me, and be thou perfect. And Abram fell on his face,
and God talked with him” (Genesis 17:1-27). What a moment was this! To discover
in that interview that he had never yet touched the pathway of the Lord. He had
walked by the light of his own eyes. All was worthless, all was ignored, he has
but to listen as he lay on his face before God, until the whole unfolding of
God’s mind, thus far known, is heard, and the previous fourteen years is treated
as a blank in his history. One sentence alone passes his lips in this whole
chapter, one cry from his heart is heard. It is the struggle of one who now
feels that nothing of God was in those many years of hope, that he must now step
off this self-devised pathway on to the path of God, leaving all behind as a
mistake, as the effort of man to accomplish the things of God.

What a moment for the soul! Have there not been such-like soul-awakenings in
God’s saints at times? Moments when all was fading away which had delighted the
eye, and the heart’s cry was heard: “O that Ishmael may live before thee!” Must
all then go? Is there not some remnant of former days which may be spared? Has
all been a mistake? Is all to be thus ignored? God may pity the soul in this —
though not His purpose. He may say, as it were: “And as for Ishmael, I have
heard thee.” And the link may be spared and blessed in an earthly way, but it
never enters the path which is divine: “But my covenant will I establish with
Isaac.”

Seven times do we now hear the utterances of God in His unchallengeable “I will”
(Genesis 17:2-8). Those purposes are announced, into which man could never enter
as co-worker with God. “I will make my covenant with thee”; and I “will multiply
thee exceedingly”; “I will make thee exceeding fruitful”; “I will make nations
of thee”; “I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and to thy seed
after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto
thee, and to thy seed after thee” (cp. Galatians 3:29; Php 4:19). “I will give
unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land whereon thou art a stranger”;
and “I will be their God.”

Abram has but to hearken, to receive, to hear, all that God Himself would do by
him. Abram’s strength was but that of man, it could but mar the power of God in
resurrection. He must accept the seal of this new creation, he must take “the
sentence of death” home to his own soul in the “sign of circumcision” — the seal
of the righteousness that he had by faith, being yet uncircumcised.

Mark the significance of all this, expressed in the changing of his name at this
time. Rather, let us say, in God imparting to that name the breathings of His
own. Instead of Abram he would now be Abraham. The breathings of the name of
Jehovah, the self-existing God, are imparted to his; he is made, as it were, a
“partaker of the divine nature” (Cp. 2 Peter 1:2). He belongs to the new
creation of God. * {*See also how Oshea is turned to Jehoshua, and many other
cases in the word (Numbers 13:1-33).} This was the sign of “the sentence of
death” upon man, and the entrance into that where “all things are of God” — of
which circumcision was the seal. The work of God would be done in the vessel by
Himself alone. The human vessel must bow. It must take this sentence home to
itself. In spirit it must enter into the new creation with a new and
divinely-breathed name. The vessel must be will-less and powerless in His hand.
But more: “The power of his resurrection” must be known, for it alone can avail
in a dead man, to lift him out of the dead and into this new sphere. (“He
considered 28 his own body now dead.” “He hesitated not at the promise of God
through unbelief.”) This power now comes in: “As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt
not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.” She, too, must be made
partaker, as it were, of the divine nature; she must, like him, have the
breathing of God’s name put to hers, that she may in figure be of the new
creation also. “And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I
will bless her and she shall be the mother of nations, kings and people shall be
of her.” Again he falls on his face — now as Abraham. He “found strength in
faith, giving glory to God.” Abram once had fallen on his face and listened; but
now Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child
be born unto him that is an hundred years old: and shall Sarah that is ninety
years old bear? . . . And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed;
and thou shalt call his name Isaac: 29 and I will establish my covenant with him
for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.” This was “the power
of resurrection,” now the resource of God. Human strength and human hopes were
dead in Abraham and Sarah, the “sentence of death” taken home to their souls,
that they “should not trust in themselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.”
“Against hope he believed with hope, that he might become the father of many
nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be” (Romans
4:18). But there was more taught here. God had said, at the moment when he first
appeared to Abraham as the Almighty, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.”

Hitherto the Lord had been his shield and his exceeding great reward. His
guardian care had marked his path — his shelter from his foes. Now more was
asked: God’s new name would bring fresh responsibility. El-Shaddai had been
revealed Himself, who could do all things, who only needed an empty vessel under
“the sentence of death,” to use. “Perfection” must now be found. This was the
answer of the soul to the revelation of God, the soul responding, as face
answers to face in the glass, to all that God is — as thus known.

We have then:

Circumcision first brought in, the sign of the sentence of death and the cutting
off from ourselves; the power of His resurrection follows, as that of God, who
would work in a dead man; we have perfection required in those in whom the other
two are seen.

Thus were the roots of these things learned in practical power by the vessel of
promise, afterwards to be known in their spiritual significance in New Testament
times. The omission of the “not” here is very probably right, and in keeping
with the subject. Which signifies “laughter” or “joy”: he makes melody in his
heart to the Lord; realizing this heavenly joy: this “eighth day” of creation
power. When therefore we turn to Paul in Philippians we find all there. The
vessel is there in its moral beauty and perfection, as far as this can be
reached below. The workings of flesh are not there, nor sin, nor the weakness of
man, as a vessel of mercy upon the potter’s wheel. No flaw is here. The vessel
is not now marred in the hands of the potter. True, it is not yet transformed
into the potter’s image in glory; but it is attenuated to its utmost on earth,
rendered as transparent as it may yet be; and the “Treasure” shining out in
every phase. Christ is motive, Christ is energy, Christ is end. The potter is
now seen in the vessel.

We find those great principles which we saw in Genesis 17:1-27, in Php 3:1-21.
Paul has gone through the prefatory work. Four years in prison, chained to a
soldier, had wrought its work. The soul had been stripped of all its “desirable
things.” The labor for Christ which was his life was now arrested, as to outward
warfare in the work. Brighter lessons were in store: lessons for the church of
God, in all ages of her sojourn here on earth, were to come forth from the Roman
capitol, where he wore his chain.

He takes the conscious place — not now merely as learning the fact of death to
all the energy of man, as Abraham — but of accepting it. “We are”; said he, “the
circumcision.” The painful lesson is past. Christ had passed away from the
earth: He had died to the scene, and died out of it, to rise into that new
place, now fully taken, as “the beginning of the creation of God.” Head of that
new order of things, associated with Him, “circumcised with the circumcision not
made with hands,” we partake of all that into which He as Man had entered. We
are circumcised in Him, as Sarah was in Abraham. “We are the circumcision, who
worship God by the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence
in the flesh: ” the “sentence of death” to all that savored of the energy of
man, even at his best, and the flesh only to be ignored, even in its best phase.

There all that savored of this, all that of which man could boast, is cast
aside. Of all men he had that of which he could boast as to the flesh. Not the
“flesh of sin” here, but that which looked fair in man’s eyes, and was the best
fruit that man could produce, as such, in divine things. By birth, by religious
zeal, by righteousness of the law which applied to man in the flesh, all was
surrendered in that moral death, of which circumcision was the seal. But more: “
all things” were counted loss, they but stood in the way of that which was “all
his desire.” “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.” Here was
another of those striking points found in Genesis 17:1-27 : the desire in gazing
at Christ in glory, to know Him there — gone up to that scene where all His
glory shone. And here on earth, as a vessel indeed, will-less, powerless, empty,
finding that power which raised up the Son, out of every sorrow and grief by the
way — and by which, at last, He rose from the grave — working in the vessel,
wielding it and using it for the purposes which alone were His, to work, while
here, for His glory.

How did this power work in Paul? Look at the man who above all on earth was
filled with such mighty energy in the service of Christ in the gospel: shut up
as a malefactor in prison, suspected by his brethren, shunned by all for a time,
cut off from the work which was more than life to him. His great heart had
swelled with the hope that, as he had evangelized the eastern world — “From
Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum,” he had fully preached “the gospel of
Christ” — he would now go forth to the western world, as far as Spain — carrying
the word of life.

Caught in the toils of a prison, the great vessel learns, after four years of
exercise, to say: “I would have you understand, brethren, that the things which
happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.” God
was doing greater things when the great vessel to whom the gospel of the glory
of Christ was committed was set aside from its active work. Most of the brethren
were waxing confident now (as in quietness of heart, his case in God’s hands, he
waited on His vindicating love), his bonds were known to be for Christ; others
were the more bold to speak the word without fear. But God was making the vessel
for His use. It was on the potter’s wheel. There were greater things to be done
by him than his heart had devised. It was a light thing to evangelize the
western world compared with the writing of those epistles which came from his
prison in Rome, to instruct and comfort and rejoice the hearts of millions of
His saints for well-nigh two thousand years. To this end “the power of his
resurrection” alone could work. And if the fellowship of his sufferings” reached
even to “conformity to his death,” it was but the path by which he would arrive
at “the resurrection out from among the dead,” and thus be more like Christ.

There again we have “perfection” seen in the vessel, as far as such can be
reached while here on earth. This “perfection “ is always dispensational in its
character, and answering to the revelation of Himself which God has been pleased
to make from time to time: as Almighty, or Jehovah, or the Father of the Lord
Jesus Christ.* {*Compare Genesis 17:1; Deuteronomy 18:8; Matthew 5:48; Php
3:15.} It is important for us that we understand the different ways that
perfection is looked at in the word.

We have positional perfection, as we may term it, which every soul that belongs
to Christ possesses in Him; the standing of the saint as set free under the
gospel now set forth. This positional perfection is in contrast with what a Jew
under the law could possess; because “the law made nothing perfect.” Under the
gospel~the conscience of the believer is perfected by the precious blood of
Christ. When “once purged,” no charge of sin can ever press itself on the
worshiper. By one offering, Christ has perfected continuously the sanctified
ones, that is, those separated to God by His blood. But more: he has died with
Christ out of the old status, which he possessed as a child of Adam. He is risen
with Christ into a new sphere, too; he has been quickened together with Christ,
and raised up together (Jew and Gentile) and seated in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. Every soul who is in union with Christ stands in this “perfection” before
God. I do not speak here of their realization of such. Paul labored that he
might present every man perfect in Christ (Colossians 1:28). In this there is no
intrinsic perfection in the saint, it is his dispensational standing. He is
complete in Him who is the Head of all principality and power. He is circumcised
(positionally) in Him by the passing out, in the circumcision of Christ, into
that new order of things, that eighth day, to which circumcision belonged. (It
must be performed in the type on that eighth day.)

There is a moral perfection which is attainable here below on earth, to which
Paul exhorts and in which he walked himself (Php 3:15). This is what the Spirit
of God wrought in the vessel, in the condition found in Philippians producing in
it a reflex and an answer here to all that Christ on high is with the hope
filling the soul, to be conformed to Him in His path on earth, reaching even to
the grave, and out of which the power of His resurrection would raise it if it
reach “conformity unto his death.” “All things” were dross and dung in see king
for such perfection; but it was attained by the setting aside of all that man
could glory in, and it was wrought by the Holy Ghost in an empty, will-less
vessel, hastening on to the goal. “Let as many as be perfect, be thus minded: ”
attainable, indeed, by all, though perhaps few really attain it, for want of a
single eye. But “perfection” itself could never be reached on earth. True, the
positional perfection, all who are Christ’s possess in Him. Moral perfection
would be attained by the true-hearted saint who yielded himself to the workings
of the Spirit of God. But the end would not be reached while here. Nor until the
mighty power of Christ would be put forth, and “mortality would be swallowed up
of life,” and He would change our vile body that it might be fashioned like unto
His glorious body, according to the power whereby He is able to subdue all
things unto Himself. Of this Paul would say: “Not that I had already attained,
either were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that
for which I am also apprehended of Christ.”

Thus the father of all that believe learned his threefold lesson experimentally
in his path of old; and the leader of the people of God, in New Testament days,
learned it in his. He was a man of like passions as ourselves, but a man with a
single eye, a single motive, an undivided heart. He waits on high with Christ
for the fruit of all that the potter’s hand had skillfully wrought, not a flaw
remains, no more crushings are now required. He enjoys the “far better” thing
meanwhile. By-and-by “This corruptible shall have put on incorruption; and this
mortal shall have put on immortality,” and the Master’s handiwork will shine in
him, as a “vessel of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.”

He will have then received the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge will give him at that day, and not to him only, but unto all
those that love His appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).


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  CHAPTER 12: 02.00. LESSONS FOR THE WILDERNESS
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Lessons for the Wilderness Thoughts on some typical incidents of Israel’s
deliverance and pilgrimage.

F. G. Patterson.

“In the desert God will teach thee What the God that thou hast found:

Patient, gracious, powerful, holy, All His grace shall there abound.”

Table of Contents Chapter 1: Initiatory Lessons Chapter 2: Initiatory Lessons
(2) Chapter 3: Preparation for the Journey Chapter 4: Preparation for the
Journey (2) Chapter 5: The Threefold Chord of Praise Chapter 6: The First Three
Days in the Wilderness, etc.

Chapter 7: “By-paths” and “Straight Paths”

Chapter 8: The First Three Days on the Journey: Numbers 10, 21.

Chapter 9: The Two Trumpets of Silver Chapter 10: The Trumpet And The Rod
Chapter 11: The Water of Purification Chapter 12: Nazariteship Amongst The
Uncircumcised: Judges 13 Chapter 13: Nazariteship Amongst The Uncircumcised:
Judges 13 (2) Chapter 14: “Greater Works”

Chapter 15: The “Ribband of Blue”

Preface The thoughts in these papers were written during a long sea voyage from
Great Britain to Melbourne, in 1882. The writer trusts that the Lord may use
them for edification and blessing, and for His own glory. Wellington, N.Z.
April, 1883.


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  CHAPTER 13: 02.01.     INITIATORY LESSONS
========================================================================

Chapter 1 Initiatory Lessons In the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (1
Corinthians 10:11), we are told that the incidents which happened to God’s
earthly people, Israel, contain special lessons for our own souls. “They were
written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” “The
things which happened to them, happened for types,” and are used for us to that
end. As Christians, therefore, we come in under the final dealings of God before
the Lord comes; and judgment will then take its course. The Lord stays that
solemn day of reckoning with the world, whilst gathering out of it a people for
His name. When that action of His Grace closes, the day of the judgment of the
Quick has arrived, by which He will cleanse His kingdom from all things that
offend and from them that do iniquity, and will bring in that day of blessing,
long looked for in the Millennial earth.

Before touching upon the Lessons for the Wilderness presented in these “things
which happened to them,” I desire to say a little on the preparation of the
People and their deliverance, which placed them in the Wilderness as a place of
trial and exercise of heart, for Forty Years. I desire to do so, because there
are so many of God’s people who do not stand in the consciousness of His full
salvation. There is a feeling at times in their souls, which they would hardly
like to admit or to analyze, that all is not well. It may be an undefined sense
of hesitancy when they challenge their own hearts, or are challenged by others;
a feeling which they cannot well account for nor define, but still there it is.
The truth is, they have never reached the fact of their own hopeless ruin and
guilt in the sight of God. Were this so, we would not find such thoughts
intruding at all. The heart turns back upon its experiences, which haunt it even
in its brightest moments, and they feel that all is not as it should be.

I am sure there is in such a state of soul, the want of being candid and open
with God (at the bottom). There is an effort to conceal or to gloss over these
moments; to forget them, until they make their unpleasant companionship
painfully felt. What I mean by being candid and open with God is this: that we
have never fallen down before Him and poured into His ear the truth of these
unhappy experiences which are shut up in our hearts, and sought His grace to
remove them forever. Have you, my reader, ever gone, in the secret solemn
moments of intercourse with God, and told out to Him this marring hindrance to
your full peace and joy? Possibly you may never have done so — and yet perhaps
you hope it will come right some day, and thus the harassing thought has never
been brought out between your soul and God. No wonder, then, you are not free.
Do not expect, with such fancied concealment on your part, that God will pass
such over, and give you to enjoy His grace all the same. Of course I am well
aware He knows all about it. So does the parent who is aware that his child
carries an unhappy secret in his heart. But he longs, too, that the child should
open his heart and bring forth the secret (which the parent knows), and talk to
him about it in the confidence which love inspires, for love truly known always
inspires confidence. It is impossible to love a person truly without confiding
in him. But to return. What a wonderful thing it is to have self, with its sins
and backslidings, its fear of death as its wages, and of God’s judgment at its
end, all cleared away; and God, in His perfect love, taking possession of the
whole vision of the soul! How free then is the spirit of the child of God. What
rest then does he enjoy. How the Spirit of God witnesses with his spirit that he
is a child. There is no painful questioning whether or not such is the case; but
there is the freely flowing testimony of God’s Spirit with his that this is a
clearly-settled thing. All is free and bright between him and God. His will is
broken: he submits himself; he drops into the arms of love, and rests in the
grace that saves. He worships and adores without effort and without check; and
his heart goes out freely without a thought to God of self. The Lord is before
his soul; both in what He has done, and what He is.

Let us now look back somewhat on the things which happened to Israel.

They were slaves in Egypt. Here was both their condition and position before Him
— in bondage as to the one, and on the other in the territory where Satan ruled.
We may ask the question here, What does Egypt signify? Just as Syria, and the
Wilderness, and Canaan, have their spiritual and typical meaning, so has Egypt.
It is not man in nature as God made him; nor is it man in nature fallen (that is
Syria). Egypt is man in nature, fallen, and captive under the power of the
enemy. Hence an Israelite redeemed and in the possession of the land, coming to
worship the Lord with his basket of firstfruits, should own this as his former
state and say, “A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into
Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty,
and populous: and the Egyptians evil entreated us, and afflicted us, and laid
upon us hard bondage: and when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the
Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our
oppression: and the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt, with a mighty hand and
an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 26:5-7). Man in nature had fallen, and he was
under the enemy’s power; God alone could now deliver. But first He must show
that He had interposed. Israel groaned by reason of her taskmasters; but
Israel’s groans were groans of misery, not cries to Him who alone could help.
For when his Deliverer came, Israel would have none of Him: Moses must be
refused. Israel must reject her Saviour, as well as Egypt refuse his claim. When
this was so, and that “boasting could be excluded” in all — then and then only
will He interfere. We never really know the Gospel, until we see that we have
rejected Christ! This is the state of things in Exodus 2:1-25. God’s Deliverer
appears now for the first time. Affection for His people was the spring that
moved his soul! “It came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of
Israel” (Acts 7:23). “He spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his
brethren,” and he “slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.” Again he went
out the second day, and seeing two men of the Hebrews striving together, he said
unto him that did the wrong, “Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?” “But he that
did his neighbour wrong, thrust him away, saying, ‘who made thee a ruler and a
judge over us?’ For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God
by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not.” Then Moses fled away:
the figure of a rejected Christ.

There is now another thing which must be established ere we learn fully the
Gospel. We have had in Exodus 2:1-25 a rejected Christ in figure, now in Exodus
3:1-22 we have the “strange sight” which Moses turned aside to see, at the
back-side of the desert, after his forty years. “The Angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and
behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses
said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt!

Let us repeat this expression of wonder — “Why the bush is not burnt!” Let us
put it in another form, if we may; and say, “How can God, who is a ‘consuming
fire,’ burning up all that is contrary to His Holy Being, reveal Himself without
consuming?” Here was the grand question, Can He “who is of purer eyes than to
behold iniquity,” have to do with man otherwise than by judgment in
righteousness? Yes; most surely He can and has done so; He has revealed Himself
in Christ! And Grace now reigns, through righteousness unto eternal life by
Jesus Christ our Lord! Such is the gospel. The very foundation of all is this
imperishable basis. And mark well, beloved reader, it is as the God of
resurrection, He thus interferes (Luke 20:37). This great fact comes out plainly
in the Lord’s reply to the Sadducees. He says, “Now that the dead are raised,
even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, and
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

Here, then, we find a marvellous group of divine principles clustering together,
for the spiritual mind. A rejected Christ, and the God of Resurrection,
revealing Himself through Grace in righteousness, as the foundation of the
Gospel! Who could have conceived such a group of truths, here in type presented
to us, but One who is divine and whose Book is divine? But when we turn to the
New Testament — to the Antitype, what wonders there await us! In the Epistle to
the Romans — where the soul’s great questions are settled for each one
individually, we find the deep foundations laid in these very truths. That
Epistle begins with a rejected Christ. We read of “The gospel of God . . .
concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, (which was made of the seed of David
according to the flesh); and declared the Son of God with power, according to
the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead” (Romans 1:1-4). Here we
have the Heir of David according to the flesh, cast out and slain; but raised
from the dead by the God of resurrection. And when the apostle would tell us of
the great work which flows from this, he adds, “For I am not ashamed of the
gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that
believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is God’s
righteousness revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall
live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17). Here then we have the group of divine reality —
which we meet in type in the book which first unfolds redemption.

Surely this must be so: God’s principles, whether taught us by types or facts,
are always the same. How much more precious, of course, are the facts — it is on
these we rest. The types edify and confirm the soul which is settled on the
never-changing facts. It is there our souls may rest assuredly. We are not
called to rest on promises as to these things. The truths of the Gospel are
facts — divinely attested and satisfying to God and to him who rests there.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 14: 02.02.     INITIATORY LESSONS
========================================================================

Chapter 2 Initiatory Lessons When we come, further on in this book, to examine
the details from the night of the Passover until the morning of praise (Exodus
12:1-51, Exodus 13:1-22, Exodus 14:1-31, Exodus 15:1-27), we find that all are
based upon these opening thoughts of Exodus. The details give us the varied
features of the great facts of redemption, as learned by each soul and entered
upon by faith. They are faith’s lessons, laying hold of what the Gospel is. The
former great truths are really the work for us; and the learning of such is the
work in us, by which we enter on and realize all that God has done in Christ.

Next comes the first great initiatory lesson for the soul, with whom God is
about to deal. (Exodus 3:14) When Moses would come to Israel, and they would say
to him, “What is his name?” “What (said he) shall I say unto them?” “And God
said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the
children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” Now, here is the first thing
for the soul’s acceptance — God is! He is not afar off, but near. One out of
whose presence we cannot escape. One in whose presence we ever are. Do we act on
this as if we believed it, my friends? Does the poor fool who says in his heart,
“There is no God,” believe this? How do his actions speak in reply? Just in this
solemn way — that they are performed without reference to God at all! Who could
sin with impunity, consciously in the presence of God? Not even the most
depraved. He dare not commit his iniquity there. But his life is formed upon the
principle that there is no God. He does not say this with his lips; but his
heart says it. He would love to think that his desire is true, and that when he
died he would be as the beasts that perish and cease to be.

Here I would pause on that solemn thought — the heart of man! “The Law” says of
it, “Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart, is only evil continually”
(Genesis 6:5). The “Prophets” testify, “The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). The “Psalms” bear
witness that “The fool saith in his heart, there is no God” (Psalms 14:1). The
“Gospels” — in the words of Jesus, record that “Out of the heart of men proceed
evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness”
(Mark 7:21-22). And the “Epistles” tell us the same, in words of even deeper
import. “The Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding
darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in
them because of the blindness of their hearts” (Ephesians 4:17-18). It is the
one universal testimony of every section of the Word of God. But as the “heart”
of man is the spring of evil, so it is the channel for good; and when cleansed
of God it is where “Christ may dwell.” “Out of its abundance,” for good or evil,
it “speaks.” “With the heart man believes unto righteousness;” it is “purified
by faith”; the “pure in heart see God.” It “cleaves with purpose of heart to the
Lord.” God’s love is shed abroad in it. It is a good thing that it be
established in grace. When God said, “Seek ye my face,” my heart said, “Thy face
Lord will I seek.” God would say too, “My son give me thine heart.” But we must
return to this initial lesson of the soul. God reveals Himself as the great “I
AM,” the self-existing God, beside whom there is none. Let us act according to
this revelation, and act always so as to prove that we believe it. There is none
who can say, “I am that I am” but He. Where is the man who is not double-minded
at times? Does he tell me all that is in his heart? Nay; not even to his best
beloved on earth! Paul as a saved one can say “by the grace of God I am what I
am.” I am what grace has made me. But even he cannot say “I am that I am.”

Blessed be God there is a Man of whom God hath said this, even when under the
very wrath of the Cross. But He stands in this alone, as in all else beside.
When He cried, out of those mighty depths, “He weakened my strength in the way;
He shortened my days; I said, O God, take me not away in the midst of my days,”
what was the reply? It was then the glory of the self-existing One is expressed;
“Thy years are throughout all generations. Of old thou hast laid the foundation
of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but
thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; and as a
vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art (see
Hebrew and Greek) and thy years shall have no end” (Psalms 102:23-27 and Hebrews
1:10-13).

What then must be the first expression of the soul which has to do with God? It
exclaims “God is!” “He that cometh unto God must believe that he is, and that he
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). God says of
Himself, “I am.” He says to Jesus, as Man in weakness, “Thou Art”; and the
believing soul bows in faith saying, “He is!” This is the grammar of divine
realities!

We see the result of this in Exodus 4:29-31. We find in those verses a lovely
expression of the sinner’s true attitude when first he has to do with God as a
Saviour; when he has been seized with the reality of God before his conscience.
He has not yet learned His work of Grace, nor has he experienced aught but the
great fact that God has interfered. “God has visited the children of Israel.”
“He has heard them; He has looked on their affliction.” What deep soul trouble
might be saved were those two points grasped with a firm and mighty tenacity!
“God is”; and “God has visited us, and looked upon our affliction!”

What now is the soul’s true response to these things? “Then they bowed their
heads and worshipped!” This was faith’s obedience. It was not obedience to a
claim from Him. It was not obedience to the law. It was not the obedience of
love. Obedience to the law owns God’s authority. The obedience of love is the
soul’s service of gratitude to Him who loves us. The former may honour His
authority; the obedience of love may express the devotedness of a heart to Him.
But nothing can honour God like the “obedience of faith.” It accepts the fact
that He has revealed Himself as a Saviour

What a pity that this lovely expression should be obscured by a weak rendering
in that most excellent of all translations, our honoured and beloved English
Bible. If we refer to the two passages where only it is found (viz. Romans 1:5;
Romans 16:26), we see how much we lose in not having the true thought given us.
After unfolding the substance of the Gospel, as in the person of Christ, the
apostle turns (Romans 1:5) to his own connection with it: “By whom (he says) we
have received grace and apostleship for obedience of faith among all nations,
for his name.” The Gospel is thus presented for obedience of faith. The other
passage represents the Church — the mystery as revealed also for obedience of
faith. Paul’s two-fold ministry, as many are aware, is thus presented.

Now this was faith’s obedience in Israel. God had revealed the fact that He had
interfered, and faith accepted this without a “but” or a doubt! This is
refreshing to the soul. Would that we saw such now-a-days. But mark, now, that
if in Israel we see that blessed effect of the news through Aaron, we see the
opposite effect in Pharaoh — this man who solemnly witnesses to the terrible
fact that God hardens those who harden themselves against Him. He shuts them up
to that which they desire. “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go,
that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness” (Exodus 5:1). Be (as it
were) a fellow-worker with God to that blessed end. What then was the reply of
Pharaoh? What the reply of many who hear the testimony of grace, day after day?
“Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” Terrible reply of a soul who has
never stood in aught but unbelief and defiance before Him. “I know not the
Lord.” Thus speaks the pride of man, who hardens his neck against the Blessed
God — “I know Him not.” For these two things God will take vengeance when Christ
returns. He will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels — taking
vengeance on them that know not God; and that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ”; and “who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the
presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be
glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe in that day”
(2 Thessalonians 1:9-10).


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  CHAPTER 15: 02.03.     PREPARATION FOR THE JOURNEY
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Chapter 3 Preparation for the Journey

I pass over the “signs and wonders, in the land of Ham” and the varied
compromises of the enemy. I come now to the moment when all was approaching that
solemn night of judgment: that crisis when all was brought to the final test;
and every pleading voice was hushed in the dark and terrible night of judgment.

Yet God would not strike, without a warning word, even those who had hardened
their necks against Him. Moses conveys this last and final testimony to Pharaoh
in these words — “Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the
midst of Egypt: and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the
first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of
the maid servant that is behind the mill, and all the first-born of beasts. And
there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was
none like it, nor shall be like it any more” etc. (Exodus 11:4-6). The voice was
heard for the last time, but never to be repeated.

O the solemnity of those “last words” of God at times to souls! The like perhaps
had often been spoken in the ears of those who have refused them; but they
little calculated that they never more should be heard. “The day of visitation”
was past, and Egypt knew it not. This was her condemnation. The helm of the ship
was put “up” or “down”; her course was changed, the voice was unheeded, and then
she rushed on to her final doom! In the midst of judgment Pharaoh sought to flee
from the Lord (Exodus 14:25). It was now too late to flee to Him. And the day is
fast approaching when the great men, and the mighty men of the earth will call
upon the rocks to fall upon them and mountains to cover them, as they seek to
flee, with souls guilt-stained forever, from the face of Him that sits upon the
throne, and from the Lamb; because the great day of His wrath was come, and none
would be able to stand (Revelation 6:15-17).

I must not dwell on the chapters which follow. Suffice it that a few words may
be said to lead us to the moment when Israel sang the song of Moses and of
victory! At midnight God would pass through the land in judgment; in the evening
Israel were to slay the Lamb. There are two striking points before us as to the
people here. First: their history would now begin with God; as He said, “This
month shall be unto you the beginning of months.” And next: the blood of the
Lamb, and it alone, could answer His claim. Here we learn in type two things —
so frequently presented to us in the New Testament Scriptures. We find them in
the Lord’s discourse to Nicodemus in John 3:1-36 1. “Ye must be born again,”
said the Lord to this man of the Pharisees; and 2. “The Son of man must be
lifted up.” This new birth would be to him, as to Israel, “The beginning of
months.” All before this was ignored; God would have none of it. And then again,
“Take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood, . . . and strike the lintel
and the two side posts with the blood”; “And when I see the blood, I will pass
over you.” “And the people bowed the head and worshipped” This was not the grand
and solemn rite of the Day of Atonement, when blood was placed on the Throne of
God. It was not a scene where the High Priest alone — standing for God, wrought
that great work for Him, as for the people. Not so; every individual soul whose
house was in that land was active ere this solemn moment of judgment arrived.
Each should slay the Lamb himself; each should personally and individually
appropriate the blood as his only shelter from the sword of the destroyer. Here
it was that each one entered upon and learned and appropriated that precious
work of Christ. The moment the eye of each saw that blood flowing from the slain
Lamb, and his hand grasped the bunch of hyssop — emblem of his soul’s
humiliation — and the truth of his repentance, and sprinkled the blood, he
re-entered his house, sure and certain that he was sheltered with what God had
accepted and that which alone would meet the destroying angel’s sword. God’s
provision and God’s own acceptance of it were the ground of his unchanging
peace. This was faith: faith in God’s provision to meet His own demands: faith
in His certain promise that all was well — all depended on this. Impossible that
God could look on him other than white as snow. Why was this? Because He would
never despise the value of the blood of Christ. The night of terror came, and
there was heard in Egypt “A great cry”; “for there was not an house where there
was not one dead.” The first-born was dead in every unsheltered house: the Lamb
in every house which was sheltered by its blood! Judgment had been passed on
all; the Lamb had borne it for the people of God. Egypt had borne it for
themselves. Each was irrevocable, and its issues never changed.

I desire my reader’s reply to a question. Do you believe that that precious
blood has been shed; has been presented to God by Jesus? Do you believe it has
met His claims? Is this enough for you? Has it met your need? I ask you to
answer this question in conscience before God; and when it is answered, I ask
you to rest on that blessed and eternal fact. Never more can your sins be
imputed to you. Never more can that blood be shed; never more can it be
presented to God. All has been done, once and forever. Its efficacy remains
eternally the same; you are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a
Lamb without blemish and without spot — foreordained indeed before the
foundation of the world, but manifest in these last times for you. By Him we
believe in God Himself: who not only gave His Son for us, but when His Son had
died, He raised Him from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope
might be in God (cf. 1 Peter 1:18-21).

What part had they in all that had gone before? Just but one small link which
was only to their shame. “The bunch of hyssop,” — the humiliation of their soul
— bringing each down to the very spot to which all that work applied, the link
which appropriated all that was provided; the touch of faith of the hem of the
garment of Christ!

Here I would remark, that there may be no misapprehension as to the import of
the type, that in no way does hyssop point to Christ. It is remarkable that
whenever the Lord is presented in Himself alone in type in Scripture, we never
find this symbol mentioned. See the early chapters of Leviticus, where all those
varied offerings of sweet savour, and for sin and trespass, are passed in
review; no mention of hyssop is found there. But the moment we find an offering
where the sinner is seen appropriating it, or being placed under its value, to
cleanse or to restore — there we find the hyssop. We have noted this when Israel
appropriated the Paschal blood. We see it when the leper is cleansed, (Leviticus
14:1-57) when the unclean is restored (Numbers 19:1-22). We learn it in the
words of a soul in the depths of humiliation about its sin in Psalms 51:1-19,
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,” but never when Christ in His
perfect blessedness appears.


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  CHAPTER 16: 02.04.     PREPARATION FOR THE JOURNEY
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Chapter 4 Preparation for the Journey

However, Israel must not only be sheltered in the place of judgment; but he must
be redeemed out of the place of death. Without this last all was incomplete;
until this was done they still stood in the old place of bondage, and there was
no song of praise. All was silence on the Paschal night; “every mouth was
stopped and all the world guilty before God.” There was no communion with the
Judge. They were delivered from His claims on that solemn night. They must now
be delivered from the claims of the Enemy; they must therefore be removed from
the place of death where Satan’s power held sway. They must be delivered from
the fear of death, through which they had been all their lifetime held in
bondage (Hebrews 2:1-18). The “midnight” of judgment had now passed, but another
“night” of anguish must be endured; and the “morning watch” must come, when the
Lord would look out unto the host of the Egyptians to trouble them; and the sea
must return to his strength, as the “morning” itself appeared. Israel could then
sing songs of deliverance because they were saved that day out of the hand of
their enemies! (Cf. Exodus 14:20; Exodus 14:24; Exodus 14:27; Exodus 14:30.)

How many souls (and thank God that there are so many), who know this shelter
from judgment to come, but have never realized, nor even heard of, the full
results of redemption. They have never in conscience left the old status in
which they stood as sinners. How many there are who could say, “I am a poor
sinner, and the blood of the cross is my only hope”; who could not say, “I am a
poor saint, but the judgment seat of Christ is the resting place of my soul.”

Now here it is where souls are often feeble indeed. They have no soul
deliverance at all. Israel has started with their kneading troughs on their
shoulders, and their unleavened dough; but they have not left the land of
slavery. They come to Pi-Hahiroth (“the gate of liberty”) only to find it a
place of anguish and fear.

Oh, my beloved reader, hearken to one who knows it well, in my dwelling somewhat
on that most common state of soul amongst the children of God. I refer to that
want of liberty to avoid the evil and do the good; that want of freedom from
self, which so mars the service, and worship, and joy of souls. How often have
we come together to read Scripture, and we have drifted from some bright and
blessed theme, to what we so well know as the state of soul in Romans 7:1-25.
Why is this? Alas, because souls are not free! I remember once at a reading, one
being asked, in a reply to a question on that chapter, “If he was ever
dissatisfied with himself.” How quickly was the reply given affirmatively to the
question. “What (said the speaker) does that prove?” “Simply that you are not
free – not yet done with self at all.” he had never fully exchanged self for
Christ before God, both to break the bonds of evil under which they writhed; and
to bring forth the fruits of good which they longed to perform.

God would have us find Him both the Deliverer from the thraldom of the one, as
well as the Strength by which alone, as working in our weakness, we can do the
other. God has accepted Christ, both as to what He has done, and what He is, for
what flesh in us has done, and what self is. Here faith rests. But faith is not
always simple; we hearken to the suggestions of our own hearts, and faith gets
clouded and dim. The fact is we have not yet bowed to the great truth that we
are dead unto sin in Christ! Here then, is the difficulty.

There are two great parts in learning the salvation of God. First: that “Christ
died for our sins, according to the Scriptures,” and second: that we have died
to sin in Him. We must learn both in order to be free. A soul exercised and
convicted of its sins and guilt, on hearing the first of these great truths
rejoices in the news and is sensible of forgiveness through His blood. Yet after
a time when it begins to learn the evil of its nature, which is unchanged, it
passes through far deeper exercises in another way, and the struggle begins — a
struggle lasting often for years of bitter anguish; yet never at the same time
losing what it had first learned of the work of Christ. Taught of God in this,
He does not ignore what the soul has received, while leading on to further
light. It was a question of faith in His precious blood which brought
forgiveness for its sins. Now it comes to a question of experience, which always
contradicts in us what God testifies. This is a striking and marked effect of
the Spirit of God working in a soul. The testimony of the Spirit for us, as in
Christ, contradicts that of His testimony in us, as of ourselves. How then are
both testimonies to be reconciled? The soul must be passed through experiences
of the most bitter kind, so as to have its confidence in self broken. It must be
reduced experimentally to that sense of powerless inability to deal with what it
finds within, or to do that which is well pleasing in the sight of God, and to
learn to look to Christ alone and at self no more forever. All this is not
learned in a moment, though Christ’s work is known in bearing our sins. In
short, beloved reader; it is the effort of the soul, which having begun with
Christ for forgiveness of its sins; now seeks to carry on the work, of which it
still finds the need, in its own supposed strength. It would now quell this evil
working of flesh, curb that propensity, reduce into order an evil nature, which
may not show itself outwardly in the form of sins, yet works inwardly to the
deep anguish of the soul, and with all this, it desires and tries to do what
pleases Him. Have we never experienced this? Have we never found this “law of
sin in our members, warring against the law of our mind,” and instead of giving
us liberty, bringing us into captivity to its power? Take an evil temper for
instance. One finds it part of our very being and so wound round our heart that
although it may not show itself to others, it embitters the soul to its
possessor — than which there is hardly any experience less easy to endure. We
think we have power to deal with its workings; we strive, we pray about it, we
cry to God; yet no answer comes. We see that it is not a Christian state that it
should be unconquered there. We are at our wits’ end, and find no issue. What
would not the soul give at such a moment, to break its bonds and be free? Trial
after trial is put forth to snap the cords that bind us; they chafe our souls
and remain unbroken. Effort after effort fails, as each is put forth to produce
the good we long to do, yet we find it not. Service, if we are called upon to
serve, is labour and sorrow. Perhaps we may have to conceal this bitterness in
our own bosom rather than stumble others whom we would serve. Perhaps too our
pride sustains us, and we bear our anguish alone. We put on a fair face to those
around with this canker in our heart untold. The Enemy presses upon us; we find
no escape. What more fitting cry can burst forth from the inmost experience of
our soul than that furnished us by God’s Spirit — “O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death?” {Romans 7:24}.

Alas, having begun with Christ, we then thought to carry on the rest ourselves —
we supposed we had strength — have we not? At last we have come to the point,
when we cease to struggle. Surrender becomes victory, and we are free! We may
not at the moment be able to define how the soul has emerged into this liberty,
but there is holy calm. We have learned one salutary lesson: we never got out of
our bitter anguish, until we found we could not; that Christ would not help us,
but that He can deliver. We ceased to struggle, we dropped our efforts, we
turned away hopelessly from self; our eye was turned to Him Who died and rose;
we learned that we too had died in Him, and we are free! Simple faith could
never have brought us to that condition. Self must be, in experience, broken in
all its pretentiousness; whether as to freeing itself from the bondage of evil,
or as to the strength to work that which is good. It is a saint who learns “that
in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” Surely, one might suppose
that although as sinners there was no good thing, or acceptable, performed by us
— still that as saints there would now be some good found. Perhaps we
unconsciously acted as if this were so. We supposed we now had power. But the
lesson had been forced home by humiliating experience and failure on our souls,
that even as saints no good thing can be found in us, nor ever can be; and that
our efforts to bring forth good are but the denial that this is so.

“Ye are dead,” the Spirit says of us; but Experience says “impossible”; until
forced to learn it thus; and faith bows in liberty to this great deliverance and
reckons itself dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, in Jesus Christ our
Lord” (cf. Romans 6:11, with Colossians 3:3). In our typical chapters in Exodus,
we see all this in some measure (Exodus 12:1-51, Exodus 13:1-22, Exodus 14:1-31,
Exodus 15:1-27), but there is one point which deserves special notice here. You
will remark that before this night of anguish was pressed upon Israel’s soul in
Exodus 14:1-31, “The Pillar of Cloud” came down to be with them and to lead and
guide. This points in type to a most important element in the history of the
soul. It is this — that in the state of soul which we have just commented upon —
the Spirit of God, as a seal, may be there, all the time. Nay, I would press the
fact that it is so. Some would seek to have it that the Spirit could not be
there until deliverance was known; to such I would reply, you are making the
slate of soul of the person — that which God seals with His Spirit, and not the
value of the precious blood of Christ in which it stands. A person passes at
times* through much of the very experiences we have touched upon, and yet has
never lost the sense of what he possessed, before he entered upon them. He knew
his sins were forgiven through the precious blood shedding of Christ, and it was
this — the value of the blood — which God sealed. The oil, or Spirit, was always
put first on the blood, not on the man, when the leper was cleansed (Leviticus
14:17). To this agrees all the teaching of the Word of God, whether of the types
in the OT or the examples or doctrines in the New.

{*I do not say that all do. The case of each varies much. In this God is
Sovereign.} The Paschal blood having been shed in Egypt, and before the people
stood on the sands of the wilderness — God had come down to be with them. This
was in type the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the blood of Christ having prepared
the way, a witness to and seal of its value in which they stood.

I do not further dwell on the experience of Israel in what followed. We have
touched on that of souls in the antitype already. I would only add that Israel
too must taste the bitter waters of death to every hope from themselves. They
too must “stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.”* The Lord must fight
— not they! The Lord must speak — they must hold their peace! They must cease to
struggle, and the Lord must think for them.

{*They must stand still and see the salvation of the Lord after the cloud came
down. Most of FGP’s contemporaries, whose writings we value, regarded sealing
with the Spirit to coincide, typically, with deliverance across the Red Sea.
That was the salvation of the Lord (cp. Ephesians 1:13). That was how the power
of the taskmaster was broken (cp. Romans 7:24; Romans 8:2). Cf. Also 2
Corinthians 3:17. It was on the wilderness side of the Red Sea that the song of
redemption began. See The Salvation of Jehovah, by W. T. Turpin, etc. [RAH]}

How strikingly the contrast is seen between Exodus 14:10 and Psalms 78:53! In
the former we read, “the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore
afraid”! In the latter — “And he led them on safely, so that they feared not;
but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.” In the former we see the weakness of man
exposed, but in the latter the thoughts of God as to the new man revealed! Does
not this lead us to a happy conclusion so often taught us in the word; that God
looks at the soul in whom He is working by His Spirit, as marked out for
acceptance in Christ even at the very moment when He is forced to pass it
through the deepest pressure, that the evil of the flesh may be known? And its
powerlessness to cope with it experimentally learned? How dearly did Joseph love
his brethren! How earnestly did he prepare their hearts to learn this, at the
very moment when he was speaking roughly to them, and putting them in ward!
Believe it, my brethren, there is no exercise of soul through which we pass, but
which has its bright and glorious end, when we shall learn if we do not even
now, what God’s end is. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and ye have seen
the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy (James
5:11). The Red Sea does not in type go further than their death to all their
foes. I look at these chapters, as before noticed, rather as the people learning
experimentally and in detail the value of the work of Christ. Just as in the NT
Christ’s work was done in the Gospels on the cross; while in the Epistles, the
details of its value are taught us. Nought but death in them could deliver from
him that had the power of death, nor lead them out of the place of judgment and
this too by leading them into it! They pass down into death (in figure); and
once there the enemy’s power is stayed. They are not said to “come up” out of
the Red Sea; for this we must have the Jordan. “Going down” and “coming up” are
terms in Scripture, which each apply only to Egypt and Canaan; not to the
Wilderness, nor to the Red Sea.


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  CHAPTER 17: 02.05.     THE THREEFOLD CHORD OF PRAISE
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Chapter 5 The Threefold Chord of Praise

Exodus 15:1-27 is the first song ever sung — which we hear of in the Word of
God! Never had souls stood in the consciousness of God’s salvation before this
time. We search in vain in the Book of Genesis for a record of redemption. We
know, of course, how trustfully the patriarchs walked with God and rested in His
promises; but we do not read of their songs of praise. They walked with Him as
an accepted people walk; and no question was raised of a condition from which it
needed the power of redemption to deliver. The first song bursts forth from the
heart of Israel, with its threefold note of praise. We may expect to find
therefore in this song, which inaugurated these dealings of the Lord in
salvation, God’s true thoughts of the order of praise.

Exodus 19:4, gives us the comment of God on this chapter and on the great work
celebrated there. We read, “I bare you on eagles’ wings and brought you unto
myself.” This is the foremost thought in the salvation of God. It was not that
eventually they might not learn that that same work had brought them to their
longed-for Land. Nay: it was the basis of every blessing onward to the end. But
we would not for a moment admit that a soul who had realized its being in
“heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” was more fully brought to God than at the
shores of the Red Sea. Of course it is quite true that there was much to learn
and to realize, and there might not be that full sense of a heavenly portion in
one who had sung this song, as in one who had traversed the Land and had taken
possession of all upon which the sole of his foot had trodden. But I would have
my reader be careful not to weaken the grand fact that in what is typified by
the Red Sea for us, we are brought to God Himself! This is seen most clearly in
the book of the wilderness, which is so sweetly full of grace — the First
Epistle of Peter. There we are in the wilderness most distinctly, for he does
not lead us to our “heavenly places in Christ.” In 1 Peter 3:18, we read, “For
Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might
bring us to God.” Not, remark, to Canaan, or heavenly places, but “to God.” This
exactly fits the expression in the antitype, “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and
brought you unto myself.” This is just as it should be. We may and doubtless
shall, get all that follows, but the first great thing is this: “we are brought
to God.” Nothing can add to this for us.

There is a lovely allusion to this in Deuteronomy 32:11; and to the figures of
what the “eagles’ wings” signify. Indeed the gospel of the glory speaks in this
figure with great significance. In this grand and touching passage we read, “As
an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her
wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him
(Israel), and there was no strange God with him!” The Lord asked Job (Job
39:27-29), “Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?
She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong
place. From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.” On the
crag of rock, inaccessible to man, she builds her nest, and rears her young. The
time arrives when she would teach her young ones to gaze upon the sun, and soar
from the rock themselves. Then she “stirreth up her nest and fluttereth over her
young.” The young ones must dare the space mid-air below, and she flings them
off the rock! They flutter and sink down toward the abodes of man. They near the
fowler’s arrow. She swoops in her might of wing from the height above, she
“spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings.” The
fluttering eaglet rests its pinions on the tried strength of the parent wing;
the fowler’s dart can reach the eaglet’s life only through her own. Thus she
teaches them to soar, and rise and gaze, as none other can but she,* on the
bright and glorious sun. Thus we are taught as “the way of an eagle in the air”
(Proverbs 30:19) to walk above the world and to gaze on Christ on high, sure
that as He lives we live also. We learn too that “They that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall
run and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).

{*It is said that if any of the young cannot through weakness of vision gaze
upon the sun, they are rejected from the eagles’ brood.} But in this first song
of praise; we find three distinct notes of harmony. How frequently these are
reversed. Yea, even the last note taken up, and the rest forgotten! This should
not be. When at the first, certain things come before us in Scripture, such
initiatory references give us the roots of those varied branches and
developments that follow. Some would suppose that the first thing for which we
should praise is our own blessing. Gratitude for the love that has so fully
saved — should cause the saved one’s heart to praise.

Let us rather see in what order these notes of thanksgiving flow from Israel’s
heart that day.

1. The first is — “the Lord”! So much is self forgotten that the Deliverer alone
is seen! This is as it should be. “Sing ye unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed
gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea! The Lord is my
strength and my song, and He has become my salvation; He is my God, and I will
prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a
man of war; the Lord is his name!” (Exodus 15:1-3). How blessed, yet how simple.
How profound, and yet how suited was the first note from the redeemed! How
glorious would be the gatherings of His people, were their souls so free that He
were the burden of their song! Not the mere effort that such should be, but the
full heart telling out His blessedness! Out of its abundance pouring forth its
praise!

2. Next we have the Enemy! Those forces of might whom He had subdued! (Exodus
15:4-12). “Pharaoh and his hosts hath he cast into the sea . . . the depths have
covered them; they sank into the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand hath dashed
in pieces the enemy . . . Thou didst blow with the wind, the sea covered them;
they sank as lead in the mighty waters.”

3. And last of all they turn to their own portion — the blessedness and
inheritance of the people whom the Lord had redeemed (Exodus 15:13-17). “Thou
hast led forth the people whom thou hast redeemed; thou hast guided them in thy
strength into thy holy habitation.” These are the three notes of praise. Here is
the divine order, the manner in which the Spirit of God would lead the full rich
song. But this needs that full salvation should be known. Not merely known as a
fact; but that the soul had entered upon its joyful possession. What else could
suit the heart of God? What else could be the outflow of a heart that had read
His? When John at Patmos heard Jesus named, his heart burst forth in such notes
as these. God gave a voice, by His Spirit, to the hearts of those who knew His
Son. When those words (Revelation 1:4-5), were written in the “Isle called
Patmos,” on that Lord’s day — “Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is,
and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before
his throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first
begotten of the dead, and the prince of kings of the earth, — a person was
before the disciple whom Jesus loved. All was forgotten but One! The heart burst
forth with joyful exultation, “Unto him that loveth us”! Here was the first note
of this song. The Lord was there. The second, like that in Exodus 15:1-27, was
His victory over our Enemies. He “washed us from our sins in His own blood.” The
last note in true divine order was the result for us: He “hath made us kings and
priests unto God and his Father”: just the order of Israel’s song. How could it
be otherwise? If Israel’s threefold note of praise was dictated by the Spirit in
Exodus 15:1-27; their divine order marked out in true and heavenly harmony;
surely His Spirit, in dictating a song for God’s heavenly ones, must ever lead
them in like and kindred notes of praise!


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  CHAPTER 18: 02.06.     THE FIRST THREE DAYS IN THE WILDERNESS, ETC.
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Chapter 6 The First Three Days in the Wilderness, etc.

“So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; and they went out into the Wilderness
of Shur: and they went three days in the Wilderness, and found no water. And
when they came to Marah they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they
were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.”

“And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he
cried unto the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into
the waters, the waters were made sweet.” (Exodus 15:22-25). This passage
presents to us a very distinct and striking moment in the history of the people
of Israel. We have — The First Three Days in the Wilderness, which lead to the
trials of faith. In this we learn what the world is now to us, as a place of
trial and exercise of heart. Let us examine them in detail.

“They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.” One would suppose
that all would now be well. God has wrought for us such a complete and glorious
salvation, that we never should hear of sorrow more: He is about to bless us now
all the way through. O, my reader, how many there are who are disappointed in
this; who have started with the thought that all would now be well. Again we
read, “And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah,
for they were bitter” (Exodus 15:22-23). The song of praise is changed into the
murmurings of Israel!

Now, like other things in Scripture, the first moment, when anything is
presented to us, gives to it its character onwards to the end. This is seen in
these “first three days.” Was the wilderness to be like this all the way? Yes,
reader, never to change! The only question is, “What the bitter waters are for
each day ?” not, “Shall they cease in the step which follows, or in days which
come after, to the end?” Nay; they never cease here below! If the cross has
redeemed our souls, we must take up our own cross, daily, and follow Christ to
the end.

Alas, how many of us rejoice in that which the cross has wrought; rejoice too in
hope of the glory: while we have not yet learned to glory in tribulations also
by the way! How often, instead of tribulation working patience, it works
impatience by our restless wills!

Here then is the picture of our circumstances — we can neither find the water;
nor drink it when it is found. A Christian learns the joy of God’s salvation,
and with bright and fervent step he starts on his journey; and trouble comes.
Bad times set in; losses in business supervene; former friends become cold;
employment is not to be had: his children have no bread. Something seeming to
answer is found. It turns out “bitter water.” Deeper losses follow: or his
employer takes advantage of his dependence to oppress; to use words to him which
would not be permitted, were he not in his power. Perhaps the voice of slander
is spoken in secret. His heart is crushed, yet his bread depended upon his work:
his children and wife need daily food. It is Marah for that soul. But the Lord
showed Moses a tree and he looked upon it, and then He showed him how to use
that tree, to make the waters sweet. How was this? We gaze upon the cross — the
tree: we learn a new use for it now. It had cleansed us from our sins; and even
our sinful selves had there disappeared, in redeeming love. God saw us by it
“dead with Christ.” But now we place that cross by faith in the bitter waters,
and what ensues? We ourselves are gone! The old man that would resent the bitter
circumstance, was crucified there; and we learn to accept our own death to all.
We suppress the resentful reply to the bitter word. We “keep silence when the
wicked is before us,” even though our “sorrow is stirred,” and our heart is “hot
within us.” We bow to the lesson as the training of our God. We look up: we
rejoice; we glory in the sorrow. The tribulation works patience; impatience
vanishes; the waters are made sweet: we learn to hold ourselves as dead; our
evil nature is suppressed, leaving room for the new man alone to act. We had
learned the meaning of “Peace I leave with you”; that peace which Christ had
made; we now learn “My peace I give unto you” — that rest of spirit when
drinking the bitter waters made sweet, and we find rest under the yoke of
Christ: we submit; nay, we glory in those very things — finding our joy in God
alone; the waters become sweet by such divine alchemy.

These are the “trials of faith.” These are the lessons that teach us what the
“world” is. And here I may say that the exercises of soul, which led to the
discovery of our own helplessness, are not confined to those which preceded
deliverance. I believe we have them, in other ways, all through our path. Where
is the exercised soul who has not gone through such experiences as to all
through which we pass? The gaining of our daily bread: the affairs of life:
everything in fact, bears that in it in which we learn our own powerless
condition. Then comes in another power, which is not of man, but which works in
his conscious strengthlessness the “power of his resurrection.” And it is God
who works in us by this, both to will, and to do of His good pleasure.


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  CHAPTER 19: 02.07.     “BY-PATHS AND STRAIGHT PATHS”
========================================================================

Chapter 7 “By-paths and Straight Paths”

We come now to the “First three days of the journey” (Numbers 10:29-33). But we
must turn aside for a moment to look at Israel’s by-paths — and the Straight
Paths by which God would lead. The entire journey in the Wilderness is comprised
in twelve chapters which are found in the middle of the book of Numbers (Numbers
10:1-36, Numbers 11:1-35, Numbers 12:1-16, Numbers 13:1-33, Numbers 14:1-45,
Numbers 15:1-41, Numbers 16:1-50, Numbers 17:1-13, Numbers 18:1-32, Numbers
19:1-22, Numbers 20:1-29, Numbers 21:1-35). The previous chapters give us a
prefatory unfolding of certain things, connected with the arrangement of the
camps of Israel, around God Himself, in their midst, in His Sanctuary. The
remainder of the book giving other instructions, some of which look onwards to
their dwelling in the land. The first step onwards, gave a character to their
whole path. We see in it the effort of flesh to find a path for itself in the
Wilderness apart from that marked out of God. Flesh cannot walk in His paths;
but seeks a bye-path — an easier way, which seems right, and seems to lead in
flesh’s vision, to the same end. It proves but a snare, which must be retraced
to the very spot where it turned aside, there to re-enter God’s true path, which
alone is sure to reach the goal.

Let us examine this carefully. If we remark the order in which the Camp set out
on its onward progress, it was unlike that prescribed in the earlier chapters of
the Book of Numbers, where the Sanctuary was in their midst. Here the Ark went
in advance of the whole, followed by the tribes of “Ephraim,” “Manasseh,” and
“Benjamin.” (Numbers 10:21-24). But immediately the conduct of the people is
described: chapter after chapter of failure is presented to us. They turned
aside quickly out of the way; yet God forsook them not.

Since then nearly three thousand five hundred years have passed away, and the
failure of that moment has never yet been recovered. Still — that is morally the
very spot to which God will eventually lead back their erring hearts before they
are restored in the end. Great and marvellous are Thy ways, O Lord! When we turn
to the eightieth Psalm — one of those heart breathings of His people in the last
days which are hastening on; there we see — in those pleadings of His Spirit in
their exercised souls — that He has that moment of Numbers still before Him. He
ever remembers that scene, for He knows all and never forgets. We read — “Give
ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock: thou that
dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. Before Ephraim, and Benjamin and
Manasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and save us. Turn us again, O God, and
cause thy face to shine: and we shall be saved . . . Return, we beseech thee, O
God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine and
vineyard which thy right hand hath planted . . . Let thy hand be upon the man of
thy right hand, upon the Son of man, whom thou madest strong for thyself. So
will not we go back from this: quicken us, and we will call upon thy name.” The
awakened soul of Israel returns in spirit to that first step of departure from
the Lord. Their hope is alone in Him, and “the Son of man” — the man of God’s
right hand becomes their resource and confidence, in the day when the Lord of
Sabaoth turns their hearts to Himself, and causes His face again to shine upon
them, and they are saved!

O what lessons for the redeemed soul! What warnings are here for us! What
faithfulness to Himself and to us, do we find in all God’s ways! How small a
beginning it was, which led to such mighty results, such mighty unfoldings of
God! Let the way be long or short, the bye-path must be re-traced: the soul must
be brought back in spirit: the first buddings of evil must be laid bare to their
roots, that the soul may judge with God’s vision and wisdom, its path and ways
to their spring. Such is the nature of the “Bema (or Judgment seat) of Christ”
(2 Corinthians 5:10) when this is not done in this life here. But O, how
blessed, that the deepest recesses of our hearts, will all be then laid bare;
our motives and springs will then be known; and these very things that were so
humbling to us while here, will be found, as under the hand of God, to have been
made to work together for good for them who love God, who are the called
according to His purpose. O God, there is none like Thee; and there is no people
like thine, O Lord! When the Camp set forward on its journey, the Ark of God
went before, leaving its ordinary place in their midst. God departs from the
ordered way, in sovereign grace; and instead of being surrounded to be cared for
and guarded by the People, He goes before to care for them. “When he putteth
forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow, for they know
his voice.”

“And they departed from the mount of the Lord, three days journey; and the Ark
of the covenant of the Lord went before them in the three days journey, to
search out a resting place for them” (Numbers 10:33). And this is His care for
us in our wilderness path. He gathers us around Him, going before us by the way,
in the varied expressions of His love for us. At times to “Remember Him” in the
sign of His death; at times for the ministry of His word; at others to wait on
Him in prayer. These are the oases in the wilderness — the green spots of
refreshment where He would dispense His care, and give us to realize His
Father’s love.

How often are our eyes turned upon some human prop at such moments as these. How
little do our hearts look up to Him and to His stores of goodness; we would rest
upon other broken reeds rather than on Him. It is not that we should refuse, by
this, the instruments and channels of His grace. How often does the heart in
seeking to keep from human props, run into the other extreme, and ignore the
very channels by which He would refresh our souls. But such is man, ever seeking
a way of his own devising, rather than the blessed Lord’s ordered way. We see
here how even His servant Moses is at fault, just when His love was being so
brightly expressed in the Ark advancing before the hosts of Israel. It was then
that Moses leaned upon an arm of flesh, a natural help, in seeking to have a
child of the desert — his “father-in-law,” to be for them “instead of eyes.” But
God must now be all for them. The Priests went forward bearing the Ark of God;
wrapped in its coverings. First the Vail, then the Badger Skins, and then the
heavenly blue. They went the three days journey — the Ark going before: the feet
of the priests left their momentary mark in the sand of the desert, and Israel
followed where these footfalls fell; thus were they strangers and pilgrims in
the earth. Many had traversed these paths before; many have done so since that
day; many a child of the desert had trodden the same solitudes; but they were
not strangers and pilgrims there. What constituted the others such, and only
this, was the presence of the Ark of the Lord — the Christ of God. We are only
strangers and pilgrims where we are His, and He is our guide, and we follow Him.
We may fail and stumble by the way, but this is what singles His own out from
the common herd of men, and gives them that character of strangers here, and
pilgrims journeying to a better land!


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  CHAPTER 20: 02.08.     THE FIRST THREE DAYS ON THE JOURNEY
========================================================================

Chapter 8 The First Three Days on the Journey Numbers 11:1-35, Numbers 21:1-35

Now come the First three days of the journey, which lead to the testings of
faith; will Christ, the heavenly manna be enough; will He be all-satisfying to
their heart? Let the reader and the writer of these lines answer the question
for themselves! Do you ever wish for aught that God has not bestowed? Is the
Christ of God all your desire? Alas, alas; how many a heart afar off now from
God, has begun by desiring something which God had not given! People will reply,
if you ask, What is the subject of Numbers 11:1-35? “Tis the story of Israel
loathing the manna.” Nay, my friend, there is no word about “loathing” here.
God’s Spirit will give us the true reply — “we should not lust after evil
things, as they also lusted” (1 Corinthians 10:6). This was the first departure
of the Church of God from Christ. In this we learn something of what the “flesh”
is. It never can be satisfied with Christ, our only portion here. “Our soul is
dried away” is the language of flesh. “There is nothing at all but this manna,
before our eyes.” When first the manna was given “It was like coriander seed,
white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31). But
its ‘virgin’ whiteness is now changed: its colour is not the same to their eyes:
its taste was now “the taste of fresh oil.” All was changed. The footsteps of
Christ marked the way; the Lord (rising up early) spread abroad the dew around
the camp before it stirred — on the dew He spread the manna — the food of God —
Christ incarnate. That was all! They had to gather it carefully before the sun
was up. They might search in vain for a large piece: it could not be found.
Seeking for signal interventions of God often show where we are. Have we
gathered up all the smaller (but there is nothing small with God) interventions
of his hand all the day long? We would then find the immensity of His supply.

Forced to be content, (alas that we should say so) with God’s provision, flesh
again resents; and “the people . . . ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar,
and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it.” Would angels have done so, my
brethren? (For “man did eat angel’s food.”) I answer, No! But this tells its own
terrible tale. Some have sought to evade the solemn lesson here recorded, by
referring to Exodus 16:23 — seeking thereby to prove that this was right in
Israel and of God. Alas, how it betrays our unspiritual state! Things were
allowed and passed over too of the Lord, while Israel was still “under grace,”
which brought down the heavy hand of God in judgment afterwards, when they were
“under law.” Witness even this passage; as well as the giving of the quails in
Exodus 16:1-36 in grace, and in Numbers 11:1-35 when there fell thousands of the
people for asking and receiving them. It speaks to our souls of the present hour
with trumpet tongue. It is the character of the day especially, in which we
live. Christ can never be palatable to flesh, and then man must seek to suit Him
to the flesh in man, by some other mode. Is this never done, reader? What are
all the efforts put forth to make Christ suit the natural mind of man, in the
preaching, and teaching, and books, and efforts of the present day? If some of
us have not got that which appeals to the senses in a religious way, by
architecture, and music, and painting, and the arts of man; there are other
ways. A book must have a choice cover: it must have pictures, and narratives to
thrill the senses, or the like. There must be “services of song,” to entertain
the “camp followers” — the “mixed multitude” which mingle with the host of the
Lord. There must be revival preachings; flags, and music, diagrams and models,
and the manna must be mixed carefully withal, so as to make it palatable to the
flesh! Alas, alas, what a picture surrounds us! What a moment is before us when
they grew weary of God’s bread, and sought to make it palatable to hearts whose
cry was — “we remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely: the cucumbers
and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. But now our soul
is dried away; there is nothing at all, beside this manna before our eyes.”

Look around us on every hand. Look in our midst from gathering to gathering of
God’s saints. Look, each one — into his own heart, and say, is not this the
picture of what we see, and what we know? The Church of God; the saint of God
does not say deliberately — ‘He is not enough.’ But her actions, our own
individual actions, tell the tale. We are like Israel, seduced by our own flesh
and enticed; or by those who have no portion with us; and having hearts ready to
be drawn away. We mingle Christ with the devices of the flesh, so as to make Him
the common food of man. We thus dishonour Him; and unspiritualize our own souls.
Do I speak too strongly in one word which I have written? My brethren, I would
that I were able to portray the scene with the vivid colours of marked reality,
which lies around on every hand today. A scene so strikingly pictured in the
type before us. It is for us, on whom the ends of the ages are met, that such
have been written in the Word of God. O, let those who are true to Him set their
whole being against such things. Do we not know that when a truth of divine
revelation is brought down to the intellect of man, that it is absolutely lost?
It is no more now of God. Often have our hearts been pained to think that some
chapter, some divine truth which it has taken us years to learn from God; and
some one comes, presents it to unspiritual souls, who had never given it a
thought hitherto, by a diagram or a model, or the like, and in half-an-hour it
is picked up in the intellect: the edge of the truth is destroyed; its interest
is gone. It is reduced to the human mind and lost!

Now let us remark the apparently broken manner in which v. 9 is thrown into the
narrative of Numbers 11:1-35. The infidel would say, Ah, yes; it was a scrap of
some other writing then extant, which the collator of these books put in,
mistakenly, here. Thus the most touching beauties of Scripture are lost on such
minds. The very things which cause the soul of the renewed man to bow down with
praise but serve to draw out the evil folly of the infidel heart — so blind in
its enmity, to that priceless gift — the Word of God!

“And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.”
Wondrously lovely are these words. They fall like dew upon the soul, in the
midst of such a scene as the former part of the chapter describes. Man’s heart
is exposed here; but that of the Lord disclosed. Did He withhold His open hand?
Did the six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, hunger next day?
Did the manna cease that night? Has God Himself now changed? This little verse
of two lines is the touching and lovely answer. How blessed to read in it the
character in which He spake of Himself after their wayward hearts had been
exposed. How still more wondrous the word He speaks through the last prophet of
Judah, whose utterance closed the Word of God till Jesus came — “For I am
Jehovah, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob, are not consumed.” (Malachi
3:6). He waited for three thousand five hundred years ere He would say these
words: till man, till Israel, till Judah, till the Remnant brought back from
Babylon, till all, had corrupted their way. Then He tells forth what He ever is
— the resource of faith — the unchanging God! If God would change, nothing would
be secure: there was nothing left on which to rest. It is joy to the soul to
know this: that with Him there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.

Reader, does your soul delight in this, that God never changes? If you know Him,
you will find it the rest of your spirit for ever. Did He change toward us
through the cross? Nay, I say; in Him there is none! Jesus offered to Him that
which met His holy being without changing it, and thus let His changeless nature
free! Free too, to bless according to the dictates of a heart evermore the same.
Surely we too can say, “Because He changes not, therefore we are not consumed.”
It reminds us of Him who revealed Him — even Jesus: Who when the Spirit of God
shows us every previous ordinance and covenant and sacrifice set aside in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, He brings in Christ to replace them all, and when He has
brought Him in He keeps Him in for ever! He would not close the book without
this word, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever” (Hebrews
13:8). Jehovah was that great and fearful, that unutterable name, of old; Jesus
(Jehovah the Saviour) the imperishable name — taken in time, to be borne for
eternity! But at the closing moments of their journey we find another scene,
when the manna is again refused. The true scene when they “loathed” the light
bread from heaven. Some might suppose that this was but a repetition of the
former test, now at the end of the journey; as that had been at the beginning.
To the infidel it is but food for his mocking heart, in his brief hour, at the
expense of the Word of God. To the believer in Christ, it again tells forth
another of those signal lessons of Scripture, at which his heart bows down with
praise to Him, who has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and has
revealed them unto babes. O let us ever be but babes, so that we may be divinely
wise.

How many souls, do you suppose, of manhood’s age were here in this scene, who
had come out of Egypt with Moses? Without taking account of Moses himself who
never entered the land, there were but two! These were “Caleb the son of
Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun!” Of the others we read — “Their carcases
had fallen in the wilderness”; all had died. They had had their test and had
been found wanting: they had said, “would God, we had died in this wilderness,”
and God gave them their desire. They could say (in Numbers 11:1-35) we remember
the flesh-pots of Egypt. Here (in Numbers 21:1-35) there is no trace of such a
word. Then it was the testing of the fathers; here it was that of the children;
such could not say “we remember”; alas they say — “we loathe”! Are there not
those amongst us who had come forth to Christ in these last days, through many
exercises, and with the loss of all things, with earnest hearts refusing the
allurements of the world? We have found somewhat of the desert’s toil; but have
not our hearts often returned to Egypt and longed for those things behind us,
which fed ours nature there? Let my reader answer if this be so. But there has
grown up (as with Israel) a generation among us who had not been then alive to
those things which feed the flesh; many too have been born in the wilderness, to
speak as men; they have been brought up from the first on the manna, the pure
bread of God. They have not purchased the truth with the wrenchings of heart
with which their fathers had. It has cost them nothing, but tacit assent, often
without an exercise of soul.

These are here before us, in Numbers 21:1-35.

They had come to the borders of the sunny land: a few steps more, and they were
in possession of all. They might have gone in with the idea that they were of a
different race with their fathers, who had died: they might have taken credit
for this. Surely, they might have exclaimed, ‘we never loathed the manna,’ ‘we
never longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt.’ ‘We were brought up on manna, on
Christ and His truth alone!’

They had just come up to Kadesh, on the very borders of the Land; but between
them and it, was a small strip which belonged to Edom, through which was “the
Kings highway” (Numbers 20:17, etc.). Edom refused to let them pass that way;
and God ordered that it should be so; for it was not the way for the redeemed to
enter into Canaan. They were then turned back for two years to have their
testing, and to disclose what was concealed within till now. “They journeyed
from Mount Hor, by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom”; they
had to pass down south around Mount Seir — Edom’s possessions; and turn them
northward by the eastern side of Jordan, and pass into the Land through its
dried up waters, after the Ark of God. Death and resurrection is the only
pathway thither. And now the latent truth comes out; now the springs within are
reached: now the children’s hearts have had their test. At once we read of those
who might have thought truly that Christ was enough till now; “our soul loatheth
this light bread.” “Where is boasting now?” “It is excluded.” “Every mouth is
stopped,” my reader. We learn to judge our own hearts and not those of others.
Our spirits are humbled: we become slow to speak; slow to wrath. We distrust
ourselves; we cling the more to Christ. We are dumb; we have to leave it all
with God, and Christ is all to us now and for ever. These “First three days on
the journey,” lead, then, to the testings of faith: they disclose to us what the
“flesh” is in ourselves, as in those also in whom there is nothing else but
“flesh” in the sight of God.


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  CHAPTER 21: 02.09.     THE TWO TRUMPETS OF SILVER
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Chapter 9 The Two Trumpets of Silver

Redemption being complete, the Christian is looked upon in three distinct
conditions, which are never confounded, in the Word of God.

First: he is seen as possessor of eternal life in Christ; “God hath given unto
us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” This gift of God is founded on
the fact, that all his guilt is put away; his sins and iniquities are remembered
no more. Death is no more for him the wages of sin, but the entrance upon his
eternal rest. But with all this he is down here on earth; he has no new place
with God; he has received a nature suited to that new place; but not that place
itself.

Second: he is also brought into heavenly places in the Person of Christ: He hath
“quickened us together with Christ; and hath raised us up together, and made us
sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). In this he has
a new place with God.

Third: there is a journey between these two points. A race to be run: a goal to
be reached; though reached already if he looks at himself as in Christ. He has
so to run meanwhile, that he may attain; to run with patience the race set
before him, looking unto Jesus. He must press towards the mark for the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. To labour to enter into God’s rest. To
hold fast the beginning of his confidence steadfast unto the end (cf. Php
3:1-21; Hebrews 3:1-19, Hebrews 4:1-16, Hebrews 12:1-29; etc.). He has no
present but what is future, in looking at this triplex condition in which he is
seen. To understand this triplex view of the christian state, is of great
importance in the understanding the Scriptures, and rightly profiting by their
teachings. There are warnings, and exhortations addressed to him while in the
race, which would not apply to his standing before God. These warnings and “ifs”
of Scripture try his heart if unsettled in redemption, as they would seem to him
to make the end far from sure.

Israel had this triplex condition too. But they did not begin as we, with a new
place with God; they had to reach it at the close. We have already begun with
this new place, in Christ in heavenly places: yet we run to reach the goal, and
the fruition of all. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; yet we
are running the race to win Christ, and be found in Him! This is our heavenly
calling of which we are partakers, as holy brethren in the Lord.

Israel was brought by redemption, out of Egypt; and he was brought into Canaan.
But he had also to pass through the Wilderness to his rest. The book of the
Wilderness (Numbers) unfolds this journey as many are aware. The NT, speaking
generally, is for the most part occupied with that journey, onwards to the end:
the Epistle to the Ephesians only, leading into the having Canaan as a present
thing in Christ. This is assumed however, in all the Epistles, as true of every
true Christian. The Epistles to the Hebrews, and those of Peter are occupied
with the pilgrimage, and the journeyings of the people of God, in a special
manner.

Before the journey commenced (cf. Numbers 10:11), Moses was commanded to make
Two Trumpets of Silver: “Make thee two Trumpets of Silver: of a whole piece
shalt thou make them: that thou mayest use them for the calling of the assembly,
and for the journeying of the camps” (Numbers 10:2). The visible and open
guidance of God by the Pillar of the cloud and of fire, was there by day and by
night continually. This all could behold. Even the most unspiritual in the Camp
beheld the constant unvarying presence of the God of Israel. Then came the
testimony of His word in this type before us, rendered as occasion needed, by
those who received the communications and were near enough to be in the secret
of His mind, as then revealed. This was given through those Silver Trumpets, by
the varied notes which were sounded. Then again, the Ark of the Covenant went
before the camp, to seek a resting place for them in the Wilderness.

Those three things expressed the guidance of God to Israel — “At the commandment
of the Lord they journeyed” as directed by the movements of the Pillar of the
Cloud. His “Word” sounded on more special occasions, by means of the Trumpets of
Silver. There Himself, as the true Ark of the Covenant; and he that followed
would “not walk in darkness but have the light of life.” These are seen in the
antitype in 1 John 2:4-6. First we have His commandments; then His Word; and
then Himself. But there was more in the Silver Trumpets than all this. In this
book of Numbers, we find that they are the only Instruments which the Lord
directed to be made in this Book, in the Wilderness journey. They were made of
Silver; while in Exodus, the things which were made there were all of Gold or of
Brass. The former presenting God’s essential righteousness; the latter, that
righteousness when it dealt with man in responsibility. The sockets of the
boards of the Tabernacle, with some fillets and hooks, were made of silver, and
they only. I believe we must always interpret by the context, in seeking to know
the meaning of these typical things. It will not do to lay down one hard line in
such cases, and insist that each must mean, in all places, and books of
Scripture, the same. To do so we would suffer much loss in the lessons of the
Word. The silver may point, as some say, to redemption, when the book in
question treats of such. But in Numbers where it is the journey that is before
us, and these Trumpets the means by which the God of Israel communicated with
His people; the Silver Trumpets present to us — first, the “Trumpet” is the
testimony of His Word: while the “Silver” is the immutability of His ways. This
is echoed in the Wilderness book of Hebrews 1 st. The word of God, confirmed by
His oath; and 2nd. The immutability of His ways. “Wherein God, willing
(counselling) more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise, the
immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath,” etc. (Hebrews 6:17). The
Silver here then has this meaning — the immutability, or unchangableness of His
ways; so abundantly proved during their eventful journey. This was the basis of
His actings, and His command, testified by Aaron and his sons, by means of those
Silver Trumpets.

We read of four distinct blasts or notes of these Trumpets in Numbers 10; and we
find these notes echoed by the Spirit in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Here, the
people were under the leadership of Moses and Aaron, the Apostle and High Priest
of Israel, in their earthly calling. There, the Christian assuredly is under the
leadership of Christ — the Apostle and High Priest of the holy brethren —
Partakers of the heavenly calling. The first note of the Trumpets in Numbers was
“For the calling of the Assembly” of Israel; when they were to be gathered
together for the varied exigencies of that day. In Hebrews this finds its
antitype in the words, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as
the manner of some is; but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as ye
see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:23). The second blast was “For the
journeyings of the camp.” “At the commandment, of the Lord they rested in their
tents, and at the commandment of the Lord they journeyed.” How blessed to know
that no movement was undertaken; or no halting place was chosen in the desert,
but “At the commandment of the Lord,” clearly and distinctly announced in their
ears. How few of His people can clearly say, “I am as certain of my path here,
or there; or I am as sure I have halted in the very spot indicated, ‘by the
commandment of the Lord,’ and not by the desire of my eyes, or the longing for
change, or the slothfulness of nature, emanating from my own deceitful heart.”
No matter where the direction of the journey pointed, “at the commandment of the
Lord,” or how much delay there seemed to be, till another order for the march
was sounded from the resting place; Canaan alone was the goal! “For the
journeying of the camps” the note was sounded, and it had this end alone in
view; just as those antitypical blasts of the Trumpets are re-echoed in Hebrews:
“Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest”; “Let us run with patience the
race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith.” The
third occasion on which we read of the sound of the Trumpets is “an alarm” –
They have translated this word in Psalms 89:15, as “The joyful sound.” But it
was both. For it was heard both when the enemy was astir, and to the accustomed
ear it was a “joyful sound”: the Lord of Hosts was with His people: no enemy
could take them unawares. But it was “an alarm” too, for it stirred up the
faithful to the need of vigilance against a watchful foe: and to the enemy it
was the “alarm” of impending defeat and ruin. Who of the saints has not quailed
before the warning of Hebrews? How often have we seen the exercised soul
trembling and uneasy as the “alarm” sounded in those solemn verses in Hebrews
6:1-20, Hebrews 10:1-39. The sound of the Silver Trumpet was echoed in the
conscience of the questioner; and yet the “alarm” when explained and interpreted
by the mind of the Spirit, proved to be but a “joyful sound” to the weakest
faith: though fatal to unbelief.

“Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the
beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the Trumpets over your burnt
offerings, and over the sacrifice of your peace offerings, that they may be to
you for a memorial: I am the Lord your God” (Numbers 10:10). This was the fourth
“blowing of Trumpets” in the desert — the “days of gladness” were there marked;
and over the “Burnt-offerings” and “peace-offerings” the sound was heard. How
full is the end of Hebrews (Hebrews 9:1-28, Hebrews 10:1-39, Hebrews 11:1-40,
Hebrews 12:1-29) of the worth of Him in whom all the offerings found their
answer “once” and “for ever”! It is a day of gladness we are called to there, to
“Eat the fat, and drink the sweet; to send portions unto them for whom nothing
is prepared: for the day is holy unto our Lord; neither be ye sorry; for the joy
of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Or as the Epistle to the Hebrews
would put it — “To do good and to communicate forget not; for with such
sacrifices God is well pleased (Hebrews 13:1-25).

Thus we find the Numbers with its types, and the Hebrews with its
interpretations, fitting themselves together with the perfection of God’s
communications to our souls. “The things which happened to them happened for
types, and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are
met” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The Trumpet then, characterized the starting point
of the journey of the people of God. O, if they had hearkened to its joyful
sound they would have known the “Blessedness of the people that knew” this;
“They shall walk,” says the Psalmist, “O Lord, in the light of thy countenance”
(Psalms 89:15).


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  CHAPTER 22: 02.10.     “THE TRUMPET AND THE ROD”
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Chapter 10 “The Trumpet And The Rod”

Then came the journey. Alas, each step was but failure and turning aside “as a
deceitful bow.” In the chapters which follow we do not find even one that is
free from sorrow and ruin. What a witness are they not against us! What a
testimony too, to the faithful unchangeableness of God! And God permitted them
to advance, step by step, in this downward path; He never left nor forsook them
all the while. At last when the deepest spring in their hearts was reached, in
Numbers 16:1-50, in the rebellion against the Royalty of Christ, as seen in
Moses (“King in Jeshurun”), and against His Priesthood, as seen in Aaron, by
Korah and his company, God’s hand must now strike, and strike it will. “Hereby
shall ye know (said the Lawgiver), the Lord hath sent me to do all these works;
for I have not done them of my own mind. If these men die the common death of
all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord
hath not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her
mouth, and swallow them up with all that appertaineth unto them, and they go
down quick into the pit: then ye shall understand that these men have provoked
the Lord (Numbers 16:28-30). This was complete apostasy. This was the last and
final sin: “the great transgression.” This is what Christendom has for her doom:
she will “perish in the gainsaying of Core” (“Korah” Jude 1:11).

Now comes the never-failing resources of God. How truly these things speak to
us; how they recall to us that nothing happens, absolutely nothing, which has
risen so high or gone so deeply down as to find His resources fail. How then is
it that He, who cannot brook sin, will bring in to the Land a people, who have
thus gone to these lengths in ruin? How can the plague be stayed that had begun?
Who could stand between the living and the dead? None but our Great High Priest
— not one! Priesthood alone can bring a failing people in, consistently with Him
who will not sanction their failure and who never fails Himself. This was His
resource: the Rod of Priestly grace (Numbers 17:1-13), triumphant over death,
which laid its deep and broad foundations by resurrection, in a sphere where its
buds and blossoms and fruit — the fruit of the almond tree could flourish; apart
from the storms of sin, and murmuring, and judgment. Where it could be “shown”
to the Lord as that which He had chosen to lead an unfaithful, and a failing
people into the Land.

Yes, my reader; we have been redeemed from the deep ruin in which we lay: when
our guilt cried out for its due — the vengeance of God. We have set out in the
desert with a nature which hates sin and loves and enjoys all that is in God
Himself. We have another nature which takes advantage of the very fulness of the
grace in which we stand, and makes it but the occasion for outraging the grace,
and living in the sin it loves, if allowed. But God has His way of dealing with
us, who still have the tendency to return to the hole out of which we have been
digged. He has His way of holding us up in the joy and blessedness of all that
our better self delights in. This is by the Priesthood of Christ — who “ever
lives to make intercession for us.” Never, for one moment, are we from under
that. Rod of Grace. Never will His purpose for Christ’s glory change, and this
is the manner in which He works, day by day, to bring us into that good land,
where sin, sorrow, and sighing are things of the past for ever. The Trumpet and
the Rod then were the extremes of the path in the Wilderness. The one was the
testimony — the commandment of the Lord, which began the journey, and was to
have guided them all through the way. The people hearkened not to it, but turned
aside. “They tempted and provoked the Most High God, and kept not his
testimonies; but turned back and dealt deceitfully like their fathers: they were
turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked him to anger with their
high places, and moved him to jealousy with their graven images (Psalms 78:56,
etc.).

Then it was, when they had gone to destruction (Hormah), that His own unfailing
resource was brought forth. His soul turned to the Man of His right hand at the
end of their path of shame. The Rod that budded and bloomed blossoms, and
yielded almonds was brought forth from the Sanctuary, to lead and guide; to take
away the murmurings of the people that He might not take away themselves. The
Rod came forth last when destruction was pending over them. The Trumpet was
first heard, then at last the Rod, and it never failed. But let us examine more
closely this “thing which happened unto them.”

We will turn to the Hebrews — our wilderness book. Let me call it the “Book of
the Trumpet and the Rod.” There the Christian is viewed as in the desert — where
he follows his “heavenly calling” out of this scene, and after Christ — the
Forerunner who has “entered within the vail” ; “into heaven itself now to appear
in the presence of God for us.” In the first chapter we find the Lord Jesus
coming forth from God, at the close of all His testimonies, as the Messenger or
Apostle; God spoke in the person of His Son. Then His glories pass before us; He
is the effulgence of His glory; the express image of His subsistence. The
upholder of all things by the Word of His power; the appointed Heir of all
things; the maker of the worlds; the purger of sins: better than the Angels,
because He is who He is; He is the object of their adoration; God speaks to Him
as God (Hebrews 1:8-9). Jehovah addresses Him as Jehovah, in the day of His
affliction (Psalms 102:1-28) In Hebrews 2:1-18 we find Him as Man; fitted to be
the High Priest because of this; going back to God, and crowned with glory and
honour when He sat down on high. As Apostle He had come from God to us (Hebrews
1:1-14); as High Priest He had gone back from us to God, when He had passed
through his pathway of suffering, and made at its close propitiation for our
sins (Hebrews 2:1-18).

Then in Hebrews 3:1-19 we are to “consider Him” in these characters, as leading
His people through the Wilderness, as Moses the Apostle from God, and Aaron the
Priest, had done at another day. The whole profession of Christianity is looked
upon then as professedly in the journey from the Cross to the glory, and in the
wilderness where thousands would fall and never reach the goal; as Israel’s
carcases fell in the wilderness. Being thus looked at as in the way, we find the
“If we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.” “Today
if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” “We are made partakers of
Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.”
Here the “if” and the warning comes in most suitably as on the journey to the
rest of God.

Now you will always find, I think, that an “if” is used in false Christianity to
disturb true souls, who are not thoroughly settled in grace, instead of in the
way that God uses it, against the flesh. They will say, ‘O don’t be too sure;
salvation is not such a certain matter as you think; a great deal depends on
oneself; there are conditions. Don’t you see how many times an “if” is used, and
a condition pressed upon us, etc., etc.’ Now I think God uses an “if” to make us
dependent and trustful in Him, and His faithful love, and never uses it to
disturb the faith of the simplest child of God.

Suppose I was walking on the parapet of a great high building with my little
child by the hand. I felt the awful danger of the place for him, and said, as he
looked down and shivered with fear, “My little son, if you fell down there you
would be smashed to pieces: don’t pull away your little hand from mine.” The
child looks up into my face and says, “Father, you will hold me fast, you have
no trace of a thought in your heart of letting me go, though you warn me.” “No,
my child,” I say, “not a trace: but I want to keep you alive to the danger, and
keep up the sense of dependence on me, in your heart.” This is the way God uses
an “if.” He keeps the soul alive to the sense of the danger of the place we are
in; the power of the enemy; the treacherousness of our own hearts; the
faithfulness of His; our constant need of dependence on Him. Surely all this is
right and well: and this dealing meets the case, and the present need of the
true heart, on the journey: while it vindicates the care of God, under whose
conduct all profess to be, but who alas are often only the mixed multitude — the
“camp followers,” of the true people of God.

Now when we come to Hebrews 4:1-16 He applies all these preceding chapters to
us. The Apostle had come to us from God (Hebrews 1:1-14). The Priest had gone
back from us to God (Hebrews 2:1-18). The people were under His conduct in the
way, in these two characters (Hebrews 3:1-19). The Spirit would then exhort,
“Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest,
any of you should seem to come short of it (Hebrews 4:1).

Suppose I meet my reader, and find that although he has professed to be
journeying to God’s rest, and that all his aims and hopes were there; yet his
daily life and ways do not answer practically to the ways of a stranger in this
scene; and a pilgrim to that other. Suppose I find him going on with the world
and its spirit, and settling down on his lees; bringing up his family for the
earth; placing them in it; allowing ways that were unsuited to his heavenly
calling: Well, I say, you may be all you profess, but, if I were you, I would
“fear.” You most assuredly “seem to come short” of it. Take care: many profess,
and many fall by the way and never get in at all. Israel all came out of Egypt,
but they fell in the Wilderness, and never reached the goal. There is no
question raised here about a true soul going in. “We which have believed do
enter”; no doubt about that; but you should remember Israel. They heard the
report from the spies: the gospel of the rest of Canaan — in their day, and
never got in. The word preached by the spies did not profit them, because it
lacked the divine mixture of faith: “it was not mixed with faith in them that
heard it.” “They could not enter in because of unbelief.”

Now here we break off suddenly in the chapter to meet the difficulty which a
godly Jew would experience about this “rest of God” being still a future thing.
He would naturally say, “Well: I thought God had rested when He created the
world. Does it not say that in the seventh day God rested from all His works
which He had created to make?” Oh yes, says the writer, “God rested from all his
works.” And surely He did; but sin broke through His rest. He only rested from
creating, but never rested in the works of His hands. Sin came in immediately,
and disturbed His rest, and left Him with these alternatives 1. to destroy all
by judgment; or, 2. to let all remain in its ruined state, as fallen with man,
whom He had placed over all; or 3. to begin to work again. He refuses to destroy
them by judgment, and will not allow it to remain so; and so we find Him again a
Worker, making coats of skins for Adam and his wife, and He has never rested
since that day.

Men seek religiously to keep a sabbath as a day of rest. Well, I say, you have
not God with you in that fancied rest. He is a worker since the third of
Genesis; and never has been a rester, and never will, till the new Heavens and
new Earth come, wherein dwelleth righteousness. The Lord Himself when here, was
accused of breaking the Sabbath, when He had cured the paralyzed man at the Pool
of Bethesda; and His reply to the accusers was this “My Father worketh hitherto,
and I work.” Now the Spirit works; and by-and-by the rest of God — Father, Son,
and Spirit will come, and then only will God rest.

There was one other difficulty to be met for the convert from Judaism. They read
in Joshua 12:1-24 that the Land had rest from war. This the writer meets by
telling them how their prophet King sang, hundreds of years afterwards, the
words of Psalms 95:1-11, “Again he determined a certain day, saying in David,
‘Today’ (after so long a time) as it is said, ‘Today if ye will hear his voice,
harden not your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not
afterwards have spoken of another day.

Adam had broken up the rest of Creation by his sin; Israel had broken up the
rest of Canaan by theirs, and so God wrought, in His infinite patience and
grace, and will to the end, until the time foreseen in Hebrews 4:9. “There
remaineth therefore a keeping of a sabbath” — a rest of God — for His people.
This break therefore disposes of the difficulties.

Now the exhortation — the blast of the Silver Trumpet — is heard, “Let us labour
therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of
unbelief.” God has retreated into Christ, and there His rest is now; and will be
displayed for all His own at that day.

How abruptly we again break off at Hebrews 4:12. But no: it is the word — the
blast of the Trumpet of Silver that is heard — the Word of God: quick and
powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces the joints and
marrow: it discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. It deals with every
movement of the will of the flesh. All is laid bare under that which is His
“eye,” looking down and discovering thoughts in your heart, my reader, that did
not emanate from Him: intentions for today — for tomorrow — that have not Christ
before them, and the goal — the rest of God. The Word comes in and stops them
all. Do you welcome that as a “joyful sound”? If you are an honest pilgrim you
say, ‘Yes; it is a joyful thing to me to have my soul searched out; every corner
of my heart laid bare: every secret corner exposed and brought into the light of
God’s presence by His living Word.’ Still, you add, it is disheartening, to have
that detector of my thoughts and intentions ever pressing down its searching and
breaking power into my soul. Yes, but had Israel rejoiced in the blast of the
Silver Trumpet they had never fallen, so to say, in the Wilderness, and God has
this in His mind for you. But you will remember that the Trumpet began the
journey with Israel; and when all had gone to ruin, then God’s resource of the
Rod was brought forth at the end. But how is it for you? The Trumpet sounds —
the Word of God speaks with its searching notes to the soul, and lays all bare:
then at once, the Rod of Priesthood, is introduced. He puts the Trumpet and the
Rod together at the beginning of the journey, that the one may deal with the
will of the flesh that would break away from Christ; and that the other may
uphold the weakness of the renewed soul, prostrate under the searching power of
the Word. How blessed! He does not look for the failure to become apparent
before He interferes. No. He would carry His people through without the failure,
and bring them in safety to that Land of rest. But one might say, as he reads
Hebrews 4:14 — “Seeing then that we have a great high Priest, that is passed
into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession;” he
might say ‘That great person cannot know what a poor weak thing like me has to
pass through. I have a wicked heart: He had not: He could resist the temptations
of the enemy: He was pure and perfect: He was the Son of God.’ How touchingly
the next reassuring verse reads, “For we have not an high priest which cannot be
touched with the feeling of our weaknesses:* but was in all points tempted like
as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of
grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace for timely help” — (see Greek).
Much better indeed than “help in time of need.” Better to be sustained in answer
to our cry of weakness before we fail, than even to find a strong arm reached
forth to raise us up again when we have turned aside from Him. The cry goes
forth from the sense of need; the strong right arm is around us in that strength
which is made perfect in our weakness; and we can say, “Thou shalt stretch forth
thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me”;
and “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.”

{*Cf. 2 Corinthians 13:4 where the same word is found as to Christ.}


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  CHAPTER 23: 02.11.     “THE WATER OF PURIFICATION”
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Chapter 11 “The Water of Purification” When the Lord introduced the Rod of
Priesthood as His unfailing way of bringing in a failing people home to glory,
all hung from that moment on it, whether to sustain, to restore, or to meet
their need. The details of its establishment in the Type, and its varied
provisions and exercises are found in Numbers 17:1-13, Numbers 18:1-32, Numbers
19:1-22, Numbers 20:1-29. In Numbers 17:1-13 we find Priestly authority
established in Aaron and his sons: and in Numbers 18:1-32 Priestly service to
maintain the people in communion; they should bear the iniquity of the
Sanctuary, and of their priesthood before the Lord. With them rested the charge
of the Sanctuary — God’s dwelling — and of the altar — the place of intercession
for the people. There are things which those in this place of nearness to God —
His priesthood, now have to sustain; which others — who keep the more distant
place, and enter not upon its exercise (though all His people are Priests) —
have not to bear. We see this amongst the people of God even now. Those who have
never entered on their Priestly place in practical power, do not sustain the
reproach of Christ as those who have done so; although the former enjoy the
result of this nearness of the latter; and partake of the spiritual
communications vouchsafed to those who are in the secret of the Lord.

Still, the most holy things of the offerings of the Lord — the varied details of
the sacrifice of Christ (Numbers 17:9); as well as the best of oil and wine
(Numbers 17:12-13), first ripe fruits of the Land, are their portion. That is,
they feed on Christ s work, and Christ s person in a manner, and in the midst of
the Holy things; which those who keep in the greater distance lose.

You see this illustrated constantly in the spiritual saint; as also in the
unspiritual, who holds truth in a carnal way. And, it is grief to say, there is
much truth held carnally by the people of God. You will see those who do not
doubt their salvation, and yet who plainly are unspiritual saints. Then when
trial comes; or some intervention of God s hand to break up the fallow ground of
their hearts; they have to go through much deep exercises and fears — finding
they have to do with God in a way that their lives had never experienced.

Yet all the while faith is not lost: Christ has sustained it in their souls by
His unceasing Priestly grace. “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not:
” yet they have to be sifted like wheat. Well, if the sifting out of the chaff
leaves the pure grain behind; and well, if when converted they may strengthen
their brethren. In Numbers 19:1-22 we find another feature which flows from
Priestly service; that is, in a certain sense, advocacy to restore and purify
when defiled. And I may here remark that in Numbers 20:1-29, we find the
exercise of Priesthood with regard to the needs and murmurings of the people;
and at its close, the perpetuity of it touched upon in the stripping of Aaron
and the clothing of Eleazar; a living Priest goes up to Mount Hor, from the
presence of the people; and a living Priest comes down — re-appearing without a
break, in their sight.

Numbers 19:1-22 is the only reference to the work of Christ we find in the
journey of the people through the desert. This is most significant and
instructive. In fact it is the key of the book. The Redemption of Israel out of
Egypt gives character to the book of Exodus. The propitiatory work of the great
day of atonement (Leviticus 16:1-34) characterizes the Book of Leviticus after
Priesthood failed. And the maintenance, or restoration of the unclean to
communion, is peculiar to the Book of Numbers. Each are suited to the books in
which they are found, as well as to the state of the people; and the aspects in
which the Lord is seen.

I do not purpose dwelling too largely on the details of Numbers 19; which are
full of interest. Rather do I desire grace for a practical application of the
truths there presented us.

One thing strikes us; there never was a return to the blood sprinkling of
redemption on the night of the Passover in Egypt. The blood once appropriated by
our souls, and satisfying to God, never needed to be applied again. Its efficacy
was abiding and eternal. Just as we never find a recurrence of the application
of the precious blood of Christ to our souls, in the teaching of the New
Testament.

It is here then the great significance of this “water of purification” — mingled
with the “ashes of the Heifer,” is presented to us. We will remark too that it
was what we may term “Eleazar” work that we find here. It is not “Aaronic”
service — pure and simple. The reason is this — that it is not the highest
aspect of our Lord s blessed work; but very necessary yet humbling (may we not
say?) to Him; because connected with the failures of His people. Blessed service
of love surely in its perfectness, for “his own.” Nor is it the greatness of His
work, which the “bullock” would present; the perfection of His patient toil. Nor
yet the passive, unmurmuring submission, as a “lamb without blemish or spot”; or
as a “sheep before her shearers is dumb.” Here it is a lower aspect than all
these: a “Red Heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish; and upon which never
came yoke.” The female of the herd, yet inwardly and outwardly clean.

Remark too, the place where her blood was presented. It was not where the God
and the High Priest meet, at the Brazen altar without, or at the golden
Mercy-seat within; but where God and His people came together for communion,
“before the tabernacle of the congregation.” The blood was sprinkled seven times
there, just as a memorial of the basis of all. The Heifer was then consumed.
Ashes was all that remained: the irrefragable proof that our sins could never be
imputed again. They had been — once, to Christ: He was consumed by the judgment
which fell on Him; and blood could not again blot out, what already blood had
obliterated. Every portion of this sacrifice was burned outside the camp. There
was not the smallest portion kept to be consumed before the Lord. It was more
completely in every part consumed, outside the camp, than even the sin-offering
in Leviticus 4. The very blood was burned there also. The only thing reserved
was as much of the blood as the Priest could take on his finger for a memorial
and sprinkle seven times “before the tabernacle of the congregation.” She was
slain too “outside the Camp.” How completely does this exclude the thought that
aught of this sacrifice was atoning; or offered as a propitiatory offering to
God. No: all was for the “unclean.” Every one too, in the chapter, who had to do
with the ashes was defiled. The Priest who carried out the ceremony; the person
who burned the heifer; the man who gathered the ashes; he who sprinkled the
water of separation; or who touched the ashes; and whatsoever he touched who had
thus touched them: all were unclean! There was but one thing undefilable, and
that was the “Ashes of the Heifer.” Yes, reader; what a lesson is here. No one
can have to do with sin, even in another, and be undefiled, but God, alone! When
He touches sin He withers it; when man does so he either sympathizes with it, or
is defiled! But I must pass on. The ceremony of restoring the defiled or
unclean, needs but few words But let us see for a moment what made it needful.
With us it is sin; or the flesh revived in ourselves, or in another. The carnal
mind; the unclean lust; the selfish covetousness of the soul; the angry word;
the foolish thought. The opened ear which hears the sinful word, or slander. The
slanderer himself; the liar; the profane. Are these things possible in the saint
of God? Read Colossians 3:5; Colossians 3:8; or Ephesians 4:28-32; Ephesians
5:3-5, and say if God proclaims this; or read your own heart, reader, if you
know it somewhat, and tell me what you think. One moment’s working of sin, in
whatever shape it may be found, secretly or openly, and you are an unclean man;
“cut off” from the fellowship of God s Spirit, and of the Father and the Son;
from the saints too, who are maintained in the communion which you have lost. Of
course you must be a saint to have lost it; and you must be a saint to be
restored; both are true. If not a saint you never had it; nor could you be
restored to what you never had. So that this does not interfere with your
salvation. But I need not press this, in a day when salvation is somewhat truly
known. The sin committed suddenly in your presence, which you were not party to,
has made you an unclean man, as well as him who committed it! This is solemn. If
a man died suddenly in a tent (Numbers 19:14), all those present, or who came
in, were unclean. How could they avoid this? you say. I reply — Will God lower
His standard of holiness because man would excuse himself under the plea that he
could not avoid it? Never, my friend. He provides the way in which you shall be
restored; but He will not declare you clean when it is not so. An “open vessel”
too; your opened ear for instance, “which hath no covering bound on it” (Numbers
19:16), when your ear is not closed to all else but Christ; is defiled. But we
must proceed.

“The grace of God in a man’s heart, is a tender plant in an unkindly soil.” It
is like the “Sensitive Plant,” which when it grows naturally abroad, droops and
closes its leaves even at the approach of the footstep of man, or the brushing
of the dewdrops off the grass-plat near where it grows. The Spirit is grieved
within us, and we need a “clean person” now to act. Where will such be found? He
speaks Himself — our true “Clean One” — “ If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
with me” (John 13:8).

Here too we find the “Bunch of Hyssop” in the hand of this “Clean Person”; not
in our own. Each man’s hand grasped this in Exodus 12:1-51 for himself; each
dipped it in the blood in the bason; each went forth and struck the lintel and
two side posts of the door of his house — and each appropriated this as his only
shelter from the destroyer. The poor thief on the cross did so in the depths of
his humiliation when he bowed in faith and justified God for his righteous
sentence and suffering. There God met him, and Christ took the lost sheep to His
home rejoicing! But here all is changed. The Hyssop is in the hands of another.
It is not man now appropriating Christ; but the Advocate about to bring the soul
of the defiled to its true and real state of humiliation and judgment of self
for its sin. Does my reader ever suppose that when his soul has turned aside and
been defiled, he would have turned back again, but for the advocacy of the Lord?
When the sin has been committed, and its pleasure has gone; whose hand has
grasped the Bunch of Hyssop, and has applied the remembrance of His anguish in
bearing that sin away? Then again, with the water of His word mingled therewith,
sprinkled it on that man whose back is turned on his Master, and sent him away
to “weep bitterly”? When David’s murder and adultery were accomplished, and he
strove to hold his head high; and forget his crime, who sent Nathan the prophet,
with the word of God to open David’s eyes, which lust had closed? Was it to
restore David to His favour for which Nathan was sent? Nay, but to do a “third
day” work (Numbers 19:12), and to bow his soul down in the agony in which we
behold him prostrate on the earth, with the cry, “I have sinned against the
Lord.” “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow.” (Psalms 51:7). This was true “third day” conviction. It was
the deep sense in the soul of self loathing; and self judgment, in the sight of
God, who had not imputed, but had put away his sin. There was no restored
communion here: there was anguish and sorrow. But on the “seventh day” the child
of adultery died. And again the Hyssop is dipped in ashes and running water, and
sprinkled upon the soul — prostrate man. Can he not now feel his hopes revive in
God? His real state (not merely his felt state) has been reached. He can say,
“Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit”
(Psalms 51:12). Now he can wash his face and anoint himself, and enter into the
house of the Lord and worship. A man now who knows his own heart better, and has
learned a deeper lesson of the heart of God! This was the “seventh day.”

Look at Peter. In high handed self confidence he denied his Lord, and when the
cock crew — the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. He had not felt his sin, nor
his departure from Christ ere this; but the look of Christ entered his soul —
the “third day” had arrived for him; and bitter tears, which could never blot
out his sin, disclosed to him the depths of his departure from the Lord, and the
sense of being unclean and defiled. But for him there was a seventh day too. The
joyous heart which girt his fisher’s coat unto him, and leaped into the sea to
greet his Master, proves a heart restored; a “seventh day” reached; even before
the springs of departure were fathomed in his soul in the interview which
followed. Sin in him had triumphed for the moment over the grace of Christ; but
grace in Christ had finally triumphed over his sin!

Well; “there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.” But when we
have tasted the bitterness of thus sinning against our God; and some taste this
more than others: we learn to walk more softly and distrustfully of ourselves.
But let me beseech of you my reader — Do not trespass upon the grace which
restores thus. The conscience becomes blunted; the soul grows deadened, under
the power of this sinning and repenting; the joy of the heart in Him is sapped
and eaten away. He is surely faithful and just to forgive us our sins, yea,
moreover, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness; but if so, the aged
Apostle adds; “my little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin
not.” Yet “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but
for (the sins of) the whole world” (1 John 2:1-2).


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  CHAPTER 24: 02.12.     NAZARITESHIP AMONGST THE UNCIRCUMCISED
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Chapter 12 Nazariteship Amongst The Uncircumcised Read Judges 13:1-25 The
ordinance of the Nazarite Vow is found in its true and suited place, in the
journeyings through the Wilderness; and is introduced in that book which treats
of the itinerary of the people of God (Numbers 6:1-27). Certain directions of a
(to us) typical character, are unfolded there, to be observed by those who
separated themselves unto the Lord by this Vow.

I judge that it follows in marked order, after the subjects of the previous
chapter, in which we find the cleansing of the camp where Jehovah dwelt, and
more specially, later on, with the law of the bitter water of jealousy; which
applies in principle both to Israel, and to the Church, in her responsible
place: as also to the individual saint. The Church has given herself to another,
when she had been espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ; and the Lord exposes
the pollution of the flesh in her; and the man — Christ Himself, is thus
guiltless of her iniquity, which she bears, in the Government of God.

Then, in Numbers 6:1-27, we have special devotedness, in separation to God, by
individuals, when the Church figuratively, as a whole, had gone aside. Just as
in 1 Timothy we have the external Church in order as God’s habitation, and in 2
Timothy the separation to God of individuals, when she had fallen without
possibility of return as a whole.

However I only refer to this fact — not with any thought of entering upon
details of the Nazarite Vow in Numbers 6:1-27, but as noticing its place in the
Wilderness, and the fact of Nazariteship then coming in, for the first time. We
may remark that Nazariteship was a vow entered upon by individuals — voluntarily
on their part; and not inherent, or characteristic of the person: and we may
also add that in Scripture — with the exception of Christ — the true Nazarite —
there were but three born Nazarites in the actual sense, known in the Word of
God: namely, Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. As Christians we are looked
upon as born into this condition as being in Christ.

I now turn in the first place, after these preliminary remarks, to Judges
13:1-25. This Book comes after Joshua, where we have the people introduced into
their earthly inheritance by Joshua; type of Christ in the power of the Spirit
of God, leading His people into the realization of their heavenly inheritance in
practical power. The Book of Joshua shows this energy in taking possession
thereof; and also the decay of that energy in maintaining the same in the power
of God.

Now Judges is the result of this; and gives us the history of the failure of
Israel (or the Church in the antitype), in not putting out evil from their
midst, and possessing the Land. The death of Joshua is the key note which begins
the book. They were then left to work out their own salvation from the enemy.
Analogous to this is the departure of apostolic power from the Church, which is
left to work out her own salvation from the enemy, with fear and trembling, in
the absence of Paul; while God was there with them both — willing and working
according to His good pleasure (Php 2:1-30). The Church of God was set up on
earth in heavenly blessing, and she failed from the beginning in realizing this;
she went downwards in her course, till she has become what we see around us.
Hardly a trace now remains of even the apprehension of what the Church of God
is. The “World” has become the “Church”and as a consequence under God’s
government, the responsible Church will be treated as the world; while God will
remove His own before her judgment comes.

Now Judges is the history of this in Israel; and unfolds in type for us, God’s
great principles to the end. From time to time, and at the cry of the people
when oppressed under their enemies — God raised up Judges and Deliverers, which
answered to the varied revivals in the Church of God by His suited instruments;
and He wrought great deliverances for His people. They too, went on well for a
time, during the life of the Judge, and then relapsed into their old ways. We
find in this book exactly Twelve Judges — showing how completely God had wrought
for their blessing. Twelve being the number of complete earthly ministration.
The history closes with Judges 16:1-31 : those which follow showing a state of
things which had come in somewhere about the second chapter of the book. I judge
that this portion of the book is placed last of all, for the special purpose of
showing when the book closed its history in Judges 16:1-31 the character of
things in which God was thus working all through for His people, in mercy. I
notice this specially, as some would perhaps think that these closing chapters,
owing to their place in the book, were the state which supervened after all the
work of the Judges was done. A reference to the chronology of the English Bible
will help to show the time when the circumstances occurred. In examining the
histories of these revivals we will see that the deliverers were, generally
speaking, raised up at the cry to the Lord of the people. He heard their cry and
sent His instruments to deliver them. This character of things closes in Judges
12:1-15. Up to this, the enemies were found amongst the Canaanitish Nations
within; or some other adjacent tribes — scourges from without which had entered
the Land: Midian, Moab, Ammon. and others, were in general their foes. They
variously typify Satan’s power and the instruments he uses. But when we come to
Judges 13:1-25 we find other enemies — not of Canaan — under whom they groaned
in complete bondage for “forty years.” These people were the Philistines. This
moment of their history marks the commencement of Israel’s relations with these
bitterest of foes. They had settled within their borders, but were neither of
the land itself within; nor were they scourges from without. This is to be noted
well. The relations of Israel with these “uncircumcised” never ceased until
David came: when he had taken the stronghold of Zion, the Philistines were
finally subdued. Then was heard the sound of a going in the tops of the Mulberry
Trees: the Lord went forth before His armies and discomfited them (2 Samuel
5:1-25). Similarly the enemy which answers to them in the midst of the Church of
God, looked at responsibly on earth, will never be finally subdued until Christ
— the true David comes; and then all will be complete victory.

What then was the principle and resource of God, after eleven Judges had been
raised up, to meet this character of enemy, and deliver His own? It is seen in
the twelfth of the Judges in Samson; in whom we see Nazariteship, or separation
to the Lord: “He shall be a Nazarite to God from his mother’s womb!”

We will here remark too, that this Deliverer was not raised up at the cry of the
people to the Lord: there was no cry then heard from them. Unlike the former
answers to their cry, He interferes in this case unsought. In the barren wife
too, we see the constant sign in Scripture of the powerlessness of man, and the
need of the power of resurrection; and God interferes in Sovereign mercy,
Himself. He reveals a new principle to meet the state of things onwards, till
David came. He does not raise up a Deliverer to lead the people themselves to
victory over their enemies. They had sunk too low for this. There was now no
restoration to a formal state proposed; no recovery was suggested in this new
departure in the ways of the Lord. This Nazariteship therefore was complete
separation, even from the people of God; while working out great deliverances
for them the while, from their internal foes: and this in the midst of the
people still, who were not separate themselves. But I must look a little more
closely at the character of this enemy, and who they were.

Like most principles, and facts unfolded in Scripture: we find that the first
intimation of such, generally gives us a key to what afterwards grows from this
root into the texture of the Word.

If we turn to Genesis 10:1-32, where the dividing of the nations of the world is
before us — the peopling of the earth by the sons of Noah; we find (Genesis
10:6-20) the descendants of Ham were Cush (the Ethiopian) and Mizraim (Egypt of
which this is the Hebrew name), etc. Then in Genesis 10:13-14, “Out of Mizraim .
. . came Philistim.” Here then is the root, and there, the branch — plainly
before us. They were not merely man fallen and under Satan’s power, as Egypt
represents: but they wandered away from that ground, and had crossed the Desert
by what is termed “the way of the land of the Philistines.” This “way” God would
not allow Israel to traverse when leaving Egypt (Exodus 13:17), “because that
was near.” It was in fact a “short cut,” if we may so speak, across the Desert,
and into the land of Canaan. It was not the true path for the redeemed — through
the Red Sea and Jordan; through death and resurrection; by which alone the Land
could be entered after a divine way, and possessed.

These “uncircumcised” (for this they are always termed); passed into the Land of
Promise — wandering away from their own country, and entering into the place of
blessing, without the title to possess it. They were not now of Egypt; nor were
they of Canaan. They had left their own country, and were no more Egyptians:
they had reached that other without the right to be there. They were not Israel;
nor even were they those who were attached to Israel for blessing; but had
“intruded into those things” which they had no title to possess. They were the
bitterest enemies to the truth in that day — these “uncircumcised.”

They were the seed of the natural world fallen, under Satan’s power, and
unredeemed; which stretched out into the place of promise, and laid hold on it
without title; but they never absolutely possessed the promised Land. They may
have “giants,” and great ones of the earth, and by knowledge may seem to
possess; but they never can.

They were thus the greatest enemies to the people of God. It may not be too much
to say, that there is much to do with the natural senses in this class of enemy;
for they have their “Five Lords” and “Five cities” too; but after all it is
knowledge alone, without faith, or life, and there it perishes. It had intruded
into those things it had not seen, vainly puffed up by the mind of flesh.
(Colossians 2:18). Can we not apply this solemn type to what is around us on
every hand: yea, within us also? Can we not apprehend how, as truth is known, it
may be received by the natural senses of man? The flesh — uncircumcised and
unrenewed, may lay hold of divine things, yea of heavenly truth; and yet have no
part or lot therein. The mind may work with divine revelation, and take it up in
clearness; with precision and accuracy of expression; but there it ends. What
greater enemy can there be, to the true work of the Spirit of God in the Church!

These were the foes which overflowed like a flood, and engulfed the people of
God, in Judges 13:1-25. “The Lord delivered them into the hands of the
Philistines forty years.” Flesh — unredeemed, had taken possession of the divine
place, and faith was silent, and cried not to the Lord. All was death around at
that day. Then God moves after a new fashion; and inaugurates a new thing —
unknown before.

Indeed I may go further, and say, that all His vessels from that hour, until
David came upon the scene, were raised against these hitherto triumphant foes.

1. Samson — in whom was the Spirit of Nazariteship, or separation to the Lord,
was raised up — (note it well, my reader) to “begin to deliver Israel out of the
hand of the Philistines.” He would only inaugurate the work — for he was not
Christ! He might “begin” the work: the True David alone could finish it. It is
to be noted here, in connection with this, that his name of Samson, means
“Sun-like” — from Shemesh, the “Sun” of Righteousness Himself. The principle
which he represents would be the nearest thing to Christ, in its verity and
truth; and seen in His people, in Separation to God.

2. Then came Samuel — in whom was the Spirit of prayer, or dependence on the
Lord; and in whom we see that great and mighty power first definitely
established. His work was always against the Philistines, and prayer was the
mighty lever wielded under God by him. His very name signifies “Heard of God,”
as he himself was the child of his mother’s — Hannah — the barren woman’s prayer
(cf. 1 Samuel 1:1-28, 1 Samuel 2:1-36, 1 Samuel 3:1-21, 1 Samuel 4:1-22, 1
Samuel 5:1-12, 1 Samuel 6:1-21, 1 Samuel 7:1-17).

3. Then came Jonathan in the days of Saul, and in him we see the Spirit of faith
in service. His hand wrought great victories over the uncircumcised (cf. 1
Samuel 13:1-23, 1 Samuel 14:1-52).

I pass over poor Saul, who was anointed “Captain over my people Israel, that he
may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines.” His was the trial of
flesh — set in the fullest advantages; a gift without life, in an unsanctified
vessel. Alas, poor Saul! He never went against them, and at last he fell by
their hand.

These three instruments taken together, give us the three-fold cord of true
power in these days. Separation to God; Dependence on Him; and the Energy of
Faith in service! All these must go together for a “Threefold cord is not
quickly broken.” Poor Jonathan tried to serve without the other two: he never
separated from Saul’s house, and after his lovely, fresh and successful service,
he too fell by these very foes, and his body was nailed by the Philistines to
the wall of Bethshan! (1 Samuel 28:1-25).


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  CHAPTER 25: 02.13.     NAZARITESHIP AMONGST THE UNCIRCUMCISED
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Chapter 13 Nazariteship Amongst the Uncircumcised In the case of Samson we see
how everything betokens God’s hand working in sovereignty. He chooses the
already dishonoured tribe of Dan; first among Israel which lapsed into idolatry
(Judges 18:1-31). He can do as it pleases Him. Unasked, the Lord appeared to
Manoah’s wife and announces the birth — to her who had been hitherto barren — of
this child. The details of the chapter are very lovely, in many ways, and
especially bright in the fresh deductions of faith of the wife of Manoah. I
would but notice in passing, three strong features which present themselves to
us here. First, we have the Nazarite — the separated one, to the Lord. Next —
after the offering of the Burnt-offering and Peace-offering — how the angel,
whose name was “Wonderful” (cf. Judges 13:18 with Isaiah 9:6), ascends up to
heaven in the flame of the altar. And lastly, “These things” showed to Manoah
and his wife.

Now here I would refer to the NT for a moment, with respect to the Nazariteship
of Christ. In the earlier Gospels the Lord is seen in the power of the Kingdom —
eating and drinking with the children thereof, if they would hear. In the Gospel
of St. John this is all changed. He is an alien to His mother and her children;
a lonely Man, from the very beginning of that Gospel; and “His own,” are set
aside (John 1:11-12). He is a Nazarite all the way through: gathering and
leading a heavenly company of Nazarited ones to the Father’s House on high. In
John 17:1-26, where the acme of this is seen, we find in broad lines, these
three things of Judges 13:1-25 come out afresh in all their intensity and
reality. His people are separate: “They are not of the world, even as He is not
of the world.” He says to the Father, “And now come I to thee”: He ascends on
high, in the value of the Burnt-offering and the Meat-offering, in which they
were accepted before the Lord. And “These things speak I in the world, that they
might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” The Church of God was a Nazarited
one. Instead of retaining this place, she “ate and drank with the drunken.” But
Christ was ever so; and when the Church has fallen as a whole, the only resource
is individual Nazariteship — special devotedness to the Lord. The Church of God
ever is united to Christ in glory; but to be owned in such a state, it requires
that those who would be recognized must be separate to Him. There is no other
way. They must be Nazarites; and they must keep the secret too of this, with the
Lord. To be outwardly so, without inward separation; to pretend to Nazariteship
externally, when not so before God, is terribly solemn. To have an outward
character to maintain, while inwardly the conscience is not pure, is but to
find, when the moment of testing comes, that we have lost our strength, and wist
not that it was departed from us.

Samson’s history — all the details of which I do not enter upon — suffice it for
my present object, to notice its broad features, is divided into two distinct
parts; each ending with the sentence “and he judged Israel . . . twenty years”
(see the end of Judges 15:1-20 and that of Judges 16:1-31). The first division
of his history is embraced in Judges 13:1-25, Judges 14:1-20, Judges 15:1-20. In
it we will notice how full of power is this Deliverer of his people. How
complete is his victory over the Philistines. In all this portion we note too,
that “The Spirit of the Lord” came upon him, in his mighty acts (Judges 13:25;
Judges 14:6; Judges 14:19; Judges 15:14). And also we will notice that he is not
accompanied by Israel in these acts. Nay, even the men of Judah come down to
bind him and to deliver him into the Philistines’ hand!

How striking is all this to our souls; let the saints of God accept the path of
Nazariteship in these days: it is true that God may be, and will be with them in
power and blessing. That blessing may extend largely, and with deepest profit
even to those too who have not separated themselves to the Lord; bringing
deliverance also to them. But they are opposed to those who have taken this
separate path. When the people of God are not separate to Him — they will not
have those who seek His face, to act in faith and Nazariteship, because to do so
is but to judge their own path as unsanctified to God. They would not refuse
coalition, nor acts of outward power; but to separate from them and for their
blessing too, only meets with their enmity and condemnation. In the second
division of his history all is changed! There is no trace there of the power of
“The Spirit of the Lord.” Samson has lost the Nazarite place: the very common
sense of man has departed from him, to his betrayal and defeat. He falls — never
to rise again, into the hands of the Philistines. He is blinded by his foes; a
proof to them at least, that Dagon is stronger than God! Have not God’s people
done this? Have they not fallen into the hands of the uncircumcised? Have. they
not lost their Nazariteship — being mixed up with the worldly? And thus
accepting the evil, they witness, alas, without the words, that evil is greater
than good, that the world under which they are captive is stronger than God:
saying — that there is nothing perfect here, “We are delivered to these
abominations.” They are blinded and captive — and, unable to break their bonds.
Only fit for the world to make mock at, and rejoice that their Nazariteship is
defiled and destroyed. How well may the Scriptures say to such, “Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from among the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee.”
(Ephesians 5:14). But when the world — and “woe unto it”! has drawn away that
which God had separated to Himself, by its allurements, it only brings upon
itself the dire judgments of God, and its total ruin: and this too at the moment
of its greatest triumph. When bind Samson is called to make sport before the
Philistine Lords at Gaza, and when he leaned upon the pillars of the house on
which they stood, filled with these thousands of the foe, God heard his cry. And
when he bowed himself with all his might — the house fell upon himself and on
all that were therein; “So the dead which he slew at his death were more than
they which he slew in his life”: but he falls himself in their destruction.

Thus it will be with the world when God removes the Church from this scene, as
when Samson himself was removed; more of her foes will be destroyed in her
death, than she had done in her life; for her removal will be the sign for the
crushing judgments of God on the professing Church, which alas is but the world!

Now analogous to these two sections of Samson’s history: the one, of
Nazariteship in power and victory: the other, of Nazariteship lost, and of
blindness and defeat: we find these two features plainly, in the two last
messages to the Seven Churches in Asia, in the Revelation of Jesus Christ by
John: namely, Philadelphia and Laodicea.

I do not enter upon the interpretation of the Seven Messages, which is familiar
to many amongst the Lord’s people in these days. But only notice that these
messages are divided into two great parts. Those two parts unfold the universal
principle of God’s judicial dealings with man; with Israel; and with the Church,
as a responsible body set up on the earth. He looks back at the primal order, or
state, in which anything was first set up, and from which it had fallen. He
gives space to recover this state if such may be. But failing this He looks
forward — and revealing Himself in judicial power and glory, presents this as
the measure and standard. As if to say, “Can you meet and answer me?” The state
in which that which the subject of judgment was set up by His hand in
perfection, is the one standard of judgment: and then the nature of God Himself
being the other. The first four messages to the Churches are founded on the
former standard. He charges the Church that she had left her first love she had
fallen from that state in which she had been established. Then comes the
exhortation — “Repent, and do thy first works, or I will remove thy candlestick
out of her place.” No response to this being made; we go further and hear the
solemn words, “I gave her space to repent and she repented not”: therefore
judgment must supervene. The standard of judgment then changes. The Lord Himself
was coming in. Can she meet the burning beams of His glory? Can she stand when
He appears? Nay, all was now over, and the only thing that faith could do was
this, “hold fast until I come.” This is the ground in the last three.

Then all is changed. The messages are now founded on this — that recovery can
never be. Judgment must clear the scene, ere the glory appear, when Christ
comes.

I would here remark what is of great importance to note well. That there is no
“Church ground” (to speak in a Pauline aspect), in these messages. John is
always individual, and never corporate in the divine teaching through him. They
present moral states, or great moral features reviewed by the Lord; with His
varied exhortations and ways of dealing with such; and the rewards to the
faithful “who have an ear to hear.”

I do not think that such an expression as “Philadelphian ground” is therefore a
true thought. Rather the reverse. It gives the impression at once of a corporate
thing; and loses therefore the great value, in its true and moral aspect, as a
moral state expressed by, and suited to the Lord.

There may be what we may term a ‘Philadelphian state’ seen, individually in
souls, in the dark ages; or even now in the professing Church. Souls that are
true; and walking in devotedness of heart — wherever found; and when walking up
to the light and every gleam of it possessed, are truly “Philadelphian.”
Knowledge is not Philadelphian in any wise; unless knowledge is found producing
that truly blessed moral state, of which Christ can approve. Are there none, my
brethren, who would perhaps assume “Philadelphian ground,” who are anything but
Philadelphian? Are there none, on the other hand, who know but little indeed of
the light and truth which has been shed about our path in these days, and yet
who walk unseen, with every gleam of light they possess shining out in devoted
hearts and ways? At the same time they are mixed up with what others, with
greater light, know is not the truth?

I do not say that such would continue to be so, did they refuse fresh gleams of
light, shed upon their path. Nay; this would at once deprive them of the
character of Philadelphia. They would be Laodicea in a moment then.

Philadelphia is indeed the Nazarite path: that moral Nazariteship which meets
with the approval of Christ. All is victory with such a state. Yet it is a path
in which the secret must be kept, between Christ and the soul. He knows and He
alone: “I know thy works” — this must suffice the true heart. Such may be asked,
“Tell me wherein thy great strength lieth!” but it is a secret not to be
betrayed. This answers to the first part of Samson’s history. But Laodicea
follows. Alas, she is blind, as Samson, now. Her Nazariteship is lost. She still
thinks herself “rich, and increased with goods, having need of nothing”; yet her
strength is gone; she is blind and naked. She is counselled to anoint her eyes
with eye-salve, that she may see. She is lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, but
nauseous to Christ: He will spue such a state of things out of His mouth. My
brethren, there are lessons here for our souls! We may have to begin de novo;
the days of our former separation may have been lost. But we can begin again! We
have a God of mercy to deal with, who has unfolded what is well-pleasing to Him.
The moment is coming when the Church of God will be removed, in her last stage
here; then the judgment of the Philistines will take place. Then the “sound of a
going” will be heard “in the tops of the mulberry trees,” once more; and the
Lord will go forth to battle with His foes, and “The saints will be joyful in
glory”: “The high praises of God will be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword
in their hands !”

Let Philadelphia then remember that He has said, “Hold fast till I come,” and,
“Let no man take thy crown.” The day is coming when Christ the heavenly
Nazarite, will say, “Eat, my friends, drink, my beloved.” When we shall know the
meaning of the words, “Then shall the Nazarite drink wine” (Numbers 6:1-27). The
blessing of Joseph which ran thus, will then be Christ’s: . . . “The God of thy
father who shall help thee; and by the Almighty who shall bless thee with
blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, . . .the
blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors,
unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be upon the head of
Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was Nazarited (see Hebrew) from
his brethren!” The Crown is shorn (as it were) of the only True Nazarite, when
the days of His separation shall be at an end! (Cf. Genesis 49:25-26;
Deuteronomy 33:13-17). The days of the Kingdom will then have come, and those
who have stood fast, and walked as Nazarites here, will then be owned. Those who
separated themselves to David of old, in his days of rejection, gathering to him
in the Cave of Adullam, and in the days of the Kingdom, they received their
reward. But the brightest gems of his glory were those specially named, who had
met these special enemies — “the uncircumcised.” If we consult 2 Samuel 23:1-39,
when the Sweet Psalmist of Israel sung his lovely “Last words,” it was of those
who had conquered the Philistines its substance most expressed.


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  CHAPTER 26: 02.14.     “GREATER WORKS”
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Chapter 14 “Greater Works”

“Let your light so shine” (Matthew 5:16).

“Greater works that these” (John 14:12).

“The Candlestick” was one of those ordinances which stood alone, giving a
character to the Wilderness Journey, in the Book of Numbers. We have already
noticed several of these special things, some of them not even mentioned
elsewhere, which are peculiar to this Book. Before the journey commenced, and
the Levites were set apart to serve, the “Candlestick” was the first thing
spoken of. When the Lord addressed Moses, from off the Mercy Seat that was upon
the Ark; — “And when Moses was gone into the tabernacle of the congregation to
speak with him (God), then he heard the voice of one speaking unto him from off
the mercy seat, that was upon the ark of testimony, from between the two
cherubims: and he spake unto him: “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak
thou unto Aaron, and say unto him, When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps
shall give light over against the candlestick.” (Numbers 7:89; Numbers 8:1-2).

Here only, of all the furniture of the Sanctuary is the Candlestick found. Just
as the Trumpets alone belong to this book; and the Rod of Priesthood; and the
Ashes of the Heifer; and the Ribband of Blue; — The Candlestick — though
heretofore directed to be made, stands alone. This is full of instruction for
our souls. How blessed it is to find some grand apparent difficulty in the Word
of God! Be assured that when something comes across our path there which seems
irrational, and out of context; in fact something that we are afraid to
entertain — tempted to fear some mistake; it is in such a place that the richest
ore crops out from the Word; yielding to us its sweetest lessons! But the
mistake we sometimes fall into is, making efforts to master the difficulty at
once, never giving a thought to the great fact that we may not yet be ready for
the truths which are there. Our souls are not fit for the lesson, and we must
wait; we must grow in fitness; we must not give the matter up as hopeless, nor
as not being for us at all. But we must wait for God’s time, and look for light
to Him. Jesus spake to His disciples, as they were able to bear it. Have I not
at times feared to make my difficulties known to another? Has not my soul
trembled — tempted to think I had placed my confidence in some statement of the
Word in vain? Yet I have waited on my God, and not in vain; ‘and, it may have
been in years after, the truth was made clear in the Word, and my soul was
filled with praise! The great thing is never to lose confidence in it: God will
sometime make it plain to the exercised heart.

I do not say that there is such a difficulty here, in the ordinance of the
Candlestick. There may be absurdity in the matter, to the soul of the infidel.
He may sneer at the hopeless jumble which the word of God here, as elsewhere,
presents, to him. He may found theories about disjointed narratives and of
collected manuscripts, and other wise deductions while the beauties of
Scripture, like the starry skies to the blind man, are lost upon him. Alas — he
wants eyes to see!

How suitably then is the Candlestick here introduced. The people of God are
about to start on their Wilderness journey (Numbers 10:1-36); in their Levite
character* they are about to be set apart to serve the Lord (Numbers 8:1-26),
and ere they start on their pilgrimage all must partake of the Paschal Feast —
the symbol of the unity of a redeemed people (Numbers 9:1-23). The first thing
therefore is this, that they are to shine as the “Epistle of Christ — known and
read of all men”! They are to “Let their light so shine among men, that they may
see their good works, and glorify their Father, which is in heaven.” “Christ” is
to be made known through them on earth, He is to shine out in all their ways:
this on the one hand; but on the other, it is their works which are seen; but
they are to shine so that men may trace them to the source of all — their Father
in heaven revealed by Jesus; the Father of lights with whom is no variableness,
nor shadow of turning! Here then most suitably is the Candlestick found.

{*The Church on earth has two characters. The first her Priestly one — all her
Members being fitted to enter the Holiest — under their great High Priest to
worship God. Then in the second place she has her Levite character — in which
the service of the people of God is seen. All too, have this place.}

Remark too in this ordinance of the Candlestick — the seven lamps, lit up by the
oil of the Spirit, are to shine where no light was, within the holy place, but
“over against the Candlestick — the shaft of which was of beaten gold. The lamps
were to shine so that its beauty should be seen. In the inner Sanctuary, or
“Holiest of all” there was no light needful: the God of Israel was the Light
thereof: the glory “Shekinah-ed” there; and in that glorious light none could
dwell. What a wondrous “shadow” was this of Him, who “dwelleth in the light to
which no one can approach, whom no one hath seen nor can see,” to whom be glory
for ever and ever ascribed! (1 Timothy 6:1-21). But in the outer Sanctuary, or
“Holy Place,” this light was there. “The candlestick shone over against the
shaft thereof.” God would have a light to display His Son. And here it is of
profound interest and instruction to us, to note that when the vail was rent
which divided the Holy place from the most Holy, the now blended light still
shined on — when both were but one “Holy”!* The light of Him who sits upon the
Throne or Mercy Seat; and that from the seven branched Candlestick, both
combined; the light from the glory in the face of Jesus, and the light of the
Spirit lit up in the Church of God on earth, formed one bright and glorious
effulgence. The day will come when in the glorified Church on high (Revelation
21:1-27), we read, that “the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the
light thereof”; and yet “Her light was like a stone most precious; like a jasper
and a sardine stone.” This effulgence all combined will shine forth — “I in
them, and thou in me: that they may be made perfect in one; that the world may
know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me (John
17:21).

{*It is deeply instructive here to note, that in the Epistle to the Hebrews the
Holy place and the Most Holy are spoken of as one thing — under one plural word,
which embraces both when applied to the antitype — the true heavenly Sanctuary.
For us the vail is rent and all are one: the “Holy” and “Holy of Holies” (cf.
Hebrews 10:19).}

If we turn to the Gospel of John (John 12:1-50, John 13:1-38, John 14:1-31) we
have a lovely hint at this “Candlestick” — where the Lord unfolds the gift of
the coming Comforter to His People, when He was going away.

He had entered Jerusalem as her King. “Hosannah! Blessed is the King of Israel
that cometh in the name of the Lord,” resounded from the voices of “much
people,” “which had gone forth to meet him” (John 12:1-50). They waved the
branches of palm trees, and spread their garments in the way. The Romans looked
on and were silent. The Greeks came up and laid hold on His followers, saying,
“Sirs, we would see Jesus.” All seemed lifelike, and promised great things. But
the Lord was not deceived. He could not yet “silence the enemy and the avenger”;
nor “rise to reign over the Gentiles”; nor bless His people as their King. Nay.
“The corn of wheat must die or abide alone” (John 12:24); but if it die, it
would bring forth much fruit. Another scene must darken the world. The cross
must ensue, and the judgment of the world must come (John 12:31). But the end
would be — “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” No
more an earthly Messiah seeking in vain to draw the Jew — “His own”; but a wider
glory would shine from the cross: Christ must leave the earth: He “must be
lifted up” from it — not yet to heavenly glory; but between the heavens and the
earth — upon the cross, He would be no more merely the object to the Jew as
walking here; but to draw all men unto Himself! He would thus — as the
crucified, be the object for the world. The “Brazen Altar” must be satisfied;
its claims must be set at rest for ever, ere He could pass into the holiest in
virtue of the work there done. When the camp stood at rest in the Desert,
surrounded by the Tribes of Israel, it figured the dwelling place of God. When
one approached God’s dwelling place, he left the world outside. Inside the
curtains which surrounded the Court of the Sanctuary, he met the Altar of Brass.
It did not stand in the world outside, nor did it reach the dwelling place of
God. Like the cross, it stood between them both — for the Mediator between God
and man; the “Daysman,” to stand between. But the sinner had left the world, and
all hope from man behind, when he lifted his eyes to the meeting place between
God and man. The cross where Jesus was lifted up, was this Brazen Altar. “I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me!” He would thus be the
“Zaphnath-Paaneah”; the true Joseph — the “Saviour of the world” (Genesis
41:45). When the “Brazen Altar” was thus passed by, ere the saved one reached
the presence of God, the “Brazen Laver” met him by the way. He must not only be
cleansed according to the need of man; but fitted for communion according to the
thoughts of God! The Laver met his daily need, and the defilements contracted by
his feet were removed — that no soil might hinder his fellowship with the Father
and Son. Jesus becomes the true Laver (John 13:1-38) to wash their feet, that
they might have “part with me.” “If I wash thee not thou hast no part with me.”
When the Brazen Layer was now passed, the “Holiest” the “Father’s House” — was
entered (John 14:1-31) to prepare a place for those who had been cleansed. The
vail was yet unrent till Jesus died; He enters it, as yet, alone. He would come
again and receive them there Himself. But Jesus — “The way the truth, the life,”
must prove in death, by being rent in twain as it were, that “no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me.” This was the vail — His flesh. In the “Holy” place “the
Candlestick” was set to shine meanwhile. The oil was about to be given; the
Spirit of God, the other Comforter should be bestowed. Then the lights of the
lamps would shine over against the Candlestick. Jesus had declared the Father;
“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also.” This was natural in Him and
true. None but He — the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,
had declared Him. But a new thing would come. One which would be supernatural
indeed. “The believing one on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and
greater works than these shall he do, because I go to my Father.” This was the
‘Candlestick.” The sevenfold light would shine from the believer, in the power
of the Spirit, “over against the Candlestick.” Believers would show forth the
Son of God, as he had shown the Father!

These were not Apostles: doubtless they too were amongst those who would so
shine; but we do not find Apostles named in John. It is “believers” of which He
speaks here. Were this not so, they would lose the joy and blessedness of these
Scriptures in John. The “great work” of Jesus — so natural to Him; would be
replaced by “greater works” in them. It was the Father known in the Son was His
great work here. But when poor lost ones, now saved, would show forth Him, by
the power of the Spirit given them: these things were beyond what man could do.
The seven lamps would show their light, but they would shine when no light was
seen, revealing the beauty of the shaft and knops and flowers of the
Candlestick.

Look at Stephen — “Full of the Holy Ghost,” gazing steadfastly into heaven. The
glory from the Holiest shone out upon him. The Lamp of the Candlestick was lit
up on earth, and no power of Satan could quench the light. It was “ Christ” that
shone in him. It shone over against the Candlestick. He beholds his Master in
the heavens, and he is like his Master in the darkness outside. His face shines,
as a child of the resurrection, like the face of an angel. His words are like
his Master’s prayer. He was telling forth, without the words, the virtues of Him
who had called him out of darkness into His marvellous light.

Surely this was a “greater work” than Christ had done. With Him all was perfect;
all shone out because it was within. But not so with us. If the God who caused
light to shine of old out of darkness had lit a Lamp in our hearts, it is tor
the shining forth of the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of
Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). But all this is “Because I go unto my Father.”
All rests on Him. He alone can order the lights “without the vail of the
testimony, in the Tabernacle of the Congregation . . . from evening until the
morning before the Lord continually . . . He shall order the Lamps upon the pure
Candlestick, before the Lord continually” (Leviticus 24:1-4). May His own
“Shine, as lights in the world, holding forth (exhibiting) the Word of Life!”


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  CHAPTER 27: 02.15.     THE “RIBBAND OF BLUE”
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Chapter 15 The “Ribband of Blue”

“. . . Upon the fringe . . . a ribband of blue” (Numbers 15:37-41). The
ordinance which now comes before us, in this remarkable book, is found in a
parenthetic chapter, lying in the midst of the history of Israel’s conduct in
the Wilderness; and is peculiar to the Book of Numbers alone (Numbers 15:1-41).
This chapter contains certain directions to Moses relating to things to be
observed when they be come into the Land, which the Lord had given them. (We may
of course except Numbers 15:32-36, where an instance had occurred of
presumptuous sin in the Wilderness; and yet this incident was connected with the
directions about sins of ignorance, and sins of presumption there given.) The
very position of the chapter has marvellous beauty for our souls. Israel had
been sentenced to wander for forty years in the desert, until the carcases had
fallen there of those who had “despised the pleasant land,” and who said, “Would
God we had died in this wilderness.” Some amongst them had sought to go up
against the Amalekites and the Canaanites without the Ark, and were discomfited
unto Hormah. This was told us in Numbers 14:1-45. The rebellion of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram, which was in reality apostasy, was then about to manifest
itself. Just before this took place, this lovely chapter drops in, with its
streams of refreshment for our souls — detailing the unchanging faithfulness of
the Lord! He speaks to Moses in all the calm dignity of one who could not
change, though Israel might destroy himself. God was faithful, and He had given
them the Land. Nothing then could alter His purposes and promises to Abraham’s
seed.

Moses was to speak unto the Children of Israel, and say unto them, “When ye be
come into the land of your habitations, which I give unto you!” (Numbers 15:2).
Just as if nothing had occurred, and Israel was as faithful as He, those words
are uttered; irrespective of all that had passed! But it is always thus. Man may
fail: the saints too may turn aside. The servant’s heart may be wrenched as he
beholds their ways; but God is the refuge of their heart and their portion for
ever! It reminds us of the Corinthians, when in such a state that Paul had to
turn aside on his way there, having heard of their sins. But before he ever
touches upon this, his heart turns to God. He thinks of Him. Of his abiding
faithfulness, spite of all; and he says, . . . “Who shall confirm you unto the
end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is
faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son.” (1 Corinthians
1:8-9).

Thus it is here (Numbers 15:1-41): He would bring His people in; and would teach
them in the Wilderness their practice for the Land! This is striking and
remarkable indeed. It is something at which we may challenge our hearts and ask
— Are we too sensible of the fact that we are taught in the Wilderness our
practice for the glory? I have no doubt that our walk here determines our place
in that glory. Yet on the other hand — I am sure “it will be given to them for
whom it is prepared of my Father” — as the Lord has said. But this does not
alter the other fact in any wise. If we recall the scene of the Supper which
they made for Jesus in Bethany, before He entered upon His passion in Jerusalem
(John 12:1-50), we see three souls there — the dead man, Lazarus raised from the
dead, seated with Him at the feast: the Martha who had served Him at her own
board, and loved her Saviour, still serving there: and the Mary who sat at His
feet and heard His word; who fell at His feet in her sorrow now worshipping at
His feet, in this typical scene of glory. We are taught by this that as each one
had learned of Him and walked with Him in the sorrows of the eleventh of John,
each took their place at the feast in Bethany with Him: Lazarus sat; and Martha
served; and Mary, with her spikenard poured forth, worshipped! So with His
people now: they are being fitted here, slowly but surely, by His hand, for the
place and service they shall occupy in His glory. What an incentive is this for
diligence of soul!

How this reminds us of David’s men of old, who came to him, a sorry lot indeed;
but served and abode with him till his kingdom came, and then what glorious men
surrounded, and ministered to his glory! What characters were their’s: what
deeds had they wrought long perhaps forgotten; but remembered, and recalled and
detailed in their value to him, in the day when he “wrote up the people” (2
Samuel 23:1-39).

There is a touching significance too in this “Fringe” which was to be placed on
the bottom of their garments; and the “Ribband of blue,” coming in here, in the
midst of instructions, which have to do with Canaan, and their practice there.
Nothing could be plainer than the fact that this “Ribband of blue” was an
ordinance for the Wilderness path; though not for it alone. It was that which
was abstract and general, without having reference to place or circumstances.
Yet here it is, in the midst of instructions for the Land. Why was this?

It is plain (and the more so when we apprehend its import), that this heavenly
border, was to serve, to connect their earthly path with things of another
scene! That while here below the heavenly blue was to link their practice with
things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God!

Thus is the unchanging faithfulness of the Lord, linked with the heavenly walk
of His own, as they are instructed in “things above,” where their hearts, and
their affections are also.

Let us remark too, that this fringe, with its border of blue, was not placed on
those parts of their garments, which were conspicuous to the eye. They were
placed on the border of the robe: “the hem”* which came nearest to the ground.
They were to “look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do
them; and that ye seek not after your own heart, and your own eyes.”

{*That which the woman with issue of blood “touched,” when she was made
perfectly whole by Christ. (Matthew 9:1-38).} The smallest detail of life: that
which was connected with the pathway, and came down to the common things of
every day, were to be heavenly in their character. It was to call to their mind
each day and hour, by its heavenly blue — that they belonged to Him who is
heavenly “as is the heavenly, so are they” (1 Corinthians 15:48). They were to
“remember,” and to “do” — to be obedient in all details.

It was not enough that they should themselves decide what was heavenly, and
follow the dictates of their own heart. All was faulty unless done in obedience
too: obedience to the commandments of the Lord. But there was more than this.
Its result was seen in a holy and separate walk; “and be holy unto your God.”
And here it is when the New Testament in its antitypes reflects the types of the
Old with such marvellous beauty. When we come to look at the practical
directions which are found there, how the details enter on the smallest things
of life, and are founded on the fact that the saints are connected with heaven
and Christ.

Time would fail us to recount the thousand precepts which fill its pages: the
commandments addressed to direct the life possessed. The directions given to the
life bestowed upon the children of God. How different is this from the
commandments of the Law. They were prohibitions to the flesh, out of which
nothing but evil could come. They forbid its actions and its lusts. They
required righteousness from an unrighteous man, and visited their curse upon all
who did not answer to them. But the commandments of the New, are addressed to a
new life given, which needs to be directed through an evil world. They are
called commandments, because if we did everything right without obedience, it
was worthless. This was the path of Christ. This heavenly character comes out
very strikingly in the Colossians: as in other places in the Word. But there,
where the saints are not themselves [looked at as] seated in heavenly places in
Christ, it is largely seen; though not less seen in the other epistles. The
saint in Colossians, “risen with Christ,” is practically walking in a character
suited to heaven where Christ sits at God’s right hand.

Remark, beloved reader, how all those relations of life which Christianity owns,
are here addressed. Wives and husbands; children and parents; servants and
masters; ministers and those ministered to, in their heavenly paths: the subject
one always coming first.

We do not find in the New Testament, directions for kings, or rulers; statesmen
or soldiers; or the great ones of the earth. There may be, and there have been
saints in these relations, but God does not recognize them as such there. To be
so but falsifies what Christianity is. It instructs the lowly, the subject ones
of the earth, in their heavenly path; but great in the sight of God. Some of the
relations it exhorts came in through sin (as servants and masters, etc.). It
does not disturb them. It does not undertake to set the world to rights. It
leaves all things as it found them for the present time; but it comes from
heaven to sanctify the heart in these relations, that it may be “heavenly” and
“obedient” and “holy” to the Lord. The servant to his master, though an
unbeliever. The master to his servant though a slave. And this while gathering
out of the world a people for the Lord.

How sad and solemn it is, when heavenly truth has but little power with the
saints, when clearness of doctrine, held in the mind, has never sanctified the
heart; when worldliness marks those who hold the highest truths which God has
been pleased to reveal. When the conscience alas, is deadened by the very truths
which should produce a separate, holy, obedient, heavenly path. But I speak of
nothing new in this. It brought forth those terrible “woes” from the lips of
Christ. Those warnings which came forth with scathing distinctness against those
who taught the precepts of scripture, and pretended to walk therein, but whose
desire was to be “seen of men,” and not of God. Hearken to those denunciations
of Christ in Matthew 23:1-39 against the formalists and religionists of that
day. Woe after woe is heard; and this touching rite of the “Ribband of Blue” is
referred to with those words: But all their works they do to be seen of men,
they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments;
they love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. Is there
not the spirit of this around us now, rather than the lowly heavenly grace of
our Lord? Had they not changed by their formalism, that which was the expression
of this — in the “border” of blue, into an emblem for self-exaltation and
spiritual pride? That which God had given to produce a lowly walk, was used only
to gain place and honour from man. But Jesus is the same. And virtue comes out
of Him now as then, when a lowly soul would touch the border of His garment by
faith, whether for healing, or for fresh supplies of grace. May the Lord apply
these several Wilderness lessons on which we have meditated, to our souls;
binding them all together, as one said to me once, with a true “Ribband of
Blue,” that His name — the name of our heavenly Saviour and Lord, may be
glorified in His people, while they are waiting for Him here below. F. G.
Patterson.


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  CHAPTER 28: 03.00. THE CHURCH OF GOD ETC.
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F. G. Patterson Blackrock Lectures Second edition – Revised Preface to the First
Edition The lectures in the reader’s hands were delivered in the course of
ordinary service in the ministry of the word. Some who heard them thought that
they might be useful to others, and the notes of them where given to the writer,
and form the basis of these papers. That they may be a blessing to His people,
is the earnest desire of the writer, and if so, they will bring glory to the
name of the Lord. Blackrock, September, 1870.

Note: The name “Blackrock Lectures” was the suggestion of a brother in
communion, for the sake of distinction from others.

Table of Contents Lecture 1: Christ “Head over All the Assembly, which is His
Body”; a. Christ, “Head over all things”; b. “Head . . . to the assembly.”; c.
“Which is His Body.”

Lecture 2: “The House of God, which is the Assembly of the Living God.”

Lecture 3: Christ Amongst the Candlesticks Revelation 1:1-20, Revelation 2:1-29,
Revelation 3:1-22, Part 1 Lecture 4: “Him that Overcometh”, Part 2 Lecture 5:
Our Present Condition and Our Hope Lecture 6: The Church in the Glory; and the
Father’s House


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  CHAPTER 29: 03.01.     CHRIST “HEAD OVER ALL THE ASSEMBLY, WHICH IS HIS BODY”
========================================================================

This evening, in the Lord’s mercy, I desire to bring before you, beloved
friends, the great subject of the church of God, which, next to Christ Himself,
is the centre of all God’s counsels for His glory. It is very sweet, when we are
in the consciousness of our relationship as sons — children of God our Father —
to be assured of, and instructed in our relationship to Christ as “members of
his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” He is never said to be “bone of our
bone”; but we are said to be “of his flesh, and of his bones,” when He has gone
on high, after His work on the cross by which we are saved. The church is that
wonderful structure in which God will display in all the ages, and throughout
eternity, the “exceeding riches of his grace.” How rich He is and how far His
grace could go, will be seen in “his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” The
Bible is the history of two men — the “first Adam,” the responsible, or created
man; and the “last Adam,” the man of God’s purpose and counsel. The responsible
man’s history closed in the cross. The “second Man” — the “last Adam” — came in,
and, in blessed and holy love, took willingly the cup of wrath, and died, that
God might be free, in righteousness, to let out the floodgates of His love. The
stream took its rise in His heart, but needed a righteous channel in which to
flow. It was pent up in the heart of Christ, little as we could have conceived
it, when He said, “How am I straitened, till it be accomplished” (Luke 12:1-59).
He poured out His soul unto death and the stream flowed on! God’s heart was thus
set free to flow out to sinners — the vilest — the most abject; bearing them
back by redemption on its mighty stream, to place them on high — “seated in
heavenly places in Christ.”

You do not find God’s purposes and counsels unfolded in scripture till the cross
is past. It stands morally at the end of the world’s history. In God’s dealings
previous to the cross, you have the responsible man tested and exposed. The Lord
Jesus came down and brought out the fact that man was irrecoverably lost. If the
world had received Him, it would have proved that there was some latent good in
man’s heart which only needed this fresh culture to unfold. But no! Man had no
heart for Jesus then, as now. We know this when we think how we desire naturally
to live without Jesus. Men will talk of anything but Him. In religion he can
clothe himself, and pride himself, because it gives him some importance in his
own eyes; but the presentation of the Lord Jesus tests the heart which can thus
deceive itself, when He has no place there. On this side of the cross,
historically, you have the purposed Man in glory — the veil rent, and the grace
of God preached “unto all,” and no further dealings of God, until His
long-suffering is exhausted, when the judgment of the living closes the scene,
and introduces the millennial age. We have to do with Him either in grace or in
judgment. To know Him in grace, we have passed from death to life; to know Him
in judgment is eternal woe! When the cross is thus passed, all God’s counsels
which were before the foundation of the world, unfold themselves to us in the
word, and that for the first time. It is exceedingly interesting to trace from
scripture what does come out then — when the Lord Jesus, the second Man, is in
the glory of God.

I will draw your attention shortly to some of them. In Hebrews 9:26 you read,
“Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.” This was accomplished by the suffering and death of the
cross. I am going to point out all the “nows” of scripture as to these things.

1. In Romans 3:21-26. “But now the righteousness of God without the law is
manifested”; again, “To declare at this time [now] his righteousness,” etc. The
judgment that was needed to establish God’s righteousness against sin was poured
out upon the head of Jesus; and God took Him up as Man, who had glorified Him by
bearing all to His glory, and set Him on His own throne — thus displaying His
righteousness, His consistency with Himself in doing so. Thus the gospel is the
revelation of God’s righteousness, because it is His own consistency with
Himself in ministering His grace on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ. We
are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus,” and God is just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”
Instead of the demand for righteousness from man, there is the administration of
it to him, and that of God’s righteousness instead of man’s, from the glory
where Christ is. The saints of the Old Testament stood on the ground of the
“forbearance” of God. We as Christians, stand on His righteousness, (cp. Romans
3:25 with Romans 3:26). There was “the passing over,” [see margin — not
“remission”] of sins that are past, i.e., of past ages. Forgiveness was promised
(Jeremiah 32:1-44), but not preached or proclaimed (Acts 13:38). Suppose the
case of a man who owed a debt, and whose creditor forbore with him because some
rich man had gone security for his liability. The debt was there, but the
creditor forbore to press his claim. But if this rich man came in later and
discharged the whole amount, the debtor was free! So with us, in contrast with
the saints of old with whom God forbore — the cross now proves His righteousness
in doing so — we stand on the ground of God’s righteousness being now gloriously
manifested, because Christ is in heaven! (John 13:31-32, John 16:10, John
17:4-5). We who believe possess a purged conscience which no saint of Old
Testament times ever could, though he knew God in blessed confidence, and found
Him a God of grace. The cross is now the proof of how righteous this forbearance
of God was with them.

2. In 2 Timothy 1:9-10. “Who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling,
not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which
was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. But now is made manifest by
the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath
brought life and incorruptibility (aphtharsia) to light through the gospel,”
etc. (See also Titus 1:1-3.)

3. Then in Ephesians 3:10, “To the intent that now unto the principalities and
powers in heavenly places might be known by means of the church the manifold
wisdom of God.” (See also Romans 16:25-26, etc.)

Thus we find the closing up of the first man’s history in responsibility in the
cross, which stood morally at “the end of the world.” In the cross man
consummated his guilt, and there the blessed Son of God drank willingly the cup
of wrath, and not only put away our sins, but the man that sinned by enduring
the judgment of God that lay upon him. Then God took the man who so glorified
Him, and put Him in glory in the display of righteousness. The promise of
eternal life before the world was revealed, on the close of man’s history in the
death of Christ, he who had the power of death being also annulled; and the
eternal purpose of God in the church is made known.

Thus you get all these “nows” of scripture when the cross is past, and Christ is
in the glory of God, having accomplished redemption. Sin is put away for the
believer; righteousness manifested; eternal life bestowed. There was one more
thing that God’s manifold wisdom might be known; namely, the church of God.

Let me remark as to the word “church.” It has done more mischief, and created
more misapprehension as to the divine purposes, than almost any other
expression. Let us be clear at once as to it, that the word is not in scripture!
No doubt you have it in our excellent (for the most part) Authorized Version.
But it is not a true representation of the original. In all cases it should be
translated “assembly.” If we were to speak of the assembly of England, of
Scotland, of Ireland, we would not understand what it meant. When we use the
word church, it is a conventional word, conveying a human thought about a human
institution. For instance, take the well known passage in Matthew 18:1-35, “Tell
it to the church”; read it, “Tell it to the assembly,” and the thought of many
of its being the teaching or priestly body, or other organization, is gone.

Now, the interval during which Christ is hidden in the heavens, and the Holy
Ghost is dwelling on earth, in contradistinction to His working in other ages,
has no computation in scripture. “Times and seasons” belong to the Jew and the
earth. The present interval is not “time,” properly speaking, at all. Time is
counted when God has to do with earth and earthly things.

What then, is the “assembly of God,” looked upon in the truth of the expression?
It is the body of a Head, who has gone on high; formed by the Holy Ghost sent
down from heaven, to be the vessel for the expression of Christ, while He is
hidden from the world, and before He is revealed in glory. As we have in
Ephesians 1:22-23 : “And gave him to be head over all things to the assembly
which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” In order to
facilitate the unfolding of my subject, I have divided it into three heads. a.)
Christ, “Head over all things.” The universal dominion over all the works of God
is bestowed upon the man of God’s counsel, as we find in Psalms 8:1-9. So the
first Adam, the created man, was given a universal lordship over this scene, as
it came from its Creator’s hands. This he forfeited when he fell by sin. We
read, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26). Then, in Psalms 8:1-9, this is
bestowed on the “Son of man” the man of God’s counsel: “Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy hand: thou hast put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and
the fish of the sea; and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea.”

I come now to examine how He takes possession of it all. He does so under four
titles; namely, as God, Creator of them; as Son, and appointed Heir of them; as
Son of man, according to Psalms 8:1-9, the Man of God’s counsel; and as redeemer
of His inheritance, which had fallen under Satan’s power through the lusts of
man when he fell. In Colossians 1:15-16. “Who is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of every creature: for by him were all things created that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones,
or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and
for him.” This refers to all the works of His hands, for the creation of all
things is always in scripture attributed to the Son of God.* When the persons of
the Godhead are distinguished as to creation, He is always the actor. If we look
at John 1:3 we find the strongest expression of this. Nothing came into being
which ever did come into being, except by Him. “All things were made by him, and
without him was not any thing made that was made.” All things were made by Him
and for Him, as we see by Colossians 1:1-29.

{*No doubt it is written, “In the beginning God created,” etc., but there the
expression is general; it does not give details as to the activity of the
persons of the Godhead. The New Testament brings out definitely the unity of the
Godhead in the Trinity of the persons; and there we get details.

Strange that in the creed, called the “Apostles’,” creation is attributed to the
Father. Scripture uniformly attributes it to the Son, when it distinguishes the
Persons in the Godhead. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven
and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son,” etc.}

Then He is called the first-born or Chief of all, not as to the point of time of
His taking a place in creation; but because of the dignity of His person. If the
Creator stoops to take a place in that which displayed His handiwork, He must
necessarily be first and chief in it, even if He appeared last of all on the
scene.

Now, if you turn to Hebrews 1:2, you will find the same truth, with another
added, “God hath in the last of these days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he
hath appointed heir of all things, by whom he made the worlds.” Here again,
creation is attributed to Him who is appointed Heir of all. But there is a third
point, which you will find in Psalms 8:1-9, “O Jehovah, our Adon, how excellent
is thy name in all the earth, who hast set thy glory above the heavens . . .
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or, the Son of man, that thou
visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast
crowned him with glory and honour Thou madest him to have dominion over the
works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet,” etc.

Now, with regard to the question which you find in Psalms 8:4, “What is man?”
You will find it asked three times in the Old Testament. In Job 7:17, “What is
man that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest visit him every
morning, and try him every moment.” The question in this chapter arises in this
way. Job, like many, is struggling under the discipline of God’s hand. God is
holding Job under His hand for it! And Job is writhing under His dealings,
imploring God to let him alone “till he swallow down his spittle!” He speaks in
the anguish of his spirit, and asks, in the bitterness of his soul, “What is
man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart
upon him? and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every
moment?” He pours out his plaint to God, desiring to know how it was that the
mighty God should set His heart on such a poor worm as man, “whose foundation is
in the dust,” and “who is crushed before the moth.” In Psalms 144:1-15 you have
the same inquiry, “What is man?” Here it is the cry to Jehovah of the godly
remnant of Israel in the last days, pleading the insignificance of man — their
foes — as a ground for the speedy judgments of His hand and their deliverance
from their oppressors, who are prospering around them. They cry to Him, “What is
man?” Why spare them; why not execute judgment, and thus deliver the people of
thy hand? But when we come to Psalms 8:1-9, you find that it is the Spirit of
Christ in the Psalmist, which asks the question “What is man?” etc. Put to shame
and rejected of men — and of Israel — His plaint goes up to Jehovah, and He
asks, from His lowly place of rejection, “What is man?” And we get grace’s
answer to it all, in man in Christ, according to the counsels of God; and we
therefore have what God is as well, because we have God in grace revealed in Him
— going down into death, by the grace of God, to connect the creature with his
Creator.

Christ was this Son of man — set over all the works of God’s hand — as Adam, the
created man, had been at the first, in the dominion of this scene which he lost,
when he was drawn aside of Satan, and fell. Thus we find in this question asked
three times, though in very different connection, in the Old Testament; and the
answer to the question in Psalms 8:1-9 is brought out in wonderful development,
displacing the first man by the second, the first Adam by the last, three times
in the New. (See Hebrews 2:1-18; Ephesians 1:1-23; 1 Corinthians 15:1-58.) In
Hebrews 2:6 you find the words of the Psalm quoted, as far as they are fulfilled
— the end of the Psalm has actually yet to come. It is touching, too, how the
inspired writer of Hebrews will not say, David “in a certain place testified,”
etc. How well he knew that a greater than David was there! He writes, “One in a
certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him; or
the Son of man, that thou visitest him. Thou madest him a little lower than the
angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the
works of thy hand: thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.” Then
he explains, “For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing
that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But
we see Jesus [this “Son of man”], who was made a little lower than the angels,
for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he, by the grace
of God, should taste death for everything.” This is the word; not merely “every
man.”

He has tasted death in all its bitterness, not only for the glory of God, which
required it; and to destroy the power of Satan, who had gotten the power of
death over man; and for the sins of His people, if He was to bring many souls to
glory — but also for the whole inheritance as His title to bless it. Every blade
of grass, every leaf of the trees, He has died for! He takes His inheritance,
with all its load of guilt, and dies to redeem it all — tasting death for it,
“by the grace of God.” This is a far wider thought than the saints merely,
though they are included in it. The beautiful world, beautiful wherever man’s
hand has not marred it, or his foot has not trodden it down; that which came out
of the hand of its Creator in all its variety of living beauty, displaying His
handiwork in all its lights and shadows — it has been purchased by the blood of
Christ. Already redeemed by blood from the hands of the enemy, it has yet to be
redeemed by power. The eye of faith turns on high and sees Him on the throne of
God, the title to all things in His hand, as God their Creator, as Son and Heir
of them, and as Man! Yet more, as the One who has “tasted death” for it! He took
the curse that was on the scene; and the day is coming when not a vestige of
that curse will remain. The thorns and thistles of Adam (Genesis 3:18), and the
want of fruitfulness of Cain (Genesis 4:12), will give place to the earth
yielding her increase (Psalms 67:6), and the thorn and thistle giving place to
the myrtle and the fir tree (Isaiah 55:13). He will inherit it as its
Redeemer-Heir. He tastes death and then goes on high, where God has “crowned him
with glory and honour”

Thus He is there, “Head over all things” in a fourfold title Creator, Son and
Heir, Son of man, and Redeemer. There He awaits the joint-heirs (His bride for
that day of glory), and when all are gathered, He will put forth His great
power, and binding Satan, will possess all, and we shall be joint-heirs of it
with Him. That interval is marked by the presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling
here below. b.) “Head . . . to the Assembly.” The second point I desire to bring
before you is, that Christ, as man in glory, is thus “Head over all things”; is
Head, not over, but “to the assembly.” You will mark strongly that He is never
said to be Head over the church, but to it. We will look at it in its other
aspect as “His body,” again.

Now I may surprise some (who have grasped the truth of the church being the body
of Christ, formed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven at Pentecost), by
saying that the thought of the “assembly” was well known in the Old Testament
scriptures, and familiar to the order of things in Israel. Thus we find the word
where it has perplexed some, in learning that the church, as we know it now from
scripture, began its existence after the ascension of Christ and descent of the
Holy Ghost. I refer to the passage in Acts 7:1-60, “The church [assembly] in the
wilderness,” referring to Israel in their Journey from Egypt to Canaan. The
whole congregation of Israel as they came out of Egypt, in its corporate unity,
as well as its gathering together, is treated as the assembly. In Exodus 22:1-31
we read of “the whole assembly of the congregation.” In the expression “the
tabernacle of the congregation,” it is another word in the original, and should
be rendered “tabernacle [or “tent”] of meeting,” and signifies the place where
they met Jehovah. I need hardly say that, comparatively, there were but few true
saints of God amongst that great congregation. But in its corporate unity as a
nation come out of Egypt, and the assemblage of the people it was termed and
treated as the “assembly” of Jehovah. You know how they defiled His
dwelling-place; for He had brought them out of Egypt that He “might dwell among
them” (Exodus 29:45-46), so that finally He removed His glory or presence from
their midst (Ezekiel 8:1-18; Ezekiel 9:1-11; Ezekiel 10:1-22; Ezekiel 11:1-25).

Let us carry the thought with us that Israel, as a nation, was the “assembly” of
Jehovah. They corrupt themselves wholly in this position, and God has two great
controversies with them in His dealings by-and-by, when He takes them up again.

Isaiah 40:1-31; Isaiah 41:1-29; Isaiah 42:1-25; Isaiah 43:1-28; Isaiah 44:1-28;
Isaiah 45:1-25; Isaiah 46:1-13; Isaiah 47:1-15; Isaiah 48:1-22 gives His first
great controversy with them (especially Israel) for idolatry, ending with the
words, “There is no peace, saith Jehovah, unto the wicked.” The second is more
specially with the Jews, than with Israel as a nation. It is from Isaiah
49:1-26; Isaiah 50:1-11; Isaiah 51:1-23; Isaiah 52:1-15; Isaiah 53:1-12; Isaiah
54:1-17; Isaiah 55:1-13; Isaiah 56:1-12; Isaiah 57:1-21, and ends with the
somewhat similar words, “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” This
is for the yet deeper guilt of the rejection of Jehovah-Messiah, come into their
midst in grace. The general testimony of Isaiah, as of the other prophets, is
that a remnant only would be spared and saved, when God would turn His hand to
deal with them once more.

I may here mention, what has been noted, that the book of Isaiah, exclusive of
the historic interlude in Isaiah 35:1-10, Isaiah 36:1-22, Isaiah 37:1-38, Isaiah
38:1-22, is divided into two great portions, chaps. 1 — 34 giving their external
history in the midst of, and with relation to, the nations with whom they have
to do (outside of those embraced in the Gentile empires, to whom the throne of
the world was given, when God removed the glory from the earth; these we find in
the book of Daniel). Then, after their external history (Isaiah 1 - 34), and the
historic interlude of parabolic significance (Isaiah 35:1-10, Isaiah 36:1-22,
Isaiah 37:1-38, Isaiah 38:1-22, Isaiah 39:1-8), we get their internal or moral
history discussed (Isaiah 40 - 56).

If we examine Isaiah 8:12-18, we find only a remnant attached to Christ, who
becomes a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel.
In Isaiah 5:1-30 Jehovah looks back on the nation as to how they answered to the
culture bestowed upon them; they “brought forth wild grapes.” In Isaiah 6:1-13
He looks forward, and they are proved to be unfit for the glory of the Lord of
Hosts: they are “undone”; Isaiah here representing the people before Jehovah.

What is now to be the remedy? Jehovah of Hosts will become a man! This was now
the resource. The virgin would bear a Son (Isaiah 7:14) and Jehovah of Sabaoth
becomes Emmanuel — God with us! In Isaiah 8:12-18, He becomes a stumbling-stone
and rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, and historically He was in the
Gospels, (cp. Matthew 21:42-44, etc.), but a sanctuary to the remnant who attach
themselves to Him. “He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling,
and for a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel: for a gin and for a
snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and
fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. Bind up the testimony, seal
the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face
from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him” (Isaiah 8:14-17).

Thus, we find that Christ became a stumbling stone to Israel, but a small
remnant of the people attached themselves to Him — who were “for signs and
wonders “in Israel (cp. Hebrews 2:13).

I will now trace shortly the history of this remnant, while Jehovah hides His
face from Israel. You find it distinctly in Matthew’s gospel. In Matthew 4:1-25
He goes out in Galilee, and calls around Him Peter and Andrew his brother; then
James and John, and so the company of His disciples. Mark what Isaiah 8:16 says,
“Bind up the testimony, and seal the law amongst my disciples.” He began to do
that in the Sermon on the Mount; but when we go on to Matthew 16:1-28 Peter
confesses Him “Son of the living God,” and Jesus says, “On this rock I will
build my assembly.” Israel having nationally failed as the assembly of the Lord,
He now unfolds that He would replace it by an assembly which He was about to
build; which still was a future thing.

Now turn with me to Psalms 22:1-31 and you will find definitely the position in
which this remnant is placed by redemption. You have there the great question of
good and evil solved by Christ on the cross. All the evil that is in man’s heart
brought out; all the cup of divine and righteous wrath against sin poured out
upon the devoted head of Jesus! The cross of Christ surpasses in moral glory all
that this universe will ever behold! It is a necessity, because of a holy and
righteous God, that sin must be judged. But what necessity was there that the
holy, spotless Son of God should be treated as sin, and left to endure the
judgment of God due to it? None, but that of His own sovereign grace “He who
knew no sin was made sin for us.” This the cross reveals. God whose holy nature
cannot allow sin to remain unjudged, to spare the sinner, and give expression to
all that was in His heart, did not spare His Son. He was left to be forsaken of
God, as we learn from that solemn cry bursting forth from His heart at that
surpassing “hour,” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There the great
question of good and evil has found its eternal solution. Where man was, in evil
at its culminating point and sin receives its righteous judgment, there all that
God was in goodness has found its infinite revelation in Him who devoted Himself
for this to His glory at all cost to Himself. The turning point is reached in
Psalms 22:21, “Yea, thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.” Then His
first thought is, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the
assembly [cp. Hebrews 2:12] will I praise thee.”

Israel, as we saw, was originally the assembly of Jehovah. The whole thing
fails, on the one hand sinking back into idolatry; on the other, rejecting
Jehovah-Messiah, come in lowly grace. The remnant, which was to form the nucleus
of the new assembly, is delivered and attached to Christ, and instructed by Him.
It did not get the name “assembly” until His resurrection, save in the
announcement of His yet future purpose to Peter; but when the Lord had passed
through the judgment of the cross, as described in Psalms 22:1-31. and He is
heard from the horns of the unicorns — a figure of the transpiercing judgment of
God — His first thought is to declare the name of His deliverer — God to His
brethren, now owned thus for the first time; for divine love was free now, so to
speak, to act according to its own dictates.

Historically this was fulfilled in John 20:1-31. The judgment of the cross was
passed in John 19:1-42; and in John 20:1-31. He is standing forth in
resurrection: the whole question of sin has been gone into and settled – not a
shadow of it left on our souls, who believe. The first man’s history is closed
under God’s judgment fully executed. I thank God, every Christian here can say,
and should without hesitation be able to say, there is not the weight of the
smallest cloud on my soul, that Christ has not removed. The second Man is able
to associate us with Himself in all the place He enters into as risen from the
dead.

He turns to Mary (John 20:17) saying, “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended
to my Father; but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father,
and your Father; and unto my God, and your God.” That is, the Son of God places
the disciples on the same platform as Himself by redemption: He is not ashamed
to call them “brethren.” The finest message that ever passed through mortal lips
is sent to them through a woman, who, ignorant if you please, could break her
heart for Christ! The Son of God is not ashamed to call them “brethren” — now
named such for the first time — because they stand in all His own acceptance
before the Father! His Father is their Father; His God is their God! He thus
declares His name, and pronounces “peace” twice; and breathes on them “life more
abundantly,” as the last Adam — a “quickening spirit.” “The disciples were glad
when they saw the Lord.” In life He had declared His Father to them: in
resurrection He presents them to His Father as sons!

Thus, you have the “assembly,” now definitely in its place for the first time
composed — of the same remnant of Israel, and Christ in their midst —
proclaiming peace and declaring His Father’s name.

Now mark, all this is on earth, and Christ is still there. Psalms 22:1-31 goes
no further than resurrection. So that as yet we have no Holy Ghost come down
from heaven, and consequently the “body of Christ” not yet formed.

Now, if we turn to Acts 1:1-26, another truth comes out. They were to remain in
Jerusalem until they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost, “not many days
hence.” His earthly work of the cross was over; all its fruits will be
accomplished in due time. His heavenly work of baptizing with the Holy Ghost —
so frequently spoken of in the Gospels — was yet to come. He says, “For John
truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many
days hence.” That of “fire” is omitted, because it is yet to come. The fire of
judgment will yet cleanse His kingdom of every stumbling-block and them which do
iniquity. It has nothing to do with the Holy Ghost’s appearance in tongues of
fire on the day of Pentecost. This baptism was to change the relationship of
this “assembly” into one not yet revealed or accomplished. They are the
“assembly,” but not yet “his body.” I wish to keep these two thoughts distinct
in your mind, before they become interchangeable by the subsequent descent of
the Holy Ghost, as in Ephesians 1:22-23. In Acts 1:9 the Lord ascends to heaven,
and a cloud receives Him out of their sight. In Acts 2:1-47 the Holy Ghost
personally*2 descends from heaven, and they were all baptized of Him. He sat
upon each of them, and filled all the house — dwelling thus “in them,”
personally, and “with them,” collectively. This assembly is now God’s habitation
through the Spirit. The one hundred and twenty disciples — thus baptized — are
technically named the “assembly” from that moment (Acts 2:47). ** The Holy Ghost
now dwells on earth for the first time, and consequent on redemption. He had
wrought before He came to dwell, as in Old Testament days.

{*The reader will do well to consult John 14:1-31, John 15:1-27, John 16:1-33 as
to the personal presence of the Holy Ghost upon earth, consequent on the work
and departure of Christ. “The Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was
not yet glorified” (John 7:39). John 14:16, “I will pray the Father, and he
shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever”; not for
a few years, as He who was then about to leave them. The world would not receive
Him, but He would not be only “with them” as Jesus, but “in them.” Read the last
clause of John 14:17 thus, “For he shall dwell with you, and shall be in you.”
Not only is this rendering correct, but the context proves it to be the thought.
Then John 14:26, the Father would send Him in the Son’s name; and in John 15:26,
the Lord would (as gone on high) send Him from the Father.

John 16:1-33 shows the Comforter’s presence on earth, and what He would be when
Christ was gone. It was expedient that He should go (John 16:7); until then the
Holy Ghost would not come; “If I depart I will send him unto you.” John 16:8-15
show what He would be, and how He would act when come, with regard to the world
and the disciples. He would glorify Jesus on earth (John 16:14), as Jesus had
glorified the Father on earth (John 17:4).

It is the unfolding of the actions of a divine Person on earth in company with
the disciples. In 1 Peter 1:11-13 we find three steps of much moment, marking
the presence of the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven as the special truth of
Christianity. The Spirit of Christ in the prophets, prophesied of things not yet
come, but to be ministered to us (1 Peter 1:11). The glad tidings of the
accomplishment of these things – Christ having suffered and gone on high — were
preached to us by the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, a mediate thing between
the sufferings and the glories that were to come (1 Peter 1:12); and then these
things were to be brought in at the revelation of Jesus Christ, now hidden in
the heavens.

**If the word “assembly” in Acts 2:47 be questioned, we find that a separate and
distinct company was formed and recognized (see Acts 4:20); and they are termed
the “assembly” in Acts 5:11, before the breaking up of the whole thing
externally in Acts 8:1-40.} The “temple” in Jerusalem was an empty house, and
Israel an “untoward generation.” The “assembly” was now the “city of refuge” for
the “slayer of blood,” where those who bowed to the guilt of their Messiah’s
blood could flee.*

{*The “assembly of God” is ever since, the “city of refuge” for the poor Jew —
guilty of His Messiah’s blood; and, fleeing to it, he is safe from the avenger
of blood. When the death of the high priest, anointed with the holy oil, takes
place; that is, in the antitype — when the Lord Jesus finishes His present
intercessional Priesthood on high; the poor Jew may then, and only then, return
to the land of his inheritance (see Numbers 35:1-34).}

It was an analogous state of things, as in 2 Samuel 5:1-25; 2 Samuel 6:1-23,
when the ark was in delivering grace on mount Zion with David; and the
tabernacle at Gibeon, with no ark or presence of Jehovah. Analogous, too, to the
pitching of the tent outside the camp by Moses, (Exodus 33:1-23) and every one
that sought the Lord went out to it.

Now, to this “assembly” the Lord added such as were being saved from the
destructions about to fall on the nation of Israel. This is the force of Acts
2:47. It does not raise the question of their ultimate salvation; nor is it a
description of their state as “saved ones,” but is rather the characteristic or
technical name for a class of persons (the three thousand, for instance, on that
day) which were being saved from the judgments about to fall on the nation. They
were all Jews. See also Luke 13:22-23. In Acts 3:1-26* Peter proposes that
Christ would return and bring in all the blessings of the kingdom, as spoken of
by the prophets, and thus all the kindreds of the earth — the Gentiles — would
be blessed.

{*This is an interesting point. In Acts 3:1-26 you have nothing at all about the
“assembly.” Peter goes back to the fathers of Israel, and proposes — by the Holy
Ghost come down, and in answer to the intercession of Jesus on the cross,
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” — that if they would bow
and repent He would return, and the times of restitution, and all that the
prophets had spoken, would ensue. Thus God was bringing in the responsibility of
Israel; while Has purpose was working under all for the “assembly.” The two
principles of responsibility and purpose are worked out in the wisdom of God, as
from the beginning.} In Acts 4:1-37 you get the answer of Israel to the
proposal. It was wholly refused! They put the two apostles, Peter and John, in
prison; and in Acts 5:1-42 the whole twelve: then Stephen (Acts 6:1-15; Acts
7:1-60) sums up their whole history in responsibility, from Abraham’s call till
that moment. Despised promises; a broken law; slain prophets; a murdered Christ;
and a resisted Spirit, is the terrible tale! (Acts 7:51-53). Stephen seals his
testimony with his blood, and commits his spirit to the Lord, and all is over.
The “assembly” is scattered to the four winds; and Saul of Tarsus, the most
determined of opponents, “made havoc of the assembly, entering into every house,
and haling men and women, committed them to prison.” The whole external thing is
dispersed, and Saul heads the persecution that brings it about. The blessing
goes down to Samaria in Acts 8:1-40. But in Acts 9:1-43 the man who was the most
terrible opponent and leader in wasting the assembly, is converted. Called out
by the mighty power of God — apart from all earthly intervention, apart from the
twelve apostles — a heavenly light appears to him, “above the brightness of the
sun”; and the first sentence spoken to him by the Lord of glory conveys the
truth of the union of these scattered saints with Him in glory, as not now
merely His “brethren,” but “me!” “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” They are
united by one Spirit to Christ in glory, and He owns it! This bitter foe is
taken up of God, and made the minister of the gospel to every creature which is
under heaven, and of the “assembly” which he had wasted — to fill up the word of
God! (See, for the double character of Paul’s ministry, Ephesians 3:8-9; and
Colossians 1:23-26.) This leads us now to the third point which I desire to
bring before you, that is, The body of Christ. c.) “Which is His Body ”

We have seen that the “assembly” in its external manifestation in Jerusalem was
scattered abroad at the death of Stephen. Then the blessing flowed down to
Samaria, and Saul of Tarsus, in the midst of his terrible career of sin and
rebellion against a glorified Christ is called out to be the minister of that
grace which called him, and of the assembly which he had persecuted, and of the
faith which once he had destroyed! He is converted to the recognition of the
union of those scattered saints with an ascended Christ. “I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest.” This wonderful truth he ministers in Ephesians 1:1-23; Ephesians
2:1-10, both as it was in the counsels of God, and action to make it good.
Everything in this scripture is looked upon as from God’s side — even faith
(Ephesians 2:8) is the gift of God. He first shows the choice of the persons,
before the foundation of the world; and as predestined to certain privileges.
Individual relationship as men in Christ with God, and sons before the Father,
first, fully settled. It is the highest of all our relationships; higher even
than our being members of Christ’s body. To the praise of the glory of His grace
they are accepted in the Beloved. Thus they have been brought by redemption, as
we have seen, into the same place with Christ as man (Ephesians 1:3-7). Then
each has been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, having believed the Gospel
of his salvation the seal of God marking us as His, as looking back at the
perfection of the redemption which is past; as looking forward, an earnest of
the inheritance that is before us, as joint-heirs with Christ in His headship
over all things which is to come (Ephesians 1:13-14). The inheritance we have
not yet actually received, nor could we till He receives it; the earnest of it
we have, in the dwelling of the Holy Ghost. The salvation, the glad tidings of
which we have heard, is the deliverance or transfer of the person out of the old
state and place in which we were in Adam into an entirely new place and
relationship with God in Christ.

Then Christ is seen raised up as Man and gone on high, set at God’s right hand,
Head over all things to the church which is His body, which is formed of Jew and
Gentile, dead in sins, children of wrath, quickened together with Christ, raised
up together, and seated, [not yet with, but] “in” Him in the heavenlies. Such is
the revealed place of the assembly, “His body,” according to the counsels of
God, and the work of God by which He effectuates them, during the interval while
Christ is hidden in the heavens, and rejected by the world; and before He is de
facto “Head over all things.” When all things are put under His feet in the age
to — come the “assembly,” in purpose and result is “his body,” the fulness of
Him that dwelleth in all.”

Thus we have seen Christ — “Head over all things,” in three characters: God —
Creator of them; Son — and appointed Heir of them; and as Man, according to
Psalms 8:1-9, the Man of God’s counsel and purpose. He takes it all by
redemption, as by personal right. But an interval comes, while He is hidden in
the heavens, and the Holy Ghost dwells on earth; during which He is seated on
His Father’s throne (Revelation 3:21), before He sits on His own — as Son of
man. “We see not yet all things put under him.” Meanwhile, the “assembly” — “his
body” — is formed; its members co-quickened with Him, co-raised, one with the
other, and co-seated in the heavenlies in Christ.

Now if we had no more than this about the body of Christ, in scripture, we
should have to accept what many, alas! have held from very early days in the
history of the church, that this body is invisible, and only a thing of counsel
and purpose in God’s mind. This thought came from confounding the visible,
external body, or house, with the true body of Christ. The not seeing what the
body of Christ was, and the distinction between it and the visible assembly
around, forced those who could not accept the visible corrupt thing as His body,
to invent the terms “visible” and “invisible church.” But when we turn to the
first epistle to the Corinthians, we find (1 Corinthians 12:12-26) another
thought than that in Ephesians 1:1-23. There we have the body of Christ seen in
God’s purpose and counsel, as it will yet be manifested in glory, and those who
compose it — seated in heavenly places in Christ; that, which, when He is in
possession of all His glory, as Son of man, in the coming age, is “his body.” In
1 Corinthians 12:1-31 we see the body of Christ as actually existing upon earth,
maintained in unity by the power of the Holy Ghost. So much is the truth of its
being here on earth before the mind of the apostle, that he says, in 1
Corinthians 12:26, “And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with
it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.” Here all its
members are seen on earth; this is plain, for the saints who have fallen asleep
do not “suffer.” It is those who are on earth at any given time, during the
sojourn of the church on earth, who enter into the thought of this scripture;
they are maintained in unity by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, who
baptized them into “one body.”

Here let me say, that an individual is not said to be baptized with the Holy
Ghost in scripture. Not even our Lord Himself. Of the descent of the Holy Ghost
on Him, as Man, in bodily shape as a dove, when He was about to enter upon His
public ministry, He says Himself, “For him hath God the Father sealed” (John
6:27). The baptism of the Holy Ghost is a corporate thing, forming the
relationship of a body of people, as of the assembly on the day of Pentecost.
The one hundred and twenty were corporately baptized of the Holy Ghost, and thus
constituted “one body,” not at that time, of course, for the truth of it was not
revealed, for the faith of its members, but truly so before God. Afterwards,
Gentiles were incorporated into this body, as in Acts 10:1-48; Acts 11:1-30 (see
especially Acts 11:15-17). Now, this baptism of the Holy Ghost having formed all
those in whom He dwelt into “one body” at Pentecost, there was no need to repeat
it from that time. Individual saints, members of the body of Christ, have died,
and their spirits are with the Lord; their bodies — the temples of the Holy
Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19) dissolved in dust, and perhaps scattered to the four
winds. They are of that body, and will be found in its unity in eternity, but
have ceased to enter into account as of it here, as at present seen on earth,
where it is maintained in its unity by the Spirit of God. Those who have ever
since believed the glad tidings of their salvation have come into this body by
the individual sealing of the Spirit of God; and thus it is true of believers
now on earth, that “by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body,” because we
have, by the sealing of the Spirit of God, come into that which was then formed
by the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

How important, beloved friends, is it to see that this body of Christ is here
upon earth now, as truly as on the day of Pentecost. Why? Because the Holy Ghost
is here on earth, where, as to personal place, He maintains the body of Christ.
All those who have died and passed away are of the body of Christ, as seen in
Ephesians 1:1-23; but it is only those alive, at this, or any given moment, on
earth, who are seen and treated as the body of Christ, according to this chapter
before us. So that here, at the close of nineteen centuries, the body of Christ
is maintained in its unity as truly and perfectly as when it was at first
constituted at the day of Pentecost. The external manifestation, alas, is gone;
but the Holy Ghost, who came down and constituted it first, is here still; and
the body of Christ is maintained, as then, by His presence and power.

Now, when we come to 1 Corinthians 12:27, we find that Paul applies this truth
to the assembly at Corinth: “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in
particular.” That is, in principle, as gathered together at Corinth, they were
the body of Christ in Corinth: not, of course, separating them from the whole
body here below, but as part of it, and according to the principle of their
constitution; and so true of the whole complement of the saints in any other
given place. When we read the closing verses (1 Corinthians 12:28-31), another
and important thought comes in. He changes the language now from “body” to
“assembly.” In Ephesians 1:1-23 we remember that “assembly” and “body” are used
as interchangeable terms. Because the thing is there seen in its result, and
according to the purpose of God. In 1 Corinthians he speaks of the “assembly,”
and speaks of the “body”; treating one practically and in principle as the
other, because the truth of the “body” was to be worked out and expressed in the
“assembly,” but he does not use the words interchangeably. This is very
striking, and shows the wisdom of God’s Spirit in the choice of His words.

It draws forth the adoration of the heart of the renewed man, those wondrous
touches of wisdom in the word of God. In what is only a stumbling-block at times
to unbelief, faith finds a mine of divine wisdom and beauty. The Lord be praised
for the opened eye to behold and profit by His words!

It is in this epistle that we find the responsibility of man coming in, and
warnings to those who have Christ’s name on them, as well as to those who were
builders after the apostles (see 1 Corinthians 3:1-23). Of this we shall speak
in full on another occasion, as the Lord may direct. In these closing verses,
then, of 1 Corinthians 12:1-31, we find, after He has unfolded the body, as seen
on earth, and spoken of the assembly in Corinth as being in principle the body,
he then shows various members of the body of Christ, gifts and the like, set in
the assembly: members of the body, set in the assembly — of course, looking at
the latter, as the whole corporate profession of Christianity on earth. But
while the “body” is spoken of, and the “assembly” is spoken of, one is not said
to be the other (Ephesians 1:22-23), although treated as practically identified
here below. It was the ruin of the assembly, when this ceased to be so. This
gives room for the working out in full result of the grace and work of God, in
the truth and fact of the church as built by Him; while leaving room for man’s
responsibility to come in, and warnings to be given as needed here below, as to
the responsible church built by man. In 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, we have the
Lord’s table given us to be the symbol of the unity of this body of Christ upon
earth, in partaking of the “one loaf.” “For we being many, are one loaf, one
body; for we are all partakers of that one loaf.”

We have seen then, I trust, dear friends, the body of Christ in its two -fold
presentation, that is, first, as formed of saints seated in the heavenlies in
Christ according to the purpose of God in eternity and His work in time, which
gives it a wholly heavenly character. Secondly, upon earth maintained in unity
by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the present interval, the faith of which is
expressed in partaking of the “one loaf” in the Lord’s supper. I turn now to
another aspect of the church, as the “House or habitation of God” here below.
This will come out as a separate subject.

Meanwhile, may the Lord bless His people fully. May each one’s eye be single,
that the whole body may be full of light, and that the truths we have sought to
bring before them in some little measure, may, with all their sanctifying power,
form our souls that He may be glorified, and that we may grow up to Him in all
things, for His name’s sake. Amen.

Note. It is of the deepest importance to apprehend that the body of Christ, as
seen on earth, during the interval while Christ is hidden in the heavens, is
only composed of those saints who at this moment are alive on earth. There is
one scripture (Ephesians 1:22) which looks at it in purpose and result as the
entire gathering out of the saints from Pentecost till the Lord’s coming for the
saints. The others treat it as the complement of saints here, where, as to
personal place, the Holy Ghost is, who constitutes, by His presence in the
members, “one body.” In Romans 12:1-21 it is seen in the activities of its
members on earth. In 1 Corinthians 12:1-31 it is so fully seen on earth that “If
one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.” Those here are only those
who are in the place of suffering; and gifts are not in heaven. In Ephesians
4:1-32 the ascended Christ has given gifts to His body, for the perfecting of
the saints, and gathering and edification of the body as also seen on earth: for
such ministry and edification is not in heaven but here; where it is said of it,
“From which the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which
every joint supplieth,” etc. The apostles saw that before their eyes on earth
which was the body. They never contemplated the church remaining here for long,
but looked for the coming of the Lord. He did tarry, in long-suffering love.
Still the thing which is here before our eyes is the body, as before theirs.
Just as the British army is the British army now, that is, the effective
fighting men; and it was the British army at Waterloo also; and probably not a
soldier remains in it that was in it then. They have, like the saints who have
died, passed out into the reserve, or freedom from service, as Paul and the
saints since then; and while all of it, do not enter into the count of the body
as seen of God on earth today. They will be eventually, according to Ephesians
1:1-23 the body when Christ is de facto Head over all things, and meanwhile, I
am sure, suffer loss of no privileges whatever which they enjoyed when here.


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  CHAPTER 30: 03.02.     “THE HOUSE OF GOD, WHICH IS THE ASSEMBLY OF THE LIVING GOD.”
========================================================================

I come now, dear friends, to another side of the subject altogether — that of
the “house of God.” After we pass Ephesians 1:1-23, we leave that portion of the
Epistle which is occupied strictly with the purposes and counsels of God. — “The
purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” This
sentence characterizes Ephesians 1:1-23. Ephesians 2:1-22 gives us generally His
work in time to accomplish them; and from Ephesians 1:11 we pass to the actually
formed subsisting assembly on earth.

First he describes the condition of the Gentiles — “aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and
without God in the world: but now, in Christ Jesus, ye who were sometimes far
off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace who hath made both
one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.”

Here Paul thinks of Gentiles and Jews — both brought nigh to God, “in Christ,”
by His blood. This could not be even during His lifetime, for none could be “in
Christ” then. He sheds His blood — lays down His life — rises, and ascends on
high, “our peace,” having borne the wrath, and reconciled both to God in one
body by His cross, having slain the enmity thereby: preaching peace to those
“afar off” — the technical expression as to a Gentile — and to the Jew, who was
dispensationally “nigh.” Thus “we have access through Jesus (not “in Christ” as
before) by one Spirit to the Father.” You notice that the language here is
essentially different to the early part of Eph. Here are two sets of people
brought in one body — on one platform — having access by one Spirit — through
Jesus (di autou) to the Father (not en Cristo Iesou, for here comes in
mediation). Then we come to v. 19; “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ
himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building, (pasa he
oikodome) fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.

You will recall that in Matthew 16:1-28, the Lord said to Peter, when He had
confessed Him to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” that the Father had
revealed to Peter this truth as to the person of the Lord; and how the Lord
tells Peter something about His assembly, and then about himself. “And I also
say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my assembly,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He does not here tell what
this assembly would be; but marks its still further construction and the
foundation upon which it would stand. This foundation was the person of Christ
as risen — Son of the living God as confessed by Peter’s faith, just what we
have in Ephesians 2:20). 6 The apostles and prophets doctrinally, were laid as
the foundation and Jesus Christ personally, the chief corner stone. “The gates
of hades” was the power of death wielded by Satan by the judgment of God; Christ
had entered His dark domain, and broken asunder its bars, leading captivity
captive, and had been proved Son of God in power, by resurrection of the dead
(Romans 1:4). Death had prevailed over man once innocent, now fallen. Christ had
annulled its power, and risen above it, “Son of the living God.” This would be
the foundation of the assembly which He was about to build.

{*The confession “Son of the living God” is so plainly the foundation of the
church, as to need but few words. “Hades gates” is put in contrast to “Son of
the living God,” who had gone down into the stronghold of death — wielded by
Satan’s power by the judgment of God (Hebrews 2:14). He came up from that dark
domain, bursting the bars of death, triumphing over it. Death had triumphed over
an innocent Adam, and a fallen one. It “reigned from Adam to Moses.” It had
triumphed over Israel under law. Now Jesus comes, and goes down into it, and
conquers it, not by intercepting, but by defeating it. “Hades gates” could not
prevail against what He would now build on that imperishable foundation, Himself
in risen power — “Son of the living God.” “Declared Son of God in power by
resurrection of the dead” (Romans 1:4). How well did Peter know its meaning when
he said, “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but
chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual
house,” etc. (1 Peter 2:1-25). He had no thought here of the assembly being
built on himself!} This evening I wish to distinguish, in some measure, two
things which are distinguished very clearly in scripture, that is, the
“assembly” which Christ builds by the Holy Ghost come down, according to Matthew
16:1-28, and into which no false material can enter; and the assembly in which
man has his responsible place as builder, into which “wood, hay, and stubble”
enter* — in other words, the house of God, where the Holy Ghost dwells.

{*Men have confused the two wholly; attributing to the external church in which
man builds immunity from the power of evil and judgment, which was only promised
to the true church which Christ builds. “The gates of hades shall not prevail
against it” is the promise to the church which Christ builds; not to that which
man builds (1 Corinthians 3:1-23).} When Christ builds, He does not commit it to
man at all, and no responsibility of man comes in. He dies and rises again, and
that which He builds on the imperishable foundation of faith in His person in
resurrection is secured for ever! This building is brought before us in
Ephesians 2:20-21 — that which Christ builds, and which “fitly framed together”
— mark those words strongly — “groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.” This
temple was begun when the Holy Ghost descended from heaven, and “groweth” till
all is in glory, to the very end of the church’s earthly sojourn, it is not yet
complete. Now you will not find those words, “fitly framed together,” when that
which man builds comes before us. But mark the difference between the temple of
Ephesians 2:21, and what you find in the last verse; “In whom ye also are built
together, for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” First he looks in
Ephesians 2:21, on the progressive work — the whole temple, according to the
mind and purpose of God to be His sanctuary, the home of the brightest
manifestation of His glory for ever; and secondly (Ephesians 2:22), he looks at
the present aspect of the assembly, at this moment, an habitation, or
dwelling-place of God by the Spirit, on earth — in other words, the “house of
God.”

Now in Ephesians 2:22 we see that while he gives us the normal thought of the
house or habitation of God, on earth in its existence here during the present
interval, he does not say who is the builder. So that while this last verse
gives you the normal thought of the house of God, as at Pentecost, or ever
since, at any given moment, he leaves room for the bringing in of man’s
responsibility, and does not name the builder, as we shall see.

Let us now turn to the first epistle to the Corinthians, where we find that,
speaking generally, the order of the house of God is the thought in the mind of
the Spirit.

Let me say here, that God coming down and dwelling in something on earth is a
very different thought from that which we saw in the early part of Ephesians.
There it was God quickening members, and raising them up and uniting them to
Christ in glory. In that thought we saw Christ, as Head of His body, seated in
heavenly places, and His body united to Him in the same sphere. But in this
truth of a “habitation of God,” there is no thought of head, or body, or union
at all. Of your body you say, it is myself — as the Lord to Saul, “Why
persecuted thou me?” Of my house I say, I dwell in it; but its walls are not
united to me. This makes the two thoughts as distinct as possible; and you find
in scripture the word “assembly” is sometimes used for the true body of Christ
in purpose and result, as we have seen; and also, for the professing body, or
house where the Holy Ghost dwells. When the house or habitation of God was first
constituted, at the day of Pentecost, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, all
those of which it was composed were true believers. The Holy Ghost “sat upon
each of them,” and “filled all the house,” thus fulfilling the Lord’s promise in
John 14:17 (which read, “He shall dwell with you, and shall be in you”). The
Holy Ghost was now in them, and with them; and collectively they were God’s
house on earth.

Man then began to carry on this work, and Peter receives by baptism* into this
house the three thousand Jews, etc., and so the house of God went on. They came
in to partake of the privileges of that sphere, to which God had now confined
His ordinary operations on earth. Soon those came in who were merely taking up
the profession of Christianity (Simon the sorcerer, and the like), and the house
began to enlarge its proportions beyond the limits of those who were really
Christ’s. Still the Holy Ghost was there, and He remains still, though the house
has been so enlarged as to embrace a great baptized Christendom.

{*That baptism was the mode of admission or reception to it is clear from the
fact that those who were constituted the house by the descent of the Holy Ghost,
that is, the twelve apostles, and the company of disciples who were with them,
were never baptized at all (I speak now not of John’s baptism, but of Christian
baptism). There was no one to baptize or receive them. They were already the
house, by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and could not be brought in. Then,
those who were received after Peter had addressed them had to pass into this new
ground, and all the privileges belonging thereto, through baptism (Acts
2:37-47). They came into the house of God in order to receive, or “for (eis)
remission of sins”; and besides, “Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
They had neither yet; and baptism of water was the door of entrance for those
who were being received. I may here remark that baptism is the sign of what one
is about to receive: not of what one has received already. The baptism of the
Holy Ghost, on the other hand, constitutes the body of Christ.} But to return to
1 Corinthians 1:1-2. In these verses you get the most comprehensive of all the
addresses of the Epistles in the New Testament. No one can escape the breadth of
the thought and persons embraced there. It addresses the assembly of God at
Corinth, and is so framed that at no time can any one professing the Lord’s name
evade its responsibility. There is this remarkable difference between it and
that to the Ephesians. In the Ephesians he calls them “saints and faithful”; or,
as the word would convey, “believers” (pistois): “To the saints which are in
Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” In Corinthians he says, “Unto the
assembly of God which is at Corinth, to them which are sanctified in Christ
Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Nothing could be more comprehensive. But
what says 1 Corinthians 1:9? “God is faithful!” that is the point here, for
there are responsibility and warnings and the like. In Ephesians he calls them
“saints” and “ faithful”; in Corinthians he calls them “saints,” but does not
add the word faithful, but says God is so.

We have, therefore, before us a most comprehensive thought; and let me remark
that, in itself, “calling upon the name of the Lord” in scripture, is merely
profession. To be valid, of course, there must be life in our souls; but it is
no more than this. A man might call on the Lord’s name to dishonour it. See the
people who did many wonderful works in Matthew 7:21-23, and said, “Lord, Lord”;
He says of them, “I never knew you.” This is very solemn. When we turn to 1
Corinthians 3:1-23 we find instruction before us, founded on the responsibility
of those professing Christ’s name, and that of those who build the house
ministerially, here below. “For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s
husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God, which is given
unto me, as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another
buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For
other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if
any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay,
stubble; every man’s work shall he made manifest: for the day shall declare it,
because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of
what sort it is. If any man a work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall
receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burnt, he shall suffer loss: but he
himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of
God,* and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple
of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye
are.” (1 Corinthians 3:9-17).

{*In Ephesians 2:21, it is said to be a temple in process of building. Here, in
1 Corinthians 3:1-23, it is said to be a temple already, as built of man, but
ostensibly before the world, and responsibly “God’s building. “Ye are the temple
of God”; that is, the saints collectively. Unlike 1 Corinthians 6:19, where it
is your body which is said to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, as dwelling in
the individual. It is in view of “God’s building” being His temple, that the
defilement of it becomes so serious, as in 1 Corinthians 3:17. Hence the added
thought of the temple.} In this scripture, dear friends, we have the other
thought of the “house,” or “temple of God.” In Ephesians it was that building
which is “fitly framed together.” Here you will get no such words. You have
Paul, the wise master builder, commencing the building — laying the foundation
in his doctrines and ministry. Then others follow. It is the question of
ministerial labour and its results; “work,” not works. Some have confounded this
with the “works” of Christians; but it is “work,” that for which those who have
carried it on will have to answer to God. The teaching brought in souls
according to its character, into the responsible house “God’s building,”
responsibly before the world. It has been remarked that here we find three
characters of builders engaged in the work. The good builder, who himself is
saved, and whose work will stand (1 Corinthians 3:14). Then the man who builds
badly, himself saved, it is true, but his work burned up (1 Corinthians 3:15).
Thirdly, a bad builder — a heretic — whose work is not only burnt up, but he
himself is also lost. That is the house, or temple of God, carried on by man’s
responsibility. Christ carries on His work all through, into which no
responsibility of man enters, but there is that which is committed to the
responsibility of man’s hands, and which is thus spoken of.

Like all that has ever been committed to man, alas what a ruin it has become.
This pressed upon the spirit of Paul, as he tells us “the mystery of
lawlessness” was already at work, and the man of sin would arise (2
Thessalonians 2:1-17). It raised the warning voice of John, that the Antichrist
would come, and even then there were many antichrists, “whereby we know that it
is the last time” (1 John 2:18). Jude, too, and Peter add their evidence of the
state of things that would be developed till judgment cleared the scene.

I will turn now to a word in 1 Corinthians 9:1-27 for a moment, before passing
on to the remarkable warnings of 1 Corinthians 10:1-33. I allude to that in the
last verse — “castaway.” Many have shrunk from this word in its full force, as
utterly “reprobate,” finding the apostle Paul using it of himself; and who so
conscious of the fulness of redemption — who so certain that the Paradise he had
tasted of (2 Corinthians 12:1-21) was to be his home for ever? He says,

“But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means,
when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (adokimos) 1
Corinthians 9:27.

He looks at himself as running in a race, responsibly here below, and, although
he runs in no uncertainty of the final issue, he feels conscious that it is no
imaginary foe with which he has to contend. He did not fight as “one who beat
the air,” that is, as if a fancied enemy was before him. But with all the energy
of one who knew the terrible foe which he bore about in himself — the “flesh”
for which the Son of God had to endure the judgment of God in infinite suffering
— he kept under his body and led it captive, lest preaching to others, he
himself might be a castaway. First a good Christian, then a good preacher! It
does not suppose a child of God, yet to become a castaway. It does. suppose the
possibility, of a preacher being lost!

He is putting a case of the most solemn character, needed because of the
prominence given at Corinth to gift in which power was displayed, and he
transfers it to himself for the sake of others; as he had said in an earlier
part of the epistle, “These things have I transferred to myself and Apollos for
your sakes” (1 Corinthians 4:1-21).

We find the word here translated “castaway” used eight times in the New
Testament, and each time in the fullest force of the word as lost! In the
passage we have touched upon. In Romans 1:28, as to the heathen; “God gave them
over to a reprobate (adokimos) mind.” In 2 Corinthians 13:5-7; three times
translated as “reprobates.” In Titus 1:16; the unbeliever is “unto every good
work reprobate.” In 2 Timothy 3:8, the Jannes and Jambres resisters of the truth
are “men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.” And in Hebrews 6:6,
“that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and nigh unto cursing; whose
end is to be burned.” No one could have a second thought as to these passages;
and, besides, Paul never was disapproved or castaway in his ministry; never was
his ministry so wondrously blessed, or used of God, as when from the prison in
Rome came forth many of the scriptures of God.

Now when we come, to 1 Corinthians 10:1-33, we find he applies this principle of
1 Corinthians 9:1-27 to others who might enjoy privileges such as those of the
house of God, and rest in carnal security in its ordinances, without having part
in the divine nature. Under the figure of “the things which happened” to Israel
in the desert, using those incidents as types, and as “written for our
admonition, upon whom the end of the ages are come,” he warns against resting in
a mere outward profession such as was to be found in the responsible house as
the result of man’s failure in building.

Persons might enjoy an ordinancial relationship with Christ (that is, by baptism
and the Lord’s supper) as constituting the external church built by man, and
after all be lost! They were to be warned by what happened to Israel, with many
of whom God was not well pleased, and who were overthrown in the wilderness. The
order in which he puts together these incidents in their wilderness history is
truly worthy of our notice. How often it may~have appeared to us as a number of
incidents strung together, without apparent connection or order, except the fact
of their being striking moments in the wanderings of this stiff-necked people.

For* (gar) brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our
fathers were; under the cloud and all passed through the sea; and were all
baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same
spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of
that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with many
of them God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now these things were our ensamples, to the intent we should not lust after evil
things, as they also lusted (1 Corinthians 10:1-6).

{*This is the correct reading. It connects the chapter with the closing verses
of 1 Corinthians 9:1-27. The dividing of the chapters has broken the order of
the subjects in them.}

Here, we are shown that, although they all partook in common of these privileges
as associated under the leadership of Moses, their privileged position did not
secure them. In the passage the historical incidents are given us symbolically,
and put together in a moral order, quite away from the historic order, in which
they occurred; and in them we find set forth in principle what the history of
the professing church has been, and will be until her end. In 1 Corinthians 10:6
he begins by what happened some two years after they left Egypt. If we examine
Numbers 11:1-35 we find that at that solemn juncture in their history, they
loathed the pure manna with which the Lord had fed them from day-to-day; “There
is nothing but this manna before our eyes”: and lusted for the flesh-pots of
Egypt again. This was, in the antitype, the first sign of departure of the
church from Christ. And, oh, what a solemn moment it is for the soul when Christ
is not found to be enough for it when the heart cries out for something more
than His blessed person! How it turns to some vanity, or some folly or sin, some
idol of its own device, to fill up the void in the heart that desires something
more; something to satisfy the cravings of the flesh! What was this but the
history of the, departure of the church from her first love to Christ! “Thou
hast left thy first love,” is the sad and solemn plaint of His heart (Revelation
2:4), and no activity could make up for this.

Now the apostle turns to another marked occasion (1 Corinthians 10:7) which
happened before they left Mount Sinai. When Moses was in the mount, receiving
the law from Jehovah, Aaron and the children of Israel made the golden calf, and
danced round the idol. Their forefather Abraham, as they themselves also, had
been called out of a world of idolatry to be the witness of the one true God
against all the gods of the nations. The first thing they do is to fall back
into that out of which they had been called. They must have something for the
eye to rest upon; for Moses had gone up the mountain of Sinai, they had lost
sight of him; and Aaron made them this golden calf, and coupled the name of
Jehovah with “a calf that eateth hay.” “These be thy gods, O Israel”: “To-morrow
is a feast to Jehovah.” So with the church. She was called out of the world to
walk in the Spirit, and the first thing she does is to sink back to walk in the
flesh once more. Instead of walking by faith, and waiting for an absent Lord,
she desires something her eye can rest upon, something more tangible than a
glorified but unseen Christ, known by the Holy Ghost come down from heaven; and,
the moment she does so, fornication with the world follows. This comes out in
the next verse (1 Corinthians 10:8). There we get an incident which happened
about the close of the fortieth year (Numbers 25:1-18). “Neither let us commit
fornication, as some of them also committed, and fell in one day three and
twenty thousand.” Illicit intercourse with the world follows. This is what is so
strikingly mentioned in the message to Pergamos in Revelation 2:13, when the
church had shaken hands with the world, so to speak. “I know thy works, and
where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s throne is.” The church “espoused as a
chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2), had given herself to another. The
result is, Christ is tempted. “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also
tempted, and were destroyed of serpents” (1 Corinthians 10:9). This is told of
Israel in Numbers 21:1-35.

Then comes the final one, “Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and
were destroyed of the destroyer” (1 Corinthians 10:10). This we find in Numbers
14:1-45. The solemn moment came when “All the children of Israel murmured
against Moses and against Aaron.” “And they said one to another, Let us make a
captain, and let us return into Egypt.” Here was the complete giving up of the
Lord and His servants, and that at the moment when those faithful men “men of
another spirit” were exhorting them to go up and possess the land. They despised
the pleasant land, and propose to make a captain and return into the land of
slavery once more; and they “were destroyed of the destroyer.”

Thus, from what seems merely a number of incidents in their history, put
together without any apparent order, we find the most comprehensive moral
picture of the history of the professing church. It begins with finding an
unseen Christ insufficient, and the craving for something which would satisfy
sight and sense (1 Corinthians 10:6). Then idolatry follows, with what is set up
to fill the eye of those who could not walk by faith, and wait for this absent
one (1 Corinthians 10:7). The world can now walk with the church, for she has
left the ground of faith, and has gone back to that which the eye can see, and
fornication between the world and the church is the result (1 Corinthians 10:8).
This is “provoking the Lord to jealousy” — “tempting Christ” (1 Corinthians
10:9). And it ends in the giving up of the heavenly hope, and proposing to make
a captain, and return to man and man’s estate once more! In other words, it
began with a calf — that is, something, no matter what, set up, which the senses
can rest upon, when Christ is not enough; and ends with a captain, that is, man
is put in the place of Christ. The departure from first love gave place to the
working of the “mystery of iniquity”; that is, flesh in man getting a place in
the things of God. The story ends with an Antichrist, when the profession of
Christianity is abandoned, and thus the “falling away” or apostasy comes, (2
Thessalonians 2:1-17) and the Antichrist or man of sin!

How solemn is this history, beloved friends! How wise, how merciful is our God,
to warn us and tell us what is coming, we know not how soon! How needful to see
to it that we are not resting in privileges merely, but that our souls have had
to do with the living God, who of His own will has begotten us by the word of
truth!

Now, all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for
our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. There hath no temptation taken you
but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be
tempted above that ye are able; but will, with. the temptation, also make a way
to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:11-13.) Now I turn
to a few other passages of the New Testament, still to bring before you this
thought of the house of God. In Philippians you will find that Paul recognizes
how things had gone astray. At the first moment of the church’s history, the
body of Christ and the house of God were co-extensive, that is, they were
composed of the same individuals (Acts 2:1-47). But when men began to build, the
house enlarged its proportions disproportionately to the body. There was a mass
of material not introduced by the Lord; but the Holy Ghost did not leave the
house. On the other hand, the Holy Ghost constituted and maintained in its true
unity the body of Christ; uniting the members to Christ in glory. The two
thoughts are quite distinct: the house, and the body. In the thought of the
house you lose individuality, but you do not get either head, body, or union.
The body is united to its head in glory. It is the double relationship of the
church; to God as His dwelling place, to Christ as His body. In Php 2:21 we find
how things were failing, and those who professed Christianity were “carnal,” and
walking “as men.” “For all seek their own, and not the things of Jesus Christ.”
Again, look at the third chapter. “Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be
thus minded: and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even
this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by
the same rule; let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be followers together of
me, and mark then. which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk,
of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose God is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Php
3:15-19).

You will note here how the apostle’s wisdom detects three distinct states of
soul in the professing church: 1. Those “perfect,” or full grown, that is,
having the full sense of a Christian’s place as dead and risen with Christ, and
running on like Paul, towards the glory, and likeness to a glorified Christ. 2.
Those who had not fully attained in the soul’s consciousness to this true normal
condition of the Christian, as apprehended for the glory by Christ; but who were
to walk up to what they had, and God would give them more; and, 3. Those who,
under the name of Christ, were glorying in their shame, in that flesh for which
Christ had been put to shame on the cross (the cross on earth answering to
heavenly glory on high). These were mere professors, whose end would be utter
destruction. And here I would draw attention to the strikingly analogous state
of things, in this threefold state, to that of Israel when we come to the close
of the Book of Joshua. There Joshua dies; and in Philippians Paul is in prison
at Rome, and the church of God has lost the devoted services of the great
apostle. Joshua had put two and a half tribes in possession of their portion in
the land of promise, namely, Judah (Joshua 15:1, etc.), Ephraim (Joshua 16:5,
etc.), and half Manasseh (Joshua 17:1, etc.). Two and a half tribes would not go
in and possess the land that he divided. They did not go back to Egypt, nor
would they go into the land, but took an intermediate place outside the borders
of the Lord’s possession (namely, Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh; see Joshua
1:12, etc.; Joshua 13:15, etc.). And lastly, seven tribes were in the land, but
were not put in possession of their inheritance. (See Joshua 18:2-3.) Thus the
land was conquered, but not possessed. They were thus left to “work out their
own salvation,” so to say, from the enemy; but, alas! “all sought their own, and
they sank to the condition seen in the book of Judges after Joshua’s death.

Those “perfect,” answer in the analogy to the two and a half tribes in
possession.

Those who had “not attained,” to the seven tribes in the land who had not yet
possessed; and,

The, two and a half tribes to those who, under the profession of Christianity,
were enemies to the cross of Christ. They did not abandon Christianity, as those
did not give up their title to be termed “of Israel”; but refused their true,
calling, gloried in their shame, minding earthly things, and so were the first
to fall into the hands of the enemy, and give him an entrance to the professing
church.

I have no doubt that these three states are thus found till the end in the
professing church.

If we pass on now to 1 Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy as to how one ought to
behave oneself “in the house of God, which is the assembly of the living God,
the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The church is looked upon
as the depository of the truth; and so responsible to hold it up as the pillar
and support of it. “The truth” is Christ Himself. If He were here He would not
want a pillar and ground of the truth. But He is absent and “the mystery of
godliness” is committed to her. “The mystery of iniquity” is in contrast to
this, and is Satan’s effort through the flesh in man to frustrate the testimony
of Christianity, which is founded on the end of the first man, and a last Adam,
before God. Then you have (1 Timothy 3:16) the whole course of Christ from the
glory; God come down and “manifested in flesh”; presenting all He ever did as
man, in the power of the Holy Ghost, even as He was declared Son of God in power
by resurrection according to the Spirit of holiness, thus “justified by the
Spirit.” “Seen of angels,” most blessed of creatures, sustained of God unfallen,
they beheld their God for the first time when He became a babe, and they burst
open the heavens, and in unselfish praises sang of God’s good pleasure in men
(Luke 2:1-52). “Preached unto the Gentiles”; this was the new thing in
Christianity, there was no preaching in the Old Testament: Judaism was not
characterized by preaching. “Believed on in the world”; an object of faith in it
and not merely among Jews: and then “received up in glory.” Thus you get the
whole testimony of Christ which was committed to the church; God come down in
love, passing through His course here; and finally, man received up in glory.

Hence, in 1 Timothy, we get external order before men, as the great subject in
hand, in the house of God here below. So in 2 Timothy,* things had got into
deeper disorder than ever; and, once ruined, there was no repairing the ruin. It
is not God’s way to restore a fallen state, but to bring in a better when His
purposes allow of it; and meanwhile, the faithful have their path clearly
defined through a ruined state of things.

{*It has been remarked that 1 Timothy contains the ordering of things when the
house of God was in order; and 2 Timothy, the path of the saint when all was in
disorder.}

“Nevertheless [that is, although evil had come in as a flood] the foundation of
God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And,
let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. But in a
great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood
and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour. If a man therefore
purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet
for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work” (2 Timothy 2:19-21).

Here we discover what things had come to in man’s hands. He does not call it The
great house, but “A great house.” It is an analogous thought; for responsibly it
is still the house of God, where the Holy Ghost dwells (1 Corinthians 3:1-23).
God’s foundation had not changed, and there was a seal, having on one side an
inscription, which showed the privileges of all who were His — the Lord knew
them; and on the other, that which marked their responsibility — “Let every one
that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” One cannot leave the
house while God lingers in it in long-suffering grace, but let him clear himself
from all that was false and untrue. There were in it vessels to dishonour,* as
well as of honour.

{*This word does not refer to degrees of honour, as some have supposed. It may
be rendered “disgrace,” “ignominy,” “infamy,” etc.; anything false or untrue.}

Now, if we compare the opening verses of 2 Timothy 3:1-17 with the closing
verses of Romans 1:1-32, we find how that, under the name of Christ, all the
horrible wickedness of the heathen world has been revived. The words used by
Paul to describe the heathen are almost word for word the same as those used to
describe the professors of Christianity in this chapter. How deeply solemn; and
worse too, because done under the name of Christ (cp. Romans 1:29-32 with 2
Timothy 3:2-5).

Now we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is very true that in it we do not
find that the writer is teaching or treating of the church of God, as such. He
has another subject in hand. Still, underlying his teaching is the thought of
the house of God, where the Holy Ghost dwells. Those who have professed
Christianity, and have taken on them the name of Christ, are seen in their
responsible place, travelling through the wilderness. I am about to examine two
passages, both of which have troubled godly souls, who have not yet enjoyed
thorough, perfect peace with God. One can speak for another in this. I allude to
the sixth and tenth chapters. In the former we read, “For it is impossible for
those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were
made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the
powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto
repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put him to an
open shame” (Hebrews 6:4-6).

I will examine each sentence in these verses separately; and I may remark, in
passing, that the essential difference between these verses and those in Hebrews
10:1-39 is, that in Hebrews 6:1-20 we have at length, the privileges to be
enjoyed by all who profess Christianity consequent on the exaltation of Messiah
to the right hand of God, after having accomplished the work of redemption, and
the consequent presence of the Holy Ghost on earth; while in Hebrews 10:1-39 we
find rather the excellency of a sacrifice, so perfect that it left nothing to be
added to it. It was so absolute in its value that it left no room for another.
In ch. 6, the Holy Ghost is prominent; in Hebrews 10:1-39, the sacrifice of
Christ.

“It is impossible for those who were once enlightened.” If we turn to John 1:9
we find the words, “That was the true light, which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.” Christ was this true light. Just as the sun shining at
noon-day; if a man does not open his eyes to see the sun, it is of very little
use to him as light. Now you find that the same word is in each sentence. In
Hebrews 6:1-20, “enlightened” is rendered “lighteth” in John 1:1-51 (phorizo).
It means the external enlightenment of the truth of Christianity shining on the
heart and conscience. Souls might thus be “shined upon,” or enlightened, without
having life at all. Far different is the thought of Paul when he speaks of God
having shined into his heart, “for the shining forth of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). That was a real
work in his soul. “Enlightened” means, then, the external presentation of the
truths of revelation to the soul, with the light they bring. John 1:9 makes this
clear from the use of the same word. For although Christ came into the world
shining as a light for every man, every man did not use the light. To use it
were to be saved.

Again, “And have tasted of the heavenly gift.” Here we have what was in contrast
to the law and even that spoken by the Messiah on earth. He now spoke from
heaven (Hebrews 12:24); and the gift (for it was a gift that was now presented
to men, instead of a demand being made upon them as under the law) was now fully
from that source, even as announced here below. How many, during the ministry of
the Lord on earth, had tasted of the blessedness of His gracious words, and with
hearts moved to say, as they heard Him, “Never man spake like this man!” and who
turned back and walked no more with Him, as the character of the path in which
He has to be followed began to dawn upon them. Tasting of the heavenly gift (it
now came from heaven) is not eating His flesh, and drinking His blood, and so
vitally receiving it in the heart.

“And were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.” All who profess the name of Christ
partake of the Holy Ghost in the sense spoken here. The word is used for
external participation in privilege, without necessarily the possession of it.
The Holy Ghost having come down from heaven, charged with this heavenly gift, to
dwell in the house of God, all who have been received into that house have a
common interest in His presence; quite another thing if they used the blessing.
It is not at all the same thought as being born of the Spirit of God, or being
possessors of the Holy Ghost, who has been given us as a seal, and who dwells in
our bodies as believers.*

{*The word used to express this external partakership in privilege (metokos) is
found (with the verb, etc.) in the New Testament in Hebrews and 1 Corinthians;
and in one other passage which serves as a key to its usage. I refer to Luke
5:7-10. Nothing can explain this more simply to any soul than the use of it by
Luke in describing the fishing scene in this chapter.

Simon had launched his ship out into the deep at the Lord’s command. The Lord
had wrought the miracle, and they had enclosed the great multitude of fishes;
and beckoning to (tois metokois) their partners, . . . which were in the other
ship; they came and filled both the ships, so that they “began to sink.” The
fishermen in the other ship had a common right and privilege with Peter and the
others, as fishers in the lake of Gennesaret. “Partners” is here expressed by
metokoi. But when we come to Luke 5:10, we find, “So was also James and John,
the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon” in the same ship. Here we
find a different word used (koinonoi) to express real partnership in the same
boat, in contrast to common rights with all the other fishermen in the lake. To
put a case. Suppose a guild of merchants, all of whom have a common interest in
the privileges of the guild. Some two or three are partners in, and own, a
flourishing concern. All who are of the guild have these common interests, and
would be metokoi but the partners in the special concern would be koinonoi.}

Thus all who are in the house of God, confessing and hearing the name of Christ,
are partakers (metokoi) of the Holy Ghost, who dwells there. All have an
opportunity of participating in the blessing which He imparts, and may even have
been made vessels of His power — a totally different thing from communion in the
divine nature and His indwelling as the power of the realization of it.

Perhaps, too, they have “tasted the good word of God” thus, and remained the
same people, unchanged. How often do we see this! Souls to all appearance
seeming to receive the glad tidings with joy and brightness, and have no root in
themselves, and [en]dure for a time, but when temptation arises, because of the
word they are offended. Now, I believe that when a soul does really receive the
word in his conscience, he never does receive it with joy at the first. It makes
a soul serious rather than joyful, though it leads to everlasting joy. And the
powers of the “world to come,” or “coming age.” This will be the millennial age,
which is characterized by Satan being bound, and men’s diseases cured. The
testimony to that age were the miracles which the Lord Himself performed, as
well as His bestowing power on His disciples to perform them. How many — nay,
how few of those thus wrought upon had real life in their souls? We learn from 1
Corinthians 13:1-13 the vast difference between any amount of power, and the
possession of the divine nature which is love.

Thus you see, dear friends, that heaven had expended all its treasures of grace
and blessing, consequent on the exaltation of Christ after His atoning work;
giving the presence of the Holy Ghost, and all these privileges, as
characteristic of the new position as we have seen. If souls turned away thus
from the Holy Ghost, as some have, done, and the whole profession of
Christianity is rapidly doing the same, what could be done? They endorsed the
sin of their nation (those Hebrews) and crucified for themselves the Son of
God.* The nation had done so, and said, “His blood be on us.” Some had escaped
to the city of refuge — the church was such to the blood-guilty Jew — but there
was the danger of abandoning it, and thus the avenger of blood would overtake
them, and they would not escape. While in one closing verse as he turns to the
reality that was manifested to be among them (1 Corinthians 13:9) we learn that
all these things of 1 Corinthians 13:4-5, might be there, without the possession
of salvation.

{*The word “afresh” in the English Bible is not needed, and should not be
there.}

I see a striking parallel between the law of the cities of refuge (Numbers
35:1-34) and this, chapter (Hebrews 6:1-20) which I do not think had been before
noticed. Like the church, the city of refuge was for the Israelite, and the
stranger and sojourner amongst them. There were two characters of guilt
mentioned and dealt with; namely, that of the premeditated murderer, and that of
him who slew another suddenly without enmity in time past. These two were
differently dealt with. The murderer was to be given up — his sin would find him
out, even in the city of refuge. The unpremeditated slayer of blood was safe. He
was to flee there, and remain there, till the death of the high priest who had
been anointed with the holy oil: then he might return to the land of his
inheritance.

Now, when we examine Hebrews 6:1-20, we find a solemn and beautiful analogy. The
church had become the city of refuge for the poor blood-guilty Jew. Peter
invites them, at Pentecost, to judge themselves for the deed, and flee; saving
themselves from the “untoward generation” (Acts 2:1-47). All would go on thus
till scrutiny took place according to God (cp. Matthew 22:1-14). Then, no amount
of privileges would avail where there was no life in the soul, and at the same
time the strongest “consolation” to those who had “fled for refuge to lay hold
upon the hope set before” them (Hebrews 6:18), confirmed by the promise, and the
oath of God! This little sentence, “fled for refuge,” so links the thought of
the type with the antitype, as now known to faith — this, too, in an epistle
where the High Priesthood of Christ is so much the subject, and in its present
exercise, within the holiest. As Christians, we have to do with Him as a priest
gone in! — “the forerunner for us,” making the sanctuary of God the present
refuge of our hearts; the Jew will have to do with Him as a priest come out!
This He never does in Hebrews; there is only a hope that He will do so (Hebrews
9:28, etc.). Accordingly, when He leaves the present exercise of His priesthood
as intercessional, and comes forth to exercise it after its true order — royal,
or Melchisedechial – the history of the church as in her sojourn here will be
past; and Israel as a nation (that is, the true remnant of them in that day)
will return to the land of their possession. In the type, it was at the death of
the High Priest; in the antitype, it is Christ ceasing to carry on His
priesthood after the present character of its exercise on high, and entering
upon its character as Melchisedec.

You find in this chapter, as has been remarked, the highest character of
Christian privilege short of life, and, what is so touching, in the close of it,
— the feeblest expression of true faith found in the New Testament — that of a
man pressed for his life, and “fleeing for refuge to lay hold!” God thus
acknowledges the faintest expression of faith, and encourages it with the
“strong consolation” of the word and oath of God, at the same time giving the
most solemn warnings as to profession and participation in privileges, where
there was no life. Life, where it existed, was expressing itself by works and
labour of love — could be known by its fruit as ever.

Now, I turn, beloved friends, in the close of this subject, to the 2
Thessalonians 2:1-17, where you find, in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, the apostasy, or
giving up of the profession of Christianity in toto, and the revelation of the
“man of sin.”

He shows that while the mystery of lawlessness works, God was still restraining
the manifestation of the “lawless one.” The apostasy, or “falling away,” will
not be, as long as true Christians are in the scene, and as long as the Holy
Ghost dwells here to maintain the body of Christ. Then, when the hindrance is
removed, the abandonment of Christianity comes. An Antichrist, or man of sin, is
then revealed, who would sit in the temple of God. Antichrist “denies the Father
and the Son” (1 John 2:22), that is, the revelation of the Father by the Son,
known to our souls by the Holy Ghost; or, in other words, the revelation of
Christianity. This is at the time of the apostasy. I could not say there is the
apostasy now, (or as long as true saints are in the scene, and the Holy Ghost
here, although the principle’s of it may be at work, and many may be apostates.
But the whole professing church has not yet reached the apostasy.

I have endeavoured to lay before you seven points in these two lectures.

1. First of all, the assembly, which is the body of Christ, as seen in heavenly
places, in the counsels of God, and in result, when Christ is de facto “Head
over all things,” according to Ephesians 1:18-22; and composed of all saints
from the day of Pentecost until the taking of it to glory.

2. The body of Christ as maintained in unity on earth by the power of the Holy
Ghost, and composed only of those who are alive upon earth at any given moment
where as to personal place, the Holy Ghost is, and having for the symbol of its
external unity the partaking of “one loaf,” as in 1 Corinthians 10:1-33, 1
Corinthians 11:1-34, 1 Corinthians 12:1-31, by the members set in the assembly.

3. A holy temple in the Lord, growing under His hand — “fitly framed together” —
silently and without flaw, until the last stone is placed on it in the glory
(Matthew 16:1-28; Ephesians 2:21). No responsibility of man enters here.

4. The house as a habitation of God by the Spirit on earth, in its normal
condition (Ephesians 2:22). Here it does not state who builds it. But it
connects with —

5. The house or temple, that is, all who profess His name on earth, where the
responsibility of men enters as of builders, and those built; wood, hay, and
stubble, may he found there (1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 10:1-33; 2
Corinthians 6:1-18) — what is commonly called “Christendom.”

6. What it comes to in such a case, having in it vessels to honour and to
dishonour: this Paul likens to “a great house” (2 Timothy 2:1-26). And, lastly,

7. The apostasy, and the man of sin. But this is the abandonment of the
profession of Christianity (2 Thessalonians 2:1-17), the true saints having been
removed from the scene at the Lord’s coming. On another occasion I hope to
present, in some measure, a sketch of the aspect Christ assumes towards the
external church, as given by John in the first three chapters of the Apocalypse;
and, ultimately, the path of an “overcomer” in the midst of it all.

Meanwhile, may He keep the feet of His saints, and bless the truths of His own
word. As the darkness of the scene deepens, may the light shine more brightly
from Him, lighting up the pathway to those who seek to do His blessed will, and
walk to His glory. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 31: 03.03.     CHRIST AMONGST THE CANDLESTICKS
========================================================================

Revelation 1:1-20; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22

Part 1 On previous occasions, beloved brethren, I have sought to bring before
you the two great aspects of the church of God as presented in scripture.

First of all, the true thing in its relation to Christ as His body — that which
is united to Christ by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; “the assembly which
is his body” — and, on the other hand, in its relation to God as His dwelling
place on earth, the assembly, or house of God. Of this last, two aspects come
out very distinctly in scripture: that which Christ builds, and that which man
builds.

They word “church,” or properly “assembly” is used of both the body of Christ
and the house of God. That is, if you look into heaven you find Christ gone up
there, and the assembly is His body, as seen in Ephesians 1:1-23. If you look
below here on earth, the house, that is, those who profess Christianity, is “the
assembly of the living God” (2 Timothy 3:1-17). They are two distinct thoughts,
and never confused.

Most of the confusion of Christendom at the present time has come in by the
mixing up of these two things.

There is also, as we saw, the body of Christ as in 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; seen
on earth, composed of those who are here, and these only, maintained in power
and unity by the Holy Ghost on earth. And Christians on earth were treated
practically, as gathered together in any place, as “the body of Christ” in that
place: as Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12:27), “Now ye are the body of
Christ, and members in particular.”

We saw too, how man’s responsibility was owned in. carrying out God’s work here
below, tracing the house or temple in which man might build and fail in the
character of his work, until the complete abandonment of Christianity and the
Antichrist.

Now tonight I am about to trace some thoughts from a scripture which is happily
more or less familiar to many of us; I mean the first three chapters of
Revelation.

I am about to examine it in three ways:

First of all, the attitude in which Christ is seen in the midst of the churches
in Revelation, as presented by John.

Then, secondly, what His testimony is to these assemblies: His thoughts as
revealed as to the “things that are.” And lastly, I hope to unfold in some
measure what it is to be an “overcomer” in the midst of such a solemn scene.

You will easily accept what I am about to say to you, namely, that Paul could
not be the vessel to reveal this aspect of Christ amongst those assemblies. Paul
unfolds the Son of God a heavenly Christ, gone up on high, whether as head of
His body the assembly, or High Priest. John, on the contrary, speaks of God come
down; a Christ walking upon earth, whether manifested there in grace, as in his
Gospel; or His judicial dealings as in the Revelation, by which He substantiates
His claims here on earth. Paul is “heavenly” in his testimony; with him it is
man gone up on high; John is “divine,” and with him it is more God come down,
manifestation on earth. This thought is familiar to many.

Hence, in consonance with his other testimony, John is the instrument taken up
to show us Christ in this intensely judicial attitude towards the external body
which bears His name. We must carefully distinguish Him as Head of His body,
ministering nourishment by joints and bands to His “own flesh;” and His judging
and scrutinizing, and threatening the external church with excision in result,
in her place as a corporate witness on earth.

John is here watching over the fortunes, as it were, of that which Paul had set
up; and telling us what Christ will do with it: He is “about to spue” it out of
his mouth (Revelation 3:16).

He is in the Island of Patmos for the word of God and testimony of Jesus. Sent
there into exile by the Roman Emperor, he was, nevertheless, in the full
enjoyment of his Christian privilege, “in the Spirit, on the Lord s day.” From
this and other passages of the word, I gather that there is a special action of
the Holy Ghost on that day (see John 20:1; John 20:19; John 20:26; Acts 20:7; 1
Corinthians 16:1, etc.).

You will bear in mind the book of the Revelation has specially Christ’s claims
upon the earth in view, to be made good when God will bring the First-begotten
into the world. But before the visions which point to this end, John is recalled
by a voice behind him (his face is with the mind of the Spirit towards the
introduction of the kingdom), and he turns about to see the vision; and sees the
Lord in this character, and learns what He was about to do with the responsible
body here below, which was not emitting the light, to be the responsible vessel
of which He had set it up.

“I turned to see the voice that spake with me; and being turned I saw seven
golden candlesticks.” They are described as of gold, because set up from a
divine source at the first. “And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like
unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the
paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white
as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine
brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many
waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a
sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his
strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right
hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first, and the last: I am he
that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and having
the keys of death and of hades.” (Revelation 1:12-18).

Here you find Christ’s aspect toward the assemblies as John presents Him. His
personal and judicial character, as Son of man, and yet Ancient of Days; judging
and discriminating amongst the candlesticks. You do not find His relative
characters, such as High Priest, or head of His body the assembly; that is more
the Pauline way of presenting Him. As “Son of man,” He is judge of all — and as
such you find Him here. “He hath given him authority to execute judgment also;
because he is the Son of man” (John 5:21). He is “clothed with a garment down to
the foot”; not “laid aside” as for His gracious service of love and washing His
people’s feet (John 13:1-38); and “girt about the paps with a golden girdle.”
His heart and affections are not seen flowing out to His church — His bride, but
girded up with a zone of righteousness — not grace. In Daniel 7:1-28, the
“Ancient of days” is described as Christ is here; so the Son of man is the
Ancient of days as we know even from that prophecy (cp. Daniel 7:9; Daniel
7:13-14; Daniel 7:22). “His eyes as a flame of fire”; this intense personal
scrutiny which reached the soul. I dare say some of us may remember (and some
may feel it now), when they were uneasy, and conscience was not at rest in the
midst of ecclesiastical things around. The effort to explain and excuse matters,
under plea that they could not get perfection here, failed to reassure the
conscience. They were unable perhaps to account for the sense of disquiet they
felt; practices in religious things irreconcilable with scripture, troubled
their souls: efforts to be happy and mend matters, and seek personal freedom
when in the midst of corporate corruption, were unsuccessful.

What was it that caused this exercise of conscience? Simply this — Christ’s eye
was turned upon them; and though they might not have known it, they felt it, and
felt too they could not be happy in such connection any more; they could not
stand His gaze. How solemn and sad, when you know of those who were once
exercised about the evil in which they walked, settling down into it, and the
exercises of soul passing away, and conscience acting no more! Christ’s eye has
been removed from them, as it were. They did not accept the light, and bowed not
when the heart was sensitive to the evil, and now they are left where they
desired! How solemn.

He holds all subordinate power — the stars, in His right hand of power; His
voice is heard in majesty, and He judges by the word of God the sharp two-edged
sword; while His countenance was as the sun shineth in its strength, the symbol
of supreme authority.

I pass over the details, desiring only to present the general thought as to the
aspect in which He is here seen. When John saw Him he “fell at his feet as
dead.” It was the same disciple whom Jesus loved, and who leaned on His breast
at supper in his own familiar place, accepted in the grace of the Lord.
Converted by the apprehension of the person of the Lamb of God, and attracted to
Him from that moment; here all is changed. This terrible aspect of Jesus as
judge, causes him to fall at His feet as dead. He is reassured by “Fear not” —
He was the living One who had died, and held in His own hand the keys of death
and of hades; He had never given them up. “Hades gates” could not prevail
against the Son of the living God; Christ had the keys of all! He had never
given them to Peter, nor to any. He gave “the keys of the kingdom of the
heavens” to Peter — never the keys of death and hades.

Now He sends seven messages to seven assemblies in Asia through John. There were
many others in those provinces, but these are chosen as presenting, in their
then state, what will serve the Spirit of God to give us, as in a lengthened out
picture, the history of the profession of Christ s name on earth and its
responsibility, with His thoughts and judgment of it from the start to the
finish.

They may be looked upon in three distinct ways: 1st. As seven existing
assemblies whose condition needed the words spoken to each, at the moment. 2nd.
As messages containing words to him that hath an ear to hear what the Spirit
saith, at all times: and, 3rd. As affording in completeness a prophetic
delineation of the history of the whole church in responsibility from
immediately after the apostolic times, until its final excision, as a false
witness for Christ: “I am about to spue thee out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16).

Seven [churches] are chosen as the number of spiritual completeness, here
conveying the completeness of God’s thoughts as to the subject of which He is
treating. This manner of presentation of what has become history is wise and
beautiful, as everything of God must be. For if so many successive and varied
phases of the church’s history on earth had been presented as such prophetically
foretold, what would have become of the hope of the Lord s coming, given to the
saints to be their constant expectation from the time He went away? How be
looking for Him if there had been the express revelation that all these things
had to take place in the church’s state before He came? The answer is, that in
the wisdom of the Spirit of God, the moment they were uttered, all the features
were there, and no delay was needed to unfold and develop them; so that He might
have come at the moment the messages were penned. And at the same time they
would afford a word of encouragement and warning to him that had an ear to hear
at all periods; while they would convey, as the “long-suffering of our God
waited,” to those who were called, near the close of the period, the most
important instruction as to what had passed in successive phases of the church s
history, accounting for its state at the end and marking out the path of God in
it for any who had an opened ear.

We will take a rapid glance at them, as I do not mean to go into details; this
has been ably done by others.

Ephesus presents the state of the church immediately after the first planting of
it in apostolic days. Active enough, but her first love for Christ had waned. No
activity could compensate for this. He seeks to recall her; “Remember therefore
from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works, or else I will
come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place except
thou repent.” She had allowed the light to flicker and grow dim, and there is no
more said as to a candlestick in the messages; for from the moment of failure of
heart for Christ it was treated as such a departure of the general body, that it
ceased to be a true collective and corporate testimony to Christ on earth,
though having the place of the candlestick in responsibility till the close. In
the second assembly, “Smyrna,” which answers to the early persecutions of the
church which followed, from Nero to Diocletian, you find the Lord turning to
account times of tribulation to restore if possible the church’s heart to its
normal condition; and Satan the instrument of it. How often it is thus with
individual souls. When there is a decline of soul and the danger is of its
slipping away from Christ in practice, then comes trial in mercy; the sorrow and
tribulation are for good, even to drive back the soul to Christ, from whom it
had departed. So with the saints here; though there was poverty in the eyes of
the world, Christ could say “Thou art rich”; far different from Laodicea in the
end, boasting of herself that she is rich; to her the Lord shows she is poor and
miserable and blind and naked.

Now mark in Pergamos how Satan changes his tactics. If he cannot succeed by
persecution (which only made Smyrna brighter in testimony, as nearer to Christ),
he will try seduction. If he cannot be a lion, he will be a serpent. Here she
has settled down to dwell where Satan has his “throne.” It answers to the time
of Constantine, when the empire took up the profession of Christianity and
patronized the church. Thus, instead of being a thing persecuted and despised by
the world, the friendship and patronage of the world became hers and her ruin.
In the midst of all an “Antipas” (which means “against everyone”), can be
recalled, a faithful witness for Christ, who had suffered death in the place
where an unfaithful church was content to dwell. The world which her Lord and
Master had refused from Satan’s hands had attracted and overcome her (Matthew
4:1-25). She should have trodden in His lowly footsteps. More difficult,
therefore, for the faithful ones to stem the torrent of corruption now setting
in; yet those that did would be fed by the hidden manna — a humbled Christ — in
their lowly path. The doctrine of Balaam was tolerated, and that of the
Nicolaitanes — the abuse of grace once hated (Revelation 2:6). Grace was so full
that they said in principle, you may live as you like, it will only enhance the
grace. In Ephesus you find they hated the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes; in
Pergamos “Thou hast them that hold” it. Alas, how the atmosphere into which the
church had slipped had darkened her perception of what was due and suited to
Christ! We feel the slightest soil when the heart is with Him. Let the heart
start aside like the bow that is broken, and things we would have shuddered at
are allowed, and conscience grows dull. Balaam’s seductions were getting a
place; indeed they had one already; and yet in the midst of all, “Antipas” —
strangely significant his name! — was slain for his faithful testimony of
Christ. It was a great thing to be an “overcomer” in such a state of things. An
overcomer was one who was stemming the tide and swimming against the stream.
Such an one would know what it was to feed upon the “hidden manna,” and to have
the “white stone” from Christ. He could understand the path of a humbled Christ,
who had refused the seductions of the, world, as the church should have done.
None knew the value of the secret approval of Christ, but the one who deserved
it and got it. When Thyatira comes you get another thing. It is the complete
corruption of the Popery of the middle ages. You find that instead of being
seduced into corruption as Pergamos, the church was now the originator and
propagator of it. It took its origin in her. Children were born of the
corruption (Revelation 2:23). Still Christ owns even increasing devotedness of
faithful ones in the midst of such a scene, but evil was allowed. “I know thy
works, and love, and faith, and service, and thy patience, and thy last works to
be more than the first. Notwithstanding, I have against thee, that thou
sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess; and she
teaches and seduces my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things
sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and
she repented not” [as the passage must be read] (Revelation 2:19-21). Up to this
message we find the Lord seeking to recall the church to her original condition;
now, there was no hope of this, “She repented not,” or more correctly “her will
was not to repent.” The corruption had come in and finding a lodgement there,
fresh corruption took its rise in that which bore His name on earth: hope,
therefore, of recovery is past.

Now, we find two things for the first time mentioned. First, a remnant in the
midst of the scene of corruption, owned of the Lord; and secondly, the Lord’s
coming as the only resource for the faithful, and instead of any recovery of the
church, the kingdom, and the morning star, are presented in hope.

Here I would venture to use a figure, to illustrate the varied states of the
professing church. A rainbow is seen to present a number of colours, of which
one special colour is prominent at a given moment. If you watch it, you will
remark that the prominent colour softens, and another stands out, and so on. So
with these churches: some characteristic which stands out prominently at a given
moment is before us, then comes another. All the colours are there at the same
time, but a prominent one stands in relief amongst the rest. So all these
various features may be found at one and the same moment in the professing
church; but at certain moments one stands out markedly from the whole.

Thyatira here is complete corruption and the authoress of it, and no hope of
return. The faithful have to hold fast till the Lord comes again. She, was
assuming “power over the nations” – the Papacy in the middle ages did this; the
faithful would have this, when He came back to whom of right it belongs, but not
as in the scene of His rejection, where the corrupt church was usurping it. The
“morning star” given them meanwhile would speak of Christ known in heavenly
glory, and of the heavenly side of His coming before He appears to take the
kingdom, the harbinger of that bright day of earthly glory in which they would
be associated with Him in all that He received from His Father.

Read Revelation 2:24 thus, “But to you I say, the rest [or remnant] who are in
Thyatira.” “That which ye have hold fast till I come,” is the word that would
test them. It would be time enough to have the kingdom when Christ gets it
instead of “reigning as kings” with the church unfaithful to its absent Lord.
When we come to Sardis, which gives us Protestantism since the Reformation, we
find that they had “received and heard” much. What use did they make of it? God
had wrought, and out of the effect produced in man’s hand came this Sardis
state, of which death was the chief feature. Sardis had a name to live, and was
really dead before God. The church in Protestantism had not assumed power like
Thyatira, but had appealed to the world, and was of the world, and would be
treated as the world when He came upon it as a thief.” Their works might look
well before men, but they were not perfect before God. If of Thyatira He says,
“I will put her into great tribulation”; of Sardis He says, I will treat her as
the world, because she is the world and nothing else. This is what is before
Protestantism, with a decent outward profession, but wanting in all that would
give it reality before God. The Lord’s coming, you will note, is mentioned here,
as to the character in which He would come on Sardis. “Till” that event was the
thought prominent in Thyatira: “As a thief” in Sardis. See 1 Thessalonians 5:2-5
for the solemn force of it. To Philadelphia it is more the Person who comes that
is before the soul; and He comes quickly. This is the calling of God in the
closing scenes of the church’s sad history; the prominent colour, so to speak:
the power of Christ resting upon them in weakness. “A little strength,” is her
character, but she uses it, and keeps His “word,” and does not deny His “name.”
Beautiful and blessed testimony of His heart to the feeble ones! Philadelphia
(“brotherly love”) is not a perfect state of things, but it is God s state of
things;* and this is what we want.

{*It would be this at any time, and wherever found; but specially characterizing
those who go on with Christ, a true remnant at the close; as Laodicea
characterizes those who sink into the worldly religion with much boasting around
us. These two branch out of the state of things that made Sardis. All four
states, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea, are contemporary and run on
to the end, while commencing after each other in point of time. All are in
existence now, for who can deny that Laodicea is manifested?}

Silently and quietly she walked in what was suited to His name — the Holy and
the True. She could not say, Jehu-like, “Come and see my zeal for the Lord: ”
which, after all, was characterized at bottom by ambition and cruelty. Nor could
she, like Laodicea, boast that she was rich and increased with goods, and had
need of nothing.

Thyatira may go into great tribulation — Sardis be found as the world, and
treated as the world — Laodicea be ready to be spued out of His mouth: in the
midst of all, Philadelphia waits for the Lord, she observes His word and walks
in what is suited to His name, and He will keep her out of the hour of
temptation (Isaiah 24:1-23), which comes upon all the world, to try them that
dwell upon the earth (Revelation 3:10).

Christ presents Himself to her as one outside the whole scene — not in an
ecclesiastical way as walking amid the candlesticks, but morally according to
that which He is in Himself, and as one who disposes of all. Both positively and
negatively she is faithful to Christ; yet to others has no apparent strength.
She had but little, and she used it for Christ! This was power. People are
attracted by power. But how do they look for it? In some great display with
brilliant effects, and manifestations of it. Did they ever think of power being
manifested in patience? Patience is a sign of power when the church is in ruins.
It is to produce this in His people that God puts forth all the resources of His
power. “Strengthened with all might according to the power of his glory”
(Colossians 1:11). To what end? you say; “to patience and long-suffering with
joy.” What a descent in man s estimation, expecting some brilliant result to
draw the attention of all! But patience was the first sign of apostolic power
even (2 Corinthians 6:4), and is of more account with God than the most striking
manifestation of power. In Laodicea you find what Satan can do with flesh in man
in a religious way. Of her He says, “Thou art neither cold nor hot” and He is
about to spue her out of His mouth! The church was called to walk in the Spirit,
outside of man and his sphere of things. Here she has completely gone back to
walk in the flesh, and is a false witness for Christ. He stands at the door and
knocks; He is outside the whole scene, shut out by what bears His name. When
this phase of evil is fully manifested, He can bear with the profession no
longer. And the judgment threatened in Ephesus is executed with every mark of
His disgust. The corruption of the best good is the worst evil, and He treats it
as such. To return to the attitude of Christ among these candlesticks. It will
be seen that He calls upon the individual who has an ear to hear what the Spirit
says to the church as a whole: not the church, at least from Thyatira down,* she
is corrupt; the overcomer would have his reward. The rewards are suited to the
peculiar difficulties each has passed through in faithfulness to Him.

{*The call to hear hitherto addressed to the whole church is from this point
(Revelation 2:29) only sounded in the ear of the overcomer. The church as a
whole is given up as even having an ear to hear.} But it will be noted that in
all this scripture there is not one single instruction to the individual but to
“hear”! Some have found it a matter of much difficulty, why, in the midst of so
much that is evil, no directions should be given to clean oneself from it, and
to depart from such a state of things. While other scriptures, are clear enough
as to the principle, here where such flagrant evil is disclosed, why are there
no directions how to act? The answer is simple. John is watching over the
fortunes of that which Paul had been used administratively to set up, and we
learn from these addresses what Christ will do with it. He does not unfold what
I am to do, but tells me what He will do, and calls upon me to hearken and
overcome. If I want to see my own pathway, and what I am to do, I must seek it
elsewhere when I have heard what the Spirit says to the churches. I should more
likely find my path from Paul, through whom, if he had laid the foundation of
the church which had now fallen into decay, we also learn that this would be its
history and have inspired directions to meet the changed state of things. To him
then, I must turn; as also to other scriptures, to see what the path of an
overcomer should be in an evil day. This I hope to enter upon at another
occasion.


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  CHAPTER 32: 03.04.     “HIM THAT OVERCOMETH”
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Part 2

{These two parts were taken up on two occasions, and formed the subjects of two
lectures. This will account for the manner of their presentation to the reader.}

Heretofore I have endeavoured to bring before you, first of all, what the church
is in the truth and actuality of it, as the body of Christ in purpose and
result, according to the counsels of God. That which it will be when Christ —
the second Man — the last Adam — possesses manifestly all His glories; the
church then “his body, the fulness of him who filleth all in all.” We also
looked upon the other aspect of the church as Christ s body on earth,
constituted and maintained in its unity as “one body,” by the presence and power
of the Holy Ghost. Then we traced from scripture the house of God as the
professing body here below; and lastly, we saw the judicial attitude in which
John presents Christ as to it, “with eyes like unto a flame of fire”; an aspect
in which Paul could not, I think, present Him. It is more His province to
present a heavenly Christ gone up as man into the glory of God; and he does not
bring Him down again. Of course, that He will be manifested in judgment, is in
Paul’s writings too; quite true and needful in filling up the word of God.

It is very blessed, beloved friends, to know that we are united to Him, who is
the Judge of quick and dead, by the Holy Ghost sent down. We have eternal life
in Him, and we stand in complete redemption. There is not a single shadow
judicially, between our souls and Christ. But still He is going to spue the
professing body that bears His name here out of His mouth, and I do not want to
be identified with the state for which He will thus reject it; I want to be an
overcomer. I do not say it is possible for a true Christian to be spued out of
Christ s mouth; but he may, alas! be found at this moment identified with that
state that is utterly nauseous to Christ.

There is much said of the blessings to the overcomer in these scriptures
(Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22). What is the meaning of an overcomer? He
is not a person who is standing fast when things are all in order. Take Adam in
the Garden; had he to overcome in anything? No. Then, when overcoming becomes
necessary, what is the fact? Things have got into disorder; the mass have gone
right away. A flood tide brought them in; the ebb came and swept them right
away. Now when things were so, the overcomer has to stand fast for Christ in the
scene; and he is the very one to whom Christ’s heart is drawn out in a way that
could not have been when the whole body was going on well.

It was in the dark day of Israel’s ruin that Elijah and Elisha were sustained;
there were none such men in the palmy days of Solomon. The faith that carried
Elijah through such days of ruin for God, was answered by his being taken to
heaven in a chariot of fire! The overcomer was one who when he found that the
people of God were drifting away from a state suited to him, was stemming the
stream. If you ever swam against a stream, you know what would come of your
missing a single stroke and where it might land you: and it is one thing,
beloved friends, to have gained a firm foothold, and another to keep it — one
thing to have the intelligence of a divine place, and another altogether to
maintain it in power. On the last occasion on which I addressed you, I noticed
that in the messages to the Seven Churches you get no individual directions as
to what to do. You get rewards promised the overcomer, but you are not told how
to overcome. Many say, Look at all the evil that is in the seven churches and
the like, and the Lord does not direct His people to leave them! Shall I tell
you why? For this reason: you never have in them a single direction as to what
you are to do, but one. That is, you are to “hear,” the church? no; it is a
judged thing but “what the Spirit says” to her; then you find the blessing
promised “to him that overcometh.”

Turn with me to a few scriptures in the Old Testament, that we may see how
others overcame in an evil day. In Exodus 32:1-35 we find a fine case of this
character. Israel had been called out of idolatry; Abraham first, and then the
whole nation, to be the witness of the one true God. But the moment poor man
gets anything committed to him he fails. Moses had gone up to receive the law
from Jehovah, and the people of Israel and Aaron were below. As soon as they
lost sight of Moses, they made a golden calf; they went back into idolatry; into
the very thing they had been called out of. So with the church of God. She was
called to walk outside of man and flesh altogether; the first thing she does is
to fall into walking in the flesh. You find murmuring over a question of the
funds in Acts 6:1-15. In Acts 2:1-47 they were “all filled with the Holy Ghost”;
when we come to Acts 6:1-15 they were to “choose men full of the Holy Ghost.”
You see they were not all full then.

Well, here in Exodus 32:1-35 Moses had gone up into the mountain, and Aaron had
made the calf of gold; coupling the name of Jehovah with the similitude of a
calf that eateth hay! And they said “These be thy gods, O Israel,” etc. Now I
only recall this well-known history to show how Moses and Levi overcame. God
sends Moses down, and he saw the calf and the dancing. He took the tables of the
law which God has given, him, and brake them beneath the mount. Why does he act
thus? Through entering into God’s mind, from being with God. He does exactly the
right thing at the right moment. It was the instinct of divine communion.
Beautiful action of Moses! The glory of Jehovah was cared for, and the safety of
the people too. The breaking of the tables met both; for if the law had come
into the camp it could only have been their destruction, and where then would
have been the witness of what He was in His own nature?

Mark Exodus 32:25. Moses had been given Aaron through his unbelief at the first,
and of all he led him into the deepest trouble. So it is always. We bring a
thorn on ourselves by our unbelief, and then the time comes when it rankles and
gives us many a bitter moment. See Abraham, too, he goes down to Egypt and gets
the Egyptian maid. She was a thorn gotten in that land of darkness. See how he
reaped what he had sown through her.

It is always so. God says, as it were, Well, you cannot rise to me, I will come
down to you. Then we find how much better had we risen up to Him, surmounting
all the mountains of difficulty unbelief had conjured up.

Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said — and oh, let it be a word for
every conscience I address, may each one be bent on standing for God down here —
he said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me;” “And all the tribe
of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.”

Splendid action in faith in overcoming. They stood in faithfulness for God
before men, and they earned the glorious privilege of being the priestly tribe!
And this is the true character and basis of all priesthood It is one thing to be
by grace a priest of God, as all Christians are, but quite another to earn our
priesthood by consecration to God. It is just in the measure we have been
faithful before men for God, that we can stand before God for men!

Moses says, “Who is on the Lord’s side,” and the tribe of Levi respond to the
call. They separated themselves in faithfulness from their brethren who were
unfaithful to God, and consecrated themselves for their priestly place to be the
priestly tribe; for they had not hesitated when the moment came to choose
between God and man. The Lord, so to say, never forgot it to Levi.

If I turn to Deuteronomy 33:1-29, and examine the blessings of the tribes, I
find Moses takes up two especially, Joseph and Levi. “And of Levi he said, Let
thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah,
and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah; who said unto his
father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his
brethren, nor know his own children: for they have observed thy word, and kept
thy covenant. They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they
shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar.” The
lights and perfections (Thummim and Urim) of the relationships of Jehovah with
His people, and of His people with Jehovah, would be his. There was intercession
too with the Lord; “They shall put incense before thee,” and teach Jacob His
judgments and Israel His law. This was overcoming in Levi. In the next chapter
of Ex. (Exodus 33:1-23), Moses took the tent and pitched it outside the camp.
There was no command from God to do this, but he acted in the intelligence he
had gained from being with Him. All who sought the Lord from that guilty camp
came outside to this separated spot. And the cloud or presence of Jehovah came
down and talked with Moses as a man talks with his friend. Here you find another
action in overcoming. The camp had utterly failed. Well, says Moses, I will not
go with the evil. He sees that if the Lord was to go on with the people there
must be separation from the evil to Him.

It was, the most glorious moment of that blessed servant’s career. If you turn
to Numbers 12:1-16 you will see how the Lord appreciated the action. “My servant
Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house,” “With him will I speak face
to face.”

Now I turn to another “overcomer” in Numbers 25:1-18. A moment of deep
corruption had arrived, and the Levite Phinehas, with his javelin, acquired an
“everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God” when corruption was
spreading its foul stain on His people. It mattered not if in former days Levi
and Simeon were the closest allies in wickedness (Genesis 49:5-7), now came the
moment: when God was everything, and Zimri the Simeonite falls by the javelin of
Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest! This was overcoming;
this was the son of a priestly tribe qualifying himself under testing for his
priesthood a priest amongst the priests!

If we now turn to Judges 7:1-25, we shall find overcoming, when it was a case of
natural blessing which drew others off the path. I read of Gideon’ s little band
who overcame. First, we find that in this day of battle with the Midianites, the
army of Israel went out thirty-two thousand strong. And the Lord said, “The
people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their
hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, My own hand hath saved
me.” It is God’s way to work in the weakness of man, “that the excellency of the
power may be of God and not of us.” Twenty-two thousand who were “fearful and
afraid” returned from the host. “And there remained ten thousand. And the Lord
said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water,
and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of whom I say unto
thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I
shall say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go.”

Fear and difficulty were the tests for the first time, and those who had stood
these tests, and were neither fearful nor afraid are now tested with a natural
blessing, and nine thousand seven hundred fail! Only three hundred now stood the
test. How many souls have received vigour and strength by passing through a
strait with Christ; but when a moment of ease comes, when nature can let itself
out, and the loins are ungirded, failure and disqualification ensue. See David
in the days of his rejection, what a noble path of faith was his! Yet when at
ease and at home, with ungirded loins, he drops into the path of gratification
of self. How deep was his fall in the matter of the wife of Urias! “The time
when kings go forth to battle” had arrived; “but David tarried still.” Oh what
failure; what bitterness ensued! So here with Gideon’s army. Only three hundred
stood the test. Their hearts were in God’s battles of that day. They did not in
the ascetic zeal of flesh refuse the blessing as it came in their way, but they
were not entangled by it. That was the point. Like Jonathan dipping his staff in
the honeycomb and passing on, he was refreshed. Other interests pressed on his
heart, and he passed on with enlightened eye. The test was, “Every one that
lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by
himself; likewise everyone that boweth down upon his knees to drink.” The one
snatched the blessing hastily and passed on: the other partook of it at ease.
Israel wanted the first, and so did God. And God delivered Israel by the three
hundred self-denying men. The victory was won. And God is delivering the many at
the present hour, by means of the faithful, prayerful earnest, self-denying few;
while thousands are sunk in the ease of things around, in carnal enjoyment and
rest.

I turn to another “overcomer” in Jeremiah. His pathway is a very striking one.
Cradled, as we may say, in the lap of the finest revival that ever took place in
Judah — the bright day of Josiah, which followed the drear and evil day of
Manasseh.

I may remark that there were two great revivals in the history of Judah’s kings.
That under Hezekiah, and that of Josiah. The first was characterized by faith.
You will remember how Hezekiah prayed and spread the letter before the Lord, and
the Lord came in and destroyed the army of Sennacherib. But Josiah’s revival had
another characteristic, which was attention to the Word of God. The roll of the
book was found, and then came the wondrous revolution effected by this judging
of all things by that perfect standard. In analogy you have these two revivals
in the history of the church. That of the Reformation was characterized by bold
faith, breaking up existing things; and although the word of God was in measure.
the basis of appeal, things were not judged according to its standard. Rather
was it a reformation of that which seemed to be the church around. In the
present day, another action has come, and God is leading souls back to
scripture; and close attention to the word of God gives a character to the
action of His Spirit in souls at the present time.* Everything is judged to
which the veneration of centuries and the antiquity of ages lent a charm, and
led souls away from scripture; and God has taken care, in His infinite,
boundless mercy, that when He has commended us to scripture in these last days,
we should find in it everything needed for the exigencies of every hour.

{*I do not say how far of course there has been the bowing of heart in His
people to the word of God, to any great extent. Still it is to scripture God
commends us. We have the truth there, and “He that is of God ‘heareth us” (that
is, Apostles and apostolic writings). See the address of Paul to the elders at
Ephesus Acts 20:1-38 : and the close of 2 Timothy 3:1-17; 1 John 4:5-6, etc.}

Press the word of God on people and they give you up. They say the times are
changed. It might do then, but it will not do now. It needs courage to obey it,
no doubt: courage with oneself, courage with others. But he that obeys God in a
world like this, is owning God in a world that disowns Him. People may say they
have it. But do they keep — observe His word, and not deny His name. “Be thou
strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the
law,” etc. It is true Christian obedience, the obedience of Christ, to have no
will of our own, the new man living by, and guided by every word of God.

God is recalling His saints now to — not primitive, but original Christianity.
This tells us, too, how near is the coming of the Lord.

Well, Jeremiah’s history commenced in the days of Josiah’s passover. He sang the
Lamentations when that faithful king was slain. There have been men whose
ministry has left a big mark, so to say, behind them; it was not so with him
(unless what he has written). He was the voice of God to His poor people as long
as they had an ear to hear. Look at ch. 13. What does he say? If you do not
hearken to His words, I will go and weep for you before the Lord (Jeremiah
13:15-17).

It was a day too when they could boast, “The temple of the Lord are these”
(Jeremiah 7:1-11); and yet add, “We are delivered to do all these abominations.”
How like the cry of some: We cannot help the evil, and it is the best thing we
can find, and the like. It was a day like the present in more ways than this.
The ecclesiastical party boasted that the law should not perish from the priest,
nor the counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet: “Come and let us
smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words”
(Jeremiah 18:18-19). The testimony of God was refused and the plea of antiquity
and succession set up.

Oh how like the present hour! When there is a stand made for the testimony of
God’s truth by a few simple souls, who are they who are the most hitter
opponents? Those who claim to be the conservators of what is divine! Yet they
alike oppose the testimony God gives, and the evidences of God’s work in others,
and sink down into more complete darkness and hostility to God than before. In
Jeremiah 15:1-21 we find Jeremiah’s path; “Thy words were found, and I did eat
them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am
called by thine name, O Lord God of hosts.” He eats the word, digesting it and
making it his own. Now, what was the effect? “I sat alone!” It separates him
from all, to God. Then the answer of God comes; God owns the position. Mark,
too, how his own faithfulness was the ground of his being used to others; he
earned the place; not of course that it was not grace that bestowed it upon him,
and used him too, I grant it was, fully. Now, says the Lord, “If thou take forth
the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth. Let them return unto
thee; but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a
fenced brazen wall; and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not
prevail against thee; for I am with thee to save thee, and to deliver thee,
saith the Lord.” This position of separation to the Lord, was a tower — a
citadel of strength in an evil day; a position where all who loved His name
could come.

If I turn to Paul in the New Testament (Ephesians 4:1-32), I find that it is no
vague separation to some indefinite object. I find what we have in the midst of
the scene. I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are
called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one
another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace. There is one body, and one Spirit” etc.

There is a difference between the calling (vocation) here named, and that of
Hebrews (Hebrews 3:1). In the latter it is individual; in the former, connected
with the corporate calling of the church — “one body “ — a “habitation of God
through the Spirit.” Now he says, Do you walk worthy of it. Still I must know my
calling, before I can do so. Here it is plain enough. I might as well say my
salvation is of no consequence, as say that my pathway is of no consequences as
a member of Christ. Both rest simply and immutably on the word of God. If I
accept one I am bound to accept the other. I dare not say, Christians have
failed to follow what has been given, and this exonerates me. Such reasoning
would not stand before the Lord for a moment. If I say, Things are in hopeless
confusion. So they are, but will this state of things, will putting the blame on
others, exonerate you? Has the Holy Ghost left the church? Has the divine fact
that “There is one body and one Spirit” changed? No. He is here, and maintains
the unity of Christ’s body on earth as truly as ever. The simple question is,
Has He failed? But you say, It is all scattered. I am told there are thirteen
hundred sects in Christendom! How can I set things to rights? Well, supposing
you cannot (and it is true), you must begin with yourself, and set yourself to
rights! This is the first thing. Just as Jeremiah did in his day; the word of
God digested in his soul isolated him but not for long, for he was to be God’s
mouth to separate the precious from the vile.

There is the intrinsic, real thing, “one body, and one Spirit” with “one hope.”
Then cones the unity of profession, “One Lord, one faith (that is, one common
creed, not Jew, or Pagan) and one baptism”; of course the baptism of water,
which introduces into the sphere of profession. Then you get the third circle,
the widest of all, and yet coming down to what is most intimate of all; “One God
and Father of all; who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” He is
“above all”; that is His supremacy. “Through all”; He permeates everything. Then
He returns to the saints, He is “in you all”; He is in relationship with them
according to the character of the name of God and Father. Just as one owns a
great estate, but he dwells in the house on it, and so possesses it; so will God
do in the church by-and-by. He will take possession of “His inheritance,” in and
by the saints, with Christ, as He did the land of promise of old, in His people
Israel.

There are thus three great circles of unity. They bear a certain analogy to
those you find in John 17:1-26. There is first, the apostolic, essential unity;
they were of one mind and purpose, as the Father and the Son, by the Holy Ghost
(John 17:11). Secondly, you find the unity of divine fellowship and consequent
testimony to the world around in grace (John 17:21) this was seen at the first
moments of the history of the church at Pentecost. Thirdly, the perfected unity
of glory, which will be by-and-by, when the world will “know” what it might have
“believed” through the second if we had been faithful (John 17:23); this will be
the displayed unity of glory in the millennial day when there can be no possible
failure. To return; we find that the Holy Ghost has maintained intact this
unity, no matter how men have externally broken up the church of God. Thus we
find something definite to guide us; we can come together to the name of the
Lord, when we have cleared ourselves from the evil and falseness and profession
around us; even the feeblest few, and we find “One body and one Spirit” abides.
This “unity of ‘the Spirit” embraces all members of Christ who are not under
discipline, and even Christ Himself as chief of it. It is a basis which embraces
and contemplates the whole church of God, and yet in its character it must be
suited to Christ. It is not merely the unity of Christians, it is comparatively
easy to have this. Easy to say, Let us sink differences and be together, and
then attach Christ’s name to it, and call it unity. The fashion of the day is to
make a union and attach Christ to it nominally. The Spirit of God, on the
contrary, attaches unity to Christ.

People reason, Are not all believers, however they walk, members of the body of
Christ? I admit it most fully nay, you may say, I cannot deny it! Abstractly
they are members of “one body,” and the Spirit of God maintains its unity. But
when I come to practice I cannot own that all are “endeavouring to keep the
unity of the Spirit.” I speak of practice, diligently seeking to realize by the
power of the Spirit that unity in which we have been formed.

What God commends us to is that unity, which embraces all members of Christ, and
yet allows of nothing that is unsuited to the Chief of this unity, who is Christ
Himself!

There is a marked difference between being in the abstract “one body,” and the
observance of this practically.*

{*If Ezra and his remnant came to Jerusalem, they found a divine centre of
gathering for all Israel; they could exclude none who could show their genealogy
– this was needed, for it was a return. Still if Nehemiah and his company come
later, it will not do to make a fresh city and temple and call it Jerusalem,
because in the abstract all were Israelites. They must follow where others had
been led of God, and thank God that His grace had wrought in souls before they
appeared on the scene.}

Let us examine what Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:1-26. He sees the house of God in
ruin when he writes this letter to his beloved son in the faith. In his first
epistle we find the orderings of things when things were in order; in the
second, the path of the saint when things were in disorder. In 2 Timothy 2:19,
he says, “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his; and, Let everyone that nameth the name of
the Lord depart from iniquity.” We cannot say, The whole thing is in ruin; we
are delivered to this corruption. No. Fundamental truth has not changed, and
although the ruin cannot be remedied, we are responsible for this. The Lord sees
a great mass of profession and says, I know them that are mine in it. Then we
have the responsibility of those who name His name, they are to “depart from
iniquity.” This we have touched upon before. I need not say another word if
souls have not gone this far. Then He takes up the analogy of a great house,
with vessels to honour and dishonour; the man of God has to purge himself from
these, that he may be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, like Jeremiah, and meet
for his Master’s use. He cannot go on with what is untrue nor can he set things
to rights; this then must be his path, to be an “overcomer” in the scene around.
If you find what is right and what the Lord would have you do, “To him that
knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Now he goes on to say, “Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness,
faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
Nothing can be clearer to any heart subject to the word of God. I have to watch
my own heart, lest the enemy find an open door, to ruin a path of outward
separation from evil by inward unholiness. Then I find those in 2 Timothy 2:22
with whom I can — nay, I am bound to walk. It is not a lonely pathway, for thank
God there are those “that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” to be found.
This is the action of the Spirit of God amongst the saints at the present
moment, separating “the precious from the vile.” The Lord has it in His heart to
awaken His sleeping saints, that they may not be ashamed before Him at His
coming.

Then a person may say, Why these people are open to the same difficulties as at
the first when the evil came in. How will they deal with them? Well, I find in
the next chapter (2 Timothy 3:1-17), “Thou hast fully known [had perfect
understanding of] my doctrine, manner life,” etc. “Continue thou in the things
thou hast heard of me,” etc. Paul’s “doctrine” is the resource, and never to be
surrendered; and we can endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace, and such action will have all His members in view, though they may have
no intelligence of their privilege and responsibility. If walking in the truth
together, the action is not merely towards each other; our action radiates
towards, and has reference to every member of Christ, no matter in what
association he may be found. But it will be easily seen, that this is not
standing fast as when things were in order, but overcoming and getting back to
divine principles when things are in disorder.

All our path God makes so plain for us, that we need have no difficulty in an
evil day. It is an evil day, but the very evil makes the path the more plain for
the single eye. The Lord gives us in full measure, then, to know what it is to
overcome. We each and all have something to do; and the great thing for each is
to do that for which we have been left here by Christ. We may do much and
largely, and not do our first works, or that to which God has called us. See
Saul; he was raised up to de liver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines (1
Samuel 9:16). He slaughtered Ammon, “so that two of them were not left together”
(1 Samuel 11:11); yet failed in what God had set him to do. We have to seek His
mind, and not argue for expediency, and what we think is right. Nothing God
meets so blessedly as the single eye. When our eye is single, the whole body is
full of light, having no part dark; and the heart walks peacefully with God. It
is due to Christ that so it should be. Do I love Him? Than let me keep His
commandments. We need personal devotedness to Him, and it is humbling that we
find so little of it, in days when He is imparting such light to our souls. We
need the alacrity of heart that bows to His will in the most trivial thing, and
it brings its own joy from Him who has said to us, “If ye love me keep my
commandments.”


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  CHAPTER 33: 03.05.     OUR PRESENT CONDITION AND OUR HOPE.
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Acts 17:1-7

{This paper, as will easily be seen, does not pretend to unfold in detail the
various features of the Lord’s coming. Being one of a series of lectures, the
subject was treated more as filling up the line of thought presented to those
who heard them. This will account for the manner of its presentation to the
reader.}

“Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to
Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his manner was,
went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the
scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen
again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. And
some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout
Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.

“But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd
fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an
uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the
people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto
the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are
come hither also whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the
decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.”

It may seem strange that I have read this account of the ministry of the apostle
Paul, during the three sabbath days in Thessalonica. But it is extremely
instructive to compare the historic narratives of the Acts with the Epistles
afterwards written to the saints in the same places.

I have read these verses for the sake of two special thoughts contained in them:
1st, that there was a crucified, dead, and risen Christ preached by the apostle
to them; and, 2nd, that there was to be a reigning Christ by-and-by; “another
king, one Jesus.” This we may gather from Acts 17:7. Its suitability too, is
apparent when we think of those whom he addressed; namely, Jews who were
familiar with the hopes of a glorious reigning Messiah, and who were instructed
in the scriptures which so spake. The basis then, of the thoughts I desire to
present this evening is, as to the past a suffering, dead and risen Christ; as
to the present, the association of the people of God with Him in a pathway of
suffering and rejection; and as to the future, His Coming again in glory, and
taking to Him His great power to reign, and our association with Him in His
glory.

Now there is an immense reach between the first and the last of these thoughts;
He has suffered, died and risen again, and gone on high, “to receive for himself
a kingdom,” and He will return to take it in power and great glory; you will
find that the two Epistles to the Thessalonians fill up the great gap, if we may
so term it, between the past sufferings of Christ and His future glory.

You will anticipate from this, that I am about to speak a little this evening
about the coming of the Lord, as the great event which will bring about all this
glory for which He waits and we wait. It is near, beloved brethren; the heart
feels conscious that it is so; and the present action of the Holy Ghost marks it
as very close at hand.

You will find that when redemption is accomplished, and the Holy Ghost is
dwelling here, there are two thoughts brought before us very prominently in the
New Testament; both very different in character, yet very closely allied; that
is, the “coming” and the “appearing” of the Lord Jesus.

I may remark as to the expression, the “coming” of the Lord, that it means His
presence in contrast with His absence; and it is a large and comprehensive word
as so used, reaching from what is known to many of us as the “rapture” of the
saints, to be “for ever with the Lord,” and continuing through the interval
which follows, till His appearing with His saints in glory. The word “coming”
(parousia) embraces both thoughts; while the “appearing” (epiphaneia) is the
shining forth of His coming when He will be displayed in glory to the world.
That word “coming” is often used for this event, the “appearing”; but this last
word is never used for the “coming: His “coming” or presence in contrast to His
absence, embraces many details which He will accomplish in the interval, till
His open manifestation to the world, when “every eye shall see him,” coming with
“ten thousands of his saints.”

Many of my brethren whom I address know, that Christ is presented in the gospel
narratives in four distinct ways. In Matthew He is seen as Jehovah-Messiah, son
of David, son of Abraham, presented to His people and rejected, and in
consequence passing to His higher glory as “Son of man,” over all the works of
God’s hands (Psalms 8:1-9), through death and resurrection; then coming back as
Son of man, in judgment, with the ensigns of Jehovah power and great glory.

If you examine Matthew 24:1-51, you find the Messiah rejected by His people and
cast out, then returning as Son of man in judgment, and delivering His people
Israel. First dealing with Jews, in the land of Judea (Matthew 24:15-31), and
appearing for their deliverance. Then gathering the “elect” of Israel from the
four winds, from amongst the nations of the earth (cp. Isaiah 27:12-13;
Zechariah 2:6).

Before that day comes, there is an immense heavenly interval, during which
Christians are in relationship with Christ. We have this presented under three
parables: The good and the evil servant; the wise and foolish virgins; and the
faithful and the unfaithful use of the spiritual gifts {perhaps, rather,
responsibilities} of Christ, as ascended and gone away for the time from Israel,
until He comes and reckons judicially with His servants. And then, when the time
we are passing through is past and gone, you find that after having come and
delivered Israel (Matthew 24:15-31), and dealt in the true appraisal of the work
and watchfulness of His servants (Matthew 24:44-51; Matthew 25:1-30), He sits
upon the throne of His glory, and before Him are gathered the Gentiles or
nations, and His “brethren” after the flesh, the Jewish remnant of that day; and
the former are judged, as to how they had received the message of His coming
kingdom and glory through the latter. Believing and bowing to it, constituted
them the “sheep,” as the rejection of it, the “goats.” It is the judgment of the
“quick,” which introduces the millennial kingdom, the thousand years of earthly
blessing. It will be seen that there are three classes of persons in this scene;
the sheep, the goats, and His “brethren.”

You must quite set aside the human thought of this scene being a “general
judgment” — there is nothing so foreign to scripture. God does not confound
together the saved and lost in “that world,” when by the truth He has wrought to
separate them here, much as man has blotted out the distinction. In the judgment
of the great white throne of Revelation 20:1-15, after a thousand years there is
not a living man seen; in that of this chapter not a dead man is seen! Besides
all this, the ground of judgment in this solemn scene would embrace but a small
proportion of the population of the world. Comparatively few will have had the
testimony addressed to them, which forms the ground of judgment here, or any
testimony from God: they will be judged according to their works — a totally
different ground of judgment. This precludes the thought of its being a general
judgment. Nothing but most careless reading, or the bias of human thought, could
have so interpreted the passage. With this judgment of the living nations, the
Jewish mind was most familiar; with a judgment of the dead but little. To us as
Christians, the judgment of the dead is a familiar thought and the judgment of
the “quick” {living} very little known. In the Gospel of Mark, the Lord Jesus is
presented as God’s servant in testimony, in His holy mission of service of love;
at the close of it when ascended and in glory, it is said, even then, the Lord
working with His servants whom He had left to carry on His heavenly mission here
below. He is still the worker as gone up. In Mark 13:1-37 you find Him as one
who has gone away, and set “every man his work, and commanded the porter to
watch”: then He comes back to see if each is at His post of service and
watching; whether at even, or at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the
morning. Thus, is the Lord’s coming presented in keeping with the gospel of His
service — His own work, or that of His servants. He comes back to see if each
servant is at his post.

Beloved friends, here let me say to you that it is a very solemn thing for every
soul to enquire, Am I filling up the little niche of service that He has given
me? There are not only great gifts, but joints and bands; and the body of Christ
is said to increase by the joints and bands; every joint supplying that which
belongs to itself in the mutual and effectual working of the measure of each one
part. It is a great thing if each has found out his own path of service for the
Lord. It may be by earnest prayer in one; by the use of his temporal means in
another; of the spiritual gifts in a third. In one way or another, He has given
us something to do for Him, and He is coming back to ascertain how each is
discharging the duty given him, and “at an hour ye think not.” Therefore, after
giving to each his work, and commanding the porter to watch, He says, “What I
say unto you, I say unto all, Watch.”

Now in Luke, who is the great moralizer, presenting things morally to men’s
souls, and looking for a moral state in them, we find another thing. If Matthew
gives us the official glory of the Messiah, and Mark the mission of service of
One who “went about doing good”; Luke gives us Himself — Jesus, the Son of man —
dealing morally with man. What then, will he look for, as he presents to us the
Lord’s coming? A moral state of soul in those whose is such a hope. In Luke
12:1-59, “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning” — that is not
resting here; “Arise, depart, for this is not your rest, it is polluted.” If you
compare every place in scripture where you find girded loins spoken of, you will
find the characteristic of the place is toiling and journeying on in a scene
where your heart and affections must be braced up, they must not flow out here;
it is a place of conflict and toil of some sort or other.

He speaks here of a “little flock.” Be says, I have charged myself with your
circumstances, you need not be of a “doubtful mind.” Let your loins be girded,
and your lights burning, and ye yourselves “like unto men that wait for their
Lord.” Notice the word “like”; that the world might take knowledge of them.
Nothing tests the heart like it. I say there is nothing in scripture that has
such testing power with souls. If the Lord’s coming be the horizon of the soul,
see how little you will care for this scene. How little laying up for the
future. The world would say, Well, it is plain what the man is doing. His hope
is imprinting itself on his life, and acting itself out in all his ways. Of what
value is this blessed hope if it be only held as a doctrine?

What is so blessed is, that it brings a divine person before the soul, and the
heart is drawn out after Christ: it cultivates intimacy with Christ as we pass
through this scene. Your heart is in the very condition that will welcome His
return; it enjoys and cultivates a deepening intimacy with the one for whom it
waits. Nothing brings Christ so personally before the soul as the hope of His
coming.

Now John presents to us the divine Word manifest in flesh; the only begotten Son
of the Father, the Son of God. And instead of a coming in power and glory, or in
scrutiny of service, or as expecting a moral state of soul and heart to answer
His own, He says, “I go”! (John 14:1-31). I must take your heart and affections
out of this place and all earthly hopes. I must lead them into the Father’s
house, where there are many mansions. David’s kingdom and Messiah’s glory must
now fade away in your hopes and hearts. The day will come when all that earthly
glory will be consummated. But your hopes are in another sphere. I am about to
enter the Father’s house as man. I have wrought out your title to be there, on
the cross. I enter it myself in the title by which you will enter into it. Then
“I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be
also.” Thus His instruction deals with and supersedes the hopes of the Jewish
hearts around Him, and, as a consequence, suits our hearts, which have had no
such hopes at all.

How blessed, beloved friends, to find, the moment I am free in heart and
conscience before the Father, in the knowledge of His grace, that there was an
abode in His house on high for me before ever the world was! Why is it that we
never find any description of the Father’s house in scripture? You have the
heavenly Jerusalem described in her wondrous glory and displayed as His bride —
but never the Father’s house. Because you are supposed to be familiar with the
Father’s Son, the Father is revealed in Him; and then it is sufficient to know
that He is there, and the heart rests content in peaceful joy in the sense that
where Jesus is, it is enough! “That where I am, there ye may be also!”

There is but one other passage in John that brings you thus into heaven and the
Father’s house. This is suited to him because he is occupied in unfolding God on
earth in Christ — not as Paul, who rather shows us Christ as man gone on high,
and our place in Him in glory. The other passage I allude to is John 17:24. So
far as to the general truth of the Lord’s coming in the gospel narratives. He
had come and presented Himself to bring in, in grace all the glories that the
prophets had spoken of, but was rejected. When He comes again He will bring in,
in glory, what was refused in grace. We will turn now to the two epistles of
Paul to the Thessalonians. In them we shall find that the pathway entailed on
the saints, and the circumstances which occur between the two great points I
have before named, all come out. These epistles fill up, as it were, the gap
between. So needed and suited too, to perfect that which was lacking in the
faith of those saints at Thessalonica.

I might remark in passing, as to this chapter (Acts 17:1-34) that it illustrates
the word of Paul, so frequently misapplied to cover worldliness, and mingling in
the world. I allude to, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all
means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). Acts 17:1-34 explains or illustrates his
statements. If he goes into a synagogue in Thessalonica to speak to instructed
Jews, he takes up the scriptures they knew and profess to believe: if to Athens,
amongst the wits and philosophers of that city, noted for learning and human
wisdom, he takes his text from one of their altars, on which was the
inscription, “To the unknown God,” and quotes from one of their own poets a
sentence which judged all their idolatry, “For we are also his [God’s]
offspring” (Acts 17:28). Then, again, when He passed into the cities of Derbe
and Lystra, where the grosser and more superstitious forms of idolatry
prevailed, he preaches that they should turn from these vanities unto the living
God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein:
who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless
he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from
heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts
14:15-17). He adapted himself to the turn of mind and religious thoughts of men
— keeping his own liberty with and in Christ all through, and thus becoming all
things to all that he might win the more.

Now in Thessalonica he took up in the synagogue their own scriptures, and
unfolded what had happened to their Messiah as foretold there — “Opening and
alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead;
and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.” (Acts 17:3). Then, when
we examine what he wrote to them afterwards, he alludes to the fact that this
rejected Jesus, who was their Deliverer from the wrath to come, had not saved
them from a path of suffering, but that His path was theirs. “Wherefore, when we
could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone; and sent
Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellow-labourer in the
gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith;
that no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we
were appointed there unto. For verily, when we were with you, we told you before
that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.” (1
Thessalonians 3:1-4).

Thus the path of this suffering, dead, and risen Christ was shared with those
whom His love had called to inherit with Him His future glory! How sad the
mistake the Corinthians made in this. They had “reigned as kings” without Paul.
“Would to God,” he says, “ye did reign”; for Christ would be reigning too (now
He is “expecting”); and Paul then would “reign with you” (see 1 Corinthians
4:8).

You will remark too, how bright and beautiful was the state of these freshly
converted saints. “Ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and
Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and
Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that
we need not to speak anything. For they themselves [the heathen] show of us what
manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to
serve the living and true God; and to wait for his son from heaven, even Jesus,
which delivered us from the wrath to come.” (1 Thessalonians 1:7-10).

Why was it that their Christianity was so bright? Because, whenever you find
Christianity so, depend upon it, it is very objective. That is, Christ, as a
living person, is so thoroughly before the heart, that the saints are lifted out
of themselves, and every eye and heart is filled with Him. In the first chapter
(Acts 1:10) we find how this suffering, dead and risen Jesus had gone on high to
His Father’s house; and how these beloved saints were waiting for God’s Son from
heaven. It is not as “Son of man” we have thus to do with Him but as “Son of
God.” Paul was the first who preached Jesus, “the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). The
Father had raised up His Son from the dead; and He is our deliverer from the
wrath to come.” “To serve” and “to wait”: “to serve the living and true God, and
to wait for his Son from heaven,” was their blessed occupation here.

Now, while they were thus serving and waiting, some had fallen asleep. You do
not find in the doctrinal parts of the New Testament that a saint is said to
die. No; he has been laid to sleep. “Death is ours,” and Jesus had taken it out
of the hands of Satan; it was no more wielded by him who had the power of death,
as the “wages of sin,” over the saints of God. Some amongst them had “fallen
asleep,” and those who remained were troubled. They thought those who had thus
gone would lose the blessing for which they waited, and they sorrowed for their
loved ones who had gone. It was needful, then, to come in and reassure their
hearts, and Paul is given an express revelation to do so. Suppose one whom we
loved had fallen asleep, what comfort would be given to us now-a-days? Would it
be, Be comforted, God will bring them back? Rather would it not be, Ah, you will
go to him? Would it not be something like that by which David comforted his soul
when the child died: “But now he is dead wherefore should I fast. Can I bring
him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel
12:23).

Nay; the hope is for Jesus to come for us, and bring with Him those who have
gone before. Now Paul says, at the close of 1 Thessalonians 4:1-18, “I would not
have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye
sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died
and rose again, even so them also which are laid asleep through Jesus will God
bring with him.” It is not “them which sleep in Jesus.” Jesus, the true David
has taken Goliath’s sword. He has disarmed Satan, who wielded the power of
death, by going down into his domain of death. Therefore says Paul, “Death is
ours.” It is not now the wages of sin to the believer: that which leads sinful
man to the judgment which lies beyond. The Lord has taken it into His hand, and
if a saint who has waited for Him here below, has rather to wait with Him on
high, he is “laid to sleep through Jesus and God will bring them with him.” The
terms of the last clause of 1 Thessalonians 4:14 would apply, I apprehend, to
the saints who have slept from Stephen and onward. Only such are before the
apostle’s mind, though not of course excluding any: Christ the first-fruits,
afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming.” Because the Son of God had
first to take a personal name — “Jesus.” He did so when He became a man. “Jesus”
is His personal name. Then He had to die and rise again, and disarm the enemy,
taking death into His own hands. It does not say, Laid to sleep by Christ, but
“through Jesus.” It is His action now. He has hushed the saint to sleep, as the
mother has hushed her child! The spirit of the departed one is with Him; his
body in the dust. When Jesus comes they will be re-united. The power God in
resurrection will glorify the saint who has been fitted for the glory by His
blood.

“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord.” (Paul is about to give a
special revelation. When he does this, he marks it strongly, as, “Behold I show
you a mystery,” and the like). “That we which are alive and remain unto the
coming of the Lord, shall not prevent [that is, anticipate, or, go before] them
which are asleep.” If there is any advantage as to time they have it. “For the
Lord himself”; it is not merely “The Lord,” but “Himself shall descend”; as He
had said, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself” (John 14:3). He will
leave His Father’s throne and descend from heaven “with a shout.” The shout is
one of relationship with His own. His voice once called us out of darkness to
Himself. The same voice gave forth the bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me,” when under the hand of God as made sin for us. It is the same
voice which now speaks in the accents of divine grace from heaven in the gospel
(Hebrews 12:25). This voice of the Good Shepherd which we have known in our
inmost souls, but which the world discerns not, will speak once more to those
who are His, by this shout of relationship. Then the “voice of the archangel”
carries it on, and the “trump of God” gives its sanction to all. Then the “dead
in Christ shall rise first.” If there be a moment of precedence they have the
advantage of those who are “alive and remain.” You will mark that it is the
“dead in Christ” for it embraces all the saints of God.* When this wondrous
rapture takes place there is no distinction between the Old Testament and the
Church of God. “In Christ” marks a state or condition; they have not died “in
Adam,” but in Christ.” Just as you cannot speak of a person being in Jesus —
that is a personal name but “in Christ.” Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up,” [or snatched up] “together with them in the clouds, to meet
the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort
one another with these words.” This is only one stage. The Father’s house is
more than meeting Him “in the air.” “In my Father’s house are many mansions
{abodes} . . . that where I am, there ye may be also” {John 14:2}. That is, the
Father’s house. It is there He presents His saints as the fruit of the travail
of His soul. This is ever the order, “First children, then heirs.” As in
Ephesians 1:1-23, “Predestinated to sonship through Jesus” (Ephesians 1:5): then
“ In whom we have obtained an inheritance.” The highest relationship we have is
sonship to the Father.

Thus we have (Ephesians 3:18): “To the end that he may stablish your hearts
unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ with all his saints.”

Now you find that time apostle will unfold the evil that is to be manifested,
while the saints are on high, before their shining forth in glory with Christ;
before the “Lord comes with ten thousands of his saints.” This rapture of the
saints of God is a positive necessity in the completion of the grace which has
taken up our cause. One feels that scripture would be incomplete without it. It
is the consummation — the finish of the grace. It is power putting them into the
glorious place for which His precious blood has fitted them the positive result
of the meetness in which they now stand.

It has been said, but mistakenly, that it is only those who are actually waiting
for Christ who will be caught up when He comes. But scripture never supposes
that a saint is not waiting for Him. It always gives us the normal condition of
Christians; our common level as to standing and hopes; though degrees of
apprehension and joy are no doubt fully recognized. Consequently you never find
in scripture that a saint is not waiting for Christ. Many, alas! have sunk into
the abnormal state; many have never had the hope — never have had bridal
affections awakened. Does this set aside this blessed hope? Does it change His
sovereign grace? No! blessed be God, and the rapture of His saints is the fruit
of sovereign grace; and waiting or not, all will be included in that wondrous
army — for He must see the fruit of the travail of His soul.

Now the word for “coming” is a large and comprehensive term in scripture as we
have seen. It embraces in its scope the interval from the catching up of the
saints, till their shining forth in glory — their manifestation with their Lord
to every eye. The Lord will do many things during that interval. His first
action will be to move from His present seat on His Father’s throne to meet them
in the air. His voice is heard, “And the dead in Christ shall rise first: then
we which are alive [the remaining ones] shall be caught up together with them in
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
(1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

We gather another step from 1 Thessalonians 3:13. He presents them to His
Father, in His Father’s house on high. “First children, then heirs,” is the
divine order. We shall then taste the joys of the Father’s house, already become
the home of our hearts, amid its many mansions {abodes}. In this passage we find
the “coming” looks on to a moment beyond their presentation in the Father house;
and this because he had introduced the thought of responsibility and holiness.
Hence it runs on to the moment when they appear with Him; and all responsibility
as to their path and ways of holiness has passed under the scrutiny of His eye.
When the saints are thus safely housed on high, the complete unfolding of the
evil on earth takes place. These epistles go on to develop that; so you see, we
are finding in these scriptures the steps between our two points in Acts
17:1-34. The world goes on saving “Peace and safety” on the eve of her “sudden
destruction” out of which “they shall not escape.”

Nothing can be more solemn than the state of things at the present hour. The cry
from the infidel heart of many is, The world awaits a man. You, beloved
brethren, are informed of what is coming. Like “the prudent man” who “foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself,” while “ the simple” — the foolish — “pass on and
are punished” (Proverbs 22:3). You are trimming your lamps, and going forth to
meet your Lord. People tell you that the coming of the Lord is death. What
folly! Who ever heard of death being our Lord? And His own lips have told us to
be “Like men that wait for their Lord.” Jesus is this. He is our Lord and
Saviour, and He looks that our hearts may indeed, with unworldly joy, wait for
Him. In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 he recalls their hearts, and exhorts them by
their proper hope, “The coming of the Lord, and our gathering together unto
him,” not to be shaken by the false letter, “as from us” (2 Thessalonians 2:2),
that the “day of the Lord had come.” The open manifestation, or “day” of the
Lord, would not come while they were here, and before that day, the lawless one
the man of sin — would be revealed. The mystery of iniquity was then at work;
the apostasy would come, and then he who would sit in God’s temple as God, would
be there. The Lord would then appear in glory with those heavenly saints, who
come with Him from the Father’s house on high. The day that would “burn as an
oven,” when the brightness of the glory of the Sun of Righteousness would
consume the wicked to ashes, and bring in healing and refreshment to the now
cleansed and prepared millennial earth! This wilful king — this lawless man
would meet his doom, as those too who were deceived and who wilfully followed
him, not receiving the love of the truth that they might be saved.

You have often noticed the “wings” of “the Sun of Righteousness,” when reading
Malachi 3:1-18. I believe they allude to the saints previously caught up, who
wait for Jesus, the morning star, before the dawn; before He appears as the
“Sun” of that day of glory. This is hinted too in Matthew 13:41-43. “The Son of
man” cleanses His “world kingdom” from all things that offend and them which do
iniquity; and then the glorified saints shine forth as the sun — His wings — in
their Father’s kingdom on high. When He does arise, to bring in that glorious
day, it is with burning as an oven, which consumes to ashes the wicked, and with
“healing in his wings” for others. If He consumes the lawless one with the
Spirit of His mouth and destroys him with the shining forth of His coming {2
Thessalonians 2:1-17}, the glorified church becomes then the channel of grace to
the renewed earth. Through her, and out of the throne of God and the Lamb in her
midst, comes the living stream of the water of life, to a world where healing of
nations is yet the service of His redeemed. (See Malachi 3:1-18 and Revelation
22:1-2.) So here in Thessalonians, He comes to consume some in judgment and to
be admired in those that believe in that day [2 Thessalonians 1:1-12], when the
Lord will make good all that has been ruined by the first or responsible man. He
takes His great power, and reigns for the thousand years.

Now, beloved brethren, what has been the great sin of the professing church? It
has been the giving up of the constant, immediate hope of the Lord’s coming. I
would beseech you, whenever you find the faintest thought introduced of
something yet to he accomplished between this moment and the Lord’s coming for
His people, treat it as it deserves — as the voice of the evil servant who said
in his heart “My Lord delayeth his coming”! You may not be able to interpret
scripture to any great extent; you may be a plain man, but one whose heart is
true to Christ. I pray you hold fast what you do know — that His coming for His
saints is your hope; and do not let what you do not know disturb your hope — do
not allow the evil servant’s voice to find an entrance into your soul. Treat it
as His voice, even if it come clothed with all the veneration of antiquity, with
the opinions of centuries, the learning of divines the piety even of men who
have lived and died for Christ. Treat it I say, as the evil servant’s teaching,
and refuse it if you would be faithful to an absent Lord.

See what the evil servant’s teaching (Matthew 24:45-51) produced in the ten
virgins who had gone forth at the first to meet the Bridegroom (Matthew 25:1,
etc.). “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins,” etc. At a
certain moment then before the eye of Jesus when He uttered the parable, the
profession of Christianity about to be set up, would assume a certain character;
all who had gone forth would give up the hope, and would go in again to rest;
“they all slumbered and slept.” The hope of His coming was soon treated as
heresy. Then the midnight hour came, and at that solemn moment the cry was
revived. His heart desires not to find His people sleeping amongst the dead. He
has revived the hope which lay dormant for centuries. He has given His one
awakening cry! He never repeats it! It may wax louder and louder – God grant it
while He tarries. It may find a response in many a heart sunk down in dead
formalism: but remember, He never repeats it. Where do we now stand in this time
of the breaking up of everything? In the little interval between the midnight
cry and the, dawning of the day. The exercised eye sees in the confusion of the
present moment the action after the midnight hour. But mark the calm and
peaceful attitude of those five wise ones. They are beautifully conscious that
they have their title to go in. There is no hurry — no hesitancy as to this.
Mark, too, their active state. They are trimming their lamps, and there is oil
(the Holy Ghost) in their vessels. The foolish, poor things! are on the search
for it. See the crowds around you at present. Some deluded into Ritualism; some
into Popery, with her pretentious claims; some turning to one thing; some to
another. All seeking for the oil which the wise possess. They know not where to
procure it. And in their search — in the active state, too, of the wise — they
are sundered. God is separating “the precious from the vile”! They had started
together some time before, awakened by a cry they may not have understood. But
in their search they are parted from the wise. The wise do not follow them; but
the foolish have to come and seek counsel from the wise. Mark, too, when the
door was shut, the despairing clamour for admittance. But the day of grace was
past, and hope was gone for ever! I can conceive nothing more deeply solemn than
the cry, “Lord, Lord, open unto us.” And the calm righteous answer of One whose
heart is still open to welcome the lost ones in the day of grace, “Verily, I say
unto you, I know you not.” Does not this convey to us the thought that a day is
coming, when the careless, the procrastinator, and the professor, will awaken to
the awful reality that the door is shut, never more to be open to them; and that
a cry of despair and conscious ruin will echo through the length and breadth of
these lands, so long favoured with the light of Christianity? Oh that sinners
would be wise — would consider the solemnity of the moment we occupy in the
history of things around us. How soon that door may be shut, and hope a thing of
the past. How little response too, has the cry found in the hearts of His own;
still, before the judgment of the professing body comes, He would warn His
people, and awaken them, that their well-trimmed lamp may light Him in, and
throw back the darkness which grows more dense, as the moments, precursor of the
dawn, speed on their way! May our hearts watch and wait for Him the bright and
morning star. To be found watching and waiting when He comes, will repay the
heart that mourns His absence, and lives here, by, with, and for, an absent
Lord!


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  CHAPTER 34: 03.06.     THE CHURCH IN THE GLORY; AND THE FATHER’S HOUSE.
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I have sought hitherto to present to you some of the great salient features of
the church of God. What she is in His counsels and purposes; what she is as now
maintained on earth by the presence and power of the holy Ghost; what man has
made of it all here below, and the aspect in which Christ is seen with reference
to the great profession of Christianity on earth; and lastly, what the path of
the Lord’s people is, amidst the havoc and ruin around them at the present hour.

God is recovering His saints by the truth, to walk in the truth of the church of
God, as gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ before He comes.
There can be no ecclesiastical recovery of the whole church; to attempt it is
only failure, and only makes confusion more confounded. But God never compels
His children to sin. He never leaves them without a path in which they may walk
worthy of Him, and where the heart and conscience may be at rest.

It is a cheer to one’s heart, too, to think that He will maintain to the end a
faithful few, whose path and ways will answer to His mind and will. The last
prophet of the Old Testament recognized and addressed a remnant in the midst of
what was so evil at that day, and such a remnant was found when the Lord first
came (see Luke 1:1-80; Luke 2:1-52). The later epistles of the New Testament
take account of a godly few, building themselves up in their most holy faith;
and the heart looks that by grace there will be found those in that faithful
condition, when He comes again. On a previous occasion I spoke to you of our
blessed hope as connected with our present condition that of the coming of the
Lord Jesus for His own. How far, shall we ask ourselves, have we been living in
that hope during the past week — the past day? How far has it been the
expectation of our souls from hour to hour? Has the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ been livingly before our hearts? There are two reasons why we should wish
for His return: first because there is so much here below contrary to His glory;
and secondly, because we love Him and long to be in His own immediate presence.
And this will be enhanced as the heart seeks intimacy and deepening acquaintance
with Christ who has given Himself for us. On this occasion I wish to speak to
you a little about “the bride, the Lamb’s wife,” as displayed in the millennial
glory. God acts upon our souls by His truth thus: He brings the future glory
before us as a present practical reality in its sanctifying power. He unfolds to
us the glory prepared for us from everlasting, a boundless field of endless joy;
points us to One who has gone on high, the centre of it all, One who can absorb
our heart’s affections as the alone worthy object of them — Christ, whom we have
known below in weakness and sorrow, the centre of that scene of light and
blessedness. He has given us the Spirit to dwell in us, and to make heavenly
things known to us now; to unfold those things that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1
Corinthians 2:9-10). He takes of the things of Christ’s glory, and puts them
before us now, that we may live in them — live in the Father’s love, and in the
love of Christ which passeth knowledge — that while here we may be the
reflection of Christ. Thus He unfolds the glory, that our hearts may he carried
into it, and that it may have its own sanctifying effect upon us.

It is interesting to trace how much, and in what different lines, the practical
power of the glory of God is brought before us in the Epistles. The glory is the
consummation of His grace to us.

Take up the Romans, where it enters into our hope (Romans 5:2), we “rejoice in
hope of the glory of God.” We cannot be more meet {fit} for heaven, because our
meetness depends on what Christ has done; but our capacity to enjoy that glory
may, nay it ought to grow. As has been beautifully said, The present
sanctification has all the elements of the future glory; and the future glory
contains all the qualities of the present sanctification. So it is. We are
formed by what we make our object. So Paul who gives us the result of his
experience of Christ: what he had “learned.” “Yea, doubtless, and I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” It
was the spring of his devoted path of service and self-surrendering toil! “To me
to live, is Christ”: his chief and only aim, “That Christ may be magnified in my
body, whether it be by life or by death.” Yet the morel he knew Him, he longed
to know Him: “that I may know him.”

Take the 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 3:18), “We all beholding the glory of the
Lord with open [unveiled] face, are changed [transformed] into the same image
from glory to glory.” “We all,” he says, it is the common joy of every Christian
to gaze upon that glory shining in the face of Jesus, and thus be transformed.
The first look was on a lifted-up Son of man dying on the cross for our sins.
But He is not now there: He has left the cross, passed down to death and the
grave, risen, and gone on high, witness that the righteousness of God has been
vindicated against sin, and is now displayed. Do I seek to be like Him? What
heart that knows Him does not long to be transformed into the same image? How
then shall it be? By studying a humbled Christ, and seeking to walk as He
walked? Nay; the power is not found there. Shall I seek conformity and likeness
to Him, by occupation with myself, looking into my own heart to produce what is
of Him there? No: that will never do it! How then shall I become like Him? By
occupation of heart with Christ in glory: by gazing and feeding upon, and
engrossing my heart with Him in the sphere of God’s unsullied light where He
fills all things, and flesh and self can never come. There I find that a
thousand things grow dim, which are not suited to that scene, nor to the heart
of Him who is there. Flesh and self wither down to their true place of death:
the beauteous lines of Christ are written upon the fleshy tables of the heart,
by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, and the moral traits of His glory are
reproduced in the deepening conformity of our ways to Him.

Stephen, gazing upon his Lord in glory, meets the stormy waves of a world that
hated his Lord before it hated him; and their vessel, broken by the stones of
the multitude, only emits the beauteous light of his glorified Lord as he tastes
the fellowship of His sufferings. He is delivered to death for Jesus sake, and
the life of Jesus is manifested in his mortal flesh. Here I cannot pass on
without remarking one feature in which Christ excels — for in all things He must
have the pre-eminence. Stephen first says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”: and
then kneels down and prays for Saul and those who were stoning him, thus setting
his spirit free. Not so Jesus. First He says, “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), and at the close of the cross He commits
His spirit to His Father. The order is reversed; Stephen was but man — though
blessed martyr indeed; Jesus was the manifestation of divine goodness: Man
perfect in dependence before God, He was also God perfectly revealed to man. In
Colossians too, where we are; seen passing through the deep, heart-searching
circumstances of the wilderness way, the glory of God is again brought to bear
on us. “Strengthened with all might,” for a scene where all is against us. What
is the measure of the strength? “According to the power of his glory” (not
“glorious power”). What wonderful results will be produced with such strength,
you say. But, to what are we strengthened? “To all patience!” Is not that a new
way of making me patient in this scene? Patient amidst its sorrows, trials,
temptations, and heart-rendings. And “strengthened . . . to all long-suffering”;
the long-suffering that bears without a murmur every evil work, as it can
perform every good work through Christ that gives it strength. But this we have
already had before us: only “with joyfulness” crowns the verse. It is not the
heart assuming an attitude of submission with sorrow at the core, what is called
resignation (a word unknown in scripture). But heart’s joy springing up to Him
in glory, in answer to the resources of His glory that strengthen for the same
path of peaceful rest in a Father’s love and will that characterized Him.

Turn to James, and again you find the glory and its principles presented as a
motive and power for conduct here. “My brethren, have not the faith of glory,
with respect of persons” (James 2:1). If you have faith — the faith of glory, to
which your steps are wending, do not go on with the spirit of the world, which
puts the poor man in the low plane, and a rich man in the seat of honour! Let
the principles of the glory form your ways, so that the spirit of the world may
be broken in you.

Again; look at 1 Peter 4:14 : “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy
are ye; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is
evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.” When I feel that I have been
reproached for the name of the Lord, it is as if the skirts of the glory had
touched me! The spirit of the glory where Christ is has, so to speak, touched
him who has been slighted for His name. Take it where you will, beloved
brethren, the power of the glory of God is brought to bear for present
sanctifying on our hearts and ways. So that whether for hope. or conformity to
Christ; for patience by the way, or to deal with the spirit of the world; or
with regard to the reproach of Christ, the glory of God as revealed in Christ is
pressed upon the soul as the power for the production of what is of Him in the
Christian. See John 17:19. But to turn to my subject. I just name at once in
passing, that the verses we have read (Revelation 21:9-27; Revelation 22:1-5),
give us the description of the millennial display of the bride to the world. The
saints have been taken up, and from ch. 4 are seen in heaven during the
judgments which follow, preparatory to the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In
Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22 the church is in its present condition; in
Revelation 4:1-11 the saints are seen in the glory, where they remain until they
appear as the armies of heaven with Christ in judgment, in Revelation 19:14.
Then Satan is bound, and in Revelation 20:4-6 the fact of the thousand years of
the kingdom is stated; then you find the short season after the thousand years
when Satan is loosed once more (Revelation 20:7-10). The judgment of the great
white throne ends the sad history of this earth, and the new heavens and new
earth follow (Revelation 20:1-8), which closes all. One thing remained to be
told, and we find it then follows, and forms my subject for this evening. The
bride, the Lamb’s wife, is seen in her personal and her relative glory. And what
is of such real moment and blessing to our souls is, that all the sanctifying
work which Christ is now accomplishing in His saints will come out, and the
result will be seen in the glory as here displayed. We read that He “loved the
church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the
washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious
church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy
and without blemish.” What a motive, then, to yield ourselves to Him that His
grace may be not hindered! He sanctifies by the action of the word; He discloses
all that hinders fellowship with Himself in that bright scene; He reveals and
unfolds Himself to the hearts of His saints — to wean them away from this scene,
and fill their hearts with Himself. Then, He will present His church to Himself
glorious, without a spot of defilement or wrinkle of old age — not a trace of
the scene through which she has passed; the heavenly Eve of the last Adam for
the Paradise of God! This wonderful scene is too often looked upon as something
of the future; a description, no doubt with real points of interest, yet
presenting but little in present formative power to our souls. When the display
of that day of glory comes, it will be too late to use the scripture in this
manner.

I think it will be seem that in this display of glory, what Christ was
personally, what the saint — the church was left here to be — relatively, by His
grace, and what the glorified church will be absolutely, as displaying the
glories of the Lamb — all these come out in this scene.

“Having the glory of God” (Revelation 21:11). One thing must strike us forcibly;
it is, how much the glory of God is interwoven with the description of the
heavenly city. You have it both in literal words and in figures. You find it in
the foundations of the city; in its walls; in its light within and appearance
without; all is glory! It underlies, surrounds, enfolds and lights up the whole
scene. The glory of God has enwrapped the saints, and they dwell in the glory of
God. No doubt, it is her millennial display; still it gives character to the
church, that even now is set in this world to display the moral traits of that
glory to it. “The glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light [or
light bearer] thereof.”

Here it is seen, in the perfection of the given glory of Christ, as answering to
its full character. He, not to say we, could not be satisfied if it were not so.
She is the display of the glory to the millennial earth. She does not come down
to earth herself, but sheds the light of that glory upon Jerusalem below. As the
heavenly Jerusalem the church still keeps her character as the display of grace;
as Jerusalem below will be the centre of earthly government in that day. How sad
to see a Christian who is heavenly even now (1 Corinthians 15:48) try to mingle
these two principles; as for instance, a Christian acting as a magistrate, or
taking part in the politics of the world. What is he doing? Seeking to mingle
the government of the earth with the grace revealed from heaven. It is
impossible now, but both will have their place in the millennial display of the
glory of Christ. If from the heavenly Jerusalem — the vessel of grace — the
leaves of the Tree of life are ministered for the healing of the nations; in the
earthly Jerusalem is seen judgment returned to righteousness: “The nation and
kingdom that will not serve her shall perish” (Isaiah 60:12). In this chapter
one of the seven angels comes, which had the seven vials full of the last seven
plagues, and carries John in the Spirit to a great and high mountain. It is not
a wilderness from which he sees her (cp. Revelation 17:3). It is striking the
different stand-points from which the seer views each vision as it passes before
him in this book; each place suited to that which he beholds. Upon the “sand of
the sea” (Revelation 13:1), he stands to see the beast arise “out of the sea,”
which typifies the renewed Latin Empire arising from the seething mass of the
nations. The “wilderness” is a fitting place from whence to see the mystic
Babylon, drunken with the blood of saints and martyrs of Jesus. A “mountain,”
“great and high,” is the platform from which to behold this heavenly Jerusalem —
the bride, “descending out of heaven from God”; she does not come to the earth,
but is let down that the earth may see her glory, the glory of God displayed in
her.

It is remarkable that what we know as members of Christ now, by the Spirit of
God sent down, others will behold in that day. We read in John 14:20, “At that
day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Mark the
order here; the Son is gone on high, having accomplished redemption, He is in
the Father; the Holy Ghost has been sent down and gives the consciousness of
being one in nature and life with Him who is there: we are in Him there, and if
so, He is in us here. This is the consciousness which the Spirit of God gives us
now.

Now if we turn to a verse in John 17:1-26, we find that the order of John 14:20
is reversed. He says there, “The glory which thou hast given me I have given
them; that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and thou in me”; —
here it is not Christ in the Father and we in Him; but the order is exactly
reversed. It is Christ in them as perfectly displayed, as the Father was in Him.
The Lord Jesus turns to the day of glory that is before us. Thus He can speak of
our being “made perfect in one,” and “that the world may know.” Now, we should
have walked so that the world might have believed: but, alas, we have failed to
display Christ to the world. In what infinite grace He carries us in to the day
when there will be no more failure, but He will be perfectly displayed in us,
“that the world may know that thou hast sent me when it sees you, my brethren,
and all His saints, in the same glory as the Son of God — “and has loved them as
thou hast loved me.” This city is that display. She has the glory of God —
“Having the glory of God, and her light was like unto a stone most precious,
even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.” This is a symbol used for the glory
of God (Revelation 4:3). She has the glory “of God”; and yet it is called “ her
light” (Revelation 21:11). Why is this? Suppose God has produced the graces of
Christ in the saints here. Well, pure grace has done so; yet He has counted it
to them. So here; if the church has the glory of God, yet it is her light, by
His grace. What was Christ Himself? God manifested upon earth in that lowly Man.
You long to be like Him; you long that the graces and mind of Christ may be
reproduced in you; well those that are, are counted as yours, though His grace
has wrought them. As when in Revelation 19:8, to His wife “was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen white and clean,” and this linen said to be “the
righteousnesses of the saints” though all absolutely the production of His own
grace in her. What He was upon earth, what He produces in His people, and what
He displays in glory, are all seen.

“And it had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve
angels.” Here you find the human side, as well as the divine. Twelve gates and
twelve angels. If you look at Christ Himself on earth, you find the human side
and also the divine. If He takes a little babe in His arms, it is a beautiful
act of humanity; but when He pressed it to His heart He pressed it to the heart
of God! A human act, yet divine. To the widow of Nain: “Weep not,” came from the
pitying human heart. “Young man, I say unto thee arise,” was the voice of God
that quickeneth the dead. “And he delivered him to his mother,” again the tender
heart of man! You do not know which moment it is man, and which it is God, in
those scintillations of His moral glory. So in the heavenly city; if you find
the “glory of God,” you find the “twelve gates” as well. The thought of the
“wall” is security, as that of the “foundations” is stability. The angels are
willing doorkeepers; they have been the instruments of the carrying out of the
providence of God. Here they are outside. Unjealous angels, who desire to look
into the tale of grace to man. The church now is “a spectacle to angels” and to
men; so she will be then. The woman ought “to have power {authority} on her
head, because of the angels.” Then the bride has glory as well, and the angels
stand as porters at the gates, thus beholding “the manifold wisdom of God.”

Let me remark that the twelve apostles have a double place: in relation to the
kingdom below, as in the church on high. The Lord promised them, “When the Son
of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (see Matthew 19:28). They have the chief
place in the administration of the kingdom, and are in the foundations of the
city on high. The names of the tribes are written on the gates: the gate was the
place of judicial authority and administration, of which the tribal order of
Israel was the centre “Lot sat in the gate,” etc. This is now transferred to the
church; hence the names of Israel’s tribes written on her gates — the symbol of
such administrative order — so transferred. “On the east three gates; on the
north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And
the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve
apostles of the Lamb.”

“And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates
thereof, and the walls thereof.” If you look at the earthly Jerusalem in
Ezekiel, He measures it with a line of flax (Ezekiel 40:3) as His possession.
But this will not suffice to measure that which is the fruit of the travail of
Christ’s soul. You may remember that in Ephesians 2:7, it is said that by the
church God will display, “in the ages to come, the exceeding riches of his
grace, in his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” You cannot measure by human
admeasurement that by which God unfolds and displays to eternity the full extent
of His riches of grace, in His kindness towards us.

God is the symbol of divine righteousness. The estimate of the full result, now
come in glory that can be displayed, of His counsels of eternity, can only be
according to His own nature. God alone can justly value the travail of the soul
of Jesus, when He made His soul an offering for sin: when He presented to His
Father a fresh motive for His Father’s love. “Herein doth my Father love, me,
because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.” (John 10:17).

“The city lieth four square . . . the length, and the breadth, and the height of
it are equal.” It was a cube, the symbol of divinely given perfection.

“The building of the wall was of jasper”; that is the symbol of the glory of
God. “He that sat [upon the throne] was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine
stone” (Revelation 4:3). So was the “first foundation” of the wall. The glory of
God is thus the foundation, the security, the stability, and the light of the
heavenly city. Oh, how the heart worships as it contemplates such a scene! His
glory enfolds His people on every side.

“And the city was of pure gold, like unto clear glass.” Gold is divine,
righteousness and clear glass represents the fixed transparent purity of truth.
Thus, the city itself presents in this wondrous symbol what Christ was Himself,
and what the “new man” is, “which after God is created in righteousness and
holiness of truth.” It is not Adam in innocence, when he knew not good or evil;
nor Adam fallen, and righteous by the law, if that could have been to fallen
man. But created in all the beauty of God’s righteousness by grace, and the
transparent truthfulness of Christ — as transparent as the day! If we look at
our own hearts, what poor, treacherous, double-minded things they are; but it is
but so with God. Thus set in divine righteousness before God, in Christ, with
truth in the inward parts; in the measure in which the new man is in action, it
is like Him who could answer, when asked of the Jews “ Who art thou?” “I am
absolutely what I speak unto you”: His words expressed Himself (John 8:25). As
to the foundations, they are garnished with all manner of precious stones. When
God displays Himself He does it under the figure of those coloured precious
stones, as has often been remarked. Catch the ray of bright colourless light
from the sun and separate it in a prism, and you find the colourless ray broken
up, and resolved into the varied colours of the rainbow. “God is light” — and
dwells in the inaccessible light unto which no one can approach, or can see.
When He displays Himself in any way, these beautiful colours symbolize this
display.

Take the rainbow; it is the pure light of the sun shining through the tears of
the rain-cloud, but when broken up through those tears, exhibiting in those
heavenly lights and shades of colour the virtue of the colourless ray. When the
high priest of old, with the breastplate of many coloured stones, entered the
holiest, the pure light from the mercy-seat was reflected in each colour on his
heart. Thus Christ is now sustaining His people here in their weakness, and
carrying them through this scene according to the light of the heavenly
sanctuary. By-and by, instead of sustaining them in their weakness as now, He
will place them in power on high.

If you look at Christ on earth, you see the “Son of man, which is in heaven,”
displaying God on earth before our eyes. “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the
godhead bodily.” See Him weeping over Jerusalem: the Messiah’s heart wrenched in
mourning over His people’s sin. It was the tender heart of man, but sprang from
that deep and wondrous fountain — “The tears they fell from human eyes, but they
came from the heart of God.” Thus was God displayed. The heart adores when one
thinks we have to do with a God who has stooped down to human tears, in a world
of tears.

Thus God takes up our trials, and sorrows and tears; and by them He displays in
His people the heavenly lines of that nature which suits His heart, because it
is His own.

“The twelve gates were twelve pearls.” Here a lovely thought finds its
expression. In it is seen that moral beauty and comeliness which attracted the
heart of Christ in the church, and for which He “sold all that he had.”
Internally we find the city is “pure gold like unto clear glass”; externally the
moral beauty of the pearl. Each gate showed out this. So with the Lord Himself
personally; so with the Christian relatively, who has “put on the new man” where
“Christ is all”; and outwardly, the effect is that the lowly traits of His grace
are produced, and thus with the church collectively, if it needed the whole that
Christ might be fully displayed according to God’s thought. Here we are carried
on to the glory when it will be perfectly so. Thus we see how the thought flows
through the wonderful description as to what Christ was personally, what His
saints are relatively, in the measure in which what His grace has wrought is
seen in them, and what will be seen in full display, when He “comes to be
glorified in his saints and admired in all that believe.”

“The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.” The figure
was before used, Revelation 21:18. Here we find that not only the city, but the
streets are so. It is the reverse of what we pass through now, in a defiled
world. In that city of glory the feet will only come in contact with that which
answers to the new man within. Oh! if the heart does not “watch and pray” now,
how the soil is contracted, and the heart defiled! The heart rests in the
thought of a scene where it may let itself go; when watching and praying will be
things of the past — never to be relaxed for an instant now, because the flesh
is in us and the world around us so suited to it.

There Christ alone will fill the soul. What joy without alloy! And it is sweet
to think that all the dissatisfaction one feels with one’s own heart now, is but
a note of sympathy with that scene on high where all things are of God! There
the very streets we shall walk on suit the nature of God, already become ours in
righteousness and holiness of truth. There we may ungird our loins, for all only
reflects His glory, and the more the heart goes out freely the more worship is
the effect produced. So the description goes on, “I saw no temple therein.” In
the earthly restored Jerusalem the marked feature of the scene in the temple
once more (Ezekiel 40:1-49; Ezekiel 41:1-26; Ezekiel 42:1-20; Ezekiel 43:1-27;
Ezekiel 44:1-31; Ezekiel 45:1-25; Ezekiel 46:1-24; Ezekiel 47:1-23; Ezekiel
48:1-35). Here there is none. Why is this? Because worship is all that is here:
it characterizes the scene; “They shall be still praising thee.” A Jew could
hardly understand how there could be no temple. The temple gave a character to
his relationships with God. There God dwelt, shut up from every gaze, to be
reverenced. But if He shut Himself up within the veil, He shut man out! He could
not be there. How different this wonderful scene of glory. There is no
concealment of it. The unveiled mystery of God is there, and the heart has
nought to do but adore.

It is humbling to discover how little concentration of heart there is with us
now for worship. How little there is of that “looking up steadfastly” — that
fixedness of soul. Worship is the character of the place to which we are going;
there it goes on for ever. Even here the little tributes of praise our hearts
can bring are sweet to Him; “the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

“I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple
of it.” The whole city is the sanctuary of His presence. “And the city had no
need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it,” no need of borrowed light
“for the glory of God did lighten it.” We had the glory encircling and entering
into the whole structure of the city. Here it is the light of it. Even now if
there is light in our hearts it is the light of that glory shining on the face
of Jesus. All the glory of God shines concentrated on that face, and we gaze on
it without a veil and at peace; nay, the fact that it shines on the face of Him
who gave Himself for me, engages me to be occupied with the glory thus revealed.
So it will be for ever. He bears the glory. Would that like the Queen of Sheba,
we knew even now what it was to be so taken up with Him, in whom all the glory
of God shines before the opened eye of faith, that self might be entirely
displaced. There was no more spirit in her, and she pours out her treasures at
His feet. Then it will be perfectly so. The heart that has learned to know His
love, will be at home with Him in that scene of light and untold joy.

“And the nations shall walk in the light of it.” Here there enters another
thought. Worship if I look within, testimony if I look below. “I in them and
thou in me,” is fulfilled. “The glory which thou hast given me I have given
them.” There Christ is seen in the saints, who are the radiance of His glory to
the nations below.

Worship and testimony are true now too in their measure in the saints. As a holy
priesthood you go in to worship Him, as a royal priesthood you come out to show
forth the virtues of Jesus (1 Peter 2:5-9). So if there is worship filling the
scene, there is testimony, for the spared nations walk in the light of that
heavenly city. The worship is feeble now; so is the testimony a poor gleam of
light in a dark world. Still the gleam is there, in Christianity, poor though it
may be. And in that measure the nations of the earth walk; other light there is
none.

“The kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour to (not ‘into’) it.”
They own that the heavens do rule. “And the gates of it shall not be shut at all
by day: for there shall be no night there.” Perfect security — no need to shut
those gates; and there is no darkness there. Darkness is ignorance of God, with
John. Where does doubting come from — where uncertainty? From ignorance of God.
All is gone now, and “there is no night there.”

“They shall bring the glory and honour of the nations to it, and there shall in
no wise enter into it anything that defileth.” Let me ask, Did anything enter
into your heart that defiled to-day? Were you living so with Christ, that
defilement was kept outside? How one trembles at seeing a bright young soul
filled with that early joy in Christ: one who has trodden the path longer knows
well that that fresh joy will subside if Christ does not become all as its
object, and that some wretched idolatry of the heart will enter in and defile,
and turn it aside. How wisely did Barnabas exhort those babes in Christ that
with purpose of heart they should cleave to the Lord (Acts 9:1-43). But here the
heart can rest. Nothing that defiles can enter the heavenly city — neither the
flesh of man nor the lie of Satan. All is excluded here. There is the other side
too — “But they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” They only for
whom He died, as the objects of His love may enter in. In Revelation 22:1-21 you
find the city in her relative, if in the previous chapter you had her personal
character.

“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding
out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” The river is the symbol of blessing
flowing out. The Lord Himself is its source. “If any man thirst let him come
unto me and drink.” The one who drank would be the channel for the river to flow
into others, “Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters.” He drinks,
and slakes his thirst at the fountain source, and from the fulness of the
satisfaction there are rivers to flow out to the desert world around. Even now
the bride, conscious of her relationship to Christ (Revelation 22:17) before the
day of her espousals in heavenly glory (Revelation 19:1-21), and having Him as
the centre of her heart, has the whole circle of His present interests before
her, and can say, “Let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him
take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). Still we find the thought we
have noticed all through; that what Christ was personally, and the Christian or
the church is relatively, characterizes it in the glory, when the time for
display has fully come.

It is the character of Christianity to go out with what you have. Preaching
gives it its tone. Under Judaism it was, Keep to yourself: there was no
preaching, as a rule. Christianity is thus characterized — rendering what you
have received. The woman of Samaria could not help telling of what Jesus had
made known to her soul. He loved her, He knew her, and He saved! “She went and
told the men” — in the boldness of grace.

See Saul of Tarsus. His eyes are opened. “And straightway he preached Jesus that
he is the Son of God.” Do you, beloved, go out with what you know? Or is it with
you, like the lepers of Samaria, “A day of glad tidings, and we hold our peace?”
(2 Kings 7:9). Has God satisfied the need of your heart? Well, there is a soul
who wants it, will you not tell it to him?

Here, too, you find “the tree of life,” — not two trees but one. The old story
of the two trees of Eden is ever. In Paradise there was responsible innocent
Adam. He eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in disobedience, and
is shut out from the tree of life, never to regain a lost Paradise of innocency.
Outside the garden came the law to fallen man to raise the question, if life
could be connected with responsibility; the two trees again in principle. But he
needed life to fulfil responsibility, and he had none, and was lost. If I say,
This do, and ye shall have a fortune; clearly it proves that you have not got
one. It is quite another thing to bestow the fortune, and then to tell you how
to use it. Thus have we found Christ to be the tree of life, when first He had
met the whole question of responsibility under the judgment of God for us. There
is no tree of responsibility. Is there no remaining responsibility, then, as
children of Adam? None! Christ has taken it up, and for ever closed the history
of the responsible man for God and for faith. Now your responsibility is to be
true to what you are: a child of God. Children first — then the duties of
children follow. The tree of life bears twelve manner of fruits for the heavenly
redeemed. How the heart rejoices now to sit under His shadow with great delight,
and to find His fruit sweet to our taste. What will it be to hearts capable of
enjoying Him in glory, to sit under His shadow there and eat those heavenly
ever-changing fruits, while the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the
nations in the earth below.

“And there shall be no more curse.” Adam’s transgression brought the curse in
its train; Cain’s fratricide entailed another. Sin’s curse has lain everywhere
in this scene, but there will be no trace of it there “but the throne of God and
of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve him.” Oh what
hindrances to this there are now. Service will be the joyous liberty of the
heavenly glory. It is the happy rest of active joy; but richer still and more
intimate in blessing “They shall see his face,” — not now as in a glass darkly
but face to face — oh what divine and endless satisfaction And his name shall be
in their foreheads.” They bear the proof before all, that they are His, the
imprint of what He is manifestly on their brow.

“And there shall be no night there.” No darkness, nor ignorance of God. “They
need no candle, neither light of the sun,” no borrowed or created light. “The
Lord God giveth them light; and they shall reign for ever and ever.” Serving and
waiting occupy them now (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10); then they serve and see His
face, and reign for ever.

God reveals to us this scene where, the Lamb’s glories dwell, to cheer and fill
our hearts with its present sanctifying power, and to give us a truer estimate
of what the height of our calling is, as we see all that it now made good to
faith, and in the power of the Holy Ghost carried out to its full result in
glory then. A little word more and I close. There is another aspect of what is
before us which needs but few words to describe: few are the words of scripture
concerning it. That which is here so elaborately portrayed is the glory in which
we shall be displayed. The world will see and know the tale of grace, in
Jerusalem on high. But there is a secret pavilion of the soul’s holiest joy —
His Father’s house with its many mansions, and more than all, the Son Himself to
take the servant’s place still in infinite grace and minister the richest joys
of it to us for ever! There is nothing of this here. In John 17:1-26 you have
the secret but no description; it is enough to say He is there. He says (John
17:24), “Father, I will.” Heretofore in the chapter He had prayed; now He
demands, “Father I will, that they also whom, thou hast given me, be with me
where I am; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me: for thou
lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” Shall we not be happy in seeing
Him in His own peculiar glory — a glory we may never share. He speaks of it,
too, as having been bestowed, as He takes everything that was His own in John.
This is His grace. If He emptied Himself of all His glory He had with the Father
before the world was, He receives it back as Man [John 17:5]. He receives it
from His Father’s hand, because He had become Man, to be a Man for ever! He has
taken manhood into the glory of God, never again to lay it down. Shall we not
behold Him with rapture then? Then we shall know the heights from which His love
had stooped, which the heart can but little know. Yet what little we do know
makes the longing more deep to know Him fully, and to be with Him for ever in
that bright scene of glory, of which He is the centre and sun. He who possesses
it is ours, though that peculiar range of glory may never be: but He will bring
us in to gaze upon it. The Lord give us to live in the consciousness of heavenly
things as fully revealed, and of our association with Him in them, to form our
souls more and more as a people that belong there. Soon we shall be actually
there. May He who is the centre and brightness of all that scene of glory fill
our hearts, conducting the light of it into them and displacing all that is
unsuited to it more and more; till the moment fixed in the Father’s counsels
when He can take us there, and present us before the Father, who gave us to Him,
perfectly suitable to Him. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 35: 04.00. THE LORD'S HOST.
========================================================================

The Lord’s Host. A few thoughts on Christian Position, Conflict, Hope.

F. G. Patterson.

"Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as the Captain
of the Host of the Lord am I now come." Joshua 5:13-14.

Preface to Second Edition (revised). The writer desires to commit the Second
Edition of this little work to the grace of the Lord Jesus; praying for His
blessing on all therein which may be found agreeable to His own blessed Word.

Islandderry, Dromore (Co Down), May, 1877.

Contents

Part 1.

Chapter 1. The Purposes of God, and the State of the People.

Chapter 2. Judgment Announced and the Way of Escape: the Bunch of Hyssop.

Chapter 3. The Seal of the Holy Spirit on the Forgiveness of Sins.

Chapter 4. Redemption.

Chapter 5. Praise: the Song of Grace and Glory.

Chapter 6. Heavenly Places.

Chapter 7. Canaan First; then the Lessons of the Wilderness.

Chapter 8. "Gilgal": the Stones of Memorial in the Jordan and at Gilgal.

Part 2.

Chapter 9. "Gilgal": Circumcision, Positional and Practical.

Chapter 10. "Gilgal": the Passover on the Plains of Jericho.

Chapter 11. "Gilgal" "the Old Corn of the Land.".

Chapter 12. "Gilgal": the Captain of the Host.

Chapter 13. Condition of Soul to Face the Foe: the Loins Girded with the Truth.

Chapter 14. Condition of Soul: the Breastplate of Righteousness.

Chapter 15. Condition of Soul: Feet Shod with the Preparation of the Gospel of
Peace.

Chapter 16. Condition of Soul: the Shield of Faith.

Chapter 17. Condition of Soul: the Helmet of Salvation: and the Sword of the
Spirit.

Chapter 18. Condition of Soul: Prayer.

Chapter 19. "Good Success" in our Spiritual Warfare.

Part 3.

Chapter 20. Realization: the Seven Trumpets of Rams’ Horns.

Chapter 21. Unity of Action; Diversity of Operation: Joshua’s Spear.

Chapter 22. "The Last Trump:" Conclusion.


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  CHAPTER 36: 04.00I.     INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
========================================================================

Introductory Remarks. The Lord’s Host, as of old with an earthly people, may
fitly be used to distinguish those — now a spiritual people, whom He has
redeemed. He has in His mighty love delivered them from the "world," the
"flesh," and the "devil," through the redemption which He has wrought; putting
them in full acceptance before God; an acceptance known and enjoyed by faith.
This is the common lot of all who are His — of every child of God. "When he
ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men"
(Ephesians 4:8). He first went down into the condition into which sin had
brought man; into the "lower parts of the earth," broke asunder the last
stronghold of the enemy; led captive those who were captives to Satan, and so
perfectly and completely delivered them, that He can now use them against the
enemy as instruments of His power.

Now, not only has He given us, by the calling of His grace, to be "holy and
without blame before him in love;" but He has also seated us "in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus" as to our present place before Him. Nor is this enough. It is
not sufficient that we should possess these, our blessings, and our place by
faith; He would also have us to realize consciously the wealth of our portion in
Him. Of what use would be all the riches of India, even to one who possessed it
by an unchallengeable title, if he did not realize his possessions, so as to use
and enjoy them? So with the things of Christ — "Our own things." We may be
assured of it that they offer a wondrous field for diligence of heart, to
realize and enjoy them, and to put others into possession of them also. But we
may also be assured that this required purpose of heart, with a right condition
of soul, and self-denial and devotedness: faithfulness, too, with that which is
"another man’s," that God may entrust us with the "true riches" (Luke 16:11-12).

There is a wide difference between being, in the abstract, possessors of these
heavenly riches, and the active realization and enjoyment of them, as of our
place in union with Christ.

We shall hope, if the Lord will, to examine these things in detail; as also the
activities of those who have entered upon their heavenly warfare — let us add —
with diligent hearts; and we will then endeavour to exhort one another while it
is called today, and encourage one another, or be encouraged, as the Lord may
distribute to each of us in His own wise way.

We will divide our meditations, therefore, into three larger divisions, viz: —

1. The heavenly place, in Christ Jesus, which is ours as the people of God,
through the redemption that is in Him.

2. Being there — the condition of soul which is needed, that we may realize our
"own things." This will embrace three special phases: 1. The practical dealing
with flesh and self consequent on our place in Him. 2. The condition of soul
needed to meet the enemy. 3. How the presence of the Lord is ensured, and "good
success" in our spiritual warfare. And,

3. The realization of our heavenly inheritance and the deliverance of others —
in short, the activities of "the Lord’s Host" under the leadership of a heavenly
Christ. The striking analogy between the Book of Joshua and the Epistle to the
Ephesians and Colossians has been a fruitful theme of meditation and instruction
at times amongst the Lord’s people, even when the analogy has been but faintly
seen. Our meditations will be based chiefly upon these Scriptures which offer
such a rich field for the study of those who are His. "Whatsoever things were
written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and
comfort of the Scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4); and "All these things
happened unto them (Israel) for ensamples; and they are written for our
admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come" (1 Corinthians 10:11). Not
only, then, have we the immense field of the "Law of Moses, and the prophets,
and the Psalms," for our learning, patience, and comfort but we have in a
special way, the "things" which happened unto Israel, under the specific
dealings of the Lord, presented to us as warnings and encouragements by the way.
May He bless His people, and stir up their hearts’ energies in the way that He
can own and bless, for His name’s sake! May we not only have divine
sensibilities as to the truth, and to the blessedness of these things which
pertain to Christ but may we have the divine energies also in seeking His face,
that we may know and enjoy the things that are freely given to us of God!


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  CHAPTER 37: 04.01.     PART 1.
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Part 1.

Chapter 1. The Purposes of God, and the State of the People. In the early
chapters of the Book of Exodus we have a vivid illustration of the state of
God’s people as sinners, before redemption. They are in Egypt, a company of
slaves and idolaters. Egypt gives us, in type, the world in its state of nature,
fallen and under Satan’s power. They were there in conscious misery, though
apparently without any thought but present ease from the bondage under which
they groaned. The "iron furnace of Egypt," with the lash of its taskmasters, and
the clank of the chains of its slavery was felt, but God was unknown! Even when
their cry "by reason of the bondage" was heard, it was not a cry to God. It
reached His ears doubtless, for all things are naked and open before Him; His
ear is never heavy, so that the groans of this scene do not reach Him. The poor
prodigal (Luke 15:1-32) had got to the end of his means in the land of his
slavery, but that did not bring him to his father, nor even "to himself;" nor
did his heart cry to God for deliverance. To supply the want from which he
suffered, he goes further away from God than ever. His will brought him away
from his home at the first; his need took him further off still; his complete
misery gave occasion for the display of his father’s fullest grace! So with a
sinner. You will see one wasting health, talents, and energies, in the pursuit
of some bubble which long eludes his grasp; when reached at last, it vanishes
from his sight and affords no satisfaction to his craving heart. Then the
prodigal goes further, and joins himself to a citizen of that country, but he
finds the reality of the principles of that land — it never gives. Ask a man of
the world to look back upon his life and tell you, when he was wasting his
energies, and appearing so rich and happy, did it satisfy him? He will honestly
answer you, No! His want never brought him to God; it carried him further away
even than his will; and he barters for the husks his all! It is in a certain
sense a mercy to find a soul at this extremity, for in the extremity of misery
there is no hindrance to the grace of God, which an "elder son" refused.

"And God heard their groaning" (Exodus 2:14); and God came down to deliver them.
He is not merely love, but He is active in His love. "God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son." "The Son of man came to seek and to save
that which was lost." But "God is a consuming fire." How then can He act in
love, and have to do with sinners without consuming them? This is beautifully
hinted at in Exodus 3:1-22, where the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses "in a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush." The bush burned, but was not
consumed. Strange anomaly! "And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this
great sight, why the bush is not burnt!" This was the wonder. If God had
revealed Himself in the character of One whose burning holiness must consume all
contrary to itself, who might abide? But He came down and revealed Himself in
lowly grace in Jesus. He veiled His glory in that lowly Man. Still "he could not
be hid." As the sun in piercing through the cloud proves the intensity of his
beams by the light and heat which they convey, so Jesus in His lowly path of
service and toil, sent forth His beams of love and light to enter the hearts of
those whose need had penetrated His. He came down in grace to seek in a poor
lost world for those who would trust His love, before the day of judgment. Thus
God, who is a consuming fire, was not consuming, because He was revealing
Himself in grace, but in a grace which reigns through righteousness.

He now announces His purpose to Moses: "I am come down to deliver them out of
the hands of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good
land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." Not a word is said
of the wilderness, and its forty years of endurance and toil. His plan was to
test them there, which He did; but His purpose was to bring them to the place
where He could dwell, to a land that "drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A
land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always
upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year"
(Deuteronomy 11:1-32). He would bring us into a place where His own heart can be
satisfied, and where He may dwell with and enjoy His people. How different from
the land of slavery where nothing is to be had for nothing, where no man gives!
"For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt,
from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy
foot, as a garden of herbs" (Deuteronomy 11:1-32).

God has redeemed us for heaven and for His own glory to Christ. He has not
redeemed us for this world at all, though He tries and tests our hearts here,
and teaches us to test and trust His. So He announces His purpose to Moses, and
says not a word of the wilderness.

Now when Moses came to announce God’s purpose to redeem His people, Satan began
at once to bestir himself. As long as the strong man armed kept his palace, his
goods were in peace, but when a stronger than he appears, all is changed.
Burdens are increased, and the tasks more severe. Bricks are to be made without
straw. The quiet service of Satan, where all are asleep under his power, gliding
down the stream, is easy indeed, compared with the moment when God begins to
work. The deathfulness of a previous state is even preferred to the pressure of
the enemy. The chains which had been noiseless and unfelt are now heavy, and
their clank is heard. How many and how varied are the fetters with which Satan
binds his victims! And these chains are the saddest of all which are noiseless,
and therefore unfelt and unheard.

Cain’s chain was envy. He could not bear to see one who had not toiled like
himself accepted without an effort, as Abel was. Balaam’s was the "wages of
unrighteousness" which bound his soul in its fetters. He would gladly have died
the "death of the righteous," but to break the fetters he so well loved, and to
live the life of the righteous, he could not bear, and he was a lost man. With
Herod, it was his lust which bound his soul. In him we see the signs of deep
workings of the natural conscience, so much so that "he feared John, knowing
that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he
did many things, and heard him gladly" (Mark 6:1-56). He seemed for a time to be
an altered man. But the chain that bound his soul with noiseless power was too
powerful for him to break, and to please a courtesan he beheaded John. How
deeply solemn!

We might mention other cases in Scripture of this kind. Judas loved money;
avarice was the noiseless chain, and it ate away his heart; no eye but the
Lord’s could see it. He grasped it more tightly, till the "son of perdition"
"went to his own place." With the amiable young ruler, it was his possessions
which bound his heart unconsciously to the scene, till Jesus put His finger on
the chain, and "he went away grieved, for he had great possessions." With Gallio
it was the careless indifference which we see in so many; "He cared for none of
those things." With Felix it was procrastination. He trembled at Paul "reasoning
of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," but put off repentance to a
convenient season, which, alas! never came. With Saul of Tarsus, it was his robe
of self-righteousness. Cleaving so closely to the heart, these chains are unfelt
till the Lord interferes in mercy; then all is changed. Satan’s bondage begins
to be felt as it never was before, and all his energies are then put forth to
frustrate the purpose of the Lord in delivering grace. Alas! we find that the
people whom He has come to deliver now murmur. But we cannot wonder at this, as
all was comparatively well with them in that service with which Satan had made
them satisfied. But when the chains are touched they complain.

I desire to address the conscience of my reader as I pass on. Is there some
noiseless chain, silently but surely woven round your heart, and, alas! it may
be, unknown to you! Perhaps it has been touched now and then by the Lord, and
the clank heard for a moment in your conscience; still yet you are unbound. It
may be a chain which you know yourself — the Lord and conscience have made you
aware of it — and still it is there. Some secret sin — something cherished and
allowed in your heart and ways — unseen by the eye of others, there it rusts,
and cleaves to you. Be warned, and look to Him who has pointed it out; be
assured that as surely as His unerring eye has seen it, so surely can He snap
the fetters that bind your heart; they will be like "the cords that were upon
(Samson’s) arms" — they will become "as flax that was burnt with fire." Do not
allow the terrible chain of procrastination to bind your soul till that
"convenient season" which never comes; but be warned, and flee to Him (be you
saint or sinner), and in His presence He will prove the truth of His words — "If
the Son, therefore, shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:1-59)

Chapter 2.

Judgment Announced and the Way of Escape: the Bunch of Hyssop.

I pass over all the signs and wonders wrought in the land of Ham; and also over
the compromises proposed by the enemy under the pressure of God’s hand, until
the moment when the final message was sent by Moses to Pharaoh. This we find in
the eleventh chapter of Exodus. And here I note the marked and striking analogy
between this, and the Lord’s present dealings of grace. With the message of the
fullest and richest grace of the Gospel, comes the most solemn and final
revelation of a judgment to come — as final as it is solemn and searching to the
soul. No threat — no language of denunciation or declamation; but the terribly
calm, clear statement of the utter ruin, after every trial and test, of man’s
estate; of the sure and certain perdition and eternal ruin of every soul with
whom God will enter into judgment, according to his works. The truth has come
and disclosed all: it has shown what God is, what man is, what Satan is, what
the world is, what judgment is — all things are laid bare. He does not threaten;
but has revealed judgment to come as the solemn result of grace despised.

"And Moses said, Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the
midst of Egypt." When all were asleep and apparently secure, the judgment would
fall: "And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as
there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more." A cry when the blow had
fallen. Signs and wonders had produced no contrition of heart: Pharaoh had
hardened himself still more. Threatenings of judgment were of no avail. The plan
of deliverance was unfolded by Him who knew His own requirements, and who was
about to enter upon the scene as a relentless, righteous Judge. The supper-time
was the time to hear and to act; when the midnight came the blow had fallen, and
then it was too late. The procrastinator might plead how well he understood the
plan of deliverance; but he had folded his arms and judgment had overtaken him.
He might cry, "Lord, Lord, open!" but the door of mercy had closed for ever!

If we examine the parable of the Great Supper in Luke 14:1-35, we find that it
was not those who were living in open sin who refused this final call of grace.
I say final, because you will note that the Gospel Feast is set forth as the
final meal of the day of God’s dealings with men. The Lord was at dinner in the
house of this Pharisee at the time. The supper is the last meal of the day
before midnight comes. This is very significant and striking. The gospel comes
after all God’s previous ways of testing and trial have passed. The morning of
innocence, with its lovely moments of freshness, when God came down to visit His
creatures, when His creation was unsoiled with sin, soon passed away and man
fell, never to return to this state of creature blessedness.

Then came His noon-day dealings with man, now with a conscience obtained when he
fell. During their continuance came the frightful wickedness of men and angels,
the earth was filled with corruption and violence; and God had to wash the
polluted earth with the mighty baptism of the flood. Then men set up the devil
for God in the renewed earth, and the whole world was worshipping him, in the
passions and corruptions of their evil hearts. The afternoon testing of the Law
followed. It told man what his duty was, both positively and negatively — its
"Thou shalt," and "Thou shalt not," taught him what he ought to be. But it never
disclosed what he was, utterly and hopelessly ruined. Nor did it tell him what
God was, with a heart full of tender pity and perfect love. Then the prophets
were sent to recall him to its observance lest judgment should overtake him, and
these they stoned.

It was in the averting that at last God revealed Himself in Christ. Would man
now be won? Alas, no! Not one single heart was attracted to Christ of itself.
They saw no beauty in Him that they should desire Him. It was a lovely evening,
after a day of storm and evil, which was ushered in so brightly; but how soon to
close in around the darkness of the cross, where men quenched (as far as they
could) the light of heaven.

God had another moment of mercy. The supper-time of the Holy Ghost sent down
from heaven, with the message that "All things are now ready;" "Come," for the
midnight of judgment was about to fall. But "all with one consent began to make
excuse." Men who were not living in sin, but who were doing lawful and right
things — attending to the farm, the merchandise, or their family affairs — even
they also refused the gift of God.

I know nothing more solemn than the fact that when the Lord lifts the veil and
points to the awful judgment of a future scene, in the parable of the rich man
and Lazarus (Luke 16:1-31), we learn there the compelled remembrance (the
deathless sting of remorse) of times gone by and advantages lost for ever, in
this present day of grace. How dreadful then for the professor, the
procrastinator, the careless man. "Son, remember!" tells its own tale more truly
than the many words which might be used to paint the scene. But it is not my
present task to dwell on this side of the picture; I desire rather to unfold in
some measure the certain way of escape from this judgment to come. The one is as
certain as the other.

God had a serious question with Israel on the night of the passover. They were
sinners, and sin had constituted Him a Judge. He had come down to deliver them
and to bring them to the land. He appoints a way in which he can righteously
pass over them as sinners when judging the world. The blood of a spotless lamb
was to be taken, and placed upon the two side posts and lintel of the doors of
their houses, which were to be closed, and none of the people were to leave
their houses until the morning.

I did not purpose dwelling lengthily on this well-known scene, which has been
such a fruitful theme to others. But I would press a few points which may not
have been fully noticed. In the evening the lamb was to be slain, and its blood
sprinkled by the believing Israelite in the "obedience of faith." This was done
by means of a "bunch of hyssop." Now this points to a most significant and
important thought in connection with the gospel. Many know the plan of
salvation, as it is termed; they are as clear as possible as to the truth that
salvation is by faith alone, and that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it
only, is that by which security from coming judgment depends. They know well
those words, that "without shedding of blood is no remission"; yet they never
have had, so to speak, the Bunch of Hyssop in their hands, though this
illustrates the real link between their souls and their acceptance of the
gospel. This is the point concerning which so many are ignorant. A Bunch of
Hyssop is used in Scripture on two occasions. (I do not now refer to its typical
import in the offerings: see Leviticus 14:1-57, On one occasion it is used by an
Israelite with blood (Exodus 12:1-51). On the other it is used in the hand of a
clean person, for an Israelite, with water (Numbers 19:1-22). In both cases it
signifies humiliation. The Psalmist refers to it in this way in Psalms 51:7,
where he cries, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." This was the moral
cleansing of his soul by complete humiliation. An Israelite who believed Moses
concerning the plan of deliverance on that "night to be remembered," did not
fold his arms quietly, as many, and do nothing. No; he was up and doing, in "the
obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5; Romans 16:26). "Believing in his heart" the
glad tidings by Moses, he was seen outside the door of his house, before the
world "confessing with his mouth" the acceptance of this message, and thus
appropriating his personal share in the efficacy of the blood of the lamb. It
was truly humiliating for him to go outside before a world of idolaters, into
whose sins he had sunk (Ezekiel 20:6-8), and confess that, although he was one
of God’s chosen people, he could claim no immunity from judgment but by the
shelter of the blood of the lamb. He thus justified God and condemned himself.
It was humiliating, but right to do so. "Let God be true, and every man a liar."
Here is the link between the soul and Christ, which so many need. The Bunch of
Hyssop has never been grasped; the soul has never bowed in the obedience of
faith, and in the conscious reality of its state, not only believing the gospel
in the heart, but confessing it with the mouth to salvation.

How many are the dealings of God with souls to awaken them to the sense of their
need, that His heart may thus be free to pour its love into theirs! How varied
are His ways to bring them down to the point of blessing — even the sense of
their own ruin in His sight. Once there, there is no hindrance; how simple then
becomes the story of His grace "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in
thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:8-9). The poor
thief was there in conscience, when he rebuked his fellow, and said, "We indeed
justly." He had the Bunch of Hyssop in his hand at that moment. Not claiming
superiority over the railing robber; not excusing himself; but justifying God,
and condemning himself; then there was no hindrance to the love of Christ making
itself known to bins. He believed in his heart, and he confessed with his mouth,
and went to paradise with Jesus that day. So with the woman of Syrophenicia;
"Truth, Lord," confessed the fact that she could claim nothing from Him who was
there before her, with His heart full of mercy. "Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs"
— told that her heart had penetrated God’s, and knew and believed that there was
a blessing there even for one who had neither promise, nor right to claim His
grace. It was the bowing of the conscience before the Lord in the obedience of
faith; and the moment she is there the spring is touched — His heart is free to
give the blessing which He had come down to reveal and bestow. "O woman, great
is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." You cannot think too well of
God! Like Jehovah of old wrestling with Jacob until he brought Him to the point
where He might bless him, Jesus, as it were, wrestles with her till she has a
sense of her true state, and then the blessing comes. An Israelite on the
evening of the Passover, with the bunch of hyssop in his hand, conveys this
truth to our souls. The blood he sprinkled was to meet and satisfy the eye of
God. It was to present a righteous ground to Him in judgment, for passing over a
man whose sins deserved that the blow should descend on him, even more
righteously than on his Egyptian neighbour next door. The midnight of judgment
came, but all was settled beforehand, as it must be for us. Our sins cannot be
worse in the day of judgment than now. God’s way of escape from judgment then
will not have changed. It is as certain now as then. His love has anticipated
that day in giving His Son. His Son has come, and has presented His blood before
God. God has pronounced on our state as sinners already; and the day of judgment
cannot speak more plainly than "There is none righteous; no, not one!" Christ
has borne our sins and put them away before that day comes, and God has sent the
news of His having done so. "He that believeth not is judged already (ede
kekritai) because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of
God" (John 3:18). But you may say, I know it all. I ask then, Are you forgiven?
Are you safe under the shelter of the blood of Christ? I do not ask, Do you hope
to be so? I ask, Are you safe? If you believe God, you are. If you believe your
own heart, you are deceived: "He that trusteth in his own heart, is a fool"
(Proverbs 28:26). May you know what it is to have had the Bunch of Hyssop in
your hand; your heart confessing that your only security is that God, against
whom you have sinned, has looked upon that precious blood of Jesus, that He has
accepted it already, and the day of judgment will not change its value, or make
it less precious in His sight. In virtue of it He has declared, "I will pass
over you." Do you dare to doubt that He has accepted it? You could not, for you
know He has. I do not ask, Have you accepted it, but do you believe He has done
so? The proof that He has is that Jesus is at God’s right hand. "When he had by
himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high"
(Hebrews 1:3). He has by Himself purged the sins, and he who believes has his
conscience purged of them. Suppose some one has paid a debt which I owed and
could not discharge; well, I cannot be sued for it, but I shall be afraid to
meet my creditor. To be happy in his presence, I must know that some one has
been kind enough to do it: so God declares that it is done. Then my conscience
is free, and I can afford to look now into my heart, which I dare not do before.
The question of all our sins has thus been settled before the day of judgment,
and according to God’s mind. If not, we never can put them away. Christ cannot
die again "death hath no more dominion over him." He "was once offered to bear
the sins of many." I say "all our sins;" for all were future when that precious
blood was shed — when Jesus bore them in His own body on the tree. If all were
not there, if all were not borne and put away, they will most surely come up
again at the day of judgment, and that would be eternal ruin. Thank God He has
borne ours who believe. Others may reject it and perish, but there the love is,
and there is the work of Christ to save all who believe in Him.

Chapter 3. The Seal of the Holy Spirit on the Forgiveness of Sins. On receiving
the forgiveness of our sins, there results a most important matter for our
souls. I allude to the sealing of the Spirit of God. The sealing of the Spirit
takes place at once when we receive this forgiveness — when we believe in
Christ. This is quite different from the work of quickening, which makes us see
our need of forgiveness. It is the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost in our
bodies. This truth comes out very blessedly in the type of "the things which
happened" to Israel. The moment the blood had met God’s claims, the pillar of
cloud and of fire descended. "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar
of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them
light; to go by day and night: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day,
nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people" (Exodus 13:21-22).

It was blessed to be safe from a God of judgment on the night of the passover.
But God was outside, and the Israelite was within: there was no communion
between them. They could have no thoughts in common with One who was judging. To
keep Him outside the house was the thought of that solemn night. But now He
comes down at once to take His place amongst the people whom blood has
sheltered. Forgiveness was known, but deliverance was not; still the conscience
was clear with God, and in virtue of this the cloud descended before they were
out of Egypt. A soul may know no other truth than the simple but blessed fact of
the forgiveness of his sins. Never mind; the rest will come! God seals him.
While Peter yet spake these words — "To him give all the prophets witness, that
through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins"
(Acts 10:43) — here were quickened people, needing forgiveness, listening; there
was Peter declaring forgiveness in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in virtue of
His work — needy hearts accepted the message; it was this they wanted, and at
once, as the words entered their hearts, "the Holy Ghost fell on all them which
heard the word." No doubt He had been at work in quickening them before Peter’s
visit. He had created desires and the need of forgiveness which Christ alone
could satisfy, but now He comes with the message of forgiveness, and they
believe; consequently He takes up His abode in the bodies of those who believed
in this message of pardon. This was the gift of the Holy Ghost; quite distinct
from the gifts which, to mark His presence in the sight of others, were also
seen at that day. This makes the sealing of the Holy Ghost very plain. So it was
understood by Peter, and taught by Paul. Peter tells them in Acts 2:38 that, on
the remission of sins, they would receive the Holy Ghost. Paul so teaches in the
Epistle to the Romans. The blood of Christ having been shed (Acts 3:25); and the
ungodly sinner having believed on Him that justifieth the ungodly (Acts 4:5),
and who raised up Jesus from the dead, who had been delivered for our offences
(Acts 4:24); "the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts (at once) by the Holy
Ghost, which is given unto us" (Acts 5:5). All this is before deliverance is
known (Acts 6:1-15, Acts 7:1-60) from their state as sinners before God.

Thus, the reception of the Holy Ghost is a positive result on our believing in
Christ, for the forgiveness of sins. Much has to be learned doubtless, but the
result is plain — the Holy Ghost dwells in us as a consequence, and as a seal;
"Having believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians
1:13).

Hebrews 10:1-39 also shows us this truth. The moment the work of Christ is
accomplished, the Holy Ghost is sent that we may know the forgiveness of our
sins. "Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness to us and their sins and iniquities
will I remember no more" (Hebrews 10:14-17). Here it is not the witness of the
Holy Ghost in us, which is spoken of, but that to us. He comes to dwell in the
Church, and to tell us not only that Christ had purged our sins before He went
on high, but to bring to us the testimony, that we may have our consciences
purged, and that God will remember our sins no more! He will not be untrue to
His own Word; nor to Him whose precious blood has been shed; nor to His Spirit’s
testimony to us. Thus we have the (unasked) presence of the Holy Ghost,
consequent on the putting away of our sins through the blood-shedding of Christ;
as Israel had the cloud and the glory (unsought), consequent on the
blood-shedding of the paschal lamb. It was as if God desired to be with His
people at once; so the moment He could righteously come down to dwell amongst
them, He did so.

Chapter 4.

Redemption. To possess the forgiveness of his sins is the portion of every child
of God. An unforgiven child of God is unknown in Scripture. False theology may,
and has darkened the souls of His people; or they may never have known the
light. Still forgiveness is their portion, and they are forgiven whether they
know it or not; but God would have them know it as well, and when they receive
forgiveness, He gives them the Holy Ghost. It is no matter of attainment, but of
simple faith; taking God’s thoughts and giving up our own. "Abraham believed
God;" that was faith. Experience will often contradict what God says, but faith
is not experience, and we are saved by faith and not by experience. "The full
assurance of faith" is the only normal Christian state. It rests upon what
Christ has accomplished, and upon what the Holy Ghost declares in the Word of
God. Unbelief may reject it and be lost; but faith — child-like, Christian faith
— believes God; it "sets to its seal that God is true," and God sets His seal
(the Holy Ghost) on him who believes. But to know forgiveness is not to know
redemption. A man may know his sins are forgiven for which he would have been
judged, and in conscience still be in Egypt. He may think himself "a sinner"
merely, still. He may suppose he is still a child of fallen Adam, and thus he
may have no sense of deliverance from that state at all. Now it is one thing to
know that I had sins, and that I had earned judgment for those sins, and that
grace stepped in and sheltered me by the blood of Christ, both blotting out the
sins for ever, and delivering me from a judgment to come; but it is quite
another thing to know that I have been wholly delivered from a present state
before God — that of a responsible and sinful child of Adam, and that I am now a
forgiven child of God, and never can be a child of Adam again!

Here the truth of redemption comes in, and we have both. "We have (both)
redemption through his blood, (and) the forgiveness of our sins, according to
the riches of his grace" (Ephesians 1:7).

It was one thing for Israel to know that they had been safe from judgment on the
night of the Passover, and quite another to have been saved out of Egypt. They
had been slaves there, making bricks without straw. They are God’s freed men, as
they sing the song of Moses on the wilderness side of the Red Sea! Here is where
so many err. They are trusting in Christ as their only hope; they may know too
that their sins are pardoned, but they go on all their lives through, perhaps,
crying out "miserable sinners" or "sinners." Plainly they do not know
redemption, or this they could not do.

Suppose that an Israelite, instead of singing Moses’ song of redemption, was
crying out, because he found himself the same person still, "I am a poor slave
in Egypt," what would you have thought of his folly? Yet there are plenty of the
people of God in no better state. How thoroughly dishonouring to the work of
Christ! But it satisfies systematic religion, and ministers to it. Redemption is
ignored in its true force; I do not say in words, for, alas! that is one of the
most successful plans of the enemy, to use orthodox words without their true
import, and thus blind the souls of the people of God as to their real meaning,
keeping them in darkness and uncertainty all their lives. An Israelite who was
redeemed was dealt with from that moment on an entirely new footing — never as a
slave in Egypt again; but according to the new place and relationship in which
he now stood with God, and so it is with the Christian.*

{*Here I may remark that we must not confuse two thoughts that are quite
distinct in Scripture. I refer to Redemption and Purchase. Christ is the "Head
of every man" — even the heathen. Every man must be presented to Him in grace
now, or in judgment by-and-by, because of the rights He has over all men by
purchase. This is alluded to in 2 Peter 2:1, and in Jude 1:1-25, where it speaks
of those who profess His name, denying the Master who had bought them; but it is
not said that He redeemed them. In the parable of the Treasure, in Matthew
13:1-58, you have the man buying (agorazo from agora — the market-place) the
field (the world), in order to obtain the treasure which he had found in it. He
purchases the whole inheritance, the world and all that is therein; but He
redeems His people (apoluo, from luo, to loose). Buying them makes them your
slaves; redeeming them is setting them free! It is never said that He redeemed
all men; it is said that He bought them; and therefore He has, on this ground,
although not on this only, indefeasible rights over all men. A Christian is both
purchased and redeemed. Made free by redemption from Satan and the consequences
of his sins, he is Christ’s by purchase — he is "bought with a price," and
therefore is "not his own," but the possession of Him who has purchased him.}
And now comes another thing altogether: not merely have we to learn what we have
done, and the forgiveness we need for this; but we have to learn a far more
trying lesson — what we are, and the deliverance we have in Christ. We never
obtain the sense of thorough deliverance from what we are, until we are forced
to cry out, "O wretched man that am, who shall deliver me?" Forgiveness may be
known in measure, at the same time, as we have seen. This is unfolded in Exodus
14:1-31. They started to leave Egypt, but the bitter lesson was then learned
that they could not deliver themselves. Forgiveness does not give strength, nor
does the possession of life. And here comes in experience; but experience before
deliverance, and therefore not experience on proper Christian ground yet.*
Experience will never give deliverance; it will "bring me into captivity," but
it will never set me free (see Romans 7:14-24); that is the work of another.

{*I would here notice the significant typical import of the fact stated in
Exodus 13:18. The people went up as far as Etham by five in a rank. (margin )
Now five, in the typical use of the number, means weakness — it is "relatively
small." "Five thousand of you shall flee at the rebuke of five," etc. Here it
was God’s ordering that they should go out by five in a rank from Egypt; while
on their side man’s weakness must feel that it cannot deliver itself. Satan’s
power is typified by six, or its multiples: and "six hundred chosen chariots" of
Pharaoh (Exodus 14:7) pursued them to hinder their escape from his hand. This is
the more striking if we compare it with the fact that they crossed the Jordan
afterwards by five in a rank (see Joshua 1:14; Joshua 4:12). The beginning of
the picture shows man’s effort in his own strength which is only weakness to
leave the territory, and deliver himself from the thraldom, of Satan; this he
finds by bitter experience that he is unable to do, and that he must be
delivered by another. The other end of the picture shows us that it is only man
in weakness who is permitted to pass through, and man’s weakness which God will
use on the new ground of practice in the heavenly warfare, so that when he is
weak then he is strong. They must by God’s ordering leave Egypt by five in a
rank, as afterwards they must also by His ordering, in the same way pass over
Jordan, to meet the Canaanite on the other side.} On the night of the Passover
it was a question between God and Israel: on the day of the Red Sea, between God
and the enemy. Was God or the enemy to have those whom blood had purchased? In
the salvation of the Red Sea we learn in type the efficacy of Christ’s death and
resurrection in delivering from the world, and Satan’s power who had formed it
as a sphere in which to please the flesh in man. The blood of Jesus answered for
our sins before God as a Judge. His death and resurrection takes us clean out by
redemption into a new place; delivering us for ever from the attacks and
accusations of the enemy. God counts to us in grace, and we possess by faith,
the efficacy of what Christ has passed through for us. The children of Israel
had encamped at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the Sea. Pi-hahiroth bears the
significant meaning of "The opening of liberty." Here Satan’s power is put forth
in a final effort to frustrate "The salvation of the Lord." All his hosts are
marshalled against the people, who are "sore afraid." But the Lord permits this
pressure which eventuates in their learning Him in a far more blessed way than
as a Judge. They experience what souls do who find that a day of quiet slavery
to Satan was more easy to be endured than the pressure of his power against
them, in their first efforts to escape. They may have dreamed of escape in days
gone by; but now the trial comes. Will Satan permit it? The bondage of the
Egyptians was preferable to this trying moment: "For it had been better for us
to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness" (Exodus
14:12). Death was before them, and up to death Satan wields his power. Once
death is past, Satan’s power is over.

Now God’s resources are seen; the blood which had answered for our sins has come
from the side of a dead Christ; but He has risen, and left the whole domain of
Satan’s power — nullifying death for him who believes. "Fear ye not, stand
still, and see the salvation of the Lord . . . The Lord shall fight for you, and
ye shall hold your peace" (Exodus 14:13-14). And Moses lifted up the rod of
judgment, and divided the waters of death; and the people passed over to the
other side through death, which stood before them a moment before. The Lord has
gone into the last stronghold of Satan’s power, and wrought complete salvation
for His people. A very real work may have to be done in them, that they may know
themselves, and that when put into the pressure of such a moment they may be
forced to find that all must be of God. But the Lord has wrought the work of
salvation for us; and what He has passed through is counted to us in grace. It
is not merely that His blood has cleansed us from every sin and saved us from
judgment to come; but He has died and risen, and left the whole sphere into
which He entered; we have died also to the sin and sinful state for and to which
He died in ending it before God; and now He liveth unto God. "Christ being
raised froth the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For
in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto
God. Likewise reckon ye also (i.e., count it true in faith, what God has counted
to you in grace) yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:9-11).

How then can Satan touch or accuse? If we have died with Christ out of the scene
into which He entered in divine love, we have died to it for ever. Satan may try
to follow (as Pharaoh and his hosts), and find that there is his ruin. He put
forth his worst, in leading on the whole world against Christ to drive Him out
of it; but therein Christ destroyed his power. His accusations are over; his
attacks frustrated. He might accuse and attack one who is alive; but we have
died with Christ, and this he can do no more.

If we were simple, this truth of deliverance would be simple too. But alas, we
are not simple, and hence the bitter experiences we have to pass through, till
we cry out, "Who shall deliver?" Then all is clear. We have been translated
completely out of the place and condition in which we committed the sins, and as
cleansed from them, put into a new place "in Christ" risen from the dead. By no
efforts of our own could we ever reach this place. It is by complete surrender,
and by giving up every effort that we obtain this deliverance in Christ, who has
accomplished it all, and who now stands in this new place Himself.

You find this experimentally described at length in Romans 7:14-24. Not that
these verses give you the experience of any person at the time they were spoken.
They are the past experiences of a delivered man, who had struggled for freedom
until he found he was rather getting further from deliverance than nearer the
goal. He is now standing on dry ground, so to speak, and describing what he
experienced before he was free.

You see a remarkable illustration of this in Jonah 2:1-10. He is put into the
place where none could deliver him but God alone in the "belly of hell" — as he
describes it. Three times over he promised what he would do, if he only could
get out; but no! "I will look again toward thy holy temple." No; vows and
resolutions will not do. "But," he cries, "I will sacrifice to thee with the
voice of thanksgiving." Will this set him free? No. Again he cries, "I will pay
that I have vowed." All in vain! Promises and vows, efforts and resolves which
are made in such a state will not do; they all come from "I," and as long as "I"
is recognised you have not given up "I" as one in whose flesh "dwelleth no good
thing," and turned the eye away to Christ alone.

"Well," said Jonah, "Salvation is of the Lord!" Ah, Jonah, you have found out
the secret; you have touched the spring of the lock, and you are standing on dry
ground the next moment! How simple, and yet how blessed to have the eye removed
from self — hopeless self — and turned in the sense of utter, helpless weakness
upon Christ! Then all is done, and we are free! In passing I may remark that
there are three steps learned in the bitter experience of this chapter (Romans
7:14-24). First, the hopeless evil of the nature of the flesh, in which is no
good: not merely that the tree has produced evil fruit, but that the tree itself
is corrupt. Then, secondly, it begins to dawn upon the soul that, after all,
there are good desires, and earnest longings to do the right thing for God. The
very aspirations of a new nature, which is sanctified to the obedience of Jesus
Christ, are there. The first cry of the quickened soul is "Lord, what wilt thou
have me to do?" But oh, what distress of soul, to find that even with good
desires and earnest aspirations after God, the evil nature is stronger than the
good, and leads me captive, so that I do the thing I hate; and I detest and
abhor the thing I do! Bitter lesson; but useful to learn. Lastly, then, I learn
that I have no power over it, and some one else must step in and set me free.
Sad enough to find its total evil; sadder still to find that it is not myself,
and yet I am captive to its desires. But the moment I give "I" up, and cry "Who
will deliver?" my eye has turned away from all the efforts of "I," and at once I
am free. The Lord has been there in the depths, and the evil nature has been
completely condemned in Him, so that I can reckon myself dead by faith and for
deliverance; though in fact and experience, I find the nature alive, and its
tendencies unchanged, but am entitled to treat it as "not I," but an enemy to
overcome and subdue.

Thus we are "in Christ" — not "in Adam" at all, and now, for the first time, God
will have fruit from us. All this work of redemption (Exodus 12:1-51, Exodus
13:1-22, Exodus 14:1-31) is what God has done for us. The experience we pass
through is a work in us, that we may enter upon what He has accomplished. Now,
for the first time, the mouths of those who in solemn silence ate the paschal
lamb on the night of judgment; whose cries of fear had been silenced at the Red
Sea by a God of salvation, are opened in a rich song of praise for what the Lord
has accomplished in His delivering grace.

Thus sins, and death, and judgment, are all behind the delivered soul. The sins
are gone — for Christ has borne them. Death is past for us in Him. Through it we
pass (if we have to die physically) into the presence of the Lord, and "death is
ours" — not now the wages of sin; but Christ having taken its wages, we are
free, and instead of sinful man’s portion, "after this (death) the judgment"
(Hebrews 9:27); it leads us to the glory where Jesus is. Judgment is past, for
He has borne the wrath, and he that believeth "hath everlasting life, and shall
not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). And
"the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the
host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them: there remained not so much as
one of them." "Thus the Lord saved Israel" (Exodus 14:28-30). The same waters
that silenced the foe, flowed back into their mighty channel; there was no
retrogression — no return. Redemption once accomplished is accomplished for
ever! The waters, flowing back in the channel, precluded the possibility of
returning by that path into the land of slavery and sin

Chapter 5.

Praise: the Song of Grace and Glory.

"Whoso offereth praise, glorifieth me," saith the Lord. God is pleased to
receive our praises for what He has done for us, as also for what He is. Who
would refuse to sing to His praise! Who would be silent in rendering to Him "the
fruit of our lips; giving thanks to his name"? But mark the moment when the note
is heard. The enemy was silent, he had "sunk to the bottom as a stone," "like
lead in the mighty waters." God had wrought, and Israel was free; now He will
have His meed of worship. How can He be worshipped when the heart is not free,
when the conscience is not at rest? Impossible. The ordinary thought of worship
is the going through of certain religious formularies, and a routine of praying
and singing, and perhaps hearing a sermon. All well in their place, but such
things will not be in heaven. Worship characterises heaven: "They shall be still
praising thee; "They rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God
Almighty." The Father seeketh those that worship Him in Spirit and in truth
(John 4:1-54). Worship is the expression of our fulness, as of His blessedness.
Prayer is the expression of our need and our dependence on Him.

God first cleanses us from our sins, that we may be happy in His presence. He
bestows on us a nature which is capable of enjoying Him in the light of His
presence. Then He sets us before Him, "holy and without blame" in Christ, seals
us with the Spirit of God; then having redeemed us, Christ takes His place in
the midst of His people to lead their praises up to God. He was alone in death,
sin-bearing, and judgment; the moment He has accomplished this and has risen, He
says, "In the midst of the assembly will I sing praise unto thee." (Compare
Psalms 22:22, with John 20:17, and Hebrews 2:12.)

Now I believe we should sing as Christians — believers, if you please — or not
sing at all. The idea of setting sinners, as such, to sing, has no warrant from
Scripture. We should sing in the consciousness of our blessing, and to Him, or
of Him who has blessed us.

We will examine some features of interest in Moses’ song, the chorus of which
was taken up by Miriam and her maidens, with timbre’s and dances. "Music and
dancing" were thus heard outside the house and bore their testimony towards
others. Even if it provokes the elder son’s enmity, it tells out the father’s
and the household’s joy! (Luke 15:1-32)

There are two distinct parts in this song; that of Moses, and that of Miriam.
Moses’ song took in both the present grace that delivered, and also the future
glory to which they were called. Miriam only sang of present grace, but did not
take in the glory beyond. This is marked and striking, and the more so when we
find that she died by the way, in the wilderness, before they entered the land
(Numbers 20:1-29). Doubtless Moses too died on Mount Nebo; for the Law, of which
he was representative, could never lead into the possession of the land; but
that does not affect the lesson which we learn here; besides it must have been
so, as he "spake unadvisedly with his lips," and it "went ill with him for their
sakes." His faith saw the delivering grace of the Lord, and so he sung. It also
saw the sure glory that would come, and it took in the Jordan (v. 16) and the
entrance into the mountain of the inheritance of Jehovah, which He had made to
dwell in; the sanctuary which His hands had established.

Miriam only sang of present grace. A lovely note to be sure! But the heart must
enter into something more than the look behind into those mighty waters of
judgment, out of which Jesus rose, having left our sins, and death, and judgment
for ever! Such a joy would never carry us through the desert where faith and
patience are tried and tested every day. It needs that the heart be carried into
the glory beyond, where He is, and to rejoice in the hope of it in the time to
come; in the present sense of peace with God, and the consciousness of standing
in the present favour of God — that favour which is better than life. (Compare
Romans 5:1-2).

She pre-figures here the first bright joy, so full and real, which we have
perhaps experienced ourselves, or have seen in others. It is bright and blessed,
but it is a joy that never lasts very long on the journey. You see it at times
in those freshly converted. In such a state the soul frequently becomes occupied
with the joy, and this frequently takes it off true dependence on the Lord, and
a fall is the result.

There is another kind of joy which is full and deep, and which never dies. It
survives all the vicissitudes of the way. No desert sorrows or privations can
ever touch its spring. "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice"
(Php 4:5). The Lord is the spring of it here, and He never fails. Paul was at
the end of the desert journey there, and yet he never was so full of this joy.
There was everything to try and wrench his heart. Like the caged eagle, he was
pent up in the walls of a prison — shut out from the fellowship of the saints —
all they that were in Asia, the scene of his most successful labours, had turned
away from him; the saints were going on badly — the Church failing — need had
pressed on his soul — and he was cut off too from that service which was his
life: yet he finds marrow and fatness filling his heart, and his mouth is
praising with joyful lips, in a dry and thirsty land where no water is (Psalms
63:1-11).

There is, as has been noted, another exceedingly lovely desire which springs up
at once, seen in this song. It is to have God dwelling with them; the soul
desires to prepare Him an habitation. It is going to dwell, by and by, with God
in the land; but meanwhile it would have God dwelling with it in the desert:
this is the alternative of John 14:2; John 14:23. Satan is now in the Land; that
is the strange anomaly in the present state of things. We are with God in the
wilderness, and He with us: but with Satan, or rather against him in the
heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. The holiness of the Lord, too, is now spoken
of for the first time. It was hinted at to Moses, in Exodus 3:1-22, in the
words, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest
is holy ground." If God had come down to redeem His people out of bondage and
corruption, He must have holiness; and now that they are free, they sing He is
"glorious in holiness."

I believe we never understand what holiness is until we know redemption. You
will find a sincere soul distressing himself dreadfully because he does not find
holiness in his heart. He thinks rightly, Must I not be holy? You ask, Where do
you look for it? And you find he is looking for it in his own heart. The fact
is, he is not established in righteousness yet, and he is looking for holiness
where "there is no good thing." But when he finds himself with God in
righteousness, and redeemed, then it is all right to look for it as becoming the
new sphere into which he has been introduced, to be with God. "Be ye holy, for I
am holy" is all right then.

They are thus saved — but "saved in hope," as Romans 8:24, says. It never takes
you further than the wilderness, with a hope of the land and the glory, and
meanwhile the groaning in unison with the Spirit here; but singing the praises
and blessings of the Lord.

Chapter 6.

Heavenly Places.

Redemption is the starting-point of the Christian in his course and his
relationships with God. Many and bitter are the experiences which lead the soul
up to this; but they do not find the soul consciously on proper Christian ground
at all. This redemption is in Christ. We come into all the blessings and
benefits of it on believing — but the work was done long before — our sins were
borne, and all was finished before we came on the scene. Then came the work in
our consciences which made us feel our need of cleansing; then of deliverance;
but it only led us into the value of what Christ had already accomplished. This
is note learned by experience — though experience may lead up to it — but by
simple faith in Christ. Faith is the empty hand which stretches itself forth to
be filled from Him; and true faith may always be tested, in that it has Him for
its object!

Some are troubled, too, about measures of faith, as to the assured sense of
deliverance or otherwise. There are no measures of faith in this respect. Faith
is faith; and there is no such thing as faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that does
not save. You may ask, When? I reply, When you have got it! Just as a drop of
water is water as much as is the Atlantic Ocean; so faith is faith — be it great
or small. Faith casts the soul wholly upon God and what He has said, apart from
feelings or experiences altogether. No doubt when faith is simple right feelings
and experiences will follow; but it rests upon the word of God as its true and
only basis.

It may now be demanded, why I have brought together the heavenly place of a
Christian, immediately following the salvation of God, and complete deliverance
of the soul out of all its former relationships and responsibilities. Has not,
it may be asked, the great and terrible wilderness to be traversed before we
reach that place on high? Did not Israel wander for forty years in the desert
before they arrived in Canaan? This was all true with them. They traversed the
one to reach the other. We have, on the contrary, reached our Canaan already, as
being in Christ; it is then, and only then, that we have found the world a
wilderness to us. I do not think we ever really find it so, until we are
conscious of our place and possessions on high "in Christ" — united to Him by
the Spirit of God. I do not say that with all it is so known; many think the
wilderness of life has to be traversed before the soul is conscious of its place
on high — but this is not God’s way. "Not as the world gives" gives He unto us.
He brings us into all that Christ possesses as a Man before Him — and this is a
present thing. There is no experience at all in learning this. Much experience
had brought the soul to the consciousness of powerless fear, and such exercises
of the heart and conscience that it might learn God as a Saviour — delighting to
save! But God has brought a Man into glory, and seated Him on the throne of God.
Faith tells us that there is a Man in heaven — faith which is based upon the
testimony of the Scriptures. They tell us that this is the new place for man by
redemption. If I look upon Him as the forerunner, He has entered in for me, If I
look upon my union with Him in that new place, then I am united to Him who is
there. If I was alive in sins, He shed his blood and put them away. If I was
dead in sins, He died for my sins. If He was raised, God has raised us together
with Him. If He is gone up on high, we are raised up together and seated
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. There never was such a thing as a
man being united to Christ in heaven before the Holy Ghost came down from heaven
to dwell in our bodies. There never was such a thing as the Holy Ghost dwelling
in a man whose conscience was not purged, and this could never have been until
after the work which purges the conscience was done. Hence no saint before the
cross ever knew all his sins put away, and his conscience purged. He knew of
certain sins being forgiven. Nathan is sent to tell David of his horrible sin in
the case of Uriah being put away. But no one ever knew God in the light of His
presence within a rent vail, and that the very blow which rent the vail had put
him in God’s presence without one single sin! As a consequence, the Holy Ghost
never was given till Jesus was glorified. (See John 7:36-39). The Holy Ghost
inspired the prophets; came on them for a time, and then left them. He did this
even on men who were not converted to God at all, as Saul and Balaam. He guided
and taught the saints, and quickened the souls of sinners; but He must have the
conscience purged of every sin before He could dwell in our bodies. The Spirit
of God wrought in souls, and they were born again of the Word and Spirit of God.
They had a new nature, which longed for complete deliverance before the cross
made it possible that God could make known to any that all their sins were there
put away. The children of God were then in bondage, hoping for a Saviour, and a
salvation which they needed. Still none of them had the Spirit of adoption — the
Spirit of His Son, whereby they could cry "Abba, Father," given them. Now, it is
true (since the cross) that "Because ye are sons (already, by faith in Jesus
Christ; Galatians 3:26), God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your
hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6). We stand thus consciously in
relationship to God as our Father, which no saint of God ever did; although they
were born of God, this relationship as sons never was known. Confidence in God
characterizes the Old Testament and before the cross; relationship characterizes
the New. The people of God before the cross were under the "forbearance" of God.
When the cross came and discharged all God’s claims, and purged their sins, they
are on another footing altogether. They now stand as those who have been
righteously forgiven and justified. Romans 3:25-26, brings this truth out very
plainly; "Whom God hath set forth a propitiation (or mercy seat) through faith
in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the passing over (margin), of
sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare at this time, his
righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth
in Jesus."

Suppose a man owed a debt which he could not discharge. Well, some kind person
says he will be security for that debt. Then his creditor forbears with him; he
does not press his claim. Still the creditor’s claim has not been settled, nor
is the debtor relieved; the debt hangs over him still. But suppose the rich man
has kindly discharged the debt himself, unknown to the other. How very kind! you
exclaim. But still the debtor’s mind is not relieved; he thinks he is still
under the forbearance of his creditor. Then some one comes with the news that
all has been discharged, and that the creditor wishes to assure the person that
he wishes him to know it, and not be afraid to meet him any more.

Now this forbearance was the state of the saints before the cross — they
confided in God — trusted His promises. They knew that some day or other these
promises would be fulfilled. They thus lived and died in confidence in God. God
was looking on towards the cross, and the Son was in the heavens; the One who
had presented Himself to come some day and do all God’s will (Psalms 40:6-8).
Thus God waited, and His people were under "the forbearance of God;" and the Son
was security, so to speak, for their sins; one day or other He would take up the
claim and discharge it. At last came the Son of God; in holy love He took up the
work — "bore our sins" on the tree, discharging every claim. He died and rose,
and went on high. From the heavens which He entered by His own blood (Hebrews
9:12), He sent down the Holy Ghost with the message that the sins were borne and
put away, and thus our consciences are purged in receiving His testimony to us
(Hebrews 10:15-17); then having believed this testimony to us, He then comes to
dwell in us, uniting us to Him who has purged our sins, and then making us
members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones! But more. Then comes out
all God’s delight, and the purposes of His love. He gives us the same place, and
joys, and blessings, and inheritance with His own Son! He had become a Man, and
as a Man — the firstborn amongst many brethren He took His place in glory, and
God set us in Him there on high. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3). He has quickened us together with
Christ; raised us up together, and seated us together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).

Thus His people have, by sovereign grace, this new and wondrous place, and they
should be the exponents of a heavenly Christ, on earth, by the Spirit of God.
The Church of God, looked upon in the truth of it, is the reflex on earth,
produced by the power of the Spirit of God, to the glory of Christ in heaven.

We will now examine this a little more in detail. Forty years’ endurance brought
Israel up to the plains of Moab, and Jordan lay before them. The wilderness is a
subject of deep interest to our hearts. In no place do we so learn the
sympathies and tenderness of Christ as there, where faith and patience are tried
and tested — where God leads and feeds, and trains His people in obedience and
brokenness of will, for the heavenly warfare of the land. This is not properly
the subject of these papers, though we may enter a little upon it in the next
chapter. They had been safe from judgment forty years before in Egypt, on the
night of terror. They had come out of it by redemption, never to return by that
way again. Still they were not come in to the Canaan to which God had purposed
to bring them; and there rolled the barrier to the land. The Jordan is commonly
taken as a type of death, and very justly. But it is not death physically — or
in other words the death of the body. It is the fact of Christ’s death and
resurrection being counted to us in grace, and so used that it is death and
resurrection morally to us, leading us "in Christ," into a new scene altogether;
a place where we know no man after the flesh, yea, if we had known Christ after
the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him thus no more (2 Corinthians 5:16).

We read in Joshua 3:1-17, that the Ark of God — borne by the Levites — was first
to pass down into the waters of death, the last token of the enemy’s power.
There was to be a space between it and the Host which followed after. Then as
the feet of the priests touched the brim of the waters, they stood upright on an
heap, and all the Host of the Lord passed over into the land in which the Lord
delighted, at the other side of Jordan. God had passed over them when He was
judging Egypt. They passed over here, when it was a question of sovereign grace
bringing them into the land in which He chose to dwell.

None could pass that way till Christ first was there. He must dry up that mighty
stream of death in which God’s judgment was expressed. He must thus end human
life, which the enemy could touch, before He introduced us into the life beyond
it all. The waters compassed Him about, and flowed over His head. Deep called to
deep as they reached His soul. But all was borne, and the bed of the river of
death proved, as His people traversed it with dry-shod feet, that all had borne
down upon Him; "All thy waves and billows passed over me." The priests "stood
firm," bearing the Ark; and "the people passed over right against Jericho."
There was the organized strength of the Enemy in unbroken power — the seven
nations of Canaan were also there. Thus has the Lord died and risen; ascended on
high He has entered, as Man, into a new sphere for man, and has introduced us
into life on the other side of death, and given us all that He possesses as Man.
In Ephesians 1:1-23 this new place is unfolded according to the counsels of God.
It is remarkable that there you have an allusion, not only to the Passover and
Red Sea; that is the judgment of sin, and redemption of the people of God; but
we have also in it the Ark in and out of the Jordan, and in our Canaan — the
heavenlies. Thus, the whole wilderness is dropped; fulfilling most fully in the
antitype the statement of God’s purposes to Moses in Exodus 3:8, and the full
result of those counsels in introducing man into His presence on high.

Thus we read (Ephesians 1:7), "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." The blood of Christ,
on the ground of which we have this forgiveness and the redemption which is in
Christ, is the way into those counsels of His grace and purposes in Christ
before the world began. Then we read (Ephesians 1:19) of "The exceeding
greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his
mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and
set him at his own right hand in heavenly places." Thus the true Ark of the
Covenant has been in the waters, and in the next chapter (Ephesians 2:3-6), the
people of God have passed through. "Even when we were dead in sins, he hath
quickened us together in Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

We have thus been introduced into this new land. We might say in the language of
Psalms 119:3, "The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back." As the Psalmist
links together the deliverance out of Egypt of the Red Sea, and the entrance
into the land through the Jordan; so does the breadth of the purposes of that
God, "who is rich in mercy," take in, in Ephesians 1:1-23, Ephesians 2:1-22, our
present introduction into "heavenly places in Christ Jesus," as the people whom
He has cleansed and redeemed!

Chapter 7.

Canaan First; then the Lessons of the Wilderness. The people of God are a
heavenly people — they are already "in the heavenlies in Christ," as we have
seen. We require no experience in learning this blessed truth — nothing but
simple faith. We pass through many experiences before accepting the truth of
being dead with Christ to our whole sinful state as children of Adam; the more
so when experience contradicts God’s Word, and we find we are, if we look at
ourselves, still alive. The evil nature is still ready to lend itself to
everything contrary to God. But for faith, and for God, it is dead. The only
thing which lives in us, in His sight, is that new nature which He has given us.
The feeblest throb of it is fragrant before Him, because it is the exhibition of
the life of Jesus, in whom was all His delight, in our mortal bodies.

We have thus been introduced into a life on the other side of death and
judgment. The very life we have in Christ is a witness that our sins are all put
away. Before He bestowed it upon us, He first bore the sins which He found in
the way, as He passed down, in holy love, into the depths in which we lay —
"dead in sins." He then rose, leaving them all behind. He introduced us into a
peace on high with God — a fitting sphere for that life to grow and flourish. He
gives us the glory He has as a man: the possessions of all He will inherit. Then
He looks for the works and fruits suited to that new condition which God had
foreordained for us to walk in (Ephesians 2:10).

Thus, in this new place, having this new life, and being already set in
possession of all things in Christ, we are not in Egypt; we did walk according
to the course of this world; we are not in the wilderness; but we are in the
heavenly places, which are our Canaan: "We are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit." And here comes in the paradox of the Christian state. He looks on high
and sees Christ in the glory, and is conscious that he is in Him. He looks below
and he finds himself traversing a world under Satan’s power, in which there is
not a breath that is not noxious to the new and heavenly life within. But having
first begun in the glory, with the consciousness of His place there, he is in
the race which leads to the attainment of the goal — the prize of the calling on
high of God in Christ Jesus. He looks at himself, and he can say, "as having
nothing." He looks at Christ, and says, "yet possessing all things."

Now, there is no place for learning the tender sympathy of Christ — the
blessings of a Father’s love and patience and care as in the journey through.
True, he must first have reached by faith the Canaan to which be has already
come in Christ. Then he finds that this world is not the sphere in which God can
bless him fully; but that there is no place where his own heart is more
thoroughly learned, and the heart of Christ, as in the wilderness way. In
Deuteronomy 8:2-5 we read — "And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord
thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to
prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep his
commandments or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed
thee with manna (which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know), that He
might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Thy raiment waxed
not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell these forty years. Thou shalt also
consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God
chasteneth thee." The wilderness is the place of education for our warfare in
the land — the place where faith and patience are tried, and where the ultimate
thought of God in the training is that obedience may be perfect, and our wills
broken, by learning to live by every word of God. The first stage in the
wilderness journey gives a character to the whole. We find it in Exodus 15:1-27,
just after the song went up to the Lord. The first thing we have to do is to
give thanks unto the Father, "Which hath made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of
darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in
whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians
1:12-14). This takes in the whole range of what God wrought from the night of
the passover, until the morning when the note of praise ascended to Him from the
hearts of His redeemed people, on the shores of the Red Sea, in which the hosts
of Pharaoh had sunk to the bottom as a stone. Then we need to be strengthened
according to the power of His glory unto patience by the way. The salt or bitter
waters of death have delivered us, because they have been borne by Jesus. But
now we must taste them because we have been delivered. We must find that death
is in the scene. Tribulation is our portion in this world — but in Christ,
peace. What, then, must we learn? That we are crucified with Him; that the
cross, in which we can glory, when put into the trial, makes it sweet indeed.
Take reproach — how bitter to endure! but let it be the reproach of Christ, and
how different is the taste! Take the needed discipline of His hand in correcting
that which is evil in us, or likely to spring up in our hearts — how hard to be
borne, how hard to be continually humbled! Now if we were thoroughly humble we
should not need to be humbled, but because we are not, we must be broken down.
See the thorn given to Paul. He goes to the third heaven, where no one had ever
been before and returned again but Paul, and now he must have his thorn. What
trying work thus to be humbled before others, just because he had been in the
heights! He did not need it there, but he did when he returned, and lest he
should boast of having been there, he must have a thorn in his flesh. He prays
thrice that it may depart from him. It was the bitter water to Paul. But no! The
Lord knew better than Paul what was needed, and he must have the thorn. Very
well, says Paul, "most gladly;" "I glory in it." Ah, Paul, now you are at Elim!
You have made an Elim of the trial, and you can sit under His shadow with great
delight, and His fruit be sweet to your taste.

There are three sorts of tribulation or dealings of God in the way of discipline
in the wilderness with us. First — Tribulation in which we may glory; for
instance, suffering for Christ in this evil world. This is different from
suffering with Christ. All Christians suffer with Him, because they possess life
in Him, and that life must necessarily suffer in a scene which was all suffering
to Him. If we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him. But to some the
suffering comes for faithfulness to Christ; it is also looked upon as a gift.
"Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but
also to suffer for his sake" (Php 1:29). In this we can indeed make our boast.
How far this goes beyond suffering for conscience’ sake! A man to suffer for it
may be a loser, because he does his business conscientiously: perhaps his
profits may not be as large as those who have no conscience in the matter. But
the same man may have found the pathway of a rejected Christ in this evil world,
have had grace to turn his feet into the track, and the result may be that he
loses his business altogether. The mistake is in judging things merely as right
and wrong by conscience. Conscience is never a guide. Paul followed his
conscience, and persecuted Christ and wasted the Church of God. Following Christ
is the only sure pathway, and it is a Christ whom the world has cast Out, and
whom God has set in glory. Can I have better treatment from the world than He
had? "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are
not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world
hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater
than his lord. If they have persecuted me they will also persecute you; if they
have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will
do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him who sent me;" that is
the Father (John 15:19; John 15:21).

There is a second kind of suffering under which I must humble myself, and in
which I cannot boast. I allude to the suffering of various kinds which comes
under God’s righteous government, and from Him as a Father, for evil allowed and
unjudged in our ways. The Father, without respect of persons, judgeth according
to each one’s work, therefore we have to pass the time of our sojourning here
(to which this judgment applies) in fear; there is no fear in heaven (1 Peter
1:17). How much these retributive dealings of a Holy Father with us are
forgotten!

Then there is another tender and merciful order of chastening or discipline,
which is more what Paul also had to endure. It is a preventive discipline,
because of a tendency to be puffed up. The Lord knows our hearts well; who knows
them better? and His dealings are suited to the temperament of each, and to the
tendency of each to get away from Christ, to which each is most liable. "He
withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous;" His eyes are on them for their
good, and the righteous should not withdraw their eyes from Him! A striking fact
comes out now. I mean when the Marah bitterness is approved of, as God’s true
and loving yet firm dealing with us, the sorrow and bitterness become but the
occasion for the next step; the cross sweetens the cup. It brings to mind that
murmuring self has been dealt with on the cross, and when self is gone, then the
bitterness that self tasted is gone with the self that tasted it. Then the soul
is at Elim with its wells and palm trees, its refreshment and shelter. But I
allude to something else which is not told us in Exodus — their return to the
Red Sea again. How strange to go back to that through which they had just
passed!

If we turn to Numbers 33:1-56 we find the interesting itinerary of the journey,
step by step, and stage by stage, marked and registered under God’s eye. From
Pi-hahiroth to Marah, from Marah to Elim, and from Elim, with its fountains and
palm trees, back again to the Red Sea! (Numbers 33:8-10) What do we learn from
this? I believe a blessed lesson. We should be able to turn now, without a
quiver in our hearts, and calmly survey that death by which we have been
delivered — the death of Him who passed through its dark raging flood for us. We
can contemplate it as that which silenced every foe; "The waters covered their
enemies; there was not one of them left" (Psalms 106:11).

Chapter 8.

"Gilgal": the Stones of Memorial in the Jordan and at Gilgal.

God has thus given us eternal life in His Son — a life on the other side of
death and judgment, which were borne by Jesus before it was bestowed. This life
is a witness that the sins we had committed are all for ever put away. When He
was passing down in holy love into those depths where we lay "dead in sins," He
found our sins: He took them up and made them His own — died and rose, leaving
them all behind Him at His cross.

We have also been introduced, "in Christ," into a new sphere on high with God; a
fitting place for the life He has bestowed. He has given us in title the glory
He possesses as Man, and the possession too of all He will inherit by and by.
Thus, in this new place, we have wholly left the Egypt to which we once
belonged, and the wilderness which we traversed, as we look at ourselves "in
heavenly places" "in Christ." And here comes in the double character of the
Christian state, as we have before said. If he looks up he is in the heavenlies
in Christ Jesus, united to Him by the Holy Ghost sent down. But he is traversing
the desert as a pilgrim and stranger, if he looks below; a place in which every
breath is noxious to the heavenly life he possesses in Christ. He has begun in
the glory, and he is in the race which leads to the attainment of the goal; the
mark for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ Jesus. He looks at
himself and can truly say, "As having nothing;" he looks at Christ, and says,
"Yet possessing all things." The first spot where Israel’s feet stood after
crossing over was at Gilgal. There is no student of Scripture who will not have
noticed the deep importance of this spot subsequently, in all the wars of the
Lord, as also in the history of the people. (See Joshua 4:3; Joshua 4:8; Joshua
4:19; Joshua 5:9; Joshua 6:11; Joshua 6:14; Joshua 6:23; Joshua 9:6; Joshua
10:6; Joshua 10:15; Joshua 10:43; Joshua 14:6.)

Here I may remark that Canaan is not the type of the Father’s house where we
hope to be when the Lord comes and receives us to Himself, and conducts us to
that scene of bliss. There will be no conflict, no enemies found in that place
of rest. Canaan is a figure of the heavenlies which we are in, as a present
thing by faith; and as united to Him who is there. All is yet in possession of
the foe. The heavenlies are the abode, for the time, of wicked spirits — the
rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12). We have therefore, to
maintain our place as heavenly men, under the Lord, against all the hosts of
Satan’s power.

Gilgal has five characteristics, of which we shall now hope to speak in detail.
They are —

First, The stones of memorial set up at Gilgal, and those in the Jordan.

Secondly, The characteristic of the place — Circumcision.

Thirdly. The eating of the Passover there, on the plains of Jericho.

Fourthly, Feeding upon the old corn of the land of Canaan; and —

Lastly, The presence of the Captain of the Host of the Lord, who now presents
Himself to lead a circumcised people to victory.

If all things then are ours, there is that which we never may and never would
lose sight of; nor would our God allow it to be so. I mean the way into this new
sphere, and what it cost the Lord of glory that He might have us there. It would
seem as if He only waited until His people were safely over, to speak of that
which was nearest to His heart (Joshua 4:2).

There were two heaps of stones of memorial set up. One, at the command of
Joshua, by twelve men, in the place where they lodged at Gilgal. This was
composed of twelve stones taken out of the spot where the Ark stood firm till
all had passed across dry shod. The other by Joshua himself, in that spot where
the feet of the priests bearing the Ark stood, in the bed of the river of death.
No doubt both are attributed to Joshua (Joshua 4:20), but there is a striking
significance in the difference.

There are two ways of looking at these stones. They point to the Lord Jesus
Himself at the moment when the waves were flowing over His holy soul in death.
And they point to Him as the risen One, who was dead, and is now "alive for
evermore." They also point (for such is the perfect identification between Him
and His — He the Redeemer, they the redeemed; He the Sanctifier, they the
sanctified) to our being now one with Him in life who was dead, and who lives
for ever; also that as thus risen with Him, we are dead with Christ. The moment
we are introduced into this life in resurrection, the remembrance of the path
into it for us — the path of death for the Lord, is the constant food of the
soul. Instead of death having fed upon us, its lawful prey — we feed upon death;
but this death is the death of the Lord. It was thus we received this life at
the first; eating the flesh, and drinking the blood of the Son of Man; thus
appropriating Him in faith, and in the consciousness that except thus we have no
life in us (John 6:53). Having fed upon Him by faith in death, and having
received eternal life in Him, we live by that which produced it. We feed upon
Him as risen, and who was dead, and thus we live by Him. "He that eateth me,
even he shall live by me" (John 6:57). This is practical life: all else is
death. It is but the Adam life (if you can call it such), and God owns it not.
The Lord instituted the supper when here below on the same night on which He was
betrayed; but this was not enough. We do not (as the Church of God) eat the
Lord’s supper merely as thus appointed. He has gone on high in glory, and again
— as the true Joshua, type of a heavenly Christ, by power of the Spirit, Leader,
and Guide of His people — has He re-instituted the feast. It is from the heavens
He speaks through Paul, by the Spirit of God sent down; and thus does the Church
of God partake of it in the unity of one body. It had not this character as at
first given, and the Church of God partakes of it, as the symbol of its unity as
one body — breaking one loaf, which expresses this unity. "The cup of blessing
which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The loaf which
we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (i.e., His own body.)
For we, being many, are one loaf, one body (i.e., the Church, His body); for we
are all partakers of that one loaf" (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). With Israel, it
was twelve stones, as the symbol of the unity of the twelve tribes. With the
Church it is "one loaf" — because it is "one body" in union with its Head in
glory. There is no room in this for the independency of the present day. There
is no room for the self-will of man in having as many tables as he pleases, or
each one for himself; as many have done through the "commandments and doctrines
of men."

Thus the Church of God, if obediently acting under a glorified Christ, by the
power and direction of the Spirit of God, has the precious memorial in that
feast (in its verity), the touching and heart-searching remembrance of the death
of the Lord, antitype of these stones taken from the bed of death. We carry with
us death, which once was our enemy, but now our ally, to this place of strength.
She is conscious of her union with Him who died. There was no union with Him
till He rose. Till then He abode alone. But also (now that we are in union with
a risen Christ), we know that we have died with Him, and are now risen with Him,
and thus introduced into this sphere of glory.

Oh what a crowd of thoughts would freely flow through our hearts, by the Spirit
of God, were we to meditate further on those that present themselves as we
contemplate this feast! But we must be satisfied in presenting the meaning as
far as we can in this meditation; bearing in mind the basis of our thoughts as
noted in our introductory chapter. The other heap of stones was set up by
Joshua, in the bed of the river Jordan. The first heap, set up at Gilgal, was
placed there by the twelve men, at his command. These he is said to have placed
himself, in the place where the priests’ feet stood firm with the Ark. To me
this difference conveys a most touching truth. We are are told in Joshua 4:18,
that the waves flowed on, over this second heap of memorial stones, as soon as
the Ark of the covenant, borne on the priests’ shoulders, came up out of Jordan:
"and there they are unto this day."

Both these heaps of stones refer to Him in His death, and in His resurrection.
They also speak to us (because twelve were thus used in the type) of our being
risen with Him who was dead; and as risen, we know too that we have died with
Him.

One heap — that at Gilgal — was ever to be seen; while the other was hidden,
deep in the waves of the river. There are two sides, so to speak, amongst the
host of thoughts which encircle the Lord’s Supper, one of which the church has
always — but I do not think that practically she invariably enjoys the other.
The stones which the twelve men took under Joshua’s command (or with us, the
Church acting under the power and directions of a heavenly Christ), are ever to
be seen and enjoyed. She always has the remembrance of Him in His death, carried
to the place of communion — the ever freshly-speaking memorial of her blessing,
and of the death of Him who gave Himself for her. "Till he come" marks its
continuance. But, let me ask my reader, do we always have that of which the
second heap of stones speaks? Is Christ always free (it was Joshua’s action in
the type) to lead us to the brink of that river? — are our hearts always in
order that we may be led there? Yea, more; are our souls spiritual enough to be
so led? Can He, I say, ever freely lead us back to the river — while we have
only stepped to that spot from the Gilgal where self is gone, and put back the
stream — draw aside the vail of waters, and allow us to gaze down into their
depths, and behold the spot where His precious feet stood fast; and let us read
His heart, and His sorrows — His cry!

How blessedly have we enjoyed Him speaking to our hearts, of our blessing in
feeding together in peace at the Supper of the Lord; but have we always been let
into what flowed through His heart at that memorable hour? I can answer for
myself — perhaps for others — No!

Oh, for the children of God to come together in such condition of heart and
conscience, that He might be ever free to manifest Himself and allow us thus to
discern His body! That we might not only have (what, thank God! we ever have)
the truth conveyed to us in the heap of stones at Gilgal; but that He might be
free to carry us in company with His spirit to the place His holy soul was, when
deep called to deep at the noise of God’s waterspouts (Psalms 42:7); when the
waters compassed Him about (Jonah 2:5); when they flowed over His head
(Lamentations 3:54); or when they came in to His soul (Psalms 69:1); letting us
into the secrets of those moments when nature veiled her head; when the sun put
on his mourning, and the rocks rent, because the Son of God was pouring out His
soul unto death; when His heart was like wax, melted in the midst of His bowels!
(Psalms 22:14.) There in His solitary path through death’s river, He stood fast,
there was God most fully glorified; there to the Father was presented a fresh
motive to love His Son. And He values our remembrance of His love — now that we
are free to think of Him who gives us His company at Gilgal.

Thus we have death, our foe, converted into our ally in this new scene; and
Joshua, in his explanation of these stones of memorial, takes in the Red Sea in
looking back (Joshua 4:23); as Moses’ faith, in the song of deliverance, took in
the Jordan when looking forward to the completeness of God’s salvation (Exodus
15:16).


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  CHAPTER 38: 04.02.     PART 2.
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Part 2.

Chapter 9.

"Gilgal": Circumcision, Positional and Practical.

Satan has lost his prey! "He who had the power of death, that is the devil"
(Hebrews 2:14), can go no further than death; there his power ends. He put forth
his worst at the close of the Lord’s pathway here; but he was not subject to
Satan’s power. It was sin occasioned his having this power, and there was no sin
in Jesus. "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me" (John
14:30). The Lord entered his domain and destroyed his power for ever, for faith,
and for God. He could not then bar the victorious exit of the people out of the
house of bondage; nor, therefore, can he now hinder the entrance of the people
into the land. If Christ died and rose for us and delivered us out of the one;
we have died and risen with Him by faith, and entered in Him upon the other. But
if so, we must practically hold ourselves dead. Satan can work in this new
sphere upon all that is in our hearts, if we do not reckon ourselves thus dead;
this were ruin indeed, for there is no retrogression from the place of this
heavenly warfare. Satan bestirred himself and the burdens were heavier to bear
of old. Now he bestirs himself again on other ground. But he is cowed in the
presence of the redeemed host of the Lord. He might be a roaring lion, seeking
whom he may devour, in the wilderness journey, and frighten the people very much
indeed; but here his heart melts "because of the children of Israel." "And it
came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of
Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea,
heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children
of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was their
spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel" (Joshua 5:1).

Now his whole tactics are changed; a more subtle warfare than ever must now be
carried on. "The wiles of the devil" are now the resource; a cowardly, hidden,
plausible, but deadly strife. There never was a time when the children of God
needed to believe it more than at present. You can hardly take up a book, even
if endorsed by the highest names in religion and learning, without finding an
adder in the path; a serpent in the grass. Some devilish heresy, or some
infernal infidel thought, glossed over and covered up apparently with the garb
and language of Christ! Religion, science, antiquity, Scripture, are all
enrolled under his banners in this conflict against the Lord and His people. It
is not a little open power (at least around us here); but the quiet deadly
crusade against the truth, on all hands. Crowds have deserted the Lord’s
standard, betrayed by his plausibility. Crowds have never found their place
beneath its folds. The smoke from the pit clouds their perception, and stifles
the consciences of His people. The very persons who profess to love Christ, and
who take the place of conservators of the truth, are enlisted to stamp it out,
or hinder those whom He loves from taking up the cross in this heavenly warfare.
The "world" is enlisted; and religion adopted as the fashion of the day. The
"flesh" is in the saints of God; the "world" is the sphere where flesh can find
itself at home when the heart is not with God. The old grossness of the "world"
is abandoned: it is now "the thing" to be a religious man. The world has
patronized Christianity, and is on its good behaviour. But I must stay my pen.
The Lord grant that His people may be able to say "We are not ignorant of his
(Satan’s) devices" (2 Corinthians 2:1-17).

What then must be the course of the Lord’s people in their divine warfare? Self
must be the first thing dealt with (and that thoroughly), as that which the
enemy can use. Give him nothing to work upon and he is foiled. "He that is
begotten of God (i.e. who has this eternal life in Christ), keepeth himself, and
that wicked one toucheth him not" (1 John 5:18). This is accomplished by the
putting practically to death all that which is dead judicially, for God and for
faith, through and by the death of Christ; everything that savours of the "old
man."

We never can accomplish this until we first consciously possess this heavenly
life and place beyond death and judgment. This being true, we do not deal with
ourselves in order to reach this new platform, but because we are there.
Therefore, the wilderness was not the place for this kind of thing. They never
were circumcised until they reached the land (see Joshua 5:5-6).

Here I would note what seems generally to have been overlooked; that there are,
with us, two aspects of the truth of circumcision, as spiritually interpreted.
Its practical side has frequently been examined; but the positional side seems
generally to have been overlooked. Now both are true. "We are the circumcision"
— that is not practical, but characteristic. "In whom ye have been circumcised,
with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the flesh
by the circumcision of Christ" (Colossians 2:11); this, too, is positional
circumcision in Christ. No doubt we find further on, the practical side of it in
the mortification of our members, and practically putting off the fruits of the
old man (Colossians 3:1-25). So also in Php 3:1-21. If he says "We are the
circumcision," see all that must go practically; his righteousness by the law,
zeal, religiousness; everything must be cast aside because we are the
circumcision. First we have the positional side or character; then follow the
results which flow from it practically.

Circumcision first came in, in the case of Abraham (Genesis 17:1-27). He had
sought to possess the promises of God as to the heir, by the energy of nature.
Then, by circumcision, which he learns practically, that he cannot get the
promise by the power of the flesh; and Ishmael, the fruit of it, must go. In him
— type of the Jew after the flesh — we find what we may term ritual
circumcision; i.e., merely the outward observance without the inward reality.
But when Isaac was born he was circumcised after eight days, and in him we have
one in whom both sides of the truth are illustrated. He was born of a
circumcised man — this was, so to speak, positional. Thus we are begotten from
on high, from the sphere into which Christ has entered as man, dead and risen,
and thus circumcised, or completely separated to God. But Isaac was also
circumcised the eighth day. So in Abraham you have practical circumcision. The
putting down and refusing the workings of nature, which sought to act in divine
things and only frustrated the divine ends. In Ishmael you find ritual
circumcision "not of the Spirit," "but of the letter;" and, In Isaac, a type of
both positional and practical — born of a circumcised man, but circumcised the
eighth day. But to pass on. We are wholly separated to God by the circumcision
of Christ. We have begun in the new order of things, in Him "who is the
beginning of the creation of God." Then we must enter upon that order of dealing
with self, by the application of this truth spiritually to our souls, so that
Satan may have nothing to work upon, no material on which to act; and thus that
we may present an impenetrable front to the foe.

Here the Lord directs Joshua "Make ye sharp knives, and circumcise again the
children of Israel." They still bore the traces of the slavery of the land of
Egypt. "The reproach of Egypt" was still clinging to the Lord’s Host all must
now disappear. This, beloved reader, is very quiet, unseen work with God. It has
no outward show whatsoever; nothing to attract attention in this heavenly
warfare. But in it we find the first requisite — the sine qua non of all real
spiritual power. To remain at Gilgal and do nothing, in order that all fleshly
energy may be broken in us, seems a strange process. But so it must be that we
may learn the lesson of that utter weakness, which is really the condition in
which divine strength works; then the power is really of God and not of us. If
this lesson were truly learned by many who go on in fleshly energy, what
different results would be seen. Then we should find that if we were always at
Gilgal, it would only be a step from that place of strength to victory.

See Paul: one who possessed an energy which puts us to shame. He went into the
synagogue in Damascus to preach as soon as he was converted (Acts 9:1-43); but
Paul’s fleshly energy was not yet broken. The Lord loved him too well to allow
him to go on in the energy of his nature, and he must be a broken vessel, that
the excellence of the power might be of God, and not of Paul. So he has to fly
from Damascus. What a sorry spectacle he presented, as lie was let down the wall
in a basket! And Paul has to go again and stay there three years and do nothing.
What a lesson for his ardent nature! But Paul wanted God, and God did not want
Paul yet, and so he must stay at his Gilgal. What lost time! exclaims one or
another; but it was time well spent, for he came forth a broken vessel, but a
vessel filled with the power of Christ, and the fleshly energy of his nature
subdued and broken.

Moses too must learn that, in his divine warfare, the flesh and its energies
only lead into trouble; he too must have his Gilgal at the "backside of the
desert" for forty years, ere he is a vessel meet for his Master’s use. The fine
warm-hearted, impulsive Peter, alas! must have a sad and grievous fall, to teach
him what his flesh was capable of, and what Satan’s power was, before he was
prepared to go forth in the boldness of grace, and in the power of the Spirit of
God. And Peter gained strength, by learning that he had no strength but that of
the flesh, which is only sin. The knife of circumcision must cut deeply and
unsparingly all that is of the flesh in us; but it is a true mercy, for that
with which it deals would only lead to ruin and defeat if allowed to work. If we
were always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, self would never be
seen, and Christ would always be seen. This would be true victory in the
heavenly warfare. The Lord’s Host, thus, as circumcised people, bear the marks
of their heavenly citizenship, and the traces of Egyptian bondage are rolled
away.

Suppose you see one who is a child of God running after fashions, the world, and
the like. Well, you say, you may be dead and risen with Christ, but you need to
visit Gilgal that you may practically learn the meaning of circumcision. But it
is as we have noticed before, quiet, secret work with God, which brings no eclat
with it, and has nothing to show to others; but by and by the strength of God is
seen working in and by him who is truly and spiritually circumcised.

Chapter 10.

"Gilgal": the Passover on the Plains of Jericho. In the Passover on the plains
of Jericho we find the third feature which Gilgal presents to us. Circumcision
gave it its character, and the stones out of the river of death had been set up
there. Encamped at this wonderful spot, the circumcised Host of the Lord
celebrate redemption once more. They can look back to the first moment of their
history as a people of God, when God as a Righteous Judge was not smiting those
whom blood had sheltered from His holy eye. What different feelings fill their
hearts as in the plains of Jericho they now can gaze around them, and look back
on the cross in peace! It speaks to our souls of the occupation of heaven by and
by, when praising the Lamb who has redeemed us to God by His blood, and thus we
shall be looking back to the cross even from the glory. But then it will be from
the Father’s house, not the Canaan in which we now are in Christ, from which
Satan is not yet expelled. In looking around from Gilgal, we find how the
horizon of our souls has enlarged since the day God at first took us up as
sinners. The walls of the houses of Israel were their horizon on that solemn
night of judgment. There they stood, with girded loins and sandalled feet, ready
to depart from the land of slavery: but outside the houses, destruction and
death were doing their solemn work. God was judging; and woe betide the sinner
who was not within a bloodstained lintel on that night.

Then came the day when they stood at Pi-hahiroth, before they crossed over to
the other side of the sea. There the horizon enlarged itself, and instead of
knowing Him only as a Judge passing over them, a Deliverer God unfolded His
great salvation before their eyes, and they passed across the sea, with death as
a wall on either side, and the glory of God sheltering them and leading them
into the wilderness. Still the horizon is enlarging each step of the way until
the desert solitudes are around them. There God teaches them another lesson. He
teaches them what His resources are in the desert, where the eye has not one
vestige of anything to rest upon to cheer and support the heart, or to supply
the daily need of His people as they traverse its wastes. They are forced to
look up to God. There He teaches them the boundlessness of His resources, and
proves that He is superior to the desert and its momentary need. If the manna
failed but for one day, what would become of that mighty Host? But it did not
fail; nor did His hand fail who rose up early to spread the daily supply upon
each drop of dew which surrounded the objects of His care!

How the heart is taught to wonder and adore Him for the unexpected ways in which
He comes in with His resources for those who trust Him, where they never dreamed
they were. But He "suffers them to hunger" that He may feed them. He suffered
Paul to be cast down, but why? that He might comfort him and teach his heart
those deep, rich consolations of Christ which he never otherwise could have
known, so that he can rejoice in the Lord always. He can rejoice when the wells
are full of water, and he can rejoice in Him when the wells are dry. "Because
thou hast been my help (not that the help came, but because God was his help),
therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice." Because God’s loving
kindness is better than life, his lips shall praise Him. There is no blessing to
be compared with it to the heart that has tasted His loving kindness. It is
better than all the favours He can bestow, great and wonderful as they are. Thus
the soul is filled with marrow and fatness, and the mouth can praise Him with
joyful lips, even in a dry and thirsty land. But the soul’s horizon has widened
each step of the way, until at Gilgal we can survey the scene where there is
neither length, nor breadth, nor depth, nor height. God Himself is the horizon,
and that is infinite; a boundless field of glory. There the soul can rest and
look back in peace and remember the way; it can survey the past, from the night
of the blood-stained lintel, through the walls of the Dead Sea, and the wastes
of the desert; until now, on the other side of Jordan, from the place of
strength, it can survey the basis of it all — God’s glory, and its own blessing,
in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. "And the children of Israel encamped at
Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, at even, in
the plains of Jericho" (Joshua 5:10). God spreads a table for them in the
presence of their enemies; setting them down to celebrate redemption, and think
of the cross, in the heavenlies in Christ.

Chapter 11.

"Gilgal" "the Old Corn of the Land."

"And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover,
unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same day" (Joshua 5:11). Here
another characteristic of Gilgal is seen. A circumcised people are feeding upon
this heavenly food. This points to a glorified Christ, as the manna does to a
humbled, lowly one. In the desert the heart is cheered and sustained by feeding
on Him as the lowly Jesus; the "bread of God," who came down from heaven to give
life to the world. We have received life out of His death. He has given us His
flesh to eat and His blood to drink. We lay in death and ruin, and He entered
the scene in holy love. He died and ended our whole moral being as sinners in
the sight of God. "He that eateth me," He says, "shall live by me." But in
feeding upon Him, we feed on One who has ended our history as children of Adam —
so that we do not live by Adam at all, but by Christ, who has borne the judgment
which stood registered against us. As poor sinners we came first and ate His
flesh and drank His blood. That is, we appropriated by faith that death as
meeting our state and accomplishing the redemption by which we have left for
ever our whole condition, and thus, out of His death we have received life. Then
we live because of, and on account of Him. "As the living Father hath sent me,
and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me (the One who had died and risen),
even he shall live by me" (John 6:57). Is there diligence of heart, beloved, in
feeding upon this humbled, dead and risen Son of God? It is the characteristic
of eternal life in us, which we possess in Him, that it lives by Him as its
object. "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me (not merely died
for me, or put away my sins, but, "who loved me"), and gave himself for me" —
yes, gave Himself for me, and loved me when I was a sinner and nothing else.
Blessed Son of God — Son of the Father, who has told out His Father’s love, and
bade me read it in Himself; to whom I cling and in whom I trust, to whom I can
unburthen my poor wretched heart when it has turned aside and fed upon things
for which He had to suffer and die. Pardon and cleanse the wandering hearts of
those whom Thou lovest, Blessed Lord; draw them to Thyself, and unfold Thyself
to our souls, and occupy our hearts with Thine own sufficiency! In the desert we
learn the need of feeding upon this Humbled One. Reproach is bitter, but He bore
it Himself — "The reproaches of them that reproached thee, are fallen upon me."
And when we are privileged to bear the reproach, what sweetens it, but that it
is "the reproach of Christ" How faultily too are we able to interpret these
trials and sufferings for His name, in their true value. What may seem deserved
by us, and what thus may lead us to judge ourselves, may, after all, when
weighed and appraised according to the balances of the sanctuary, be "the
reproach of Christ."

How could Moses tell when he forsook the court of Pharaoh, and fled when he had
slain the Egyptian, that God would characterise his act as He does in Hebrews
11:26? Oh, what marvels of divine grace, and what weighings of actions that none
can read but God Himself, will be manifested in that day when "every man shall
have praise of God!" Actions which we blushed to recall; poor, faltering
blunders, fears and turnings of our eyes to the right hand and to the left; but
God, who has treasured them as the productions of His grace in us, will then
read all that His grace wrought in us, in the daylight of heaven, and they will
receive a name that will make us only wonder and adore. Many a fine action too,
which has won the applause of men, will then be found to have had its meed in
that applause; only worthy too, it may be, of a place in the forgotten past, and
unworthy of a name in the then recounted annals of the wilderness way! But it is
the manna which feeds the soul in that journey, and it is appreciable only by
those who tread in the path where such food is found. It is not found amongst
the great things, or the great ones of this earth. His was a lowly, unknown
track, but one which left a path of heavenly light behind it in the eyes of God!
When consciously in wilderness circumstances, we need another food. We need that
which grows and ripens and fructifies in the land of glory. So we read that they
ate the old corn of the land, on the self-same day on which they kept the
Passover on the plains of Jericho. A heavenly Christ now unfolds Himself, and
feeds our souls, "Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now
henceforth know we him no more" (2 Corinthians 5:16). How bold does Paul grow in
his glowing words in this Scripture! His life seemed to be made up of two
alternatives; "Beside himself," when his heart entered upon those things that
eye of man had not seen, but which are revealed unto us by the Spirit; but
"sober" when he thought on others (2 Corinthians 5:13). The love of Christ
constrained his heart — impelled him onward in its mighty swellings, because of
man’s condition — "dead" — proved by His "dying for all," to beseech men. But
that once-dead One, now lived; He had died, and had risen, and entered on that
scene of glory. In Him God would make all things new. That vista of the new
creation opens before his heart — he sees the One whom some may have known as
the Messiah walking here in lowly love. He would know no man after the flesh;
but his heart glows, and grows bolder as he proceeds, "Yea, though we have known
Christ after the flesh," as He was on earth, "yet now henceforth know we him,"
he says, "no more." He had entered the glory as a Man. As Man He occupied the
throne of God — object of the adoration of the Hosts in glory; there he knew Him
now — as the "old corn" of that land. If he needed Him (as he ever did) in the
wilderness way, it was as One whom now we understand in measure, whom He was as
He traversed the world — "the bread of God" which came down from heaven — who
died, and rose, and went on high.

We never feed at the same moment on Christ, in these two conditions. As we are
in the double place of being on high, and traversing this world’s deserts, so we
need Him to feed and sustain our souls in both conditions. In one we need to see
and know Him in His downward path from the glory to the cross, as the Humbled
One — the true manna — whose "mind" is to be in us, enabling us to bring God
down in the circumstances, so as to act divinely in them every moment. This we
learn in Php 2:1-30. In the other the eye, once blinded by His glory, grows
stronger by His Spirit as it gazes on Him who had displaced the whole moral
being of His servant, and his body thus filled with light from that glory, seeks
only to "know him," and to "win Christ" as it runs onward to the goal of
complete assimilation to the One on whom it feeds in heavenly glory on high.
This is the "old corn" which fed Paul in Php 3:1-21.

Oh, what preparations of heart for the people of God! What lessons for those who
would fight "not in uncertainty" for the possessions which they seek to realize.
But they must learn too that only as "unleavened cakes" can this heavenly Christ
be used and enjoyed. How could the joys of earth — of human relationships — be
allowable in such food? Impossible. The fruit of the land must be eaten by those
who are circumcised in the unleavened perfection of that nature which is capable
of feeding on such food. What can those who are feeding upon the "lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life," know of this old corn of the
land? They are running after the vanities of this life, the follies of this
world. They need to go to Gilgal! Egypt’s chains are still there. Egypt’s
"reproach" still clings to them. And though they may be truly trusting in Him
whom they profess to love; though they may be dead and risen with Christ, they
need to visit Gilgal that they may be circumcised, ere they can either need or
appreciate this heavenly food.

Let us test our hearts, beloved. Are they feeding with diligence on a heavenly
Christ, or upon those things which shut Him out? Is Christ precious to us as
hidden treasure? Is the "beauty of the Lord" sufficient to fill our hearts so
that our souls are tilled with marrow and fatness, and we are able, in a dry and
thirsty land, to praise Him with joyful lips

Chapter 12.

"Gilgal": the Captain of the Host. The last feature which Gilgal presents is now
before us. Circumcision gave it its special character. The Passover eaten in the
plains of Jericho followed; and then the feeding on the old corn of the land. In
this spot too, stood the "memorial stones," taken from the bed of the River
Jordan; and there the Captain of the Host now presents Himself to lead His
people into the possession of their "own things."

He comes too, as suited to their present condition of conflict. Adapting Himself
to it, He presents Himself with a "sword drawn in his hand." Thus you will ever
find that Christ adapts Himself to the condition, and to the need of His people.
If they need redemption, then He is their Redeemer. If they need to be fed and
guided in the wilderness, He is their Food and Guide. In every thing He adapts
Himself to them. So when they are about to do battle with the foe, He comes with
a drawn sword in His hand to lead them to victory. When Joshua was standing by
Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and "Behold, there stood a man over against him
with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him,
Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" Why this question? Because in our
heavenly warfare there can be no neutrality! Every one we meet all day long is
either for or against Christ. Every moment of each is an opportunity for victory
or defeat; for obedience or disobedience. Hence the question. There can be no
neutral ground — no middle place for those who would fight God’s battles.

We are either for the Christ whom the world has rejected; and in consequence,
against the world; or, we are for the world that has cast Him out, and
consequently against Him. There is either with or against. But it is but the one
thing or the other. Lukewarm, we may seek to be; or, we may advocate so-called
"Christian charity" — than which there is no one thing more nauseous to Christ.
What an outcry raised if a heart seeks to be true to Him, and refuses the right
hand of fellowship to those who are false, or indifferent to the holiness and
truth of His name, whose one mission to the earth was this — that He "might bear
witness to the truth" (John 19:1-42).

Many a practical infidel heart turns away now-a-days without seeking a reply to
Pilate’s question, "What is truth?" Men do not care. Alas, Christians do not
care! If, they say, our salvation is secure, why trouble us with more? You only
seek to press what we believe to be non-essentials!

O the solemn state of souls, when good is put for evil and evil good — bitter
for sweet, and sweet for bitter; and His people love to have it so. Not only so,
but, under the plea of Christian charity, as it is termed, evil is tolerated,
and Christ’s honour and God’s truth esteemed valueless things, unless, indeed,
so far as the selfish ends of souls are served. Shall not God visit for these
things? Do you suppose that He is as indifferent as you would be, and as you
desire He should be? He would not be God if it were so! Do not the burning words
of Isaiah most deeply and fully apply in this lukewarm day? "Judgment is turned
away backward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen in the street,
equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh
himself a prey (or ’is accounted mad’, margin); and Jehovah saw it and it was
evil in his eyes (margin) that there was no judgment," etc. (Isaiah 59:1-21).
Indifference is a more hateful thing to God, than pen of man may tell. The
gushing, indignant words of Scripture pour out His thoughts about these things,
in their deep and solemn tone. "Curse ye Meroz! said the angel of Jehovah: curse
ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of
Jehovah, to the help of Jehovah against the mighty" (Judges 5:1-31). This was
God’s thought about neutrality which His people in this latitudinarian day would
term "toleration" and "forbearance," and which covers up under the cloak of
Christianity that which is more deeply hostile to His name than the horrors and
darkness of the heathen world.

"And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come." Mark
what he says; "now come." They had rolled away the reproach of Egypt, and now
bore distinctly the marks of heavenly citizenship — haying exchanged them for
the marks of Egyptian bondage. They had surveyed the fulness of redeeming grace
in that paschal feast on the plains of Jericho: they had fed upon the old corn
of Canaan — while standing around the memorials of death, taken from the spot
where the Ark stood fast in the waters of death. Now the Captain of the Host
appears to lead His people to victory.

"And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him,
What saith my Lord unto his servant?" Beautiful attitude of worshipful
obedience! He does not enter Canaan as a suppliant merely, but as a worshipper;
one whose ear is open to hear the needed charges of the Captain of the Host of
the Lord. We find another thing too in this touching scene. The unshod holiness,
which is the strength of conflict, coupled with the worshipful heart of one
whose ear is thus waiting to receive the commands of the Lord.

Remark, also, that at the far distant moment when God in grace came down to
deliver His people — revealing Himself to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus
3:1-22), these very words had been spoken to him. Now, at their entrance upon
the conflicts of this heavenly warfare, they are sounded again in the ears of
Joshua — "for the place whereon thou standest is holy." If holiness was needed
at the deliverance of His people out of Egypt, how much more, now that they are
entering into Canaan!

Here I must pause, before entering on the next words of the Lord to Joshua
(Joshua 6:2); for we have yet only noticed the first of the second feature which
we named in the opening pages of this book (p. 2); i.e., the dealing with self
and flesh, by practical circumcision, needed that the heart may be in condition
for these divine wars. We must now examine another feature, that is, the arming
of the Host in order to meet the foe. This we will enter upon in the next
chapter.

Chapter 13.

Condition of Soul to Face the Foe: the Loins Girded with the Truth. The few
verses in the close of the Epistle to the Ephesians will give us the basis of
the thoughts I now desire to present to my readers. It is to be remarked that
they are found at the end of the Epistle which sets us already in the
"heavenlies, in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 6:14-18).

We read in Ephesians 1:7, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace," following the
blessed calling of God, in which He has set us before Him as sons, holy and
without blame before Him in love, and accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:3-6).
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us
with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of
children by Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his
will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted
in the beloved."

We enter this wonderful sphere of blessing by redemption through blood; as
Israel was delivered by the Passover and Red Sea. Then Christ has been raised up
as Man (Ephesians 1:19, etc.), and seated on high; the people have been
quickened, raised up together, and seated in Him in the heavenlies (Ephesians
2:1-6). In Ephesians 3:10 we read, "To the intent that now unto the
principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by means of (dia)
the church, the manifold wisdom of God." Thus her testimony reaches the hosts on
high, even at this present time. The angels see the Church in Christ Jesus; the
world is to see His Epistle in her here below! When we come to Ephesians 6:12 we
find our warfare is carried on in the same sphere. "For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood," as Joshua and Israel in an earthly Canaan; "but against
principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,
against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places" (margin).

Thus, whether for our blessings, our position, the Church’s testimony, or our
warfare, the scene is all in that sphere into which we have entered already "in
Christ." And this is really what our Canaan is. We are passing on to be in the
Father’s house on high, where no conflict will ever be; but we are already in an
order of blessing, where we have to fight the Lord’s battles against His
enemies, and this is the true normal conflict of the Lord’s Host.

It will readily be seen that this armour of God is more that which enables us to
stand against the foe, as we read; "That ye may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and having done all, to stand." It is not so much an aggressive warfare as
a defensive. It relates too, to the condition of the heart and conscience which,
when good, leaves the foe without resource, and our souls are thus maintained
consciously in the joy of our heavenly position, as witnesses and soldiers of a
glorified Christ. Do we suppose if our souls are bent on maintaining such a
position, that Satan will allow us to pass? We shall never be so conscious of
the depth of his wiles as then. Alas; what mournful instances crowd upon our
memory, of those who once ran well, who fought valiantly in the Lord’s battles,
and fell before the foe! Some part of His armour wanting; some joint let loose;
some moment of an ungirded loin, and the ever watchful foe sent home his wile,
and the bravest have fallen. Alas! what dishonour has been heaped upon His name;
what shame — and confusion of face have followed, when some active servant, some
bright and blessed witness — prostrate before the foe, proves that none are
secure in this solemn, yet blessed battlefield, when lacking the condition of
soul unfolded in this "whole armour of God."

O beloved friends, let us be warned, deeply, truly warned — yea, forewarned, and
therefore forearmed. If Peter had believed the words of Jesus, he would have
deeply mistrusted himself, and failure perhaps would never have ensued. How He
watches our hearts all the way; warning us, reminding us of the dangers and
snares. At times permitting us to go to the brink of some fearful chasm, where
some allowed and unjudged sin was leading us. He allows us, as it were, to see
the abyss for a moment, and makes our hearts shudder, and then turn to cling
more closely to Him; to adore that unwearying, unwavering love which thus deals
with these treacherous hearts, that we may not fall and dishonour Him. Blessed,
adorable Lord and Saviour! Who but Thyself would so bear with us? Who would —
who could keep us as Thou? And oh! was there ever a day in which Thy keeping was
so needed as this? Hardly a book we take up; hardly a thought which is current,
but carries some devil’s wile concealed. Lord, keep the young in this infidel
day. Preserve the tender impressible heart from the corruption of man, from the
lie of Satan which circulates around. Give grace to parents to make their home a
place where the young heart turns instinctively to find it truly "home;" that
they may not seek in the outer world what they should find there — the genial
warmth of a parent’s watchful heart, the confidence of his trusting child. Walk
before your children, ye parents, and present Christ to them thus. Win their
hearts to Jesus by preaching Him in your words and ways. The first thing which
is presented to us in this armour of God, is the inward condition of our souls.
There can be no divine activity until the heart is right with God. We may be
heavenly men, and know the things which are freely given to us of God, without
this sine qua non of a Christian soldier — a heart to which the truth of God has
been applied in such a way that all is broken which would hinder the vessel
being used. Hence nearly all the thoughts we have in this armour are what we
would term subjective truth. He casts us back upon our own condition; but He
never does this until we have been fully established by His grace in Christ.
When this is so, we can bear anything — we can bear to be broken to pieces in
conscience and heart by His word, just because this experimental work never
gives us a thought of uncertainty as to our soul’s acceptance with Him. It is
just because we are fully accepted in Christ that this dealing comes; we would
not have such dealing with our hearts if it were not so. Many bitter experiences
come before peace with God and redemption are known. Then comes another order of
dealings, because of this new and blessed relationship and place before Him.

We read "Stand therefore, with your loins girt about with truth." Now, there is
no truth in the world but the word of God; you find doubts, and darkness, and
ignorance, and pride; plenty of speculations of man’s mind, which, because he is
a creature, never can rise superior to the level of a creature’s mind. The word
of God, being the revelation of the truth, sets everything in its right place
and relationship with Him. It tells me what God is as revealed in Christ: it
tells me what He is to a poor, lost, ruined world. It tells me what man is, what
Satan, what sin is; what His righteousness is regarding sin; what His love to
the sinner. All is unfolded in the word of God. But man cannot bear to be thus
judged morally, and set where it sets him; hence every effort is made to weaken
its force, to destroy the poor man’s faith in the living word of God.
Nevertheless, one who has tasted it in any little measure, finds in it (as the
deep cooling draught of water to the soul of a thirsty wanderer) that which
satisfies his heart and sets his burthened conscience at rest. In it he finds
and learns his Saviour by the power and teaching of the Spirit of God. When this
living word is applied to the heart and conscience, and the whole inner man
curbed and broken, his loins are thus girded with the truth. The loins are that
portion of the body that need to be braced up and supported in conflict and
toil. Wherever we find Scripture speak of girded loins, we are supposed to be in
the place of conflict and weariness, or of exercises of heart. As the Lord said
to Job, "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer
thou me" (Job 38:3). When the loins are braced up with the truth, the affections
are curbed, and the will broken, so that there is a firmness of tone imparted to
the whole man. He finds his way strewed with those things after which his
natural heart would go out; but "the truth" has judged their value in God’s
sight, as well as in his, and they are refused. In this battle field, where
defeat is ruinous, and where retreat is impossible, how deeply important that
not even for one instant the girdle should be relaxed. A moment of carnal ease
or fancied security, and the heart is entrapped into some action which years of
bitter tears cannot recall. How we find too, that even if the will was not
active in going after the desires of the flesh and of the mind, the loins were
ungirded and failure ensued. See David when he should have been with girded loin
as a man of war in that day, in the battle field, at the time when kings go
forth to battle; the heart was thus an easy prey to a watchful foe. Oh, what a
bitter fall ensued in the matter of the wife of Uriah! Years of sorrow followed,
and consequences which no repentance could ever efface from his house, marked
the sure and certain righteous government of God.

Look at Peter in the garden of Gethsemane. No sense of his own total want of
strength in the face of Satan. No thought of Satan’s power. He was sleeping with
ungirded loin, when he should have watched and prayed; he was in conflict when
his Lord and Master was submitting Himself as a lamb for the slaughter. How had
He (blessed Lord!) spent His time? In an agony of prayer. He was praying when
Peter was sleeping; He was submitting, when Peter was fighting. But what a sad
conflict it was — flesh fighting with flesh, and with the carnal weapons of man!
Then following Christ "afar off" — then denying with oaths — then the bitter
tears!

How we see too, that in this heavenly warfare a moment of victory is a solemn
and dangerous one for the soul. We are never so near defeat as when we have
conquered. The very success of the spiritual man takes him away from the sense
of full and complete dependence. It is an intoxicating moment, so to speak, when
the heart feels and knows that God has been using one in the battle field. We
are inclined to look upon it as our success; self is once more aroused, and the
enemy has that on which he can work. David had conquered, and David was just
crowned in Hebron. His first thought was of the ark — but his success did not
serve to keep him a dependent man. He consults his "captains," and places the
ark of God on a "new cart," instead of on the "shoulders of the Levites." How
the failure of a spiritual man involves others in its sorrow; the "breach upon
Uzzah" told this sad tale. Tells too, how the moment of success is the moment to
distrust one’s self more deeply than ever, a moment to brace up the loins more
firmly with the truth. The time will come when we may let the heart go free;
when conscience will not be needed, and there shall be girded loins no more for
ever. In heaven we shall be able to let the heart go free. Here never! If you
tire for a moment in watchfulness, and relax the loins, the heart wanders into
something that is not Christ! Then comes the reaction, and we tire of self more
than ever. It has sprung up again and defiled the heart.

It will not do to have the truth merely known; but it must be the truth applied,
and then, with girded loin and broken will, the heart goes on with God, and
Satan’s wiles avail not. God’s truth has revealed all that is in heaven, and has
revealed God’s heart on earth. It has judged all in this evil world: every
motive and spring of action laid bare by Him who was and is the living Word of
God.

He came into this world — the Truth Himself — that He might bear witness to the
truth. Not one single motive ever governed His heart that governs man’s — not
one single motive ever governed ours that governed His. The eternal Son of God
became a man; He walked with God for three and thirty years, never doing His own
will — perfect as it ever was. "Not my will but thine be done." He met Satan at
the beginning of His path of service. The enemy came up to seduce Him from the
path of obedience. He showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time. Own me, says the enemy, and all shall be thine. As God, He could have put
aside his power in a moment. But this would not do for us. As man in obedience,
and by obedience He bound the strong man. As man in obedience He was an
hungered. To work a miracle would be an easy task for Him who created the world.
But no! He came to obey; and while it was no harm to be hungry, it was harm to
satisfy that hunger without a word from God. "Man," He says, "shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word of God." I have come to obey. The living Word, in
obedience on earth; perfect Man before God; perfect God to man. He was the
truth, and the truth is now embodied in the words (not merely word) of God.
Scripture is the words of God — the intelligible words disclosing all His mind.
"Which things also we speak," says the apostle, "not in the words which man’s
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."

Chapter 14.

Condition of Soul: the Breastplate of Righteousness.

Having showed us the preparation of our hearts to meet the foe by this
subjective truth — a girded loin, he passes on to the state of the conscience,
marked by the next part of the armour, the "breastplate of righteousness." As it
is a question here, not of our standing before God but of our facing the foe, I
need but state that this breastplate of righteousness is a conscience void of
offence before God and man.

There is no part of the armour which, if wanting, will make the heart so weak as
this breast-plate. Let none but one’s own conscience know in secret the stain
that is there — be it of the faintest hue — the heart cannot stand boldly before
Satan’s accusing power. The (consciously) righteous is as bold as a lion.
Nothing is more to be sought than this most precious of all precious conditions
of soul, a good conscience before God and the enemy. "Herein," says Paul, "do I
exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and
toward men" (Acts 24:16). In the ordinary Christian, who is but seldom, if ever
active in this heavenly warfare, a good conscience or the reverse plays a part
more in a grieved or hindered Spirit, than in open failure and feebleness. His
own heart can tell whether his joy is full in deep, precious communion with the
Father and the Son. This only can be enjoyed with a good conscience; an
uncondemning heart. Confidence in God is perfect when the heart condemns us not.

If one labours actively in the fore-front of the battle, how truly terrible is
the case, when in the midst of outward activity, the accusations of the enemy
fall on the ear of the heart. To keep up the outward activity, in such a state
of soul, is to leave the soul open to the wiles, and indeed the open power, of
the enemy in a most solemn manner. How often those who have boldly stood for
Christ, and, in His hand have been most blessed instruments of His power, have
fallen — irrecoverably fallen from their post, because thus open to the snares
of the devil.

There never has been, I think, a break-down of this kind, but it has been
preceded by warnings and previous dealings of grace; but which fell unheeded on
the ear and heart. The Lord give us to be warned and to shun the danger — the
wrong turning in our path; the wrong hour. To look not on the wine when it is
red!

Having on the breastplate of righteousness, then, keeps the heart as bold and
free as air; but free to go on with God. There rests no frown on His face, so to
speak, and the soul is conscious of the freedom which grace has given, in His
presence. The conscience purged by the precious blood of Jesus, maintained in
practice good before Him, knows the joy of going on with Him freely and
naturally. In such a walk the flesh is better known, than in one who learns it
by a bad conscience through failure and weakness. It learns the tendencies of
the flesh in the light of His presence; it knows it has His strength to count
upon; he makes indwelling sin, though not a ground of communion, an occasion of
it, and his heart judges the tendencies it finds there, without the failure,
learning them by the standard of God Himself as known, rather than the lower
standard of the conscience which feels the stain. The first part of the armour,
then, expresses the normal condition of the soul to which the truth has been
applied; thus judging all the motives within, and bracing up the whole man. It
may act defectively, as the word of God in Hebrews 4:12, "Discerning the
thoughts and intents of the heart." Appraising every thought which springs up,
as to its source — as of God, or of the flesh. Or discerning whether the intent
which the heart cherishes has Christ for its object or self. It may come too in
the shape of a formative and, sanctifying truth, as we read in John 17:1-26,
"Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." That in Hebrews is more
the detective power of the word; while John refers more to the formation of the
soul, separating it by the word of the Father from the world. All that is of the
world is not of Him. And then, by the revelation of a Man in glory before the
Father, who is our life, and who is the pattern for the new man before Him. The
second part of the armour is more directly as regards the conscience; giving
condition of soul to face the foe, no armour being provided for the back. The
breast-plate bright — the conscience good; the soul thus walking with God, and
the enemy having nothing to point at, nothing to enfeeble that boldness which it
needs, and which otherwise would make the soldier of Christ as weak as water in
His presence. No self-accusations to render him irritable with others, and, in
this way his heart is kept in peace. It is surprising to see how happy things
seem, what a different hue they present when the soul is walking peacefully with
God. The reverse, too, when there is an accusing conscience. Where it is so, we
are ready to find fault with others, and see what we would not see if we were
happy in the love of Christ, flowing from a peaceful walk and a conscience void
of offence towards God and man.

Chapter 15.

Condition of Soul: Feet Shod with the Preparation of the Gospel of Peace. When
the conscience is good, and the heart free to go on happily with the Lord, it is
wonderful what a peaceful character it imparts to the pathway of the soldier of
Christ. He is not what the world would call a hero. God’s heroes present a sorry
figure to the world’s eye. A humble broken spirit characterizes them. They have
found the secret of strength, and the ability to govern their own spirit in a
world where "a man of spirit" is esteemed. "He that ruleth his spirit (is
better) than he that taketh a city" (Proverbs 16:32).

What a tone this peacefulness of spirit gives to the whole man in the trials and
troubles of the way. "The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the
sight of God of great price." (1 Peter 3:1-22) In man’s sight but little
esteemed, but not so in the sight of God. We never find that peaceful spirit
when the soul is not happily with God. It may be put on outwardly and a canker
in the heart, but it is one of these precious graces of Christian life, which
there is no such thing as imitating.

Alas! one sees the want of this, and cannot but see it, in many who are occupied
with very high truths. Objective things are presented to the soul and esteemed,
as surely they ought to be. But there is the other side too; the broken, humble
spirit, which esteems others better than itself. The tone of soul which is ever
on the watch for some line of Christ in the ways of another. This is the "mind
of Christ." No doubt that the divine energy which lifts one out of things here
below is much to be sought for and desired; but when this side alone is looked
for, the tendency is to make the person hard, and inclined to judge others. To
me, it is far more wonderful to see Him walking on earth as a lowly man, acting
divinely in every circumstance; never indifferent to any sorrow or trial, while
feeling it more keenly than others; yet always accepting the trial in the
meekness and gentleness which bows its head, and accepts of all the sorrow as of
God. I do not say we can enjoy this beauty of Christ, or indeed perceive it at
all, if we only seek to know Him thus. We must know our place first "in Christ"
before God; we must "know him" in measure, in that scene as the glorified One.
Then we will be morally fit to enjoy Him, and trace His wondrous path of lowly
love — the more to be wondered at, as we know the person of Him who was there.
This lovely peacefulness of soul carries one into all the details of each and
every day, with soft and gentle tread; sheds by its presence a calm and placid
influence on others; it gives firmness to the pathway in which it treads the
battlefield of God. The feet thus sandalled with firm footing, as it may be said
(hetoimasia), of the glad tidings of peace, carries peace into the enemy’s land;
and in face of the restless anxiety and uneasy fears which govern the hearts of
so many, and as much as lieth in it, lives peaceably with all.

Jesus Himself was the Prince of Peace. He passed through a world of unrest, in
the calm of heaven. He was ever in the bosom of His Father. No circumstances
ever ruffled Him. Sorrow and rejection pressed upon Him; unbelief and hardness
of heart met His Spirit, to chill if it were possible, the love of His heart;
still He went on. He sighs at man’s unbelieving spirit, but lifted up His eyes
to heaven. The Samaritans will not have Him in His mission of love, because His
face was as it were to go to Jerusalem; i.e., His heart was bent upon a path
which ended in the cross and shame. He bows in submission and passes onward to
another village; rebuking James and John who knew not what spirit they were of.
His yieldingness is known unto all (Luke 9:1-62). At His end, when all His
sorrow stood before His soul; even when He had surveyed its mighty depths and
accepted the cup from His Father’s hand, He passes through shame and scorn and
spitting, in calmness and peace. No moving of His heart to haste; no reviling
when reviled; no threatening when He suffered — His case was with His Father. In
the midst of all — with girded loin, as Servant of servants, He thinks of
Peter’s fleshly blow which cut off Malchus ear; He touched and healed it;
repairing His poor impulsive Peter’s rashness. He still has His eye on Peter. He
thinks of him as one who specially needs His care. His eye is turned on him at
the moment the cock crew, to disclose to him the distance his heart had wandered
from His Lord. Silent before His foe, He commits Himself to Him that judges
righteously, when His judges were condemning (and they knew it) an innocent man.
He was as "A man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs."

Oh, how His blessedness judges our ways! What trifles move our hearts to haste?
But still our calling is to be the heralds of peace, and of the Prince of Peace;
to carry into a world of unrest a spirit of peace and restfulness, which is to
be found only where self is broken and God is trusted. This condition of soul
results as the outflow of Christian character, consequent on the previous pieces
of this armour of God. The inward condition formed and braced by the word of
God; the conscience perfect to face the foe. No thought for self is needed, and
the heart is thus free to go on with God and think of others, and, with
restfulness of spirit, shedding blessing upon those around. Thus we find that
this relative state towards others, only ensues when the personal, inward
condition is right with God. "Feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of
peace," follows the girded loin and breastplate of righteousness.

Chapter 16.

Condition of Soul: the Shield of Faith.

We have examined the subjective or inward state of soul, personally and
relatively, in the previous parts of this armour of God. Now we come to that
inward state which rests in unfeigned faith upon God Himself in His known
character — what He is — which sustains in us perfect confidence in Him, so that
come what will, we know that nothing can separate us from His love. Things may
seem adverse; we may have reached our wit’s end, so to speak; still the heart
that knows Him who cannot be but what He is, waits patiently for His time to
show Himself strong in behalf of them that trust Him.

"Above all (this previous condition of soul), taking the shield of faith,
wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked (one)."
What is here spoken of is not the faith of the sinner which first lays hold on
Christ. We find that in the Epistle to the Romans, and we may term it the
no-working faith of a sinner; "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness" (Romans
4:5). Here in Ephesians, we find the faith of the saint: the perfection of
confidence in God, known experimentally as One who is what He says He is. That
confidence which as the heart grows in the deeper knowledge of Him, discovers
more deeply the springs of evil within, yet finds its confidence in Him growing
in proportion; so that the heart trusts and counts upon Him against itself. It
can say, I cannot trust myself, and God cannot trust me, but I can count on Him
and trust Him. It can say, Go with me, for I am stiff-necked, and cannot but
fail if left alone.

You find this "shield of faith" practically illustrated in Moses. God had said
that the people were a stiff-necked people, and if He were to come into their
midst He must consume them in a moment. Then Moses took the tent and pitched it
outside the camp, and the Lord came down and spake with Moses face to face, as a
man speaks with his friend. Moses had found grace in the sight of the Lord, and
his heart seeks to find grace; he seeks to learn the fulness of this grace. All
the goodness of the Lord then passed before him, and his heart, bowed in the
presence of the mercy of the Lord, makes the very fact of their being a
stiff-necked people, the plea that His presence might go with them by the way.
The very reason which the Lord gave in Exodus 33:5, for not coming into their
midst, lest He should consume them in a moment, Moses pleads in Exodus 34:9, as
the reason why He should go with them. "And he said, If now I have found grace
in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us; for it is a
stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine
inheritance." But he had found out meanwhile what God is in Himself, and in this
consciousness he pleads for His presence, on the ground of what He is, and seeks
His company by the way, because they were a stiff-necked people! Oh, what
confidence — what a plea to present to Him, in the consciousness of the depths
of such evil hearts! And it must be so, the more He is known; and the more we
know ourselves.

See this confidence even before forgiveness is known, in the woman of the city
who was a sinner. The very light which rendered her speechless, as a convicted
sinner in His presence, drew her heart to the One who, while He searched the
conscience — piercing and following in its turnings all the depths of sin and a
nature at enmity with God — drew the heart to Him in love, so that she can count
on Him, because of what He is, against all that His holiness had disclosed of
her heart. In her case it was a sinner’s confidence who had not yet been assured
of His grace. How much greater must our confidence be in One whose grace is
known, and who has set us without a spot in the presence of His holiness, where
the very light and holiness only increase the confidence of our hearts the more!

Satan may come in with his dark suggestions, but their power is gone, because
God is known. Thank God, we do know Him better than we know ourselves! Not
better than He knows us, but better than we know our own hearts. What a comfort
to the heart, that He knew all — that He knows all! I can go to Him and tell Him
all. The depths of evil, and the springs and motives which I find there; and
find that I have Him for me, against it all. Satan’s fiery darts (I do not now
wish to enter upon their full meaning, as used of God for discipline of the soul
under His hand) are quenched with the joyous and exulting note, God is for me!
Silenced by this blessed condition of soul conveyed to us figuratively in this
"shield of faith."

How much better is it to possess this blessed state of soul, by having on the
armour at all times, than to find its importance when wounded by some shaft of
Satan! It is not the day of conflict which is the time to put it on; but when
the heart is with God, in the consciousness of His favour resting upon it. At
the same time the deep consciousness that a watchful enemy is ever ready to take
advantage of an unguarded moment, should such be allowed, and work defeat or
wound the soldier of Christ. Its deep importance is learned at times by failures
and woundings of the soul. How much better, I repeat, it is to learn it in
confiding peace with God. To use it in companionship with Him, rather than by
exposing one’s self, with some portion of it wanting, to the assaults of Satan’s
power. Negatively we may learn its importance by slothfulness of soul with God;
the heart thus becomes indifferent and cold. Positively we may learn it when the
conscience is concerned and not at rest. Then the Spirit of God acts as the
stern, unbending convicter of the conscience; making us feel the loss of that
joy, and happy communion with our God and Father, as known and enjoyed against
the evil; by His pointing out the evil which has thus separated practically the
soul from God. How frequently we find the former, or negative side. The latter,
or positive side, is more terrible to bear, because the soul has enjoyed the
favour of God which is better than life; and has lost it through allowed evil. I
speak, of course, of one whose acceptance as a sinner is complete, and who has
known it in the soul’s consciousness.

Thus this complete, perfect confidence in God, expressed in the shield of faith,
follows all the previous inward condition of the soul conveyed to us in the
loins girded with the truth — the breast-plate of righteousness, and the feet
shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Chapter 17.

Condition of Soul: the Helmet of Salvation: and the Sword of the Spirit.

If the Shield of Faith conveys to us the soul’s perfect confidence in what God
is, in His own unchangeable nature: the Helmet of Salvation teaches us what God
has done for us, known and enjoyed in the soul; and with that unquestioning
certainty that never leaves in the heart a shadow of doubt as to the result by
and by. When the soul feels and knows this, it is free in the day of battle, and
goes on without fear. It can think of others when the enemy seeks their ruin. It
feels that that lovely word, "Thou hast covered my head for the day of battle,"
imparts a firmness and joyfulness that no present circumstances can ever mar.
The enemy may rage, and evil may be there; but through that impregnable helmet
no sword can ever pass. God’s salvation as a helmet on the head, set there by
the hands of God Himself, renders the heart fearless in the face of the foe. One
is free, in the forgetfulness of all personal questions as to one’s own things,
to desire others’ good.

It will be seen that while we receive this precious piece of the armour of God,
and that so far it may be looked at as producing a subjective state of soul,
still God is the confidence of the heart both in the Helmet of Salvation (what
He has done for us) as well as in the Shield of Faith. In a certain sense then,
God is objectively before us, though the state produced is noticed too.

What a lovely illustration we have of this helmet of salvation in Paul in Acts
26:1-32. For a considerable time in prison; cut off from the work he loved and
lived in; and the sad thought perhaps that his own conduct was the immediate
cause of his imprisonment; the first moment of his conversion fills his soul.
There stood that blessed man, bound with chains, before Festus, with King
Agrippa and Bernice. He unfolds to them the story of his former life, his
conversion, his mission of service. This Pharisee of the Pharisees; this
righteous man according to the law, who had lived in all good conscience before
God, while doing many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth; this
dread persecutor of the saints — of the Church of God: there he stood, the
attention of the Roman governor riveted by the glowing words addressed to the
king, until Festus cried out, "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth
make thee mad."

Mark the calm and collected reply: "I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak
forth the words of truth and soberness. For the king (Agrippa) knoweth of these
things, before whom I also speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these
things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner. King
Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest. Then Agrippa
said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I
would to God that not only thou, but also all that hear me this day, were both
almost and altogether such as I am, except these bonds!"

There stood this blessed witness of the power of that salvation with which God
had covered his head for the day of battle. An evident consciousness too of the
truth they conveyed, in the king’s soul, before whom he spake the glowing words,
eloquent from the calm and holy joy which filled the speaker’s heart. How near
was King Agrippa to this salvation, and yet how far off, when, to cover and
conceal his emotion, he rose up and went aside to confer with the rest.

Chains and imprisonments had not damped this heavenly joy. Free in heart, and
with the helmet of salvation on his brow, he can think of others’ blessing. No
desire was expressed as to removal of the bonds of Christ which he wore. His
desires were for others. He does not merely wish they were Christians, which
King Agrippa seemed almost persuaded to become, but that they might be "both
almost, and altogether such as I am;" that they might have the same deep joy
which filled his heart — the same salvation consciously which rested on his
brow; "Except these bonds" — he could bear them alone for the Master whom he
loved, and he would only wish them to be as happy a man as he, without the
bonds.

Oh, what a softened feeling grace imparts to the heart which brings us in
contact with a living person, who has placed the Helmet of Salvation on our
brow! It is not the salvation itself which then engrosses, but the One who has
so acted for us, setting our heart as free as air, that it may run in the same
channel with His heart towards an evil world. The soul is now free and in order
to wield "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Remark that first
of all, the Word of God has formed us, and braced up the whole inner man; the
conscience is good; the path peaceful; confidence in God perfect, and the
conscious joy of a salvation which no adverse power can mar, and which links the
heart with Him who has accomplished it and bestowed it upon us, making the heart
so joyously free. Then comes the aggressive warfare, by the sword of the Spirit,
against the enemy of souls.

Remark too, that as in all this armour it is a question of meeting the wiles of
the devil, so here it is not the word used in edification for souls, but for
detecting and unmasking these very wiles. How prostrate and feeble the soldiers
of Christ seem to be in these infidel days. They fear often to stand alone by
that word which God has set above all His name (Psalms 138:2). They are not
formed by its precepts themselves, and therefore they are not fit to use this
mighty sword; it would cut themselves, for it has two edges. It must do its own
keen circumcising work with ourselves, before it can be used effectively against
the foe. Israel must be circumcised themselves, before they can draw their
sword, and follow the leadings of the Captain of the Host of the Lord. But when
the soul is thus fitted to wield this sword, no enemy can withstand it. See the
Lord Jesus Himself, in conflict with the devil (Matthew 4:1-25). No power was
put forth by Him to destroy the destroyer. No word spoken to correct the
misquotation of the enemy (Matthew 4:6). "It is written" was His weapon; and By
the words of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer" (Psalms
17:4). It is very striking as one has noticed, that when it became a direct
conflict between Jesus and the devil, the Word of God was the instrument used on
both sides. The Lord uses it to explain and govern His own conduct, and the
devil uses it against Him. How solemn! For in the present day, when the saints
are thrown upon it as their resource, the devil uses it for his own ends as
well. But the Saints must be formed in obedience by it, else they will find they
must fall with the sword of the Spirit in their hands; because it will wound
themselves. When those wiles of the devil are presented to the soul, there is no
fear felt for the result of the conflict by the well-trained soldier of Christ.
He is not amazed at what the enemy presents, nor distracted by an effort to have
some text ready to meet the foe: the word of God comes readily to the heart and
lips, and the wile is answered: the enemy may not be worsted, but the soul is
steadied; its conduct and obedience are accounted for by the word. No wile of
the enemy can stand for a moment before that mighty weapon which is "mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong-holds; casting down reasonings, and
every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing
into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:4).
Every infidel suggestion is met; every perversion of the truth laid bare; every
superstition with which the devil deceives his votaries — exulting in their
shame — is exposed. All is met by the mighty instrument which alone can guide
the soul in a world of boasting progress; but which, having lost the knowledge
of God, and refused the revelation of Himself in tender grace in Jesus, ripens
under the culture of the wicked one, for that judgment, which will consign
himself and his followers to the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and
the false prophet are, to be tormented day and night for ever! (See Revelation
20:10-15.)

Chapter 18.

Condition of Soul: Prayer.

We now come to the last mighty weapon in this "whole armour of God." The
breathing of His people’s hearts to God by prayer, when they have been formed by
His word — His breath to us! It is the characteristic feature of Christian life;
obedience and dependence mark its activities this fallen world. It is very
striking how frequently we find the word of God and prayer in close connection
in Scripture. When God was dealing with and testing man in the flesh in the
nation of Israel, He did not name prayer as part of their relationships with
Him. They accepted, in their own strength, the Law as the terms of their
relationship. Now, prayer expresses the weakness of man. There were two forms of
address to God given them, one expressing blood guiltlessness (Deuteronomy
21:1-23), and the other the expression of worship in the perfection of obedience
(Deuteronomy 26:1-19). But man was put on his own strength to do these things
and so to live in them. What ruin ensued! Yet, in the midst of such a wreck, no
doubt many a faithful heart cried to God, outside all ordered and formal
relationships with Him. In the opening of the first book of Samuel, we find a
Hannah — desolate, and pining after her heart’s desires — moving her lips as her
heart expressed its cry to the Lord. Even Eli the High Priest rebuked her,
supposing that she was drunken with wine. But her answer seems to have touched a
chord in the old priest’s soul, as she replied, "No, my lord; I am a woman of a
sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured
out my soul before the Lord." Eli answers her, "Go in peace: and the God of
Israel (He who had wrestled of old with Jacob in another way) grant thee thy
petition that thou hast asked of him." (1 Samuel 1:9, etc.) The child Samuel,
whose name signifies "Asked of God," was the answer to this cry.

We find too, in the early chapters of this book how complete was the wreck of
things in Israel. The priesthood was defiled and corrupted, and at last the Ark
of God passes into the hands of the Philistines, and "Ichabod" is written on the
ruined people, whose aged high priest brake his neck, in falling backwards from
his seat by the side of the gate, when he heard that the Ark had been taken by
the uncircumcised.

All ordered relationships were now gone. The people have no priest to draw nigh
to Jehovah; the priest (if he desired it) has no Ark, where to consult by "Urim
and Thummim;" no mercy-seat on which to sprinkle the blood before the Lord. What
will now be His resource, who is never frustrated by the evil and failure of
man? Samuel — the man who was "asked of God" — will now be the "prophet of the
Lord," by whom God will reveal Himself again by the "word of the Lord" to the
consciences of those who had an ear to hear. If God thus maintained His
relationship through the consciences of His people by Samuel, the cry of need —
the prayer of His people, also went up to Him by Samuel (1 Samuel 7:8-9; 1
Samuel 12:18-19; 1 Samuel 12:23), In this we find the two great principles, or
characteristics of spiritual life, so frequently found together in Scripture,
viz., the Word of God, and Prayer. Mary at the feet of Jesus hearing His word;
and the disciples saying to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 10:1-42, Luke
11:1-54), illustrate this thought. See also Peter in Acts 6:1-15, "We will give
ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the Word." "Let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly;" then "Continuing instant in prayer" (Colossians
3:16; Colossians 4:2). Even the very food we eat is sanctified unto us by the
word of God and prayer. God’s word sanctions certain things for the use of the
body, as meat and drink for His people; they receive it from Him with prayer,
refusing nothing that has thus been set apart by His word: "For every creature
of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving;
for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:4-5).

Prayer is the first expression of the newly born soul to God. They lead Saul of
Tarsus, blinded by the light of the glory in the face of Jesus Christ, to
Damascus, and in the "house of Judas," in the street called "Straight," behold
this persecutor on his knees. A little time before he was breathing out
threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord Jesus; now the
earnest cry ascends to and enters His ear; and "Behold he prayeth," shows how
the Lord’s ear and heart were attentive to these strong cryings of this chief of
sinners.

Prayer takes very varied characteristics in the word of God. If we turn to Luke
11:1-54 we find the Lord instructing the hearts of his disciples in the earnest
prayer of "importunity." He says, "Which of you shall have a friend, and shall
go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves: for a
friend of mine in his journey is come unto me, and I have nothing to set before
him. And he from within shall answer, and say, Trouble me not: the door is now
shut, and my children are with me in bed: I cannot rise and give thee. I say
unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet
because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." How
practical is the scene He here portrays! The deep sense of need, and dependence
on One who has discovered Himself to our souls as One who alone can supply the
want we feel. The sense of confidence is displayed too in the earnestness which
turns not aside from Him to any other source. He knows the heart, and knows well
whether there is there unmingled confidingness in Him. Yet it is not His
goodness and readiness to hear and answer which are here unfolded, but the
importunity, the pertinacity of the heart that clings to and cries to God until
the need is supplied. That which abates not in earnestness in asking of Him who
has said, "Ask, and it shall be given you." But this is not the highest
character of prayer by any means; still it is needed for His people while they
are here. A still more blessed provision — for making known our requests — is
found in Php 4:6. In this place we do not find that He promises to supply the
need we express to Him; but He answers in another and much more blessed way. Ten
thousand cares may press upon the heart; what is to be our resource? "Be careful
for nothing"! is the reply. "Nothing!" you answer; how can this be? Then He
proceeds, "But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let
your requests be made known unto God." And how blessed is the answer. Perhaps
not one request has been granted, but the answer comes in another manner; "The
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus"! God puts His peace into the heart which has put its cares
on God! How frequently we are disposed to allow our cares to eat away at the
heart and bow down the soul. Care for the Church — the saints of God; the deep
anxieties of service for the Lord; for the conversion of those we love; for the
recovery of those who have wandered from the way. Circumstances too may try the
heart: the love of those whose love we valued has grown cold; the bitterness of
being misunderstood and misjudged, all press upon the soul. How blessed those
strong, bright words, "Be careful for nothing"! How blessed to go to God in the
strong cryings and secret bitter tears which His eye has marked and noted, and
hand over the cares to Him! Mark, it is not to our Father, but to God. It is not
here the confidingness of relationship, but to a holy Being whose nature is
known; whose throne is never touched by cares. The heart learns there to pour
out its earnest cry, deepening in intensity from "prayer" to "supplication,"
until the heart has risen, as it were, above the cloud — above the cares which
pressed upon the soul, until it bursts out in the pure light of heaven, in
"thanksgiving" into the ever opened ear of One who gives His peace to the
relieved heart, with the sweet sense that His hand is under the care — that He
has charged himself with the matter — has taken it into His own merciful hands,
and we have in exchange God’s own peace. But in Ephesians we are outside the
things which distress the heart, in another way. The range of vision takes in
the things which occupy the mind of Christ. The great interests of the Lord on
earth are before us, more than our own cares. Not that He does not interest
Himself with our little cares and trials — that He does; but here the prayer and
supplication in the Spirit, with its watching and perseverance, is for "all
saints." In the true dependence of one who is fully armed with this armour of
God, prayer keeps the heart in confidingness in Him. Self is broken, and He is
trusted, and "the more knowledge the more prayer." Satan cannot seduce the heart
which is ever in this attitude before God. "He that is born of God keepeth
himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." The Host of the Lord has thus
been prepared to meet the foe, and to "withstand in the evil day" — that is, the
whole period through which we now pass. The soul is formed by the truth; the
conscience good, maintained in the light; the heart peaceful, in the
confidingness and piety which walks with God and trusts Him amidst the storms
and waves which beat around us. Thus Satan’s fiery darts are of no avail, and
with the helmet of a known salvation covering the head, and the word of God as
the Spirit’s sword, we are ready to meet the wiles of the devil, and the heart
is kept in a right condition before God in this evil world. He has His true
place of authority which orders all; the saint too is found in his true attitude
of dependence and confidence before Him, as expressed in prayer — but prayer
which embraces His great interests here on earth; "all saints," in their labours
and conflicts, toils and joys.

We have seen, then, the condition of soul which flows from the unsparing
dealings with self and flesh, because of our place on high in Christ. Then the
arming of the Host against the foe, to resist and face the enemy with the
courage of God. We will now look at the condition of soul we need to go on
naturally and happily in communion with the Lord, in the aggressive warfare,
realizing our own blessed portion on high. We must plant the foot on each spot
of ground which is ours in our heavenly Canaan, but in doing so we find we must
first dislodge the foe. Deeply important it is then to know the conditions by
which the path and service of faith may be successfully trodden, so as to insure
the presence of the Lord with us, and "good success." This we will hope to
examine in the next chapter.

Chapter 19.

"Good Success" in our Spiritual Warfare.

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto
you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the
great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the
great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.

"There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life:
as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee; I will not fail thee, nor forsake
thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide
for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them."

"Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do
according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee; turn not from it
to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou
goest."

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate
therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is
written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou
shalt have good success. Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of a good
courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with
thee whithersoever thou goest." (Joshua 1:3-9.)

We will now examine the blessed principles, by the observance of which we may
enjoy the sure presence of the Lord in almighty power, and good success in our
spiritual warfare.

Mark the first thing that is presented — the land is ours: God has given us, in
the grace of His heart, the best of blessings, in the best place, and in the
best way; "All spiritual blessings; in heavenly places, in Christ." "All is
yours," He says, but then we must drive out the enemy and place the sole of our
foot upon every inch of ground, and take possession. He has marked out the
bounds, and none can dispute our title to what He has bestowed. No hostile power
can stand against His people — God is for them; "If God be for us who can be
against us?" The possessions are His, but in His people, under Christ, He takes
them into His hand.

Such is the boldness with which we have to face the foe; no fear of the result,
He "hath not given unto us the spirit of fear." But all is ruin where these
conditions are not observed. In place of "There shall not any man be able to
stand before thee all the days of thy life," we find, further on, that they
"could not stand before their enemies," and the Lord said, "Neither will I be
with you any more" (Joshua 7:12). How solemn! The walls of Jericho, around which
the victorious Host had walked but a little before, had fallen down flat; and
now the people are smitten before the men of Ai, "and the hearts of the people
melted, and became as water." The "accursed thing" was permitted; disobedience
brought its defeat and bitterness. "Covetousness," which desired the wedge of
gold, and "idolatry" of heart, which saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish
garment, had been allowed; until defeat proved that the Lord’s presence and
power was forfeited while they remained, and a discomfited Host finds what a
reality His presence had been, though unseen, and how the sin of one of their
number was felt by all: "One member suffered and all the members suffered with
it."

It is interesting to see, in passing and alluding to this chapter, that as
obedience was the condition of their strength and of the Lord’s presence with
them, so again by obedience restoration is effected in the judgment of the sin.
Even the judgment of the offender, and the recovery of the presence and
manifested power of the Lord for them. This obedience, too, by which such is
effected, is seen in those who suffered, rather than in the offender. One would
almost have thought that it should have fallen upon him, but it is upon Joshua
and the people that the activities of obedience now devolve; thus the offender
is discovered, the evil cast out, and the people restored. So it is also in
Matthew 18:15-22. Upon the aggrieved devolve the activities of grace towards the
offending one — not upon the erring one. When all had failed in the effort made
for his recovery, the very obedience of the aggrieved one was the means by which
all came to light, and was judged and cleared away. Such is God’s way.

"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." As if the Lord were to say, If I
was with you through the desert solitudes, where your needs and your necessities
were all my care; how much the more will I be with you now, when you are
occupied with my battles in the land, and my warfare is your care. Moses recalls
this persevering, unchanging, perfect love which had been displayed in the
desert, in those touching words, "He knoweth thy walking through this great
wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast
lacked nothing" (Deuteronomy 2:7). And here the Lord recalls His ever watchful
presence and care, as if to remind them of its solicitude and perfection, that
their hearts might trust Him whose battles were now to be fought, and whose land
was to be taken from the enemy’s hand. "I will not fail thee" in the exigencies
of every hour of need and toil; "nor forsake thee" in the wisdom and power
needed in possessing the land.

How bright and real are those words spoken at times to the heart of His servants
as the difficulties increase, and the power of the enemy displays itself: "Be
strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an
inheritance the land which I sware unto their fathers to give them." Adversaries
there are, but the word is, "In nothing terrified by your adversaries" (Php
1:27). You may appear as grasshoppers in your own sight, and they as giants; the
cities may be walled up to heaven; no matter: the higher they are the more
complete will be the proof of what My power can accomplish by an obedient
people.

Paul at Corinth (Acts 18:1-28) meets the opposition and blasphemy of the enemy;
but the Lord speaks to His servant, "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy
peace; for I am with thee, and no one (oudeis — man or devil) shall set on thee
to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city." Many were there to whom the
word of life was to be ministered, and who needed to be put in possession of the
land — their "own things." Paul was to divide to them their lot — their heavenly
possessions, and the word was, Be of good courage, "be not afraid." Timothy
might have been discouraged at the defection and the general state of things —
another day of deep ruin; but again the word to him was, Be strong in the grace
that is in Christ Jesus." And Paul can write those wondrous words, "I endure all
things for the elect’s sakes, that they may obtain the salvation which is in
Christ Jesus with eternal glory" (2 Timothy 2:1-26).

"Only be thou strong and very courageous" — why is this again repeated? Why this
solicitude that courage and strength may be there? "That thou mayest observe to
do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee." Courage and
strength were needed to obey. God’s strength is with us in the path of His will,
and not out of this path most surely; and we need courage to do His will in this
evil world. Take up God’s word as the standard by which to walk, and men will
tell you that the times are changed — (so they have!) — that things are not what
they were, and the like. Besides this, we need courage with self to obey the
word of God. Who is not conscious of the unsubdued will of the flesh, which is
not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be? We need special courage
with self that we may do His bidding; we need courage one with another; with the
world; with relations, with all. We may have to walk alone in the pathway, but
if so, we walk with Him whose word it is. It needs then this courage to obey,
and God knows the end from the beginning: He foresaw all that would come, and He
gave His word in view of all. Thus we can trust that He has not spoken one word
too much, and there is not one word which is not needed, even if it may seem of
little moment in our eyes. He looks at the enemy and exhorts us to "Be strong
and of good courage;" He looks at ourselves, and again He speaks, "Be thou
strong and very courageous;" "Turn not from it (the word) to the right hand or
to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest." But if there is
courage needed to obey, that we may prosper in our spiritual warfare, it needs
too, that we should meditate on the Word that we may know the mind of God as
revealed therein. "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but
thou shalt meditate thereon day and night." The word of God carries with it the
great fact, which we find growingly each day, that God has revealed the truth —
nay Himself, in the midst of a scene formed and systematized through man’s
departure from Him. Divine light is needed for our path through it, with its
snares and pitfalls, and we have a watchful enemy to meet and overcome;
therefore, we should live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
The day may be bright, or the night may be dark, the great thing is to have the
word of God stored up in the heart, and treasured there in the love of it, that
we may be kept from the paths of the destroyer. "By the word of thy lips I have
kept me from the paths of the destroyer," speaks the Spirit of Christ in Psalms
17:1-15, and "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against
thee," in Psalms 119:11. "Meditate upon these things," says the apostle to the
young servant Timothy, "give thyself wholly unto them, that thy profiting may
appear unto all." (1 Timothy 4:1-16) And so we find, "Blessed is the man that
walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful: but his delight is in the law of the
Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." Now mark the result, "And
he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his
fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth
shall prosper." (Psalms 1:1-6) The heart is carried along in the channel of
God’s mind, and thus the constancy of communion with Him enables the heart to
live in another sphere and order of things than the motives of the scene we are
passing through. But it is in the heart — the affections, in which the word must
be hid. Intellect will not do, or clearness of thought — but the heart in
treasuring up His words is kept near to Him in whom dwells all the fulness of
the Godhead bodily, and thus we know that we are in Him. "For then thou shalt
make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success" (Joshua 1:8).

We now come to a word of deep blessedness, and nothing can compensate for the
absence of such an assurance from the Lord. "Have I not commanded thee?"
sustains the heart in the midst of the scene through which we have to tread our
way, with the presence of Christ, in almighty power. To have God’s command
steadies the heart in the midst of it all. To find a difficulty by the way, and
not have such an assurance is bitterness indeed. The more tender the conscience
the more deep the pain, when we are not assured of having His command if
difficulties arise. We have to be exercised and sifted in heart, that we may
seek His face in the exigencies of the journey, but He gives the consciousness
of "Have I not commanded thee?" in unwavering certainty to us. The heart may cry
out, in the sense of the peril that a false step might entail, without having
His word — "Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee." But He never fails the
heart which cries, but assures it with His calm and quiet "Come"! Then all
difficulties vanish like the morning cloud; or they only serve to unfold His
resources and ways to us, when we know we are in His pathway here below. In a
dream Paul is directed to Macedonia; and they gathered that the Lord had called
them to preach there, and they go across. For days they seem to have no work to
do; then a few women are found at a river side, and are blessed through the
Word; and then Satan comes to hinder and deceive. What a lesson we learn in
these men walking for days apparently at leisure (that which tests the soul’s
condition often but too well), with girded loins. The enemy does not meet them
unprepared, but finds these soldiers of Christ armed with the whole armour of
God, and Satan is frustrated, and the damsel delivered from his power. But the
deliverers are soon cast into the inner prison, with bleeding backs undressed,
and their feet are set fast in the stocks. What a moment of anguish, had not
Paul had the clear sense in his soul of "Have I not commanded thee?" and thus,
without a single care, he and his fellow-soldier prayed and sang praises to God
at midnight, in that unquestioning confidence, and that trustfulness which an
uncondemning heart bestows.

Again take Moses: Forty years before he had assayed in fleshly zeal to deliver
his brethren, and had failed. Forty years of discipline finds him a broken man;
distrustful of his own powers and unwilling to go when sent by the Lord. His
mission begins — he shows his signs, and demands God’s first-born from the hands
of Pharaoh. He is driven from his presence, and the people, whose minds he had
wrought upon by the visions of freedom from the lash of Egypt, are driven back
to their toil with heavier tasks than before. Now comes the solemn moment for
this man Moses, who would be a deliverer to his brethren. They turn upon him,
and charge him with the increase of their burdens and that their savour was
abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh. (Exodus 5:21.) Moses returns to the Lord in
this bitter moment of his history, and the Lord gives him a charge — a defined
mission to His people and to Pharaoh; then all is clear. "Have I not commanded
thee?" really makes all simple, and no matter what difficulties may arise
hesitation is gone, and this blessed soul-sustaining word is the solace of the
heart of him — nay of all — who have wrestled with Him, as it were, that He
might speak it to our souls. Then the rejection of our brethren, if we have to
bear it; the sorrows of service, whatever they may be, are overborne by the
words, "Have I not commanded thee?" "Be strong, and of a good courage; be not
afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee
whithersoever thou goest"! If He be with us, no matter how rough the water. Yea
the waters may seek to engulph the ship, but if He be in it all is well. In the
remaining portion of this chapter we learn a solemn lesson in one way, and a
blessed lesson on the other, On one side we find the type of those who seek to
take their place on this side of the Jordan — death and resurrection applied to
us by the Spirit of God. Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, do not go back to Egypt
— still their hearts linger on this side of the land of promise, seeking rest —
not where the calling of God had contemplated. Joshua had not given them this
portion; but the well-watered fields on this side of Jordan seemed to be a
proper place for their flocks and herds, and their wives and little ones. They
"came short" of the purpose and calling of God, yet they are not apostate, by
turning back again to the land of Egypt. So far, they are "enemies to the cross
of Christ . . . who mind earthly things." The things of heaven, as risen . .
with Christ, have no sweetness to the taste of those whose wills led them to
settle where Israel wandered. Solemn truth, too, that henceforth they are looked
upon as distinct from Israel. They have a history of their own, outside the
land; like Lot’s history in Sodom, so distinct from that of Abraham on the
mountain-top with God. The day came too, when it could be said of them, "In the
divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart. Why abodest thou among
the sheep-folds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? In the divisions of Reuben
there were great searchings of heart." (Judges 5:1-31) The ear was opened to
hearken to that which took possession of the heart, and it was deaf to the call
of the Lord. Yet there had been a day too, when Moses refused to come out of
Egypt without those "wives and little ones" whose prosperity now was their
hindrance in entering the land.

How we see this every day around us. Parents urgent and earnest in seeking to
have their children converted, and thus severed from the land of Egypt; yet when
the prospects in this world of those children are at stake, a midway course is
chosen; the land of promise, where the Lord carries on His warfare is refused,
and ease accepted. Still this did not bring with it the rest which was sought;
for those who sought rest without going into heavenly places had still to go to
war. On the other side, it is very sweet to find how that the Lord cares for the
wives and the little ones of those who fight His battles for their brethren. We
may leave them to His care as a tender Father and a more than Husband, conscious
that He can care for them when we are not with them, while engaged for Him. We
could not care for them ourselves even if with them were He not to do so, and He
can do so without us when occupied in His affairs. This may be done in various
ways. Epaphroditus may "labour fervently" for his brethren in prayer. Perhaps to
some bed-ridden saint was Paul indebted for those great gifts whereby the hearts
of many were gladdened in the fields of his labour for Christ, and so a note of
praise ascended to Him who had put it into the heart of some such lowly saint
thus to pray. See 2 Corinthians 1:11, etc.


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  CHAPTER 39: 04.03.     PART 3.
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Part 3.

Chapter 20.

Realization: the Seven Trumpets of Rams’ Horns.

We have now reached the closing part of our meditations. We turned aside at the
end of Joshua 5:1-15 to examine the condition of soul unfolded in the "Whole
armour of God," and needed by the Lord’s people in order successfully to face
the foe and stand fast in the evil day; we also sought to learn something of
those practical conditions, by the observance of which we may expect unbroken
success and the Lord’s blessed presence with us, in these spiritual wars (Joshua
1:1-18). The Captain of the Lord’s Host had said to Joshua, "Loose thy shoe from
off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy." The place of
conflict was holy ground, and "As captain of the host of the Lord" had He "now
come."

We will seek now to learn something of the lessons taught us in Israel’s
history, in order to the practical realization of our own things, and that we
may be used for the deliverance of others: these two activities characterise the
life and warfare of the redeemed. "Now Jericho was straitly shut up;" or, "Did
shut up, and was shut up" (marg); not only was this unbroken display of the
enemy’s power "shut up" from the Host of the Lord; but in heart and will it was
against Him — it "did shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out,
and none came in." But Jericho must fall before the armies of the Lord. Satan
must find that no power can defeat the people of God, while walking in obedience
and dependence, and God working in them. Rahab was within, and could not get out
to those with whom her heart was bound up. Israel was without, and no power of
man could break down those walls which reached to heaven. But a power had come
into this world which no malice of the enemy, no evil of man could frustrate or
defeat: the power of simple obedience. It was by this mighty weapon Jesus bound
the strong man; and by the same power reaching "unto death," He had gone into
his last stronghold to set his captives free! Now those delivered ones are about
to be used to deliver others from his power by the same mighty energies, and to
take possession of and realize their own things.

We may remember that when the Lord would give His people a heavenly place, in
type, in their crossing of Jordan into Canaan, or in the fact unfolded in the
end of Ephesians 1:1-23 and commencement of Ephesians 2:1-22, that He — the true
Ark of the covenant, must go first into the waters of death, and thus make a
pathway for His people into the land of promise. But another blessed and
precious truth is taught us in the fact that when they are in the land, and
about to take possession of all, the ark will follow after the faithful soldiers
of the Host of the Lord. And this is just as it should be. None could enter the
waters of death and pass across that flood unscathed, until Jesus entered and
dried up these waters. There He must be alone. None but He could bear the wrath
— none but He could stand fast in those "swellings of Jordan." But this being
accomplished, the order is reversed, and in the forefront went the "seven
priests, bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns," and "him that (was) armed
passed on before the Ark of the Lord" (Joshua 6:4-9). And then the falling walls
would prove two things. First, the faithful condition of heart of those who led
the way, and next, that the Lord was with those faithful hearts in sure and
almighty power.

We find two other occasions where the presence or otherwise of the Ark told its
solemn tale. In Numbers 14:1-45 when the Lord had pronounced the sentence of
forty years’ wanderings for the unbelief of those who would not go up and
possess the land, and then had turned back Himself to be a wanderer with them;
the people, instead of accepting this discipline as of God, which faith would
have done, seek to go up to battle without the "Ark of the Lord" (Numbers
14:40-45). "And they rose up early in the morning, and got them up into the top
of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the
Lord hath promised: for we have sinned. And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye
transgress the commandment of the Lord? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for
the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the
Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the
sword: because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be
with you."

Twelve men had safely traversed the length and breadth of the land for forty
days some little time before; yet the children of Amalek, and the Canaanites
were then there; but God was with these men, and faith counted not its own
resources, but counted on the Lord. Then, six hundred thousand men with
unbelieving fears, in heart turned back to Egypt, and God gave them up to their
unbelieving desire — "Would God we had died in the wilderness" (Numbers 14:2) —
and said, "I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they
murmur against me. Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the Lord, as ye have
spoken in mine ears, so will I do unto you: your carcases shall fall in this
wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number,
from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me, doubtless ye
shall not come into the land" (Numbers 14:27-30). But they did not bow to this
chastisement from His hand. Faith should have counted on God and gone up against
the foe at the first; and now faith should have accepted and bowed to this
sentence and remained; but instead of this, they rose up early to go to battle
without the Lord. He, before whom the children of Anak were nothing, tells them
that they must be smitten in their own strength, before those very Amalekites
and Canaanites who were there. But even this word of warning was not "mixed with
faith in them that heard it," any more than the word of glad tidings of Canaan’s
rest by the spies. So we read, "But they presumed to go up unto the hill-top;
nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of
the camp." The result was fatal; they were completely routed before their
enemies, even to Hormah (Destruction).

Thus we find the solemn result of an effort to go against the foe without the
presence of the Lord. In 1 Samuel 4:1-22 another lesson is "written for our
learning." It was the day of Israel’s failure, and their ruin was now about to
be complete. The Philistines — the instruments of Satan’s power which had been
allowed — were gathered in battle against Israel. And Israel was smitten. In an
unfaithful condition they had ventured to go out against the enemy; the result
was what must ever be. But instead of this defeat bringing them, in the sense of
their own state, to the dust before God; they seek to identify the Ark with
their own unfaithfulness. Do you suppose that God could acknowledge or succour
them? Impossible! We read, "Let us fetch the Ark of the covenant of the Lord out
of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh amongst us, it may save us out of the
hand of our enemies."

They did so; they shouted too, "with a great shout so that the earth rang
again." But God would not answer. He knew how to take care of His own honour,
even if His Ark were to be found in Dagon’s house (1 Samuel 5:1-12); but own
them He will not. But at Jericho we find the normal state of the warfare of the
Lord’s Host. The complete number of the priests were to go in the forefront
blowing seven trumpets of rams’ horns. Here I find an exceedingly beautiful
thought; one which will commend itself to the Christian reader’s heart and
conscience; giving him to feel consciously and increasingly the conviction that
there is not one word of God but which has its divine lesson for us. This, thank
God, is the growing conviction of the writer. That he and all the Lord’s people
may have grace increasingly to appreciate His word, is his prayer!

Seven is the well-known symbol of completeness or perfection in spiritual
things; and the Trumpet is that which carries simply with it to the heart and
understanding the thought of testimony rendered actively (Numbers 10:1-36,
etc.). The Ram is always the victim of consecration (Leviticus 8:22, etc.). The
Horn is used as the symbol of power. To put all that this lovely type conveys
together, it would mean, the testimony of the power of complete consecration to
God! How lovely! A delivered — redeemed people, in full consciousness of all
their privileges; armed at all points with the whole armour of God, obedient in
heart and practice; the Lord’s presence amongst them in living and victorious
power, and in the forefront of this Host of the Lord, the testimony of the power
of complete consecration to God! O, if the church of God — if the Host of the
Lord, had maintained this wondrously blessed place of consecration and power,
would it not have led indeed to the fulfilment of the prayer of the Son to the
Father, "That they all may be one, that the world may believe"? (John 17:1-26).
But another striking thought comes in here also. When the sound of these
trumpets was heard, the people were to shout with a great shout. In Psalms
89:15, we find exactly the same word, in the original language, translated
joyful sound." "Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound; they shall
walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance." And here we find this shout of
victory — the fitting accompaniment of all the surroundings in this scene. They
walked in "the light of the countenance" of Him who was pre-figured in the ark,
and knew the "joyful sound" — the joyful shout of conquerors through obedience
to Him, and through His victorious power.

Forth sallied this little cavalcade day after day; contemptible, doubtless, in
the eyes of the proud city of Jericho; but the Lord was there, and obedience in
patience gave character to the little host, as they waited the time that the
shout would be answered by the falling walls, and the deliverance of those on
the Lord’s side who were within. But one day, or two, or three, was not
sufficient to accomplish this victory. Seven days must be completely fulfilled;
perfect patience must be tried and proved; but it was the patience of God! And
while exercising this perfect patience, each day the little army returned to the
true place of strength and self-judgment — to Gilgal. It seemed a foolish thing
to those who may have seen it from the proud walls of Jericho; but those in the
secret of the Lord could afford to bear this reproach of Christ and contempt of
the enemy: they had faith in Him whose Ark they bore on their shoulders, and
whose unseen presence ordered all! And the seventh day came. On that day they
were to encompass the city seven times. "And it came to pass at the seventh
time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people,
Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city." His victorious power was working
through their obedience; and "So the people shouted when (the priests) blew with
the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the
trumpet; and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down
flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him,
and they took the city." The Lord had given it to them in right and title, but
they had thus to realize the possession and dislodge the enemy. But more; those
who were captives to the enemy’s power were to be delivered. Rahab (with her
"house") had been a "prisoner of hope" since the day she had "received the spies
in peace, and sent them out another way." She had identified herself in faith
with the Lord’s people when they had not an inch of their possessions; a host of
wandering pilgrims. But her faith saw beyond all this and could say, "I know
that the Lord hath given you the land" (Joshua 2:9). She looked for a "true
token," by the faith which wrought by love, in that it sought the safety of her
father, and her mother, and her brethren, and sisters, and "all that they had."
In the obedience of faith she bound the scarlet line to the window — the "true
token" — which these witnesses of the Lord had given her. Not only did she
"believe with the heart" their testimony; but "confessed (it) with the mouth,"
in binding the line to the window of her house on the wall. The day came when
Joshua redeemed the pledge these men had given, as the Lord Jesus will own every
true pledge which the soldiers of Christ now make in His name. When the walls of
Jericho fell down flat, the only thing which remained was Rahab’s house on the
wall! She might say with us, "We receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved;" all
will move by judgment some day, unless that which stands on the propitiation
wrought by Jesus, and is reconciled. "By faith the harlot Rahab perished not
with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace,"
testifies one divine witness (Hebrews 11:1-40). And another adds, "Likewise also
was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she received the messengers,
and had sent them out another way" (James 2:1-26). Her faith, like that of the
woman of Samaria in another day, had wrought by love, and "many had believed
because of the word of the woman." Her father, mother, brethren, and all that
she had; all her kindred were saved and delivered on that day; and this through
the obedience of the victorious hosts of Israel. More still: she was not merely
delivered, and then left to her own resources; but she was brought out to the
camp of the Host of the Lord, and eventually had a place of deepest honour in
the ancestry of the Lord of glory (Ruth 4:21; Matthew 1:5). Where now should the
victorious Host have gone? To carry on this brilliant warfare, says some one,
still into the enemy’s power. Nay; they should have returned to Gilgal — the
place of the secret of power, and renewal of the strength of the Lord! But a day
of victory is a trying day, and, instead of this, even Joshua fails. (Blessed
that the true Joshua never fails!) He "sent men from Jericho to Ai" (Joshua
7:2). Alas! they had not returned to Gilgal; for the victory had led to
negligence and confidence in their own resources. But I pass on.

Now the end of Ephesians 1:1-23 pointed out Christ — the true Ark — in the
waters of death, and the people passing over dry-shod, as quickened together
with Christ, raised up together, and seated together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus. This was before us in type in the third chapter of Joshua, when
the Ark was borne on the priests’ shoulders in the river of death. But there, we
remarked, when it was a question of sovereign grace, the Ark went first into the
waters, as the Lord Jesus into the death where we lay (Ephesians 1:19). But in
Joshua 6 we saw, as it was a question of faithfulness and spiritual conflict,
the Ark came on behind.

Just the same analogy as Joshua 3:1-17 bears to Joshua 6:1-27, in this way, such
analogy, may we not say, lies between the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1:15-22,
and his prayer in Ephesians 3:14-21. The Lord is first in death and
resurrection, and then the people pass over — quickened together with Him, and
so are seen in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. May we not safely give to the
prayer of Ephesians 1:15-22 the characteristic name of the prayer of Possession?
The apostle desires that they may know what they possess — the calling of God
into the Father’s house (Ephesians 1:3-6): the inheritance of God — that is, the
universal possession of all created things set under Christ and the church as
joint heirs with Him (Ephesians 1:9-11); and the power to usward who believe,
which was wrought in Christ when God raised Him as Man from the dead and set Him
on high; this same power had wrought in quickening and raising them. But when we
come to the prayer of Ephesians 3:1-21, which may we not characterise as the
apostle’s desire (that we should not only know what we possess and are brought
into as in Ephesians 1:1-23, but) that we might realize and take possession of
by faith, all that is ours in Christ? Is it not then the prayer of Realization?
This being so, he prays that we may be strengthened with might by the Spirit of
the Father, in the inner man; thus we are put first, and then it is to the end
that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. He has been set on high — the Son
of the Father — the centre of all the wondrous counsels and purposes of glory
and He desires that we may realize what we are before Him, in the consciousness
of our souls, in order that Christ, who is this centre, may dwell in the heart’s
affections. Not merely that the "eyes of our heart*" may be enlightened to see
(objectively) this prospect of our possessions into which Christ as man had
entered, and which were ours in Him, as in Ephesians 1:1-23; but that in our
hearts Christ might dwell; He who is the centre of all the glory. Then looking
out from this centre, and being rooted and grounded in love, He desires that we
may be able to comprehend (subjectively) with all saints, this boundless scene
of glory — "What is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;" an ocean
without a shore. To be with the heart of Him who is the centre of it all — to
have Him who is its centre dwelling in our hearts by faith; thus we must take in
what His heart does, and all those whom His heart embraces, even "all saints."
They are the closest and nearest circle in the affections of Christ. We may not
be able to go with all of them in their ways here below, if they are walking in
disobedience to the truth; but we shall, if near the heart of Jesus, bear them
upon ours, and have communion with the thoughts that Jesus thinks of them on
high.

{*"Eyes of your heart" is the correct reading of Ephesians 1:17.} But boundless
and wondrous as are these fields of glory, they do not fix the affections; they
do not engross the heart. And so he goes on, "And to know the love of Christ" —
this makes the heart feel at home. If, as one has remarked, I were unused to the
courts of kings, and I found myself there, they might dazzle me with their
splendour, and the like; but splendour presents nothing on which the affections
may rest. But suppose I found the dearest friend I had there, and the chief
person there? At once I am at home. Thus from the glory (which, though unnamed,
is implied), he passes on to recall the heart to Jesus, and to give it to feel
at home in the scene, "the love of Christ" — the very love which now I know, and
which I have learned here below in the sorrows and joys and needs of the way.
But even if it sets the heart restful and at home, he adds that it too "passeth
knowledge." Thus we are "filled into all the fulness of God."

"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think" (so He is, most surely) but, "according to the power that worketh in us."
Not merely a power working for us, blessed as that is, and has been; but "in
us," enabling us to realise and possess consciously this glory, in Him who is
its centre — to overcome what hinders — to take these things of Christ out of
the enemy’s hand (as Israel, by the power that wrought in them in taking
Jericho), and thus bring Him that glory even now, which He will have "in the
Church throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

Chapter 21.

Unity of Action; Diversity of Operation: Joshua’s Spear.

Before we close, perhaps some practical thoughts on the living activities of the
Lord’s Host may be helpful to some. May the Lord direct us in our thoughts.
There is a sentence in Joshua 6:1-27 which has much power and significance —
"The people went up into the city, every man straight before him." There was no
clashing with each other’s work or pathway, while the fullest unanimity, the
most perfect fellowship and harmony prevailed amongst the conquering Host of the
Lord. This is the divine order, and there is none like it. There was no one
person had the same path, or the same work to do as another. God never repeats
Himself I He never makes two leaves of a tree — two blades of grass — two faces
alike. He never sets two members of Christ to do the same service in the Church
of God. Each, however closely his work may lie with that of another, has his own
work to do; and no person can do another’s work as well as he can do his own.
Nay, he can, of all men, do his work best himself. To be successful as the Host
of the Lord, there must be the divine unity of action, while diversity of
operation necessarily follows. The Lord guides all spiritually, and each one
shows his confidence in his Lord and Master, and his obedience to His commands,
by going "straight before him" in the pathway he has been ordained. Like the
soldiers of a mighty army, we are moving right and left in the smoke and
confusion and din of the battle-field; we do not, and cannot know the bearing of
each act of ours on each other in carrying out the plan of the battle, or the
purposes of the Captain, in the presence of the enemy. The mistake we frequently
make is, instead of seeing to it that we are keeping line ourselves, we are
watching the pathway and service of another; perhaps encroaching on it and
hindering him, and in consequence not doing our own special work. Now this
should not be. Wisdom is marked in each step of obedience; and each step of
obedience finds each in his place with God. The confidence of each too, in his
Commander is thus proved, and his work is done in quiet confidingness of heart
in Him. The action of some unseen soldier of Christ, whose pathway lies in some
secluded corner, who is perhaps only known to Him, has its bearing on the whole
Church of God. He may think his actions are of no consequence, he is so humble
and insignificant a member of Christ: he has yet to learn that "those members of
the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary . . . for God hath tempered
the body together, having given more abundant honour to those parts which
lacked: that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should
have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the
members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with
it" (1 Corinthians 12:22-26).

Now this is strikingly illustrated in type in the eighth chapter of the Book of
Joshua, in the history of the taking of Ai. We have the doctrine unfolded for us
especially in Ephesians 4:1-16, Romans 12:1-21, etc. When Israel had failed
after the destruction of Jericho, and the solemn discipline in the case of Achan
had been accomplished, Israel thus "proving themselves clear in this matter,"
the Lord had directed that all the people of war should now go up. Ambushments
are laid; some at the west and some at the north of the city, all under the
direction of Joshua by the command of the Lord.

There are even now in the army of Christ (these, so to speak), outposts,
pickets, and ambushments, as in another way there were then. Some are standing
alone for Christ, far away from the fellowship of the saints. Like the lonely
but watchful sentry, upon whose fidelity the safety of the army in measure
depends — some have this lonely post. But whether his path be isolated, or
amongst the congregated saints, upon the faithfulness, watchfulness, devotedness
of each depends (as far as man’s responsibility reaches) the work of God in the
whole. The men of Ai are drawn into the snare; the army of the Lord in the
forefront seem to them to give way, yea, to flee. There are times to do this
even in this day in our spiritual wars. A time to let our yieldingness be so
known to all men, as to make it appear to them that we have nothing to say. Such
a moment may seem a triumph to the foe. But how short-lived! He is led to commit
himself the more completely; but faith counts on the resources of God, and
abides His time. Thus did the Lord in His day, and all seemed a complete triumph
of the enemy. But O what wondrous resources lay behind! What a work was He
accomplishing, when in His apparent defeat and desertion by all! The enemy
seemed to have gained such a complete victory, when Jesus, despised and rejected
of men, died a malefactor’s death; and wretched men could say, "Ah, so would we
have it!" But what a downfall was his, when the bars of death — the "gates of
hades" — were borne on the shoulders of this Mighty Conqueror, and the enemy’s
last strong citadel — death — succumbs, abolished by the power of His
resurrection.

We too may seem at times to be defeated — to yield, and flee before the enemy’s
power, confiding in our Captain and the unseen resources — the armies of reserve
which He can employ to accomplish His victory. But all this requires faith in
Him, faith that thinks not of self, but of Christ. The watchful eye of Jesus
marks all from the heights above; He withdraws not His eyes from His people.
"And the Lord said unto Joshua, stretch out the spear that is in thy hand
towards Ai: for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the
spear that he had in his hand toward the city. And the ambush arose quickly out
of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they
entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire" (Joshua
8:18).

Thus we find that the Holy Ghost produces under Christ, unity of action in the
hearts of those who are thus under His mighty and constraining power. Wondrous
Unity! past man’s comprehension; past his ordering. But no difficulty is felt
when the Lord is thus at work, and an obedient people act in the current of His
mighty operations. Joshua’s spear — and that by no preconcert — was stretched
out by a hand which grew not weary till all was accomplished. This marks this
lovely concert of action in the unity which is indeed of God. Each soldier on
that day had his own special pathway; yet there was but one Joshua, with one
spear, who ordered all. True unity; yet true diversity brought forth to fruition
this victory.

If we turn to Ephesians 4:1-16, we find these activities unfolded in the church
of God. Complete, sevenfold unity begins the chapter (Ephesians 4:1-6), yet
diversity marks the place of each and all. The "prisoner of Jesus Christ"
exhorts that we should walk worthy of this vocation which he has just unfolded.
It embraces with its collateral truths three prominent features. The calling of
God into Christ’s place as Son and Man before Him (Ephesians 1:1-23). Then our
corporate relation to Christ, the Head, as His body (Ephesians 1:1-23). And in
the close of Ephesians 2:1-22 the fact that here on earth we are builded
together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. All these wondrous things
form the basis of his exhortation in Ephesians 4:1-16.

"Lowliness and meekness" become us most surely then, in God’s presence. To be
lowly in truth we must be consciously there. "Long-suffering" too; for the
greater the evil, the more must this divine quality be found in us. It is more
than patience; long-suffering supposes outrage and injury, and our bearing it as
God. Then too, "Forbearing one another in love;" it needs this much, for flesh
is in each, and we have flesh in ourselves. It can never combat with flesh in
another; thus there must be forbearance. It is wonderful when this forbearance
is exercised towards the actions of flesh in another how he is ashamed, and how
the soul is brought to self-judgment sooner or later before the Lord. All this
then is prefatory to the great end in view, the glory of Christ, and in walking
worthy of our vocation. We shall be characterised by the blessed qualities of
lowliness and meekness, long-suffering and forbearance in love; this divine
character crowning all, and qualifying (what otherwise would be but human
amiability) with the nature of God. The Apostle now names the sevenfold unity.
First the essential real unity to which our corporate responsibility is
attached. He begins by saying, "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in
the uniting bond of peace." All diligence is needed for this in such an evil day
as that through which we now pass. This is its scope. Then, when we come to its
practice all should be "using diligence to keep" it, in the uniting bond of
peace, in "one body." The first two unities are connected with the Holy Ghost,
"There is one body and one Spirit." This is the real thing formed by the
presence of the Holy Ghost, "one hope" — it can have none other. There can be
but one for that which is held in living unity by the "one Spirit" of God, in
"one body." The next three are connected with Jesus as "one Lord." Here we find
His place of dignity as owned in profession by all who call on the name of the
Lord, "both theirs and ours." Such have but one common confession of His name —
"one faith." It is this is in his thought. Elsewhere there is also "the faith,"
as the truth held between the soul and God; or "faith" in itself, as a divine
gift and power in the soul. But here it is the common confession and profession
of "one faith" in "one Lord," and this expressed by "one baptism" — of water.
The last unity brings us in connection with "God," as such; He who is "Father of
all" (cf. Ephesians 3:15), or supreme Author of them; who is "above all;" here
we find His supreme place; He also permeates all, and lastly, He is "in you all"
— thus He dwells in the saints. This then is the administrative place of the
Spirit, of the Lord, and of God. The revelation of the Trinity we find
elsewhere. We have these unities connected with the Holy Ghost, real, essential,
and vital. Unities connected with the Lord — those of profession and confession.
And with God as Father and supreme.

He then turns to the great source of divine diversity in the Church, to Jesus —
the true Joshua. "But unto every one of us is given grace, according to the
measure of the gift of Christ;" here are contemplated the Hosts of the redeemed
on earth — the whole church of God. Every one in the mighty army has his place.
What business would he have to be in and of that Host if he had not some office
to perform? "According to the measure of the gift of Christ" determines all. He
sees fit to give, and He is Lord of all. He is seen here in His glorious
exaltation, as "ascended up on high." How then did He reach that wondrous place?
First He went down into the stronghold of Satan’s power — death; but He did so
as one who overcame this power of the enemy by apparent defeat, as we sing, "He
death by dying slew." Then He burst the bars of the grave asunder, and "ascended
up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." At another day a
little rehearsal of this wondrous victory, in an earthly way was celebrated in
the song of Deborah. "Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise,
Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam" (Judges 5:12). But
its effects only lasted for a little moment, and then passed away. Now this
eternal victory of Jesus is so complete that He can turn those who were captives
to the power of the enemy and as thus set free, and make them His Host against
all his power in the energy of that day of glory, in which He will bind Satan
and cast him into the bottomless pit, and fill the earth with the full results
of His victory and glory. Shall not His Hosts then gladly publish His victory?
Israel’s first great salvation is ever a type and sample of their last and
greatest deliverance. In the day of their redemption from Egypt they had to
"stand still and see the salvation of the Lord;" in their final deliverance it
will be the same story. Their extremity is God’s opportunity, as is ever the
case. The Church can say "Thou hast ascended up on high, thou hast led captivity
captive; thou hast received gifts in the man" (Psalms 68:18). The day will come
when it will be said, "Yea, for the rebellious also (Israel), that Jehovah God
might dwell among them." Meanwhile, "He gave gifts to men," He has not only
"received gifts in man" according to the Psalm, but given "gifts to men" —
members of His body. The same power that will free the world from Satan’s power,
He now dispenses in His members, in order to free others from that power, and
build them up by the word of His grace.

What a wondrous Christ is He with whom we have to do! One who first descended
"into the lower parts of the earth," i.e. the grave. The creature fell with the
first Adam, and became subject to Satan’s power and to death; Jesus — the second
Adam — went under death, and then ascended far above all heavens." I look down
to the deepest depths of ruin where the creature lay; I look again up to the
highest heavens, even "the heaven of heavens which is the Lord’s," and I behold
a Man filling it all! From the extremest depths of ruin, to the highest heights
of glory He has traversed, "that he might fill all"! and this as Man. It is such
a Christ with whom we have to do; such a Christ we have to serve, in the
consciousness of the breadth of these wondrous fields of glory as realized by
faith; in the depth of the creature’s misery as fallen, and under Satan’s power.

Then we learn the diversity of the special permanent gifts which He has given:
"And he gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some
pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the
ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-12). Apostles
did their own special foundation work, and then passed away. Their special power
and foundation ministry is continued to none: none could now say, "Have I not
seen the Lord?" a necessary qualification for this work; nor could any now say,
"And so ordain I in all the churches." Without these special qualities there are
none. Their work then was done and ended when the last apostle passed from this
scene. He gave "some apostles," and there it ended. And He "gave some prophets"
— Mark was one; Luke was another, may I not say? They were not apostles, but
they wrote by revelation their Gospels and the Acts. Such like service, with the
oral teaching as revealed then by the prophets, was their work; it has been
accomplished, and they too have passed away; their work was done.*

{*The gift of prophecy is continued now in another way. For those, who in
ministering speak to the conscience of the hearer from God — whether to saint or
sinner — are prophesying in the ordinary sense. (Cf. John 4:19; 1 Corinthians
14:1-40, passim)}

"And he gave . . . some evangelists," whose work is to carry the "glad tidings"
to the lost, in this evil world, and bring souls when delivered from the bondage
of Satan, to the consciousness of their place in Christ, and thus as of the Host
of the Lord to do battle against the enemy.

"And some pastors and teachers" to shepherd and feed the flock of God, and train
them in the ways of the Lord. All these are special and permanent gifts attached
to individuals; an evangelist is always an evangelist, even when he is not
evangelizing. A pastor and teacher is always this, though not always at his
work. They are the definite abiding gifts of Christ to the Church, "Till we all
come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." This is
the end and aim of ministry in the Church of God. Even when the Lord shows
(Ephesians 4:12) for what purpose He has thus bestowed these gifts, He puts the
individual saint first, even before He speaks of the whole body. Just as the
place and relationship to the Father, of the individual saint, is shown most
fully in chapter 1 of this epistle, before his corporate place and relation to
Christ as a member of His body is touched upon in its end; so here He adds, "For
the perfecting of the saints (first; then) for the work of the ministry, for the
edifying of the body of Christ." And the end to be attained, "Till we all come"
— that is, every individual saint of the whole body of Christ — "in the unity of
the faith," one uniform basis of faith in the understanding of the things of
Christ, and consciousness of our place before Him; the standard of all being
"the knowledge of the Son of God" — He for whom the Church waits; upon whose
person as risen, she is built; "The Son of the living God;"in the faith of whom
she overcomes the world, and who will take her to Himself for His Father’s house
and the glory. The measure of growth in each being "a perfect (or full-grown)
man," in contrast with being "babes" (Ephesians 4:14); the "perfect man" having
still but one just measure and stature to which to attain, that of the "fulness
of Christ."

Then after those permanent gifts are treated of, we find the "whole body," in
the effectual working of the measure of each one part." Here we find the place
and function of all the members of Christ without exception. The expression
"effectual working" is very beautiful; for not only on the individual growth to
"full age" of each Christian, depends the prosperity of the whole body; but also
upon the "effectual working of the measure of each one part," hangs the healthy
growth and edification in love of the whole. The heart pauses for a moment to
contemplate what the Church of God — the Host of the Lord — would have been, had
these wondrously blessed thoughts of Christ been practically carried on to
fruition. Still, blessed be His name, the thought is unchanged, and faith thinks
His thoughts and faithfulness acts upon them, even were there but one or two
acting in their truth on earth. What a wreck — what a ruin, has the Church
become in the hands of Satan and men! Yet still the work of grace and truth
proceeds, and it will be found, in spite of all the failure, that He who knew
the eternal thoughts and counsels of God, and descended to carry them out in the
power of divine love, will effectually do so, and present the Church to Himself
"Holy and without blame before him in love." In Romans 12:1-21 we also find this
"unity of action," and "diversity of operation" — in living and practical power.
The chapter begins with the weightiest of all truths in the practice of a
soldier of the Lord’s Host: personal consecration to the Lord (Romans 12:1-3).
"I beseech you," says the apostle, "by the mercies of God." Wondrous basis of
divine exhortation, of which the mighty mercies unfolded from Romans 3:1-31,
Romans 4:1-25, Romans 5:1-21, Romans 6:1-23, Romans 7:1-25, Romans 8:1-39* are
the foundation in this chapter. "That ye present your bodies," heretofore the
slaves of sin and every folly, "a living sacrifice." How touchingly does this
point to Jesus as the perfect meat-offering — the sinless Man ever before the
eye of heaven, and before His Father His perfection in this lovely character was
only proved in its completeness by His death in obedience to His Father, and for
His Father’s glory. Were we to enter upon the full beauty of its presentation of
the Lord, in Leviticus 2:1-16, we should notice an ingredient which, while it
formed no part of the offering, was never to be forgotten, that is, the "salt."

{*The direct connection is between the end of Romans 8:1-39 and Romans 12:1-21.
Romans 9:1-33, Romans 10:1-21, Romans 11:1-36, are parenthetic, and refer to
Israel in the past, in the present, and in the future.}

Salt represents the separative power of holiness, which in Him was always
perfect. There was a holiness in Jesus which He used to bring God’s love to man,
because He could not be defiled. But it was that inward power of it which
distinguished Him from all other men. It is this He presses at the close of one
of His most deeply solemn discourses (Mark 9:1-50), "Have salt in yourselves,
and have peace with one another." He exhorts to this inward power of holiness
and holy grace which connects the soul practically with God, enabling it to
refuse the evil and choose the good in this evil world. This renders this
"living sacrifice" "acceptable unto God." So far as in us lies, it is thus that
the frankincense of His graces are seen in us. No one being ever was offered in
itself to God but Jesus. But His was that intrinsic perfection ever presented to
Him, and tried by the judgment of fire, yet only and always yielding its own
sweet savour: all the frankincense went up to God. So far then as Christ liveth
in us, this "acceptableness" is found. This is our intelligent service.

He then passes on to our relative place of separation from the world and its
ways, and in obedience thus we find as Enoch, God’s good and acceptable and
perfect will; or as Moses, having found grace in God’s sight, we seek His way,
that we may find grace in His sight. Then He looks (Romans 12:3) for lowliness,
yet sobriety of thought as to ourselves, in the place of responsibility God has
set each one. No false humility; but humbly yet firmly accepting the place and
measure of gift which God has bestowed, and this in dependence on Him.

After this personal consecration or devotedness, he turns to the mutual
relationship of all, as "one body in Christ" (Romans 12:4-5); "For as we have
many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being
many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." Then he
passes on to the individual responsibility of each and all. If it be ministry,
it is to be waited on; or prophecy; or teaching; or exhortation. He who gives is
to do it with simplicity; he that rules (takes the lead) with diligence. He that
showeth mercy, with cheerfulness. Love is to be without dissimulation, and from
the bottom of the heart. Evil to be abhorred; good, to be desired and loved.
Kindly affections flowing to others; each taking the lead in paying honour one
to the other. Diligence in business, and without slothfulness, thus serving the
Lord. Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer.
Distributing to the necessities of saints; given to hospitality, Bless them
which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice,
and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not
high things, but associate with what is lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all
men. If it be possible, as far as it lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; but give place unto wrath: for it is
written, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine
enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt
heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with
good."

Blessed list of graces and virtues which God looks to find in the practical life
and warfare of the soldiers of Christ! May they be engraven on the heart, and
seen in the lives of all who are His, that His name may be glorified!

Thus, while we see how unity of action in "one body," is imperative on the
soldiers of Christ, when moving practically under His eye and command as Captain
of the Host of the Lord; diversity of operation is maintained throughout: each
having his own place and work assigned to him in the whole. As the members of
our human bodies, though many, do not interfere one with the other in the
discharge of their several functions; but each working in unity, form one
harmonious whole, so is it in the Church of God! May He give singleness of eye
and purpose of heart to His people — to each and all; that we may know His mind
and will, and, knowing it, be found effectually working in the measure assigned
to us, where we can best glorify Him and carry out His designs and victories
here. The day will come when the armour may be put off, and the girdle of
service be laid aside for ever! Then He will put it on in His eternally blessed
love; and, girding Himself afresh, will come forth to serve us with the best
things from the table of the Father, feeding us with His own hand, to make us
enjoy the more that House on high in which we shall dwell with Him and He with
us, in its peaceful joys for eternity.

Chapter 22.

"The Last Trump:" Conclusion.

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of
the archangel, and with the trump of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

There is but one command more for which the Host of the Lord now waits — a
precious, glorious word! He whose voice once spake on earth in lowly grace, and
now speaks from heaven with grace unchanged by man’s sin, will utter that
"shout" of relationship to His own. Known only to them, and heard only by those
who have already known the Shepherd’s voice; in the twinkling of an eye all
shall be changed, and "for ever with the Lord."

What a thrilling note it will be to many a toiling one, who has trodden
faithfully his lowly path in the armies of the Lord! Perhaps he had laid down
his head on his Master’s bosom and "slept," till that day should come — his
spirit with the Lord. It may be that he may be found amongst those who are
"alive and remain," and when the voice of Jesus sounds it finds him at his post,
like a man who waits for his Lord. In the thousand times ten thousand
circumstances of life, the voice will reach those whom He loves, and He will
carry him to His Father’s house on high. The mighty Host of the Lord will rise,
in silence and secrecy, like His own resurrection. He will glean up the dust of
His people, hitherto carefully preserved by His living power. The four winds of
heaven may have scattered it abroad; the four quarters of the earth may have
apparently swallowed it up; but it must surrender His prize. The sea must give
up those who are Christ’s, and who perhaps found there an unmarked tomb. The
sealed tomb, the silent places of the dead, must be gleaned of their precious
dust. The unmoved sod; the yet-sealed tomb, will tell the tale, that He who left
the grave with unbroken seal in presence of the sleeping watch; He who left the
grave-clothes "wrapped together" unmoved, has ordered that with the same
silence, the same quiet yet mighty power, the "dead in Christ" will rise. They
will quit their places as He, the "first-fruits" did, when He comes. The living
army still here then hear His voice, and then this corruptible puts on its
incorruption; then this mortal puts on its immortality, and the exulting song of
the Church is heard in response to His mighty "shout" — "O death, where is thy
sting; O grave, where is thy victory"! (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) Then "they will
gaze upon their Master, with His name upon their brow."

Like Enoch of old they will not be "found" — for God will have translated them.

What an incentive is this hope to earnestness of purpose in serving Him for whom
we wait, meanwhile. The "terror of the Lord" for those who are not Christ’s must
press itself heavily upon the heart of His soldiers here. They know that the
sleeping Church has had the midnight cry. They know how His coming had been
forgotten — nay denied. They know how that many who love Him had fallen into the
"evil servant’s" snare, who said, "My lord delayeth his coming." Again they have
heard His voice, and have trimmed their lamps, and "gone forth to meet" Him.
They know the solemnity of the hour in which they now stand. They feel that the
dawning of the day is near; they watch through the gloom for the Church’s
Bridegroom — the "Bright and the Morning Star." They feel that all the confusion
of the present moment marks the state of the poor foolish virgins. They know
too, alas, the solemn wail that will pass over these lands where Christ is
professed, but alas, Himself unknown — "Lord, Lord, open unto us," and this when
the door is shut for ever! Solemn moment of terror indeed will it be! But, O!
how bright and living a moment it will be to those who belong to the "first
resurrection;" who are raised or changed by His mighty power as the witness and
proof of their complete acceptance in the Beloved. His resurrrection was a proof
of the perfection and glory of the person of Him who was there. Ours will be the
proof of the perfection of His work in which we stand. Surely then we may well
"comfort one another with these words."

"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in
the Lord." Amen.


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  CHAPTER 40: 05.01. THE WAYS OF GOD
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The Ways of God Government, Grace, and Glory.

F. G. Patterson.

1865 253 etc.


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  CHAPTER 41: 05.02.     TABLE OF CONTENTS
========================================================================

Table of Contents Chapter 1. — The General Scope of the Dealings of God.

Chapter 2. — The Past History of the People of Israel.

Chapter 3. — The Times of the Gentiles, and Their Judgment.

Chapter 4. — The Calling of the Church, and Her Glory.

Chapter 5. — The Corruption of Christendom.

Chapter 6. — The Judgment of Israel and the Nations Introductive of the Kingdom.

Chapter 7. — The Glory, or Kingdom.

Chapter 8. — Satan Loosed for a Little Season, the Great White Throne, and the
Eternal State.

Chapter 9. — Conclusion.


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  CHAPTER 42: 05.03.     INTRODUCTION
========================================================================

Introduction At a time like the present, so full of events crowding themselves
together in the history of this present age — an age which ends with
consequences so deep and solemn to the world, and so full of blessing to the
Christian, and to the Church of God — it is a blessing from the Lord to have our
minds directed towards the prophetic word, and to the ways of God. It is said of
the prophetic word, that unto it "ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light
that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your
hearts." It is desired as briefly as is consistent with the end in view, and as
the Lord may graciously afford guidance and blessing to our need; to bring
before the mind of the people of God the general scope of the great
dispensational dealings of God, which it has pleased Him, in His infinite grace,
to make known to us in His word, so as to display those dealings in government,
grace, and glory. In this way some may be enabled to follow those dealings in
their consecutive order, as nearly as such may be followed, so as to grasp the
purposes of God thus revealed.

Truly we may say, we only "know in part;" but the Lord is very gracious, and
waits on our slowness to learn.

It is not pretended to give a complete view of the details of these things, but
such as may lead the mind to a closer searching after the more minute details in
the word of God, and a more perfect apprehension of His purposes and ways. In
carrying out such a desire, many truths, well known of late amongst the Lord’s
people, will be before us — needfully so — that the more important parts may not
be forgotten or omitted, in the consecutive order of God’s ways. And should it
be found that it is necessary to depart from this order, it will be but to link
together more fully and clearly the events, that the mind may be enabled to pass
along the chain without leaving a link behind. The purpose of these papers is to
put the truth plainly and simply before the mind from Scripture, for "godly
edifying which is in faith;" not to combat with error, however useful and
necessary such may be in its season. For it is strongly felt that, when the
truth with its clear and perfect light shines into the soul, it dispels the
darkness around, and finds a resting-place in the heart that desires to be
subject to the word of God. May the consideration of these truths prove a
blessing from Him, who alone can bless; and may He enable us to live in the
power of the things which are unseen and eternal, and abundantly bless His own
word! In searching into these subjects, a very large scope of Scripture will be
before us, besides the prophetic scriptures, which embrace five great distinct
subjects, viz.: — first, the corruption or ruin of Israel; secondly, judgment
following the ruin; thirdly, the times of the Gentiles; fourthly, the crisis of
the world’s history; fifthly, the glory or kingdom. I would premise one remark
upon 2 Peter 1:20 : "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of
any private interpretation." There have been certain partial fulfilments of
prophecy in times past, which, no doubt, bore largely upon them the features of
the occurrences to which, when fulfilled, in a primary application, they
referred; but if we were to say that their scope ended there, we should miss the
mind of the Spirit in the subject of the scripture, and make it of private
interpretation. Prophecy begins in the mind and counsels of God, and only ends
in His own glory to be revealed and perfected and displayed in his Son; it links
together two things, the counsels of God and their accomplishment in Christ. We
cannot, therefore, begin at a subsequent point, or stop at any one prior to the
end, without losing its great aim. No matter how exact may have been the
apparent fulfilment of certain prophecies, when we come to examine the details,
we are sure to find features which clearly show that, when God was pleased to
use the circumstances that were coming, or that were then before Him, He has
always shown that He had other thoughts in view reaching on to the
accomplishment of His full purposes and glory, of which the matter before Him
served as a type. Prophecy, too, is occupied about earthly events, not about
heavenly. "There is one glory of the celestial and another glory of the
terrestrial" truly; but prophecy is silent as to "the mystery which, from the
beginning of the world, had been hid in God." "The mystery, which was kept
secret since the world began, but now is made manifest." "This is a great
mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."


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  CHAPTER 43: 05.04.     THE GENERAL SCOPE OF THE DEALINGS OF GOD.
========================================================================

The General Scope of the Dealings of God. With reference to this subject, we
will refer to three scriptures as follow: "But when the fulness of time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law." (Galatians
4:4.) "In the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in
one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even
in him; in whom we also have obtained an inheritance." (Ephesians 1:10-11.)

"And the angel . . . sware by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . that there
should be time (delay) no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh
angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished."
(Revelation 10:6, etc.) These three portions of Scripture mark out three great
leading events or epochs of God’s dealings towards the world: the first of them
is past, and the two others manifestly future; the difference in the two last
lying in this, that the one ends when the other begins. We shall now endeavour
to ascertain from Scripture, to what past dealings and ways of God the
expression in Galatians refers, "When the fulness of time was come." We must,
consequently, take a general glance at the past history of the world as revealed
to us.

We turn to Genesis 1:2 :, and there we find that God, having created the man and
woman, bestows upon them the "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." A universal dominion bestowed upon
them over all created things. We pass on to Genesis 3:1-24 :, and there we find
that Satan had come in and succeeded in obtaining this headship through man who
had fallen, and through his lusts, when estranged from God. To Adam alive and
innocent had been given a law upon the observing of which the retention of the
blessings and dominion depended, and which would, as a creature, have kept him
in his proper place of subjection to God. Adam thus fallen hears a promise, that
the woman’s seed (which he was not) should, in due time, bruise the head of
Satan, who had thus obtained the headship by his deceit; and thus he passes out
from the presence of God. "So he drove out the man." Then begins the probation
of man in this condition, which lasted about four thousand years, till "the
fulness of the time was come." For about sixteen or seventeen hundred years of
this time of trial men are left to themselves (God never leaving Himself without
a witness) till the flood, when the earth was "corrupt before God, and . . . was
filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt:
for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." "The invisible things of
him from the creation of the world" having been "clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead," leaving them
"without excuse." And so God said, "The end of all flesh is come before me, for
the earth is filled with violence through them: and behold I will destroy them
with the earth." "And so he brought in the flood upon the world of the ungodly .
. . and the world that then was being overflowed with water perished," and thus
ended the trial of man left to himself.

Noah and his family are saved through this judgment, and we find him on the
earth thus cleansed. Into his hand is given the "sword;" government is entrusted
to him — "Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the
image of God made he man." Noah thus entrusted, began to be a husbandman, and he
planted a vineyard, and he drank of wine, and was drunken; thus losing, morally,
the position in which he had been placed by God. The worship of devils began.
Men, when they knew God, "glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but
became vain in their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened:
professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of
the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds,
and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." "The things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God."

Self-will thus fills the heart of men — self-will that would prove a centre in
itself, having lost the link which linked it to God, the only centre of good:
men unite to make a centre of unity apart from God. "Let us build a city and a
tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be
scattered about upon the face of the whole earth." Man would call this unity,
God calls it confusion, (Babel,) and He goes down and scatters men abroad,
giving them the restraint of tongues, "an iron band round men." When the world
had thus gone into idolatry, "and worshipped and served the creature more than
the Creator, who is blessed for ever;" God separated to Himself one man,
Abraham, and in him a family, a nation, that He might (amongst other counsels)
place man under another test, on new ground. In course of time He separates this
nation of Israel from the world (Egypt) to Himself, giving them thus separated,
Himself dwelling amongst them, His law. This law represented to man the rule of
his responsibility as a sinner, and also represented the authority of God.
Ignorant of themselves, they accept it as the condition of their relationship
with God; the law-giver goes to receive it, and before the conditions are named,
those who accept the conditions, set up a golden calf and worship it as their
God, and fail! God then puts the law into the hands of a mediator and adds the
conditions of longsuffering and mercy to its claims. The history of the nation
of Israel, thus set on new ground, gives us the result of this fresh trial of
man. It lasted till the captivity in Babylon. During that time of trial we
listen to the pleading voice of the prophets and messengers of God, striving to
win back the rebellious people to the observation of the conditions of their
relationship with Him, and to keep the law that defined them. "But they," says
the prophet, "like Adam, have transgressed the covenant; they have dealt
treacherously against me." (Hosea 5:7.) They broke the covenant upon which the
blessings depended, as Adam had done.

Man now gets another trial. Supreme power is put into his hand. Universal
dominion is given into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon: "Thou, O
king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom,
power, and strength, and glory; and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the
beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, hath he given into thine hand, and
hath made thee ruler over them all." (Daniel 2:37-38.) How then will he use it?
Will it be to the glory and honour of Him from whom he had received it? The
result is known. Lifted up in pride of heart, he makes of himself a centre, and
for a religious and idolatrous unity apart from God persecutes His people.
Lifted up in pride he says, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the
house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my
majesty." (Daniel 4:30.) He loses his moral reason and becomes a beast! And now
into this wilderness of the world, into the spot where God had put His vineyard
and planted His vine, that it might bring forth fruit for Him — the vineyard
that He had fenced and gathered out the stones, and planted with His choicest
vine, and of which He could say, "What could have been done more to my vineyard
that I have not done in it?" and when He looked that it should bring forth
grapes, brought it forth wild grapes, with all His care and culture, "the
degenerate plant of a strange vine:" — into the moral wilderness of this world,
and into that little spot on which He had bestowed such care, came His last
trial of man! "I have one Son, it may be they will reverence him when they see
him." The tale is soon told: they gave Him a cross when He came to seek His
crown! They gave Him spitting when He came to seek for fruit! And thus ended the
probation of four thousand years under every form of trial; the fulness of time
was come! Man cannot now say that one single way was left untried of God; he is
left without excuse. The fulness of time was come, and God sent forth His Son.
The Son came to seek and to save that which was lost! He took the twofold
position: "made of a woman," through whom sin had entered; "made under the law,"
through which men were under condemnation, "to redeem them that were under the
law," that we might receive the adoption of sons; that God might display the
exceeding riches of His grace to those who were poor and miserable through sin.
The result to those that believe is, "We have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." To such His purpose
is revealed: "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather
together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on
earth, even in him; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance." And when
these fulness of times shall have run their course, the strong angel shall sware
by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there shall be no longer delay, and
that when the seventh angel should sound, the "mystery of God" should be
finished. (Revelation 10:1-11 :) "And the seventh angel sounded, and there were
great voices in heaven saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever."
(Revelation 11:15.)

Let us now look at these "times" that are running on to their "fulness." "The
fulness of time" is evidently past; the "dispensation of the fulness of times"
plainly future.

1. It is now the time of the testimony of the cross and resurrection of Jesus,
and the gathering together of the joint-heirs for Him, in whom we have obtained
an inheritance; the time when God’s secret work is progressing, fitting the
spiritual stones to His spiritual house.

2. The time of the Church suffering in brokenness and weakness here below, in
the kingdom and patience of Jesus.

3. The time of confusion and misrule, when judgment is so far separated from
righteousness, that when the only righteous One stood before the judgment-seat,
owning that the power which was there was given of God: "Thou couldst have no
power at all, unless it were given thee from above" — it condemned the
Guiltless!

4. The time of the blindness of the beloved people, the vail being over their
face, the fulness of the Gentiles being gathered in.

5. The time of the Gentile domination, when the great image of Daniel has not
yet received the blow upon his feet from the stone cut out without hands.

6. The time when the whole creation groans and travails in pain, waiting for the
manifestation of the sons and heirs of God.

7. The time when Satan goes about, a roaring lion unbound, seeking whom he may
devour; whose voice we hear in the evil spirits, "torment us not before the
time."

8.The time of the "mystery of God," when He bears with much longsuffering the
evil, without judging it; when wickedness is in high places, and goodness
trampled under foot; when falsehood triumphs, and truth is fallen in the
streets.

9. And the time when Jesus, rejected by the world, sits at God’s right hand,
waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. But we must now retrace our
steps. We saw that man had lost the headship and dominion given to him in
Genesis 1:2 : We turn to Psalms 8:1-9 : and find that there is a "Son of man" on
whom this dominion is bestowed. "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works
of thy hands, thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea,
and the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea, and
whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea." Who is this "Son of man?" and
when is this dominion to be exercised and enjoyed? Hebrews 2:1-18 : answers us:
"Unto angels hath he not put in subjection the habitable earth to come,
(oikoumene) whereof we speak; but one in a certain place testified saying, What
is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownedst him with glory
and honour, thou didst set him over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things in subjection under his feet . . . . We see not yet all things put under
him, but we see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour." It is in the age to
come this dominion is to be exercised and enjoyed by Him who is also the "Son of
man," now "crowned with glory and honour."

We turn to Ephesians 1:19-23, and find the apostle again quoting the same Psalm.
He speaks of the exceeding greatness of the power which was wrought in Christ
"when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the
heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and
every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to
come. And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all
things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in
all." We learn from this and other portions of Ephesians 1:1-23, Ephesians
2:1-22, Ephesians 3:1-21, Ephesians 4:1-32, that, while He is exalted thus, a
body is being formed for Him from Jew and Gentile; and that the same power that
was put forth to raise Christ and exalt Him as man to God’s right hand (He was
always the eternal Son, the Word that was with God) is put forth to quicken,
raise up, and unite to Him the joint-heirs, which form His body the Church.

Again, in 1 Corinthians 15:27, the apostle quotes this psalm. Thence we learn
that this dominion is accomplished in resurrection, the resurrection of the
saints from among the dead, of which the chapter treats; that when that day
comes, some shall not have been laid asleep by Jesus, but all (living and dead)
shall be changed. It is at that period that the dispensation of the fulness of
times shall have course, and God shall have gathered together all things in
heaven and earth in Christ: and when the saying shall be brought to pass, "death
is swallowed up in victory." (1 Corinthians 15:54; Isaiah 25:8.) Then He shall
proceed, as we find by the kindred passages of Isaiah, to bring in the blessing
of the earthlies; and then the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom of
our Lord and of His Christ, "when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion,
and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously."

We find this in Isaiah 24:1-23, Isaiah 25:1-12, Isaiah 26:1-21 : The world and
its systems brought under judgment, when it will reel to and fro like a drunkard
under the judgment of God. When He will punish the host of the high ones that
are on high: Satan and his hosts shall then be cast out of the heavenlies
(Revelation 12:1-17 :), after having so long obscured and hindered the blessing
from God. The kings of the earth shall be punished on the earth, when they are
gathered together against the King of kings and Lord of lords. (Revelation
19:1-21 :) This universal judgment makes way for the establishment of His throne
in Zion. "In that mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all nations a feast
of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of
wines on the lees well refined. He will remove the veil that is spread over all
nations. He will take away the rebuke of His people Israel, the remnant of the
nation that have waited for him, who was "the strength to the poor, and the
strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, and a shadow
from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the
wall." He will bring the branch of the terrible ones low, and cause "the feet of
the poor and the steps of the needy" remnant of his people to "tread it down,"
and teach them in that day of their deliverance and restoration to sing this
song in the land of Judah, "We have a strong city, salvation will God appoint
for walls and bulwarks." The whole three chapters are of exceeding beauty,
showing what the Lord will do at the day when the saying is brought to pass,
"Death is swallowed up in victory," when all that has been marred and destroyed
in the hands of the first Adam, shall be made good in the last Adam," and when
He shall exercise the headship of Psalms 8:1-9 : taken as Redeemer-Heir — the
joint-heirs united to Him; when the name of the Lord shall be excellent in all
the earth; and His glory, not only as King in Zion, but that which He has set
above the heavens shall be displayed in the heavens and the earth, at "the times
of the restitution of all things." In fine we see that man has destroyed
himself; every fresh trial only proving how complete has been his ruin and
failure. He has sinned away his blessings as soon as he has received them. We
see that God will make good in a far higher sense, and to His own glory,
everything that man has ruined, and under which he has failed, in the Son of man
— the second Adam — in Christ! What we have considered embraces only the period
of probation up to the cross and rejection of God Himself in the person of
Christ. We shall see, in considering over other subjects, this humiliating, yet
necessary, discovery, more clearly brought out. True it is that man — the first
Adam — was as really lost and ruined at the day of Genesis 3:1-24 : as in his
rejection of Christ; but it was this which brought out definitely the enmity of
his heart to God and good. Before the cross there was no distinct proof of this.
He had failed in many a patient trial from God; but his ruin was fully proved,
when God, gentle, humane, loving, full of grace and truth, came into his midst
and was rejected in the person of Jesus Christ!


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  CHAPTER 44: 05.05.     THE PAST HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.
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The Past History of the People of Israel.

After our short survey of the general dealings of God, we now come to consider
His ways, as exhibited more in detail; and in doing so we turn to that people,
or nation, which was peculiarly the platform for their display, in government,
longsuffering, and mercy — the people of Israel.

We have seen the state of the world and failure of man in the days before the
flood: and afterwards Noah set up on the renewed earth, the world going into
idolatry, and, amongst the jarring elements of human wills, man striving to make
a centre and a name apart from God, and the judgment of God thereon — the
divisions of the world into nations in the family of Noah. There was a purpose
with God at that time, in His mind and counsels, which we find in Deuteronomy
32:8. "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he
separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people, according to the
number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is
the lot of his inheritance." Here we find that centuries before they existed as
a nation, the counsels of God were occupied about them. His dealings with the
nations of the world were arranged with reference to the seed of Jacob. The
world had lost the knowledge of the one true God and had gone after idols, even
the family of him of whom it was said, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem." Satan
had succeeded in gaining the position God should have had in the minds and
hearts of man. "Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time,
even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served
other gods." (Joshua 24:2.) We learn from 1 Corinthians 10:20, in which the
apostle quotes Deuteronomy 32:1-52 :, that these gods were devils. This being
the case, God chose one man, whom He called to separate himself from his
country, associations, and his family to be a witness in the world and against
the world for Him. To this man, Abraham, God gave certain promises, both of a
temporal and of a spiritual nature. The question before us being the past
history of the nation of Israel, we pursue only the temporal promises. When
Abraham came into the land of Canaan, God said, "Unto thy seed will I give this
land." (Genesis 10:11.) When Lot had separated from him, these promises are
renewed. "Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art
northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land which
thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed for ever," etc. (Genesis
13:14, etc.) Again in Genesis 15:1-21 : we find the promise renewed and the
bounds of the land named. "And he said unto him, I am the God that brought thee
out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." And again,
"Unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt to the great
river, the river Euphrates." In a vision in the same chapter God reveals to
Abraham that his seed would be a stranger in a land that was not theirs and that
they should serve them. "And they shall afflict them four hundred years . . . .
. And afterwards they shall come out with great substance."

Now these promises were entirely unconditional: they were given by God and
received by Abraham without any condition whatsoever. We find them, still
without condition, repeated to Isaac in Genesis 26:1-35 :, and to Jacob in
Genesis 28:1-22 : We turn to Exodus 2:1-25 :, when the four hundred years were
expired, and we find these promises to the fathers alluded to; "And God heard
their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and
with Jacob; and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto
them." The people are now redeemed, and taken out of Egypt, the covenant name of
Jehovah revealed to them. Afterwards they are told God’s purpose in thus taking
them out. "Unto thee it was showed that thou mightest know that the Lord
(Jehovah) he is God, there is none else beside him." (Deuteronomy 4:35.) Or, as
He says in Isaiah 43:12, "Ye are my witnesses that I am God." On the redemption
of the people God takes up His dwelling amongst them in the cloud and the glory.
The question of righteousness had not, however, yet been raised. The people
journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai, the objects of perfect grace. Here God
proposes certain terms of relationship with them; "Ye have seen what I did unto
the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye
shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is
mine." etc. (Exodus 19:1-25 :) "And all the people answered together and said,
All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." See also Exodus 24:3; Exodus 24:7,
where the covenant is ratified by blood. Thus they enter upon a covenant of
obedience as the terms of relationship with God. Instead of saying, "No, we
cannot trust ourselves in the least; if we accept conditions as these, we shall
surely fail: we shall not be able to keep our blessings for one hour." Instead
of this, they were full of confidence and ignorant of themselves. The result is
plain and solemn. The lawgiver goes up to the mount that burned, to receive the
terms of the covenant; and, ere he returns, the people make a calf and worship
it, as the god that brought them up out of Egypt: they say, "Up, make us gods
which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out
of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." (Exodus 32:1.) Moses
returns with the tables of the law in his hand; he sees the music and the
dancing when he came nigh unto the camp: he saw that on the side of the people
the terms of the relationship were broken; and his anger waxed hot, and he cast
the tables out of his hand, and broke them beneath the mount. Pure and unmixed
law never, therefore, came amongst the people. The lawgiver returns to the
mount; he goes up again, "peradventure he might make an atonement for their
sin;" and in answer to the prayer of Moses, the people is spared, and a covenant
of long-suffering, patience, and mercy added to that of the law; and it is
established in the hands of the mediator and the people. (Exodus 34:27.) The
Book of Leviticus, with other matters, settles the approach to God, who dwelt
amongst them, and the priesthood. The Book of Numbers gives the journey through
the wilderness. When about to enter the land, the covenant is renewed,
establishing the terms of their possession of the land on condition of their
observing them, in the plainest way in the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy
27:1-26 : states the principle of legal righteousness, and Deuteronomy 28:1-68
:, as other parts of the book, the conditions of their inheritance and blessing
in the land. "And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto
the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I
command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all
nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake
thee, if thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou
be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field: blessed shall be the
fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the
increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep: blessed shall be thy basket
and thy store: blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou
be when thou goest out." (Deuteronomy 28:1-6.) And the alternative, "But it
shall come to pass, that if thou wilt not hearken to the voice of the Lord thy
God, to observe and to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command
thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.
Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field; cursed
shall be thy basket and thy store; cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and
the fruit of thy land; the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep:
cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou
goest out." (Deuteronomy 28:15-19.) The whole chapter states in the most solemn
manner the conditions of their possession and retention of their blessings in
the land. And we read in Deuteronomy 29:1, "These are the words of the covenant
which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land
of Moab (in the borders of Israel), beside the covenant which he made with them
in Horeb."

Accordingly we find them entering the land under the leadership of Joshua, the
waters of Jordan separating themselves, and the "Lord of all the earth" passing
into the land before His people, to possess the land in them. This was an
important title which the Lord thus assumes, to which we shall have occasion to
refer again. The Book of Joshua gives the history of their conquest and
establishment in the land. In the last chapter we find Joshua establishing a
covenant with the people, in which they bind themselves to serve the "Lord their
God," and to obey His voice, and under these conditions to retain the blessing.

We now see one point established clearly, of the utmost importance, which is,
that the people never yet possessed the land, or the blessings promised to the
fathers, under the unconditional terms promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
These promises are yet to be fulfilled and accomplished in grace. The results of
their inheritance of the land, and the blessings conditionally, we find in the
Book of Judges, as in other scriptures. "And the children of Israel did evil in
the sight of the Lord and served Baalim: and they forsook the Lord God of their
fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods;
of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto
them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord and served Baal
and Ashtaroth . . . . And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel: and he
said, Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded
their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice: I also will not henceforth
drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died;
that through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the
Lord, to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it or not," etc. (Judges
2:11-13; Judges 2:20-23.) This book shows their failure, and the faithfulness
and longsuffering of God, who raised up judges and deliverers from time to time,
to bring temporary relief to them out of the hands of their enemies. In 1 Samuel
we find the failure of the priesthood in the family of Eli. We read, "Now the
sons of Eli were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord." (1 Samuel 2:12.) The
entire chapter treats of this failure, and the cognizance the Lord takes of it.
In 1 Samuel 3:1-21 : the Lord establishes the regular line of prophets in
Samuel, "ere the lamp of God went out in the house of the Lord," to form the
link between Himself and the consciences of the people. In chapter 4: the ark of
God, on which He manifested His presence, is taken. Eli dies, and the wife of
Phineas, dying on giving birth to her child, names him "Ichabod, saying, The
glory is departed from Israel." The prophet Samuel is now the link between God
and the people. "He judged Israel all the days of his life." When be became old,
he set his sons to be judges over Israel, but they "walked not in his ways, but
turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment." The people
now desire a king, and "the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a
king to judge us; and Samuel prayed unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto
Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for
they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign
over them." The Lord now gives them a king, a man of their own choice, Saul the
son of Kish. 1 Samuel 9:1-27, 1 Samuel 10:1-27, 1 Samuel 11:1-15, 1 Samuel
12:1-25, 1 Samuel 13:1-23, 1 Samuel 14:1-52, 1 Samuel 15:1-35 : give us the
history of his appointment and failure. He fails in what he had been raised up
to do. "And Samuel said unto him, The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from
thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than
thou." (1 Samuel 15:28.) God now gives them a king, a man of His own choice,
"David the son of Jesse," who at last is settled in the kingdom. After him, his
son Solomon is established on the throne of the kingdom, in the full tide of
prosperity and blessing, "neither adversary nor evil occurrent." (See 1 Samuel
16:1-23 : — 1 Kings 10:1-29 :) But "Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt,"
and he multiplied wives unto himself. Both of these things were expressly
forbidden in Deuteronomy 17:1-20 : "And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because
his heart was turned away from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto
him twice; and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go
after other gods: but he kept not that which the Lord commanded." (1 Kings
11:9-10.)

They had now failed under prophets, priests, and kings. Solomon had for a little
moment united all these in his own person, serving as a type of Him in whom all
shall be established. We read in 2 Chronicles 9:3-4, when the Queen of Sheba
came up, she heard the wisdom of the prophet, and saw the magnificence of the
king, and the ascent of the royal priest to the house of the Lord — a faint
shadow of the coming day of the glory of the kingdom.

God now stirs up the adversaries of the kingdom against Solomon, declaring by
His prophet that He would take the kingdom from him; yet He would still preserve
one tribe to David’s house, that he might always have a light before Him.
Accordingly, when Rehoboam came to the throne the mass of the nation revolted
under Jeroboam, who established a separate kingdom, and an idolatrous centre of
unity. The tribe of Judah only was preserved to the house of David. From this
time we pursue the histories of these two divisions of the nation, under the
kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. That of the former is a tale of evil
without any redeeming point, till we come to 2 Kings 17:1-41 :, when, under
their last king, Hoshea, Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria came up and led away
the nation of Israel captive. "In the ninth year of the reign of Hoshea, the
king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed
them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the
Medes." (2 Kings 17:6.) Read the entire chapter, which gives the account of
this. These tribes have never been restored.

We follow the history of the kingdom of the house of Judah from Rehoboam’s day,
which is such another tale of wretchedness, and failure, and departure from God,
occasionally relieved by the reign of some faithful king, such as Josiah and
Hezekiah, till the house of David consummated its guilt in Ahaz. This king had
set up the altar of a strange god in the house of the Lord, and made molten
images for Baalim, and followed the abominations of the heathen. He was scarcely
exceeded in iniquity by Manasseh after the reign of Hezekiah. In the reign of
Zedekiah the time had come when those touching and solemn words were pronounced:
"The Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes
and on his dwelling place; but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised
his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against
his people, till there was no remedy." (2 Chronicles 36:15-16.) Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, came against the city of Jerusalem, and besieged it and took
it, and brought the nation captive into the land of Babylon, and put out the
eyes of the king and slew his sons, rifled the house of the Lord, and burnt it
and the king’s house, leaving a few of the poor of the people to be
vine-dressers and husbandmen in the land. They had failed under prophets,
priests, and kings, and God pronounced these words by the prophet concerning
their last king: "And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come,
when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem, and
take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase
him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no
more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." (Ezekiel
21:25-27.) The glory, or presence of Jehovah, that had dwelt amongst them since
they had been redeemed from Egypt, departs from its house. Turn to chapters 9:
to 11: of the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 9:1-11 : the prophet sees the glory of
the God of Israel gone up from the cherub, and standing upon the threshold of
the house: the Lord marks His own, who were faithful, then executes judgment. In
Ezekiel 10:1-22 :, the glory departs from off the threshold, and stood over the
cherubim that were to bear it away. And in Ezekiel 11:1-25 :, the glory goes up
from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mount of Olivet, that is upon the
east side of the city. As soon as the people had gone into captivity, the
"sword" of government is handed over to the Gentile king, and the "times of the
Gentiles" begin. "Thou, O king, art a king of kings, for the God of heaven hath
given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the
children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, hath he
given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all." (Daniel
2:37-38.) Israel had been God’s servant up to this (in this position, however
faithless). See Isaiah 43:10 — "Ye are my . . . servant whom I have chosen."
(See also Isaiah 41:8; Isaiah 42:19; Isaiah 44:21.) The Gentile king now takes
the place of the Lord’s servant, though in another sense. (See Ezekiel 29:18;
Ezekiel 29:20; Jeremiah 25:9, etc.) During the times of the Gentiles, God
assumes the title of the "God of heaven," as we see all through the Book of
Daniel, which treats of these times. He had gone over Jordan into the land of
Israel, as we saw, under the title of the "Lord of all the earth," and had
exercised His government from the centre of Israel. The people having proved
themselves worse than the heathen around, utterly untrue witnesses to the "Lord
of all the earth," God removes His presence from amongst them, and bestows the
government of the world into the hands of the Gentile king.

Thus ends, properly speaking, the past history of the nation of Israel. In the
language of Hosea, "The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king,
and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without
an ephod, and without a teraphim." And again, "Call his name, Lo-ammi: for ye
are not my people, and I will not be your God."

We must not, however, close our brief view of their past history, without
looking shortly at the return of the remnant, of part of Judah and Benjamin at
the close of the Babylonish captivity. We turn to Jeremiah 25:1-38 : and we find
that when they were about to be sent into captivity into Babylon they are told
by the prophet, "Behold I will send . . . Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my
servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants
thereof . . . and this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment;
and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years." We find in the
Book of Esther how God secretly watched over His people without publicly owning
them or manifesting Himself to them, in the land of their captivity. We read in
Daniel 9:1-27 : that as soon as the seventy years of the kingdom of Babylon were
run, and Darius the Mede had taken the kingdom, "I Daniel understood by books
the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the
prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolation of Jerusalem."
When the seventy years were over, a remnant of Judah and Benjamin came back, and
settled in the land (Ezra 1:1-11 :, etc.); they rebuilt the temple, and reared
up and repaired the city. (Nehemiah.) The history of this remnant is touching
and impressive. It was, however, an empty temple; they had neither the Shekinah
(or the glory of the presence of Jehovah), nor the ark, nor the Urim and
Thummim. They did not pretend to more than they had, but did what they could in
the ruins of everything around. This was not the national restoration as was
promised by the prophets; nor was it the inheritance of the land according to
the promises to the fathers; only a remnant of Judah and Benjamin returned under
the permissive patronage of their rulers, to whom they were still subject.
"Behold we are servants this day; and for the land that thou gavest to our
fathers to eat the fruit thereof, and the good thereof, behold, we are servants
in it; and it yieldeth much increase to the kings whom thou hast set over us
because of our sins: also they have dominion over our bodies, and our own
cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." (Nehemiah 9:36-37.)
When the national restoration takes place God declares, "I will make them one
nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to
them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided
into two kingdoms any more at all. (Ezekiel 37:22.) And again, "They shall take
them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their
oppressors." (Isaiah 14:2.) This remnant of the nation remained in the land
under their oppressors until the coming of their Messiah, and His presentation
to them; only a little band of disciples attached themselves to Him, and
received Him as the Christ: the mass of the people refused Him and chose a
murderer in His stead. They were warned by Him that He had come in His Father’s
name and yet would reject Him: and that if another would come in his own name,
him they would receive. (John 5:1-47) With His own blessed, unwearying love He
pleaded with, and yearned over, and wept for the people — still beloved for
their fathers’ sakes, till compelled to say, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that
killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would
I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate, for I
say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he
that cometh in the name of the Lord." (Matthew 23:37-39.) The sentence of
judicial blindness and hardness of heart, pronounced by the prophet seven
hundred years before, but in longsuffering withheld, (Isaiah 6:9-10,) came to
pass. (Matthew 13:1-58 :; John 12:1-50 :) The householder had sent his Son to
receive the fruits of His vineyard, and the husbandmen said, "This is the heir,
come let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours; and they caught him and
cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." His love was not turned aside even
by this; the Holy Ghost takes up the voice of Jesus on the cross, "Father,
forgive them for they know not what they do," by the mouth of Peter in Acts
3:1-26 :, who says, "And now brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it,
as did also our rulers." Repent and be converted and even now He will return.
But they gnashed their teeth upon His witness Stephen, and stoned him, and sent
a message by him after Jesus "We will not have this man to reign over us." Still
in longsuffering He lingers till the days of Acts 28:1-31 :, when the final
carrying out of the sentence was pronounced by Paul, "Well spake the Holy Ghost
by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people and say,
Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and
shall not perceive, for the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears
are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed: lest they should see with
their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and
should be converted, and I should heal them." (Acts 28:25-27.) It only remained
to complete the sentence by the armies of Titus — till "the cities be wasted
without inhabitants and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate
and the Lord removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst
of the land." (Isaiah 6:11-12.) The great Prophet had come into the midst of His
people: to Him they would not hearken. Rejected, He had gone to heaven to be a
Priest for those who believe; and when He comes again as King, He will unite all
these glories in His own person, and His kingdom shall have no end!


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  CHAPTER 45: 05.06.     THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES, AND THEIR JUDGMENT.
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The Times of the Gentiles, and Their Judgment.

We have shortly traced the past history of the people of Israel to the
Babylonish captivity, when the sentence "Lo Ammi" (not my people) was passed
upon them, the presence of Jehovah, or the glory, departed from their midst, and
the government of the world was transferred to the Gentiles. That is, the "times
of the Gentiles" began. We have also followed the history of the remnant of
Judah and Benjamin, which returned to the land to have their Messiah presented
to them, the sentence "Lo Ammi" not having been nor to be removed* till after
their complete dispersion and the destruction of the cities of the land. (Isaiah
6:10.)

[* The prophets who prophesied after the captivity count the years by the years
of the Gentile oppressors, and none address the people as the people of God thus
owned, save for the future.]

Just before the time when Judah was finally carried into captivity, we find God
sending His prophet to Zedekiah, who was plotting with the nations around to
throw off the yoke of the king of Babylon, requiring that he and they should
bring their necks under his yoke. He says, "I have made the earth, the man, and
the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power, and by my outstretched
arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given
all these lands into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my
servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him . . . .
Bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his
people, and live." (Jeremiah 27:5-12.) It is with this Gentile power, and those
which succeed him, until the end of their "times," we have now to do. We turn to
the Book of Daniel and read of one of the Hebrew captives enabled of God to
recall and interpret his dream to the Gentile king, who had forgotten it.
(Daniel 2:31-45.) The dream was of a great image, whose head was of gold; the
breast and arms of silver; his belly and thighs of brass; his legs of iron, and
his feet part of iron and part of clay. The interpretation shows that this image
typified the Gentile power from the days of the first king, Nebuchadnezzar, till
its close. When in its last state, a stone "cut out without hands," a kingdom
set up by the God of heaven, smites the image on its feet, 1:e., at the close of
its existence. Accordingly the compound parts of the image then fully formed are
broken to pieces and consumed by a crushing act of judgment, inflicted by the
stone. They become like chaff in the summer threshing-floors, and the wind
carries them away, so that no place is found for them. Thus it is that the
stone, which executed this act of judgment, becomes a great mountain, and fills
the whole earth. The vision is plain, and needs but few words. The Gentile power
exists in different stages, each inferior to the other, the farther it removes
front the source of its first power, until an act of judgment most complete and
destructive on its last state is executed by a power not entrusted to the hands
of men, so that every vestige of the image disappears from the scene; and the
power that strikes the blow becomes expanded and exalted, and stands for ever.

Babylon was the head of gold; its source was the gift of God, as we have seen;
its power absolute and unquestioned. "For the majesty that God gave him, all
people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he
slew, and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up, and whom he
would he put down." (Daniel 5:19.)

After it came the Medo-Persian, the breast and arms of silver, a united power
(two arms), inferior to the first in its absolute power, inasmuch as if he who
wielded the power made a law he was himself subject to that law as another; for
"the law of the Medes and Persians altereth not." The third kingdom, of brass,
the Grecian, was still inferior; as the fourth, that of the iron, and the iron
mixed with the miry clay, degenerates yet more. The great point for us to
understand is, that the great power given to the Gentile king, to which
succeeded the other powers, as typified in the great image (which, as its
existence is prolonged, deteriorates), runs on till one great, crushing,
complete act of judgment, yet to be executed, carries the whole and every
vestige of it away, replaces it, and then fills the whole earth. I say "yet to
be executed," because it is a common thought to misapply this kingdom, which
destroys the others and then fills the earth, to the gospel. Grace, or the
gospel, is never represented in Scripture as doing this. In the first place, the
image did not exist in the state typified by the feet in the beginning of the
Gospel-day. In the next, it is on them the blow is struck, which is a crushing
act of judgment, not grace. And next, it is the first act of the stone, an act
of judgment, before it begins to grow and to fill the earth. This is noticed
only in passing, as the object of these papers is rather to establish the truth
in tracing these Gentile powers to their end, than to combat with error.

We now turn to Daniel 7:1-28 :, where these four great powers are expressed
under the form of four ravening beasts. From the vast sea of human passions and
wiles, which floated unorganized in the world, striven upon by the four winds of
heaven, came up four wild beasts or kingdoms. The first like a lion, king among
the beasts of the earth, with eagle’s wings, the chief of birds: a power rapid
in its flight, and soaring above the other powers of the world. This we know was
the first of the four great monarchies — Babylon. (Daniel 1:1; Daniel 2:37-38.)

Another wild beast follows — the Medo-Persian, which succeeded that of Babylon.
(See Daniel 5:28; Daniel 5:30-31.)

Then a third — the Grecian empire, formed by Alexander the Great, which followed
the Medo-Persian (see Daniel 8:21-22), afterwards divided into four heads. The
fourth, diverse from all the other beasts and yet partaking of the qualities or
materials of all (see Revelation 13:2), strong exceedingly, devouring and
breaking to pieces and destroying the rest, which also had ten horns. It is with
this fourth empire we have more particularly to do: the chapter we are looking
at is principally occupied with him. The fourth great power was Rome, which
replaced the Grecian empire after it was broken into four heads. (Daniel 7:6 :
Daniel 8:21-22.) This imperial power is introduced by the ancient name of that
which surrounded it, its centre, Rome, in Daniel 11:1-45 :, where we read, "the
ships from Kittim shall come," etc. This is merely referred to, to show that we
have all four powers defined from Scripture, either by name or circumstances
adjacent. This power existed in its vast unbroken state in the days of Christ,
as we read in Luke 2:1, "And . . . there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be taxed." And it is with this power we, as
Christians, called out from the Gentiles, have most to do. In the second vision
of Daniel 7:1-28 :, we find that the fourth beast had ten horns, and that
amongst the horns came up another horn, before whom three fell; and this horn
had eyes, expressive of active intelligence and design; and a mouth speaking
great things. He speaks great words against the Most High, wears out the saints
of the Most High, prevailing against them; thinks to change times (Jewish
festivals), and laws (ceremonies), which are given into his hand for a time,
times, and the dividing of a time (three years and a half). Thrones are set, and
the Ancient of days sits, the dominion of the little horn is taken away (he
personifies the beast in the end, taking the lead amongst the other horns, and
so becomes the expression of the whole), his body destroyed and given to the
burning flame. Judgment is given to the saints of the Most High (the heavenlies,
"Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world," 1 Corinthians 6:1-20 :),
and the saints possess the kingdom (the earthly, "Come ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Matthew
25:1-46 :) Afterwards we find, in another vision, the kingdom of the Son of man
substituted for that of the fourth beast (the Ancient of days is the Son of man
Himself, see Daniel 7:22), which is personified in the little horn that came up
last amongst the other horns. The questions now arise, 1st. Has not the fourth
kingdom long ceased to exist in its vast iron power? 2ndly. Has it ever assumed
the features conveyed by the ten horns? 3rdly. Has it ever done what is
attributed to it in Daniel 7:25?

Now these questions will be satisfactorily answered by other Scriptures. We turn
to Revelation 13:1-18 :, and read of a wild beast which the prophet sees arising
from the sea. It partook of the characteristics of the three foregoing beasts of
Daniel 7:1-28 :, but it has another added, which was, that the dragon gave him
his power, and seat, and great authority; this it had not before. It had seven
heads and ten horns — seven forms of government, and ten divisions in its
administrative power. John saw one of its heads wounded, as it seemed, unto
death, and the deadly wound was healed. There is no doubt but that this head was
its imperial form, which has long ceased to exist: some think for ever — that
the wound was unto death. But the apparently deadly wound was healed, and all
the world wonders; and they worship him, and, through him, Satan, who had given
him his power, and seat, and great authority; and they say, "Who is like unto
the beast? who is able to make war with him?" This is clearly the little horn of
Daniel 7:1-28 :, for the same doings are attributed to him. But we have in
Revelation this added — that he was the full expression and instrument of Satan
when revived; for (as in Daniel 7:25) we read that there was given him a mouth
speaking great things, and blasphemies; and power was given to him to make war
forty and two months (three and a half years). He blasphemes God and His
tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven, "the saints of the heavenlies;" and
makes war with the saints on earth, and overcomes them — we know from Daniel
7:1-28 : until what time.

Turning to Revelation 17:1-18 :, in the explanation of the vision, to the
prophet we find the same beast, which "was, and is not." It had existed in its
one vast empire, the fourth kingdom of Daniel 7:1-28 :; it had ceased to exist,
and "shall ascend out of the bottomless pit;" it would again appear, but when it
did, it would be the full expression of Satan — "The dragon gave him his power,
and his seat, and great authority." (Revelation 13:2.) But we must proceed with
his description under his last form. "There are seven kings," seven forms of
government of the Latin empire. "Five are fallen," five had disappeared when the
prophet wrote. "One is," it existed then. Another form, not yet come, was to
arise, and continue for a brief space. Then the beast that was, and had ceased
to exist, — he would be an eighth form, yet of the seven. There would now be a
feature explained as to the ten horns, not belonging to his former state of
existence. The ten horns are ten kings, they had received no kingdom then, they
did not belong to his antecedents of one vast empire, but they would appear, and
receive power at the same time as he when he would re-exist in his final form.
They would have one mind, and they give their power and strength to the beast;
they would have each his separate existence, and yet would own the beast as
their chief — the expression of the entire. These make war with the Lamb, and He
overcomes them. Their end we find in chapter 19: The rider upon the white horse,
with the armies of heaven, comes forth at the last daring and blasphemous
defiance of his authority; and the beast and these kings are gathered to make
war against Him that sat upon the horse and His armies; and the beast was taken
and was "cast alive into a lake burning with fire and brimstone." His armies,
too, are judicially slain.

We have one point to remark, to account for the presence of Satan on the earth
at this closing scene, when he gives his power to the last form of the Latin
empire three years and a half before the execution of judgment, which introduces
the kingdom of the Son of man. We turn for this to Revelation 12:1-17 : There we
find the man-child (Christ and the Church, His body) caught up to God and to His
throne, which is immediately followed by war in heaven. Satan is cast out to the
earth; rejoicing in heaven follows; woe is pronounced upon the inhabitants of
the earth, "for the devil is come down unto you, in great wrath, having but a
short time."* He then turns his malice against the Jewish saints below, who are
then the objects of the attention of God. He gives his power and authority to
the beast for the 1260 days, or forty-two months, or "time, times, and the
dividing of a time," before the end of the beast’s existence.

[* This casting out of Satan from the heavenlies is important. Satan and wicked
spirits are spoken of as being in the heavenlies at this present time. He is
termed the "prince of the power of the air;" and the Church of God is said, in
Ephesians 6:1-24 :, to "wrestle not with flesh and blood, but wicked spirits in
the heavenlies."]

Let us now sum up shortly what we have gathered from Scripture, 1: e., the
history of the Gentile powers from its beginning to its close.

We have seen that four great kingdoms arose, commencing with Babylon, which had
its power directly from God, followed by the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, and the
Roman; this last was in existence when John wrote, and for some hundreds of
years in more or less of its iron sway. It was then broken up into different
kingdoms, and continued thus for a long time. Three and a half years before the
end of the Gentile power, Satan is cast out of heaven. Next, the Latin empire,
so long apparently destroyed and forgotten, is restored, but in a new form; not
one vast iron power, but its divided kingdoms uniting to own one man amongst
them as their chief, and giving to him their power and force. Satan makes him
his ready tool, and the world wonders and worships. This chief blasphemes God,
and as Satan cannot now accuse the saints in the heavenlies, he makes his
instruments blaspheme them. He turns his rage through this chief against the
Jewish people then gathered into their country. And, finally, he leads him to
turn his heart in open rebellion against Christ, who comes to take possession of
His world-kingdom, and put an end to the Gentile power. This chief and his
allies gather together against the King of kings and His heavenly saints, and
the end of the Beast is the lake of fire and brimstone.

We have now followed, without much diversion from our subject, the history of
the Gentile empires to their conclusion, looking especially upon the features
the fourth empire will assume, when revived as an imperial power, three and a
half years before the close of its existence; when, in the person of its leader,
it will be the plain and complete expression of diabolical power. Possessed by
Satan, it will be instigated in rebellion against God and Christ, and so be
destroyed.

But, dear friends, we may remember when considering the past history of Israel,
we saw that when Christ was presented to the Jews at Jerusalem, He was rejected,
and received only by a little band of disciples, and that He told them that He
had come in His Father’s name and Him they would not receive; and that if
another would come in his own name, him they would receive. Now during the time
of the crisis of the world’s history, synchronical with the three and a half
years of the full-formed evil of the beast, which we have seen, the Jews will
again have been gathered into their land in a state of apostacy. Scripture
largely shows that a false Messiah will present himself to them at that time,
who will be received by the mass of the people, and rejected by a remnant of
faithful ones — just the reverse of what occurred in the day when our Lord
Himself was there. This personage is the connecting link between the Gentile
power in a state of apostacy and revolt and the Jews in a similar state. Christ
was presented to Pilate as the representative of the fourth monarchy, and to
Caiaphas who represented the Jewish nation in that day: both united in
crucifying Him. At the same time He was rejected by the mass of the Jews and
received by a little band of disciples. At the close of the existence of the
fourth monarchy in its revived state, this false Messiah will appear, the mass
of the returned Jews will receive him, and he will be recognized by the imperial
head of the restored Latin empire, into whose hands he will play his game; but
he will be refused by a little remnant, whose hearts God is training, through
unexampled tribulation, for the kingdom about to be substituted for that of the
Beast, when judgment is executed.

After thus shortly introducing this false Messiah, we will follow in order the
scriptures that speak of him. He is introduced in Daniel 11:36-45; and we may
remark that the prophet is told in Daniel 10:14 that the angel was come to make
him understand what would befall the Jews in the latter days. Daniel 10:1-21,
Daniel 11:1-45, Daniel 12:1-13 : are all one vision and are occupied with this
subject, and the Lord Himself in His directions to the Jewish remnant in Matthew
24:1-51 : alludes to this prophecy (Daniel 12:1-13 :) as still future, and that
when the circumstance of the abomination of desolation, etc., come to pass, it
would be the sign for the remnant to flee, adding that, "Immediately after those
days . . . shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven . . . coming . . .
with power and great glory." We can apply it, therefore, to no other time than
to the hour of the great tribulation, or the closing 1260 days, before the
appearing of Christ and the judgment executed by Him and the kingdom set up (see
also Daniel 12:11, where 30 days are added) and substituted for that of the
beast. The king is at once introduced in Daniel 11:36-39 as one who has that
title in the eyes of the Jews. He does according to his own will, exalts himself
and magnifies himself above every god, speaks marvellously against the God of
gods, and prospers till the indignation is accomplished. He regards not the God
of the Jews, nor the Messiah, nor any god, magnifying himself above them all.
The "indignation" is spoken of in Isaiah 10:5; Isaiah 10:24-25, where we find
that there is an appointed time for its duration.

We turn to Revelation 13:11, where we find this personage brought before us
again, as the second beast, which comes up out of the earth, having two horns
like a lamb — some imitation of Christ, but his voice like a dragon. He cannot
set aside the power of the Gentile king, the Beast — that is reserved for
Christ; but he ministers to him and "exercises the power of the first beast
before him" — the power of Satan, but subordinate to that of the Beast. "And he
doeth great wonders, so that he causes fire to come down from heaven, on the
earth, in the sight of men," etc. He thus imitates the great power of God (of
course it is not so, but only in the sight or apprehension of men).

Read now Revelation 16:13-14, where we find the three great allies in
wickedness, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet, unclean spirits
proceeding from each to gather together the kings of the whole habitable earth
to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. In Revelation 19:20, we find
Satan’s two great instruments — the Beast and the false prophet. The Beast, with
his vassal kings, as we have seen before, gathered together to make war with the
Lamb, the Lord of lords, and King of kings. The Beast and the false prophet here
meet their doom. Allies in wickedness and blasphemy, they are allied in
judgment. "These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with
brimstone."

There is a link now wanting, beloved friends, in this sad and sorrowful history.
Sad and sorrowful it is, because in the judgment of these two men we see the
end, first, of one who personifies, in the close of the times of Gentile
domination, the abuse of the power that had been delivered into the hands of man
by God: filled with moral madness and impotent pride, he becomes the ready
instrument of Satan, in the last and closing acts of his stupendous wickedness,
till he is bound by Him whose heel he bruised when here, and who then exhibits
in this world, so long the playground of Satan’s deeds, the blessings He had
prevailed to procure for man when He went down under the dark domain of him who
had the power of death. Sad and sorrowful, too, as to the second, that the minds
of men, ever ready to receive the veriest lie of Satan, and ever ready to doubt
the love of God, at last become so besotted in wickedness and moral blindness,
as to receive such an one as he for their Christ. But there is, as we were
remarking, one link yet wanting, and that is, how this consummation of spiritual
wickedness, this false Messiah, becomes the link, as we may say, between the
history of professing Christendom and the Jews, in the close and the crisis of
the history of this age, before the introduction of an age of blessedness and
peace. This will be brought before our minds again; but before this we must
consider another subject which comes in during the great Gentile parenthesis,
which fills up the space between that time when Israel was the earthly people of
God, owned and acknowledged, and that when they shall be so again. That subject
is the "calling of the Church." In it is involved the second coming of Christ
for His saints, before His manifestation with them to the world, in the judgment
which we have been partially considering; also the first resurrection, the
resurrection from among the dead (of which Christ was the firstfruits) of the
saints, the "children of the resurrection." This subject, dear friends, is a
blessed one, near to the heart of Christ — the secret that was hid in God; the
eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.


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  CHAPTER 46: 05.07.     THE CALLING OF THE CHURCH, AND HER GLORY.
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The Calling of the Church, and Her Glory.

We turn to Psalms 2:1-12 : and we read, "Why do the heathen rage and the people
imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take
counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed (or, Christ), saying, Let us
break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us." Here we find a
confederacy between Gentiles and people of Israel, the kings and rulers, to
reject the authority of the Lord and His Christ. We now turn to Acts 4:24-26,
where we find this psalm quoted by the Holy Ghost as far as we have read, and
the comment then added, "for of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou
hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
determined before to be done." He was presented to Jew and Gentile, rulers and
kings and people, as King in Zion, and rejected. The Lord is represented in this
psalm as laughing at their impotent rage. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall
laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision." But with all their rage and
rejection of Christ, God says, "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of
Zion." They could not turn His purpose aside. Now while we are assured that the
full rejection of Christ, as their Messiah by the people of Israel, was at the
cross, when they said, "We will have no king but Caesar," still when we examine
the gospel narratives we find that the spirit which showed itself in full
hostility at the cross had been exhibited in various ways, especially amongst
the rulers and chief ones of the nation, during the Lord’s ministry amongst
them. This caused Him, after declaring the new era that his rejection would
introduce, to desire His disciples to say no more that He was "the Christ;"
(there was no further good to be got by this testimony to the people, that is,
to His rights as the Messiah). He adds immediately, "The Son of man must suffer
many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be
slain, and be raised the third day." This latter clause He always adds to the
declaration of His rejection and sufferings. Consult Matthew 16:20-21; Luke
9:20-22, which convey, I doubt not, the truth we are about to see. In
considering Psalms 8:1-9 : in connection with other subjects, we saw that there
was a "Son of man" to whom dominion was bestowed in all the earth, which Adam
had sinned away and lost. He, we saw, was the Lord Jesus Himself, as Hebrews
2:1-18 : informs us, even as His inheritance will be enjoyed in an age to come.
This title the Lord takes to Himself according to that psalm, after His
rejection as King in Zion according to Psalms 2:1-12 :, taking it in
resurrection. He takes the headship and inheritance, with its load of sin and
guilt upon it; and inherits it not only as His by right, but by redemption also.
He takes it as the Redeemer-Heir. "We see not yet," says Hebrews 2:1-18 :, "all
things put under him; but we see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour." Men
said, "We will not have this man to reign over us;" God said, "Sit thou on my
right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool."

We turn to Ephesians 1:1-23 :, and there we find that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ (looked upon here as the exalted and glorified Man), had raised Christ
from among the dead, and "set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, far
above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that
is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come; and hath put
all things in subjection under his feet, and given him to be head over all
things to the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in
all." Here we find Him raised and seated in the heavenlies, as the glorified
Man, all things not yet visibly put under Him, but His title declared; and while
as the expectant Heir, He is seated there, we learn that a work is going on of
quickening, raising up, and seating together in Him, the second Adam, in the
heavenly places, the joint-heirs of all His glory. It is a work, that, the more
we search into and meditate upon its depth and magnificence, humbles us to the
dust at the "exceeding riches of God’s grace." Human words can but feebly convey
to us just thoughts of a work which takes up the Magdalenes, and outcasts, and
vile ones, lost and defiled through sin, and sets them in the same glory as the
Son of God! Not only blessing them through Him and His blessed work on the
cross, but with Him! conferring upon them every dignity, every glory, and every
honour, conferred upon Christ Himself as the risen, and exalted, and glorified
Son of man! and yet a work in which God is glorified, and in which He is even
now exhibiting to the heavenly hosts the fruits of His own precious grace This
serves truly to level every pretension of man, to think on these things. We look
at ourselves, and we are inclined to ask the question, "How can these things
be?" But we look at God and His purpose, for the glory of His Son; and thus we
serve now to manifest to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, and to
teach them the meaning of "Grace!" May we learn to be silent, and to submit
ourselves to Him, who does all things well! The Epistle to the Ephesians is that
Scripture which so fully brings out these things. We find there the purpose of
God and the execution of that purpose: His own counsels and the good pleasure of
His will revealed; Himself the source of the blessings; His Son Jesus Christ the
measure of them, ourselves, by nature dead in trespasses and sins, the objects
of them! But to return. We have seen for a moment the work that is going on
while the Head is seated in heaven — raising up and uniting to Him the
joint-heirs. This is the work of the Holy Spirit since His descent at Pentecost.
Now it is most freely admitted that regeneration has been the same in all ages
and dispensations. Sinners have been, since the fall of man, quickened by the
Holy Ghost and led to trust in the promises of God for salvation by a coming
Redeemer, faintly seen in types and shadows of old. Still the saints were
quickened; they trusted, and died in faith, and were saved. But individual
salvation is not the Church of God. Every individual of that Church, no doubt,
is a saved one; still, collectively, they occupy a place, as we shall see,
beyond all that went before, and peculiar to the dispensation in which we live.
It was reserved for the day when the Lord Jesus, rejected, crucified, dead,
buried, risen, ascended, and seated at God’s right hand; not only as God’s
eternal Son, but as a glorified Man, who had fully accomplished redemption in
His own person, had put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, glorified God to
the utmost as to sin, substituted Himself for His people on the cross, and had
been thus seated far above all heavens — it was reserved for such a time to
bring out this mystery, which, from the beginning of the ages, had been hid in
God; the mystery of "Christ and the Church." The first notice of this work we
find in Matthew 16:1-28 :, where the Lord declares the foundation in Himself, as
Son of the living God. He speaks of the Church as that which was to come. He
says, when Peter confessed Him to be "the Christ, the Son of the living God,"
"Upon this rock I will build my church." The apostle afterwards learned the true
meaning of the foundation here declared, when he says by the Spirit, "To whom
coming as unto a living stone . . . . Ye also, as living stones are built up a
spiritual house," etc. This, however, is by the way, as to Paul’s ministry, and
to it alone, is entrusted the revelation of the mystery of Christ and His body.
The Lord Himself does not reveal it. He had disciples during His ministry here,
but not disciples gathered into one body and united by the Holy Ghost to a
glorified Man in heaven. In the days of Judaism, it was an unlawful thing for a
man that was a Jew to have any dealings with those of any other nation. He was
separated from amongst the other nations of the earth to God. "You only have I
known of all the families of the earth," says God, by His prophet, to that
people. When we come to look upon the Lord’s life and ministry here, we find
that He was constantly going beyond the middle wall of partition which
surrounded the Jewish enclosure, in the outflow of His own blessed grace to
those who had no relationship with God even in an outward way. Witness the woman
of Canaan in Matthew 15:1-39 :, and the woman of Samaria in John 4:1-54 : "He
was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises
made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy."
(Romans 15:8-9.) Still, the middle well of partition was not really destroyed
till the cross, however our Lord’s actions may have shown what was coming. We
find the position of Jew and Gentile forcibly contrasted in the following
scriptures: "Who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory,
and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the
promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ
came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen." (Romans 9:4-5.) And again,
"Wherefore remember, that ye being in times past Gentiles in the flesh, who are
called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made
by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no
hope, and without God in the world." (Ephesians 2:11-12.)

We find in this epistle, that the apostle speaks in Ephesians 1:1-23 of the
purpose and counsels of God, and the redemption of His people, the latter being
an accomplished thing; adding His further purpose to be executed in the
dispensation of the fulness of times, when all things shall have been gathered
together, in heaven and earth, under His headship; and when those who believe
have obtained an inheritance with Him and in Him in these things. He goes on to
show that the Head, who had been in death (he sees Him only thus) was alive
again, raised up and glorified, Head of all principality, etc., set then as Head
over all things to the Church, which is His body. In Ephesians 2:1-22 he sees
both Jew and Gentile dead in trespasses and sins, as children of the first Adam.
In Ephesians 2:1-2, he states what the Gentiles were, and then turns round upon
the favoured Jew and writes, "Among whom we also and . . . were children of
wrath even as others." This was the position of both Jew and Gentile by nature.
We go on and find that Christ "hath made both one, and hath broken down the
middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the law of commandments
contained in ordinances: for to make in himself of twain, one new man, so making
peace; and that he might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, having
slain the enmity by it."

There could be, and there was, salvation for individuals, as we have seen,
before the cross, and by virtue of what Christ would accomplish there; but the
cross itself is the foundation of this unity of Jew and Gentile in one body. "He
came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
For through him (Christ) we both (Jew and Gentile), have access by one Spirit
unto the Father." (Ephesians 2:17-18.) Here we learn the power of this unity, of
which the cross was the basis. The Holy Ghost, then, is the power by which this
unity is formed.

Now it is freely admitted that everything good, and of God, that ever has been
done in this world, was by the Holy Ghost. But, dear friends, it was reserved
for that day when God’s people, by virtue of an accomplished redemption, had
their consciences so perfectly purged, that God could come and inhabit by the
Holy Ghost, the believer’s body; and that the Holy Ghost could be given in such
a sort, as in this dispensation, since the day of Pentecost.

We do not find in the experience even of a David, the possession of a purged
conscience. There was the most blessed and perfect trust and confidence in God
displayed and enjoyed, but a purged conscience never. That was reserved till the
cross had made it possible to be enjoyed.

We read in John 14:1-31 : of the Lord, before He departed, promising His
disciples the Holy Ghost, as the Comforter. He says, "I will pray the Father,
and he shall give you another Comforter (He had been that when with them), that
he may abide with you for ever . . . he . . . shall be in you." "In that day
(when He was come), ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I
in you." This was the knowledge and experience the personal presence of the Holy
Ghost would communicate. In John 7:36-38 we learn that His presence thus was a
new thing, and that although there were believers before His descent, still it
was on believers, as such, who had been constituted such by His quickening
power, that the Holy Ghost was to be bestowed. "In the last day, that great day
of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come
unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of
his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit,
which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet;
because Jesus was not yet glorified." We find an example of this in Acts 19:1-41
: Long after the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost, we find Paul finding
certain disciples at Ephesus. He asks the question, "Have ye received the Holy
Ghost since ye believed?" They reply, "We have not so much as beard whether the
Holy Ghost is yet." (Compare John 7:39, where the word "given" has no business.)
He asks again, "Unto what then were ye baptized?" They reply, "Unto John’s
baptism." "Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance,
saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after
him, that is, on Christ Jesus." He found here a company of disciples, believers
as far as they had heard, but who had not yet received the Holy Ghost. Far from
the centre of the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, they had not yet heard if He
had come, not "whether there be any Holy Ghost." Our English Bible is faulty
here and might lead to wrong conclusions. As soon as "they heard, they were
baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus; and when Paul had laid his hands upon
them, the Holy Ghost came on them."

It is sought to show that the great distinguishing feature between the state of
the individual believer, under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost’s presence,
and the saint in that which is past, is, that he now receives the Holy Ghost to
dwell in him; that "in the Spirit" is the proper state of his existence as a
Christian, and the link which unites him with Christ risen. The corporate
blessings we will see again. In the instance quoted there was the laying on of
the apostle’s hands; but, doubtless, God was showing to us that there is a
twofold thing — the quickening and the indwelling of the Spirit, the latter
belonging specially to the present time. Not seeing this is much of the reason
for the low state of numbers of God’s children. They think that Christianity is
a sort of spiritualized Judaism, and that saints are the same now as before the
descent of the Holy Ghost, as to their state. Consequently you have in the lips
of many a one of them the prayer of David — "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me;"
while others are ever praying for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them.
Now the least intelligent saint who has been instructed in Christianity, as
such, could not use such prayers. He knows that he receives the Spirit now, as
he does eternal life, by faith, and consequent on redemption. As the apostle
asks the Galatians, who were getting under law, "Received ye the Spirit by the
works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?" And again, "That we might receive
the promise of the Spirit through faith." A Christian may, doubtless, sad to
say, by his unfaithfulness, grieve the Holy Spirit much indeed, so much so, as
almost to think he had never had the Spirit at all; but he could not with the
least intelligence in Christianity say, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me." In
Romans 8:1-39 : the Spirit is the principle of our relationship with God; He
constitutes the link between the believer and Christ; and this only is christian
life (life in the Spirit), which depends on redemption being accomplished. This
is a fact assumed to be the case in all the apostolic teaching to the Church. In
Ephesians 1:14 He is given as the seal of redemption and an earnest of the
inheritance yet to be enjoyed, till its redemption out of the enemy’s hand, the
price for its purchase having been paid. In no epistle are the official glories
of the Holy Ghost brought before us more fully than this, which reveals the
heavenly calling of the Church of God. In Ephesians 1:14, He is the seal of
redemption. Ephesians 2:18, He is the medium of access by Jew and Gentile,
constituted one body, through Jesus Christ unto the Father. Ephesians 2:22, God
inhabits the assembly on earth by His Spirit. In Ephesians 3:16, He strengthens
the saints in the inner man, enabling them to lay hold of and enjoy their
position and standing. In Ephesians 4:1-32 :, precepts are founded upon
doctrines; the saint is told not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whereby he
has been sealed till the day of redemption. In Ephesians 5:1-33 he is told to be
filled with the Spirit. In Ephesians 6:1-24 : is the power of the warfare in the
heavenly places, and his prayer is to be "in the Spirit." To multiply examples
were needless. This being established, we will now look into those scriptures
which speak of the body and the unity of the Spirit. We saw that the Lord speaks
of the Church as a future thing during His own ministry here. He had disciples,
but not disciples gathered into one body, constituting the "fulness" of a
glorified Man in heaven, by the power of the Spirit, uniting them in one. Such,
and such only, is the Church of God. It was reserved for the ministry of the
Apostle Paul to bring out this grand central truth of the Church. He tells us
that he had it "by revelation," and not therefore from others.

After the rejection of the Lord and the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost,
we find the. Church gathered in Jerusalem, and principally composed of Jews,
affording a wondrous spectacle to the world around, united in one heart and
soul, a dwelling-place of God by the Holy Ghost. The Lord lingered, in His
longsuffering love, over his beloved though now cast-off people, to see if even
the testimony of the Holy Ghost to a risen and glorified Christ would touch
their hearts. The enmity of the Jews and the religious leaders of the nation
increased every hour, till it arrived at its full height, when the Sanhedrim
(the great council of the nation) gnashed upon the witness of the Holy Ghost to
a risen and exalted Christ, in the person of Stephen, who, filled with the Holy
Ghost, sees heaven opened, and, stoned by his murderers, is received by the "Son
of man standing at the right hand of God." The Church at Jerusalem is broken up
as to its outward manifestation, and dispersed. Saul of Tarsus, the young man at
whose feet the murderers laid their clothes, on his journey from Jerusalem to
Damascus with the high priest’s commission in his robe, and the purpose in his
heart of wiping out, so to speak, if it were possible, the very name of Jesus
from the earth, is struck down at mid-day with the vision of the glorified and
exalted Jesus. He hears the wondrous truth, for the first time now proclaimed,
that the poor persecuted Christians on earth were members of the body of Christ.
"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me . . . . I am Jesus whom thou persecutest."
He arises and straightway preaches Jesus that "he is the Son of God." The short
period of its earthly manifestation at Jerusalem having passed, the Church
henceforth fully assumes its heavenly position in the mind of the Spirit. While
on earth, wherever locally represented by saints gathered to the name of Jesus,
by the power of the Holy Ghost, it is the tabernacle of God through the Spirit.
To the Apostle Paul is committed the testimony of the mystery, hidden in God in
other ages, but now revealed. He tells us that he had it by revelation.
(Ephesians 3:3.) We will briefly notice some of the testimony by him as to this.
The Epistle to the Romans being chiefly confined to the revelation of
Christianity and the individual relationship of the saint with God, and His
dispensational wisdom in His dealings with the Jew, the subject is but shortly
referred to in Romans 12:4-5. He writes, "For as we have many members in one
body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in
Christ, and every one members one of another." In 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, this
subject is brought out more fully. The bare reading of the passage should be
sufficient: "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members
of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit
are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be
bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit," etc. Nothing can
be clearer to the mind subject to Scripture. The Holy Ghost is the centre and
living power of the unity of the body. Christians are "members of Christ" and
"members one of another." How this overturns the ideas of men, who speak of
being members of such and such a church (so-called) or religious association!
This is the only unity a Christian is bound to acknowledge and own, and to
endeavour with all his heart to observe, and to witness for the unity which has
been made by the Holy Ghost, constituting every Christian a member of one body,
and gathering them together to be subject to Christ as Lord. The Holy Ghost is,
we may so say, the life which animates the whole, dwelling not only in the
individual believer, but in the body collectively. And when saints are thus
gathered together, owning this unity, and this alone, they form the sphere for
the manifestation of His presence, in the ministry of the word, "dividing to
every man severally as he will;" taking up and using, according to His divine
pleasure, those who have been gifted and set in the Church for the building up
and edifying of the body, and for the perfecting of the saints. "God hath set
the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him." (1
Corinthians 12:18.) So of Christ, "when he ascended up on high, he led captivity
captive, and gave gifts unto men . . . . And he gave some, apostles; and some,
prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the
perfecting of the saints," etc. The assembly thus is on earth the tabernacle of
God by the Spirit. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16.) Again, Ephesians 2:22 :
"In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God by the Spirit." We
are now, of course, looking at those scriptures that view the assembly here;
others, as we have seen, view it as the body of the risen Man in heaven. Both
are true. Ephesians 1:1-23 : speaks of the latter, Ephesians 2:1-22 : of the
former.

Such being the calling of the saints, the apostle founds upon it his
exhortations, in Ephesians 4:1-6. He puts their privileges first before them and
then looks upon their responsibility. "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of
Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, . . . beseech you that ye walk worthy of the
vocation wherewith ye are called . . . . Endeavouring to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, one Spirit . . . one Lord," We
have purposely passed over the entire of Ephesians 3:2-21, Ephesians 4:1; as the
reader may remark in his English Bible that this entire passage is a
parenthesis. This then is the Church of God — this the unity we are exhorted to
keep: not to make a unity for ourselves, or choose one out of the many existing
factions around, that best suits one’s education, thoughts, feelings,
circumstances, etc., but to endeavour, with hearts subject to Jesus as Lord, to
preserve a unity which has been formed by the Holy Ghost since the day of
Pentecost — the body of Christ.

We have in the same chapter (Ephesians 4:1-32 :) the care of Christ for His
body. "When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive." He went into the
domain of Satan and bound the strong man; but before He exhibits the results of
His victory amongst men, in the blessing of the millennial earth, He does so in
His body, bestowing gifts on men for the setting free of those captive under
Satan, and the building up of those who have been delivered, "till we all come
in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ." When
that fulness is attained, the complement of the body for its Head, it will be
taken away to be united in actual fact to the Head in heaven. Then will come the
resurrection of the sleeping saints, and their translation with the living
saints, when all shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. The Scriptures
teem with this blessed hope of the Church. In the earliest epistle (1 Thess.) we
find that, however unintelligently it may have been understood, the saints had
been converted to this blessed hope. "Ye turned to God from idols, to serve the
living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven." It was the hope set
before the sorrowing disciples, as they gazed up into heaven after the vanishing
form of the Lord, in Acts 1:1-26 :, that He "would so come in like manner." The
Corinthians came "behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord
Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:7.) In Ephesians, the saints are looked upon as
already seated in the heavenlies in Christ, there waiting for the gathering
together of all things in the fulness of times. Their blessing is in the
heavenlies, Ephesians 1:3; their position, Ephesians 2:6; their testimony,
Ephesians 3:10; and their conflict, Ephesians 6:12. In Php 3:20-21, the
citizenship of the saints is in heaven, from whence they look for "the Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body," etc. In Colossians 3:4,
the life of the saints is so bound up with Christ’s, that, when He is manifested
to the world, they are manifested with Him. In Thessalonians, the whole epistle
is taken up with the hope. In 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 :, it was connected with
their conversion; in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-20 :, with the labours of Christ’s
servant; in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-13 :, with practical righteousness and holiness:
in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-18 :, the whole matter and the manner of its
accomplishment is detailed. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-28 shows the design of the
apostle for their practical sanctification, and their being preserved blameless
to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thessalonians sets the hope aright in
the minds of the saints, which had been disturbed by the receipt of a spurious
epistle; and distinguishes the coming of Christ for his saints and their
gathering together unto Him (their proper hope), from His manifestation in
judgment to the world, in which we know, from other scriptures, He is
accompanied by them.

I forbear to quote other scriptures on this subject. It is almost sad to be
obliged to press so blessed a hope on the hearts of the Lord’s people — a hope,
of which the scriptures of the New Testament are so full. Sad to say, it has
become necessary to do so: even God’s people have imbibed so much of the evil
and worldly-minded servant, who said in his heart, "My lord delayeth his
coming," and of the scoffers of the last days who say, "where is the promise of
His coming?" In considering our first subject — "The general purpose of God" —
we referred to the places in the New Testament where Psalms 8:1-9 : was quoted.
The first was Hebrews 2:1-18 :, when the "Son of man," to whom all dominion was
given, is seen in heaven, "crowned with glory and honour," all things not yet
put under Him — the headship to be enjoyed in the habitable earth to come. The
second was Ephesians 1:2 :, when the body was being prepared for the glorified
head. The third remains now to be quoted again. "For he hath put all things
under his feet." (1 Corinthians 15:1-58 :) This will come to pass, as the
chapter shows, in the day when the scriptures of Isaiah 24:1-23, Isaiah 25:1-12,
Isaiah 26:1-21 : are fulfilled, in the day of the first resurrection. "Behold I
show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a
moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed . . .
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall
have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is
written, Death is swallowed up in victory." (Isaiah 25:8.) The whole chapter
treats of this resurrection, of which Christ was the first fruits, it is a
resurrection in power and glory. "It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in
glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." There is no thought in
the chapter of the resurrection of the wicked. We have before considered
shortly, that, at that time, the restoration of the nation of Israel will take
place — the veil will be removed from all nations. And it will be a period of
universal judgment of powers on earth, and in the heavenlies, introductive of
the kingdom in Zion and the renewed earth, which the saints of the first
resurrection will inherit and reign over in the heavenlies as joint-heirs with
Christ. In short, it is the time of "the restitution of all things." This period
of universal judgment is identical, as we may see, with that spoken of in
considering the "times of the Gentiles," and their judgment.


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  CHAPTER 47: 05.08.     THE CORRUPTION OF CHRISTENDOM.
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The Corruption of Christendom.

We have seen, in some measure, the nature and unity of the Church of God, and
her heavenly calling — the Church to which Christ has imparted the glory given
to Him, as man, by God the Father. The glory was His by right as the eternal
Son, as well as by creation. But the only way in which we could partake of His
glory, was, by His becoming a man, and taking this glory, and headship over all
things, through death and resurrection — thus accomplishing the redemption of
His people. How little do they enter upon and realize, and walk in the power of
their heavenly calling! Rather may it be said of many, "They mind earthly
things." They are engrossed and absorbed in the pursuits and aims of this world
— "this present evil age;" from which He died to deliver them. (Galatians 1:4.)
They are conformed to its ways, its vanities, its projects, rather than
following a rejected Christ, whom the world united under its prince, to cast out
of the world; and declaring plainly in their walk and ways that theirs is
strangership on earth, and citizenship in heaven, and that they are of those of
whom Christ said, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"
(John 17:1-26 :); and of whom the apostle, "As is the heavenly, even so are they
also that are heavenly." Would that there were more of that intense personal
devotedness amongst those who are Christ’s — amongst those to whom He has in His
marvellous grace, taught the nature and meaning of this heavenly calling, and
the truth of His Church, His Bride; who are in the place of the testimony of God
just now, in His own sovereign goodness! Would that this testimony of God might
press itself more deeply on our souls, and lead us to that intense separation
from the world; and personal, individual devotedness, as witnesses, or servants,
as it may please Him! Surely all may serve Him in the former capacity: all may
be witnesses, if all are not labourers! And surely the corporate testimony
without the personal devotedness — or the personal devotedness without the
corporate testimony, is faulty: both must go together to be in accordance, in
our little measure, with the mind and purposes of God. For a little moment the
desire of Christ, "That they all may be one . . . that the world may believe"
(John 17:21), came to pass at the first blush of the unselfish joy of the Church
at Pentecost, when the world beheld with wonder the great multitude of one heart
and soul, having all things in common. But we may remember in our former paper,
when considering the testing of man from the garden of Eden to the cross, that
we found that, tried in every way, he had failed; let us now see what man under
grace will do — if such a position will succeed. It is just such another tale of
sorrow, with this difference — that he has now failed in and corrupted, as to
its testimony in the world, that which was best! When the Church assumed fully
her heavenly calling, after the persecution and dispersion which arose at the
death of Stephen, we find Paul raised up of the Lord, that He might bring out by
him the true heavenly calling and doctrine of the Church of God — the body of
Christ. In the devoted labours of the apostle, and the scriptures given to us by
his instrumentality, we find that it became necessary for the Holy Ghost to
reveal the consequences which would result to the Church, from its witness on
earth being entrusted into the hands of man. Evil had crept in from the very
beginning, but as long as the apostolic energy was there it was kept from
gaining head, and was judged. Judaism, and false brethren, and ungodly men crept
in unawares, amongst those who were true disciples; and even those who were
truly disciples, became impregnated with the spirit of the world, and with the
evil. Witness those solemn words of Paul to the elders of the assembly at
Ephesus, the scene where all they of Asia had heard the word of the Lord: "I
know this, that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not
sparing the flock: also of your own selves shall some arise, speaking perverse
things, to draw away disciples after them." And in view of such a state of
things, he directs the heart of the faithful disciple to "God, and to the word
of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance
among all them which are sanctified." God and the Scriptures of His truth were
to be his sure and never failing resource in the time of ruin, which was fast
closing in. In Corinth we find schools of doctrine and human wisdom, taking the
place of revelation and divine wisdom amongst them. (1 Corinthians 1:2 :) In the
epistle to the Galatians, the influence of law-teachers and Judaizers compelled
the apostle to stand in doubt of them for the moment as to whether they had
abandoned the ground of Christianity altogether or not; still he had confidence
in them through the Lord. In Philippians "all seek their own, not the things
which are Jesus Christ’s." (Php 2:21.) Again, "For many walk, of whom I have
told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the
cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose
glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." (Php 3:18-19.) In Colossians,
Satan had succeeded in introducing ordinances, and philosophy, and vain deceit
after the tradition of men; meats and drinks, holy days, will-worship and
neglecting of the body — between the Head and His members. 1 Timothy,
law-teachers and Judaizers, "understanding neither what they say nor whereof
they affirm;" and the warning of the apostacy of the latter times. 2 Timothy,
the tide of evil came in with such a torrent, that the apostle sees the Church
which he had laboured for, and watched over, and builded, as a wise
master-builder, — that which the Spirit terms "the house of God, which is the
church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15),
the house inhabited by the Holy Ghost — fallen into dilapidation and ruins, and
transformed into "a great house," with "vessels of gold and of silver, but also
of wood and of earth; and some to honour and some to dishonour." In such a state
of things, in the "perilous times" of the "last days," the faithful disciple has
but one pathway — not to be satisfied with such a state, nor to think of being
able to mend the ruin, but — to purge himself from the vessels to dishonour, and
to walk with the faithful, who "call on the Lord out of a pure heart." (2
Timothy 2:20-22.) And again does the apostle turn the heart of the faithful one
to the Scriptures of God as profitable for all and every difficulty, that he
might "be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." So deeply solemn is
the warning here in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 that that which bears the name of
Christianity, and which before men has the character of godliness, shelters all
the worst features of the corrupt human heart, that the words are literally
nearly the same, and morally the same, as those which the apostle uses in
describing the corruption and moral degradation of the heathen world in the
close of Romans 1:1-32 : There is also the active energy of evil in those who,
"reprobate concerning the faith," are deceiving and being deceived; from such
the man of God was to turn away, leaving them to the judgment of God. In Titus
we find the unruly talkers and deceivers spreading their baneful influence
around. 2 Peter also testifies as to these evil influences at work amongst the
saints. Jude traces the apostasy from the time when "certain ungodly men crept
in unawares" until the Lord comes with His saints to execute judgment upon such.
In Jude 1:11 we have a summary of the apostasy of the natural man: "the way of
Cain;" teaching error for reward, and using truth for corrupt ends, "the error
of Balaam;" and lastly, where the apostasy ends, "the gainsaying of Core." This,
it will be remembered, was the revolt of the Israelites, instigated by the
Levite Korah, against the authority of Christ, in His royalty, represented by
Moses, and His priesthood, represented by Aaron. The Levites sought the
priesthood ("Seek ye the priesthood also?" Numbers 16:1-50 :), and were the
moving spring of the revolt of the simple Israelites. And thus it has been ever,
the ecclesiastical evil urging the civil power on to rebellion. See the revolt
of Absalom against David: the moving power was Absalom’s counsellor, Ahithophel,
who was a priest. (See 2 Samuel 15:12.) And so it is in the end, a beast, and a
false prophet who urges on the former, and "exercises all the power of the first
beast before him, and causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to worship
the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. (Revelation 13:1-18 :) Such has
been the corruption from the beginning of Christianity. Those who ought to have
occupied the position of the Levite, that is, those who were sent into the
Church to labour for the Lord, instead of retaining the

Levite place, recognising that all the people of the Lord are priests, and thus
entitled to enter into the holiest (see 1 Peter 2:5; 1 Peter 2:9); the
ecclesiastical, or priestly, position has been assumed as the medium between
Christ and His people; and this is not confined to the grosser evil and
corruptions of Rome, but it is the same in principle throughout Christendom,
although not developed in the same measure. Both these epistles 2 Peter and Jude
— testify of the rejection of the Lordship of Christ. Revelation 2:3 :, give us
in successive stages the different phases in which the evil would be developed
in the Church, looked at in her place of testimony here below, from her
departure from her first love, till threatened with full rejection, as something
loathsome to Him — a false witness in the world. "I will spue thee out of my
mouth." We have also the testimony in Matthew 13:1-58 : from the Lord Himself in
the parable of the tares, by which we see that the evil produced at the
beginning by the introduction of the tares amongst the wheat, goes on till the
harvest, when the righteous are gathered into the garner, and the tares bound in
bundles and then cast into the fire and burned; thus cleansing the kingdom of
the Son of man. Instead of a change, such as men think, coming over the world;
and, by the gospel, the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth as the waters
cover the sea, the evil increases till the harvest. How do the thoughts of men
who look for a millennium brought in by the preaching of the gospel, fall in
with this? Properly Matthew 13:1-58 : including the parable of the tares and the
wheat, is a similitude of the kingdom of heaven, in the phase it would assume
when the King would be fully rejected, not the Church, which had no existence;
in a subsequent chapter (Matthew 16:1-28 :) the Lord speaks of it as a future
thing. He came as their Messiah, to His people Israel — His vineyard — to seek
for fruit, and He found none. He then sowed in the world ("the field is the
world") that which was to produce fruit — "the word."

I have purposely passed over 2 Thessalonians and the Epistles of John, for in
them we find the personage named who shall consummate all this wickedness in
himself — "the man of sin" — "the Antichrist." In the former epistle, given to
us on the occasion of a spurious epistle having been received by the
Thessalonians as if from Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:2), telling them that the "day"
of Christ was there, the apostle (2 Thessalonians 2:1) beseeches them by their
proper hope, which he had taught them in the first epistle, that of the coming
of Christ, and their being gathered together unto Him, that they would not be
shaken with the thought conveyed by the false epistle, that the "day," or
manifestation, was then present (enesteke). The apostle clearly distinguishes
the "coming" from the "appearing," or "day," which is to bring rest to them from
the trials and tribulations of the world, and judgments on their enemies; for,
when the "day" of His manifestation would come, the saints would be manifested
with Him in glory. He goes on to show that before the "day" would come there
would be, there is, "the mystery of lawlessness," or iniquity, which already
worked; secondly, the apostasy from Christianity (2 Thessalonians 2:3); thirdly,
the revelation of the man of sin. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, 2 Thessalonians 2:8)
The judgment executed by Christ Himself would be the "day" in which the false
epistle told them they were. We have seen before that in this He will be
accompanied by His saints, previously gathered to Him. We have seen some of the
testimony of Scripture as to the mystery of lawlessness, and also of the
apostacy from Christendom; but there was a good hindering power (ver. 7), which,
when removed, then would the lawless one be revealed. The principles were all at
work, but the Holy Ghost was in the Church, the power of God was here below, and
the unbridled self-will of man, exalting himself above all that is called God,
or that is worshipped, was still restrained, till the fitting time was come;
then the evil would assume its definite shape in "the man of sin."

We will follow to its close the mystery of iniquity. We turn to Revelation
17:1-18 : and find the fourth Beast, or Latin empire, in his revived state,
ridden upon by a false woman, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots
and abominations of the earth." Imperially and gloriously arrayed, and her cup
full of idolatry and fornication, drunken with the blood of the witnesses of
Jesus, and the blood of saints. The prophet wonders at the end of what was once
so precious, so beautiful — the work of grace at Pentecost! She overrides the
peoples, nations, and tongues, and their kings, who have been intoxicated with
the wine of her fornication; until at last, tired with her oppression, the ten
horns and the Beast, "these shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate and
naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." She waits not for the
appearing of Christ for judgment, but suffers it at the hands of those over whom
she exercised her pernicious influence so long. Revelation 18:1-24 : gives her
judgment, and the lamentation of the kings of the earth, and those who had
profited by her traffic and rewards, for her overthrow. Such is the end of
corrupt Christianity in Rome, and wherever it is found; for she is the mother of
harlots and abominations of the earth. In considering the history of the Gentile
powers, from its beginning to its close in judgment, and that of the Beast, who
represents it, urged on by Satan in the end, we also saw his connection with the
false Messiah, whom the Jews would receive in the end of the age, and his
judgment under the character of the false prophet with the first Beast: we
desired to show how this personage forms the link between their history and that
of false, professing Christendom in the end. We saw from 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4;
2 Thessalonians 2:8, that that wicked one would not be revealed till the good
restraining power was removed: the mystery of iniquity worked, and the apostasy
would come; this we traced to its end in the judgment of the corrupt woman of
Revelation 17:1-18 :, but the day of Christ’s manifestation in judgment would
not come till the man of sin was revealed, the good restraining power having
first been removed. Revelation 13:1-18 : showed us also that it is during the
revived form of the Latin empire, at the close of the existence of the fourth
beast, that this man should be fully revealed. He who has title of king amongst
the Jews, the second Beast ministers to the power of the first Beast (not being
able to set aside the Gentile power) during the short period before the close,
when Satan shall have given him his power, and seat, and great authority. We
also saw that it was after the taking up of the saints, that Satan was cast out
of the heavenlies (Revelation 12:1-17 :); so putting all these things together,
we find that it is between the coming of Christ for His saints, and His
appearance in judgment with them, that the man of sin, the lawless one, is
revealed. As described in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 :, he does similar things to
those attributed to him in Daniel 11:36-38 : he "opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God, or that is worshipped: so that he as God sitteth
in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God . . . whose coming is after
the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders:" even as
Christ, as the Man of righteousness, was "approved of God among you by miracles
and wonders and signs which God did by him." (Acts 2:22 — see Greek.) The
attainment of this position — 1:e., of God — was the first suggestion of Satan
to Adam. Here we find it is Adam fallen, fully developed and filled with the
energy of Satan, in this man of sin, who opposes the Lord Jesus — Man in whom
dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:1-23 :) When
examining Revelation 13:1-18 : with regard to this personage, we saw that the
miracles he performs have, in the apprehension of men, the appearance of divine
energy, and they are mostly of a Jewish character. In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 :
they are more an imitation of Christ. With regard to those in Revelation 13:1-18
:, we may remember that when Elijah was raised up to witness for the name of
Jehovah, before the apostate tribes of Israel (1 Kings 19:1-21 :), the question
whether Jehovah or Baal was God, was decided by fire, which came down and
consumed the sacrifice, and that the people then fell on their faces crying,
"Jehovah, he is the God." in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 :, as we have seen in
quoting Acts 2:1-47 :, it is more an imitation of Christ, though of Satanic
origin. In the First Epistle of John he is termed "The Antichrist," who denies
the Father and the Son; or, the revelation of Christianity. Thus it is plain
that in these days of strong delusion — when men, not having received the love
of the truth that they might be saved, will be given up to believe a lie — he
forms the connecting link between apostate Christianity, and apostate Judaism,
and the apostasy of the fourth beast or Gentile power, and is in himself the
expression of the apostasy of man, claiming to be God. Judaism, for he sits in
the temple of God (I need hardly add, in Jerusalem) — Christianity, as we have
seen. And we find him coming to his end, with his coadjutor in evil, in
Revelation 19:20, under the title of the "false prophet," which is more his
Jewish character; the false woman or ecclesiastical corruption having been
destroyed, not by the Lord, but by those she had overridden.

We have now traced to their end the different agents in evil in the apostasy of
the natural man entrusted with power, personified by the beast, the Antichrist
to his end, and false Christianity to her end. Deeply solemn subjects, and yet
needful (or God would not have warned us about these things), they affect not
ourselves as to their judgment and their end, but we are in the midst of, and
have to do with, the principles which are fast ripening up around us. Ours is a
calling out of, and above, the world and we shall be with the Lord, when the
evils are fully manifested, and the world carried away in delusion by them. Our
citizenship is in heaven, where these evils cannot come. Blessed be our God!
Evil is fast ripening to its head and the minds of men more blinded, and there
are many antichrists. May the consideration of these things lead us into a more
growing separation in all our pursuits and ways from that which ends so
sorrowfully. And may we with greater earnestness long for the coming of Him who
will put an end to the evil, and fill the world with blessing under Himself. Our
considerations have led us thus far. We see that the three great systems (1
Corinthians 10:32) set up in the world for the display of God’s government and
His grace (viz., the Jew, under law; the Gentile, without law, and entrusted
with universal dominion and the Church, as Christ’s epistle in the world — His
witness for grace and truth, and under grace) have all, as far as man’s
responsibility reaches, been a scene of ruin and failure and corruption — the
ruin of that which was most excellent proving the worst of corruptions.


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  CHAPTER 48: 05.09.     THE JUDGMENT OF ISRAEL AND THE NATIONS INTRODUCTIVE OF THE KINGDOM.
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The Judgment of Israel and the Nations Introductive of the Kingdom. In the
opening subject of our considerations of the ways of God, we mentioned that the
prophetic scriptures are occupied with earthly events, and embrace five great
leading and distinct subjects, some of which, if not all, are often found
grouped together in the same prophesy. It is with the fourth of these subjects
we shall now be specially occupied — the crisis, or short period of judgment,
which cleanses the world of all things that offend, and them which do iniquity,
preparatory to the setting up of the kingdom — "the hour of temptation which
comes upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth" (Revelation
3:10); "the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it." (Jeremiah
30:7.) The nation of Israel is most prominent during this period, and is the
subject of judgment, in which the Gentiles are sharers. The testimonies of
Scripture are very full on this subject; and to help to clear it in our minds, I
have classified them into three points, as follows:

1. The promises made of restoration to Israel, after their failure, and in view
of it, besides the unconditional promises made to the fathers, both of which
will be fulfilled to a remnant of the nation, who will be established in the
kingdom under Christ in the land.

2. The testimonies of Scripture that Israel would be set aside for a long
timeless period, known only to God, and again taken up to be restored.

3. That when this timeless period shall have run out, the nation will be
restored by judgment, which not only falls on the apostates amongst them,
delivering a remnant, but is a universal judgment on the nations of the world as
well, and is introductive of God’s kingdom in Zion, and the millennial period,
when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea. As to the first point, we will turn to Leviticus 26:1-46,
where we find the result put before Israel consequent on their observing the
conditions they had accepted as the terms of their relationship with God, and
retention of their blessings in the land, and the alternative in case of the
non-fulfilment of these terms — "If ye will walk in my statutes . . . then I
will give you rain," etc. (Leviticus 26:3-13); "But and if ye will not hearken .
. . . I also will do this unto you." etc. (Leviticus 26:14-39.) It goes on
assuming that the latter would be the case, till the cities are wasted, and the
land and her sanctuaries brought to desolation, and the nation dispersed amongst
the heathen, in their enemies’ land; and then, even when in the enemies’ land,
God says, "I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them
utterly, and to break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. But I
will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought
forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be
their God." The Lord then turns back to His own unconditional promises to their
forefathers, after they have destroyed themselves: and when in their enemies’
land, He forgets them not, nor casts them off utterly. "If they shall confess
their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers . . . and that they have
walked contrary to me . . . then will I remember my covenant with Jacob . . .
also my covenant with Abraham, will I remember, and I will remember the land."
(Leviticus 26:40-42.)

Turn now to Deuteronomy 30:1-10 : "And it shall come to pass when all these
things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before
thee, and thou shalt call them to mind amongst all the nations whither the Lord
thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God . . . . that
then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and
will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath
scattered thee . . . . and bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed,
and thou shalt possess it: and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy
fathers," etc. This is not so striking as Leviticus 26:1-46 :, where the
promises to the fathers are alluded to. Deuteronomy is more the principle of
their acceptance as a nation after failure, and when "Lo Ammi" had been written
upon them. It also lays down the principle of their acceptance as individuals in
the interim by the gospel, and righteousness by faith. See the use made by the
Apostle Paul of Romans 10:11-14.

There are other promises in view of their restoration, especially that to the
house of David, to be made good in Christ. We read in 1 Chronicles 17:11-14,
"And it shall come to pass, when the days be expired that thou must go to be
with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of
thy sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house and I
will establish his throne for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my
son; and I will not take my mercy away from him, as I took it from him that was
before thee, but I will settle him in my house and in my kingdom for ever, and
his throne shall be established for evermore." This passage is applied to Christ
in Hebrews 1:5.

We find the promises to the fathers alluded to in view of their full deliverance
in the end. See Micah 7:19-20. The prophet expresses the adoration of his heart
in contemplating the goodness of God in their deliverance; he says, "Thou wilt
perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn to
our fathers from the days of old." We must ever remember that if God were to
fail in fulfilling those earthly promises to Abraham, we have no reason to
suppose that He would not also fail in His spiritual promises to him, which
latter come to us. Consult Galatians 3:6-14. Neither, we know, can ever fail.

Again, when Christ came, "As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed
for ever." (Luke 1:54-55.) In Luke 1:69-74, when both the promises to the
fathers and to David’s house are recalled, "He hath raised up an horn of
salvation for us in the house of his servant David . . . to perform the mercy
promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he
sware to our father Abraham." It is almost needless to say that the earthly
blessings were deferred, because of the rejection of Christ by the nation.

Turn now to Isaiah 49:1-26 : We find that Israel having failed as God’s servant,
is set aside, and Christ presented as the true servant; and yet He says, "I have
laboured in vain;" for we know that Israel rejected Him. The answer of God comes
in Isaiah 49:5, etc. It was a light thing to raise up the tribes of Israel, but
He should be exalted and given as a light to the Gentiles. In Isaiah 49:8, He is
given as a covenant to the people to deliver them in the end. The language of
the prophecy is very beautiful: "Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth; and
break forth into singing, O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his people,
and will have mercy upon his afflicted." Zion, apparently forsaken, then learns
that the Lord’s faithfulness is greater than a mother’s towards her sucking
child. "Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls
(Jerusalem) are continually before me." Her children make haste to return to
her, and her destroyers go forth from her. "Lift up thine eyes round about, and
behold all these (the restored and gathered remnant of the people) gather
themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt
surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as
a bride doeth. For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy
destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they
that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt have,
after thou hast lost the other, shall say again in thine ears, The place is too
strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine
heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am
desolate, a captive, and removing to and fro? and who hath brought up these?
Behold I was left alone: these, where had they been? Thus saith the Lord God,
Behold I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the
people, and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be
carried upon their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their
queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee, with their face toward
the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that I am the
Lord, for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me." The thought of applying
this to the Church is almost too over-strained to need a remark. When does the
Church ever say, "The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me" and
that at the very time when the blessing is complete? In Romans 11:1-36 : the
Apostle Paul deals with this subject, showing that God hath not cast off His
people; and he gives three leading reasons as his argument. First: there is a
remnant according to the election of grace. Secondly: through the fall of his
nation, salvation is come to the Gentiles to provoke Israel to jealousy (See
Deuteronomy 32:21), and not to reject them. And, thirdly, "There shall come out
of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob," at the time
that all Israel (that is, as a whole, or nationally), shall be saved. When we
consider the third point proposed, many of those promises of restoration will
come before us, connected with the judgment of the apostates of the nation, and
the Gentiles. As to the next point, we will turn to Daniel 9:24-27, where we
find the answer to the prayer of Daniel, who was one of the captives of Israel
in Babylon. Naturally the subject of all others most dear to his Jewish heart
and affections was the restoration of his people; and the subject of most
importance was to ascertain the length of time they would be subject to their
captors, under whose yoke they were reaping what they had sown when owned of
God. In the beginning of the chapter we find that, like any godly man, Daniel
was a student of Scripture; and in the first year of Darius the Mede, who took
the kingdom after the fall of Babylon, he had ascertained from the book of
Jeremiah that the seventy years of the desolation of Jerusalem were now past.
Faith was at work in his soul, and he set his face to wait upon God and to
humble himself before Him about his nation with prayer and supplication, with
fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. He puts himself in the position of the nation
according to its sins before God, and identifies himself with them. (See
Leviticus 26:40-41.) His heart owns the God with whom he had to do, as One who
never changed — a merciful and gracious God. God Himself is his confidence. "O
Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to
our fathers, because we have sinned against thee. To the Lord our God belong
mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him." It is something
beautiful how his faith calls Jerusalem "thy city," and Israel "thy people," as
Moses did when the people made the golden calf, and God could not own them.

We read, "Whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin
of my people Israel . . . the man Gabriel . . . informed me," etc; and in the
communication which follows — that is, the prophecy of the seventy weeks — the
answer to his prayer. We may remark that God speaks of the people to Daniel as
"thy people" — as to Moses on the occasion to which we have referred; and the
prophecy relates to the Jewish people, and to Jerusalem. "Seventy weeks are
determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and
to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint
the most holy (place). Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going
forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the
Prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be
built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after (the) threescore
and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off and shall have nothing (marg., which is
correct): and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city
and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end
of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm a (marg.) covenant
with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the
sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations
he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined
shall be poured upon the desolate." Here then is a clearly defined period
mentioned, at the end of which a remarkable change would be brought to his
people, the Jews, and to their city — their return and complete re-establishment
in grace — transgressions pardoned, sins made an end of, iniquity forgiven, and
everlasting righteousness introduced, the vision and prophecy sealed up, and the
most holy place anointed. Now let us call to mind the state of Judah and
Jerusalem, as we saw when examining the past history of the people of Israel, at
the time that Judah went into captivity to Babylon, in the closing chapters of 2
Kings. The king of Judah and the nation were brought into captivity (Israel, or
the ten tribes, had long before been brought into captivity by the Assyrian),
the city was broken up, and the house of the Lord burned with fire, and a few of
the poorer of the people left to be vinedressers and husbandmen in the land. And
let us compare that state with what is here, in Daniel 9:1-27 :, where we find a
complete and perfect restoration and re-establishment promised.

During the continuance of those seventy weeks of years (490), it assumes, or
declares, that the people or a remnant of them, will be in the land; but not yet
owned as God’s people, and still under the power of the Gentiles; the temple
rebuilt, and the city restored. This is of much importance, so let us bear in
mind those three points which characterize the continuance of the seventy weeks.

1. The people (or some of them) are in the land, but not owned of God.

2. The temple rebuilt, and the city.

3. The Gentiles still in possession of the throne of the world, or in other
words, the "times of the Gentiles" not run out.

These three things do not characterize the present time. The seventy weeks are
divided into three periods, or divisions: seven weeks, sixty-two weeks, and one
week. The first division of seven weeks, or forty-nine years, counts from the
going forth of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, this was the
starting point. "Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of
the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah the Prince,
shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built
again, and the wall, even in troublous times." First this rebuilding goes on for
seven weeks of years. We read in Nehemiah that it was a time of great distress
and trouble. "But it came to pass that when Sanballat heard that we builded the
wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. And he
spake before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these
feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make
an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish
which are burned?" etc. Then we have sixty-two weeks of years from the
rebuilding of Jerusalem unto Messiah, in all sixty-nine weeks of the seventy.
Messiah is then cut off and rejected, and does not get His kingdom. "After the
threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off and shall have nothing."
Christ presents Himself to the nation as their King, and instead of getting His
kingdom, He is crucified after the threescore and two weeks; and the counting
out of the seventieth week ceases for the time. Then the people of the prince
that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. This was accomplished
under Titus and the Roman armies at the destruction of Jerusalem, after the
rejection of Christ. The people whose armies accomplished this were the Roman
people. In John 11:48, we find the fears of the Jewish leaders absolutely
prophetic of this event. "If we let him (Christ) thus alone, all men will
believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and
nation." And the Lord Himself predicted when He beheld the city, and wept over
it, "For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench
about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall
lay thee even with the ground." (Luke 19:43.) And again, "And some spake of the
temple how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, He said, As for these
things which ye behold, the days will come in the which there shall not be left
one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down . . . and Jerusalem shall
be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."
(Luke 21:5-6.)

Messiah having been cut off after the sixty-ninth week, the chain of events with
the Jewish people ceases (absolutely, when the city was destroyed), and time
therefore ceases to be counted from that period to the present. God, as we have
seen, becomes occupied with other things. The seventieth week was to bring in
and establish in full prosperity and blessing the people, according to Daniel
9:24; but instead of the blessing, the cutting off of Messiah after the
sixty-ninth week, the city and sanctuary trodden down, and a long nameless
period of desolations to the people and city follow. Evidently, as we have seen,
it was the Roman people who were to do what is stated in Daniel 9:26. "The
people of the prince that shall come," etc. The prince was not there, only the
people are named, but the prince himself was not come. He is brought before us
after this long timeless period of desolations, still running on, "He shall
confirm a covenant," etc. The rejection of Christ, therefore, suspended all
relations and dealings of God with the Jewish people, as His people, and this
allotted period of seventy weeks ceases to run on. And when the Jews are the
objects of God’s dealings again in the short period of judgment before He owns
them as His nation, the period which remains of the seventy weeks will be
counted out and will bring in the full restoration. This short period is,
therefore, as we may easily see, synchronical with the closing events, or crisis
of the history of the world, introductive of the kingdom.

We find the same thing in many other scriptures either assumed or declared. (See
Isaiah 8:14-22; Isaiah 9:1-7.) Christ becomes a stone of stumbling to the nation
— the testimony is confined to His disciples — the Lord then hides His face from
the house of Jacob for a long, timeless period, and the prophet passes over to
the last days, which introduce the kingdom by judgment. Again in Isaiah 61:1-2,
when the Lord announced His mission in the synagogue of Nazareth, He stops short
in the middle of Isaiah 6:2, which is separated from the next clause already for
more than eighteen hundred years, and which clause announces the "day of
vengeance," and the comforting them that mourn, the remnant of the nation in the
kingdom.

Now consider the testimony of Scripture as to the third point proposed. Turn to
Deuteronomy 32:1-52 : In the closing verses of Deuteronomy 31:1-30 : Moses
gathers the elders and officers of the people of Israel together to recite in
their ears the prophetic song given to him by the Lord as a witness, in view of
their failure. He says, "I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt
yourselves, and turn aside from the way that I command you, and evil will befall
you in the latter days, because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to
provoke Him to anger through the works of your hands." Then in Deuteronomy
32:1-52 : they are viewed as having corrupted themselves. "They have corrupted
themselves; their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and
crooked generation." He then goes on to relate their wonderful history, and the
counsels and care of God as to them, and the return they made to Him. "Jeshurun
waxed fat and kicked . . . they provoked him to jealousy with strange gods . . .
they sacrificed unto devils . . . . And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them .
. . and he said, I will hide my face from them; I will see what their end shall
be, for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They
have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God . . . and I will move them
to jealousy with those which are not a people." And then in His anger He casts
them off utterly, heaping mischief upon them. When thus cast off He acts in His
own sovereignty, and in view of this He declares, "For the Lord shall judge his
people, and repent himself for his servants, when he sees their power is gone,
and that there is none shut up or left." He judges His people, avenges the blood
of His servants. When His hand takes hold on judgment he renders vengeance to
His enemies — makes His arrows drunk with blood — His sword devours much flesh;
then He turns in mercy to His people and to His land. The result of this
judgment on the nations, is that the Gentiles sing the song of deliverance with
the remnant of His people who are delivered. (See Psalms 67:1-7, Psalms 117:1-2)

Psalms 2:8-12, Psalms 3:1-8, Psalms 4:1-8, Psalms 5:1-12, Psalms 6:1-10, Psalms
7:1-17, Psalms 8:1-9, Psalms 9:1-20, Psalms 10:1-18. In the first of these
Psalms we find Christ presented as King in Zion and rejected, yet God’s purposes
only set aside for a while. Christ takes in resurrection the wider glory of the
Son of man, according to Psalms 8:1-9 :; we saw before that the Holy Ghost, in
Acts 4:1-37 :, quotes the first two verses of Psalms 2:1-12 : and stops. The
Lord is represented as laughing at their rage, but for all their rage He
declares, "Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion." Messiah is
desired, "Ask of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance,"
etc. When rejected, and about to be crucified, He represents Himself as praying
for His disciples, "I pray for them, I pray not for the world" (John 17:1-26 :),
but the time is coming when He will ask for His inheritance, and the answer
comes, "Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces
like a potter’s vessel." He inherits them by judgment, in which His people now
being gathered have their place with Him; a proof that, wherever Christ is
spoken of in the Old Testament, we find the portion of the Church as well. "He
that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power
over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a
potter shall they be broken in pieces, even as I received of my Father."
(Revelation 2:28.) This however is not his best portion, for "I will give him
the morning star" — Christ Himself. And then not only is the name of Jehovah
excellent in all the earth, but He sets His glory above the heavens (Psalms
8:1), and stills the enemy and the avenger. Psalms 9:1-20 : and Psalms 10:1-18 :
show us the position and circumstances in which the nation is found in this
crisis of judgment. The delivered remnant say, "For thou hast maintained my
right and my cause . . . thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the
wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever . . . . The Lord is known
by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own
hands . . . . The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that
forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the
poor shall not perish for ever. Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail; let the
heathen be judged in thy sight. Put them in fear, O Lord; that the nations may
know themselves to be but men." It is when there is none to say, "How long?"
that the Lord appears to their deliverance. Again, "The Lord is King for ever
and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land. Lord, thou hast heard the
desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart (that is of the spared ones
who are trained for the kingdom); thou wilt cause their ear to hear," etc. How
mistaken to think the Psalms are the expression of Christian experience as such!
How often the simple-hearted Christian has been stumbled at the cry for
vengeance on enemies, running through this class of Psalms, put in his mouth,
whose calling is to do well and suffer for it, and take it patiently, while in
the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ! The kingdom and power will be looked
for by these Jewish hearts, as that which brings their deliverance. The trials
of the heavenly saints end, just before those of the Jewish saints begin. See
Revelation 12:1-17 :, where we find rejoicing in heaven when the accuser is cast
down, and woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, "for the devil is
come down to you." He then turns his rage against the woman and her seed, the
Jewish people. The Spirit of Christ has graciously entered into these trials,
that He might give a voice to the remnant, in the closing days, before the
kingdom.

Read now Psalms 110:1-7 : Christ rejected by men, and by His people as their
king — who said, "We have no king but Caesar," "We will not have this man to
reign over us" — is exalted to God’s right hand. God said, "Sit thou on my right
hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." (See Hebrews 1:13; Hebrews
10:13.) He remains then for the nameless time "until" that hour known only to
the Father. The Lord, when that hour comes, sends out of Zion the rod of His
strength; and Christ rules in the midst of His enemies. His people are willing
in the day of His power. (They are unwilling in the day of His humiliation.)
"The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
He shall judge among the heathen," etc.

Turn to Isaiah 1:1-31, Isaiah 2:1-22, Isaiah 3:1-26, Isaiah 4:1-6 : Blessing and
rest are proposed in chapter 1: consequent on the repentance of the nation; but
they would not hearken. Eventually it is brought in by judgment — "Zion shall be
redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness; and the destruction
of the transgressors, and of the sinners shall be together." The result of this
judgment is in Isaiah 2:1-4; Isaiah 4:2-6, a time of peace and glory. "It shall
come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be
established in the top of the mountains . . . and all nations shall flow unto it
. . . . He shall judge among . . . the nations . . . and they shall beat their
swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not
lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." How
different the time in which we live, while the times of the Gentiles are running
on, characterized by those words of our Lord, "Nation shall rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom . . . upon earth distress of nations, with
perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear,
and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth," precursors of
the Son of man’s coming with power and great glory. (Luke 21:10; Luke 21:25-27.)
The remaining part of Isaiah 2:1-22 :, etc., shows the connection between the
judgment of the nations and that of Israel. "Enter into the rock, and hide thee
in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty
looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down .
. . . For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and
lofty: and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man
shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day . . . . when
he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." The result of this universal judgment
is the establishment of His people in the glory of the kingdom. "It will come to
pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be
called holy; even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: when
the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall
have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of
judgment and the spirit of burning. And the Lord will create upon every
dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and a smoke by
day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be
a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day-time from the
heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain." His
own presence will be there, when His people are delivered, as in the wilderness
of old.

Isaiah 11:1-16 : The reading of this chapter is so plain as scarcely to need a
word. A time of universal blessedness and peace; His people restored and under
the government of Messiah, introduced by judgment, which falls on them and the
nations. "He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the
breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked." "The envy also of Ephraim shall
depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off," etc

Isaiah 13:14 :, treat of the same time, a time of universal judgment on the
imperial throne of the world. (Isaiah 13:1-22) "The day of the Lord," when "all
hands shall be faint and every man’s heart shall melt.’’ "For the Lord will have
mercy on Jacob and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and
the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of
Jacob . . . and they shall take them captives whose captives they were, and they
shall rule over their oppressors . . . in the day that the Lord shall give thee
rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou
wast made to serve." "This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth;
and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations." (Isaiah
14:1-3, Isaiah 14:26) It goes on to the destruction of the Assyrian after their
deliverance (the power that occupies at that day the territory of their ancient
enemy); I say "after," because before the Assyrian fell before Babylon; here,
which proves its future application, he falls after Babylon is judged.

Isaiah 24:1-23, Isaiah 25:1-12, Isaiah 26:1-21, Isaiah 27:1-13 : This prophecy
we have examined and the deliverance of a remnant; the Lord’s throne is
established shortly before; it shows the universal judgment upon the nations and
Israel, in Zion, the reproach of His people removed, the vail taken away from
all nations. The Lord had hidden his face from the house of Israel while they
were disowned: but He is spoken of as coming out of His place for their
deliverance. "Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors
about thee, hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation
be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the
inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall disclose her
blood, and no more cover her slain . . . And it shall come to pass in that day,
that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to
perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall
worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem."

Isaiah 30:1-33 : "Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the
sun: and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in
the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people and healeth the stroke
of their wound. Behold the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with his
anger, and the burden thereof is heavy; his lips are full of indignation, and
his tongue as a devouring fire: and his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall
reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity:
1:e., and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people causing them to err
. . . . And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall show
the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the
flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hail-stones. For
through the voice of the Lord shall the Assyrian be beaten down which smote with
a rod. And in every place where the grounded staff shall pass" (the rod of
vengeance which God hath decreed), "which the Lord shall lay upon him, it shall
be with tabrets and harps" (when it is laid on the Assyrian, it is the source of
joy and deliverance at the end of the indignation, to the remnant of Israel):
"and in battles of shaking will he fight with it. For Tophet is ordained of old;
yea, for the king it is prepared" (the Antichrist, who has this title amongst
the apostate nation); "he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire
and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle
it."

Isaiah 59:15-21. Isaiah 59:20 of this passage is quoted by the apostle in Romans
11:1-36 :, in view of the future restoration of the people. "The Redeemer shall
come to Zion and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob." And then He
establishes the new covenant with Israel; His spirit is with His people, and His
words are in their mouth, which would abide with them for ever. Verse 18, etc.,
shows that it is introduced by judgment. "He will repay fury to his adversaries,
recompence to his enemies: to the islands he will pay recompence; so shall they
fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the
sun." The next chapter declares that Jerusalem is restored in the glory of the
kingdom, and her sons and daughters gathered from every side.

Isaiah 66:1-24 : This chapter gives the judgment which introduces the glory and
blessedness of the restored nation described in the latter portion of Isaiah
65:1-25 : First we have the remnant who fear the name of Jehovah and wait for
Him; then the apostates of the nation. The former are encouraged with the
promise that the Lord would appear to their joy and deliverance, and to the
shame of the apostates, who said in contempt, "Let the Lord display his glory."
"Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind,
to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire
and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord
shall be many." (Isaiah 66:15-16.) This passage shows that He comes suddenly,
like a whirlwind, and renders to His enemies the fire of judgment. Then we have
the result of this in Isaiah 66:6-14; the laws are set up again in a wondrous
manner, and Jerusalem restored. "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her
all ye that love her: . . . rejoice with joy for her, all ye that mourn for her:
. . . for thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream . . . as one whom his mother
comforteth, so will I comfort you: and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And
when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like
an herb: and the hand of the Lord shall be known towards his servants, and his
indignation towards his enemies." Then, in Isaiah 66:19-20, the spared remnant
go forth to declare the glory of the Lord among the Gentiles, and to bring back
the dispersed of Israel. The whole chapter shows most clearly the connection
between the universal judgment of the nations and Israel, with the deliverance
of a remnant, and the Gentiles who are spared blessed around the people of God.

Turn to Jeremiah 25:1-38 : We referred to this chapter before; it declared the
length of the captivity of Judah in Babylon to be seventy years: but God, having
given the throne of the world to Babylon, when He had set aside His people and
removed His presence from their midst — in principle, when Babylon is overthrown
His people are delivered, because it was the only power that held its dominion
directly from God — the other Gentile powers followed providentially. Jerusalem
was only partially restored; however, it shows the principle. In examining this
chapter, we find that the judgment goes on to the end, in which His people are
involved; primarily it referred to the judgment which was executed on Jerusalem
and the nations at the time to which the prophecy referred, Babylon falling last
of all, which had executed it; and serves as a type of the final crisis of
judgment of all the nations of the world. "For, lo, . . . I will call for a
sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the Lord of hosts . . . . A
noise shall come even to the ends of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy
with the nations, be will plead with all flesh . . . and the slain of the Lord
shall be at that day from one end of the earth even to the other end of the
earth," etc. (Jeremiah 25:29-33)

Jeremiah 30:1-24, Jeremiah 31:1-40, Jeremiah 32:1-44, Jeremiah 33:1-26 : In this
beautiful series of prophecies we find, first, Judah restored; then Israel; then
both established under the new covenant; the land restored; Messiah and the
priesthood, all introduced by judgment on the Jews and the nations, which finds
Jacob at the height of his distress. Let us examine it more closely. In Jeremiah
30:7; the prophet writes, "Alas for that day is great, so that none is like it;
it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it. For it
shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will break his
yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more
serve themselves of him, but they shall serve the Lord their God, and David
their king, whom I will raise up unto them. Therefore fear thou not, O my
servant Jacob, saith the Lord, neither be thou dismayed, O Israel, for, lo, I
will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the laud of their captivity; and
Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him
afraid. For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee, though I make a full
end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end
of thee; but I will correct thee in measure and will not leave thee altogether
unpunished . . . . Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured, and
all thine adversaries, every one of them shall go into captivity, and they that
spoil thee shall be a spoil and all they that prey upon thee will I give for a
prey. For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds,
saith the Lord, because they called thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom
no man seeketh after . . . the city shall be builded upon her own heap . . . .
And ye shall be my people and I will be your God . . . . The fierce anger of the
Lord shall not return, until he has done it, and until he has performed the
intents of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it." Jeremiah 31:1-40
: sets forth the deliverance, at the same time, of all the families of Israel:
and they shall plant vines in the mountains of Samaria and eat them as common
things. The language of this deliverance is touchingly beautiful. "Behold I will
bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth
and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child, and her that
travaileth with child together; a great company shall return thither. They shall
come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them, and I will cause
them to walk by the rivers of waters by a straight way, wherein they shall not
stumble, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn . . . . He
that scattered Israel, will gather them . . . . Therefore they shall come and
sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord,
for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock, and of the
herd; and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any
more at all . . . . Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" (both houses,
the entire nation), "not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land
of Egypt; which covenant they brake . . . . But this shall be the covenant . . .
. . I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts . . .
and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother,
saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto
the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I
will remember their sins no more . . . . If those ordinances" (of creation)
"depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease
from being a nation before me for ever." When Messiah was cut off, the blood of
this new covenant was shed, and all necessary on God’s part was accomplished to
their righteous establishment under it. Plainly the return from Babylon, of the
remnant of Judah, was not this re-establishment; for it will be established with
all Israel, as it declares, and in grace. The blessing of it however never
brings them within the veil, as is the place of Christians now. "Behold the days
come, saith the Lord, that the city shall be built to the Lord, from the tower
of Hananeel, unto the gate of the corner. And the measuring line shall yet go
forth over against it upon the hill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath. And
the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and all the fields unto
the brook Kidron, unto the corner of the horsegate towards the east, shall be
holy unto the Lord; and it shall not be plucked up nor thrown down, any more for
ever." In Jeremiah 32:1-44 : the Lord takes up the circumstances of the siege of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar to declare His counsel in grace as to their final
restoration. The prophet is caused to buy a field in token that the people would
again possess the land. "Behold, I will gather them out of all countries whither
I have driven them in mine anger . . . and I will bring them again into their
place, and I will cause them to dwell safely . . . . Yea, I will rejoice over
them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole
heart, and with my whole soul."

Jeremiah 33:1-26 : repeats the blessings, looking forward to the day when their
Messiah would be with them. "I will cause the captivity of Judah and the
captivity of Israel (both) to return . . . and I will cleanse them from all
their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me: and I will pardon all their
iniquities whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against
me . . . . In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of
righteousness to grow up unto David: and he shall execute judgment and
righteousness in the land." ("Judgment shall return to righteousness, and all
the upright in heart shall follow it." Psalms 94:15.) "In those days shall Judah
be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she
shall be called, The Lord our righteousness. For thus saith the Lord, David
shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel," not
merely Judah. "Thus saith the Lord, If my covenant be not with day and night,
and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast
away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his
seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; for I will cause
their captivity to return, and have mercy upon them."

Turn now to Ezekiel 20:1-49 : The Spirit here retraces the idolatry of the
entire nation from the time of their deliverance out of Egypt. God had brought
them out, and given them His sabbaths to be a sign between Him and them: but
they had ever rebelled in the wilderness against Him, and polluted His sabbaths.
"Notwithstanding the children rebelled against me: they walked not in my
statutes . . . they polluted my sabbaths . . . in the wilderness." God had told
them (Deuteronomy 32:1-52 :; Leviticus 26:1-46 :) that He would scatter them
amongst the heathen. Yet when they had been brought into the land they had
forsaken the Lord for the high places, and the Lord had sworn that He would not
be enquired of by them; but the nation, hardened in their idolatry, had resolved
to be like the heathen, and serve wood and stone. Then the Lord said that with
fury poured out He would rule over them. "And I will bring you out from the
people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered . . .
and I will plead with you face to face . . . and I will cause you to pass under
the rod . . . and I will purge out from among you the rebels (the apostates),
and them that transgress against me . . and they shall not enter into the land
of Israel . . . . For in my holy mountain . . . there shall all the house of
Israel, all of them in the land, serve me . . . when I shall bring you into the
land of Israel; into the country for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it
to your fathers. And I will kindle a fire in thee . . . and all flesh shall see
that I the Lord have kindled it: and it shall not be quenched." (Ezekiel
20:33-48.) Israel is here dealt with, amongst the nations of the world, for
idolatry; as Judah for the rejection of Christ (for Israel never returned to
have their Messiah presented to them, as Judah), which was her special sin, in
which she was joined by the fourth Gentile empire, represented by Pilate. In the
end she is found in close alliance with, and politically favoured by, the
Gentile empire in its revived state. The unclean spirit of idolatry did not
return to the Jews after the return of the remnant from Babylon. The Lord
notices this in Matthew 12:1-50 :: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a
man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and findeth none. Then he
saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come,
he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished; then goeth he and taketh with himself
seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there;
and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also
unto this wicked generation." Ezekiel 20:48 shows the connection of the judgment
of the nations with that of Israel.

Ezekiel 36:1-38, Ezekiel 37:1-28, Ezekiel 38:1-23, Ezekiel 39:1-29 : In this
series of chapters we get, first, the moral renewing of the nation; then the
quickening and restoration of the people in national resurrection; then when
restored and in their land, their last great enemy, which occupies the territory
of the Assyrian, comes up against them; and is destroyed in the mountains of
Israel.

Ezekiel 36:1-38 : The past failure of the nation is put before them that they
may own it before God. The heathen said, "These are the people of the Lord and
(yet) they are gone forth out of his land." (Ezekiel 36:20) But then God
remembers that His name is involved, and for His holy name’s sake He delivers
them. Then, as He had shown to Nicodemus, a master in Israel, the new birth was
necessary even to the enjoyment of earthly blessings; which, as a teacher in
Israel, he ought to have known from the testimony of the prophets. "I will
sprinkle clean water upon you . . . a new heart also will I give you . . . and I
will put my spirit within you . . . . and ye shall dwell in the land that I gave
your fathers . . . . And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase
of the field . . . . I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the
wastes shall be builded," etc. The nation is thus morally renewed that they may
loathe themselves for their sins before God.

Ezekiel 37:1-28 : In the vision of this chapter we have a figure of the national
resurrection of the people. The prophet sees a valley of dry bones, to which he
prophesies as commanded; and there was a noise and a shaking, and the bones came
together, and the sinews and flesh came up upon them; and the breath came into
them and they lived. "Then said be unto me, Son of man, these bones are the
whole house of Israel; behold, they say (in captivity), Our bones are dried, our
hope is lost; we are cut off from our parts . . . . Thus saith the Lord God,
Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and bring you into the land of
Israel . . . and shall put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live; and I shall
place you in your own land." The figure of resurrection is here used to show the
gathering of the nation, long apparently lost amongst the nations of the world,
into their land. Clearly it only applies to this, not actual resurrection of the
saints who have died in the Lord; it would not be "in the land," but to heaven,
they would be brought. In what follows, we find that Judah and Israel, long
apart, are united into one nation, under one king. God sets up his tabernacle
and His sanctuary amongst them, and establishes His covenant of peace. In
Ezekiel 38:1-23 :, Ezekiel 39:1-29 :, the Assyrian, the ancient enemy of the
people when owned of God — "the rod of the Lord’s anger" (Isaiah 10:5) against
His people, to chastise them for their sins — is here introduced under the title
of Gog, the prince of Rosh (Russia); Meshech (Moscow); and Tubal (Tobolsk). He
embraces the territory under Russia, or which that power shall have gathered
under her in that day. He is represented as wickedly coming up against the
nation in Palestine when at rest and restored. "Thou shalt say, I will go up to
the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell
safely . . . to take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thy hand upon the
desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered
out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst
of the land . . . . Thus saith the Lord . . . it shall be in the latter days,
and I will bring thee against my land . . . . Art thou he of whom I have spoken
in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel . . . and it shall come to
pass . . . when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God,
that my fury shall come up in my face . . . and I will plead against him with
pestilence and with blood . . . and I will turn thee back, and leave but the
sixth part of thee . . . . Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel . . . .
Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God; this is the day whereof
I have spoken. . . . Then shall they (the house of Israel) know that I am the
Lord their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen;
but I have gathered them into their own land . . . . Neither will I hide my face
any more from them; for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel,
saith the Lord God." Compare also for this destruction of the Assyrian, after
the people are restored, Isaiah 14:24-25; Isaiah 33:1-24 : We must carefully
distinguish Gog the land of Magog in Ezekiel 38:1-23 :, Ezekiel 39:1-29 :, from
Gog and Magog of Revelation 20:1-15 : The former comes up when the people are
restored, in the beginning of the kingdom; the latter, after the thousand years
of the kingdom have expired. "When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall
be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are
in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog," etc., (Revelation 20:7-8)

Daniel 12:1-13 : We have before seen that the time of the great tribulation,
spoken of here, is that to which the Lord Himself alludes, as happening at the
time the abomination of desolation is set up in the temple, and which ends by
the coming of the Lord Himself, and the deliverance of the people. It is the
closing half of the seventieth week, when the reformed Latin empire is the full
expression of Satanic energy, the destruction of which makes way for the kingdom
under Christ. We read, "At that time shall Michael stand up . . . for the
children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was
since there was a nation, even to that time; and at that time shall thy people
be delivered . . . . And many (not all) of them that sleep in the dust of the
earth" (this is a figure analogous to the moral death and resurrection in Isaiah
26:13-19, and the national resurrection as conveyed by the figure of the valley
of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-28 :) "shall awake, some to everlasting life, and
some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the
brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to (instruct many in)
righteousness, as the stars for over and ever . . . . And one said . . . How
long shall it be to the end of these wonders?" that is, to the end of the
tribulation, and he sware, "that it should be for a time, times, and a half," to
put an end to the dispersion of the holy people: the closing half of the
seventieth week of Daniel 9:1-27 :

Joel 3:1-21 : It is but necessary to read Joel 3:1-2, Joel 3:9-17, to show the
connection. "For, behold, in those days . . . when I shall bring again the
captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring
them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat (the judgment of Jehovah), and will
plead with them there for my people, and my heritage Israel, whom they have
scattered among the nations, and parted my land . . . . Proclaim ye this among
the Gentiles . . . . Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather
yourselves together round about. Let the heathen be waked, and come up to the
valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round
about" (this is the judgment of the quick, or living nations). "The Lord also
shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and . . . will be
the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel . . . . Then
shall Jerusalem be holy, and then shall no stranger pass through her any more."
She shall be no more trodden down of the Gentiles; their times shall have been
fulfilled.

Micah 4:1-13; Micah 5:1-15 This prophecy shows in the most wondrously beautiful
manner, the coming and rejection of the Bethlehemite by His people, who are then
given up for a time until Zion, which travails, shall have brought forth, and
the Son be owned as born to the nation (see Isaiah 9:1-21 :); and the remnant
shall be restored. The Assyrian then comes up, and He whom they had rejected is
then their peace. "And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord . . .
. And this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land,
and when he shall tread in our palaces." He shall “deliver us from the Assyrian
. . . and the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people, as the dew
from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor
waiteth for the sons of men." Jacob shall be the channel of refreshing grace
from God to the world, and a testimony to His power.

Zephaniah 3:8-20. "Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that
I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations . . . to
pour upon them my indignation . . . for all the earth shall be devoured with the
fire of my jealousy." The remnant is thus encouraged to wait for this time of
judgment from the Lord, when He would rise up to the prey; this alone would set
them free, and teach the nations to call upon the Lord, and serve Him with one
consent. In that day God would gather his dispersed people from beyond the
rivers of Ethiopia (Euphrates and Nile) and have in their midst a people that
trust in the name of Jehovah; and "the remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity,
nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for
they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid. Sing, O daughter
of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of
Jerusalem; the Lord hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy;
the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see
evil any more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not; and to
Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is
mighty: he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his
love; he will joy over thee with singing . . . . I will make you a name and a
praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before
your eyes, saith the Lord."

Haggai 2:1-23 : "For thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once, it is a little
while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry
land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come:
and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts . . . . The glory
of this latter house shall be greater than of the former . . . . I will shake
the heavens and the earth; and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I
will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen . . . saith the Lord of
hosts." This universal judgment, introductive of Christ and the glory of the
restored nation, is referred to by the Holy Ghost in Hebrews 12:26, as yet to
come.

Zechariah 10:1-12, Zechariah 11:1-17, Zechariah 12:1-14, Zechariah 13:1-9,
Zechariah 14:1-21 : In this series of chapters we have the restoration of Judah
and Israel at a time of universal judgment; and this is spoken of still as
future, long after the return of Judah from the Babylonish captivity. "And in
that day I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people; all that
burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the
earth be gathered together against it . . . . And Jerusalem shall be inhabited
again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. . . . And it shall come to pass in
that day, that I will seek to destroy all nations that come up against
Jerusalem." The verses following, which speak of the repentance of the house of
David and the nation, are extremely beautiful. The rejected Messiah is the
Jehovah who delivers them. They look upon Him whom they have pierced. There is a
great mourning in the land as in the valley of Megiddo of old. This allusion to
2 Chronicles 35:22, etc., is touching in the extreme. There, in the closing days
of their former history, their faithful king, Josiah, had fallen, and there the
nation had mourned and made great lamentation over their slain king. Here they
learn to mourn in the dust, when they learn that the king whom their nation
crucified is the Lord of hosts Himself. In the past history of the nation we saw
how that they had failed — the people, the priests, the prophets, and the kings.
Here we find these classes all represented in this national and yet individual
repentance. The house of David, which represents the kings — the house of
Nathan, the prophets — the house of Levi, the priests — and the house of Shimei
(Simeon), the people.

Judah is here dealt with, in the land, for the rejection of Christ; not like
Israel, as we have seen, for idolatry. "And . . . in all the land . . . two
parts therein shall be cut off, and die, but the third shall be left therein.
And I will bring the third part through the fire, and I will refine them as
silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my
name and I will hear them; I will say, It is my people; (Ammi) and they shall
say, the Lord is my God." The sentence "Call his name Lo Ammi, for ye are not my
people, and I will not be your God," (Hosea 1:9,) is removed. In Zechariah
14:1-21 : the Lord appears to their deliverance, in the place from which the
"glory" of the God of Israel departed, when He transferred the "sword" to the
Gentile. From the same place He had entered Jerusalem as their King, according
to this prophet (Zechariah 9:9.) riding upon an ass’s colt. On the same mount of
Olives He sat, in Matthew 24:1-51 : surrounded by His Jewish disciples; after He
had left His nation, until the day when they would say, "Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord," and instructed them as to the restoration and
gathering of their nation from the four quarters of the world, at the coming of
the Son of man in His glory. And from the same mountain did He ascend, having
been rejected by His nation and crucified, to heaven. (Acts 1:1-26 :) And on
that same mountain shall His feet stand when He returns to their full and
complete deliverance in grace! "Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against
those nations . . . . And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of
Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east . . . . And the Lord my God shall
come, and all the saints with thee . . . . And it shall be in that day, that
living waters shall go out from Jerusalem . . . . And the Lord shall be King
over all the earth . . . . All the land shall be turned as a plain, from Geba to
Rimmon, south of Jerusalem; and it shall be lifted up and inhabited in her
place, from Benjamin’s gate, unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner
gate, and from the towers of Hananeel unto the king’s wine-presses . . . . And
it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came
against Jerusalem, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the
Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles."

We have now followed without much comment, and allowing scripture to speak for
itself; which it has done, from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, giving
the testimony of a time of universal judgment; when God turns to occupy Himself,
directly, with the world again; the nation of Israel being the special object
before Him. All these dealings making way for God’s kingdom in Zion and the
restored earth; at the time of the restitution of all things — and we have seen
most distinctly that this time of judgment is synchronical with the counting out
of the closing part of the seventieth week of Daniel 9:1-27 : — the crisis of
the history of this world. And before closing this subject, I would shortly
notice the position of the heavenly and glorified saints — the Church of the
firstborn — during these scenes of universal judgment. We saw them taken up at
the time of the first resurrection to be "ever with the Lord," (when the saying
of Isaiah 25:8, 1 Corinthians 15:54, is brought to pass, "Death is swallowed up
in victory,") when this period of judgment begins. We find this in the Book of
Revelation, in Rev. 4-19, which are occupied with this period of judgment,
precursory of the kingdom. It is assumed also in other Scriptures. In Revelation
1:1-20 : we have "the things which thou hast seen," the vision of Christ walking
amongst the candlesticks. Revelation 2:3 :, "the things that are," (Revelation
1:19) or the time-state of the Church as a light-bearer here below for Christ.
In her place of responsibility the various features which would mark her
existence in the world are portrayed, from the time of her departure from her
first love, till she is threatened with total excision — "I will spue thee out
of my mouth." No doubt seven actual assemblies in Asia are addressed, but the
moral state of each is seized to describe that which would be found in
Christendom. That these seven assemblies, and they alone, could not be termed
"the things that are," is clear, as they did not constitute all that existed
then; and besides, Revelation 3:10 clearly indicates that the whole
time-existence of the Church is converged, as it promises that the overcomer who
kept the word of Christ’s patience would be kept from "the hour of temptation
which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth" — the
period of judgment we have been considering, which introduces or rather precedes
the kingdom. Revelation 4:1-11 :, etc., "The things which shall be after these
things" (meta tauta) begins this period. "Come up hither, and I will show thee
things which must be after these things." There are doubtless features in these
chapters that show the leading features which characterize the protracted period
from the apostolic days to the end of the age; but when we come to details, the
interpretation can only apply, in truth, to the crisis of the history of the
world.

All through the course of these chapters of the Apocalypse, we find a company
seated in heaven, calm and peaceful, amidst the thunders and lightnings and
judgments, cognizant of the mind of God; and with full understanding of all that
goes on beneath them in the world. In Revelation 4:1-11 : we find them, in the
presence of a throne of judgment, seated as kings and priests, clothed with
white raiment, and on their heads crowns of gold — the complement of the
heavenly saints received up at Christ’s coming. In Revelation 5:1-14 one of
their number explains to the prophet that which caused his thoughts to be
troubled; and they are again seen exercising priestly services around the Lamb.
Again in Revelation 7:1-17 : we find them in heaven, and one of their number
explains to the prophet the one hundred and forty-four thousand of Israel, and
the palm-bearing multitude of Gentiles who had been sealed for preservation
through the judgments for the millennial earth, no more to be subject to hunger,
or thirst, or sorrow. Again, in Revelation 12:1-17 :, we hear their voices
celebrating the casting out of Satan and his angels from the heavenlies: "Woe to
the inhabiters of the earth, proclaimed because Satan had gone down in great
wrath, having but a short time — the closing one thousand two hundred and sixty
days of the beast’s power. The sorrows of the saints for the heavenlies cease
when they had been caught up, and just before those of the Jewish saints, sealed
for preservation, begin. In Revelation 13:1-18 : these saints are the objects of
Satan’s blasphemy through the beast; he can now no longer accuse or cause them
sorrow, so he blasphemes "those that dwell in heaven." In Revelation 19:1-21 :,
after the marriage of the Lamb, we see Christ as King of kings, and Lord of
lords, coming forth to judgment, accompanied by the armies of heaven, clothed
with fine linen, which is the righteousness of saints. (Comp. also Revelation
17:14.) He comes forth to exercise His power over the nations, and to rule them
with a rod of iron, in which the saints have a part with Him. See Psalms 2:9,
"Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a
potter’s vessel," with Revelation 2:28, "He that overcometh . . . to him will I
give power over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: as the
vessels of a potter shall they be broken in shivers: even as I received of my
Father." Then, in Revelation 20:1-15 :, the thrones are set, and "they sat upon
them, and judgment was given unto them . . . they shall be priests of God and of
Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years." In verse 4 we find
three classes. First, those who had been received up at the coming of Christ;
second, those who, during the interval of judgment before His appearing, "were
beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God," the souls that were
martyred under the fifth seal (see Revelation 6:9); and, third, those who,
during the raging of the beast in his last effort, set on by Satan, "had not
worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon
their foreheads or in their hands." These last two classes are not deprived of
their blessing for having suffered. They lose those of the kingdom below, but
are not forgotten, and receive the heavenly blessing with the others who had
been received up at Christ’s coming.


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  CHAPTER 49: 05.10.     THE GLORY, OR KINGDOM.
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The Glory, or Kingdom. The short period of universal judgment which we have been
considering cleanses the sphere of the kingdom from everything which offends,
and them which do iniquity: and ends in the coming of the Son of man Himself
with power and great glory, to execute the last blow of judgment; and to reign
over the world during the continuance of the kingdom. When it is established,
God will have accomplished in and under His Son, His counsels and purposes as to
everything which had been put into the hands of the first Adam, and by Him
defiled and destroyed.

We have seen the first Adam, innocent, and surrounded with blessing, failing:
losing his place of dominion over the earth, and subjecting the creature to
vanity by his fall. (Romans 8:20.) Left to himself when fallen, and outside the
centre of good, he fills the earth with corruption and violence, and Satan
usurps the place God should have had in his mind. Afterwards the three great
systems, set up in the world — the Jew under law, the Gentile without law, and
entrusted with supreme power, and the Church under grace — each proving a
failure where entrusted to men; I speak of the Church as a witness in the world,
in the place of responsibility and testimony, not as the body of Christ in
heaven. In the days of the kingdom the last Adam will be there. In His own
perfect, stainless manhood, He came and stood among the ruins of a lost world,
and was confronted by Satan, who had obtained his power through the lusts of the
first Adam when fallen. (Luke 4:1-44 :) He stood in His inheritance, and found
the "kingdoms of this world and the glory of them" in the hands of Satan,
sin-defiled and in ruins. He took it thus, with its load of sin and defilement.
He foiled and vanquished Satan in the place of his power; bound the strong man,
and then proceeded to spoil him of his goods. The prince of this world came, but
had nothing in Him. He went down into the domain of "him that had the power of
death, that is the devil" (Hebrews 2:1-18 :) and through death He destroyed his
power. In due time He will cast him out of the heavenlies with his angels
(Revelation 12:1-17 :); and when he has for a short period consummated his
stupendous wickedness, in the revived Latin Empire, and the Antichrist, He will
bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit till the thousand years of the
kingdom are ended, and then He will cast him into the lake of fire. When Christ
was here, He exhibited the "powers of the world to come," or of the kingdoms,
casting out evil spirits and healing man. When that day shall be here, Satan
shall be in the bottomless pit, and "the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and
the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: then shall the lame man leap as an
hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing." (Isaiah 35:1-10 :) The creature,
which was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of man when he
fell, groaning and travailing in pain, waiting for that day of its deliverance,
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the liberty of the glory
of the children of God. We read in Genesis 3:1-24 :, "Cursed is the ground for
thy sake . . . thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." But of the day
of its regeneration, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree." "The wilderness and the
solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom
as the rose." Again, the sentence pronounced upon Cain, "When thou tillest the
ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength," shall be removed;
for we read of the day when God shall cause His face to shine upon restored
Israel, that "then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own
God, shall bless us; God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall
fear Him." (Psalms 67:1-7 :) The Jew, restored, will be the centre of God’s
recognized government in the world under Christ. Supremacy over the Gentiles
established in Him, who shall rise to reign over them; Jewish royalty restored
to the house of David, and priesthood in its excellence and purity made good.

Men had attempted to form a name and a centre, apart from God at Babel, and had
been broken into nations and tongues. (Genesis 11:1-32 :) Israel was the nation
with regard to which they had received their inheritance; it was proposed as the
centre of God’s government in the world. (Deuteronomy 32:8.) It became unworthy
of the trust; as we read of Jerusalem, "Thus saith the Lord God, This is
Jerusalem; I have set it in the midst of the nations and the countries that are
round about her. And she hath changed my judgments into wickedness more than the
nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her; for
they have refused my judgments, and my statutes they have not walked in them."
(Ezekiel 5:5-6.) And the Gentile king endeavoured to make a religious unity
apart from God. (Daniel 3:1-30 :) Many have been the centres of gathering
proposed amongst men to reverse that sentence of scattering pronounced at Babel
by God: and as many times have they failed — God has but One! "The sceptre shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come;
and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." (Genesis 49:10.) When He
came to Judah He was rejected. — "Beauty and Bands" were broken (Zechariah
11:1-17 :); and there was no gathering of the nations. Again His name was
proposed as a centre, when mercy rejoiced over judgment at Pentecost, and God in
grace took occasion of tongues, the sign of judgment, to let the nations hear,
each in the tongue wherein he was born, of the wonderful works and grace of God.
But again, His centre was refused, and there was no gathering of the nations,
but of a people out of them for His name and for heaven, to which the centre of
gathering, refused on earth, had been removed. In the days of the kingdom, of
which we speak, that which we find revealed in Genesis 28:1-22 : to the wanderer
Jacob in a dream, of a ladder connecting the heavens with the earth (God Himself
doing in grace what man had assayed to do in self-will at Babel). We see a type
of the days of the kingdom, when Christ (as John 1:51 informs us) will be this
link of union between the heavens inhabited by the glorified saints, and the
millennial earth, when the seed of Jacob, wanderers now on the face of the
earth, without land or altar, "shall be as the dust of the earth;" and when God
will have brought them again into their land, and have done all that He hath
spoken of. (Genesis 28:15.) The seed of Jacob will then be the head and not the
tail (Deuteronomy 28:13); and "many people and strong nations shall come to seek
the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord
of hosts, In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out
of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that
is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."
(Zechariah 8:23.)

Again, Jehovah had passed over Jordan before the tribes under Joshua, in their
former days, by the title of "The Lord of all the earth" (Joshua 3:1-17 :); but
when Israel ceased to be a witness to this title, and was set aside, and the
dominion transferred to the Gentile king, God assumes the title of the "God of
heaven," as we have before seen, and retains such all through the "times of the
Gentiles." But during the introductive scene of judgment which we have
considered, His claims as the "God of the earth," are again proclaimed by His
witnesses. (Revelation 11:1-19 :) He then assumes that title fully, and the
substance of the Gentiles, who desired to have the world without God, is
consecrated unto the "Lord of the whole earth." (Micah 4:13.) "And the Lord
shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his
name one." (Zechariah 14:9; see also Isaiah 54:5.)

Jerusalem — trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles shall
be fulfilled — will, at that day, be restored; when the "Redeemer shall have
come to Zion." (Isaiah 59:20; Romans 11:1-36 :) It will be said to her, "Arise,
shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For,
behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but
the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee; and the
Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Lift up thine eyes round about and see; all they gather themselves together,
they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be
nursed at thy side; the forces of the Gentiles shall come to thee, the multitude
of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from
Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall show forth
the praises of the Lord. All the flocks of Kedar shall minister unto thee; they
shall come with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my
glory . . . . Thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day
nor night: that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that
their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee
shall perish: yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted . . . . The sons of
them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee, and all they that
despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall
call thee the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas,
thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make
thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations . . . . For brass I will
bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones
iron; I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness,
violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy
borders: but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates praise." See
also Isaiah 65:1-25 : "Behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a
joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and the voice of
weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying . . . . And they
shall build houses, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, and eat
the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not
plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of my people: and
mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in
vain, nor bring forth for trouble! for they are the seed of the blessedness of
the Lord, and their offspring with them . . . the wolf and the lamb shall feed
together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the
serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith
the Lord." (Isaiah 65:1-25 :) Jerusalem, long forsaken of Jehovah, as the
beginning of Ezekiel informs us, when His glory departed to heaven, and He
transferred the sword to the Gentile, becomes again the dwelling place of His
glory. Ezekiel, in view of her day of glory (Ezekiel 40:1-49, Ezekiel 41:1-26,
Ezekiel 42:1-20, Ezekiel 43:1-27, Ezekiel 44:1-31) describes the restored city
and the sanctuary. We read in Ezekiel 43:2-5, "And, behold, the glory of the God
of Israel came from the way of the east, and his voice was like the noise of
many waters: and the earth shined with his glory. And it was according to the
appearance of the vision which I saw, even according to the vision that I saw
when I came to destroy the city . . . and the glory of the Lord came into the
house . . . and, behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house." And again,
"The name of the city from that day shall be Jehovah-Shammah," or "the Lord is
there." (Ezekiel 44:1-31 :) "At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne
of the Lord: and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the
Lord, to Jerusalem" (Jeremiah 3:17), and this in the day when Israel and Judah
shall be one nation in the land. Her people shall be all righteous, as we read,
Isaiah 4:3 : "It shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that
remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is left among
the living in Jerusalem." And again, "Thy people also shall be all righteous;
they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my
hand, that I may be glorified." (Isaiah 60:21.) The law shall be written in
their hearts. "After those days, saith the Lord I will put my laws in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they
shall be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33.) The nations also shall all call upon the
name of the Lord. When He has executed the judgment which delivers the remnant
of His people, we read, "Then will I turn to the people a pure language, that
they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent."
(Zephaniah 3:9.) Again, "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto
the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee."
(Psalms 22:27.) The unconditional promises to the fathers will then be fulfilled
in grace, and brought in, as we have seen, by judgment. Psalms 105:1-45 : is
prophetic of this, and offers thanksgiving to Jehovah, and calls upon the seed
of Abraham and Jacob, to whom they had been made, to sing unto Him, and glory in
His name. For "He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He
hath remembered his covenant for ever, the word which he commanded to a thousand
generations, which covenant he made with Abraham, and his oath unto Isaac, and
confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting
covenant, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, the lot of your
inheritance." (Psalms 105:7-11) We may remember that in considering the past
history of the nation we saw that these promises have never yet been fulfilled:
the people having taken their inheritance under law — lost it. They will be made
good to them in sovereign grace, and, as Psalms 105:7 declares, by judgment,
evidencing most clearly their still future application. The knowledge of the
Lord and of His glory shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea; and
the throne of God, and His righteous government shall be known in the world.
"Judgment will have returned to righteousness." (Psalms 94:15.) And
"righteousness and judgment shall be the habitation of his throne." (Psalms
97:2.) Christ will be the Prince of this world, and Satan bound, who is its
prince now. Obedience will be paid to His manifested power, and when this
obedience is not observed, excision will be the result, which, if it takes place
during the continuance of the kingdom, it will be recognized that it is by the
judicial acts of God’s government; and all will go on peacefully and happily.
Satan will not be there to act on men and tempt them to sin. We find the
principles of Messiah’s government in the land in Psalms 101:1-8 : — "A froward
heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. Whoso privily
slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off; him that hath an high look and a
proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be on the faithful in the land,
that they may dwell with me . . . . He that worketh deceit shall not dwell
within my house; he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. I will early
destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all the wicked doers from
the city of the Lord." We have excision the result of sin also in Isaiah 65:20,
where we read, "The sinner living an hundred years old shall be accursed," that
is, if cut off it will be recognized as excision for sin in the government of
God. The kingdom of Israel will be the earthly centre of the administration of
God’s government in the world. "He shall judge thy people with righteousness,
and thy poor with judgment . . . . He shall come down like rain upon the mown
grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous
flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have
dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth . .
. . The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; and the kings
of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him:
all nations shall serve him . . . . There shall be an handful of corn in the
earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon:
and they of the city shall flourish like the grass of the earth . . . . Blessed
be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed
be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory;
Amen, and Amen." (Psalms 72:1-20 :) Again, "Behold, a king shall reign in
righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment . . . . . Then judgment shall
dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the
work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness
and assurance for ever." (Isaiah 32:1-20 :)

Thus far we have briefly seen the earthly blessings of the kingdom. We left the
saints of the heavenlies, who had been received up at the coming of Christ to
heaven, as well as those who had been martyred during the crisis of judgment
which introduced the kingdom, seated on thrones at His manifestation, to reign
with Him for a thousand years. Let us now look at the heavenly blessing of the
kingdom. In Revelation 21:9, Revelation 22:5, we find a description of the
millennial display of the heavenly Jerusalem to the world. The prophet sees her
"descendING," (not descendED: that she never does) out of heaven from God. What
the saints should be in this day of trial — "lights in the world" (Php 2:1-30
:); the Church is in the heavenly places to the world in the day of glory,
reflecting all the glories of God and of the Lamb; the seat of the heavenly
administrative power of the kingdom ("know ye not that the saints shall judge
the world?"); her heavenly character and position, and yet her connection with
the millennial earth is revealed — clothed with divine glory, such as that of
Him who sat upon the throne in Revelation 4:1-11. Angels are the willing
door-keepers of that secure city, which is the chief fruit of the travail of
Christ’s soul. It has the fulness in perfection of administrative power towards
and over the world; twelve gates, for the gate was the place of judgment. The
varied displays of God’s nature, under the figure of precious stones, which
shone in creation (Ezekiel 28:1-26 :), and in grace, in the high priest’s
breastplate (Exodus 28:1-43 :), here shine in glory. The city and its street is
formed in divine righteousness, of which gold is always the fitting emblem, and
holiness of truth, "like unto clear glass." The Lord God, the Almighty, and the
Lamb are its temple and its light. The nations (spared through the judgments on
earth) walk in the light of the celestial city, and the kings of the earth bring
their glory and honour to it (never "into" it); they own that the heavenly
kingdom now established, and the heavens themselves, are the source of blessing
to the earth. "The Lord shall hear the heavens and they shall hear the earth;"
and they own that "the heavens do rule." (Daniel 4:26.) No evil of man or Satan
is there, and nothing enters in that defiles or makes a lie, but only those who
are written in the Lamb’s book of life. The river of God and the fruits of the
tree of life are for the refreshing of the Lord’s redeemed; no tree of
responsibility is now there, but one tree, which is the tree of life, and the
leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations of the world. The city is
the vessel of grace to the world at that day — grace characterizes her; as the
royal supremacy of the restored earthly sanctuary, and city of Jerusalem, is
ever preserved; for we read, "The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee
shall perish." (Isaiah 60:12.)

Thus we find all that has been ruined and defiled by the first Adam, made good
in the day of the kingdom, in and under Christ. The three great systems set up
by God, and destroyed by men, established in glory. The Jew in earthly supremacy
and blessing; the Gentile subordinately blessed around, governed in
righteousness, and the Church of God in the heavenly glory; the centre of the
administration of kingdom, and the vessel of grace to the world; the river of
God. (Psalms 66:1-20 :) His stream of blessing, ever full of water, has ever
been dried up in its outflow in this world, not as to its source, but as from
time to time God formed a channel for the blessing in and towards the world; it
has been corrupted, and He has been forced to remove the pure stream to other
courses, ever intent upon the blessing of man; the channel having proved itself
unworthy of the stream. In Eden it took its rise in the beginning when the
dispensation proposed was one of earthly good, and it divided into four heads,
to bear to the world the riches of such a dispensation. Soon, however, as we
know, its channels became corrupted, and there was found no place for such
blessing to flow, and so the sources were stopped, and channels obliterated by
the waters of the flood.

Again, when Israel was redeemed, and God amongst them, the river took its rise
in the rock which was smitten for His people in the wilderness. "They drank of
that spiritual rock which followed them," during the forty years’ journey, till
they were safe in the land. Then, in the daily and yearly round of feasts and
gatherings to Jehovah, the people was refreshed with the waters of Shiloah,
which ran softly amongst them — of the river "the streams whereof made glad the
city of God." (Psalms 46:1-11 :) But again the channels were corrupted, so that
when He, who was their source, came to visit that one family, whom He knew of
all the families of the earth (Amos 3:2), and whom He had chosen to form the
objects of the outflow of the river of God, and to be its channel to the Gentile
world, He found it had so corrupted itself that He could not own it or permit it
to defile the stream; and so, again, the source was transferred to another
place, and the world became fully, what it was to Him and what it has been ever
since to His people, "a dry and thirsty land where no water is." (Psalms 73:1-28
:) The source was now to be the glorified Son of man in heaven; and the
dispensation one of spiritual blessings in the heavenlies; and the channel of
the blessing, His members on earth. We read in John 7:1-53 :, where the Lord
passed by and could not own the channel (the yearly returning feasts), which had
rendered itself unfit for the river of God: "In the last day, that great day of
the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto
me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his
belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which
they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given;
because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)" Faithless as His people have proved
themselves in this dispensation, and much hindered as the stream has become,
still it flows on and will never be exhausted or dried up. "He (the Holy Ghost)
shall abide with you for ever." But the day is coming when it will be not only a
dispensation of spiritual blessings in heavenly places, but one of earthly good
as well. When there will be one glory of the celestial, and another of the
terrestrial. When all things, both which are in heaven and which are on earth,
will be gathered together in Christ. When the Lord "will hear the heavens, and
they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and
the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel" (Hosea 2:21-22), the seed of God. The
river of God will then have a twofold source — in heavenly and earthly blessing,
its source in the heavenly glory will be the heavenly Jerusalem — the Church of
the glorified: "The pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeds
out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb in the midst thereof." (Revelation
22:1.) And the source of the earthly glory will be the sanctuary of the earthly
Zion, when living waters will flow out of the restored Jerusalem, for the
blessing of the Gentiles and of the millennial earth. "Behold, waters issued out
from under the threshold of the house eastward," etc. (Ezekiel 47:1-23 :; comp.
also Joel 3:18, Zechariah 14:8.) And Christ will be the true Melchisedec, a
Priest on His throne; the link between the heavenly and the earthly glory. The
true feast of tabernacles will be kept both by Israel and the Gentiles, but also
by the saints in the heavenlies, after the harvest or ingathering, and the
vintage of judgment, at the end of this age. "And it shall come to pass that
every one that is left of all the nations which come up against Jerusalem, shall
even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep
the feast of tabernacles." And the nations that refuse to go up, will not
partake of the refreshing streams of the river of God. The Lord hasten the day
in His time.


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  CHAPTER 50: 05.11.     SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE SEASON, THE GREAT WHITE THRONE, AND THE ETERNAL STATE.
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Satan Loosed for a Little Season, the Great White Throne, and the Eternal State.

After the close of the kingdom, before Christ delivers up the kingdom to the
Father, and God is "all in all," we find another testimony of man’s ruin. Having
beheld Christ, and having been set in the midst of, and surrounded by the
blessings of the kingdom, still we learn that man is ever the same. We had the
testimony of Scripture that all are righteous at the commencement of the
kingdom. The inhabitants of the world had learned righteousness by the judgments
which introduced it, but we have not the same testimony as to those who shall be
born during its continuance. And the closing scene proves to us the fact that
grace and regeneration are as necessary then, as now, that man may be brought to
God. It is clear from this, that there will be a declension during the
continuance of the kingdom.

After the close of the kingdom, Satan is loosed for a little season, and goes
out to the four corners of the earth (he never returns to the heavenlies), and
the nations are thus tested for the last time, and the uunrenewed fall, in
numbers as the sand of the sea, into his hands. They who are thus deceived, go
up against the camp of the saints on earth, and are destroyed by the fire of
God’s judgment — thus separated by judgment from the faithful. Satan is then
cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet had been,
after which the great white throne is set; and the earth and the heavens flee
away from the presence of him that sat thereon; and no place is found for them.
The wicked dead stand before the throne, and are judged by Him who judges the
secrets of men (Romans 2:1-29 :) and who knows them! This judgment is according
to their works, and their responsibility. The book of life was opened but none
of them are found therein, and they are cast into the lake of fire. Death the
last enemy is destroyed, and hades, the place of departed spirits, exists no
longer; its whole contents were cast into the lake of fire. "Then cometh the
end, when Christ delivers up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall
have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For He must reign till he
hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things
are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things
under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son
also Himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God
(Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) may be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:24-28.)

Then follows the eternal state, the new heavens and the new earth "wherein
righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:1-18 :), not that over which "a king shall
reign in righteousness," but where righteousness dwells, for all things had been
brought into full order and subjection, so that blessing unhindered flows forth
from God. God dwells amongst men! Yet in this state of supreme blessedness we
find that the Bride, the New Jerusalem, has her own peculiar place, she is the
tabernacle of God among men! He wipes away all tears, and there is no more
death, neither sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain; for former things,
connected with sin, have passed away. The overcomer has God for his God, and he
shall be his Son. And yet — solemn thought for those who would oppose the truth
— even in this eternal state, when the Lamb’s mediatorial kingdom has passed
away, and God is all in all, eternal punishment goes on, side by side, through
the endless ages of eternity, with eternal blessing! Unto God "be glory in the
Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen!"

[Note. — We may have observed that Revelation 20:1-15 : and part of Revelation
21:1-27 : is succeeded by the description of the millennial state of the Bride,
the Lamb’s wife. Revelation 20:1-15 : begins with the binding of Satan, at the
commencement of the kingdom, and goes on through the time of the kingdom, or
1000 years, to Revelation 20:7, then it takes up the interval of Satan’s last
acts of wickedness when loosed for the little season; and finally the judgment
of the dead, and destruction of the last enemy, death, before Christ gives up
His kingdom to God (to Him who is Father), and God is all in all; so that
Revelation 21:1-8 : follow on in their consecutive order into the eternal state,
as the verses we have quoted in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58 : Then the Spirit turns to
describe that which had not before been given, the millennial glories of the
Heavenly Jerusalem, during the days of the kingdom, as is evident from 1
Corinthians 15:10, 1 Corinthians 10:24, 1 Corinthians 10:26, and Revelation
21:1-2 : The division into chapters and verses has thus disconnected the true
order.]


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  CHAPTER 51: 05.12.     CONCLUSION.
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Conclusion.

We have now passed along the chain of the great dispensational dealings of God
in their larger features, as through grace we have been enabled: from the fall
of man in the garden of Eden to the eternal state.

We read in Psalms 25:1-22 :, "The meek will he guide in judgment, the meek will
he teach his way . . . . The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and
he will show them his covenant." And, in His dealings with His servants, we find
that He acts according to the principles of His own word: for we read in Numbers
12:1-16 : "Now the man Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the
face of the earth." And in Psalms 103:7, "He made known his ways to Moses, his
acts unto the children of Israel." It is to those who are morally near Him He
deals thus, giving them capacity to understand Him, and the communications of
His mind. This is solemn. For while Israel could only know Him in His overt
acts, they were morally far from Him, and consequently unfit to hear the
communications of His counsels and ways. This is ever so: there is a moral
fitness in one Christian — a practical obedience to His mind and will as
revealed — a desire to bow to Him, and respond to the way He has revealed
Himself, that He waits upon, and guides and instructs; while another is dull of
hearing, and learns but little, and even that little has not its freshness and
power in his soul. "The natural man," on the other hand, receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14.) "If
any man will (desire) to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it
be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (John 7:17) is a simple principle, and
yet how much it involves! God does not reveal His truth, to be a mere sum of
knowledge learned, for the gratification of the mind. What He teaches, with so
much condescension, is imperfectly learned, if learned at all, when the
conscience has been unexercised, and the claims of His truth have not found a
response in the soul, so as to judge the darkness, and set the feet to walk in,
and use, and live in the power of it. And besides this, divine truth is so
contrary to every thought of men, even of the best of men, that even the soul
which enjoys the revelation of it, is prone to sink into human thoughts, and
human use of the truth. Our meditations have led us, we trust, through grace,
into some understanding, of the greater features of the dispensational dealings
of God, than which nothing is more important: without an understanding of
dispensational truth, the soul is unsteady in its testimony. If labouring for
the Lord, it makes the need of souls the paramount object; and the claims of the
Lord upon the souls of His people are too often forgotten. The "alabaster box of
ointment" should be joined with "this gospel," that is, the publication of the
activities of the grace of God by the Gospel, meeting the soul’s need, united to
such teaching as would lead the soul, through grace, thus satisfied and set at
rest, into such an apprehension of the person of Christ Himself, and such an
appreciation of Him, that the knowledge of His mind and will is sought; and the
heart learns to bow to His claims, and to walk in the path of intelligent
obedience, which His eye would mark out, and His written word direct, so that it
may please God. (1 Thessalonians 4:1.) I am bold to say that without a knowledge
of dispensation, this is quite impossible: doubtless there may be, and there is
piety amongst many; but piousness, while it meets with a certain amount of
respect, even from the man of the world, whose heart is not seared, is not "the
truth of God." It is one thing to be pious, another to walk in the truth. The
soul that has been established in dispensational truth, and that has ascertained
the ways of God during the various dispensations (and even when the testimony
entrusted to men in each dispensation has been corrupted and destroyed), learns
how to respond to God’s way; how to walk before Him in accordance with His mind
and will; even when the dispensation has fallen into ruins. Surely one judges
that the path marked out in one dispensation, would be unsuited for another; and
judges, too, with spiritual discernment, that a path right in the beginning of a
dispensation, necessarily changes its character when the dispensation has fallen
into ruins through the unfaithfulness of those to whom the testimony is
entrusted; yet all the while recognising that divine principles never have
changed, even while the vessel proved that it could not hold the treasure
committed to it. The Christian, thus instructed, sees that which answered to God
in a divine way, the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching, in the soul of a godly Jew
under law, when his nation, as an elect earthly one, was owned of God,
necessarily altering its character when his nation became corrupted; while the
divine counsels altered not. And still he is able to see the more vividly that
the pathway of a godly Jew, in an earthly nation, under the law, cannot be that
of a Christian in a dispensation where his calling is one out of and above the
world altogether; and, moreover, that the experience of a godly Israelite in his
dispensation is not such, in its best state, as is suited to a member of the
body of the risen Christ; that to be satisfied with such is to ignore the
position, of the Christian as such, and to return to Judaism in principle. It is
to walk as those of whom it is said, "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who
walk in the law of the Lord" (Psalms 119:1), is right and blessed in its time,
while to "walk in the light, as he is in the light," is quite another, and far
beyond it; it is to realize that the dispensation with an unrent veil has
ceased, that the things permitted in such a dispensation have passed away, and
that the Christian is now within the vail, in the full light of God’s presence,
set there to walk as becomes such a position, and to judge everything in his
ways inconsistent with the place, in the liberty of grace. The whole range of
his responsibility flows from his position and from the relationship in which he
is placed. The Christian, so instructed, is enabled to pass through the world,
with the truth girding his loins, and with a moral apprehension as to the work
of all its vaunted progress in civilization, religion, politics, and everything
around; and although his testimony may be, as it were, an individual one,
"clothed in sackcloth," still his faith is confirmed by the very principles
around him which tend in an opposite direction — and he feels that through grace
"none of these things move" him; and that the day is coming when his testimony,
if in accordance with the mind of the Lord, will be owned, and that then he will
see to the full, the use the Lord has had for him as a witness, when to outward
appearance he was, as Jeremiah, "shut up" — and when he "sat alone," the word of
the Lord the joy and rejoicing of his heart.

Let me ask the christian soul a question. Are the claims of the Lord Jesus on
you, of deep and paramount importance in your eyes? In proposing such a
question, I do so to those who profess to love and own Christ as their Lord; and
whose consciences have been for ever set at rest; and introduced by faith into
the full cloudless presence of God, in Christ — to those who see every question
that could hinder their perfect peace, answered by the atoning blood — past,
present, future — all secure. Are the claims of Christ of sufficient weight,
that you would seek to know His mind and will, even if it were to break up the
most cherished associations of your heart? And, knowing His mind and will, are
you seeking for grace to walk therein? I feel this a deeply solemn question in
the present day, a day of the highest sounding profession, without conscience or
life toward God. Religion is putting forth her fairest and most seductive forms;
seeking the aid of science, and poetry, and art, to deck herself withal; holding
in her hand a cup of prostitution, which stupefies the senses, lulls to sleep
the conscience. And even where she is not putting on the outward adorning, she
practises all sorts of deceits. Those whose senses would not be ensnared by the
outward adorning, are ensnared by the specious arguments of expediency, and a
round of evangelical activity — works perfect, it may be, before men, but not
perfect before God. (Revelation 3:2.) She is suiting herself more and more to
natural, unregenerate man, and under the name of Christ, she turns away her eye
from Christ, and boasts that she is "rich and increased with goods and has need
of nothing." (Revelation 3:17.) "The form of godliness, without the power"
surely is the condition of things around us. The Lordship of Christ is ignored.
The presence of the Holy Ghost either denied in words; or, what is worse,
professed to be acknowledged in words, and completely denied in practice. This
is truly solemn. The very vital central truth of Christianity, and of the Church
of God — that which marks off, in a clear line, this dispensation from all that
went before or which follows, denied; and the whole merged into a heap of
confusion, out of which souls can find no clue; and are "ever learning but never
able to come to the knowledge of the truth." "The foundation of God stands
sure," whatever man’s unfaithfulness has been. God’s principles do not alter.
And the responsibility of His people never alters either. While it is their
blessing to know that "the Lord knoweth them that are his," still their
responsibility is, "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity," iniquity connected with the great house and its corruptions. (2
Timothy 2:19, etc.) The Christian is to purge himself from the vessels unto
dishonour, that he may be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for his
master’s use, prepared unto every good work. He must not, as we have before
touched upon, rest satisfied with the corruption — nor need he try to repair the
injury that has been done; that will never be repaired till the professing mass
meets its end in judgment. His path is a plain one. "Depart from iniquity."
"Purge himself from the vessels to dishonour." And now comes his personal walk
of holiness. He is to "flee also youthful lusts; and then his walk, in the
company of others, to "follow righteousness, faith, peace, charity with them
that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." This is the principle — a plain one
— separation from evil, and to God in the midst of it. May He, who alone can do
so, give subjection to His word to those whose eyes fall upon these pages, and a
growing separation and deepening subjection, as they go on their pathway, to
those who by grace have learned in their measure to walk therein! "He that hath
my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me;" and "if a man love
me, he will keep my words." (John 14:1-31 :) This is characteristic of
Christianity. It is intelligent obedience rendered to a person, not to a law.
The time was when the faithful and undefiled in the way were blessed, who walked
in the law of the Lord. (Psalms 119:1, etc.) Then God was unrevealed. He was
hidden behind the veil and the dispensational barriers of the age. He was hidden
and had sent forth His claims to men in the law; and although it had said, "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and with all
thy strength," still it did not reveal a person to attract the heart. That time
has passed away. Christ has come; and "by him we believe in God" (1 Peter 1:1-25
:), and to him we owe the love of our hearts and the obedience of our lives —
one whose love constrains us to live henceforth, "not unto ourselves, but unto
him who died for us and rose again." (2 Corinthians 5:1-21) It is a person we
are thus called upon to live for and to love; one who has sanctified us unto
obedience such as that which characterized His own (1 Peter 1:2), surrendering
self, life, all, for those who hated Him. The law proposed that a man should
love his neighbour as himself. The obedience of Christ was the surrendering of
self altogether for His enemies! The Lord Jesus appealed in His day to the Jews
(Luke 12:54-57) to discern "the signs of the times," even by the force of
natural conscience, and to judge what was right. His word should find an echo in
many a christian heart now, that has sunk down to sleep amongst the dead.
(Ephesians 5:14.) Everything around us in the present day, religion, the state
of men, nations, powers, kingdoms are each gradually and perceptibly taking
their places for the closing scenes of judgment. The Christian, instructed
beforehand of these things, can watch them calmly and quietly, awaiting the
corning of his Lord. He knows his calling is a heavenly one where judgments
cannot come. The coming of the Lord, the Son of God, for His people, is the one
boundary, or horizon, of his hopes. His actions, and service, and plans, and
sojourn here, are arranged in view of that event; and if called to serve his
Lord and Master here, he does so in the sense that he serves as in the last
days. May a deepening sense of this fill the souls of His people; and may this,
their proper hope, ere the day dawn, be formed in their hearts, and serve to
direct their ways! It has been, I believe, said by some one, that the Old
Testament scriptures end with the hope of the coming of the Sun of
Righteousness, and the New with that of the "Morning Star." Sweetly beautiful is
this. The godly remnant of Israel who feared the Lord and spake often one to
another, etc. (Malachi 3:1-18 :), had that precious consolation before them —
that of the coming of the Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings.
(Malachi 4:1-6 :) And we find them in Luke 2:1-52 :, the Simeons and Annas, and
"all them that looked for redemption in Israel" (Luke 2:25-38), rejoicing in the
advent of the "Sun of Righteousness," the "consolation of Israel." But, alas,
His beams fell coldly on the hearts of His nation; they had no heart for Him.
Men were morally unfit to have God amongst them; and so He was obliged to hide
His beams of blessing in the darkened scene that surrounded the cross, and to
reserve the day of blessing till another season. Meanwhile, our calling was
revealed, and our hope presented to us; not as the "Sun of Righteousness," but
as the "Morning Star." The more we contemplate the fitness of this symbol of our
hope, the more does its divine origin appear. It is the watcher during the long
night who sees the morning star for a few moments, while the darkness is rolling
itself away from off the face of the earth, and before the beams of the sun
enliven the earth with their rays. And so with the Christian’s hope; he watches
during the moral darkness of the world, till the dawn; and just as the darkness
is deepest and is about to roll itself away before the beams of the advent of
the "Sun of Righteousness," his hope is rewarded in seeing the "Morning Star"
(Revelation 22:16), in His earliest brightness, coming to take His people to
Himself, that they may shine forth with Him as the sun in the kingdom of their
Father (Matthew 13:43), when He reveals Himself to the millennial earth as the
Sun of Righteousness. May He, who alone can give blessing, abundantly bless the
consideration of these things, and give that hope its own sanctifying power in
our souls!

"I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify these things in the churches; I am
the root and the offspring of David, the bright and the Morning Star . . . . He
which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come,
Lord Jesus . . . . Amen."

F. G. Patterson.


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  CHAPTER 52: S.     CORRESPONDENCE ON SINGING AT THE GRAVES OF OUR BRETHREN
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Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren

Dear ----, I am glad you have written to me, as to my letter in " Words of Truth," of May (Page 97), on the above subject, for I wished to have added a thought or so more to what I had written. The letter, you will doubtless have perceived, left the matter quite open in cases which sometimes arise when there were no sorrowing mourners laying their dead in the grave, for the singing of hymns, as the Lord might lead, in the happy expression of Christian fellowship amongst those who are there. I have not the least objection to this. But I believe that those who go to the graves of their brethren, ostensibly do so, to " Weep with those that weep." (Romans 12:15.) If there are no weepers there, I am sure it is most happy to "Rejoice with those that do rejoice; " as it is to seize any occasion when we meet our brethren for Christian communion and joy.

I doubt if Paul could have sung at the grave of Epaphroditus had he died when
performing this service for Paul, in bringing up the tender care-the " odor of a
sweet smell," of the beloved Philippians to his prison. "God had mercy on him,"
says the aged prisoner, "and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have
sorrow upon sorrow." (Php 2:27.) When the relatives, husbands of beloved wives,
parents of beloved children, widows of beloved husbands, and the like, are
surrounding the grave, the wrench has just come, and the deep wound of the heart
is felt in all its keenness (though, doubtless, it may be more keen later
still); I should doubt if it were spiritual power in their hearts to sing around
the graves of those whom they had lost. I should (for myself at least), feel it
were callousness and the want of "natural affection," which characterizes the "
last days." (2 Timothy 3:1-17) I am sure God would not have us think lightly of
these dealings of His hand. I would feel that His hand was upon me at such a
moment, and that He was looking for a chastened, lowly spirit, that was bowing
under the blow. I have no doubt but that "afterward" these things "yield the
peaceable fruit of righteousness" to the exercised heart. But it is "afterward,"
and not at the moment. Then, in the calm and quiet of an exercised heart, when
the bitterness of the blow has passed away, we may surely rise above it all, and
be able to praise Him, and be glad and rejoice for the joy of those who are
"with Christ," and away from the sorrows of this scene.

I believe that in John 14:28, " If you loved me ye would rejoice, because I said
I go unto the Father," the Lord seeks such an interest in our hearts for His
happiness, that He looks for our being happy in the thought of His happiness and
joy, as gone on high, no more to be a " Man of sorrows" in this scene. I am sure
none of them could have understood it at the moment. And besides, it is not
rejoicing that they were then about to lose Him; but, as I have said, present
rejoicing in the consciousness of the happiness of Jesus as exalted in the
Father’s glory. It may be in principle true of those who are His; but the
application and meaning of the passage refers to what I have said. Thus when our
sorrow will have subsided for a loved one, we do learn to rejoice no doubt, that
they are with Him. The substance of my letter was written to a brother, on the
occasion of the funeral of a beloved co-laborer, who was snatched away in the
midst of his field of usefulness. The brother to whom I wrote showed it to
others, who approved much of it, and no hymns were sung. For this I was deeply
thankful. Another wrote to me of the funeral, and said, None of us could have
sung; there was not a dry eye there. This was as it should have been. The Lord’s
people should collectively feel that God’s hand is upon them, when a valued
laborer is taken away. They should do so individually, in like manner, when a
loved one, closely linked by ties of flesh, or special ties, is removed.

I would hesitate to speak of what Scripture does not-"The joy of the blessed
Lord at receiving that loved one," &c. I would rather speak of and enjoy His
sympathy in the sorrow of the moment, when hearts are deeply feeling the death
of one they loved.-Affectionately in the Lord, F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 53: S.     CORRESPONDENCE ON SINGING AT THE GRAVES OF OUR BRETHREN
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Correspondence on Singing at the Graves of Our Brethren

... I feel so thankful to know that there were no hymns sung at the graves of
our dearly beloved.... I have long felt how much out of place they are on the
sorrowful occasion of our committing the body of a beloved fellow-laborer or
fellow-pilgrim to the tomb. If there is ever a moment in which hearts are torn
asunder with grief, it is then; and I feel much that those who mourn for the
departed one would rather weep and cry to our Father in prayer than sing. " Is
any merry, let him sing psalms," is the thought of God (James 5:1-20). How
sacred are the sorrows of His people in the sight of the Lord! He " putteth
their tears in his bottle," and He " knoweth their sorrows." When I think of Him
weeping, in going to the grave of His friend Lazarus, I feel that singing could
not be there. It may be said that His was not the weeping of a sorrow-stricken
heart as was that of those around Him; and I say, Be it so. Theirs was the cry
of bereavement or of sympathy; but His were tears indeed, and I love that
wondrous word of Scripture, "Jesus wept." He wept to see the power of death on
the hearts and souls of those whom He dearly loved. The Lord would have us feel
the sorrows of the way, and when are they so keen as in a moment when one who
has companied with us, and whom He has loved, has been called away? For them "to
depart and to be with Christ is far better;" but what achings of heart for those
who remain!

It has grated upon my spirit to hear hymns sung at such a time. If souls are
filled with such joy that singing is its only expression, I can say nothing; but
I doubt this. In no case in Scripture do I find a thought of doing so amongst
God’s elect. I need not cite the Old Testament, which in itself gives abundant
proof of the contrary. The full joy of the departed one was not then made known
as now we have it in New Testament Scriptures. It was seen in more or less
measure, as were the hopes of those beyond the tomb at that day. The living,
loving Savior, whose perfect human heart of hearts is now in glory, had not then
taken manhood into union with His Godhead glory as Eternal Son. God Himself was
not revealed, and the bliss of the state beyond the tomb, as then known, did not
embrace the wondrous thought of a departing to be "with Christ." It could not
then be known. When the elect at that day left this scene, it was their
happiness, most surely; and the lines of the hymn which speaks of "soaring to
worlds unknown" was, doubtless, more their experience than ours now. It could
not be an unknown world to those who know Christ; for He occupies the scene.

Yet, while it is the joy of the departed, and in measure we may be able to
rejoice, because they have gone to be with Christ, what a blank they have left
behind! Can we sing, then, at such a time? When the protomartyr Stephen passed
away, praying for his murderers, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," we
read that " Devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation
over him" (Acts 8:2). Singing could not have been at such scene. Yet here it may
be objected that these "devout men" were Jews, with their peculiar hopes and
thoughts; that they may not, and very likely did not, know what has since been
told us in Scripture. Yet I do not find Paul rebuking the dear Thessalonians for
their sorrow for those who had fallen asleep from their midst. Nay, he owns the
sorrow, but says that they should not sorrow as the rest, who had no hope beyond
this scene. He would rather give the sorrow and mourning a divine character, as
mingled with a hope by which they might comfort one another." (See 1
Thessalonians 4:13-18.)

I would add here, too, that if any saints were in the tone of soul in which
singing would be possible at such a time, it was those fresh-hearted, loving
children of God at Thessalonica. In no place in Scripture do we find such bright
freshness of soul portrayed as there. Yet we read of sorrow and mourning rather
than joy and merriment of soul. Doubtless they needed to have the sorrow
corrected in its hopelessness, rather than its existence, and this Paul does so
blessedly here.

I say not a word if the hearts of mourners are so full of praise that it can
find no other vent than in song. Far be it from me to quench the Spirit in any.
But I do say that such will not frequently be found, and for my part I would
rather hear the quiet, earnest prayer of those who surround the tomb of a loved
one, ascending and rising up to praise, if such were in unison with the hearts
clustered around, than to hear what so grates on the ear of most-the hymn or
song of praise.-Affectionately in the Lord,

F. G. P.

" Or, though their names appear not on the scroll Of martyrologists, laid down
their life, No less a martyrdom in Jesus’ eyes For His dear brethren’s
sake-watching the couch Of loathsome sickness or of slow decay, Or binding up
the ravages which men, Marring God’s image, deal on fellow-men; Or visiting the
captive in his cell, Or struggling with a burden not their own, Until their very
life-springs wore away- These, too, are martyrs, brother." As he spake, The high
supremacy of sacrifice, The majesty of service, fill’d my soul With thoughts too
deep for words.


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  CHAPTER 54: S.     CORRESPONDENCE ON THE TRAINING OF THE CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS
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Correspondence on the Training of the Children of Believers

Dear Brother,-I have had your letters seeking for help on the extremely
interesting and important subject of the training of the children of those who
are Christ’s-I mean those of true children of God. I feel how poorly I can speak
of such a subject; but am encouraged by that grace of which I learn so much
every day.

You ask, How should we regard them? As children of wrath even as others? Part of
the " world lying in the wicked one " with the wrath of God " abiding on them,
etc., etc. And here I think I would most clearly distinguish between a moral
state in God’s eye, which all are in by nature, as dead in trespasses and sins,
and the privileged place or sphere of blessing, in which God regards the
"houses" of His people; 1:e., all whom God looks upon as attached to the head of
that house. That there has always been such a sphere of privilege, certainly
from the flood downwards, if not always indeed, is clear to me from Scripture. A
sphere of blessing into which God has brought His child, and in which He has
surrounded him with wife and children, in order that the light which He has
lit-up in the heart of the head of that house may shine out brightly, and carry
by His grace the knowledge of God into the hearts of those in the house around
him.

All this is different from the nature of those thus privileged and outwardly
blessed of God. Of course it is just the same ruined undone thing as in the rest
of mankind around. But if God regards them merely as " children of wrath," He
would not say to the Christian parent, "Bring them up in the Lord’s discipline
and admonition" (as we may read the passage.) And here you must not settle it in
your mind, that it is believing children who are before the mind of the Spirit
in Ephesians 6:1-4. The Apostle leaves it without defining whether they are or
are not, addressing them simply as "children." And He tells the parents to
"bring them up " for Him (as Jochebed brought up Moses for Pharaoh’s daughter)
"in the Lord’s nurture and admonition," and surely He does not direct this if He
intends to cast them off again.

I think there is much involved in the " Lord’s nurture and admonition." He
exercises it over and with us; and we are to observe a similar course with our
children. His tender patience; His persevering love which never wearies, never
casts off its object until the end is gained. His faithfulness which never
flatters but deals with us, so that we may disallow practically all that savors
of our evil nature, and the world from which He has delivered us. This
disallowance of the flesh, and of all that savors of the old Adam and his ways
on the one side, and complete conformity to the Son of God on the other is His
aim, and characterizes His ways of discipline with us that He may be glorified.
And as we grow conversant with them as observed towards us whom He has brought
to Himself, we learn the sort of dealing we are to pass on to our children,
under Him. We must seek to show them whence the tendencies and wills of the
flesh spring, and where they end; we must disallow them in our children, as the
Lord does in us, seeking to draw their minds and hearts to Jesus, and thus with
patient grace and persevering love discipline and admonish them for their good.

I feel too, that now, the family circle is the normal place for the conversion
of the child. I am sure that much of what we are told of children’s conversions
is but the bringing to a definite point what has long been there in the soul. It
is most desirable that it should take its definite form in the way of a
confession of Christ in the child; but what I fear, is anything in the way of
excitement, by which the young, susceptible heart is easily wrought upon, thus
forcing into immature development the hardly perceptible pulsations of life in
the soul. I believe that in general such cases give a weakly tone to the soul,
and in result are often like the too early removal of the shell from the little
bird, a feeble state of soul will supervene. My impression too, is, (and the
exception proves the rule,) that the child of the believing, Christian parent
will, as a rule, seldom if ever, be able to tell when he was converted, as we
speak. It is true that, at the same time, the child or the parent may be able to
look back to some moment when the faith and life which had been already in his
soul took definite shape, and burst forth into activity and energy. Like the
bursting forth into beauty and fragrance of the flower, which has grown up from
the little unseen germ, or hardly perceptible bud, until the genial warmth of
the sun and the gentle showers of the rain caused it to open its petals for the
first time.

How lovely was the unquestioning faith of Hannah! Her son, the fruit of her
prayer, was brought up to Shiloh, not without the offerings of faith too in her
own and her husband’s hands. At as early an age as his weaning time, ere living
faith could work in the soul of the babe, she said to Eli, " Oh, my lord, as thy
soul liveth, my lord, I am the woman that stood by thee here, praying unto
Jehovah. For this child I prayed; and Jehovah hath given my petition which I
asked of him: therefore also I have returned, whom I have obtained by petition
to Jehovah; as long as he liveth he whom I have obtained by petition, shall be
returned to Jehovah." (1 Samuel 1:26-28. marg.) The contrast, too, in the case
of Eli’s house is solemn and instructive; it- illustrates the linking of the
saint and his house in the sight of God. " In that day (said the LORD to Samuel)
I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house:
when I begin, I will also make an end. For I have told him that I will judge his
house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made
themselves vile, and he restrained them not." (1 Samuel 3:12-13.)

Speaking, dear brother, of the conversion of the child of a saint, and noticing
that the time of such is but seldom known, if known at all, in the normal state
of things, I would cite the case of young Timothy. Brought up " from infancy"
(άπὀ βρέφους) in the knowledge of the holy scriptures, which were able to make
him wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus, and trained by
a pious believing mother, and perhaps, grandmother, of the unfeigned faith of
both of whom the aged apostle speaks in a most touching manner (2 Timothy 1:5);
the blessed knowledge of the Word of God thus early imbibed into his young and
impressible heart, and known as a child may know it too, paved the way for that
moment when the life it brought to his soul burst forth into the liberty of
grace and knowledge of Christ through the apostle Paul when at Lystra, who names
him his " own son in the faith."

Such, I believe, to be a true example of the conversion of the child of
believing parents. He has the priceless boon of being in the circle where the
name of Jesus is a house-told word, and the great circumstance and business of
the lives of his parents. His parents feel that they have received him back from
the Lord to be brought up under the yoke of Christ from the earliest moments of
his existence, and they feel, too, that the One who has directed them to do this
will not in vain be trusted in for that quickening of soul which he needs, as
all do, that he may live indeed. They bring him up in the faith of Christ, never
for a moment casting a doubt across his young and impressible heart that he is
not the Lord’s. They teach him the way that God forgives and saves through the
precious blood of Jesus Christ; they explain how the grace of God is received;
they show the little one the awful results of unbelief, and of the rejection of
Christ; they explain how real faith is known from the false and hollow
profession around; they teach him that obedience and those desires to please the
Lord under whose yoke he is brought up, are the true way in which the life of
God displays itself in man. And thus by these teachings the conscience is
awakened, and when, alas, failures in these things are seen, the necessity and
meaning of the confession of sins, and the unburdening of the soul to Christ is
pressed and encouraged. The desire, too, to make known to the Lord the wants of
the heart for self or others are directed to their proper outflow-prayer: all
these things lead the child onward to a confidence in God, and he grows up -Co
Christ, as he does by the food of infancy by which his natural powers have been
gradually developed.

While all this training goes on, how a true hearted parent will wait on God in
secret, that that sovereign quickening power which belongs to Him alone may be
Tut forth in behalf of his child, who he knows is by nature " dead in trespasses
and sins."

You will remark, too, dear brother, that it is in the " nurture (discipline) and
admonition of the Lord." This implies reverence for and owning the authority of
One who is over the child. It does not imply a relationship as " Father" or "
Christ;" the co-relatives of which would be " son " or " child " and " member of
his body." This is important too; because while none can truly please Him but
those who are in relationship with Him, still the word " Lord " does not
necessarily and exclusively mean this. To treat children otherwise than thus, is
in my mind to injure their souls; and hinder the Work of God’s grace as far as
we can do it. If a child finds his parent habitually treating him as outside the
pale even of external relationship with God (cf. Deuteronomy 14:2 with.
Ephesians 2:3 : also 1 Corinthians 7:14.) and hears him praying for him as an
unsaved one, he grows up in the thought (which may be true) that this is so. He
is led to look at conversion as something to come to him some day perhaps, and
perhaps not. Instead of fixing the eye on Christ and wholly away from himself,
he turns it inwards, and thus is injured and hindered in soul: thrown back, it
may be for a long season, in darkness, which occupation with self must do,
while, if dealt with otherwise, he might, through grace, have been enjoying the
favor of God which is better than life.

How Moses indignantly refused such a compromise of Satan as that proposed by
Pharaoh, (Exodus 10:1-29) " Go now ye that are men" with his reply, "We will go
with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters," &c., and
how often do Christian parents fall into the same wile of the enemy, and
separate as to the external ground of blessing, between the parents and the
children both in their own minds and the training they give them. Nay! All must
be, as with Noah of old, in the same place of blessing. "Conte thou and all thy
house into the ark," tells this blessed way of God’s goodness and mercy. "Thee
have I seen righteous before me," tells of the head of the house being blessed
in soul; and even his son, who alas, afterward dishonored his father, entered
with him into the place of safety.

Surely a wise parent will not regard his child as a child of God, ere he sees
the signs of a quickened conscience, and the fear of the Lord in him, but he
seeks to lead his heart to Christ in practice, conversation, and ways; and thus,
dependence on God, thankfulness of heart for His mercies, obedience to His will,
is impressed upon his heart, and the faith of a parent will be answered of God
in giving living faith to his child. I believe we ought to count on God for our
children-every one of them-and where there is true faith in a parent as to this,
He who gave it will answer it in making them His own.

There are many lines of thought in connection with this most interesting subject
which we might enter upon, and, if the Lord will, we may do so in another
letter.

Affectionately yours in Him,

F. G. P.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 55: S.     CORRESPONDENCE: STATE OF THE SAINTS UNDER PROMISE, LAW, AND GRACE
========================================================================

Correspondence: State of the Saints Under Promise, Law, and Grace

Dear ----, -You ask-" Can we say that Abraham and the patriarchs knew themselves to be eternally saved, when Heaven, Hades and Hell were unrevealed?" I do not cite all your question, but embody it in my reply.

Salvation, as now revealed by the gospel in the New Testament, was then unknown;
in fact, the salvation of the soul was not then the subject of revelation. The
first time it is definitely spoken of in Scripture is in Matthew 1:21, where the
thought is that Jesus, 1:e. Jehovah-the-Savior, would save His people-not from
their enemies, but from their sins. So also Peter speaks of the " salvation of
your souls," in contradistinction to that from their enemies, for which a Jew
looked. The great truths of Heaven, Hades and Hell were not then the subjects of
revelation. Until the gospel was known, after the Cross was past, these things
were but darkly hinted at; still they were there, and in measure referred to and
known. The wrath of God from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men (Romans 1:18) comes out with the righteousness of God to all, in the
gospel, which is His power to salvation. Exclusion from God’s presence (Genesis
1:1-31) was seen in measure, as was the fact of the punishment of the wicked in
a state beyond this life, but not in the clearness and distinctness which
revelation has given it since then in the New Testament. "The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God," shows that a punishment
beyond this scene was known.

Before the Law was given, the saints walked with God, and Abraham, finding that
he was to be a stranger and a pilgrim here, " looked for a city which had
foundations;" something stable outside this shifting scene; but saw it dimly and
vaguely, as far as we are told. Thus a state of blessing with God, and after
death, was looked for by the faithful. Confidence in God was blessedly seen in
them. He had as yet raised no question of righteousness between Himself and His
people, as afterward, by the Law. I do not therefore suppose they would have
known the meaning of being " eternally saved." They did not know that they were
"lost" to which "saved" would be the correlative term. They lived and died in
faith, no questions having been raised between them and God to disturb the
blessed confidence of their hearts in Him, and their "faith was counted unto
them for righteousness." With the wicked, natural conscience condemned them; "
their conscience the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing one another" ( Romans
2:15). To this was added the responsibility of God’s Spirit striving with man,
at one period of his then history at least, if not in all (Genesis 6:1); besides
the recognition of "His eternal power and godhead" as displayed in creation, so
that they were "without excuse" (Romans 1:19-20). When the Law-was given,
another thing came in. God raised by it the question, Had fallen man, a sinner,
any righteousness for Him? When this question came in, all was changed. The free
intercourse of God in grace with His people before that time, was all stopped.
Perhaps Moses’ case, individually, may have differed to the others. But God
retired and hid Himself in the thick darkness. He hung up a vail between Himself
and His people. Before that He used to come in and eat and converse familiarly
with them at the tent door. All was now changed, and free intercourse over. When
conscience awaked under the Law, there was perfect misery, unless grace was
known, and unless there was confidence in God; but that was outside of the Law
altogether.

All this time God Himself was unrevealed. Much about Him doubtless was known,
but as yet He had not come out and revealed Himself. Then came the Son of God,
and here below He became a man. The unity of the Godhead was the great doctrine
of the Old Testament, and this in contrast to the plurality of the gods of the
heathen. There were hints constantly given, and seen to faith doubtless in
measure, that more was coming, and behind all this. But the unity of the Godhead
was the subject in hand. " Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our Elohim (God) is one
Jehovah" (Deuteronomy 6:1-25). " Unto thee it was shown, that thou mightest know
that Jehovah he is Elohim (there is) none beside him" (Deuteronomy 4:1-49). The
Trinity of the Persons was never known in the soul until the Holy Ghost was
given to dwell in us. Hence even the apostles knew not fully who it was who
graciously walked with them on earth. If it had been possible for them to know
that God was there-when the Son was revealing the Father on earth-it would have
been possible to know God in duality; 1:e., that He could be known in but two
persons. This could not be. The Son reveals the Father on earth, the Father
dwells in Him and does the works; but the Holy Ghost was the power by which the
Son cast out devils-all was presented to man. But He must die and rise again,
and go on high and give the Holy Ghost to those that obey Him; and now, by the
power of the Holy Ghost, I know the Father, revealed in and by the Son. One God
is thus known in the Trinity of the Persons, as a subjective truth in the
consciousness of the soul. Peter might say, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God," and have a divinely-given revelation of this from the Father;
but it was inoperative at the time, as many things are in ourselves, until know
if subjectively in our souls. A few verses on in the chapter (Matthew 16:1-28)
he shows that flesh was not broken in him up to the height of the revelation,
and indeed it never had its power until he afterward received the Holy Ghost.
The Spirit given when Jesus was glorified made all the difference. In Jesus "
all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily." There will never be, and there
could not be, any further revelation of God, for all has been revealed, else the
Son of God has not fulfilled His mission, which is simply impossible. The
Trinity of the Persons is made known, and the Son has taken manhood into the
Godhead-wrought redemption, and reconciled us to God by His death; and, risen
with Him, we are sealed with the Spirit of God, and thus before Him in Christ
Jesus, and He in us before men. The one settles our place before God, the other
our duties before men. (Cf. John 14:10.)

These is no confounding the Persons of the Trinity, yet there is no separating
them. Each Person (as we speak) does different things, yet all work in concert
and in the unity of the godhead. The Father sends the Son; the Son does not send
the Father. The Son dies for me, not the Father. The Spirit sanctifies,
quickens, yet so do the Father and the Son. All this is now known in
Christianity, and under grace, and is quite different from what was hoped for by
those under Promise, or felt by those under Law. Under the former, the
Patriarchs knew Him as El Shaddai (God Almighty). See Genesis 17:1; and Exodus
6:3. He was the all-powerful One, to watch over the pilgrim of faith. With
Israel it was Jehovah-the self-existing One, who would bring to pass all He had
promised. With us it is the Father, revealed by the Son and known by the Holy
Ghost dwelling in us-one God in Trinity. Yet He who is such to us-the
Father-tells us that He is the same who was Almighty to the Patriarchs, and
Jehovah to Israel. Compare 2 Corinthians 6:18, and read Jehovah, for " Lord,"
where it has this significance.

You ask also, " Would the knowledge of the character of God alone give
certainty?" In the abstract I would reply, Yes. But I would qualify my answer by
saying, that you could not know His character fully until the Cross was past; so
that the work of Christ must come in, as well as God having been revealed on
earth. I may be attracted to Him as a Man on earth; but the conscience must be
purged by His work which rends the vail, and all God’s character known, perfect
in grace, face to face with man at his worst. With the knowledge of such a
revelation there must be certainty. In Job’s case, it was a deep confident trust
that God would come in and deliver him somehow. (Chapter 19:23, 27.) He desires
that his hope and confidence may be graven upon a rock, to show how true and
well-founded they are, as time would show. In the Spirit’s speaking by him,
there doubtless was a deeper thing implied than that to which Job’s hope and
confidence reached; just as the words, "lam the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob," spoken to Moses (Exodus 3:1-22), were used in unfolding a deeper truth
in the lips of the Lord Jesus afterward, in Luke 20:1-47,, than the Jews saw.
Job’s hope rises up to God, and so he puts life in Him, in contrast with the
corruption of skin and flesh, seeing that in Him was a power of deliverance from
all this in God Himself, his spirit reaching onwards to a better resurrection.

Affectionately yours in the Lord, F. G. P.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 56: S.     HE WILL SWALLOW UP DEATH IN VICTORY
========================================================================

He will swallow up death in victory"

There would seem to be a difficulty from the position which the words "He will
swallow up death in victory" occupy in the strain of the prophet Isaiah, which,
containing many subjects, begins with Isaiah 13:1-22 :, and ends with Isaiah
27:1-13 : But, as usual, every difficulty of scripture serves only as an
occasion to discover its perfection. The difficulty is that, according to the
order in which the prophet brings the statement into his strain (Isaiah 25:8),
the event would seem to follow the great crash of universal judgment related in
Isaiah 24:1-23 :, embracing, as it does, the world and all its systems, the host
of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. Yet we know
that St. Paul applies the passage to the resurrection of the Church, or first
resurrection, embracing, of course, the saints of the Old Testament days. This
event we know happens previously to this crisis of judgment detailed in Isaiah
24:1-23 :, introductory of the kingdom — a clear proof, by the way, that the
Church does not pass through the tribulation: her promise being that she would
be kept from the hour of temptation which comes upon all the world, to try them
that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10.)

It would seem to mean that, in a general way, without giving the order of the
events, the first resurrection would take place at such a time as that spoken of
in the group of Isaiah 24:1-23 : — 27:, and without pointing out the order of
the occurrences, or the moment of time for their fulfilment — a general thing
with this prophet. But the order is much more precise than this when we come to
examine Revelation 20:4. We have there three classes of persons spoken of:

1st. Those who are received up when the Lord comes, 1:e., the Old Testament
saints and the Church.

2ndly. Those of the Jewish remnant who had been martyred under the fifth seal
(Revelation 6:9); and 3rdly. Those who had not worshipped the beast, etc. The
last two classes would, of course, lose their lives, and with their lives the
earthly blessings of the kingdom about to be established; and they receive,
instead, a heavenly blessing, and a place in the first resurrection, having
loved not their lives unto death. All three classes enumerated compose the first
resurrection, which, as we know, is not a period of time, but a class of
persons, although not raised at the same moment of time but within a period
extending from the taking up of the saints at the Lord’s coming, and through the
period of judgment which passes over the world, and till the eve of the kingdom.

Now the last two classes not being raised at the same moment with the former,
and being comprised especially of the slain remnant of the Jews, it is towards
those the Prophet Isaiah has his attention specially directed, forming as they
do the prominent subject in his burthen. Hence the order in which we find them
in Isaiah 25:1-12 :, after the judgment of the world, and at the time when the
Lord establishes His kingdom in Zion. This answers so beautifully to the word in
Revelation 20:4, "They lived (this word applying especially to the two latter
classes) and reigned with Christ a thousand years;" while the first mentioned
class was raised previously to the time when the crisis or tribulation took
place. The mind of the Spirit in the prophet is chiefly occupied with these last
mentioned classes; while Paul, who is the instrument used in the revelation of
the higher and subsequently revealed truth of the Church, uses the same passage
when speaking of the resurrection of the saints who compose it when Christ
comes; the passage thus embracing all those of the first resurrection, and the
order of resurrection of the Jewish prophet having in primary view the slain
ones of the Jewish remnant who are raised last in order of time, and at the
closing moment of the events related in Isaiah 24:1-23 : — 27: F. G. Patterson.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 57: S.     HIS WILL" - "HIS WORK
========================================================================

"His will" - "His work."

"My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." John
4:34.

There are two points to be observed in the reading of the Old Testament, without
which it cannot rightly be understood. The first is, that the gap or interval in
time, from the ascension of Christ to heaven till the taking ups or rapture of
His own, is never contemplated in its Scriptures; nor is it ever computed as
time at all. And the second is, that what is said of the Lord in many cases in
these Scriptures, is similar in language to what is said of the Church - His
body, in the New Testament. Thus it is that Paul, speaking of the mystery of
Christ and the Church, calls these truths, with all collateral ones, "The
unsearchable riches of Christ." (Ephesians 3:8.) The searchable things were all
there: Incarnation, Life of suffering, Atoning death, Resurrection, Ascension to
heaven, Receiving gifts in the man, Coming again in glory, His glorious reign,
or Kingdom. All these were to be found in the Old Testament. But the interval in
time from the ascension - characterized by the presence of the Holy Ghost
dwelling in the Church - as an habitation of God, His abiding with her during
her earthly sojourn while Christ is hidden in the heavens, and His coming forth
to receive her to Himself when caught up in the clouds to meet Him in the air;
these things were not in the Scriptures of the Old Testament; they were "hid in
God," "according to the purpose of the ages." Nor are they spoken of by any of
the apostles or teachers of the New but Paul. Old Testament Scriptures are
silent as to them; so are New Testament apostles and prophets - with the
exception of him.

I mention one Scripture out of many as to the interval, or gap, of the New
Testament times being unnoticed in the Old. The well-known passage from Isaiah
61:1-2, first clause, cited by the Lord in the opening of His ministry in the
synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19), as far as the middle of a sentence, when
He closed the book and sat down, causing all in the synagogue to fasten their
eyes upon Him. The parenthesis of grace thus falling between that moment and the
fulfilment of the next clause - "And the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort
all that mourn." Yet when He foretells the long centuries of judgment which
ensued upon His rejection, during which "Jerusalem (would) be trodden down of
the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24), He
touches upon His second coming in glory, according to Isaiah 63:1-4, connecting
with that "day of vengeance" the words - "For the day of vengeance is in mine
heart, and the year of my redeemed is come" (Isaiah 63:4); also, "For these be
the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled" (Luke
21:23); and again these - "Then look up, and lift up your heads; for your
redemption draweth nigh." (John 4:28) The parenthesis of grace thus lying
between that day in Nazareth, and the day of His coming in power and great
glory. The parenthesis of glory of which Paul treats, lying again within the
other parenthesis of grace of Luke, from His ascension to the rapture of the
saints on high, while the "unsearchable riches of Christ," "the manifold wisdom
of God" - in Christ and the Church, are unfolded. These come forth when Christ
is in the glory and the Holy Ghost here.

We see this, too, in the portion of the passages of Isaiah 49:6-8, cited by Paul
in the New Testament, which apply to Christ Himself in the Old, and to the
Church, His body, in the New. "I will also give thee for a light to the
Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth." This the
prophet speaks of Christ. And Paul at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:47), "For so
hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the
Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth."
Again, "Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time I have heard thee, and in a
day of salvation have I helped thee." (Isaiah 49:8.) This of Christ. While Paul,
of the Church, in 2 Corinthians 6:1-18, "We then, as workers together, beseech
also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. For He saith, I have heard
thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee;
behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." In
Romans 8:1-39 also, speaking of the security of the believer, "It is God that
justifieth; who is he that condemneth?" While Isaiah, of Christ, in Isaiah
50:1-11, "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that pluck off
the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting . . He is near that
justifieth me . . . who is he that shall condemn me?"

Now while all this is true, and the general matter of the Old Testament is
silent as to these things, when it deals with the world and Israel, and Jehovah
Messiah’s connection with them; there are two Scriptures in the Old Testament
which touch upon the counsels of God outside the earth, the line of His eternal
thoughts, at which I would now look for a little. I speak of His eternal
counsels as those connected with things which are outside all His dispensational
dealings with the world. Prophecy connects itself with "times and seasons, and
days and years," which belong to the world, and exist while it exists, ending
when it ends; then the eternal counsels of God have their fruition, and time has
passed away.

1. In Proverbs 8:23-36, where Christ is seen as the Eternal One, the "wisdom of
God." He is there seen in two ways. First, as the resource of God; and second,
as His delight, the One in whom all the good pleasure of the Eternal was. "The
Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was
set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." Then
follows a lovely description of the priority of Him on whom all depended, before
the mountains, or hills, or oceans, or clouds were. "Then," says the Eternal
One, "I was by Him, as one brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight,
rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth"
(before it was formed); "and my delights were with the sons of men."

2. Psalms 40:1-17 gives us the other; and while Proverbs 8:1-36 unfolds to us
those thoughts before the earth was, in Psalms 40:1-17 the silence of eternity
is broken by the words here spoken by the Lord. Time and earth had intervened;
sin had entered the fair scene, and man fell; Israel had been redeemed, and had
been tried under law; prophets, priests, and kings had been there, and His
people all had failed. These blessed words are then heard, and connected with
the lowly path of faithfulness of Christ: "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." In
the epistle to the Hebrews we find the establishment of this "will." The
sacrifices proved wanting, and only recalled sin to remembrance - not putting it
away; they are set aside - by His one perfect blessed work, and the will of God
is done. "He taketh away the first," even these sacrifices, "that He may
establish the second," God’s eternal will. This had been outraged through man,
under the enemy’s power; but could not be turned aside or disannulled. (Hebrews
10:1-39)

Thus we have in Psalms 40:1-17 the "will" of God to be made good in His cross on
earth; and in Proverbs 8:1-36 the "good pleasure in the sons of men" revealed.
In Hebrews we have the eternal will established; while in the Ephesians we find
the "good pleasure of His will" brought forth from the secrets of eternity, when
He is gone on high; and this to the "sons of men," in whom His "good pleasure,"
or "delights," ever were. "If ye have heard of the administration of the grace
of God, which is given me to youward" and that "Ye may understand my knowledge
in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the sons of
men, as it is now revealed," etc. (Ephesians 3:1-21) From creation until He came
to the earth, Jesus, the eternal Son, the wisdom of God, was ever "by Him" - His
resource, and His delight. Did the counsels of the Godhead resolve to create the
universe, or to frame the world out of the chaos which is found in Genesis 1:2?
The Son was the actor, for "by Him were all things created." "Without Him
nothing came into being that did exist." Did man in innocence succumb to the
temptations of the enemy, the old serpent, the devil? Did sin and disobedience
thus enter into the world? The seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s
head; and in the foretold "bruising of his heel," and in the death which Adam’s
coats of skins required, ere he could walk forth from the garden consciously and
manifestly clothed of God - Jesus was again before the mind of the Father. How
sweet to see that because of Him, in this first scene of the world’s youthful
history, God was the first to move in approaching the sinful pair!

Again, when violence entered in, and Cain slew His brother, it was because Abel,
finding himself "born in sin," outside of paradise, his state as a sinner
pressing upon his soul, and recognizing what a Righteous Being required to meet
His nature and His claims, he brings "the firstlings of his flock and the fat
thereof." He came with the pure and sinless life of another, but displaying in
death the excellency of life. In all this he confessed that he could not provide
that which God in His nature demanded, and he as a sinner needed; and God, as it
were, seeing that faith apprehended some thing of His resource and His delight,
pronounced him a righteous man. Did Noah’s sacrifice ascend as a sweet savour in
the sight of the Lord, after His judgment of the waters of the deluge, because
of the earth’s corruption? He turns at once to His resource, His delight; and
says in His heart, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake;
because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth: neither will I
again smite any more every thing living, as I have done." (Genesis 8:21.)

Again, idolatry enters the scene; and all the world was worshipping demons
rather than God. He calls Abram out, and "preaches the gospel" in him.
(Galatians 3:8.) "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
(Genesis 12:3.) And when Abraham ascends the mount Moriah, in company with his
only son Isaac, his faith entered upon the thoughts of God Himself in Jesus, "My
son, God will provide Himself a lamb." The risen Isaac, "received from the dead
in a figure," speaks in the sight of divine omniscience, of that scene yet to be
enacted between the Father and the One then "by Him," "His delight." And God,
"because He could swear by no greater, sware by Himself," to fill with "strong
consolation" the feeblest heart that flees for refuge to Jesus. (Hebrews
6:16-18.)

Mark the delight, the suddenness (Exodus 40:1-38) with which in after years,
when Moses had reared the tabernacle, after the people had made the golden calf,
and failed in their obedience to law, God enters, and fills the whole scene so
fully, that even Moses himself could not but be an intruder - none could share
His company in that tabernacle, which was the pattern of things in the
heavenlies reared up in the obedience of faith, but He of whom every cord and
pillar, board and altar, curtain and hanging testified.

Thus and thus was Jesus, God’s resource, always by Him," "His delight,"
"rejoicing always before Him." But I need not go further. Step by step, Christ,
in type and figure, in parable and shadow, kept God’s heart reminded of plans
that never could be frustrated; but while hindered by Satan, and man, and sin,
only disclosed the inexhaustible resource that Jesus was ever before Him. The
day came when Jesus, though always "by Him," the only-begotten Son in the bosom
of the Father, was to divest Himself of the glory He had there, before the world
was; and taking manhood in the womb of the virgin, was to be "Emmanuel, God with
us;" yet ever His delight, His good pleasure. In the lowly manger in Bethlehem,
the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, was laid; and the anthem, "Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure (His delights) in men," is
sung.

Thirty years elapse, and Jesus appears amongst the crowd who were confessing
their sins in Jordan. The wandering sheep were in the waters, and the Shepherd
would go there too. Grace was at work in their hearts, and Jesus would go with
the grace; they were confessing their sins through grace, and Jesus would be
with that grace, as He, in the Godhead, had produced its fruits. At once we hear
the voice of the Father, as we had heard that of the angels at His birth,
proclaiming, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I have good pleasure." And the
Spirit, in bodily shape, as a dove, alights upon Him. Father, Son, and Spirit,
seen and heard, for the first time on earth, when He stood in the waters of
Jordan, charged with the bringing forth of God’s "good pleasure in the sons of
men," and establishing on a revolted earth His will! In a few short years we
find Him on the mount of Transfiguration when about to be received up. His own
had not received Him; the world, though made by Him, knew Him not. A momentary
glimpse of His true glory evokes the words from a bystander, "Master, it is good
for us to be here," and the Father’s voice again is heard owning His
earth-rejected, though heaven-honoured Son, as "my beloved Son, in whom I have
good pleasure; hear ye Him." (Matthew 17:5.) He then returns to the scene of His
sorrows, and steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. The seventy disciples
return. (Luke 10:1-42) He had not given them power over unclean spirits when
sending them forth. But faith in Him had caused them to use the value of His
name, and to their joy they were answered. They return to Him and say, "Lord,
even the devils are subject to us through thy name." (Luke 10:17) How joy fills
His heart, too, as they tell the tale, in the thought of the day of glory, when
Satan will fall as lightning from heaven; and even the earth will yield no place
for him, while he is chained in the bottomless pit for a thousand years. But
hearken now to what He says in their hearing "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it was thy good
pleasure." (Luke 10:21.)

And, lastly, in the gospels, when Jesus would cast the light of God on all that
man’s ways present (Luke 12:1-59), between His leaving them and His return, He
speaks of His people as a little flock; but even so they were not to fear, "for
it was their Father’s good pleasure to give them the kingdom. (Luke 12:32.) But
to recall what we have touched upon, we have:

1. Before the world was, this "good pleasure" filled the heart of Jesus, "in the
sons of men." (Proverbs 8:1-36)

2. At the birth of Jesus it was shared by unjealous angels, and the heavenly
hosts proclaimed from the excellent glory (Luke 2:1-52), "Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men."

3. When He came up out of the Jordan the Father’s voice again proclaims, "In
thee I have good pleasure." (Matthew 3:1-17; Luke 3:1-38)

4. The same words are heard from the excellent glory, on the holy mount, "For He
received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to
Him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I have good
pleasure." (Matthew 17:1-27; Luke 9:1-62; 2 Peter 1:1-21.)

5. And as He descends to His path of service, and sends forth the "seventy," and
receives them as they return, He tells of His Father’s "good pleasure" to reveal
these heavenly secrets, not to wise and prudent, but even to babes, whose names
were written in heaven.

6. And as He instructs them for their pathway (Luke 12:1-59) in this world of
sin, He adds His "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure
to give you the kingdom." His "delights were with the sons of men." At last the
hour was come, "Your hour, and the power of darkness," when all was arrayed
against Him, to stay the eternal Will being done on earth, as counseled in the
heavens. If in the gospel of Luke we found the "good pleasure" so often
expressed, as Luke presents Him a Man, in whom all was centered, it is in the
gospel of John we find His heart set, who was presented there as the Eternal
Son, to do this - Will of God. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me,
and to finish His work." (John 4:1-54) "I seek not my own will, but the will of
Him that sent me." (John 5:1-47) "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own
will, but the will of Him that sent me." (John 6:38.). "And this is the Father’s
will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose
nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." (John 6:39.)

He who expressed His own perfect will but twice in all His earthly path, was now
to do His God’s. Once in Gethsemane He expressed it, to lay it down in blessed
submission to the Father, "Not my will, but thine be done;" and once again in
John 17:24, for the eternal blessing of those whom His Father had given Him, "I
will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may
behold my glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the
foundation of the world." "Before the mountains were settled.... Then I was by
Him, one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always
before Him." (Proverbs 8:1-36) This hour then came, and Jesus in that hour could
repeat, as it were, "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire mine ears hast
thou opened; burnt-offering and sinoffering has thou not required. Then said I,
Lo, I come in the volume of the Book it is written of me, I delight to do thy
will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart." (Psalms 40:1-17) And closing
in the cross that work, and establishing that will, He cries, "It is finished."
His will is done, and "He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost."

He died and lived again: He ascended on high in glory, and all now was removed
which could frustrate that" will" of God. All was settled for ever that
established it. The "good pleasure" of the "will" could now be made known to the
"sons of men." We hear the exponent of it, now by the Spirit, unfold it in our
calling on high of God. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ
according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us
unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good
pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath
made us accepted in the beloved." (Ephesians 1:3-5.) How sweet those words,
"accepted," "taken into divine favour," "in the beloved." "Whoso findeth me
findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord." (Proverbs 8:1-36)

Now the Ephesian Epistle unfolds these eternal thoughts and counsels of our God.
In it we find (as in Christ and by the Spirit) God most fully revealed and seen.
His Church displays Him in these two ways 1. God Himself to man, to the
universe, as God now fully known.

2. Man before Him, displayed according to His counsels, as seen in Christ. His
Church, Christ’s body, in union with her Head, by the Spirit, now in mystery,
and in full display in the day of glory. The Spirit too now gathering to the
confession of His name on earth those who are His own, until the day when He
with His Church becoming manifestly the centre of an ordered universe. As we
read that, in the dispensation of the fulness of times, He will gather together
in one all things in heaven and earth, in Christ; in whom also we have obtained
an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh
all things after the counsel of His own will.

What a calling: God displayed in Christ, for "in Him all the fulness was pleased
to dwell." (Colossians 1:19.) Christ displayed in the Church His body, His
bride, "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1:22), the
ordered centre of a reconciled universe, the helpmeet, the Eve of the second
Adam, in the day of power.

How then is all this to be realized in the soul? How are we to walk in the power
of this calling of God? We must be strengthened with all might, according to the
riches of the glory of the Father, by His Spirit in the inner man. But for what?
What need of such blessed living action of God in us? It is that this Christ,
this centre of all things, to whom heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings must
bow the knee (Php 2:10), "may dwell in our hearts by faith!" That the soul’s
affections may centre in Him, surround Him, entwine themselves in Him; that
being rooted and grounded in love, no Satan’s power can disturb this planting of
our souls in the soil of love! Down deeply have struck the roots there, though
this will be tried and tested; far and wide the soul has spread its branches.
Sorrows but unfold it, and want but finds in it its rich supply. Temptations to
disturb it are met by the power of it ministered to the soul. The coldness of
our brethren deepens the joy of its being ours. The world’s sneer and scorn turn
the heart more distinctly to Him who loves. The entranced soul rises to the
deeper contemplation of that central Sun, and looks out from Him to the length,
and breadth, and depth, and height, which centre in Him, and is lost in the
fields of illimitable glory. Yet it finds itself at home there, recalled by that
well-known love which, as a sinner once it tasted, and found itself at peace
with God; as a saint too who failed along the way, and who found its never-dying
power humbling to the dust the soul with its unchangeableness; or as a chosen
one of the Father before the world was - the gift of His heart to the Son, one
"whom thou hast given me." How deep the wellspring of that love must be to one
who was the object of His eternal choice, whose delights were in the sons of
men!

Yet this love of Christ is that which touches the heart, and makes it feel
itself at home in those fields of glory. Yet while known and tasted, "it passeth
knowledge." Too great for finite hearts to grasp, yet, like the babe which knows
its mother’s love, unable though it is to explain its power, it is the link of
heart with Him whom not having seen, even now we love. The finite vessel is thus
launched upon the infinite sea of light, and love, and God - filled into all His
fulness! "Unto Him be glory by the Church by Christ Jesus, throughout all
generations of the ages of ages [see Greek]. Amen." (Ephesians 3:21.) The more
one enters upon and realizes what the Church of God is, and, connected with His
counsels for Christ’s glory, what a place she holds in God’s plans for the
ordered manifestation of His glory, the more one feels how hopeless is the ruin
which lies far and wide around our path. How false is everything which pretends
to be His Church on earth! How Satan has succeeded in destroying outwardly all
that bears Christ’s name! How feebly do those, whose spiritual vision is opened
to know some what of her blessing, grasp the thought of her place and calling in
connection with her Head on high in glory! How few there are who care for more
than that which speaks of their own blessing! How few even that have realized
their personal blessing at all! How little is the voice of the Spirit heard in
the bride, calling on the "bright and morning star" to "come!" How His people
may say, even at their best, "My leanness, my leanness; woe is me!"

Yet God would gather a people in these days to the confession of the name of
Jesus, and the truth of His body - His bride. He would awaken bridal affections
which Jesus looks for in His Church, for which He gave Himself. He has brought
forth in living power these long-buried truths. He would awaken His people, and
recall them to the state of those who at first looked for and awaited God’s Son
from heaven. He would form a heavenly company of true whole-hearted souls, whose
aims, and life, and work, are for the glory of His Son. Are there not those who
would respond to those Spirit-wrought desires? who long to answer in all things
to the heart of Christ? Surely there are. Surely when God has again brought
these things to light, He will find a people who will value them, and answer to
His heart’s desire. F. G. Patterson.

We are told in the Word to let our light so shine before men, that they may see
our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16.) Too
often we reverse this precept, and let our works shine that our light may be
seen to our own glory. Hence the danger of speaking or writing about our own
activities. The intention may be good, but it is seldom done without leading -
even if unconsciously - to the exaltation of self. If, on the other hand, we are
careful to let our light shine before men, our works, like our blessed Lord,
cannot be hid. * *


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  CHAPTER 58: S.     IS THE CHRISTIAN IN ADAM OR IN CHRIST?
========================================================================

Is the Christian in Adam or in Christ? And what is the result of this as regards
his standing and walk? A deeply important question strikes the thoughtful
Christian mind at the present day, when words are multiplied without knowledge —
a question which affects the whole tone and character of christian practice, and
the steady, solid peace of the soul. The question is, Is his standing before God
in the first or the second Adam? Is he in the first Adam, responsible before
God, since he chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the error of
his way, and was driven out from the presence of the Lord God, the ruined head
of a lost world, his access in such a state, cut off for ever from the tree of
life, death his portion here, and the second death his end? Or is he in the
second Adam (who entered, in divine grace and love, into the place of
responsibility, death, sin-bearing, and judgment, in which he lay, but who has
passed out of that state, risen, ascended, glorified, seated at the right hand
of the Majesty on high, head of the new creation of God), and is he made
partaker, as born of Him, of a risen life, justified, sanctified, and waiting to
be glorified?

Deeply important questions these, not only for individual peace of soul, but for
walk and practice before God. May the gracious Lord vouchsafe His own guidance
and teaching while we endeavour to answer these questions according to His truth
and for His own glory. In Romans 5:12-21 we find these two great fountains, or
heads of nature and of faith, contrasted. And the effect of the acts of Adam and
Christ upon the two families; viz., that which ranges itself under the headship
of the first Adam, and that which ranges itself under the Second. The question
of sin and its results — death, and of grace and its results — life and
righteousness towards each family, is discussed. "By one man sin entered into
the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned . . . But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through
the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by
grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many . . . For if
by one offence death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of
grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus
Christ. Therefore, as by one offence upon all men to condemnation, even so by
one righteousness upon all men to justification of life. For as by one man’s
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be
made righteous."

Thus the effect of the transgression of Adam was not confined to himself but
passed upon all his posterity, constituting them sinners before God. Even so
Christ’s one accomplished act of righteousness and obedience, which reached unto
death, the death of the cross, was not confined in effect with Himself, but
flows to many, constituting them righteous before God. And as Adam, fallen and
driven out from the presence of God, entered upon the headship of the family of
nature, after his disobedience unto death; even so, Christ, enters upon the
Headship of the family of faith, the new creation of God, after His one
accomplished act of obedience unto death, the death of the cross.

Let us now look at the first of these. We turn to Genesis 3:1-24 :, and there we
find Adam created in innocence, set in the garden of Eden, an earthly paradise,
surrounded with blessing and good; and in this paradise there were two trees,
the tree of life and the tree of responsibility (of knowledge of good and evil).
He was left there to maintain himself in a position and in a condition in which
he had been placed. He had access to the tree of life, but had no promise. He
had simply to enjoy what God had given him, and own the Giver in His gifts which
surrounded him. He was given to understand that he had no further responsibility
than to observe the command of God, to abstain from eating of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, failing which, death would be the effect and
consequence of his breach of the command. This was the measure of his
responsibility. He had no position to attain to or object to gain by his
obedience to the command. Alive in a certain condition, and observing it, he
maintained himself in that condition. He was not told to "Do this and live;"
but, alive in the position God had placed him in, he was to retain it by doing
as commanded, and so enjoy all the blessings of his position. Satan now comes
upon the scene. He suggests the thought to his mind that God was withholding the
richest blessing in prohibiting him to eat of the tree of responsibility; that
His love was not such a love as he supposed; and, moreover, that God had not
been truthful as to the result He had placed before him; for that, instead of
death, God knew that they would become as gods, "knowing good and evil." Man’s
heart, already turned away from God, opened itself to these suggestions —
doubted the love that was thus withholding the best blessing from him — despised
the truth, and offended the majesty of God, and aspired to be a god himself,
knowing good and evil. Satan thus obtained the place in his mind that God should
have had. Adam’s heart — turned away from God — readily hearkened to the
suggestions of Satan and fell! He thus constituted God his judge by his fall. If
God had judged His creature before this, He would have been judging Himself; for
He had made man after His own image and likeness and had pronounced His work
"very good." This was His judgment upon His own workmanship when it came forth
from His bands. But when Adam transgressed, he constituted God a judge, and
obtained the knowledge of good and evil — good, without the power to accomplish
it; and evil, without the power to avoid it. His conscience, thus obtained, told
him that he had made God his judge; for when the voice of the Lord God was heard
in the garden, the man and his wife felt that the covering they had made to hide
their nakedness, and which had, perhaps, satisfied them for the time, was no
covering when God spake. So when challenged by God he says, "I was afraid,
because I was naked." Conscience awoke under the voice of God, and thus drove
Adam to hide amongst the trees of the garden. The knowledge he had obtained when
he fell had no power to make him draw near to God, but rather drove him from His
presence. It was the sense of responsibility, united to the knowledge of good
and evil. And so we find that God "drove out the man," cutting off his access to
the tree of life. It was a blessing and a mercy, in such a condition as that
which he now had attained; access to the tree of life would only have
perpetuated a life of misery and separation from God and good. The man and his
wife pass out from the presence of God with a knowledge they can never unlearn,
and with a nature that never can be innocent again. We cannot return to
innocence, and we never can unlearn the knowledge of good and evil. Nor can we
ever return to paradise again, such as that from which Adam was driven. The man
and his wife, thus driven out, become the root and head of a lost world. Their
sin does not stop in effect with themselves; but condemnation passes upon the
whole race, which is driven out from the presence of God in them. Death is their
portion in this world. Judgment, the second death, the lake of fire is the end.
In the judgment-resurrection (Revelation 20:1-15 :) we find the two things
brought on the scene again, the principle of the two trees — life and
responsibility. The book of life is opened, and the books, I doubt not, of their
responsibility. They are judged out of those things which are written in the
books, according to their works, "and whosoever was not found written in the
book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

Let us now look upon the Second. We turn to Luke 4:1-44 :, and there we find the
last Adam — Christ. Instead of a garden eastward in Eden, surrounded with every
good, as we saw at the beginning, we find Him led of the Spirit into the
wilderness, and there He is confronted by Satan, who had succeeded in gaining
the ear of the first Adam. Satan and Christ, then, stood face to face. The proof
was there to undo Satan’s lie at the first, that God was withholding the best
gifts in prohibiting to the man access to the tree of responsibility; for
Christ, the Son of the Father, was there! The Son had come to prove God’s love
as a Giver; and the Son, who was the brightness of God’s glory, and the express
image of His person, had renounced everything, and humbled Himself — took upon
Himself a bondsman’s form — to vindicate the outraged majesty of God — outraged
by the first man, who had aspired to be a god. Confronted by the enemy, He stood
in His inheritance, and found it in Satan’s hands. "The devil . . . showed him
all the kingdoms of the world . . . and the devil said unto him, All this power
will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me; and to
whomsoever I will I give it" (Luke 4:5-6), defiled by sin, and in ruins. Had He
put forth His power as God, there would have been no conflict; it would then
have been merely the question of God’s power, and that of a rebellious creature.
But all the tempter’s wiles were put forth against the self-emptied, obedient
man, who had come to obey, and to conquer by obedience where the other had
failed; and not only so, but in circumstances of trial and difficulty, where
dependence and perfect subjection to the will of God were needed. By His
obedience He bound the strong man who was in possession of His goods, and
presented in the midst of a ruined, sin-defiled world, a perfect, spotless man
to God. Satan then departed from Him for a season. He found nothing in Him to
act upon, or by which he might draw Him aside. With a perfect will as man, Ho
did not put forth His will; He waited upon the will of God; and by the words of
His lips He kept Him from the paths of the destroyer (Psalms 17:1-15 :), and
triumphed where the first man had fallen, and in the midst of the circumstances
brought in by his fall.

But, again, and now at the close of His ministry — of His course through a
sin-defiled world, Satan comes again. Had He picked up any of the defilements of
the scene through which He had passed? Had the Lamb of God contracted a spot or
a blemish to unfit Him for God’s altar? And were the terrors of death in the
hands of Satan, and the horrors of the moment when the Father’s face, which had
shined upon Him all the pathway through, would be averted? When He would be
forsaken, not only by those whom He loved, but also of God? Would all these be
sufficient to turn Him aside from the path He had taken upon Himself to walk in?
We follow Him to Gethsemane, at the close of the path-way through the world, and
there we find the dependent, obedient Man again, meeting with "the prince of
this world." He had tried to allure Him from the pathway of obedience at the
first; but here he tries his other power, which he had wielded so effectually in
the hearts of men; and he tries by the terrors of the hour of darkness to drive
Him out of the obedient place; but no! "the cup which my Father hath given me
shall I not drink it?" He who was the Prince of life, and had a title to it
personally, accepted the responsibility of His people inherited from the first
Adam, that He might vindicate the truth of God, who had said, "In the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." For here we find those early
principles of the garden again — life and responsibility. His presence in the
world was the proof of the love of God. He had emptied Himself, as One who alone
could do it, to vindicate the majesty of God. But there was His truth to
vindicate as well, and we follow Him to His cross! There He offered to the
righteousness of God a perfect, spotless victim; and He received from the
righteousness of God the cup of wrath — the blow of divine judgment and wrath on
account of sin. Spotless Himself, He was made sin on the cross. He could not be
made sin otherwise than this. He stood there responsible for the glory of God on
account of sin; and as the substitute for His people’s sins. Let us look at His
cross. There the full evil of the heart of the first Adam, estranged from God,
burst forth in its unmingled enmity against perfect good. The judge, into whose
hands God had entrusted power and judgment, uses it to condemn the guiltless!
Priests appointed to "have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out
of the way" (Hebrews 5:2), set on their false witnesses, and plead against a
righteous man, and urge on the multitude to clamour for the blood of One in whom
no fault had been found. Disciples who had followed and leaned upon, and loved
the Man who stood there, find the place too dangerous now. The most warm-hearted
amongst them denies Him at the voice of a serving-maid — His "friend" betrays —
the others forsake Him — and there He stands alone at the hour of the
consummation of Adam’s wickedness! The cross of a rejected Christ exhibits the
hatred of man’s heart against God and good. It displays ourselves by nature to
ourselves. There we can read of what the heart of man, under every circumstance,
is capable. It tells us of what we can be urged on by Satan to do under the plea
of religion, loyalty, or what you will! But I follow on, and I find something
more. I find God in judgment, and man in sin-bearing, face to face. The sword of
divine judgment satisfying itself to the uttermost, and yet glorified in the
sacrifice that presented itself to its demands. The cup of wrath wrung out and
drunk to the dregs, and yet all the while the cry of conscious guiltlessness,
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The truth of God — His majesty —
love — holiness — every moral attribute, was displayed, vindicated, and
glorified in the death of Christ!

We read in Luke 23:1-56 : that there were crucified with Him two malefactors,
the one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Let us pause for a moment
and contemplate this scene. Around the cross of Jesus every expression of fallen
man grouped itself; some "reaping the due reward for their deeds," others
mocking the Man who had professed His perfect trust in God, and yet, strange to
say, who was there forsaken of Him. In Him we find the spotless Man who had
"done nothing amiss." He had renounced all that He might go down to the place of
ruin in which the sinner lay. There the crucifiers and the crucified met, in the
place of moral death and darkness that surrounded the cross. One amongst that
company of fallen children of Adam was destined to be something more — to be the
first trophy of the victory to be held up before the world as the spoils of the
hour, snatched out of the hands of the enemy; one of the blaspheming malefactors
who had joined with his comrades in railing upon the One who hung beside him,
with no better a portion. than himself. Before the scene closes, his convicted
conscience confesses that he was only reaping the due reward for his deeds, but
that the Sufferer between him and the other malefactor had "done nothing amiss."
Blessed position, the first step of faith; a convicted conscience consciously
guilty, and a spotless Christ, met together in the same place of death and ruin;
the one reaping what he had sowed, the other full of grace! The first step of
faith, a convicted conscience, led to faith’s second step; it turned from the
darkened scene within to light outside itself. Faith opened his eyes, "and
turned them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." (Acts
26:18.) "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest in thy
kingdom." He had forgotten the cross, the pain, every surrounding circumstance
in the scene; and instead of the darkness that hung around the cross to the
children of Adam around, it was light to his soul; and in the far distant future
he sees the Man who hung beside him, coming in His kingdom, and he merely asks
to be remembered at that hour. Little did he anticipate the answer that awaited
him. A place in the kingdom, perhaps a very lowly place, was his hope. "Verily I
say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The veil of the temple
was rent for his soul, and already he had passed into that Paradise of God with
his Lord. Happy thief, thrice happy thief! The ruffian soldiers broke his legs,
to be sure, to hasten his death, and to please religion in the world that was
about to keep high sabbath! But Christ had converted the gloomy portal, the
entrance to the second death to the sons of Adam, into the entrance to the
Paradise of God. But the soul of Jesus had passed away meanwhile, and the spear
of the soldier is answered by the blood that expiates, and the water that
cleanses. The responsibility was borne, and life and atonement come from a dead
Christ. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent
his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:9-10.) Here we have the two things again
life and responsibility: the one communicated, the other borne and atoned for.
Life, when dead in trespasses and sins; propitiation, when responsible and
guilty. The responsibility of the first Adam borne for His people, and the sin
that attached to the responsibility put away; the whole scene cleansed of the
first man and his belongings, and the Second man introduced into the glory of
God.

They take His body down from the cross and lay it in a tomb in the garden. Let
us contrast the two gardens — that of Genesis 3:1-24 : with that of John 19:1-42
: In the one was placed the first Adam, innocent, with access to the tree of
life; but he chose the tree of responsibility, in the error of his way, and
fell. In the other, lay He who had a right to the tree of life, but who had
answered the responsibility in the dust of death. To the one, the garden
eastward in Eden became the portals to a lost world, which ends in the lake of
fire. To the other, the second garden becomes the portals for His people, not to
Paradise regained, but to the Paradise of God. The life was gone to which the
responsibility attached, and the sin that accompanied the responsibility with
the life — sins borne, sin put away, to the glory of God. Sin had constituted
God a Judge at the beginning; to put away sin had also constituted him a
Saviour. Adam’s sin had made God a Judge, but grace in presence of it made Him a
Saviour.

We have traced him to the tomb, and God had been glorified in Him. The
mercy-seat had been set forth and the blood had been sprinkled upon it; the
claims of the throne had been answered as well as the end of the worshipper, and
now God comes in and takes up the surety from among the dead, and seats Him at
His own right hand in heaven. In divine love He took the place of death and ruin
in which the children of Adam, fallen, lay; and the righteousness of God takes
up the Man in whom He had been glorified, and seats Him in heaven. "And God, who
is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved),
and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in
Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:4-6.) Dead together — we in sin — He for sin —
quickened together — made partakers of a risen, justified life, beyond the reach
of death, sin, judgment, wrath, everything, (Christ having made satisfaction for
all these, before He left the place of death) we are now one with Him in heaven.
Dying for us on the cross we are one with Him in life, and "there is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1.) We are in
the second Adam, not in the first; in the Spirit, not in the flesh; under His
headship. Responsibility was borne by Him in grace. Propitiation flows to us
from the death of Christ, and His people are introduced into the new creation of
God. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are
passed away; behold all things are become new. And all things are of God, who
hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ." (2 Corinthians 5:17-18.) God has
substituted His own righteousness and the person of the Second Adam for the sin
and person of the first!

What now is the result of all this in practical life?

Before we answer this question, we must look back and ascertain what it was that
applied to Adam, fallen, under the sentence of death. Man, alive and innocent in
the garden, had but to retain the state or condition in which he had been
placed; but to man fallen and driven out from God’s presence, with a conscience
which he had received when he fell, is addressed the law, the requirement from
God to him, a sinner, and which proposed life in the things of it, and gave him
a rule to walk in, which would have been his righteousness if he observed it. In
the law we find again the principle of the two trees, life and responsibility.
It came in between Adam and Christ to propose the question, Had fallen man any
righteousness for God? And it proposed "life in them," upon the condition of
man, thus responsible, fulfilling perfectly its requirements. His conscience
tells him that he ought to fulfil all its demands; and he owns his
responsibility to be all that it requires of him — to love God with all his
heart, and his neighbour as himself; that he should not lust, etc. Had it been
addressed to Adam in the garden, it would have had no meaning whatsoever, for it
proposed to give life, whereas Adam had not forfeited life; and it prohibited
lusts which had no existence. To man, fallen, alone has it any application. It
prohibited lusts in a heart that was full of lust, and brought to light and
defined the lusts of a heart that had departed from God. It found him a sinner,
and instead of bringing life, as it proposed on man’s observing it, it brought
death to his conscience, constituted him an offender, a transgressor; for "by
the law is the knowledge of sin." We read, "The law entered (i.e., between Adam
and Christ) that the offence might abound," not sin, for sin was there.
Consequently "death reigned from Adam to Moses," by whom was given the law. It
could not, therefore, give life, and, as a result, it could not give
righteousness; for "If there had been a law given which could have given life,
verily righteousness should have been by the law." (Galatians 3:21.) "It is not
(therefore) made for a righteous man," (1 Timothy 1:1-20 :), but belongs to the
first man, fallen and driven out from God, and has its direct application to
none else.

What then is the guide for the practical life of the Christian, who has been
made partaker of the risen, justified life of the Second Adam? The very essence
of this flows from the fact that he has been brought to God in Christ, and
placed in a new condition altogether in and by virtue of redemption. The life of
the first man was forfeited; but Christ took the responsibility which belonged
to His people, and bore it fully to God’s glory, when He went down into the
place of death in which they lay as children of fallen Adam; and now life is
come to them from the death of Christ, and their responsibility springs from the
position in which they have been placed. As in earthly relationships, the
responsibility of the child to his father flows from the relationship which
exists — from the fact of his being a child; the wife’s to her husband, from the
fact of the relationship she is in--that of being his wife. So the true
Christian responsibility is founded on the existence of the relationship and the
position he is in. Life has been communicated, and he is before God, in the full
light of His presence, in the Second Adam risen from the dead and gone up into
the presence of God. It is the principle of real responsibility which sets him
to act up to the place he is in, and to judge everything inconsistent with that
place in his ways. It is not that he is to live up to what Adam, innocent, ought
to have been; or to what the law required from fallen man; or according to the
course of this world. But as dead to sin, dead to the world, dead to the law, in
the body of Christ he is to let the life of Jesus be manifested in his body; to
live the life that has been imparted to him, which was exhibited in Christ — a
life that connects him with heaven, but is to be exercised in the world, and
thus to bring forth fruit unto God. The law desired fallen Adam to love his
neighbour as himself, and gave no higher standard or aim with regard to his
neighbour than this. The new man has Christ for the measure of his walk and
practice, and is not merely to love his neighbour as himself, but to renounce
and surrender self altogether, even as Christ did — "to lay down our lives for
the brethren." He is told to be an imitator of God, as a dear child, and to walk
in love, having Christ for his example and standard; and abiding in Him, he
ought so to walk even as He walked — surrendering self, life, everything, for
His enemies. F. G. Patterson.


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  CHAPTER 59: S.     PAUL'S DOCTRINE:
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Paul’s Doctrine: Is there ever a time when it is of no practical value?

Colossians 1:1-29; 2 Timothy 3:1-17. The truths unfolded and warnings given in
the Epistles of Paul, invaluable at all times, are of incalculable value at a
day like the present. The seeds and first symptoms of all that which is now seen
in well-developed character around us had their existence thus early in the
history of the Church; and divine wisdom, foreseeing the results of them all,
has not only foreseen but provided for the difficulties and exigencies of such
an evil day. This is one of the blessed characters of the ever-living word of
God. It proves, as the difficulties arise and complicate themselves, how
matchlessly full of divine and unerring wisdom it is. One is not surprised at
anything that has arisen. Scripture has prepared us to expect that the evils
would arise, and the truth would be surrendered, and falsehood glossed over with
an appearance of the truth, as we painfully discover around us. Still the
unerring and unfailing manner in which it meets, and guides, and directs the
Christian who is subject to it, in every difficulty of his path, in a labyrinth
of evil, and unfolds its varied and wondrous beauty and resources for the
Church’s need, elicits a note of praise, often silent, but deep, to Him who is
its author, and whose perfect wisdom shines in that which is so worthy of Him!

One is struck with the wisdom and beauty of the style in which Paul, when
writing to the Colossians, unfolds before their eyes the glories and
magnificence of Christ, in whom all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to
dwell. (Colossians 1:1-29 :) The work of the Father for them and in them, in
making them meet for the inheritance of the saints in light; translating them
into the kingdom of the Son of His love, the centre of all His counsels. Their
danger lay in "not holding the head;" and thus they were allowing themselves to
be deceived by the craft of Satan, under the pretence of humility and lowliness,
and were turning ordinances into a means of gaining a standing before God,
instead of using them as a memorial of their having been introduced into a
standing known, and enjoyed, and possessed before Him.

Before one word of warning or upbraiding falls from his pen, he discloses the
glories of the Son, the centre of the Father’s counsels; by whom, through
sin-bearing, and death, and judgment, the fulness of the Godhead had cleared the
ground for the reconciliation of "all things," in the new creation, of which He
was the centre, and through whom believers had been reconciled to God.

What a rebuke to the state of things which we find touched upon in the second
chapter of the epistle! — "philosophy," "vain deceit," "traditions of men,"
"elements of the world," "meats," "drinks," "keeping of holy-days," "new moons,"
"sabbaths" (which were shadows which had vanished into their nothingness, when
the substance, Christ, had come), "voluntary humility," and such like. Things
with which the natural mind could occupy itself, and which had a "show of
wisdom" and worship devised by the human will, so gratifying to the flesh. The
apostle ranges as it were through the region of creation, providence,
redemption, and glory (Colossians 1:15-22); as if he said, "There is not a spot
in the wide universe of these things that I will not fill with Christ. I will so
unfold and expand Him before your eyes, that I will only have to mention the
follies of chapter 2: which have occupied your minds, to make you blush about
them; and this is the very One in whom all the fulness of the Godhead was
pleased to dwell, and who dwells in you (Colossians 1:27), and ye are complete
in Him. (Colossians 2:10.) Foolish people, see what you have been doing. Is not
that a more touching rebuke for you, than if I had charged you with the
infantile follies of which I have heard?"

I desire to put before my readers a line of truth which has struck me much of
late in chapter 1 of this Epistle, coupled with 2 Timothy 3:1-17; and to bring
before their minds certain truths of great importance which the apostle presses,
when the seeds of the evil had begun to show themselves, and which in this day
have grown up and ripened into such a harvest. It seems to me that he has them
specially in his mind as the grand preservatives which would guard the faithful
against all that was coming. This is the more remarkable when we find that he
presses the very same things on the consciences of the faithful in the perilous
times of the last days. So that whether in the beginning, or the ending of the
church’s sojourn here, the truths which would preserve and gird the loins of
God’s people would be the same.

I gather from the general teaching of the epistle that the apostle, who had
never seen the Colossians (Colossians 2:1), had heard of them through Epaphras,
whose ministry of the gospel had evidently been blessed to them. He had brought
tidings of them to the apostle (chap. 1: 8), of their fruit-bearing reception of
the gospel. The apostle contemplates a double condition of soul: first, that of
the knowledge of the glad tidings; and secondly, a condition produced by being
filled with the knowledge of God’s will, for which he prayed (ver. 9, 10); in
order that, through it, they might walk worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing,
and be fruitful in every good work, and thus grow through the knowledge of God.
In a word, it is the knowledge of the mystery of Christ and the Church.

Consequently, he contemplates his own ministry under these two heads: first,
that of the gospel to every creature under heaven (ver. 23); and, secondly, that
of the Church, which completed all the counsels of God. (Ver. 22–26.) Revelation
up to the point of Paul’s ministry had embraced creation, the law, redemption,
the person of Christ, the ways of God, His government, etc. There was but one
thing now, and that was the revelation of the mystery of the Church, which when
given, completed or filled up the word of God.

Christ — the Son of David and heir of his throne — rejected by the Jews and by
the world; crucified and slain; raised up again by the power of God, and by the
glory of the Father, seated in the heavens in the righteousness of God, having
answered God’s righteous judgment against sin, death, judgment, wrath, the curse
of a broken law, all borne and passed through to the glory of God; sin put away,
sins borne; the "old man" judicially dealt with, and set aside for ever; a man —
the Second man — the last Adam — in heaven in divine righteousness. The Holy
Ghost personally on earth witnesses to the righteousness of God, and to the
justification of the believer according to its full display. Eternal life by and
in the Spirit, and its conscious possession, communicated to the believer by the
Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost acting as the power of this life in his walk,
guiding, directing, controlling, and rebuking him. The believer in Jesus sealed
with the Spirit, his body a temple for His indwelling, uniting him to Christ — a
Man in glory; and thus the bond of union between all those who are His, one with
another, and with Christ. His presence and baptism constituting "one body,"
composed of such, here in this world. God dwelling amongst His saints here, as a
habitation, in Spirit, not in flesh. The Holy Ghost, the power for the exercise
of the gifts that Christ, when He rose and ascended up on high, received as man,
and bestowed on men — members of His body — thus "dividing to every man
severally as he will;" reproducing too, "Christ," the "life of Jesus," in the
mortal bodies of the saints. The power also of worship, communion, joy, love,
rejoicing, and prayer. Teaching them to await the hope of righteousness by
faith, even the glory itself. Leading them to await for Christ, and producing
the longing "Come" in the "Bride;" while her Lord still continues, the object of
her hope, in the hearers, as the "Bright and the Morning Star." Meanwhile
transforming them into Christ’s image by unfolding in the liberty of grace, the
glories of Him in whose face shines all the glory of God!

Such are some of the features of the "doctrine" of Paul.

We find then a condition of soul in the Colossians for which the apostle can
give thanks. (Ver. 3–6.) They had received the gospel, and it was bringing forth
fruit in them since the day they knew the grace of God in truth. But he will
know that the mere knowledge of the gospel, blessed even as it is, would not
enable them to "walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing." It needed something
more than the mere acceptance of the glad tidings to guide the steps of the
Lord’s people in a walk worthy of Him; and hence, while he can give thanks for
the first condition of soul produced by the glad tidings, he ceased not to pray
for them that they might have the second.

How many of the Lord’s people are in the first state in the present day
rejoicing in the grace of the gospel; and yet who never have attained to the
second! nay, who even think that anything beyond the mere knowledge of the
gospel is but speculation, or opinions of men, without power or value for the
practical walk of the saints. I think I am warranted in saying that after
Epaphras saw Paul, and learned the deep and paramount importance of that
knowledge for which Paul prayed that they might know that Epaphras was so fully
convinced of the value and importance of their learning the second character of
the apostle’s ministry, that he himself likewise, laboured earnestly in prayer
for them that they might "stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."
(Compare Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9-10, with Epaphras’ prayer in Colossians
4:12.) We see therefore three prominent and important matters which the apostle
presses in chapter 1:

First. The importance that the saints should be instructed in the second
character of the ministry, of the Church — the body of Christ, its Head. So that
understanding the deep responsibility which flowed from membership of such, they
might hold fast the Head, and walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.

Secondly. That the scriptures were now filled up, or completed, by the
revelation of this mystery. No room was left consequently for tradition or
development of any kind. It was the grand summing up of all the revealed
counsels and purposes of God the Father, for the glory of the Son. They had, up
to this, embraced and treated of creation, law, government, the kingdom, the
person of Christ, the Son; redemption, etc. There might be, and doubtless was,
still a further development of the details of these subjects, as by John in the
Apocalypse, etc., but still it would only be the unfolding, and the summing up
of the details of what had been the subject of inspiration. Paul’s ministry it
was then revealing the mystery concerning Christ and the Church, which completed
the word of God. (Colossians 1:25.)

Thirdly. The glory of the person of the Son, who is the image of the invisible
God. No man had seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom
of the Father, had declared Him. (John 1:18.) He had created all things. By Him
all things were upheld. He was the first-begotten from among the dead, and as
such the Head of His body, the Church. All fulness was pleased to dwell in Him,
and to reconcile all things to Himself; and He had reconciled the saints, who
before had been aliens, and enemies in their minds by wicked works, in the body
of His flesh through death. Thus the regions of creation, providence,
redemption, and glory, are ranged through by the apostle, and Christ unfolded as
filling all things. It is the glory of the person of the Son. To repeat them,
that the mind may recall them simply, they are three: viz., 1st, the doctrine of
Paul; 2ndly, the scriptures, which had been now completed by his ministry; and,
3rdly, the person of Christ.

Those were the truths on which so much hung and flowed from, which would be the
safeguards for the faithful in an evil day.

I do not here enter into more detail, but notice them as those truths to which
he directs special attention to meet the dangers he foresaw in the beginning of
the history of the Church.

I now turn to the instruction which he gives in the Second Epistle to Timothy,
which would afford an unerring guide to the faithful at the closing of the
history of the Church in the last days. The mournful heart of the apostle
unbosoms itself to one whom he loved, and to whom he could communicate his
thoughts freely; he unfolds to him the irreparable ruin into which the Church
was fast drifting in her outward, responsible condition. He does not look for
any restoration — not even the ability on the part of the faithful to leave the
outward professing mass. He does not in the Epistles to Timothy speak of the
inward graces and christian affections, which are to be the more cultivated than
ever in such a state of things, as he does in the Epistle to the Philippians. He
does not speak in them of the Church as the body of Christ or bride, nor of the
relationships of father and children, as elsewhere. What he treats of is the
outward thing before the world, in the character (as in 1 Timothy 3:14-16) of
what it had been set in the world to be for God. It was His house, the assembly
of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth, the vessel in which the
truth was to be displayed; and the mystery of godliness — the manifestation of
God in Christ, and the surrounding truths — was to be her testimony in the
world. She was as a light-bearer to reflect Him as His epistle, and respond to
God’s purposes in this place. In the second epistle the apostle sees that all
was now hopelessly and irrevocably gone. The house of God had become a great
house in which iniquity was rife, and vessels to dishonour had found a lodgment
and were at home in it. Paul had been "turned away from" by all in Asia. He is
here, I doubt not, a representative man, one through whom the Holy Ghost can
say, "Be ye followers together of me" (Php 3:1-21 :); and one who walked in the
power of his own doctrine. He marks out in a clear line the pathway of the
faithful in such a state of things: they were to depart from iniquity — "Let
every one that nameth the name of the Lord (kurion), depart from iniquity." (2
Timothy 2:19.) Every one who owned Him as Lord. Whatever form it would take, the
simple and primary step should be to depart from iniquity. From vessels which
were not honouring Christ in their walk, one was to purge oneself, and thus that
one might become a vessel unto honour, fitted and meet for the Master’s use.
Fleeing from youthful lusts (i.e., inward personal holiness) was to be the
character of one’s walk. And then (all before this being negative) the positive
following of righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who were calling
on the Lord out of a purged heart. (See 2 Timothy 2:19-22.) But the question now
comes, When the saints had done this, when they had departed from iniquity,
purged themselves from the vessels to dishonour, were walking in holiness and
following these things together, is there anything provided for them, when
corruption surrounds them on all sides, to keep them together after a divine
fashion in the midst of it all? Would they not be open to the admission of evil
amongst them again, and thus find that separation from it was of no avail? In
the Epistle to the Colossians, Paul had shown an Epaphras the necessity of
having the saints instructed in the second part of his ministry when they had
been established in the first: that is, when they had received the grace of the
gospel, that they might know the full counsels of God in the doctrine of Paul,
in order to walk worthily of the Lord. Yea, that he ceased not in all
earnestness and in the Holy Ghost, to pray that they might be thus instructed.
Would this now be that to which he would again point them? Here then comes the
grand truth, he recalls the very same three things as those which at the
beginning he had pressed upon the Colossians as the safeguards for the faithful
in the perilous times — times when the profession of Christianity is described
in words so nearly like those by which he had described the corruptions of the
heathen world, when sunk down into the lowest ebb of degradation and departure
from God. If the closing verses of Romans 1:1-32 : are compared with the first
four verses of 2 Timothy 3:1-17 : this will at once be seen. In describing the
various manifestations of evil in these verses, three prominent features will be
found in them: viz., 1st, Self-predominating (Christianity is the denial of
self); 2ndly, A form of godliness, while the power would be denied; and, 3rdly,
Active opposition to the truth by the most subtle device of the enemy — that of
imitation — the device of Satan in Egypt by the magicians, by copying Moses’
miracles performed by the power of God, and thus Satan’s power practically
nullifying that of God. To counterbalance those characteristic features, and to
keep the faithful after a divine fashion, the apostle names the same things as
before we noticed to the Colossians: 1st, "My doctrine;" 2ndly, The
"Scriptures;" and, 3rdly, The person of Christ as an object of faith. These he
unfolds in the remaining portion of the chapter. (Ver. 10–17.) The doctrine of
Paul (see also the manner of life which flowed from it) is that which is to keep
divinely together those who would call on the Lord out of a pure heart. It
embraces all the principles and truths connected with it, as when first
revealed. Ruin and failure could not affect it nor hinder the practice flowing
from it. Nor would it ever be impracticable for the faithful few to exercise the
godly discipline and exclusion of evil from their midst, inculcated by him. (See
1 Cor.) Outward unity, seen to such a beautiful degree at the first (Acts 2:4
:), might be gone for ever. The unity of the Spirit in the body of Christ would
never fail, and this the Christian was exhorted to endeavour to keep. (Ephesians
4:3-4.) Come what would, there never would be a time while the Church would
sojourn here, when Paul’s doctrine would be a nullity or impracticable to the
veriest handful of the faithful who sought to call on the Lord out of a pure
heart, and live godly in Christ Jesus.

Such then is the prominent and first-named point in the chapter. "But thou hast
fully known my doctrine," etc. The resource — the safeguard — the ground or
principle of action of the saints in an evil day. Without Paul’s doctrine, they
had nothing stable to preserve them and keep them together on divine ground in
the midst of corruption; with it, they would find that under their feet which
would never fail. Have we then Paul’s doctrine? We may boast, as all do, that we
have the scriptures — surely it is well. We may have confidence that an ever
faithful Lord will never leave or forsake His people, and that He knows them
that are His, and will keep them unto the end. But can we say that we have
Paul’s doctrine of the Church — the body of Christ on earth formed by the
presence and baptism of the Holy Ghost? Having it, can we say that we are as
living members, acting upon the truth of it through the never-failing supply of
grace He gives? Or, do we come under the character of those who are described as
"ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth?" — Those
whose mind and intellect the truth has reached, but without faith, and hence
without practical value in our lives? Of the truth, we can say as of faith:
"What profit, my brethren, if a man say be have the truth?" if he have not shown
that he has faith in it; and thus has learned to act upon it as something in
which he believes? It is always a sign that a man has faith in the truth which
he knows, when it has had its corresponding effect upon his life — when it has
been acted upon in practice. No man has ever had the joy and power of a divine
truth till he has accepted it, and walked therein. Many are thus ever learning
and never able to come to a divinely confirmed knowledge of it, because the
practice is wanting. It is learned in the intellect; the natural mind is touched
perhaps with the beauty and divine excellence of it; it cannot be denied, but
there is no faith in it. It has not been learned in the conscience and in the
soul; and when tribulation or persecution arises because of it, he is offended —
deems it non-essential perhaps — and surrenders that to which be has never come
to a divinely-given knowledge. If ever there was a day when there was such a
thing as "salt which had lost its savour," it is the present. The most touching
— the very highest — truths of God have become the topics of the world’s
conversation. They are held by many after a fashion, in which the edge and power
of them are lost. A worldly walk and conversation are coupled with the
intellectual knowledge of the highest truths of God; and like salt that has lost
its saltness, one can but ask of it, "Wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is
neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but (even) men cast it out."
(Luke 14:34-35.)

"But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith,
long-suffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me
at Antioch, Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all
the Lord delivered me. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall
suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,
deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things thou hast learned
and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them." (2 Timothy
3:10-14.) May the Lord open the understanding of His beloved people, that in the
midst of the confusion and corruption of such an evil day — when men are saying,
"What is truth?" and yet not caring for the reply, they may find that there are
such principles in the word of God as no amount of man’s failure can ever touch,
and which are ever practicable to those who desire humbly to walk with God, and
to keep the word of the patience of Jesus, till He comes. May they learn to walk
together in unity, and peace, and love in the truth, for His name’s sake. —
Amen.

F. G. Patterson.


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  CHAPTER 60: S.     THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
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The Doctrine of the Church as revealed to the Apostle Paul.

(bound with: The Last Days of the Church and: The Unity of the Spirit with an
appendix:

Principles of Gathering) F. G. Patterson.

"There is one body and one Spirit," Ephesians 4:4

I trust the following remarks on this momentous subject may be found useful at
the present time, and that an ever gracious Lord may vouchsafe His blessing on
the perusal of them to many of His people, causing them to realise this most
important truth, and linking their souls practically to the divine principles
set forth therein. The Lord has been most graciously working in many places in
these last days. Souls have been new-born to Him and brought into the liberty of
His grace through the Gospel. Souls thus set free from the bondage of sin and
Satan have also found freedom from the trammels of the sects and parties in the
professing church. They have, in many cases, begun to act upon their privileges
and, as the disciples of old (Acts 20:7), have assembled themselves to break
bread and thus show forth the groundwork of their redemption and liberty in that
which calls to mind the Lord in His death. Difficulties have arisen and many
have found that they still wanted a divine principle beyond this to guide them,
and yet possibly feared to go deeper into these things, lest they should be led
into something which perhaps they had been told to avoid. The confusion in which
things are and the sad failures of ourselves and of our brethren have often been
the means of driving timid souls away and causing them to shrink from inquiring
more deeply into the divine principles revealed in the Word. In such a state of
things the enemy, as ever, seeks to keep the soul from learning the truths of
God. Satan’s successful effort at the first was to seek to blot out in practice,
if he could not do so in fact, the great ever-living truth named at the head of
this paper. The vessel, Paul, who communicated it to us through his inspired
epistles, had to say at the close of his ministry "All they which are in Asia
are turned away from me" (2 Timothy 1:15). Ephesus was the capital of that
proconsular province and in it was an assembly of God, to which those high
truths of the "mystery which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of
men, as it is now revealed" were written. God has been pleased of His own
sovereign grace to revive out of the rubbish of centuries this wondrous truth
which has lain so long dormant. Many have learned it and have sought in their
weakness to walk therein. They have, through evil report and good report and
failings innumerable, sought, in reliance upon a gracious God, to glorify Christ
in the pathway of obedience to the revealed will of God. The enemy seeks to keep
the Lord’s people from learning this, His leading truth for the interval or
period in which we live. What then I desire is, that the eyes of my brethren’s
understanding be enlightened by the Spirit’s teaching to discover what they
really are before God, namely, members of the one body of Christ united together
by one Spirit, and that they may act accordingly.

It is quite impossible that, as a Christian, I can be a mere individual at the
present time. I am a member of the body of Christ as well. And while seeking as
an individual servant to serve my Lord, I find I have, in common with the rest
of the body, a corporate responsibility to Christ, the Head of His body, the
Church. I seek not, then, to evade this responsibility by looking at the
failures of others, or by finding an excuse in the truth of Christ’s lordship
over me as a servant. The Epistle to the Romans is that in which the Spirit of
God treats us with the most distinct individuality, first as guilty sinners and
then as justified persons, justified by faith. And yet when He comes to the
duties and walk which flow from our individual blessing and position, He at once
turns us to our corporate responsibility, so that we cannot dissociate these
things. No one can read Romans 12:1-21 without discovering this. As an
individual I am exhorted to present my body a living sacrifice, my reasonable
service; to be transformed by the renewing of my mind in order to prove that
good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Then, as to my corporate place in
the exercise of gift or otherwise, I am to exercise it with respect to the body.
"For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same
office; so we being many, are one body in Christ and every one members one of
another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to
us," we are to put them in exercise and use them for the benefit of the other
members.

I desire that my brethren, having discovered what they are, may own the truth
and carry it out practically, walking therein with those whom the Lord has
called and privileged to do likewise. Of this I am persuaded, that no one ever
learned a truth after a divine manner till the soul was using practically what
it had learned. Then its true power has been felt; so that to talk, as many do,
of the body of Christ and never to have really acted upon this truth, is but to
prove that the truth has not been received into the conscience and soul, while,
no doubt, enough has been seen of it to guide the steps thereinto. With this
desire I pass on to my subject.

Distinctive Positions of Jews and Gentiles in Old Testament Times

It will be well to consider the distinctive positions which the Jew and the
Gentile occupied in Old Testament days before the formation of the body of a
risen and ascended Christ was revealed. The quotation of two Scriptures will
make this distinction plain. As to Israel we read, "Who are Israelites; to whom
pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the
law and the service of God and the promises; whose are the fathers and of whom
as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever.
Amen" (Romans 9:4-5). As to the Gentile, "Wherefore remember, that ye being in
time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is
called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were
without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from
the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world"
(Ephesians 2:11-12). The simple reading of these passages will show that all the
blessings and privileges and promises and hopes that God then gave, were
confined to the elect nation of Israel, and that to partake of these blessings a
Gentile had to come in and be subordinate to the Jew, in whom they were vested
as the vessel of blessing. Our next Scripture is 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, where
we read, "For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of
that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are
we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be
bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit." Now, before the
formation of such a body out of both Jew and Gentile could take place, it was
necessary that God Himself who had surrounded Israel with a "wall of partition"
should remove it. It was not sufficient that the wall which God had placed
around the Jew had been almost obliterated by the unfaithfulness of those who
had been thus hemmed in. The partition wall existed as fully in the mind of God
and to faith as though there had never been an unfaithful Jew on earth. God had
placed it there, and God must remove it Himself ere He would form the body of
which we read here and elsewhere. The prophets had spoken of a day of which it
was said, "Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people." But even in such a state of
blessing, Gentiles remained Gentiles, and His people remained His people. The
prophets never spoke of this "body," where Jew and Gentile alike have lost their
national and social positions, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither
bond nor free. At the present time there are three classes before God in the
world. Paul speaks of them in 1 Corinthians 10:32. They are "the Jews," "the
Gentiles" and "the Church of God." In the last mentioned both Jew and Gentile
have ceased to be such before God; believers from amongst both having been
incorporated into this body of which we speak. The prophets spoke of the time
when that which we call the millennium, or more correctly the Kingdom, will have
been established on earth; when the Jew will be the central nation and the
Gentile will rejoice with the people of Jehovah: a state of things which will
come in after the Church has been gathered and is with Christ in heaven. The
foreshadowing of the removal of this "wall of partition" was frequently seen in
the ministry of the Lord Jesus Himself in the gospels. Instance the woman of
Samaria who could not understand how the Lord, being a Jew, should ask drink of
her who was a woman of Samaria, for the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans
(John 4:1-54). See also the case of the Syrophenician woman in Matthew 15:1-39.
Before this "wall of partition" was removed, it was "unlawful for a man that is
a Jew to keep company or come unto one of another nation" (Acts 10:28). The Wall
of Partition Removed This hindrance to the formation of the body of a risen and
ascended Christ was formally removed by God Himself in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ. We read, "For He is our peace who hath made both one and hath
broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the
enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make
[create] in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that He might
reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity
thereby" (Ephesians 2:14-16). The cross, then, besides being the scene where the
Lord wrought the work of redemption, was the removal of the wall of partition
which until then had existed between Jew and. Gentile. It was the basis or
groundwork for the formation of this body and for the reconciliation of a people
to God, taken from both Jews and Gentiles, both having access by one Spirit unto
the Father. The Father is the Name by which God has revealed Himself to each
member of the body in His Son Jesus Christ, as heretofore He had revealed
Himself under the Name of Jehovah to the elect nation of Israel.

All this, however, does not constitute a "body." It only removes the hindrance.
Redemption has been accomplished; the hindrance is removed; what is now wanted
is to have the Head of the body in heaven, raised up from the dead — a glorified
man.

Christ, the Head of the Body, in Heaven The remarkable quotation of Psalms 8:1-9
by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:1-23, will be helpful to us in understanding
this. There we read (Ephesians 1:19-23) , "According to the working of His
mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and
set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality
and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this
world but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet
[quoted from Ps. viii], and gave Him to be the head over all things to the
Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all."

Psalms 8:1-9 speaks of a "Son of man" to whom dominion over all creation is
given. If we consult Genesis 1:26, we find that God gave to Adam and his wife a
joint headship over all creation; but this headship was sinned away and lost
when man fell. The whole creation, now groaning and travailing, was made subject
to vanity through the fall of man (Romans 8:19-23). This headship is given, as
Psalms 8:1-9 tells us, to a "Son of man." And we discover who this Son of man is
in Hebrews ii, where the Apostle, quoting the psalm, tells us that we do not yet
see the grand result of all things being subject to Him. "For in that He put all
in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him. But now we
see not yet all things put under Him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little
lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour;
that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." Thus we find who
this "Son of man" is. It is Jesus. This brings us back to Ephesians 1:1-23,
where Paul quotes the same psalm. So we learn that Christ, as Man glorified, has
been raised by God from the dead and seated in the heavenlies far above all
principality and power and above every name, with all things under His feet, and
has been made "Head over all things to the Church which is His body." There He
is waiting for the manifest assumption of this Headship, as well as for the
manifestation of His other glories.

We have now the Head of the body in heaven, a glorified Man, as well as the wall
of partition removed. But before going further to consider the formation of the
body, we must turn aside for a moment and see what Scripture says of Union with
Christ In Old Testament times the saints were new-born, but they were not united
to Christ: they possessed life, although the doctrine of it was not made known.
The Abrahams and Davids were all saved — saved by faith — lived and died in
faith in God’s promises of a Saviour to come. But faith in itself is not union.
We could not speak of a patriarch being united to a Man at God’s right hand by
the Holy Ghost sent down, because Christ had not come and there was no man there
to be united to. Even when Christ was here, a Man amongst men, there was no
union between Him and sinful men: there could be none. Hence He says, "Except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit" ( John 12:24). On the cross He, in grace, enters into
the judgment under which man lay; bears the wrath and all that the righteousness
of God required; and in His death lays the ground whereby God can bring
believers into a new state, through redemption, to Himself. He rises from the
dead, having borne the wrath; ascends to heaven and is glorified; a Man at God’s
right hand. The Holy Ghost was then sent down, and dwells in the Church (Acts
2:1-47 and 1 Corinthians 3:16). He makes the body of the believer His temple (1
Corinthians 6:19). He seals him — having believed — until the day of redemption
(Ephesians 1:13; Ephesians 4:30). He unites him to Christ: "he that is joined
unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:17): anoints him, seals him,
baptizes him with all other saints into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13; 2
Corinthians 1:21-22) . Hence union with Christ is by the Holy Ghost dwelling in
the believer’s body and uniting him to Christ glorified in heaven. This union
neither existed, nor was it even contemplated for the Old Testament saints: it
was not in the counsels of God for them. If we turn to John 7:37-39, we find the
line drawn with great distinctness between what is now and what had gone before.
The Lord Jesus, in the chapter mentioned, could not show Himself to the world,
because neither the Jews nor His brethren believed. in Him, and so He could not
bring in the Feast of Tabernacles, which is always used as a figure of the
Kingdom. The Kingdom is then put off till another day; and the Lord goes up to
the Feast "as it were in secret." In the last day of the Feast He stood and
cried, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on
Me, as the Scripture bath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should
receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet
glorified." The gift of the Holy Ghost to dwell in believers is thus announced,
and the Kingdom which had been refused, is put off till another day. The
disciples were told by the Lord, after His resurrection from the dead, to remain
at Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, that is, the Comforter, the Spirit
of truth, which they had heard of Him, as related in John 14, 15, 16. The Holy
Ghost, the other Comforter, was to be given and to this end it was positively
expedient that Jesus should go away, otherwise the Holy Ghost would not come.
The Lord tells them in Acts 1:5, "John truly baptized with water; but ye shall
be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." The Lord was seen of them
during forty days after He rose from the dead, and there was an interval of ten
days from His ascension till the day of Pentecost (or fiftieth day) was fully
come. When it came, the promise was fulfilled, and Peter told the Jews, "This
Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the
right hand of God exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the
Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear."

One Body formed by the Baptism of the Holy Ghost

We have seen that the Lord’s promise, "Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost
not many days hence," was brought to pass on the day of Pentecost. The little
band of disciples, at first some 120, then about 3,000 and increased largely
afterwards, were baptized of the Holy Ghost, according to the Lord’s promise;
but still this was only the Jewish side of the blessing. In Acts 10 Peter opens
the door to the Gentiles, bringing them into the same position and privileges by
the baptism of the Holy Ghost. When they of Judea heard of this, Peter was
called to account for what he had done. In answer, he rehearsed the matter from
the beginning and declared that the Holy Ghost had acted with the Gentiles in a
similar manner to that on the day of Pentecost with the Jews (Acts 11:15).

Thus we have in the clearest way the Jew and the Gentile receiving the baptism
of the Holy Ghost; as to which it should be noted that this baptism is only used
with reference to the corporate body of saints upon earth: by it individuals are
brought into a corporate relationship to each other and to Christ.

We must now turn to Paul, for to him alone of all the apostles was the
revelation of the "mystery" committed. He speaks of it in Ephesians 3:1-21 and
says it had been "hid in God," not even in "Scripture," but "in God," in His
eternal purpose. This "mystery" is expressed in the words, "That the Gentiles
should be joint-heirs, and a joint-body, and joint-partakers of His promise in
Christ by the gospel" (thus should the passage be read, that is, joint with the
Jews).

Paul describes this body and how it is formed in 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, where
he says, "For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of
that one body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ." (This name "the
Christ" is here applied to the head and the members, in the same way as the name
"Adam" is applied to him and his wife jointly in Genesis 5:2.) "For by one
Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,
whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."
Here both Jews and Gentiles lose their distinctive places and are brought into
one body and united by the Holy Ghost to each other and to Christ, the Head, the
Man glorified. In 1 Corinthians 12:27 the Apostle recognizes the assembly of God
at Corinth as the body. "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in
particular" (or in part: it is the same word as "in part" in 1 Corinthians
13:9-10). That is, in the principle and ground of their gathering they were the
body of Christ, but in themselves they were "members in part," part of a whole.

Now this body is in the world: it is not in heaven. The Head is in heaven and
the members have a heavenly position by faith; while in fact they are in the
world. This body has been passing along through the world, its unity as perfect
as on the day in which the descent of the Holy Ghost first constituted it.
Nothing has ever marred its unity. True, the outward manifestation of this body
by the oneness of those who compose it, is gone: true, that the "house of God"
as it first appeared in the world, has become like the "great house" of 2
Timothy 2:19-22 : true, that all that was committed to man’s responsibility has,
as ever, failed. But the body of Christ which was in the world then, is still in
the world, remaining all through the ruin of the professing church, its unity
perfectly maintained by the Holy. Ghost, who by His presence and baptism
constitutes it; for He as ever maintains the unity of the body of Christ.

Let me put a figure before my reader, which will convey simply the fact that the
entire number of saints in the world at any given time (just as you read these
words for instance) indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is that which is recognized of
God as the body of Christ. Let us suppose a regiment of soldiers, a thousand
strong, goes to India and serves there for many years. All those who composed
that regiment die off or are slain in battle and their places are filled up by
others, so that the numerical strength of the regiment is kept up. After years
of service the time comes for it to return home. Not a man who went out is in it
now, and yet the same regiment returns without change of its number or facings
or identity. Thus with the body of Christ. Those who composed it in the days of
Paul are not here, yet the body has passed along through the last nineteen
centuries, the members of it dying off and the ranks filled up by others, and
now at the end of the journey the body is here (the Holy Ghost who constitutes
its unity being here) as perfect in its unity as ever it was. The Church as a
Building growing into a Temple and as a Habitation of God In Ephesians 2:21-22,
we get two aspects of the Church of God.

Ephesians 2:21 says: "In whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth
unto an holy temple in the Lord." Here we find a temple or building growing but
not yet finished, that is, it is growing up day by day into that which it will
be finally when in glory, a holy temple in the Lord.

Ephesians 2:22 says: "In whom ye also [the saints and believers in Christ Jesus]
are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. This gives us
what the entire number of saints now or at any moment constitute corporately in
the world. They are a habitation or dwelling-place of God through the Spirit.

These two thoughts may be illustrated by what has gone before. When Jehovah was
passing through the wilderness from Egypt to Canaan, He dwelt in a tabernacle
which in itself was perfect in all its parts and furniture, a complete thing. It
moved along through the wilderness towards the Land of Promise and was the
habitation of God. But when at last Israel was settled in the land, Jehovah had
a temple, a magnificent structure in dimensions and appointments far beyond the
tabernacle which had been His dwelling-place on the journey.

Thus, with those two verses in Ephesians 2:21 shows us what God will have in the
Land (in heaven itself) when the temple now growing under His workmanship will
have attained its full proportions and be in glory; while Ephesians 2:22 tells
us what the saints are meanwhile, namely, God’s dwelling-place, His tabernacle
or habitation through the Spirit. This may serve to illustrate in some measure,
and bring home to our hearts and consciences for our practical walks what we are
as a present. thing. How responsible, then, we are, in observing such a truth,
to act upon it; to cast our purposes, our aims, our all into it. Not merely to
know it as some nice truth or doctrine, but as a living member of it, to walk in
it, to link my soul on to the practice of it, with those who are observing it
albeit in weakness; to separate myself from all that in practice disowns it; to
act upon the living, abiding truth, that which occupies the mind and purpose of
God; that which is now made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly
places, who see in the Church the manifold wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10). How
solemn, on the other hand, to disown it or put it aside as something that does
not concern us!

Although the oneness of which the Lord Jesus spoke to His Father in John 17:1-26
has almost vanished away, and man’s unfaithfulness, yea, the unfaithfulness of
God’s people, under the highest blessing ever vouchsafed to them in this world,
has been shown in the almost entire obliteration of that oneness which the Son
desired of the Father; although all that men could do to mar it has been done;
still there is that which never changes, never fails and never is spoiled;
because (are we not ashamed to say it?) it is not in our power to do so, for it
is kept, as it is constituted, by the presence and baptism of the Holy Ghost.

How beautifully do we find Christ’s prayer for their oneness answered in Acts
2:1-47, Acts 3:1-26, Acts 4:1-37! We read there, "They lifted up their voice to
God, with one accord." "The multitude of them that believed were of one heart
and of one soul." His prayer was answered for a little moment, "that they all
may be one," as in practice they were. How soon, indeed, did this oneness of
practice fail! Then in Acts 9:1-43 we find Saul of Tarsus, afterwards Paul the
Apostle, called out to reveal something that could never fail the unity of the
Spirit in the body of Christ. This unity is what we have to keep. We are
exhorted to "endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace"; to
endeavour to keep practically that which exists in fact. Not to make a unity,
but to keep by the bond of peace that unity which exists by the presence of the
Holy Spirit in the One Body.

Now although we know that from the first, Paul taught these things to the Church
of God, as his early writings and ministrations abundantly prove, it is striking
and remarkable that it was reserved till the close of his ministry, when in
prison in Rome, to teach the truth of the unity of the Church of God, as
unfolded in the Epistle to the Ephesians.

I would put the question to many — In what state do you suppose things were when
Ephesians was written? Oh (they would probably reply) when things were going
well! The Church of God was all going on well: the church was in a proper state
and ready for such truth. To which I should be obliged to reply — You are all
wrong! Things were totally ruined. The "Church of God at Ephesus" is not
addressed (even supposing we admit the words "in Ephesus" into the first verse,
which is doubtful, and questioned by many). That there was such a thing as "the
Church of God" at Ephesus, we are told by Paul’s own lips in his address to the
elders there, in Acts 20:28. But at the time he wrote this epistle, he was a
prisoner for two years in Rome and had lived to see the ruin of what he had set
up on earth as a "wise master-builder," and watched over as a father and as a
nurse, with all the solicitude and energy of his devoted heart. This circular
letter is not addressed to the "Church of God." It is addressed to the "Saints
and faithful in Christ Jesus." Perhaps the same pen with which Paul wrote
Philippians indited this Epistle. "All were seeking their own." "Grievous
wolves" were scented from afar, long before. Had they begun already to scatter
the flock? Be that as it may, there was no "Assembly of God at Ephesus"
addressed, but "saints and faithful ones in Christ Jesus." From that moment to
the end therefore, does this letter afford a divine ground for faith, be the
days never so evil. The body of Christ was outwardly scattered to the winds, and
never could the unity of the body be maintained again: but the Spirit of God
held it intact, and the ruin never would be such that the saints and faithful
might not be with Him, who abides in and with the Church for ever, in practical
power and fellowship. Thus there never can come a moment when this cannot be
observed; nor can the "One body" be useless, as the divine positive ground of
action, by those who feel that the days are perilous, and are using all
diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit, in One body, till Christ comes again.
The Unity of the Spirit

Ephesians 4:3 This pamphlet is a sequel to the one entitled "The Doctrine of the
Church as revealed to the Apostle Paul." Many souls have, more or less,
apprehended the truth of "One Body and One Spirit," but have not yet grasped the
force of the exhortation to connect their practice with this fundamental truth.

It is hoped that in the Lord’s rich mercy this further paper may be helpful to
souls.

"I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the
vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with
longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of
the Spirit in the [uniting] bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you
all." Ephesians 4:1-6.

Here we find that there are unities connected with the Spirit, with the Lord and
with God. I treat here of the unity of the Spirit, as being specially connected
with the object of this paper. The observing of this unity is our
responsibility: the others fall into their own places accordingly.

I would here remark upon the use of an expression which is often used to convey
a right thought, but which is not found in Scripture, namely, "the unity of the
body." "There is one body," the unity of which is constituted by the Holy Ghost
Himself, and we are exhorted to endeavour to keep the "unity of the Spirit." If
we were exhorted to keep the unity of the body, we should be obliged to walk
with every member of Christ, no matter in what association he might be found, or
whatever his practice might be: no evil whatever would give us a warrant to
separate from him. The endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit necessarily
keeps us in company and association with a divine Person here upon earth.

Here I would note that which surely is so plain in the Word as to make one
almost ashamed of having to insist on it, that is, the personal presence of a
divine Person — God the Holy Ghost — here upon earth; not only in each
individual believer, but also in the Church of God. The individual believer is
indwelt by the Spirit of God, anointed, sealed, baptized with all other
believers into one body. The baptism of the Holy Ghost does not leave him an
isolated person. Its action connects him with all other believers, so forming a
body of which Christ is the Head. The promise of the Lord as to the Comforter
was that He should not only be with them but in them. The Lord was with them:
the Holy Ghost in His absence would be both with them and in them; consequently
the Holy Ghost at Pentecost not only "filled all the house," but "there appeared
unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sat upon each of them and they
were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:2-4). He not only filled each one,
but later on (in Acts 4:31), at the gathering for prayer, He manifested His
presence in their midst by shaking the place where they were assembled. The
saints are the body of Christ by one Spirit; but they are also the "habitation
of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22). God dwells amongst them, as we read
in 2 Corinthians 6:16 : "I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be
their God and they shall be my people." In being obliged to insist on this
truth, we have almost come to the state of the men at Ephesus (Acts 19:2) who,
in answer to the Apostle’s question, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye
believed?" said: "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost"
[or "We have not even heard whether the Holy Ghost has come"]. The state of
things prevailing to-day makes it necessary to call attention to this important
truth concerning the presence of the Holy Spirit both in the individual believer
and in the Church of God.

If the Church of God were in a healthy state, there would be no practical
difference between the two expressions, "unity of the body" and "unity of the
Spirit." The Holy Ghost Himself dwelling in the Church constitutes its unity and
practically embraces all the members of the body. If the Church were walking in
the Spirit, the healthy action of the whole would be unimpaired. Still, the
unity remains, because the Spirit remains, even when the oneness and healthy
practice of the body as a whole is gone. The unity of a human body remains when
a limb is paralyzed, but where is its oneness? The limb has not ceased to be of
the body, but it has ceased to be in the healthy articulation of the body. Hence
many Christians, while members of the body of Christ, are not endeavouring to
keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

How then is the unity of the Spirit to be kept? What is "endeavouring" to do so?
What is faithfulness to the nature of the Church, Christ’s body, in an evil day?
It is Separation from Evil. My first duty must be to "depart from iniquity." It
may be moral or doctrinal evil, because evil assumes many shapes: I separate
myself from it, to Christ. Thus separated, I find myself in the fellowship of
the Spirit of God. He glorifies Christ and dissociates me from everything
contrary to Christ; associating me with that which is according to Christ. The
notion that I may be wittingly associated with an evil principle or doctrine or
practice and yet be undefiled, is an unholy notion. I may be. perfectly free
from it myself, as not having imbibed it; but by practical association with it I
have left the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. When we have separated from evil
and are walking in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, Who is the Spirit of
holiness and the Spirit of truth, we find others who are walking in the same
way, and so we can be together happily in the unity of the Spirit. If there is a
spot upon earth where the Lord can be in unhindered blessing, it is amongst
those thus together, where nothing is allowed that is inconsistent with His
presence in the midst or that can grieve or hinder the Spirit of God. It is not
a question of how the saints may be together, but of a place where the Lord
Himself may be in free and unhindered blessedness, to manifest His presence
amongst those who seek to be faithful to Him in an evil day. The primary step
must be, "Let him that nameth the Name of the Lord depart from iniquity" (2
Timothy 2:19). Members of Christ are mixed up with much evil on all sides. I
must separate myself from such to walk in the fellowship of the Spirit, who
keeps me in company with Christ. To Philadelphia Christ speaks of Himself as "He
that is holy, He that is true" and the Spirit of God is the Spirit of holiness
and the Spirit of truth. Holiness will not do without the truth, nor the truth
without holiness. The absence of either is not of the Spirit of God.

Now in an evil day, when the faithful endeavour through His grace to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, the practice consistent with such
unity must necessarily exclude all evil, while, in principle, it contemplates
the whole Church of God. Wide enough to receive every member of Christ, all over
the world; narrow enough to exclude evil most carefully from its midst. Anything
short of this is a sectarian principle and ceases to be of the Holy Ghost, while
the principle in its breadth contemplates every member of Christ. Those gathered
thus in the unity of the Spirit are jealous with godly jealousy lest anything
should be admitted, either of doctrine or practice or witting association with
such, that would put them practically out of the fellowship of the Spirit. The
effect of this "endeavour" is not confined to those who have come together in
separation from evil and in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. Its aspect is
towards, and has in view, every member of Christ in whatsoever association he
may be. Those who are maintaining the truth are thus showing their truest and
most faithful love to those who are not practically with them. Abiding in the
light, in uncompromising fidelity to Christ, and in the fellowship of the Spirit
of God — this is their truest love to their brethren. They do not compromise the
light and truth of their position by leaving it for the darkness; but, if they
have grace, they win their brethren into the light, to walk with them in the
truth likewise. A word here to my beloved brethren who have been called and
honoured of God to occupy such a place in these last evil days. How deeply
responsible are they that all their words and actions may so fully bear the test
of the light and truth of God, that no occasion of stumbling be found in them to
hinder their brethren in any wise. Let there be such simple blessed devotedness
to Christ and His glory seen in them, that their brethren who are seeking God’s
path in the labyrinth around, may be drawn towards the truth and the place where
Christ can freely be with His people. Let them be found in such a place in an
evil day; let the character of their walk be simple and fervent devotedness to
Christ; thoroughly dependent upon Him as conscious of their weakness; thoroughly
devoted to Him and to that Church which He loves. I believe, if they were
walking in the power and grace of the position they have been called to, that
not alone their brethren who ought to be with them, but the world itself would
have to own, "If aught be true on earth, that is!" The counterfeits of the
enemy, too, would expose themselves. Let them ever be prepared to make much of
Christ and of the path into which He has called them in special association with
Himself, in His unspeakable grace; so that He may say to them: "Thou hast kept
my word and hast not denied my name." There would then be a savour and a power
in the simple fact that Christ was everything amongst them.

Through the Lord’s great mercy, this endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace has been accorded to His saints, and many, seeing the
pathway, have had faith to embrace it. When such is the case, the effort that
some have made to take a place outside and independent of those who have thus
been led to the Lord, is merely the self-will of man and to be treated as such.

If the simplest saints, as has frequently been the case, have been drawn
together in the Lord’s Name, even without any intelligence of the ground of the
one body, they are of necessity bound with all those elsewhere who have been
before them in the way and who may have learned more fully the divine ground of
gathering. They may slip away very easily from it and get linked up with evil,
if not watchful; and the enemy works incessantly to this end. But it is utterly
untenable to suppose that they can intelligently maintain a divine ground of
gathering and ignore what the same Spirit has wrought amongst others before
them.

Scripture admits no such independency, especially when it is coupled with the
profession of the truth of one body and one Spirit, without the practice flowing
from such a truth. To maintain an independent position is to accept one which
puts them practically out of the unity of the Spirit. Very probably such had
come together at first in the energy of the Holy Ghost, simply gathering in the
Name of the Lord. By falling into an independent position, they slip away from
the company and fellowship of God’s Spirit. They had begun in the Spirit and
have ended, or are on the way to it, in the flesh.

Walking in the fellowship and unity of the Spirit involves distinct separation
from all who are not in practice doing likewise. This tries the saints much at
times. The enemy uses it to alarm the weaker saints. The cry of want of charity
is at once raised. But when it becomes a question of being in the fellowship of
the Spirit of God, it ceases to be a question of "brethren" merely. If those who
are otherwise holy in practice, will not walk therein; and others who have had
light and grace given to them, do walk therein; this must involve separation on
the part of the latter. To the flesh this is terrible. But human love must not
be mistaken for divine love; and fellowship in the flesh for the fellowship of
the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost will not bend Himself to our ways or to our
fellowship; we must bend our ways into practical fellowship with Him. Therefore
the Apostle bids us add "to brotherly kindness love" (2 Peter 1:7). Brotherly
kindness will sink into mere love of brethren because we like their society, if
not guarded by the divine tie which preserves it as of God. God is love and God
is light; and "if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another." To exact brotherly love in such a manner as to shut out the
requirements of that which God is (and He dwells in the Church by His Spirit)
and of His claims upon us, is to shut. out God in the most plausible way, in
order to gratify our own hearts.

I beseech my brethren, as they value and love the Blessed One who gave Himself
for His Church, to pause before accepting a position which must practically put
them outside the unity of God’s Spirit. The Lord Jesus gave Himself to redeem
you; and not only so, but He died "that He might gather together in one the
children of God that were scattered abroad" (John 11:52). It ought to be on our
hearts all day long, that what Christ died to gather is scattered. He will
surely gather them in heaven; but He died to gather them together in one now. It
cannot be but by keeping the unity of the Spirit; and if not thus, it is not
what He died to effect. If it is not gathering with Christ, it is scattering,
however plausible and well it may look in the eyes of men. God is working
graciously in many places; and the enemy is working too, to try and mystify
souls just emerging out of darkness and link them up with the principles of
neutrality, indifference and independency — anything but the truth.

God has in His grace gathered many saints together in the unity of the Spirit to
the Name of the Lord, and has sustained them in the pathway through evil report
and good report. To accept ground independent[ly] of that to which God had
already recalled souls to walk in and act upon, is to forfeit the place in the
unity of the Spirit which has been accorded of the Lord and to slip away from
the fellowship of the Spirit of God. The principle of the unity of the Spirit
embraces the whole Church of God. The fact of those who have been mixed up with
worldly systems, seeking fellowship, shows that they are separating themselves
to the Lord. This should meet with a ready response. The more deeply we become
conscious of the divine character of the place we have been called into by the
grace of God, the more ready will be the response of our heart towards all the
members of Christ. At the same time we will grow in the strength and conviction
of the holiness that belongs to God’s habitation through the Spirit; and, by His
grace we will watch against the wiles of the enemy in seeking to let in that
which would grieve the Spirit of God and hinder the Lord from identifying
Himself with us and manifesting His presence in our midst. The Lord in His mercy
keeps His faithful ones true and devoted to Him in these evil days. They may be
but a remnant, but two things have ever marked the faithful remnant at any time:
Devotedness to the Lord, and Strict attention to fundamental principles. We
find, too, that they were ever the objects of His special attention and care.
Their very feebleness drew this forth the more strikingly. It was with them He
identified Himself most specially. They have but a "little strength," but
through His grace they have used it and have been brought into the place where
He is. May the Lord give them to keep His word and not deny His Name; to hold
fast that which they have, that no man take their crown. Amen.

Appendix Principles of Gathering The resource for faith amid the confusion
around is Matthew 18:20 : "Where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them." But this cannot be pleaded to the exclusion of
the truth of the unity of the Spirit in the body of Christ. To come together
pleading the promise of Matthew 18:20, and at the same time disowning the ground
of the body of Christ, is a misapplication of the promise. This promise was
given before there was any failure and before the truth of the one body was
revealed. It embodies a fundamental principle and is the resource for faith when
the manifestation of the one body by the visible oneness of its members, has
failed. Faith in the unity of the Spirit in the one body as existing here on
earth, is what we need the more. And then, when we cannot restore the state of
things in Acts 2:1-47, Acts 3:1-26, Acts 4:1-37, because the oneness of the
members is no longer in evidence, we have Matthew 18:20 as a resource to be
counted upon by faith. It needs but little discernment to see that the Spirit of
God constitutes the body in unity by virtue of His presence therein; and that He
Himself would be disowning this, did He gather disciples apart from the
principle of the one body or on any other ground.

Such being the ground of gathering, how solemn is the position of those who have
attempted to set up another table claiming to be the Lord’s (sad to say, this
has been done in some cases) and gather together another assembly in a place
where the Lord’s table has been already spread in the communion of the body of
Christ. If done in true-hearted ignorance, well: the Lord bears with such in
patient grace and instructs those who have a single eye. But if done knowingly,
nothing can justify such an act. Nothing could alter the principle of those who
are already gathered on the ground of the one body of Christ, unless something
arose in their midst which denied the foundation truths of Christian faith, such
as false doctrine touching the person or glory of Christ, or which showed
indifference on such a subject, or which would be a denial of the truth of "One
Body and One Spirit."

One has to bear with mistakes, and to seek, with grace and patience, to bring
our brethren aright, if they have erred in judgment. But unless an assembly
accepts as its line of action anything which would subvert the foundation truths
of faith, it has its claim on me as an assembly of God. To set up another is to
break practically, as far as I can, the unity of the Spirit, which I am exhorted
to keep. If we have grace for it, let us labour, Nehemiah-like, to bring our
brethren into the consciousness of their position, that they may "walk worthy of
the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and growing by the
knowledge of God." And let us not by any act of ours render confusion more
confounded. The Last Days of the Church "The Church of the Living God" (1
Timothy 3:15) The testimony in which the faithful are called to walk in the last
days, has a two-fold character: first, a witness to the unity of the body of
Christ, formed by the Holy Ghost sent down at Pentecost; secondly, the whole
church having failed, the character of a remnant in maintaining this testimony,
and this too in the midst of a great Baptized House, the responsible body here
on earth, commonly called "Christendom." This testimony can never aim to be more
than one to the failure of the Church of God as set up by Him. The more true to
Christ the remnant of His people are, the more will they be a witness to the
present state of the Church of God and not to its state as first displayed.

Now there is found in the Word of God, for example and comfort; a faith which
counts upon Him and His divine intervention in the face of man’s failure: a
faith that finds itself sustained by God according to the power and blessings of
the dispensation, and according to the first thoughts of His heart when He set
up all in primary power. He connects that power and the Lord’s own presence with
the faith of the few who act on the truth provided for the present moment, even
though the administration of the whole is not in operation according to the
order which God set up at the beginning. For example, the blessing of Asher in
Deuteronomy 33:24-25, ends with these lovely words: "As thy days, so shall thy
strength be" and all went to ruin, as the history of Israel unfolds. Yet, at the
first coming of Christ, when the godly pious remnant of the people were "waiting
for the consolation of Israel," we find one of that same tribe, "Anna a
prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser [Asher], a widow of
about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served
God with fastings and prayers night and day," in the enjoyment and power of that
blessing of Moses; "so shall thy strength be." And the Lord Christ Himself
became identified with that obscure remnant, of which she. was one, a remnant
who were ready to receive Him when first He came. The returned remnant of Judah,
too, in all the weakness of those who could pretend to nothing but the
occupation of the divine platform of God’s earthly people; to them we find these
comforting words addressed, "I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts: according
to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit
remaineth among you: fear ye not." Their faith is recalled to that mighty day of
power, when Jehovah "bore them on eagles’ wings and brought them to Himself" and
removed their shoulders from the burdens of Egyptian bondage. Undimmed in power,
He was with them, just the same, for faith to claim and use. No outward displays
were theirs; but His Word and Spirit, which proved His presence to faith,
wrought in that feeble few: to them is revealed the shaking of all things
(Hebrews 12:27) and the coming of Him who would make the "latter glory" of His
house greater than the "former." They are thus the link between the Temple of
the palmy days of Solomon and that of the day of coming glory, when He shall sit
"a Priest upon His throne," and the counsel of peace shall be between Jehovah
and Him, and He shall bear the glory. (Zechariah 6:12-13; Haggai 2:7-9).

He will shake the heavens and the earth and over throw the throne of kingdoms
(Haggai 2:21-23), thus identifying all His power with the small remnant of His
people who walk in company with His mind. He will make all to come and worship
before their feet and know that He has loved them.

Thus, too, those who answer to the calling which suits His mind, as seen in
Philadelphia (Revelation 3:1-22); who are true to that which, though not a
perfect state of things, is suited to the state of failure which He
contemplates; He makes them the link, the silver cord, between the Church of the
past as set up at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-47) and the Church of the glory
(Revelation 21:9). The overcomer will be made a pillar in the temple of His
God," in the "new Jerusalem" on high.

Let me here remark that there never was, and never can be, a moment when that
which answers to this calling, will cease till the Lord comes. In the moral
picture presented in these two chapters (Revelation 2:1-29, Revelation 3:1-22),
we find all the seven features together at any moment, as they were when He sent
the messages, and remaining so. In the dark ages and those of more light in
later days, and now at the end before He comes, all everywhere who answer with
perfect heart to the measure of truth which He has given them; such are morally
Philadelphia. Others may have more light, but the true heart that walks with
Christ in what it knows, is known of Him and is what is contemplated in
Philadelphia. Historically there is an unfolding in the state of each of the
seven Churches, each larger feature coming into prominence and presenting the
salient characteristics of the professing Church, till the Church becomes a
remnant in the message to Thyatira and develops into those which follow. But
morally Philadelphia represents those who answer to Christ’s heart at all times
and in all circumstances since the Lord gave those messages, till His threat —
"I will spue thee out of my mouth" — is finally executed. In the historical
view, Philadelphia comes in after Sardis and is exhorted to "hold that fast
which thou hast, that no man take thy crown"; but as long as His voice is heard
by faithful souls, such, wherever found, form the link between the Church at
Pentecost and the Bride, the Lamb’s wife in the day of the glory. Every moral
state in all the seven messages remains from the beginning to the very end.
There are at this moment, as at the beginning, those who have left their first
love; and those who suffer for Christ; and those who are faithful where Satan’s
seat is, and so on to the conclusion of the whole.

Besides all this, we should never forget that John is watching over the decay of
that which Paul unfolded, and telling us what Christ will do with that which
bears His Name. For our own path we get no directions but to listen, and "hear
what the Spirit saith to the Churches" for we do not find church ground unfolded
here. It is not John’s province to treat of this. John never gives us corporate
things, but individual, and never instructs us as to the Church of God, although
fully recognising its existence. When we are therefore grounded and settled in
that which never fails — the one Body of Christ, formed and maintained by the
Spirit of God on earth, as taught by Paul, we may turn with deep profit to John
and these messages, and learn what Christ will do with all that bears His Name.
But from Paul alone can I learn what I am to do in the midst of such a scene,
and how I am to be an "overcomer" according to the mind of the Lord, which never
can be by abandoning that which His Spirit maintains on earth.

How important therefore to be thoroughly grounded in the truths of the Church of
God, which remains as long as God’s Spirit remains and His Word abides: "till we
all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto
a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
(Ephesians 4:13) The Church: A Habitation of God through the Spirit.

I turn now to examine another side of the truth of the Church of God as unfolded
in the doctrine taught by the Apostle Paul: not that of the Body of Christ,
united to her Head in heaven and maintained by the Holy Ghost in unity; but that
of the "House of God," the "Habitation of God through the Spirit." On the day of
Pentecost the aggregate number of disciples who were baptized by the Holy Ghost
and thus formed into the Body united to Christ in heaven, were also on earth a
"Habitation of God through the Spirit." Each was conterminous with the other.
Both forms embraced the same people. Those who composed the Body composed the
House, and none else.

During the early part of the Acts of the Apostles there was a sort of tentative
dealing with Israel once more, an opportunity being given to them that if they
would repent and be converted, they might receive Jesus Christ who would be sent
to them. At the same time He who knows the end from the beginning, knew what
would be the result of this fresh offer. Nevertheless it was needful in His
purposes to bring out fully the responsibility of that guilty people in their
final rejection of Christ in the glory. This took place when they murdered
Stephen, who not only bore witness to their rejection of the Messiah but also to
their rejection of the Holy Ghost. But the divine floodgates of grace once
opened in righteousness through the cross, could not now be stayed, and the
stream which had flowed into "the city of the great King" up to this moment, was
diverted in its course and flowed onward to Samaria. The Lord of the harvest had
said at this place a few short years before, "Lift up your eyes and look on the
fields, for they are white already to harvest." Samaria is now conquered by the
gospel and the old enmity between "this mountain" (Samaria) and "Jerusalem" is
blotted out by its peaceful waters, at least in the souls of those who accepted
the living water thus freely flowing to them, But Philip must leave his
prosperous labour and follow the stream, if needful, to the "ends of the earth."
The sandy desert near Gaza becomes the channel of the grace of the Lord Jesus. A
child of the race of Ham, an Ethiopian, Chamberlain of Queen Candace, is sitting
in his chariot, reading the Prophet Isaiah. He had come from distant Africa to
worship at Jerusalem, and with an unsatisfied heart was returning to his own
country. The day of Jerusalem’s visitation was past. The words of the Lord
Jesus, when he wept over Jerusalem, might have been heard again: "If thou hadst
known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy
peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." (Luke 19:42.) But He who is "a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him," follows this "dry tree," who after
hearing a few words from Philip, God’s messenger, evangelizing Jesus to him,
receives the message and goes on his way rejoicing. The whole Assembly at
Jerusalem is broken up and "all were scattered abroad except the apostles."
Saul, the persecutor of the Church, is converted at the height of his mad career
by the words of the Lord Jesus in glory: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
and then and there becomes "a chosen vessel unto the Lord, to bear His Name
before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel."

Saul, the persecutor of the Church, becomes Paul the Apostle and is made a
Minister of the Church (Colossians 1:24-25) to unfold the wondrous mystery,
"even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is
made manifest to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of
the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope
of glory."

Then in 1 Corinthians we find Paul "as a wise master builder" laying the
foundation "which is Jesus Christ," and others "building thereupon." So the work
goes on. On the one side the divine work of God in forming the Body of Christ by
the baptism of the Holy Ghost; and on the other we have the administration of
the House put into man’s hands. At the first, as we have seen, God constituted
it by taking up His abode in the disciples at Pentecost as His House or
Habitation. Then all who accepted the testimony were received by baptism into
the place where the Spirit dwelt. The Apostles and those who constituted the
House at the first, were never baptized: they were not thus received into the
place where they were already. But all who came after were thus received,
professing by being "baptized unto Christ Jesus that they were baptized unto His
death," and were "buried with Him by baptism unto death," (Romans 6:3-4). Soon
after many more were added to this House of God (Acts 4:4), but all were Jews:
God took this mode of saving the remnant of Israel.

Samaria falls under the sound of the Gospel, and the enemy who first began
"within" through Ananias and Sapphira, now seeks to introduce evil persons from
"without": "while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat."
"Wood, hay, stubble" were introduced into the House of God, and Simon, the
sorcerer, is received in the flush of joy which filled many hearts in Samaria.
Thus the House, conterminous at first with the Body, began to enlarge itself
disproportionately to the Body, which was maintained of God intact within it.
But the Spirit of God did not leave the House, nor has He left it even to this
day, though it has enlarged itself into what we see around us, which is likened
by Paul to "a great house" (2 Timothy 2:20) containing "not only vessels of gold
and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour and some to
dishonour."

We will now turn to Scripture to examine more fully the unfoldings of this truth
of the House of God, an intelligent grasp of which is so needful for our path
and service to the Lord. In the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians we find two
greater divisions: 1st, 1 Corinthians 1:1-31, 1 Corinthians 2:1-16, 1
Corinthians 3:1-23, 1 Corinthians 4:1-21, 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, 1 Corinthians
6:1-20, 1 Corinthians 7:1-40, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, 1 Corinthians 9:1-27, 1
Corinthians 10:1-14; and 2nd, 1 Corinthians 10:15-33, 1 Corinthians 11:1-34, 1
Corinthians 12:1-31, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, 1 Corinthians 14:1-40, 1 Corinthians
15:1-58, 1 Corinthians 16:1-24. In the first division the Apostle has the House
before him; in the second, the Body. 1 Corinthians 12:1-31 connects both. And
here it may be of use to say that the word "Church" or "Assembly" applies to
both, though having a distinct application to each. If we look on high at Christ
in Glory, the Assembly is His Body (Ephesians 1:22-23); and if we look below
where the Spirit dwells, the Assembly is His House (Ephesians 2:22 : see 1
Timothy 3:15 where both are put together). In the Apostle’s address to the
saints at Corinth we find a most comprehensive line of thought. Unto the Church
of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called
[to be] saints [that is, saints by calling], with all that in every place call
upon the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and Ours." In this address
we find him writing .to the whole professing Church. He assumes of course that
all are true and real, unless proved to be otherwise. But all who profess
Christ’s Name are addressed: the expression, "calling on the Name of the Lord,"
having this meaning in Scripture. The simply calling on His Name does not prove
their reality: this has to be proved in those who do so call. Now the whole
professing church at that day, being assumed as real, another thing arises when
ruin has set in. The professing Church has now enlarged itself to what we term
Christendom, but it is nevertheless bound by what was revealed to the Apostle
Paul and contained in his inspired writings. The wisdom of the Spirit of God
foresaw what would happen; for if we turn to 2 Timothy 3:1-17, we find what was
prophetically provided for the "last days," which at once began when apostolic
gift was removed from the Church. The Epistle is divided into three parts. First
(2 Timothy 1:1-14) a preface; second (2 Timothy 1:15-18, 2 Timothy 2:1-26) takes
up what had already supervened in the lifetime of the Apostle, in the words,
"This thou knowest"; and third (2 Timothy 3:1-17, 2 Timothy 4:1-22) commencing
with, "This know also"; in which division he foresees what was about to be. Let
us hear his words: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall
come. For men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural
affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent; fierce, despisers of
those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than
lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from
such turn away." This then is the description of the profession of Christianity:
this is the sphere in which the faithful would find themselves: this the
platform where the servants of Christ would now have to work. And in such a
sphere, with such materials before him, was the servant Timothy to "do the work
of an evangelist," (2 Timothy 4:5).

How deeply solemn is this prophetic truth! To find that instead of the
habitation of God on earth being the answer to the glory of Christ in heaven, as
the Spirit of God meant it to be, it had so dishonoured that blessed Name as to
be described with words almost similar to those used to describe the heathen,
out of which the Church had (with the Jew) been called. The only striking
difference is this, that when the heathen are described (Romans 1:28-32), the
words, "having a form of godliness," are not used: they are added to similar
words in 2 Timothy 3 to describe a worse state, because existing under the Name
of Christ.

There is no need for one to examine more. We might recall: the words of the
Apostle in Php 2:21, All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus
Christ’s"; and (Php 3:18-19) "many walk of whom I have told you often and now
tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the Cross of Christ, whose
end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame,
who mind [set their minds upon] earthly things." Colossians, too, and Galatians,
and even Ephesians, refer to those evils which had entered in and against which
the faithful are warned. There is, too, a tendency in the saints to sink down
into an abnormal state of soul below the level of that which prevailed at the
first. The varied states around us now are the speaking witness that in the
House of God there are numbers of those who are really Christ’s but who are not
in the consciousness of the Christian standing — union with Christ in glory.

Yet the Spirit of God abides. He still inhabits God’s House on earth. He remains
there till all those who are Christ’s are called by His grace: till the Lord
Himself comes again. And still is that name — the House of God — applicable in
responsibility to that which is His habitation here below, though it is the
abode of evil too; just as the Lord Jesus spoke of the Temple at Jerusalem as
"Father’s House," though the people had made it a "house of merchandise" and a
"den of thieves." So the House of God remains such, as long as the Spirit of God
abides there. When He departs from it, it becomes, as we read in Revelation
18:2, "the habitation of devils and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of
every unclean and hateful bird."


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  CHAPTER 61: S.     THE FORTY DAYS AFTER THE RESURRECTION
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The Forty Days After the Resurrection

"The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to
do and teach, until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the
Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen. To whom
also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being
seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of
God: and, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should
not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith
he, ye have heard of me: for John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be
baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.”

"When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt
thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? "

“And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,
which the Father hath put in his own power; but ye shall receive power, after
that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses, both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth.”

"And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a
cloud received him out of their sight."

“ And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven, as he went up, behold two men
stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye
gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven,
shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts
1:1-11.) The last of these striking periods of "Forty days" is now before us,
and suitably concludes the series which scripture presents, and which we have in
measure received. The opening of the passage above, from Acts 1:1-26, begins
with a risen Savior in the midst of His disciples, and closes with an opened
heaven; and a Man, who having accomplished redemption, passes from the earth
into the glory of God. The interval between the resurrection of Christ, until He
went on high, was "forty days." In the opening of His ministry there was the
period of "forty days" of His conflict and victory, in the temptations in the
wilderness. In the close there was the other "forty days" characterized by
accomplished redemption and glory. (We may here recall that there were also two
periods of "forty days" in the ministry of His servant Moses. The first, when he
returned from Mount Sinai with the tables of the law, which he broke before he
entered the camp of revolted Israel. And the second, when he returned- his face
reflecting the mercy of Jehovah- to place them unbroken, eventually, in the Ark
of the Lord.) There is thus a certain analogy lying between the two. But in the
first period the Lord came down after His conflict with the Tempter, with His
title made good by obedience, as a Jew, to the land of Israel. (Deuteronomy
8:1-20; Matthew 4:1-25) And as the second Man before God. His Messiah blessings
also secured by His full answer to the dependence depicted of Him in Psalms
91:1-16; and much more indeed. Then in the second "forty days" He went on high
after having made atonement, and borne the curse of the law, to begin a new
service, then, in the glory. The blessed Lord, too, as well as His servant, had
His "seven days" of preface to these "forty days"- that solemn work after His
entry into Jerusalem; His passion and His atoning death; His tomb, and His
resurrection. It needed but three days to establish the fact of His death; forty
were needed to do so as to His resurrection. "Jesus " had been revealed, and
proclaimed on earth. His "resurrection" was to be coupled with that theme. These
two things were the grand subject now. "Jesus and Resurrection"- His Person, and
His victory over death, were to meet all the need of man, and display the power
and glory of God. God had intervened, when man in weakness as a sinner, and Man
in grace in Jesus had met, and when the enemy’s power could go no further, and
had wrought a new thing, against which the "gates of hades" could not prevail:
Christ had died and risen again: He had emerged from the tomb, into that new
sphere where Satan could no more reach, or man defile. The Conqueror of death-
His mighty work was done: naught now remained but to enter upon its results on
high, and make good its power in all who bow to that Name, and mighty victory.

Resurrection was but little taught in the Old Testament scriptures. Enough, that
it had been spoken of, and hoped for- vaguely it is true, still it was there.
But when that mighty triumph of God had entered the scene, and the Son of David
was declared "Son of God in power by resurrection of dead [ones]," either in
those He had raised to human life again, or in His own (Romans 1:5), then it was
the constant theme of His Spirit by His chosen witnesses; and the New Testament
is lighted with the glories of resurrection. If Satan had his ready tools, to
oppose Himself in life and ways on earth, in the Pharisee, full of his
superstition, and his tradition, which made void the word of God; he had his
fresh tools ready to his hand, when Jesus rose, to oppose His resurrection,
which was the triumph of God over all that under which man had fallen, in the
infidel, freethinking Sadducee. But not merely was the resurrection of Jesus,
and the resurrection of His people, and of those who had died in their sins-
"both the just and the unjust" to be the preaching now, when the Lord had gone
on high, but a resurrection, not of- but from the dead was to be the theme. One,
of which Jesus was the " firstfruits," from among the dead. No small wonder was
it when the disciples heard for the first time of this, and "questioned one with
another what rising [not “the rising"] from among the dead should mean" (Mark
9:9-10), a resurrection which taking place for some, would leave the mass of men
behind, who had died in their sins. The resurrection was the divine proof of the
accomplished mission and work of the Son of God. It was the foundation on which
all was now to rest. "If Christ be not raised your faith is vain," said the
apostle, "you are yet in your sins." "Yea," he continues, " and we are found
false witnesses of God, because we testified of God that he raised up Christ;
whom he raised not up if the dead rise not." (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) Satan, in
the last days too, would seek to deny this, and find fresh instruments to say,
"The resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some." (2 Timothy
2:1-26)

These "forty days," then, were used of God to bring out, by the most
incontestable proofs, the great and stupendous fact that Christ was risen.
Without that, all the testimony was, we may say, worthless: with it, all would
flow easily, and as a consequence. The disciples themselves were but slow to
believe it: they looked upon the story of it as "idle tales, and believed it
not;" Jesus, as it were, forces it upon their acceptance, in the most tender and
gracious way, till every heart was convinced; and all were made bright and
living witnesses of this new thing. He appeared to them in various ways, and at
various moments, about twelve times, during those "forty days." He did not seek
to convince them by miracles; for there was but one enacted while He remained on
earth: if indeed everything He did was not a miracle. (Comp. John :20, 21.) But
He took up His pledges given in His lifetime, and made them good in
resurrection. What as a ministering Christ He had promised, as a risen Christ He
performed. "These are the words which I spake unto, you, while I was yet with
you," said the Lord, when He would assure their hearts and say, "It is I myself:
handle me and see." He would eat, too, before them, assuring them that He who
had been their human yet divine Companion, was still the same. Yet not the same,
for since He had left them, and they had fled from Him in His hour of need, He
had made peace with God, and the proof that it was made was a risen Savior in
their midst- its first and blessed Preacher!

Let us look now at some of these appearings of the Lord to His disciples after
His resurrection. The most touching one, and full of blessed teaching for our
souls, is that to Mary the Magdalene. We find how the risen Christ is the answer
to every condition of soul. Is there an ignorant but devoted heart? The risen
Jesus will meet it in fullest sympathy and instruction. Is there one who has
denied His Lord, when he had the opportunity of confessing Him? The risen Savior
will restore. Are there ignorant ones, whose hearts are under the power of
unbelief, and false hopes as to their own aggrandizement? He will correct and
instruct and reveal Himself afresh, and fill their souls with joy; proving thus
to each and all how truly he would meet every heart, with suited and needed
instruction.

See this in Mary of Magdala. She was one who proves to us that the Lord does not
teach us through the intelligence merely (while using it), but teaches us
through the conscience or the affections. How often has that verse John 14:21,
been used amiss! Have we never thought His meaning was that all His own have His
commandments, and they that love Him, keep them, and thus show their affection?
Nay. Let us be clear in this- that all His people, alas! have not His commands.
They live too far from Him; their affections are not stirred in love to Jesus.
Does this not challenge our hearts, beloved? Nay, He means that, "He that hath
my commandments, and keepeth them, that is the one* that loveth me." Yes, but
the love to Him came first, and thus he received His commands! So it was with
Mary. Her ignorance is plain to all; but so is her affection: that of a true
heart which had lost its all, as she supposed, when Christ had died. The world
was His tomb for her, and the shadow of death shrouded the scene. Angels may
speak to her, she heeds them not. Others might go to their homes: she now had
none. The night and the day were both alike to her. There was no dawn on her
soul, for the Light of her life had been quenched, and all was darkness and
tears. That heart loved Christ with deep, though ignorant affection. Once it had
been the abode of seven devils; now it was the shrine of a crucified Savior. To
such He will reveal Himself- the risen One: He will remove the sorrow, dry the
tears, and make her a blessing to others, while blest herself. He would "bless
her, and make her a blessing." And He gives her His commands, for her own soul,
and she kept them, and brought them to others that morning, and has done so ever
since that day. The finest message that ever passed through mortal lips, first
came through those of Mary! "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto
my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." (John 20:17.)

(*ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαπῶν με.)

What awakening of hopes was here, which seemed buried forever, in His grave!
What beams of resurrection flowed in upon her soul- taught through its deep
affections. In that new sphere all His own were to stand on the same platform of
resurrection with Himself: His Father, their Father; His God, their God.

Look, too, at those two poor ignorant disciples on the road from Jerusalem to
Emmaus (Luke 24:1-53), as they walked and were sad. They were full of reasoning
among themselves as they communed together. This had to be rebuked and
corrected; but their hearts were sad. This the risen One would meet and comfort.
He would draw their eyes away from self and its earthly hopes, and fix them on
Himself- His sufferings, and His glory. He was now, though "The hope of Israel,
the Savior thereof in time of trouble," but "a wayfaring man, that turneth aside
to tarry for a night." (Comp. Leviticus 14:8.) They thought of themselves as
yet, and not of Him, and His glory; thus were their blessings hindered. They had
built their earthly hopes on Him, and now He was gone; the cup was rudely dashed
aside, and they were desolate, " We hoped that it had been he who should have
redeemed Israel." But the Author of scripture, and the Subject of scripture was
there, beside them on the read, in the darkness of that night of their sorrow.
He was there to make their hearts "burn within them by the way." To create new
hopes; impart fresh energy; unfold His glory; and make scripture tune with
Christ Himself: "O fools, and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets
have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into
his glory? And beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them
in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." Would He send a message to
His disciples that He was risen, and not think of one whose soul had wandered in
self-trust and fallen- oh, how deeply; and forget to couple the name of "Peter"
with that general message to all? To do so might be just: but He who had seen
His poor servant’s bitter tears when no other eye beheld, and saw the right
moment for a loving message to reach his heart, couples that name, which He
Himself had given him, with the rest, in special recollection. A risen Savior
meets and restores His warm-hearted, though erring disciple. Every heart is met;
every ignorance instructed; every soul which erred restored, at the suited
moment, in the suited way; and by those ways of grace which would ’be least
known to each one personally. What splendid proofs were these, that "he himself"
was there! Proofs which none could analyze for another. Such proofs that make us
feel even now, in these poor cold days, that we still have to do with Him and He
with us, by ways which are known best and only by him who has received them; yet
all tended to one great point- Jesus the Lord is risen! When this resurrection
is, "by many infallible proofs," made known, then comes His mission as the risen
One (not yet the ascended One) to His disciples. In Acts 1:6, at the close of
those "Forty Days," the disciples asked the Lord, if He would at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel? He replied that it was not for them to know the
times and the seasons: such were for the earth and Israel, not for heaven and a
heavenly company. "The Father" had such times and seasons in His own power: they
would receive the power of the Holy Ghost in "not many days;" and they would be
His witnesses- witnesses of a Christ risen from among the dead. But now mark
well the force of His reply. When He, in His incarnate days, was presenting the
kingdom to Israel, and when sending forth the twelve on this behalf, He said, in
detailing their mission in Matthew 10:1-42, "Go not into the way of the
Gentiles; and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." Here was the extent of this mission of
former days. Strictly confined to the "lost sheep" of "Israel." But all this had
been refused. Israel’s day was past, and Zion had refused her King. The old
enactment ceased then when Israel "would not." The barriers were thus broken
down; the cross of a malefactor being the answer of Israel, to Him in grace,
when they exclaimed, "We have no king but Cӕsar." As in enacting fresh decrees a
nation must repeal the old, which only suited another day, so the Lord, it might
be said, repeals the mission of former days: His heart is free now to go beyond
the narrow circle of Israel. He was then "the minister of the circumcision for
the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers"; now He would
inaugurate a new thing whereby the "Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy;”
and yet still as Israel was now on sinner’s ground, not withdraw the hand of
mercy from them.

He was now passing out to the Mount of Olives amongst His disciples; leading
them out to the spot where He would say His last farewell on earth. As His
footfall grew lighter, and as the moment for Him to be received up drew nigh, He
turns to them with those words, which repeal their old mission, and extend it on
its fresh basis from the risen Savior: "Ye shall be my witnesses," said He,
"both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost
part of the earth." As the stone, dropped into the peaceful waters, sends ripple
after ripple from the spot where first it entered, till they are lost in the
expanse around; so does this mission, now begun in Himself, extend with its
waves and ripples of mercy, embracing the world of sinners within its
ever-increasing circles!

Jerusalem had been the scene of His death and shame, there they should begin,
where faith was dead and a lifeless form.

Samaria lay beyond that once-holy spot, with a faith corrupted for centuries:
half heathen, half Jewish in its forms and its Gerizim. The "uttermost part of
the earth" had no faith at all! but lay in all its heathen darkness under the
"veil of covering" upon all its peoples. But whether for Jerusalem with her dead
faith, or Samaria with her corrupt faith, or the uttermost part of the earth
where no faith was, a risen Savior would be their testimony and meet it all! And
thus they went forth in the "Acts of the Apostles;" those three concentric
circles gradually unfolding themselves before us in the Book. For it is worthy
of note that they divide the Book in a remarkable way. "Jerusalem" was the
center of testimony from the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-47) until she refused
finally the "sure mercies of David" when Stephen yielded up his spirit to the
Lord. Then came "Samaria" with Philip and Peter and John. And lastly the scene
enlarged to the "uttermost part of the earth" through the great apostle to the
Gentiles, and those who companied with him. (See Acts 2:1-47; Acts 3:1-26; Acts
4:1-37; Acts 5:1-42; Acts 6:1-15; Acts 7:1-60; Acts 8:1-40; Acts 9:1-43; Acts
10:1-48; Acts 11:1-30; Acts 12:1-25; Acts 13:1-52; Acts 14:1-28; Acts 15:1-41;
Acts 16:1-40; Acts 17:1-34; Acts 18:1-28; Acts 19:1-41; Acts 20:1-38; Acts
21:1-40; Acts 22:1-30; Acts 23:1-35; Acts 24:1-27; Acts 25:1-27; Acts 26:1-32;
Acts 27:1-44; Acts 28:1-31) God Himself had been revealed; His grace made known.
Therefore He could not now confine His dealings to the "smallest nation under
heaven," as in the day of His testing man. The cross had broken down the "middle
wall of partition" on earth; it had opened up the way for God to man, and man to
God, through a veil rent from top to bottom; and thus the breadth of His ways
should now take in all in its scope and aspect. All "had sinned" and are "come
short of his glory," and His glory was then the measure of the grace of His
salvation. What a message to a world of sinners! None were left out: His parting
words declare it. His heart was unchanged, and only more deeply and fully
revealed through the revolted heart of man; and thus His heart, in grace, is
still turned towards man, until that day comes when "This same Jesus" will come
again to "judge the world in righteousness." Thus He blest them, and in that
attitude, with uplifted hands, He passed to His glory; and they returned to
Jerusalem to begin their task, "praising and blessing God."

We have now come to the close of our meditations on those "Forty days." May the
Lord in His good mercy apply some sweet lesson, to the hearts of His own beloved
people, from what we have reviewed; and lead our souls into deeper, fuller
communion with Him, of whom all scripture speaks, separating us more distinctly
to Himself in these our days of weakness; and preparing our souls by that
education which He knows so well how to apply, while we "look for his Son from
heaven," "even Jesus, who hath delivered us from the wrath to come." F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 62: S.     THE FORTY DAYS OF MOSES ON MOUNT SINAI
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The Forty Days of Moses on Mount Sinai THE FORTY DAYS OF MOSES ON MOUNT SINAI.
LAW AND MERCY. The second of those remarkable "Forty Days" of scripture we find
in the case of Moses on Mount Sinai, when he received the law for the first time
from Jehovah. In his case there were two periods of forty days, as afterward in
the Lord Jesus’ ministry: the first, before He entered upon it, when in the
temptations in the wilderness; and the second, after His resurrection. In Moses’
case these two periods are spoken of distinctly in Deuteronomy 9:1-29;
Deuteronomy 10:1-22, where we find two giving’s of the law connected with these
two "Forty Days:” first, the law, pure and simple; and, second, the revelation
of mercy and long-suffering added to the law.

We read, "When I was gone up into the mount, to receive the tables of stone,
even the tables of the covenant which the Lord made for you, then I abode in the
mount forty days and forty nights: I neither did eat bread, nor drink water: and
the Lord delivered me two tables of stone, written with the finger of God; and
on them was written according to all the words which the Lord spake with you in
the mount, out of the midst of the fire, in the day of the assembly. And it came
to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave me the
two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant. And the Lord said unto me,
Arise, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people which thou hast brought
forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves: they are quickly turned aside out
of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten image.... So I
turned, and came down from the mount.... And I looked, and, behold, ye had
sinned against the Lord your God, and had made you a molten calf.... And I took
the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your
eyes."

"And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights:
I did neither eat bread, nor drink water; because of all your sins which ye
sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to
anger…..Then I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I fell
down at the first; because the Lord had said he would destroy you. I prayed
therefore unto the Lord, and said, 0 Lord God, destroy not, thy people, and
thine inheritance."....

"At that time the Lord said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the
first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood; and I
will write on the tables the words that were in the first, tables which thou
brakest, and thou shalt put them in the ark And there they be, as the Lord
commanded me” (Deuteronomy 9:9-29; Deuteronomy 10:1-5.) There were altogether-as
we may see-three givings of the law.

First, by the voice of God out of the midst of the fire (Exodus 19:1-25; Exodus
20:1-26).

Secondly, by the first tables of the law, written by the finger of God. These
Moses broke after he came down from the mount the first time-his face darkened
with wrath at the sin of Israel; And thirdly, by the second tables which Moses
brought back after the second forty days’ and forty nights’ intercession for
Israel, at which time the skin of his face shone with the glory of Jehovah’s
mercy. These tables he placed in the ark (the figure of Christ, by whom, and in
whom only, they would be kept fully). There was no breaking of them this second
time, and, as we read, "there they be" unto this day.

We have thus Israel dancing round the calf, and the broken tables of the law,
figure of their condition, after the first forty days. And Israel spared in
mercy, but with the law still in their midst-within the ark of the covenant
-unbroken, at the end of the second forty days.

I do not dwell much on the first announcement of the law, by the voice of God in
Exodus 19:1-25; Exodus 20:1-26. It was given by One who shut Himself up in the
"thick darkness," and spake amidst thunderings, and lightnings, and the voice of
words. So terrible was the sight, that even Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and
quake." God had proposed these terms, and Israel, ignorant of themselves,
accepted them, in the words, "All that the Lord hath spoken, we will do." Mark
the two things-first, the word of the Lord, expressing His claim; and, secondly,
man supposing he is capable to take it up, and do it. No doubt he is responsible
to do so, but he has not the power. No man ever heard the law of God, and denied
his responsibility to obey it; his conscience accepts it, whether he like, or
no. When the "Ten Words" were spoken, the result was the people removed, and
stood afar off. Immediately, when man finds there is a claim from God to which
his conscience must bow, he desires some one to stand between him and God-he
wants a Mediator. (Exodus 20:18-19.) "Speak thou with us," they say to Moses,
and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die." At once God
answers this desire with directions for an altar, and sacrifices of
burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, in all places where He would record His
name.

These four things are the result of God’s expressing His claim: the desire of a
mediator by the people; God’s answer in the work of such; an altar, and
sacrifices of acceptance and communion; and His presence with them in all places
where He would record His name, to be with them, and to bless them. How
touchingly does His unvarying grace break out, even in the midst of the solemn
scene of law-giving on Mount Sinai!

Now, if we examine Exodus 24:1-18, where Moses was called up into the mount to
receive the law, we find it was prefaced by a seven days of preparation. (Just
as, before the blow of judgment of sin at the flood, there were also seven days
of respite.) "And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.
And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six
days; and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of
the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel. And Moses went into the midst
of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount; and Moses was in the mount forty
days and forty nights." (Exodus 24:15-18.) In the seven chapters that follow we
find the unfolding, in type, of what afterward shone in the full blessedness of
Christ, there given in the "shadows of things to come." Moses could dismiss the
history of creation with one chapter, but what spake of Christ, and of God’s
desire to dwell amongst men, seven chapters are devoted to that theme (Exodus
25:1-40; Exodus 26:1-37; Exodus 27:1-21; Exodus 28:1-43; Exodus 29:1-46.),
unfolding the heart of God, afterward to be fully revealed in His Son. The order
and arrangement of these chapters are very beautiful. First, in the various
parts of the tabernacle and its furniture, He reveals how He can approach
man-coming out from the light of the glory in the holy of holies, from the ark
and its mercy-seat (Exodus 25:1-40), until, step by step, He reaches the brazen
altar (Exodus 27:1-21), type of the cross of Christ. There He meets man as a
sinner, and then He returns with the saved one, as each step of His backward
path testifies in the furniture of the tabernacle, now needed-such as the laver,
which was for him (Exodus 30:1-38), not a display of God in Himself as such-to
meet all the saved one’s requirements by the way, in returning to God’s own
presence.

Meanwhile the high priest’s garments are introduced-garments of glory and
beauty; and the names of the redeemed are graven upon the stones of memorial on
His shoulders, and on the breastplate, where all were borne, in the light of
God’s presence, in Him. Thus, the believer dwells in the light, and is borne
upon the strength, and carried in the affections of Christ, in the presence of
God for us. When all this was being transacted in the mount with God, a dark and
terrible scene was being enacted below, on the plain, by Israel (Exodus
32:1-35); their great original and corporate sin was committed, which reaped its
bitter fruits to the end, in Babylon and judgment. I refer to the making of the
golden calf. The seed of Abraham, who had been himself called out of idolatry,
now turning back from Jehovah, to dance round the similitude of a "calf that
eateth hay"-and Aaron the great actor in this revolt against God.

God desires Moses to go down, telling him that the people had revolted, and made
them gods of gold, and that He would cut them off, and make of Moses a great
nation. Moses uses his place of nearness, not for himself, but for the people he
loved; and beseeches the Lord for Israel, and God is entreated of him. Then
Moses comes down with the first tables of the law in his hand, and breaks them
ere he reaches the guilty camp, thus preserving both the people from judgment,
and the honor of Jehovah. They never, therefore, stood under pure law at all.
The tribe of Levi consecrate themselves in the discipline of that moment, and
take the Lord’s side against their guilty brethren. Moses returns, with the
words, "I will go up, peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin." He
pleads, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and made them gods of gold:
yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out
of thy book which thou hast written." He asks that, he, not they, should be
blotted out of God’s book. The answer is, "Whosoever hath sinned against me, him
will I blot out of my book."

Moses then, when the people are convicted, and stripped of their ornaments,
takes the tent, and pitches it outside the camp, afar off from the camp, and
called it the tabernacle of the congregation. Every one, therefore, that sought
the Lord, went out there. The most touching scene follows. The most glorious
moment in all the history of Moses, and the most blessed revelation of God he
ever had, was then made. The cloud came down, and talked with Moses as a man
speaks with his friend! He pleads there with God, and God answers the one who
never stood under law at all, but had found grace in His sight. Still, he does
not feel that all is clear; his spirit has no rest yet, for two things press on
his heart-(1) the people are not relieved, therefore (2) God is not yet fully
revealed. He cries, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." Nay, this would but
consume them-it was not the time. He would afterward be seen in the same glory
with Christ in the mount of transfiguration; but another deeper spring was now
to be reached. Something was now to be known of God’s nature, never before
revealed in its true and real depths. This was "Mercy!" Never was its true
meaning known before. Doubtless the word was there, and used too in scripture;
but that deep spring in God’s own being, so rich, so full, so blessed; that in
which He delights-taking pleasure in them that hope in it. The theme ever after
for Israel’s song was to be made known; the chorus of every divine melody of
theirs from that moment would be, "O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good,
for his mercy endureth forever!"

How touching the subsequent words-"And he said, I will make all [yes, "all"] my
goodness pass before thee; and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee;
and I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
upon whom I will have compassion!"*

(* I have given the rendering of the LXX. of the latter part of this verse, as
it has been accepted by the apostle Paul in Romans 9:1-33, exactly as given
there. It is thus shown to be the more correct meaning of the Spirit of God.)
Who could have seen His face, and lived? Moses might "bow his head, and
worship," when that deep spring was reached. When He passes by we can see His
back parts, but His face, who could know? Who could have anticipated the
incarnation, the cross, the counsels and ways of God; or this-His mercy? None
indeed We may be placed in the "cleft of the rock," and, covered by His hand,
gaze upon Him as He passes by, and see His back parts; but none can see His
face-none can anticipate His ways, and live! The deep spring was reached at that
dire extremity. The divine outflow of grace had been abused. The law had been
broken. All ordered relations had been disrupted by the rebellion and ruin of
Israel. Now, mercy-sovereign and absolute-was the resource of Him who retires
into Himself, and who chooses to act from Himself -who alone can say, "I will,"
and who can hinder? It presupposes a condition of things, and the absolute
necessity for God to act from Himself in some way, either to vindicate Himself
by resistless judgment, or to extricate the people in absolute mercy. It was not
now of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.

Brethren, do our souls understand that attribute in which God is so rich? Do we
not constantly find it confounded with grace (which is the divine outflow of His
unconditional favor), to the soul’s great loss indeed? Have we never sinned
against and outraged His grace, as well as broken His law? What then is left for
us-absolute sovereign mercy, which presupposes all this condition of things. Can
I explain it to the soul that has never tasted it? Nay: it must be tasted in
those moments of deep, deep need, which nothing can meet but the revelation of
His character and nature as sovereign and absolute-but who chooses to act in
that sovereignty, and absoluteness in mercy, and not in judgment. From the
moment that Moses saw that strange sight-the Bush burning with fire, and which
was not consumed, at the back side of the desert; until the waters gushed out of
the Rock at Rephidim-all was a pure stream of grace. This grace-history is taken
up, even going back to the Patriarchs, in Psalms 105:1-45, and the Psalm
recounts what "He" did for them: it runs on to the Smitten Rock, and there it
stops. But when we turn to Psalms 106:1-48 we find the mercy-history-and it
recounts what "They" had done. What then is the burden of the Psalm? "O give
thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever!" “Moses,
his chosen, stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he
should destroy them"; and He "repented according to the multitude of his
mercies." Do Israel’s songs ever recount His grace? Ah no; it was too late after
the golden calf was made. Too late after grace was abused and thrown back in His
face, as it was, and Law was hopelessly broken. What has been the burden of
their, songs in the past; as well as those for the time to come? Their burden
and theme is mercy for evermore!

What an absence of this "mercy" do we find in those chapters of Romans 1:1-32;
Romans 2:1-29; Romans 3:1-31; Romans 4:1-25; Romans 5:1-21; Romans 6:1-23;
Romans 7:1-25; Romans 8:1-39 which unfolds the relations of our souls with God,
by grace through righteousness! But if we turn to the next three chapters
(Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36) all is mercy, for Israel is in
view! Yet the last does not close without shutting up all, Jew and Gentile, in
unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all! "O the depth of the riches," says the
apostle, in the contemplation of His ways-past finding out, yet how blessed when
revealed!

Look again at the fact, that in the church Epistles we find them addressed in
grace and peace; but not mercy. Yet, when we come to the Epistles to
individuals, mercy is added there. But in that of Jude, which gives the full
tide of the corruption of Christendom surging on to judgment, we find "Mercy,
peace, and love be multiplied:" and the saints are taught to look for the "mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life." Why is this? because the grace, in
which all were set, has been abused and outraged; and nothing remains but
absolute and sovereign mercy for all!

"Who," says Micah, "is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and
passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not
his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy!" The soul of David, in
singing the praises of the Lord for His lovingkindnesses and His tender mercies
(Psalms 103:1-22), seeks to measure this mercy which so suited his case. “As the
heaven," sang he, "is high above the earth, so great is his mercy." Still that
does not reach it, for the soul that has tasted its heights and its depths.
Again he essays, in the words, "as far as the east is from the west"; but it is
infinite, and greater than the finite-great as it may be. At last he finds its
only measure is the nature of Him who, "from everlasting to everlasting," is God
(Psalms 90:1-17): So His "mercy is... from everlasting to everlasting upon them
that fear him"-who grasp His outstretched hand reached down into the abyss of
sin, which none have ever grasped in vain.

Hear him again, who so learned its sweetness to his own soul:

"O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever."

"Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the
enemy."

"And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and from the west, from the
north, and from the south."

"O that men would praise the Lord for his mercy*; and for his wonderful words to
the children of men!’

" Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the
mercy of the Lord." (Psalms 107:1-43).

(*And so in verses 15, 21, 31, 43: see Heb. and LXX.)

How blessed, too, in Ephesians 2:1-22, if "God, who is rich in mercy," would act
according to that deep spring in His being, He must do so in a manner becoming
that mercy; and as "the angle of incidence is equal to that of refraction," so,
if He acts, in forming His church out of the materials we find in Ephesians
2:1-22, and from that deep spring, He will place those who have been reached by
mercy, far above all heavens: above all principality and might and dominion, in
Him in whom it is expressed!

Ah yes, beloved brethren, mercy and grace are never mixed up in the thoughts of
God, as in ours. We do it to our deep loss indeed. Mercy was first really
learned in scripture, when Moses "bowed his head and worshipped," at the suited
name and character and attribute of Him, who chose to act-not according to the
insolence of sin in Israel; but according to His sovereignty in mercy. May it,
in all the depth and fullness of God, be my own and my readers’ portion, in
Christ Himself forever! In Him, whose own blessed lips spake those words to
those who hated Him: "But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy,
and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
(Matthew 9:13) Sacrifice was what they could do for God, and failed to do. But
mercy was what He could, in spite of all, show to them. And again, "But if ye
had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not
have condemned the guiltless." (Matthew 12:7)

How sweet it is for the soul to rest thus in the Lord: in His known nature and
character, learned, too, in measure, through the deep needs of the soul, as a
sinner, or as a failing saint. To have found that He delights in mercy, which He
has revealed in His Son; and to be able to sing of Him-"O give thanks unto the
God of heaven: for his mercy endureth forever"! The first "forty days," then, of
Moses on Mount Sinai, ended with a broken Law and a ruined people: the second
with that blessed revelation of God’s attribute of mercy,* which can never fail.
There our souls can stay themselves in peace: whether as sinners needing and
finding salvation in Christ; or as those who have outraged that loving grace of
God, and have now no hope but in Him against whom we have sinned. In Him on whom
we have no claim, but to count on that character on which we can cast ourselves
unreservedly; to whom we may come as saints or sinners, for salvation for
eternity; or pardon and deliverance under His righteous government in time, for
all in which we have exceeded. We can cast ourselves at His feet, asking
nothing; suggesting nothing; but resting on His nature-Himself, which so fully
expresses itself in righteous consistency with Himself, through the cross and
work of His own beloved Son.

(*I do not here distinguish between governmental mercy, and mercy for eternal
salvation. Nor do I notice the fact of the law being still left, accompanied by
mercy, and Israel left under it, in this paper.) To Him and through Him be
praise to God, both now and for evermore. F. G. P.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 63: S.     THE FORTY DAYS OF NINEVEH
========================================================================

The Forty Days of Nineveh

"The word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go unto
Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So
Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord.”

" Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey.”

"And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey; and he cried, and said,
Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

"So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on
sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came
unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe
from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to
be proclaimed and published through Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his
nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let
them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and
from the violence that is in their hands.”

"Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger,
that we perish not?

"And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented
of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."
(Jonah 3:1-10)

"And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an
evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the
sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall
also the Son of man be to this generation."

"The men of Nineve shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall
condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater
than Jonas is here." (Luke 11:29-30; Luke 11:32.)

Before entering on my present subject, I would note how the well-spring of God’s
living grace rises up, and bursts forth at times, and under circumstances, even
when the dispensation is dealing with other things. In the Old Testament, grace
was not flowing out dispensationally, as now, to the Gentiles- "to all men
everywhere." Yet God was God; and His grace is seen here, in sending a mission
to the Gentiles, even in those days of dealing with Israel alone, "of all the
nations of the earth." It was a bright foretaste of the overflowing of His
heart, to be fully made known when Jesus had accomplished His work on the cross,
when God’s heart was free to flow forth in grace through righteousness.

Now it would appear that Jonah really understood, in some measure, this truth:
God had sent him on a special mission to the Gentile city of Nineveh. He was to
go and announce the judgment of God against it. God had said, "Arise, go to
Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up
before me." (Jonah 1:2.) But Jonah feared that if he announced this judgment,
and that the people repented, God would forgive and spare them; and thus his
self-importance would be compromised. And so Jonah fled to Tarshish from the
presence of the Lord.

Now let us look for a moment at Nineveh. At this time of the earth’s history it
was the greatest city in the world. It was "an exceeding great city of three
days’ journey," that is, it was about twenty miles across: far larger than
London. It was one of those enormous cities of ancient days, whose ruins, when
discovered, seem almost fabulous to behold. It was the Capital of the Assyrian
Empire: surrounded by walls, we are told, one hundred feet in height; with
twelve hundred towers.

All the "entourage" of Eastern splendor was there. It stood alone in its
greatness- a city that seemed to be unconquerable. But its sins cried aloud to
God for judgment. The striking narrative of Jonah himself unfolds God’s
preparation of His messenger for this mission; the discipline, too, through
which He passes him, until the vessel is prepared according to His mind, and
ready to His hand. First, he flees by ship from God, to escape this duty; then
the storm overtakes him, finding him asleep in the ship: the cry of the mariners
awakes him; the lot singles Jonah out as the man for whose sake the storm was
sent. Conscience now convicts him, owning that he is the man. The sea receives
him. The fish swallows him up: and in the "Belly of Hell," as he calls his
prison house, he passes through those deep and agonizing exercises of soul,
detailed in Jonah 2:1-10, until he owns that "salvation" was "of the Lord," and
then only does he stand on the dry ground- a man prepared for his work. In all
this he was eminently a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sign, too, that would
be given to the Jews, as the Lord told them. A sign that would be no use for
them- as they should have received a living Messiah. A dead and risen Savior,
who would go away to the Gentiles; it would be too late for them to know when
they had slain Him. Of course I thus look upon them as the people of God.
Individuals He would bless at any time.

Jonah then goes his way. He enters Nineveh, a day’s journey; and he proclaims
the solemn message, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." This was
the "preaching of Jonas." Doubtless he told them his own strange history: a more
striking text could hardly have been chosen. A man just emerging from a living
tomb, and standing now on the ground of resurrection in figure, could vouch in
himself for the truth of what God had done.

It will not be out of place here to say a word on the great truth of repentance.
I trust it is becoming more generally known in its real meaning and power than
hitherto; but still I feel there are many who are quite astray on this
all-important subject. I say " all-important," because you will find that it is
one of the great leading doctrines of the New Testament. The disciples when they
went forth, being sent by the Lord, "preached that men should repent." (Mark
6:12.) The Lord Himself, when John was cast into prison, came to Galilee, and
preached "the gospel of the kingdom of God," saying, "The time is fulfilled, and
the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." When He sent
His disciples forth, after His resurrection, His commission to them was- "That
repentance and remission of sins, should be preached in his name. among all
nations, beginning at Jerusalem." (Luke 24:47) Paul, too, announces, amidst the
learning and heathenism of Athens, how God "now commandeth all men everywhere to
repent." (Acts 17:30.)

"Repentance," then, is an integral part of the gospel on man’s side, while
"forgiveness " belongs to God, and is accorded by Him to every repentant soul.

Some, doubtless finding it such an important element, have lost the balance of
the divine meaning of it, and, supposing it to be a prefatory preparation
towards the reception of forgiveness, have construed it into a certain amount of
meritorious sorrow for sin; which, when sufficient, is met by forgiveness from
God. Others have taken different views, but it is not my purpose to enter now
upon what it is not; but in some measure to illustrate what it is, the Lord so
guiding me.

Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh affords a most instructive and striking
illustration of its true meaning: for "they repented at the preaching of Jonas."

Now suppose he had gone to Nineveh and said to that great city, "Repent; " as
one might suppose a case even now of a man going to the center of Africa and
calling upon the heathen there to "Repent"- what would be thought of such? Nay;
the first thing Jonah presented to the Ninevites was a certain truth from God,
well calculated to inspire great searchings of heart amongst them. He announces
God’s judgment being, as we might say, at the doors. Now what was the effect of
this? The very first initiatory effect was, that the announcement was received
in faith; and we read, "So the men of Nineveh believed God." Here faith at once
in the testimony was seen, This was necessary in order to produce what so
eminently shone in these people- true, full, and godly repentance: both as to
the past, in the present, and for the time to come. 1st. They put them on
sackcloth for the past. 2nd. They amended their ways in the present. 3rd. They
purposed a turning from their sins for the future. Here was true repentance, and
this even before they knew anything of God’s forgiving grace. Up to this they
only hope in God, with the words, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and
turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" (Jonah 3:9.) But let us
remember that the first thing was- they "believed God." Faith was the initial
movement in their souls. And I am bold to say there never was true repentance
yet, without this being the case. Get up what frames and feelings you may; let
sorrow for sin be there as deep as you please; let the soul be prepared for all
that is coming as well as possible- faith in God, or in something which He has
revealed, must and ever does go before it. I do not say that the soul may yet
have entered on peace; rather I would say I do not believe it has: nor has it
got hold of forgiveness yet, but the tender root of faith in God and His word,
has struck deeply into the heart of that man, which never can be eradicated.

Thus it was with Nineveh. The solemn sound of judgment had burst on their
astonished ears from the lips of that strange preacher, and had sunk down on
hearts, plowing up the way for that which sprang up at the same moment within-
faith in God and His word. True repentance followed; and "God saw their works,"
and the golden scepter of forgiveness was at once extended, and Nineveh was
spared! Thus it is always. Let a soul be in the true attitude before God, and at
once it is forgiven.

There is a passage in Mark 1:15, already alluded to, which may seem to
contradict this, as may others also; but, when rightly seen, it will but confirm
all we have said. It would seem, then, as if repentance preceded faith: the
words are, " Repent ye, and believe the gospel." But if we only cast our eyes on
the preceding clause, we read, Jesus came.....saying, "The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand." This presentation of something from God- no
matter what He uses- produced a work in the soul; faith was there in that word,
and such would bring repentance most surely, and belief in the glad tidings, as
well as the sad tidings that had first moved their souls, that they were unfit
for that kingdom of God.

What magnificent and soul-stirring results we find here from that "one day’s"
journey and "preaching of Jonah"! Picture to yourself the king leaving his
throne, and, doffing his royal robes, covering himself with sackcloth, and
sitting in ashes. His courtiers, too, and his people, with their wives and
little children- perhaps six hundred thousand souls (for there were, even of
that great number, one hundred and twenty thousand who were not able to discern
their right hand from their left), "much cattle," too- all partaking of the
soul-humblings of that mighty city.

"One day" was enough for them. What a contrast to the thousands now-a-days who
hear, year after year, the message of grace, and never yet have bowed down in
true repentance before the Lord!

What does God use now to produce that work in the souls of men? Judgment was
what sounded in the ears of Nineveh, and still judgment forms a part of the
gospel testimony. It is still the dark background of the picture; while the
presentation of Christ, of the "goodness of God" now, "leads" the soul to
"repentance." (See Romans 2:4.) A loving God beseeches men to be reconciled to
Him (2 Corinthians 5:20), while dark and solemn judgment to come looms over the
scene as the terrible alternative if men do not hear. "Despisest thou," says the
apostle, "the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not
knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"- leads them to
that blessed spot where forgiveness is found by a truly repentant heart. Like
the woman of the city of old, she was drawn to Him "by the cords of a man, by
the bands of love." True faith in Him had taken root in her soul (Luke 7:1-50),
and led her to His feet, to shed those tears of self-judgment for her ten
thousand sins; this was true repentance, ere she was forgiven. When there her
soul was ready for all the rest which was so freely bestowed: "Thy sins be
forgiven thee;" "Thy faith hath saved thee;" "Go in peace," were the blessed
words that greeted her ear. The root of repentance and forgiveness was faith,
while the fruit of faith was love, and then she learned His whole heart.

Mark how different was the thought in the heart of the king of Nineveh, compared
with the certainty of the gospel day, "Who can tell," said he, "if God will turn
and repent"? Now-a-days there is no "Who can tell" in the clear trumpet-sound of
grace. "Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more" is now the word. We
say, "Well, I forgive that man, but I cannot forget." With God it is more than
this; He remembers our iniquities no more!

Alas, poor Jonah! he was right about God, but it touched the self-importance of
the man. God found them bowed to the earth in true repentance, and at once, as
always, His forgiveness is extended to souls in such a state. "But it displeased
Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said,
O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my own country? Therefore I
fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth thee of the evil.”

"Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better
for me to die than to live." (Jonah 4:1-3.) Oh the heart of man, what it is!
angry and sore displeased because God would not justify his words, and destroy a
repentant city! Nay, the soul that would think thus has much to learn of His
infinite and tender mercy. Poor messenger of judgment! you could be angry at God
sparing the ten thousands of Nineveh, but Jesus can, and does, rejoice over one
repentant sinner. "Rejoice with me," is the Savior’s word, "for I have found the
sheep that I had lost." "It was meet," says the Father, " that we should make
merry, and be glad; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and
is found."

Repentance, then, is that solemn judgment which I form of, and consciously
pronounce about, myself in hearing a testimony from the Lord. I must believe
something ere I could possibly repent. It may be that judgment has aroused my
conscience; it may be that His goodness has drawn out my heart towards Him; but
one thing is certain- faith in that something is there, and by faith the soul
lives before God. Faith is the spring of life, the life of Jesus in the soul.
That life may express itself in agonizing exercises for a time, but it is a
proof that the soul is not dead, but lives. It is judging itself in view of the
divine requirements; weighing itself in the balances, and finding itself
wanting. The work of repentance, or self judgment, proceeds, and the deeper, the
better. This leads to the spot where, hopeless in itself, it turns away, in
despair of amendment, and finds its all in Christ. Forgiveness is now known and
enjoyed as the result of Christ’s work alone, and the work of repentance was
only leading the soul to the place and condition where forgiveness is applied -
namely; where we have believed somewhat of our own hopeless ruin in our own
sight, as hitherto in the sight of God. F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 64: S.     THE FORTY DAYS OF THE FLOOD
========================================================================

The Forty Days of the Flood

There are hardly any who have read the scriptures, with even a small measure of
intelligence, who will not have remarked how constantly the period of "Forty
days" occurs. Various interpretations have been suggested as to the typical
meaning of the number "forty"--composed as it is of the multiple of "four" with
"ten."* However, without dogmatizing on it, it is happy to be able to draw some
real spiritual lessons from the places where the "Forty days" occur in the word
of God, remembering that our God has deigned to use these periods Himself, with
profound wisdom, and for the blessing and instruction of His people, in that
book which contains the revelation of Himself, and His ways for the glory of His
Son.

(*”Four" signifies typically, finite perfection; "Four winds;" "Four empires;"
"Four beasts;" "The city lieth four square," &c. &c. " Ten" seems to me to imply
the outward expression of inward perfection, whether in good or evil; "seven"
being spiritual completeness; and "ten" is that which is administered from such
perfection. Thus we have "seven heads and ten horns" upon the beast. It is not
"twelve," which would be earthly perfection.) The number "Forty," then, is, I
judge, intimately connected with the probation or testing of man; as also with
the penalty, or confession, or punishment of sin under the government of God. We
read of the "forty days and forty nights" of the temptations of Christ; of the
"forty days and forty nights" that the waters of the flood prevailed on the
earth (Genesis 7:1-24); of the "forty years" that Israel was condemned to wander
in the desert for their sin (Numbers 14:1-45); of the "forty stripes" an
offender against the law of Moses, in certain matters, was to receive.
(Deuteronomy 25:1-19; cf. 2 Corinthians 11:24.) Egypt was to be desolate for
"forty years." (Ezekiel 29:1-21) Moses, too, intercedes for Israel for "forty
days." (Deuteronomy 9:1-29) The Ninevites proclaim a fast for "forty days."
(Jonah 3:1-10) Ezekiel must bear the transgression of Judah "forty days."
(Ezekiel 4:1-17)

Many other cases might be cited, leading to the conclusion that this typical
number is always connected with the probation or testing of man; and having
reference to sin, and the condition into which sin had brought man, with the
confession of it; its penalty or its punishment.

There is one very remarkable feature, however, in this interesting study; we
find these instances of "Forty days" begin at a certain moment in the history of
man in scripture, and end at another of remarkable significance. The first time
"Forty days" is spoken of is at the waters of the flood. "Forty days and forty
nights" the rain was upon the earth; a moment which was marked by this awful
judgment of God. The last time we find these "Forty days" in scripture was after
the resurrection of Christ, and is bright with hopes of better things; when He
remained on earth amongst His disciples, "being seen of them forty days." (Acts
1:1-26) Within, and comprising these two cases, the sevenfold series of "forty
days" is found, presenting a picture of the whole moral relations of God with
man, and man with God. A well-ordered and comprehensive picture, which cannot
fail to strike us as designed and planned by the Author of scripture Himself, in
His infinite wisdom and grace.

Let us enumerate the instances where they are found:

1st. We have the "Forty days" of the flood, which are characterized by SIN AND
ITS JUDGMENT.

2nd. Next we have the "Forty days" of Moses on Mount Sinai, at the giving of the
law (with the second "Forty days" of his intercession for Israel). This may be
characterized by LAW AND MERCY.

3rd. We have after this the "Forty days’ " searching of Canaan (Numbers 13:1-33;
Numbers 14:1-45), which speak to us of FAITH AND UNBELIEF.

4th. In the "Forty days" journey of Elijah from Beersheba to Horeb (1 Kings
19:1-8) we see HUMAN WEAKNESS AND DIVINE STRENGTH.

5th. In the "Forty days" of Nineveh (Jonah 3:1-10), REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS.

6th. The " Forty days" of the Lord’s temptation present most blessedly CONFLICT
AND VICTORY.

7th. And the " Forty days" after the resurrection, REDEMPTION AND GLORY.

Thus the picture is complete: the utter corruption of the world opens the
sequence of these " Forty days;" they run their course through scripture,
presenting the varied claims of God, His ways of mercy and forgiveness, and the
exercises of heart of His people; until, fittingly, the blessed Lord’s own
conflicts and sufferings close them, when, as Man, He takes His place at God’s
right hand in glory. THE " FORTY DAYS" OF THE FLOOD. The subject before us now
is the moment when God for the first time judged the world for sin. An awful,
resistless, overwhelming judgment fell upon the earth, washing away every trace
of the violence and corruption which filled the scene, by the waters of the
flood. This scene is alluded to nine times in scripture, by patriarchs,
prophets, evangelists, and apostles, and by the Son of God Himself, more than
once. It is used as a type also, though only a type, a faint shadow, of that
awful moment of judgment which must overtake the world--a greater judgment than
that of water, of the fierceness of the wrath of the Almighty. It is not the
judgment of the dead that is here before us, but of the living, those who are
taken in the avocations of life--eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage; pursuing the ordinary course of things, but sinning, sinning, sinning,
till that awful moment comes, when resistless judgment falls on the world that
God, in long-suffering, has borne with for six thousand years.

What, then, was it that caused God to judge the world in this way in Noah’s
time? The answer is, "SIN." Sin caused God to resolve on judgment the most awful
that ever yet came from the hands of perfect love. And yet how faint is it the
shadow of that eternal judgment which must come, when mercy is past, when the
day of grace is over, when no cry for mercy will receive an answer of peace.

I think it is a common human expression--which is not to be found in the word of
God--that "in the midst of judgment He remembers mercy."There is nothing in the
word of God, that I have discovered, which would carry out such a thought. When
judgment falls, it falls with resistless power, and mercy then has ceased. Mercy
and judgment cannot go together. No doubt " mercy glorieth against judgment"
(James 2:13)--that is blessedly true now; and the cry of faith is, " In wrath
remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2); but the moment that judgment--God’s strange
act-begins, then mercy, in which God delights, has closed; judgment will then
accomplish its solemn mission?

How awful is the delusion under which men lie as to this! They think that God is
too merciful to damn them. Oh, do not so delude yourselves-do not suppose you
can cry for mercy in that day, and be heard. Mercy waits in long-suffering now;
but that solemn day will not come till mercy’s day is past forever. A flood of
"SIN" filled the earth; violence and corruption characterized that fair world
that God had made "very good." It began in individual hearts, it spread in
families, it corrupted homes and communities with its leavening power. God
describes the state of things by these well-chosen, weighty words (Genesis 6:5):
"God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." How
comprehensive are those words!"every," "only," "continually." "Every" means
without exception. One would have thought, perhaps, that that conscience which
God took care man should receive when he fell (Genesis 3:5; Genesis 3:22) might
have retained some trace of longing after "good," even though powerless to
"perform" it. Nay, "every" imagination of his heart was "evil." But this might
not have been always so: surely there were some traces of God’s handy-work left,
and some mixture of good. Nay, we read again, these imaginations were "only
evil” that is, evil without admixture or trace of good. And they were
"continually;" morning, noon, and night the aggregate of his heart’s thoughts
were only evil, without exception, without admixture, without intermission! Sin,
without restraint, thus came forth in its hideous deformity. Is the world better
now? It is just the same. We have moral, social, religious, political restraints
on man; sin cannot break forth unhindered, nor do in broad day what it can when
the world’s eye cannot gaze upon it. But remove these restraints, let them stand
in abeyance for an hour, put the world on its trial, and see how it would behave
itself. The result would be, that every peaceful home in the land would be
filled with bloodshed and abomination.

Man’s heart is man’s heart, and there it is. Much more responsible, I grant you,
now than in the days of the flood; and that tide of evil is swelling, till it
breaks forth again, and is met once more by the resistless judgment of God.

"The world of the ungodly" was once judged by the waters of the flood, and "as
it was in the days that were before the flood, so shall it be in the day when
the Son of man is revealed. They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving
in marriage, until!"-no warning for aught but faith-"the flood came, and took
them all away." No wonder, then, that "it repented the Lord that he had made man
on the earth," and it "grieved him to his heart." We should not like our
handy-work corrupted; nor does He; He resolves, therefore, to destroy it. But
before He strikes the blow, He will give time, and a testimony to man’s heart,
"whether he will hear, or whether he will forbear."

Thrice forty years, then, were the days of respite. "Mercy rejoiceth against
judgment." Yet when judgment is resolved upon, God says, I will give them time!
The "long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah." It "is salvation." But
more: He will send them a. preacher. Noah was a preacher of righteousness to the
world of the ungodly. I do not think that God told Noah the length of time He
had accorded to the world to repent: this one hundred and twenty years. To have
done so would have been to break the threefold cord of faith, hope, and love.
All three were in exercise in the patriarch’s heart while he preached and
testified, and the ark was a-preparing. God knew Himself the allotted time, as
He knows all. During that strange one hundred and twenty years there were four
testimonies going on, side by side, to man’s conscience.

1st. God’s Spirit was striving with man. He would not always strive. Where, in
many a heart, are the strivings of God’s Spirit which found a voice there, time
after time, in years gone by? "My Spirit shall not always strive with man" tells
its solemn tale.

2nd. Noah was preaching. Christ’s blessed Spirit was in him, as we read of the
Spirit of Christ being in the prophets. (1 Peter 1:11.) By that Spirit of Christ
Noah testified to the spirits of the lost now in prison, while once the

3rd. Long-suffering of God waited; and we learn in another place that that
"long-suffering is salvation." Has it been so with my readers, or have they
forgotten that every day or hour of that blessed trait of God’s character adds
to their condemnation? Are you an unbeliever still?-a man with whom God has been
striving -one on whom His long-suffering waits?

4th. There was a silent, eloquent appeal, too, going on for that one hundred and
twenty years. Noah’s ark was a-preparing; its strange superstructure rearing
itself daily before their eyes. It appealed to his inmost soul. It proved the
reality of the preacher’s faith-he was governed by the word he announced-it
formed himself. To others it was, perhaps, a jest, something to be laughed at by
the old-world wits in their humor. Perhaps science, too, would pronounce that it
could not float, could not bear its burden, or weather the storm. The
construction was faulty, the "lines" were not laid down according to the world’s
then best skill.

These four testimonies spake, day by day, in the ears of men, with the results
of which now we have to do. How many heard and believed them? I am bold enough
to say, Not one! The blessed Lord’s own words, which said, "They knew not, until
the flood came, and took them all away," decide me in believing this;
nevertheless they perished not without God’s testimony, but they believed not
after all. At last the one hundred and twenty years ran to their close. The
seasons had gone on as before. The sun had shone as brightly, and the earth had
yielded her increase, and corruption ripened for judgment in the sight of Him
who cannot look upon sin, and coalesce with it. The one hundred and twentieth
year drew to its close, and no sign was seen. Unbelief grew bold in its
wickedness. But "because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil."
(Ecclesiastes 8:11.) And now the blow of judgment is about to fall, when God
(none but He is worthy of such a deed) stayed the blow! How we read and recall
such a word as this-He is "not willing that any should perish." And the voice of
mercy is again heard: " Yet seven days!"-seven days more of the long-suffering
of God-seven days of the strivings of God’s Spirit-seven days for the preacher
to preach-seven days for one last sermon, one last appeal-an appeal that none
ever heard the like before; seven days for the beasts that perish to preach
their sermon to unbelieving man-more obedient to a Creator’s voice than he! They
trooped in by twos and twos, and by sevens, into the ark! The seven days became
six-five-four-three-two-one; and still no sign of impending wrath; unbelief
could triumph its short triumph still. The ox knew his owner, and the ass his
master’s crib, better than man his Creator’s voice. The stupor of death is over
men’s souls! There are times when the frenzy of despair is seen; and even, at
times, when hope is gone, and the soul has settled into dark despair; and dull
sense of ruin falls on men’s hearts in a shipwreck at sea, and men anticipate
the judgment, and plunge into the seething waters. Worse stupor here on men’s
souls, for no sign of a relenting heart or a troubled conscience is to be found.
The stupor of death has fallen on man, and God’s long-suffering is past. "The
Lord shut him [Noah] in," we read, and then went back to heaven.

Now came a strange sight- unknown in "the world that then was." From paradise,
and onwards, we read of no rain-"a mist came up, and watered the earth," before
the flood. Now the rain began to descend, and the waters began to rise, and
rise, and rise. Then the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the
windows of heaven were unstopped: God’s controversy waxes fiercer and fiercer,
and it rained upon the earth forty days and forty nights. The ark was lifted up
above the earth: and the high hills that were under the whole heaven were
covered: the mountains too were covered, and all flesh died. Every living
substance was destroyed, man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowls
of heaven. In these few short days the world’s life was gone! Noah only remained
alive, and they that were with him in the ark. The pall of mighty waters
shrouded the scene, wrapping all living in its folds of death and judgment. One
man remained, and they who were with him, saved by that which was death and
judgment to all the rest.

God has drawn a veil over the scene; the cries for mercy are not recorded: the
sense in men’s souls, in which despair now filled, and the details of all that
passed, are not told us. We may well believe the terrors of despair which filled
their hearts, as one by one dropped down into the flood of waters; but this has
not been recorded. Enough for Him to say that they were "eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,
and knew not till the flood came, and took them all away." Of Noah we read that
he possessed two things, which made him to differ from all the world around:
reverent faith in God’s way of escape; and holy fear of that mighty judgment of
which he had heard. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as
yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which
he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."
The fear of God-who, if He be God, must vindicate His outraged name by judgment,
the faith of Him who, before that day comes, has sent the Judge first to be the
Savior. To know Him as a Savior is never to know Him as a Judge; to know Him as
a Judge is never to know Him as a Savior. He has already been at the cross,
where, in holy and righteous judgment against sin, in Him who was made sin for
us, He has fully dealt with the whole question, and settled it forever! There He
bore the wrath-there He drank the cup-there He bore our sins-and there He died,
accomplishing redemption for all who come unto God by Him. But He is not there
now. Mark the crucifix that is presented religiously to man-Christ is there.
Man’s thought gets no further than Christ upon the cross, and unaccomplished
redemption! Christ is not there. He was there-He is not there now. God’s thought
is not a crucifix with Christ upon it, but off it, and in the glory! He did not
carry the sins He bore there; they were purged before He left the cross, and
blotted out forever for those who are His. He settled that question before ever
there was a Christian on the earth. All the sins of every Christian were future
when He bore them. Then, having purged them, He went on high, and sat down on
the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. The conscience is purged when we
believe; the sins were purged at the cross. Faith knows this; God knows this.
"The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise" (that of which Noah
became heir): "Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?"-God wants
no great thing of you-"or who shall descend into the deep?" Nay, "The word is
nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart. That is the word of faith which we
preach: that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in
thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." And
again: "Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed." Does your heart, my
reader, rejoice that He is long-suffering, and waits upon sinners? Well, have
you bowed to this, and believed? That His Spirit still strives with man? Yes,
but He has also said, He " shall not always strive." Say, then, have His
strivings found an answer in your soul? If so, how blessed is your lot! But you
may still be uncertain-still a doubting one. How often has it been preached that
that is a healthful state of soul! How often have souls doubted, and doubted
their lives through, until they found themselves in heaven, and then they could
doubt no more! Faith was mingled with fear too long, but now is passed away.
Faith has changed to sight, and fear is cast out by His perfect love forever! F.
G. P.


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  CHAPTER 65: S.     THE FORTY DAYS OF THE LORD'S TEMPTATION
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The Forty Days of the Lord’s Temptation

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the
devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an
hungered.”

"And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command
that these stones be made bread.”

"But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle
of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down;
for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their
hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a
stone.”

"Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy
God.”

"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him
all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All
these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”

"Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

"Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
(Matthew 4:1-11.)

“And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by
the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in
those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.”

"And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that
it be made bread.”

"And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word of God.”

"And the devil, taking him up into a high mountain, showed unto him all the
kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto him, All this
power will I give thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me;
and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all
shall be thine.”

"And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou shalt worship the
Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

"And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and
said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence; for it
is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee; and in
their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against
a stone.”

" And Jesus, answering, said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
thy God.

" And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a
season." (Luke 4:1-13.)

We may recall very easily another scene that was enacted about a thousand years
before this (of which we have two detailed accounts given by two of the writers
of the Gospels); the former happened in the valley of Elah, as narrated in 1
Samuel 17:1-58. David- then a stripling, and just about to enter on his public
service in the reign of Saul- had come down from his father’s house to the aid
of his brethren and the people of God, who were trembling in terror at the power
of the Philistines. Goliath, their champion, had challenged them each day for
forty days, when David arrived on the scene. At once he is rejected by his
brethren, and then entered into the conflict alone- a conflict, of which the
issue was complete victory for the armies of God, and deliverance for His
people, at that day.

It was, but a shadow, forecasting that greater conflict of the greater than
David, who came from His Father’s house to re-open that great question,
commenced four thousand years before in Paradise, between man and Satan, and to
show what the true "Man after God’s own heart" could do in the presence of the
foe. It was but a faint type, but it points, as all things did in God’s hand, to
Jesus.

If we examine these two accounts of the temptation of Christ, we find that He
not only enters on this scene and conflict to prove His right as the Second man,
the Lord from heaven, in all that in which the first man had failed; but He
begins that wondrous course of education- if I may so say- in which He learned
obedience by the things which He suffered; and suffered, being tempted, that He
might be able to speak a word in season unto him that is weary, and that He
might succor them also which are tempted; thus practically fitted to be a
merciful and faithful High Priest for us.

We are not told what passed in those "forty days and forty nights." God has
drawn a veil over that solemn conflict. But we are allowed to see its close-
"all the temptation" being finished.

We may note the difference in the order in which the temptations are spoken of
in the two Gospels. This, like everything in the word of God, is of importance,
and has its significance. In the account in Matthew, the order is this: you have
His obedience tested first, then His dependence. These are the two
characteristics of the new man- Christ in us- of which He was the grand and
blessed exemplar. Then to this obedient and dependent One are presented all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and He triumphs over the enemy and
all his toils. In the Gospel of Luke I think another lesson is presented to us.
Here we have the trinity of evil which came in, in Paradise when our first
parents fell. "The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of
life," then entered this fair scene: "when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make
one wise." This, then, is the order here. In verse 3, &c., we have the lust of
the flesh; in verse 5, the lust of the eye; and in verse 9, &c., the pride of
life. And at the close, we find that when the "devil had ended all the
temptation, he departed from him for a season." Then, at the close of His
course, He said to His disciples, at the end of John 14:1-31, on His way to the
garden of Gethsemane, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me."
This was the second time the tempter was permitted to cross His path. At the
beginning he sought to seduce Him from His path of obedience, and then to deter
Him from being the Victim in making atonement at the end. This was the time when
He sweat, as it were, great drops of blood in His agony, when accepting the cup
from His Father’s hand. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, which unfolds the
Priesthood and work of the blessed Lord, we find those two scenes alluded to
separately and distinctly. In Hebrews 4:15, the Spirit of God specially refers
to the close of the forty days’ temptations at the opening of His public
service, in the words, "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities: but was in all points tempted like as we,
except sin (χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας);" and in Hebrews 5:5 we have the other scene at the
close of His life: "who, in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up
prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able
to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." In the scene of
Gethsemane, in Matthew 26:1-75, we find those prayers, supplications, and strong
crying and tears referred to in verses 39, 42, and 44, His "prayer" deepening to
"supplication," and His "supplication" to "strong crying and tears," to be
answered fully on the morning of resurrection, and to be dried up forever when
He entered upon His heavenly joy and glory. But when we contrast those words
which describe His sorrow with those which describe the heart of the tried
saint, in Php 4:1-23, instead of "prayer and supplication, with strong crying
and tears," as with Him, He has taken the sting out of every bitter sorrow for
His own, and with them it is "prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving." He
has borne our sins- not one remains. He has tasted our sorrows- not one is
without His sympathy. In life and in death, and in life for evermore, He is our
perfect High Priest and Savior!

Over those "forty days" temptations God has drawn a veil. "Afterward [mark the
word] he hungered." Note now the wisdom of the foe. We shall always find that
the tempter adapts the temptation to our present state. With Christ it was ever
perfection. He hungered; but this was not sin; there was nothing evil in being
an hungered. Still, the temptation was suited to His then state by this father
of lies. Is not this the case with us? Does not the tempter know how to suit his
temptation to our present state? Does he not know what is suited to move our
lusts- to seduce us out of the path of obedience? Does he not know the love of
the world in our hearts?- the ambition of another- the pride of a third- the
vanity of another? Does he not see the covetousness of that heart- the lust
working in this? Does not the tempter know how to draw each one away of his own
lust, and entice such? There is a poor man struggling with the world and his
children’s need. The tempter tempts him to be discontented with his lot. There
is a godly woman with a bad husband. She is tempted to impatience with her life
of sorrow. There is that rich man who hoards his money. He has been often
deceived, he thinks, in giving it away. There is a corner of his heart over
which "covetous" may be written. He gives way to the temptation to close his
purse-strings, and the tempter has his victory.

I might go on in this strain; but all who read these words know well how the
thing that suited the "old man, which is corrupt," within them, has been
ministered to by the tempter, and how, perhaps unknown to themselves, they have
fallen his prey for the moment. I say "for the moment," for I speak of those who
are open to his devices- saints of God with the flesh in them. The poor child of
Adam is often left alone by the tempter; he is his sure and certain prey, and
needs no special watchful care from the enemy of Christ. With him, his course
seems in Satan’s highway, and unless grace turns his heart there is no need; his
own heart, and his own lusts, and the world around, answer well enough for him.
But Jesus "hungered." This was the will of God. Could it happen without such?
Nay. "Command that these stones be made bread," suggested the tempter. "Lo, I
come to do thy will, O God," had passed the lips of the Eternal Son, and now on
earth He will obey. Have we never satisfied our hunger, our need, at the expense
of the word of God? Look at our daily life, reader; does it not cut home deeply
into every motive of our life and ways? Our needs, too, each day, are they ever
satisfied independently of God? Alas, for the reply, even from the lips and
hearts of the brightest saints I How "Christ" detects our souls, yet, blessed be
His name, forms us after the image of Himself who thus lays us bare. Jesus came
to be the subject One, the will-less Man (though divinely entitled to have a
will, surely). To "command," then, was not for Him who came to show us how to
obey. To command the winds and waves was His, when in obedience to His Father
and God. To command for self and His need could never be, for "self" was never
there! To obey was all with Him in a scene formed by man under Satan’s power,
independently of God. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." No word had passed His "mouth" to "make
stones bread" to satisfy hunger, apart from His will. Thus was the tempter
stripped of his power; obedience to the word of God left him a conquered foe,
and Christ was victor by obedience over man’s mighty conqueror.

We have a nature capable of being drawn aside, and an ever watchful enemy ready
with his temptations. Christ had not this; but still, whether for Him or for us,
obedience is victory. We never can be in a single circumstance where we cannot-
nay, are not bound- to do the will of God, be that what it may. Thus we may ever
be conquerors, as He was here. But let us ever remember that it is the state of
soul in which we are to which the tempter presents his wile, adapting it to that
which is uppermost at the moment in our heart; and each moment of each day and
hour is the opportunity for his defeat or victory. If the latter, the soul may
be restored, but the scar remains, telling us of a moment’s defeat in us, and of
a victory of the enemy.

Now mark what ensues. The skilful general does not continue to attack the point
where he has been repulsed successfully, he changes his mode, and turns the nank
of his foe. How rapidly, too, is this accomplished by the successful tempter.
How well the human heart is known. How frequently have those who have resisted
well in his attacks fallen, forgetful that they were never nearer a fall than
when they had resisted well. In the case of Jesus how sudden was the change.
"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle
of the temple," &c. So with us: one thing is tried, and we resist, and foil the
foe; the next moment we fail where we least expected to have done so. Our
success was thought to be our own. We ceased to be dependent, and withdrew our
eyes from Him who withdraweth not His eyes from us; and thus, and only thus, we
fall. A heart distrustful of itself, which ever looks to Him, He succors with
His timely help to keep us from a fall. Will Jesus, too, be a dependent One, and
teach us so? The tempter says- using, as it were, the word of God, by which He
lived, that to which He had appealed as His guide, and the director of His life-
he says, "If thou be Son of God, cast thyself down; for it is written, He shall
give his angels charge concerning thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee
up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." The promise of God to
His Messiah who dwelt in the secret of the Most High, and lodged under the
shadow of Abraham’s God, who had made Jehovah His refuge and fortress; His God,
in whom He would trust. It was to Him this promise was made, just quoted by the
enemy. But mark the word which accompanied this promise; how God, as it were,
delighted to unite with His promise the dependent heart of this blessed One,
which only brought out His deep perfections. "Because thou hast made the Lord my
refuge, even the Most High thy habitation." This was the dependence of Jesus;
this, what drew forth the promise of the Lord just quoted by the enemy. He had
made His God His refuge and His trust: no need, then, to try would He be as good
as He had said- no need to test One fully trusted. We put the test to those we
do not fully trust, not to those we do. To do so, would be but to "tempt the
Lord." Satan sought to inspire Him with confidence in the word of God in spite
of disobedience. He quotes the promised security, omitting the required trust.
Jesus quotes that word to Israel which made the obedience the ground of His
security, and kept His blessings as the dependent Man

Oh, my reader, have we no word in this for our own souls? Have the promises of
our God been clung to, and even rejoiced in, by us when walking in disobedience?
Have we never beheld this in those we love and esteem as His own? What He has
done for them in salvation trusted in and enjoyed; while a disobedient pathway
speaks so plainly as to need no word from us to point it out? In this, too,
Jesus was the blessed Conqueror- in this the enemy of souls was foiled.

Again," (ver. 8.) What, "Again!" Yes, my reader, and “again," and onwards to the
end. No truce here in this path for us, no time here is allowed to put off the
armor of God, even for a moment. "Again," then, all the glory of the world is
presented to Him whose own it is, but refused by Him from any hand but from His
Father’s. The distant time might have been shortened, the path of suffering
spared, the cross and shame avoided. But this was not to be. The Giver was
valued in His gift, and the Son chose to have it alone from His Father’s hand.
Let the blessing come only from Him, and all would be well. The malignant foe is
discomfited, and Jesus stands at the close of this conflict a Victor! "Get thee
hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him
only shalt thou serve," closes the scene.

Satan departs from Him "for a season," and angels came and ministered unto Him.
Mark this striking scene. How it reminds one of that final day of victory which
ushers in the millennial glory: "The kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them," stretched out beneath His gaze; then all His own. Satan cast into the
bottomless pit for the thousand years’ restraint; God’s unfallen creatures
ministering to their true and only Lord with willing hearts and hands. It only
wanted His own blood-bought ones, His church, to complete the scene. But the day
is coming fast when she, too, will be there, and when Satan, as lightning, will
fall from heaven, and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of the
Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.

There is a calm for human hearts, too, which conquer in temptation even now- a
holy sense of deep dependence and of joy felt by those who have resisted, in the
strength of Christ, the tempter’s power. The angels who ministered to those who
shall inherit salvation may thus be employed even now. But the day is
approaching when every trial of our faith will come forth as gold tried in the
fire, and be found unto His praise, and honor, and glory, at the appearing of
Jesus Christ. Would not the Lord, too, as He looked across that scene of sin,
and sorrow, and evil which stretched before His view, as Satan was cast down
before Him- the obedient and dependent Man- would He not think of all who then
were His; and all who would come after, for whom He had thus learned what it was
to "suffer, being tempted," and how to speak a "word in season" to every weary
heart? This, too, ere He descended to traverse that path which led only to His
cross and shame. But remember, dear friends, that, while the tempter thinks of
your state of soul, and suits his temptations to your desires, there is Another,
too, who thinks of us, who "ever liveth to make intercession for us," One who
has been in conflict and in victory, and thus has shown us how to obey, and how
to conquer too. We have to do with a beaten foe, and to be sustained by his
Conqueror. But this must ever be as dependent ones, who, like Himself, should
"learn obedience by things which we suffer." He learned as One to whom to obey
was a new thing- new, for One who commanded all from eternity. We learn
obedience, too, as a new thing as well as He, but new to us in another way; new,
because God’s will is now taking its place in hearts hitherto opposed in will to
Him, but taking its place surely, though it may be slowly, in hearts renewed by
grace, to which the deepest joy will be, that His will shall flow in unhindered
blessedness in that scene of rest, from our restless wills, when God will rest
in His love forever. F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 66: S.     THE FORTY DAYS' SEARCHING OF CANAAN PART 1
========================================================================

The Forty Days’ Searching of Canaan Part 1 The Book of Numbers has a very
peculiar place and significance in the word of God. It is the Book of the
Wilderness: of the journeying or itinerary of the children of Israel, alter
redemption was accomplished, and they had been brought out of Egypt, across the
Red Sea, to go onwards and upwards to the Land of Canaan. The wilderness way
never was in the purpose of God for Israel, though it took forty years to
accomplish it; just as your pathway here, as a saint, does not enter into the
purpose of God for you. It is His place to test and try you, to see what is in
your heart; to teach you lessons which could be learned in no other place. But
God has not redeemed you for earth, but for heaven; not for this world, but for
glory; this is His purpose.

You will notice here a very solemn thing. This journey, which took forty years
to accomplish, was really a pathway of only eleven days. This we see from
Deuteronomy 1:1-46 "There are eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of
mount Seir, unto Kadesh Barnea."Kadesh is on the very borders of the land, at
the southeast extremity. But mark the next verse, "And it came to pass in the
fortieth year, in the eleventh month," &c. It was a short journey if taken
direct, right into the land of promise; but through unbelief it took forty long
weary years to accomplish it.

How long, may we not ask, would the journey have been, from the day that the
Lord had ascended up on high, after He had risen from the dead, and sent the
Holy Ghost to form the church of God, until He would return again, had she been
faithful to His desire, "that they all may be one, that the world may believe"?
(John 17:1-26) How soon all would have been gathered together, and the Lord have
taken her home! But soon all was ruin-and God’s longsuffering waited ever since,
in patience, to accomplish His purpose; and we ourselves are the fruit of man’s
unfaithfulness and His delay.

Let us not be discouraged then because of evil: God is able to turn it all to
blessing in His own way.

Now we know from 1 Corinthians 10:11, that "all these things happened unto them
[Israel] for examples [types], and are written for our admonition, upon whom the
ends of the world are come." It is not that the people are the type; but the
"things which happened unto them "-a most important distinction.

We will now turn to some passages of scripture to show that the wilderness never
entered into the purpose of God at all.

Let us look at Exodus 3:1-22, at "the section on the bush." When God appeared to
Moses by that strange sight, "A bush burned with fire, and the bush was not
consumed." Israel was in the furnace of Egypt; therefore God will be in the bush
burning with fire. He would identify Himself with His people-wherever they are,
when about to deliver.

We find this purpose told us in the seventh verse concerning Israel: "I have
surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their
cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.” How blessed to
think that even when no cry was addressed to Him, He could say, "I have seen; "
"I have heard;" "I know." These touching words unfold to us, three degrees of
suffering and sorrow in His own. There is the outward sorrow that can be seen by
others. This is the easiest to bear, and that in which often most sympathy is
known from others. It may be with us a sickness, or some outward thing which may
be recognized, and which others can share. Of this God says, "I have seen the
affliction of my people." There is a deeper sorrow than this, which may be
expressed by a cry out of the depths of the heart to God. "I have heard their
cry," saith the Lord. It is a sorrow which can be put in words before Him, or
before a sympathizing friend, and in which the heart often finds that friend’s
sympathy, and God Himself hears the cry which expressed the agony. But there is
a deeper sorrow still; a sorrow in which the kindest friend can have no
share-the sorrow that eats away the heart, and could not be expressed in words,
which, if it were possible to be expressed, had better be left untold; the
unuttered sorrow of the anguished heart, which cannot even be told to God in
words-the " groan which cannot be uttered." Such can only be laid before Him in
the silence of His presence, while the soul is sustained by those blessed, truly
blessed words of His, "I know their sorrows." What rest there is in these words!
"I have seen " what could be seen; "I have heard " the cry that others may have
heard; but "I know their sorrows " when no words could express them even to Me;
how much less even to the friend or companion who might truly sympathize! And "I
am come down to deliver ….and to bring them out of that land, unto a good land,
and a large; a land flowing with milk and honey." This, then, was His purpose.
Not one word of the waste deserts which lay between. When the Lawgiver comes
(Exodus 6:1-30) to announce this purpose to them, he tells them, in those
sevenfold "I wills" of the Lord: "I will bring you out," "I will rid you out of
their bondage," "I will redeem you," "I will take you to me," "I will be to you
a God," "I will bring you into the land," "I will give it you for an heritage."
Here, again, no word of the wilderness is expressed. It was not His purpose.

Thus faith takes up this wondrous purpose in its song-the first we ever find in
scripture-(Exodus 15:1-27): "Till the people pass over, O Lord, till the people
pass over which thou hast purchased. Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in
the mountain of thine inheritance." Through the wilderness? No; not a word about
it in the song of faith; for faith takes up God’s thoughts because He has
revealed them. So in Ephesians, we find no time, no earth, no wilderness there.
We are taken out of the depths of ruin, and set in the heavenly places in
Christ, without the pathway there at all. Like the robber on the cross beside
the Lord: he is taken from the depths of degradation at once into the paradise
of God with Christ!

Why, then, does the wilderness intervene? Why the pathway of sorrow and
distress, unredeemed by a single feature of good in ourselves, as from
ourselves? Why bring in that dreary journey where our failures are seen, and our
hearts exposed? The eighth chapter of Deuteronomy is the reply. It is a synopsis
of the whole book that is before us.

"And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee, these
forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what
was in thine heart," &c. There are two things God would always have us remember:
"The day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt, all the days of thy
life" (Deuteronomy 16:3), and "all the way" they passed through. Not an incident
was to be forgotten; but all was turned to blessing by Him who alone could say
it was “To do them good at the latter end." (Deuteronomy 8:16.)

It was the trying of their faith; and the testing of patience too; disclosing
what was in the hearts of His redeemed. He knew it well, before they were
tested; but they learned it, as we do, through those testings by the way.
Bitter, too, are these lessons; humbling us to the dust, as they should do; but
filling the heart with a deeper, fuller knowledge of Him who has redeemed us,
and of what was ever in His heart the while. The people of Israel are now at
Kadesh Barnes. (Numbers 13:1-33) They had gone the "eleven days’ " journey, and
were on the borders of the land of promise. There were its sunny plains,
stretching out before their view-the garden of the Lord; that good land, which
flowed with milk and honey. Their feet were almost treading upon their
possessions when in one short moment the prospect is clouded through unbelief!

These things are written for our admonition, that they may warn and instruct our
souls. I speak to you who are Christians, who profess to believe in Him-the
Christ of God. Many of you are true Christians; many, alas, only Christians in
name, Christless Christians and lost. Yet all profess His name. This is the
state of things that Christendom presents before the Lord. A place of privilege,
yet a place of solemn responsibility as well.

They had all come out of Egypt: all seemed to be nearing the land of Canaan; yet
thousands fell in the wilderness, and never got there at all. Why was this? The
answer is ready: "So we see they could not enter in because of unbelief."
(Hebrews 3:19.) "Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man
fall, after the same example of unbelief." (Hebrews 4:11) The people then were
at Kadesh Barnea- just a step from the land-where every hope, and every promise
would be fulfilled. Immediately the hitherto secret cloud of unbelief, not
larger at first than a man’s hand, is seen growing black, and full of sorrow. It
seemed so very wise; so like prudence and caution to send up men to spy out the
land. It looked well, as it reads in Numbers 13:1-33, and as if all was
according to the mind of the Lord. He spake to Moses saying, "Send thou men,
that they may search the land of Canaan, which I have given unto the children of
Israel." This is most solemn. There is no secret spring seen in the opening of
this chapter, which would lead us to suppose anything was wrong. Do we not find
oftentimes the same kind of thing in our own histories? You do a thing; you seem
fully to have the Lord’s mind and word for what you are then carrying out. I may
meet you in six months’ time, and you will say to me, "It was all unbelief "!
How solemn! How sad to discern that the Lord often permits a thing; yea, orders
a thing "because of unbelief," as He does here. The thermometer of faith had
gone down: the bright first song of faith in Exodus 15:1-27, which seized God’s
purpose, where faith, too, sets its seal to all that He had made known; all was
gone now. Prudence and forethought were now the guiding principles; and all
looked well for the moment. God then descended to their evil, and said to Moses,
"Send thou men! " Has God never done this with us, my brethren? Has He never met
our desires where we were? and we thought it a good sign, and that all seemed
according to His mind. Have we never discovered, after a while, that all was the
fruit of unbelief?

See Moses, too, the meekest man that was in all the earth, how he was deceived;
the very leader of the people of God. "And I said unto you, ye are come unto the
mountain of the Amorites, which the Lord our God doth give unto us. Behold the
Lord thy God hath set the land before thee; go up and possess it.... And ye came
near and said unto me... we will send men before us, and they shall search us
out the land, &c... And the saying pleased me well"! (Deuteronomy 1:1-46.) My
brethren, faith never reasons. Faith does not trust God for the things that are
difficult; but for the things that seem impossible! Do not say a thing is
difficult, and therefore we must trust God about it. Say rather it is
impossible, and therefore we will trust Him. The people’s faith, then, had gone
down, and the Lord directs them to send the spies. Nay, it seems as if the Lord
desired it so to be. Nay, alas, He permits it. How often have we gone on our
knees and pleaded with God for things; and how did it turn out? He gave us our
request and sent leanness into our souls. Have not lives been spared at the
pleadings of His saints, individually or collectively, which have been the
bitter sorrow of after years? Have not ways of life been sought to find our
daily bread withal, and have been given to us too; which afterward broke our
hearts with the sorrows they entailed? How fearful we grow as we advance in
life, lest we should ask anything from Him but the right thing-that which is
according to His own will. F. G. P.

(To be continued, the Lord willing.)


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  CHAPTER 67: S.     THE PERSONAL AND CORPORATE ACTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
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The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit THE HOLY SPIRIT AS A
QUICKENER AND A WITNESS.

"What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?”

" It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that
I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (John 6:63.)

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down in
perpetuity at the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies
be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected in perpetuity them
that are sanctified.”

"Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us; for after that he had said
before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith
the Lord: I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write
them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”

"Now where remission of these is there is no more offering for sin." (Hebrews
10:12-18.) In these two scriptures we find the two great truths which I desire
to present to my reader-

1. The action of the Holy Spirit of God here on earth in quickening the souls of
sinners, thus awakening them to the sense of their need in the sight of God;
and-

2. His presence here on earth as a Witness to us of the perfection of the work
of the Lord Jesus, and of its acceptance by God; thus providing an answer to the
awakened soul by a testimony of the value of that work by which it is saved.

First of all, let us be clear as to the fact, that while the Son of God is the
Actor by whom all divine actions are performed, the Spirit of God has always
been the direct Agent in every action of the Godhead which has ever been done,
whether of creation, or providence, or government, or redemption. We see
references to this in all parts of scripture, even as to those actions which
took place before the world was. In Genesis 1:14-19, where the appointment of
the sun and the moon to rule the day and the night was made, we read of God
having made these two great lights (the sun and the moon), "and the stars also."
And we read in Job 26:13, that the Spirit of God was the Agent in doing so, for
"by his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens." So also, when from the chaos of
matter found in Genesis 1:1, God would form the Adamic earth as an abode for
man, we read that “the Spirit of God brooded [or moved] upon the face of the
waters." He also filled Bezaleel, the son of Uri; and Aholiab, the son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and
understanding and knowledge to do all the work of the tabernacle in which God
was about to dwell in Israel. So also David had the pattern of the temple which
Solomon built "by the Spirit" from God. (1 Chronicles 28:12.) He came on the
prophets; inspired the word of God; gave Samson his great strength; and, in
short, all divine actions have ever been by the direct agency of the Holy
Spirit. This is seen more fully when we come to the New Testament, both in the
Lord’s ministry and acts of power ("by the Spirit of God cast out devils," &c.),
as afterward in the church of God formed at Pentecost, which brings us down to
the present interval. I only refer to these facts in passing, that we may have
this great truth established in our minds, before we pass on to the special
subject before us.

It will also be needful here to remark, that God had not fully revealed Himself
in the Old Testament days. He is known there under various names, in connection
with certain actions, and relationships entered into, whether in creation, or
after the fall of man, or with individual souls of the elect, or with the nation
of Israel- His elect earthly people. We find Him then as Elohim, and its
derivatives; Jehovah, El Shaddai (Almighty God), Gnelion; Adonai, and its
cognate words; as well as by other names.

Still, "One God" was the great truth presented, in contrast with the plurality
of the gods of the heathen; and to witness to this unity of the Godhead, Israel
was chosen and called apart from the world:- " Hear, O Israel; Jehovah, our God
is one Jehovah." (Deuteronomy 6:4.) But the Trinity of the Persons of the
Godhead was not then the subject of direct revelation. There were hints as to it
at all times; but the fact was not then made known. I might adduce many
instances of this, such as the plural character of the name of Elohim- God; and
also the thrice holy ascription of the seraphim in Isaiah 6:1-13 compared with
John 12:39-41, and with Acts 28:25-27. See also Isaiah 48:16, "Come ye near unto
me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time
that it was, there am I; and now the Lord God, and his Spirit hath sent me." The
triune Persons of the Godhead are here plainly seen.

It was therefore reserved for the advent of the Son of God into this world, when
He had definitely assumed manhood, and taken His place as man on earth, that the
Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead should be made known. This took place at
the moment when the Lord Jesus commenced His service on earth, at thirty years
of age. The Baptist had been arousing Israel with the testimony of the solemn
issues of his mission, and as the one who was going before the face of the Lord
to prepare His ways. His cry to Israel was "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand." The ax was laid at the root of the trees; it was not now the time of
the lopping off of branches; the root was reached, and every tree which bore not
good fruit was to be hewn down and cast into the fire. Judgment was impending
over all. The Lord appeared amongst the crowd which came to be baptized of John-
confessing their sins. John resents this approach of Jesus, "I have need to be
baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" The Messiah could pardon sins; but
could not confess them, for He had none. But grace was moving in the hearts of
Israel. God had touched their souls; and instead of saying, "We have Abraham to
our father," they were accepting their true place of convicted sinners- having
no title on any ground to the promises, but that of sovereign mercy. With this
movement of grace in their souls Jesus identifies Himself. The sheep of Israel
were in the waters; the Shepherd of Israel would be there too! And His reply to
the Baptist is, "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us [Me and thee]
to fulfill all righteousness; you to receive Israel’s confession of their sins;
I to go with the grace which brought them there; and to receive, and delight in
them, as the excellent of the earth." (Psalms 16:1-11) Straightway the heavens
were opened! An object worthy of all heaven was seen for the first time. The
Lord as a man on earth receives the Spirit of God. He is sealed as man by the
Holy Spirit- proof of the excellence and perfection of His Person, on which the
Spirit could descend as a dove and abide, without bloodshedding or sacrifice.
The Father’s voice is heard from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased." The whole Trinity is here first definitely made known- Father,
Son, and Spirit - the Godhead’s glory is revealed, in the Trinity of the Persons
by whom the operations of grace are performed. But we must now retrace our steps
a little, in order to ascertain the varied spheres in which the Spirit of God
had wrought with men in former days. We must, therefore, go back to the days
before the flood. Here we find that the strivings of God’s Spirit had for their
object the whole race of man. During the one hundred and twenty years previous
to that moment of judgment, the word was, "My Spirit shall not always strive
with man." (Genesis 6:3.) It could not be said at any subsequent period that the
race was the subject of His strivings. Hence we can say there is now really no
salvation for man as a race in scripture; while there is salvation for men. "He
turneth man to destruction; but saith, return ye children of men." (Psalms
90:3.) That period of dealing passed away. His Spirit strove for that allotted
time, and the flood of waters closed the scene. The race would no more be the
subject of such grace. But when the earth renewed itself, and men again
re-peopled its surface, and then were scattered at Babel for their pride, God
called out one man (Abraham) and in him a nation, by whom and in whom a fresh
dealing began. This was the fresh sphere in which or by which the Holy Spirit
would again carry on His operations- either working within, amidst that people
by the many ways of grace then used, or by that people to draw the nations of
the earth to that center of God’s ways. This fresh platform corrupted its way,
and was cast forth out of the land of Canaan. Still, the word for faith was, "My
Spirit remaineth among you; fear ye not." (Haggai 2:5.) And the godly remnant
was sustained in faith until Messiah came. When that time came, Jesus alone was
the One to whom the Spirit is given without measure. He is the Center to whom
all must now gather, in the ways of God. But, cast out and slain, He ascends to
heaven, and receives the Holy Spirit afresh there from the Father, and "shed
forth this [as said Peter on the day of Pentecost], which ye now see and hear."
(See Acts 2:1-47) This sending of the Spirit forms the disciples into a
spiritual house on earth, a " Habitation of God through the Spirit," which
becomes (as it is still, though enlarged into Christendom) the fresh sphere of
the operations of the Spirit of God. There is now no action of God’s Spirit
directly from heaven, on the heathen around us. There is no action apart from
that sphere where the Spirit of God now dwells. God works in it, or through it,
wherever His work is done. Many instances may be adduced to illustrate this
fact. God had lit up a light-bearer on the earth, to be the "Epistle of Christ,
known and read of all men:" "A city set on a hill which could not be hid." He
owns no other light, and works through no other channel than the church of God.
We see this in the Acts of the Apostles at the first, when this habitation of
God was formed. The Jews must be convicted by the Holy Spirit from that
platform, through the mouth of Peter, of their sin, and find God’s remedy for
it, and come into God’s habitation. The Gentile (Acts 10:1-48) who had been
hitherto drawn towards the God of Israel, and had loved His people, as the
channel of mercy in a former day, must now "send for Peter" and hear words of
him whereby "he and all his house should be saved." The angel sent from heaven
to him, can only point to the true sphere on earth where salvation would be
found. And although the church of God has corrupted her way in the earth, God
knows no other channel to those "without," nor sphere of action for His Spirit
but "within," where the good word of God is heard, and the operations of His
Spirit are carried on. The heathen or the Jew, whenever reached by the word of
the gospel, hears it through the testimony of Christianity. The professing
Christian within that sphere is the object of the varied operations of the
Spirit of God. We hear of a heathen, the chief man in ____, who used to reason,
"I made this canoe; some one formed the tree from which I made it;" but there
his reasoning ended. The ____ Christians had established a missionary settlement
in those parts many years before, but had found no fruit. At last this man came
to hear. He heard of a Creator God, and one who had given His Son when His
creature fell. "Ah," said he, "this is what I have been looking for," and he
embraced the gospel. He learns the truth through the light God had set up on
earth. His reasoning prepared the way for the testimony of Christ and His word
to shine in upon his heart; but he must learn it through God’s ordered way. Like
the centurion of old, whose faith eventually rose above that of Israel (Luke
7:1-50), he had loved their nation, and had built them a synagogue; yet now that
Christ had come, his faith was directed to a higher object, and he learns from
Christ Himself of His grace.

We hear, too (to cite a case from "within"), of two miners who met one day in
the depth of their mine in _____, when one said to the other, "Do you know that
there are people come about here preaching, who say you should know your sins
forgiven in this life?" "Oh," said his fellow, "that is nonsense; no one could
ever know that here." They parted for the moment, but happened to meet again in
the course of some days. "Do you know," said one to the other, "I know my sins
forgiven?" "You!" said his comrade; "impossible!" "Not at all," said the other;
"come and hear for yourself." He came, and he, too learned the gospel! Here was
one of the ten thousand cases "within," as the other was from "without,"
illustrating the sphere of action or channel of blessing, from which God does
not depart while present things remain, even though the light is dim, and the
candlestick no more shines with its early light. Still the Spirit of God remains
and works, abiding in the church of God during her whole pathway here, though
outwardly enlarged to Christendom.

I will now draw your attention to the way in which the promise of the Holy
Spirit came out during the Lord’s sojourn with His people on earth; that "other
Comforter," who was to take His place amongst them - "in you" and "with you"-
when the Lord Jesus was gone away. He would abide with them forever; while the
Lord Jesus must depart after His short sojourn with them on earth. This comes
out definitely in the gospel of John. In the gospel of Luke, when the hearts and
the consciences are so much exercised by the Lord; and the needs of the soul are
suggested in advance of their then state, we find the Lord, after teaching His
disciples to pray (Luke 11:1-54), and by parables showing how that while man
needed to be importuned to grant a request, when his own convenience was at
stake, God as a Father to His own, would "how much more, give the Holy Spirit to
them that ask him." Thus, while in reality the Spirit was given in answer to the
prayer of Jesus Himself to the Father (John 14:1-31), the Lord would produce
desires in His people’s hearts for what He was about to bestow. When we turn to
John 14:1-31, we learn that He was about to go away, and that ere He would
return again to receive them to Himself, the Holy Spirit would be given to dwell
with them- not for a few years, and then depart, as Jesus, but "forever." "I
will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide
with you forever. The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it
seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth [or ’shall
dwell’] with you, and shall be in you." (John 14:16-17.)

Again, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in
my name, he shall teach you of all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." (John 14:26.) In these passages
we find the Lord praying the Father for the Holy Spirit to be given: and then
the Father sending Him in the Son’s name. In John 15:26, yet another step in
advance of these, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send from the
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall
testify of me." In this passage the Lord Jesus, gone on high, is the sender of
the Holy Spirit Himself. "And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin,
and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on me.
Of righteousness, because I go unto my Father, and ye see me no more. Of
judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." (John 16:8-11.)

All this came to pass in Acts 2:1-47 When the "day of Pentecost was fully come
they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from
heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, which filled all the house where they were
sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it
sat upon each of them: and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." And in
explaining this, Peter says, "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are
witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he bath shed forth this,
which ye now see and hear." (Acts 2:1-4; Acts 2:32-33.) Thus was the promise
fulfilled- the Holy Spirit was sent, and filling each one, also filled all the
house where they were sitting- forming these disciples into a habitation of God
by the Spirit. This was from thence forth that sphere in or through which, as we
have seen, the work of grace would be carried on on earth.

Now, the faculty in man in which, and by which, the Spirit works is the
conscience; faith springs up in the soul thus wrought upon. The soul is thus
alive to its true state, in some measure, before God. This is, in general,
followed by great distress in the soul. But it is thus a proof of life being
there, and as a consequence the soul turns to God, though in misery. There are
times also when only the natural conscience of man is moved by the word or truth
used by the Holy Spirit; and the effect then is to cause the soul to turn away
from God. This is always the case where only the natural conscience of man is
roused. The case of Adam when he fell, and ate the forbidden fruit, proves this.
He became as God, knowing good and evil. This was conscience; the principle he
received when he fell, and when he accepted his responsibility in eating the
fruit which was forbidden. It was the interdict given of God to be the test if
his will would be subject to his Creator or not. The man and his wife fell- the
sense of guilt and nakedness was theirs, and as they cannot change it they seek
to hide it from each other. This being done, they heard the voice of the Lord
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hide from God. This
is the effect of the word on the natural conscience of the sinner: it drives him
away from God. But the moment God speaks to the man "Adam, where art thou?"- the
conscience is wrought upon by the word of God, and they come forth- guilty and
naked, yet they are drawn towards Him. This will be found the
constantly-presented fact in scripture, especially when conscience is directly
before us in God’s dealings in the New Testament. When awakened or quickened it
draws towards God, but often in misery. When unawakened, the effect of God’s
word, or the current truths of it, drives it away from Him even farther than
before; and man’s heart keeps him away from God. The case of the prodigal son,
so full of divine instruction for us, chews us the effect of the awakening of
the soul when absorbed in the wretchedness of the far country of this world. "
When he came to himself " the sense of his condition reached his conscience, and
at once the sense of goodness in God springs up in his soul, and he is drawn
towards Him, yet in deep self-judgment and misery. He finds no answer to this
awakening of soul until he meets the Father; then all is settled by the Father.
"God is love," and "God is light;" the only two things He is said to be. These
answer to the heart and conscience in man. The light deals with the conscience,
and exposes our true state as sinners in God’s sight; but the love attracts the
heart, and draws out hope in Him in the soul. One or other may and does
preponderate before God is fully known in Christ; and the soul is swayed between
the two until then. The light presses upon the conscience of the prodigal, and
shows him his unfitness; but the love sends him on his way to meet the Father.
All the while the Father had anticipated all, and was ready to meet both the
conscience and the heart with the answer they required. Many instances are found
in the word of God as to this work of the Holy Spirit, and many are seen around
us every day. But at times the natural conscience is wrought upon for a while by
the Spirit, and like Herod, in whom we see a man who, by hearing John Baptist
preaching, "did many things and heard him gladly " (Mark 6:1-56), yet returned
to his lusts and beheaded John; and when Christ stood before his judgment-seat
(Luke 23:1-56) was given over to these lusts, and Christ answered him never a
word. He was silent towards him, as one whose day was past.

Now in these truths we find the action of the Spirit of God upon souls in
awakening them to a sense of their state before God; a needful and preparatory
action to that of witnessing to that work of Christ, which provides an answer to
the need thus produced.

We will now examine the truth presented in the second scripture quoted at the
head of this paper. Of the first we have already treated, by showing the action
of the Holy Spirit as a quickener, producing life in the soul of the sinner by a
work in the conscience, effected by the word of God, the flesh profiting
nothing. "The words that I speak unto you [said the Lord] they are spirit, and
they are life." John 6:63 As to the second, we will turn to the Epistle to the
Hebrews- which we might characterize generally as God’s acceptance of the work
of Christ, and the Holy Spirit’s witness on earth of this great truth. Hebrews
9:1-28 is occupied specially in contrasting the old oft-repeated typical ritual
in Israel with the one perfect work of Christ, which obtained eternal redemption
for us by His offering Himself through the eternal Spirit without spot to God
once and for all. In the close of this chapter we find Him represented as
appearing in three distinct ways. In Hebrews 9:26 we read, "Now once, in the
consummation of the ages, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself." Then in Hebrews 9:24, "For Christ is not entered into the holy places
made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now
to appear in the presence of God for us." And in Hebrews 9:28, "So Christ was
once offered to bear the sins of many, and to them that look for him shall he
appear the second time, without sin unto salvation." The first of these
"appearings" was at the work of the cross, when the whole trial of the first man
was over, there to accomplish that work, the final results of which will be seen
in the state of eternal blessedness, in the new heavens and the new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness. The second is now going on; He appears before
the face of God for all who believe. And the third: His being seen by every eye,
at His second coming, will be to introduce us into the result of all His work.
This third appearing is manifestly future. In the two last verses of this
chapter we find the state of sinful man contrasted with that of those who
believe. One verse (27) begins with "As," and the other with "So," placing each
in contrast with the other, "As it is appointed unto men once to die, and after
this the judgment." (Hebrews 9:27) Here we find the two solemn certainties which
fill the heart of man with terror- "Death," and then the "judgment." What worlds
would not man give to escape these terrible realities! Then come the two blessed
certainties for those who believe- "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins
of many, and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without
sin unto salvation."( Hebrews 9:28) Blessed certainties indeed! The full result
of His first coming known, and our sins borne, and put away forever! The final
result of His second coming presented for our hope; He will come again, apart
from all question then of sin, for full and final salvation! We are placed,
then, between the first and second comings of the Lord; cleared from our guilt
by His first coming and His cross; the heart then set upon Him who is coming
again to take us into the fruition of all. With these two thoughts before us, we
will read the next chapter aright. It opens with the grand results of His first
coming, and work accomplished then, and closes with the hope of His return:-"
For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry."
(Hebrews 10:37.) But in the interval between these points, we find from this
chapter how the "Holy Ghost is a witness to us" here below of the perfections of
all. He calls upon our consciences to look back on the work of Jesus on the
cross, and to know that the worshipper once purged should have no more
conscience of sins. He leads us to look up into the holiest of all, and to enter
there, by faith and at rest, to praise our God; and He leads the heart to look
forward to that moment when Christ will come again, and the affections are at
rest.

How blessed! to have a Divine Person here as truly as it was so when the Lord
Himself was here on earth, bearing testimony to us- to every burdened, awakened
soul- "Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more!" How sweet for such to
bow to this assurance from this faith-worthy Witness! We need not search our own
poor hearts for such a testimony- they will but tell the opposite tale. A Divine
Person sent from heaven to dwell on earth; to bear witness that the one perfect
work of Christ is accepted of God, instead of the works of our ruined souls; to
lead our hearts, out of ourselves, to behold in Him the divinely-given answer to
our guilt. Here we may rest in the full assurance of faith- assured of God that
our sins and iniquities are remembered no more. This requires no experience in
us to realize; it needs but that the soul should turn to God, who thought of us
when ruined and lost; to His Son who came to accomplish all His will, who, when
He had done so, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; and to the
Holy Spirit who was sent from the Father and the Son to bring the news of God-
Father, Son, and Spirit, being all "for us," giving our souls perfect and
eternal rest!

Leading us, too, to look, with souls at rest, for Him who shall come again to
take us to be with Him and like Him forever!

It is thus, dear reader, that the Holy Spirit not only awakens our souls to this
need of a Savior, but becomes Himself the witness to us of that Savior’s work,
answering the awakened conscience with that which alone can purge our sins, and
cleanse our consciences, and make us as white as snow. F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 68: S.     THE PERSONAL AND CORPORATE ACTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: PART 2
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The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 2 THE HOLY SPIRIT AS
A SEAL. (Continued)

"In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If
any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the
scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But
this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for
the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)" (John
7:37-39.)

"For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him amen, unto the glory of
God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us,
is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our
hearts." (2 Corinthians 1:20-22.)

"In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of
your salvation; in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the
Holy Spirit of promise." (Ephesians 1:13.)

These passages present to us three great facts. First, that the Holy Spirit was
never given to dwell in the believer, until Jesus had accomplished the work of
redemption, and had entered His glory on high. He had wrought, as had the Lord
Jesus, before He came; and then as the Lord Jesus had come into the world, so
was the Holy Ghost sent down to dwell- not merely to work, as in former days.
This He did at Pentecost. Secondly, we see that God anoints with the Spirit, and
seals us in connection with the new place for man, "in Christ," risen from the
dead and ascended. And, thirdly, in the last-cited passage, we find that the
believer in Him receives the Spirit as a seal, as a consequence of his faith in
Christ.

I will ask you again, as in the former paper, to recall with me some of God’s
dealings in the Old Testament days, which will cause His present dealings to
stand out in contrast with all that went before.

I pass over the pro-patriarchal days, and commence with Abraham, in whom these
dealings of God began. We first find promise given to Abraham. "I will bless
thee," said the Lord to him, "and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless
them that bless thee.... and in thee shall all the families of the earth be
blessed." (Genesis 12:2-3.) These promises were confirmed and repeated to
Abraham at the figurative resurrection from the dead of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-24),
which was typical of Christ risen from the dead.

There were afterward promises given to David, as the root of the royalty of
Israel, Abraham and David being the two great vessels of promise on the earth.
But previously to David we find an intermediate dealing of God with Israel by
the law, which brought Israel under a covenant of faithfulness on their part to
perform the terms of a covenant which was the ground of their blessing or
otherwise. In the promises there was but one party who entered into certain
obligations in perfect free will, to fail in which would be for God, who made
them to fail- which can never be. If I were to say to a person, "I will give you
this book to-morrow," and I did not do so, it is I that would fail. But were I
to say, "I will give you this book to-morrow if you do so-and-so," it depends
both on his accomplishing the terms proposed, and then on my fulfilling my
promise on his having complied with the conditions. This would be the principle
of law; that of promise. If the latter were to fail, God would fail, which He
cannot; all His promises and gifts and calling are without repentance.

Now, these dealings of God were going on in the Old Testament: Israel was being
tested under law, and the promises of God, given before the law, stood in
abeyance until God’s due time came. At last Jesus came to this world- "Born of a
woman," through whom sin had entered the world; and "born under the law,"
through which Israel was under the curse. In Him all the promises of God were
yea and amen. In His own Person He embodied them all, whether to Abraham or to
David; the former, the root of a race; the latter, the root of royalty in
Israel. But He was cast out and slain. Those who had the promises rejected them
when they were fulfilled in Christ. And when this was so, and the work of the
cross was accomplished, and Christ had risen and gone on high, a new thing is
presented for faith, which is neither law, under which man was condemned, nor
promise, which was now fulfilled. This was accomplishment; redemption was
completed, and God’s righteousness established; His truth manifested, and His
grace set free to act in sovereignty outside all former dealings, and to bring
out what was in His mind before the foundation of the world.

Hence when the cross was past we have the "nows" of scripture brought fully out.

1st. "Now, once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself." This was Christ upon the cross. (Hebrews 9:1-28)

2nd. "Now the righteousness of God is manifested" apart from the law. This was
seen in Christ upon the throne of God. (Romans 3:21.)

3rd. "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in
Christ Jesus before the world began. But is now made manifest by the appearing
of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and
incorruptibility to light by the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:9-10.) This was by the
Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.

4th. And again, "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in
heavenly places might be known by means of the church, the manifold wisdom of
God." (Ephesians 3:10.) In this we find the church of God displayed.

Let me here remark that we possess four things (with many others) which were
never known in the Old Testament times:- The righteousness of God as the ground
of His grace to us; a purged conscience through the blood of Christ; and, as a
consequence, the indwelling of the Spirit; and, still more so, the knowledge of
the Father. All these are ours now through the accomplished work of Christ

Let us, also, state that the new place for man as "in Christ" before God was
never known, nor could it be, until Jesus had taken His place in a new sphere
for man - risen from among the dead. The patriarchs and saints in Old Testament
days could not be said to be "in Christ," nor could such be said of those who
were with Him in His sojourn here on earth. It would have no meaning to speak of
such being "in Christ." I name this, for it is in connection with this new place
for man, risen with Christ, as of a new creation- "If any man be in Christ
[there is] a new creation," 2 Corinthians 5:17 - that the Holy Spirit is given.
This new state for the believer came out when the Lord went up on high; and
carries with it the complete blotting out of his whole previous state, with the
guilt thereto attached, as a child of Adam.

We come now to what happens as a consequence of faith in the Holy Spirit’s
witness of the work of Christ when received by faith. It is that the Holy Spirit
is given him as a Seal; I say a "consequence," because it does not need that the
believer should ask for the Spirit to be given him (though when he possesses the
Holy Ghost he may seek to be filled with the Spirit as a true state indeed); but
when the work of Christ is presented, and received by the awakened soul (for it
is not a sinner that is sealed, but a believer) as an answer to his need of
conscience, the Holy Spirit follows, as from God, who sets His seal of
appropriation upon the person so blest. Just as Paul could appeal to the
Galatians, "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of
faith?" Of course it was by the "hearing of faith."

Many instances may be seen in the Acts of the Apostles which illustrate this;
such as that of the disciples who had previously been quickened as sinners
during the Lord’s lifetime, and who received the Holy Spirit subsequently as
believers on the day of Pentecost. (Acts 2:1-47) So also the Samaritans, through
Philip’s preaching (Acts 8:1-40), afterward receiving the Holy Ghost. Saul of
Tarsus also, when quickened by the voice of Jesus from heaven, is three days
after sealed with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 9:1-43)

Cornelius, a truly-converted soul, who prayed to God always, &c., must send for
Peter, and hear words of him for salvation; and, as a consequence, the Spirit of
God seals those who heard and received the word of grace. In the passage from 2
Corinthians 1:1-24, already referred to, we learn the progress of this great
dealing of God very simply. Christ, in whom all the promises of God were yea and
amen, is cast out and slain, and the children of Abraham who had them are
themselves cast out- having rejected them all in Christ. But all this only makes
this new place for the redeemed, and "God stablishes us [Jews] with you
[Gentiles] in Christ" risen, where there is neither Jew nor Gentile- and in
keeping with this new place He anoints us with the Spirit. This unction or
anointing is for power over the works of the flesh and knowledge of all things-
we "have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things." "Who hath also
sealed us, and given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." The same
action of the Holy Ghost, doubtless, but having another character, that is, an
appropriation on God’s part of those whom He has marked as His own, and an
earnest to us of all that is coming in a future day, as in Ephesians "An earnest
of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession."

We will now examine some passages of scripture which show the effect of the
possession of the Spirit individually in us.

1st. First we turn to Romans 5:5, &c., where we read, "The love of God is shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us."

Here is the first effect of the possession of the Spirit. We are assured of the
love of God, who has saved us; it is assured to the heart. But lest in
possessing the Spirit we should become mystical or introspective; lest we should
turn inwardly upon ourselves to seek for evidences of this love of God,
immediately the eye is turned outward upon that which is the full proof of God’s
love to us in the verses which follow. There we learn how "God commends his own
love " (this is omitted, but is in the Greek) toward us in that while we were
yet sinners Christ died for us. "Without strength" to appropriate this love of
God; "sinners," still in our sins; "ungodly," for whom Christ died; and
"enemies," who needed to be reconciled! How full and abundant is the proof of
that love which the Holy Ghost sheds abroad in our hearts- pointing us to God,
outside ourselves; yet giving the assurance of it, and the joy of it within!

2nd. Then in Romans 8:9 we are assured that we "are not in the flesh, but in the
Spirit, if so be [or since it is true] that the Spirit of God dwells in us." The
standing is changed from "in Adam" to "in Christ," from "in the flesh” to "in
the Spirit," and all proved by the Spirit being given unto us. God reveals this,
faith receives it, and the Holy Spirit makes it good in the soul.

3rd. Again, in 1 Corinthians 2:12, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the
world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things freely
given to us of God." Here "the things" which are ours are made known to us by
the Spirit. In the Old Testament it was said, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for
them that wait for him." But now our portion is all made plain, to be realized
and possessed. "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit."

4th. Union with Christ, too, is known by our souls, for "He that is joined unto
the Lord is one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 6:17.) By the Spirit we know that we are
in Christ, and Christ in us.

5th. Liberty is enjoyed in that new sphere to which we are brought. "Where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The freedom of a soul which has done
with all questions as to self, as to Satan, and as to God. Freedom with the
Father in looking up to Him on high: freedom, too, with ourselves from all the
workings of lust and flesh within. Alas, how little realized, but, nevertheless,
ministered unto us by the Spirit of God given us from Christ in glory.

6th. Sonship, too, is known and enjoyed. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of his
Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father." (Galatians 4:6.) Thus we are
introduced into that positive relationship with the Father- as already the
children of God.

7th. Power for our walk here on earth over the works of the flesh is found in
the possession of the Holy Ghost. "Walk," says the apostle, "in the Spirit, and
ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16-23.) Walking after
the Spirit is ever to have the soul’s vision on Him whom the Spirit glorifies.
If Christ is before the soul, then the workings of the flesh are kept in the
place of death. It is not by the effort to reduce ourselves to order and manage
ourselves, but by the superior occupation with the Lord Himself. This gives
power, not intrinsic power in one’s own soul, but in the sense of weakness in
ourselves and as over ourselves; the eye is turned on Him, and power comes forth
to draw the heart after Him, and thus gives us victory over the flesh.

8th. Our Inheritance with Christ is made sure to us by the Spirit of promise
given us. (Ephesians 1:13-14.) He waits to redeem that inheritance of all
created things from the enemy’s hand. He purchased it by His blood when here;
took it with its load of guilt upon it, and died to redeem it all. But still the
enemy is the usurper, and must be cast out. Power must be put forth to deliver
it from the bondage in which it groans. Until then we also wait, but are sealed
with the Spirit until the day of its redemption, when we shall inherit all as
joint-heirs with Christ.

9th. We must "not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed until the
day of redemption." (Ephesians 4:30.) How often, instead of being the source of
joy in Christ, and in all that is ours, is the Spirit of God turned into a
Rebuker of us! We turn after the things of time and sense; we run after the
things of the world, and we wonder why our souls are not in their fresh joy. Ah,
the Spirit is grieved; the soil is felt by that most intimate Guest who dwells
in us; and in faithful love we are made to feel the stain, the heart is rebuked,
and the soul made to feel its pain, and brought back humbled, but instructed to
hearken afresh to this word to us, " Grieve [him] not!

10th. Thus we find that this same blessed Guest within us, is as a well of water
springing up into everlasting life, the source and power of prayer, of singing
the praises of God, of worship, too. "I will pray with the Spirit, and I will
pray with the understanding also." (1 Corinthians 14:15) "Praying always, with
all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." (Ephesians 6:18.) " God is a Spirit,
and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24.) And
"We are the circumcision, which worship God by the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ
Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." (Php 3:2.)

Thus, dear friends, we see how great a sphere of enjoyment and privilege, and
responsibility, too, is opened up to its by the possession of the Spirit of God-
given us as a Seal, consequent upon our faith in the work of Christ. The love of
God is assured to our hearts: the New state, as "in the Spirit," is made ours.
The Things which God bath freely given us are made known. Our Union with Christ
is by the Spirit given us. The true liberty of a saint from self and flesh and
Satan’s power, and with our God, too, is enjoyed. By the Spirit of adoption we
know our Sonship with the Father. Power for our walking outside the lusts of the
flesh is ours. Our Inheritance is made sure, and we must not Grieve the Holy
Spirit of God; and by the Spirit given us we Pray and Sing Praises, and Worship
the Father who has sought and found us, and made us vessels for His eternal
praise! F. G. P.


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  CHAPTER 69: S.     THE PERSONAL AND CORPORATE ACTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: PART 3
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The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 3 (Continued from
page 157.) III. THE "BODY OF CHRIST," FORMED BY THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

" For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one
body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all
baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or
free; and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one
member, but many."-1 Corinthians 12:12-14. " There is one body, and one
Spirit."-Ephesians 4:4.

WE come now to examine, not the individual action, on persons, of the Spirit of
God, but His corporate action, seen in the formation of the church of God on
earth-the " body of Christ."

Before doing so, I would note that the saint now has two callings: the one, an
individual calling; the other, a. corporate one. They are not confused, nor can
they be separated. The first of these is his "heavenly calling;" the second, his
church calling, as a member of the body of Christ. We must therefore examine
each of these in some detail; for we shall find that certain scriptures in the
New Testament treat of the one, and certain of the other. This shows us why it
is that in certain scriptures of the New Testament we find ourselves in company
with Abraham, and David, and other worthies of the Old Testament, while in other
scriptures we find ourselves apart from them altogether, and they are unnoticed,
unless it may be casually, and in an inferior place in God’s glory. They may be
seen as " principalities and powers," while we are the body of Him who is set
above them-" the fullness of him who filleth all in all."

Now, as soon as the earth became the scene of divine disappointment, when man
fell, God retired from the scene, and the elect became " strangers and pilgrims
in the earth," being called out of it to seek " another and a better country."
When God returned to visit the elect in it, He did so in gracious and
condescending love; and when He concluded His momentary sojourn, eating with and
sharing their hospitality, He then " arose and went his way," for sin was there;
and in such a scene God could not dwell. This is beautifully illustrated in His
visit to Abraham, in Genesis 18:1-33 This, then, was the "heavenly calling"-a
calling out of the earth, by the revelation of Himself, to another scene. This
calling is witnessed in all periods and ages of the world by the elect, or some
typical person, which presents to us the features of this vocation in their day.

1st. I t is witnessed in the antediluvian days, in Enoch, the seventh from Adam.
The earth was corrupt before God; all flesh had corrupted his way in the earth;
and " Enoch walked with God." Wonderful testimony! embracing all that man could
desire. For three hundred years (Genesis 5:1-32), as the world was ripening for
judgment, every step of Enoch was " with God." His course began at the birth of
his child; just as some striking incident in a man’s history becomes the divine
voice to his soul. He names his son Methuselah, which signifies, " At his death
he sends it."* Within the immediate circle of his family he witnessed that " the
Lord cometh" in His judgments on the earth. His outward testimony amongst men
was, "Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute
judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their
ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches
which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." (Jude 1:14-15.) " By faith Enoch
was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had
translated him; for before his translation he had this testimony, that he
pleased God."

(* Or, " He dies, and then the arrow;" a figurative way of expressing that at
his son’s death the arrow of destruction would speed. its way. Methuselah lived
up to the moment of the flood, and. passed away just as it came.) (Hebrews
11:5.) "He walked with God, and was not, for God took him." (Genesis 5:1-32)

2nd. It was witnessed in the patriarchal clays in Abraham. The God of glory
appeared unto him, and said, " Get thee out of thy country, and thy kindred, and
thy father’s house, and come into the land that I will chew thee." He does so at
last, and then when there, and he had left all behind, God says, " to thy seed
will I give this land." Here, then, was this man, outside of all he was linked
to, and having nothing on earth but his tent and his altar-a stranger and a
worshipper in the earth; a pilgrim journeying to a " city which had foundations,
whose builder and maker was God." He possesses nothing here but a sepulcher,
purchased from the sons of Heth, with these words on his lips, " I am a stranger
and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that
I may bury my dead out of my sight." (Genesis 23:4.)

3rd. It was witnessed in the Mosaic age by the great leader of the people of
God. "I pray thee," said he, " let me go over and see the good land that is
beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the Lord.... would not
hear me; and the Lord said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me
of this matter." " And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain
of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed
him all the land.... and the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware
unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed:
I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over
thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of
Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth his sepulcher unto this day."
(Deuteronomy 3:1-29; Deuteronomy 34:1-12)

4th. It is expressed in the royal days by David, in the words which he sang by
the Spirit as the sweet Psalmist of Israel: " Hear my prayer, 0 Lord, and give
ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee,
and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength
before I go hence, and be no more." (Psalms 39:12-13.)

5th. And in the prophetic age in Elijah, who went up to heaven, at the close of
his prophetic task, by a whirlwind, with a chariot and horses of fire.

6th. And lastly, in the Christian period, in ourselves, with our own heavenly
hope, while here on earth as " strangers and pilgrims," " partakers of the
heavenly calling," and waiting for God’s Son from heaven to receive us unto
Himself, that where He is there we may be also.*

(* There will be another company of this great " heavenly calling" seen in the
martyred remnant, in the last final crisis of the earth before the appearing of
Christ, who receive a heavenly reward, and are caught up there, having been
slain for the testimony of Jesus, and thus losing their earthly place in the
earthly kingdom. They also belong to the " first resurrection.") In all this we
see that we follow in the great line of saints, patriarchs and prophets, kings
and people who have journeyed onwards through and out of this scene to their
rest. We see them as "the spirits of just men made perfect," but awaiting the
"first resurrection," when they will with us, as "children of the resurrection,"
be clothed with their resurrection-bodies, and enter into their full heavenly
glory. In the dispensation in which each lived, God marked and defined the
manner in which they were to walk in existing things here on earth. Sometimes
this was by an individual walk with God; at others as a member of His elect
nation; but in none of them, before the present Christian interval, do we find
that in which we ourselves are called to walk in, as members of the body of
Christ, formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Hence we find ourselves, not only in company with that great army of saints from
the beginning to the end, having our place in that heavenly calling; but having
a definite place in the counsels of God, which they will never share. In the
church of God He glorifies Himself in a way beyond all that shall ever be. In us
He displays in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace, and His
kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. While He has given His Son, as a Man, a
place, setting Him above all principalities and powers, not only in this age,
but in that which is to come, He has given us to be His bride, His body, His
joint-heirs; the Eve of the Second Adam for the Paradise of God! It was His
purpose " before the foundation of the world," " His eternal purpose in Christ
Jesus." Still He kept the best wine to the last; He kept as His secret the
mystery " hid in God," to display at last to those " principalities and powers
in the heavenlies the manifold wisdom of God." He calls it the " unsearchable
riches of Christ." None ever anticipated it in His ways. All else about Christ
was " searchable " in the Old Testament Scriptures. His Incarnation was there,
His life of suffering, His atoning death, His burial, His resurrection, His
ascension to the right hand of God, His receiving gifts in the man (Himself),
His coming in power and glory, His glorious reign. All these are to be found;
but that which lay between His going on high, and His coming again-the valley
that lay between the mountain tops, which when we behold them, is hidden from
our view-this was never told to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to His
holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This was that which was "
unsearchable," " past finding out," in His untraceable ways! But we must now
examine the scriptures as to the formation of this body, by the baptism of the
Spirit. We will therefore look at the first prophetic mention of this "baptism"
before it took place. We hear it first, then, from the lips of John the Baptist,
the forerunner of Jesus. When announcing Him he says (Matthew 3:11), "He shall
baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." In Mark 1:8, the announcement
runs, "I indeed baptize you with water; but he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost." In Luke 3:16, it is, " I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier
than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose; he shall
baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." While in John 1:33, we read,
"And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said
unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him,
the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost." And lastly, in Acts 1:5,
the Lord tells His -disciples, " For John truly baptized with water: but ye
shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence."

Here, then, we find the several passages of scripture where this baptism of the
Spirit is formally announced. It will be seen that there is the additional
baptism of fire named in certain of these passages, in keeping with the
scriptures where they are found.

We are possibly aware that the four Gospels present Christ in various ways and
characters. Matthew presents Him as the Son of Abraham and Son of David-the
vessels of promise and Royalty in Israel. "He [thus] came unto his own, and his
own people received him not;" and He will return to them again in power and
great glory; thus having to do, in His first and second comings, both with grace
and with judgment. Hence we have these two baptisms-that of the Holy Ghost,
having to do with grace, and that of fire, expressive of judgment by-and-by. In
Mark’s Gospel we have Christ presented as the Servant of God, " who went about
doing good." As such, it is plain He has only to do with grace, hence in keeping
with this characteristic we find in Mark only the one baptism-of the Holy
Ghost-named. Now, in Luke we have the Lord’s human genealogy and His Person
presented to us as the " Son of Man." In keeping with which, and because He has
so blessedly, in that character, to do with grace, as well as with all judicial
actions, the baptism of the Holy Ghost and that of fire are both named. God "
has given him authority to ’execute judgment also, because he is the Son of
Man." (John 5:27.) But all will see that as the Son of the Father-the Son of
God. as John’s Gospel presents Him He would only have to do with grace;
therefore there is but one baptism, that of the Holy Ghost, mentioned. This same
reason shows us why, in Acts 1:1-26, only one baptism, of the Spirit, is named,
because the Acts of the Apostles present to us the work of grace begun after the
cross is there unfolded to us. This makes all plain.

Now, "when the day of Pentecost was fully come," this baptism of the Spirit took
place. And it may be well to remark here that this baptism never has to do with
an individual saint, but with a number of persons, as a corporate action; also
that once it took place it never was repeated. These remarks will be found to
have great importance in our true apprehension of the church of God or body of
Christ. The number of disciples together in prayer on the day of Pentecost were
thus acted upon-they were baptized into one body at that moment. Previously
quickened and drawn after Christ, this fresh action changes their status from
being mere individual believers to that of a body united to its Head in heaven.
Christ had gone up there after redemption was accomplished, and He has entered
into a new state for man by resurrection, and a new place for man, as ascended
and seated in heavenly places. And in connection with this new state and new
place, the Holy Ghost acts as such down from heaven, forming this " one body "
in union with Christ and with each other, as " members of Christ." This is the
only " membership " known in the word of God.

Now, here I would remark that, when this body was formed at Pentecost no one
knew anything about it; because it was needful that a fresh offer be made, that
Christ would return to Israel as a nation and bring in the times of the
restitution of all things spoken of by the prophets, and bless His people on
earth. The early chapters of Acts are taken up with this tentative action
towards that people; and it closed in the martyrdom of Stephen, and the message
was sent after Christ, " We will not have this man to reign over us." The ground
was. now cleared to bring out fully the " eternal purpose " of God; and Saul of
Tarsus was converted by a heavenly Christ, and " separated from the people
[Israel] and from the Gentiles, unto whom [said the Lord] I now send. thee." He
was heavenly in his origin and destiny and ministry, to bring out that body,
formed by the Spirit’s baptism on earth, while Christ hid His face from the
house of Israel; those " unsearchable riches" never before made known to the
sons of men; that valley between the mountain tops hitherto undiscovered and
undisclosed. Saul of Tarsus hears from the Lord Himself that the saints on earth
whom he was persecuting were Himself. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" "I
am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise [said he] and stand upon thy feet; for
I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a
witness both of those things which thou halt seen [that is, Christ in glory] and
of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." (Acts 26:15-16.) Here he
receives an intimation that further revelations would be given at some
convenient time not then arrived.

Now all this happened after the whole assembly was scattered, at the persecution
which arose about the death of Stephen, in Jerusalem. Outwardly, what was
gathered together and formed in Jerusalem was destroyed; but Paul receives (he
only of all the apostles ever speaks of the church of God) the revelation of
that which had been formed at Pentecost into a divine unity, as one body, which
never could be destroyed; nor could its unity ever be broken; God holds the
unity of the body in His own hands. The special revelations given to Paul (with
that of his ministry generally), are noticed by his drawing marked attention to
them in connection with this great subject. They are four in number: 1st. The
unity of the body, " How, that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery
[as I wrote afore in few words] which in other ages was not made known unto the
sons of men." (Ephesians 3:1-21) He then proceeds to unfold this body, composed
of Jew and Gentile, yet being neither when thus united into one. 2nd. He
received a revelation of the Lord’s Supper in connection with these truths
committed to him, " I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto
you," &c., and he gives the details of the supper (1 Corinthians 11:23, &c.),
adding to it several new features not before given by the Lord in His
institution of it on earth; but as now freshly instituted from heaven, as the
Head of His body, which He was not until He went there. One marked feature being
that it becomes, when observed in its truth, the symbol of the unity of the body
of Christ on earth. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion
of the blood of Christ? The loaf which we break, is it not the communion of the
body of Christ? For we, being many, are one loaf, one body; for we are all
partakers of that one loaf." (1 Corinthians 10:16-17.) A third marked revelation
we find in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58, in connection with the resurrection of the
saints who have fallen asleep, and the being changed of those who do not fall
asleep before Christ comes. " Behold," he says, "I show you a mystery: We shall
not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed." The fourth we find in 1 Thessalonians
4:1-18," For this we say unto you, by the word of the Lord, that we which are
alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not go before them which are
asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with voice
of the Archangel and the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

Thus we have in these four revelations: the unity of the body of Christ; the
symbol of its unity on earth in the Supper; the first resurrection of the
sleeping saints, and change of the living; and then the rapture of all to the
glory of God. These embrace the constitution, employment, resurrection, and
catching up, or rapture from this scene of the church of God or body of Christ;
and form a complete and comprehensive summary of its whole truth.

Now, I must still endeavor to present more distinctly the present actuality of
this body as here on earth, where as to personal place the Holy Ghost is. It is
here that all its members are seen at one given time-as, for instance, while I
speak these words. It is true that when there is a general abstract statement of
this body as the fullness of Christ, "the church which is his body, the fullness
[or, complement] of him that filleth all in all " (Ephesians 1:22-23), there is
no time contemplated; and then the body is seen in union with Christ in heavenly
places, as a matter of counsel, in connection with His exaltation as Man. But in
all other places in scripture when this body is mentioned, it only includes
those members of Christ who are alive on earth at any given moment of its
existence as you hear these words! For there as to personal place the Holy Ghost
is, who constitutes its unity, as dwelling in each member, and baptizing all
into one body.

Let us put a figure as to this. The ----th regiment of the British army fought in the battle of Waterloo. It is now in the roll of the army of England, having its identity, and the same number and name as then. Yet all its members have died off, not one man being in it now that was then in its strength. Others have come in, and filled up the ranks, and though the members are changed, the regiment is the same. So with the body of Christ; those who composed it in Paul’s day have died off, and others have come in, and filled up the ranks. Those who sleep, their bodies are in the dust, and their spirits with the Lord. As to personal place, they have lost their connection with the body for the present. They are of it, though not in it, now. They will all take their place in it when it is removed from this scene. Here, -" If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it," &c. Suffering is not the part of those who have passed away from present connection with it.

Formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, it has been carried along
those eighteen centuries past in unbroken unity, souls passing away, and others
coming in; and it is here to-day on earth for God and for faith, as truly as
when Paul wrote, " There is one body and one spirit." The baptism never was
repeated, but individual souls have been quickened and sealed, and thus united
individually to that which the Holy Ghost formed by His baptism at Pentecost;
and all its members can now, therefore, say, " by one Spirit are we all baptized
into one body," because we belong to that which was then definitely and
permanently formed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

There is one further important truth in connection with this doctrine, or the
body, to which I would now refer before closing this paper. It is this-that
wherever locally the members of this body were seen together " in assembly,"
they were always treated as the body: this, of course, not separating them from
the whole body on earth, but treated of God, as acting on the ground and
principle of the body, and in unity with the whole body on earth. This is found
in 1 Corinthians 12:27 : " Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in
particular." Here the principle is applied. The apostle had been teaching the
great doctrine of the body (vers. 12-26) first, its unity, and then the
diversity of its members, each having (whether comely or uncomely members) their
place in the whole; and he applies this practically to the local assembly at
Corinth, in the verse (27) above quoted.

This, then, is the body of Christ; this the corporate place of every member of
Christ on earth; this the only membership known in scripture. The divine,
positive fact and truth of that which no ruin of its outward unity, no
corruption of Christendom, can ever mar or destroy. Grasping this in our soul’s
consciousness, and by faith, we have something stable, amidst the ruins of the
professing church, on which to act; on which to rest in the last days. Of the
practical use of the truth we shall hope to treat in the concluding paper. F. G.
P.


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  CHAPTER 70: S.     THE PERSONAL AND CORPORATE ACTIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: PART 4
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The Personal and Corporate Actions of the Holy Spirit: Part 4 THE WALK OF SAINTS
ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT.

"Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit."-Ephesians 4:8.

" Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord, depart from iniquity."-2
Timothy 2:17. OUR present subject is to examine and ascertain, in some measure,
from scripture what our path is at the present time, and our responsibility in
connection with the Holy Spirit’s presence on earth, as members of the body of
Christ, formed by His presence and baptism. May the blessed Lord guide us, as
those who would say, " Show me now thy way," and " Give me grace to walk
therein."

First of all, then, we must examine the testimonies of scripture as to the state
of ruin into which the professing church has fallen, and in which we ourselves
are involved. God permitted the roots and germs of all this state to come out in
the apostolic days, so that He might give us the testimony of His word as to it
all, and mark a path for His own in the scene of confusion which exists around
us. We cannot escape from it to go outside; nor, at the same time, does God
force us to abide in a path where the conscience is outraged, and the word of
God discarded, and practices are found which have no warrant from Him. He gives
us a plain path, where we may obey His voice, and have the joy of His presence
with us in our course while here.

It is striking and instructive to see that the epistle from which we have cited
our text for this evening’s lecture, was not written in a day when everything
was in order, when the church of God was walking, in the first freshness of
power and blessing, with Christ. If this was the case when it was written, we
might have admired it, and thought of its perfection and beauty in days gone by;
but we should have found no practical value in it for our own path in days of
weakness and failure and ruin. We see the wisdom of our God in giving us its
teaching just when the days were darkest in apostolic times; when, as we read in
Philippians (written at the same moment), " all were seeking their own, and not
the things of Jesus Christ;" when "many walked," of whom the apostle had told
them before, and had now to tell them even weeping, that they were " enemies to
the cross of Christ; whose end was destruction, whose god was their belly, who
mind earthly things." Such were the days when " Ephesians" was written: the aged
apostle was in prison himself, and cut off from the work which he loved; all was
rushing onward to ruin. It was then the time for God to bring forth by his means
the most full and blessed unfolding ever given of the church of God. It was
written in a day of ruin, as faith’s provision for a day of ruin, until we all
would come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to
full-grown men-into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that
we might no more be " babes," &c. (Ephesians 4:13-14.) The gradual, but sure,
decay had begun at once in the early church. Tares were sown amongst the wheat,
and false persons were introduced from without, as Simon the sorcerer (Acts
8:1-40); the enemy, too, had begun to sow evil and discord within. (See Acts
5:1-42; Acts 6:1-15) This state of things is largely recognized in the various
epistles. In Corinthians the wisdom of men and sectarianism were springing up,
and moral evil had been allowed (chap. 5:), and doctrinal evil was spreading
fast. (1 Corinthians 15:1-58) The law had been introduced in Galatia; asceticism
and philosophy had been added to the law in Colosse. There was a return to
Judaism and ceremonies on all sides (Hebrews), and the presence of the Spirit
forgotten. All this may be seen largely in the epistles. But when we come to
Paul’s Second Epistle to Timothy, these things were there, and recognized as
current, and all those of Asia had turned away from Paul, though not yet,
perhaps, from Christ. It is then that the Holy Spirit in the apostle forecasts
the state of the " last days," which was then coming in. " In the last days
perilous times would be there," and the state of nominal Christians would become
like that of the heathen, as described in Romans 1:29-31, compared with 2
Timothy 3:2-5, with the difference of "a form of godliness," or "piety," while
they " denied the power thereof." From such the servant should "turn away."

This, then, was the state of the professing church which had been established on
earth as the " pillar and ground of the truth." (2 Timothy 3:15.) It was now the
sphere where error and evil existed unchallenged.

We must now ask, What are God’s principles, when the sphere set up by Him at any
time in the earth became corrupted as this before us? We may even see that these
principles were His before evil entered the scene, and were the true principles,
unchanged by any circumstances, which ensued. They were " separation" and "
largeness"-separation to God because He is holy; largeness of heart because He
is gracious! We see this in paradise before man fell. He planted a garden in
Eden, and separated it from the rest of the scene, for the man to dwell in, and
dress it and keep it; yet from it flowed four rivers, to carry its blessings to
the four quarters of the earth. So, when the world was judged, and again
peopled, and divided into nations at Babel, God called a man out of it,
separating him to Himself, because He was holy; yet, because He was gracious, He
promised that " in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." So also
in Israel; He brought them out of Egypt, that He might dwell among them, and His
word was, " Thou shalt be holy with the Lord thy God." (Deuteronomy 17:1-20) Yet
they were to be the center from which blessing should flow forth to the nations,
who might there learn that He was God. " In Judah God was known; his name was
great in Israel." In the church of God, too, the saints were not of the world,
even as He was not of the world; yet the desire He expressed was, " that they
all might be one, that the world may believe." (John 17:1-26) These instances
show us the principles that should guide His own.

We see this illustrated in the day when Israel corrupted themselves, and, under
Aaron, made the golden calf. Moses had gone up, to receive the law, to the top
of Mount Sinai, when the people revolted against God, and returned to idolatry,
out of which they had been redeemed. Moses came down with the tables of the law
in his hands, and saw the calf and the dancing; but, with the blessed
intelligence of one who was in spirit with God, he acts in a moment in a way
that saves the honor of Jehovah, and spares the people. Had he kept the tables
of the law outside the camp unbroken, he would have compromised the authority of
the Lord. And had he entered the camp with them, the people would have to be cut
off. So he broke the tables before the mount! He then returns to God, after the
tribe of Levi had executed the discipline of God upon their brethren, earning
their place as the priestly tribe. (Exodus 32:1-35) Moses then prayed to the
Lord to spare the people, or to blot him out of the book He had written. Nay,
said the Lord, " Him that sinneth will I blot out of my book." Moses then
returns to the desert, and while he waited to see what the Lord would do, and
the people stripped themselves of their ornaments before the mount, Moses " took
the tent, and pitched it outside the camp, afar of from the camp, and called it
the tabernacle of the congregation. And it came to pass that every one which
sought the Lord went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation, which was
without the camp."

Here was the most glorious moment of all his history. The moment when he so
apprehended God, and His holy nature, that, without even a command from Him, he
does that which was suited to Him; and the cloudy pillar, emblem of His
presence, came down, and spoke to Moses, as a man speaks with his friend! Here
was separation to God, yet largeness of heart for His people, and for their true
blessing.

We might trace through scripture many instances of this kind, which show us that
separation to Him is the true path for His own, when that which He had set up in
blessing had corrupted its way in the earth. We see it in Israel separated from
Egypt: Moses separating from Israel at the moment cited. The Nazarite-Samson,
separated from Israel, when they were under the domination of the Philistines.
David’s men separated to him in his days of rejection. Jeremiah’s directions to
separate himself from the people to the Lord (Jeremiah 15:1-21), that he might
be God’s mouth, to separate the precious from the vile. So the "mark" to be set
upon them who sighed and cried for the abominations in Jerusalem. (Ezekiel
9:1-11) The Baptist separating the repentant remnant to Christ. The church
separated from the nation at Pentecost. Paul separating the disciples from the
others. (Acts 19:1-41) The directions, " Come out from among them, and be ye
separate, saith the Lord," &c. (2 Corinthians 6:1-18) But when we turn to the
Second Epistle to Timothy, we find this principle applied to our path in the
simplest and most striking manner. The aged apostle turns to his own son in the
faith, with his heart burdened with the sin in which the people of God now were
involved; yet bright in the freshness of the courage needed to lift one above it
all, and give the sense that God was above all the evil around. It is often the
case that the soul gets under the power and sense of the evil to such a degree,
that it becomes occupied with it, thus losing sight of God. This is a wrong
state to drift into, and never will give power to surmount the evil in anywise.
Grappling with the evils in the world, or the so-called christian world, is not
our path. But while persuaded of their existence and power, the heart can turn
to God, and find Him and His ways superior to the evil; and we are called to
separate ourselves to Him. This character of things occupies the greater part of
the epistle. The Spirit of God recognizes that there is no ecclesiastical
recovery for the church of God, as a whole, to be looked for; while there always
is individual recovery by the truth. He had been treating of the false teaching
of Hymenaeus and Philetus, and such like, when he adds, "Nevertheless, the
foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth, them that
are his. And let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from
iniquity." How refreshing to think that no amount of corruption had destroyed
that sure foundation of God! There stood the everlasting truths, which never
altered, though the house of God had enlarged itself to what he likens to " a
great house," with " vessels of gold and of silver, of wood and of earth, some
to honor, and some to dishonor," yet scattered abroad by the devices of men, and
by the craft of the enemy, within that sphere were those who were Christ’s. "
The Lord knoweth them that are his," said one inscription of the seal of God!
The eye of man could not single them out, nor even the eye of faith discern
them. They may be like the seven thousand who had not bowed to the image of Baal
in Elijah’s day, whom the prophet had never discovered. Still, God knew them;
they might be as the godly ones in the day when Israel’s heart was as hard as an
adamant-stone, when Ezekiel prophesied in vain; they were known of Him who knows
all hearts, and He called to’ the executors of judgment in Jerusalem-" Go
through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark
upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations
that be done in the midst thereof," before judgment which would not permit of
pity, fell on the rest. (Ezekiel 9:4.) God knew those in that day, those who
were His; and He knows them now, as our passage in 2 Timothy 2:19 testifies.
This is the privilege of all who belong to Him. But now he turns to the reverse
of the seal, and reads the second inscription: "Let every one that nameth the
name of the Lord depart from iniquity." Here, then, is the way I may see those
hidden ones of the Lord; they must be separate from evil to Him. Simple yet
comprehensive step! Let the evil be moral, doctrinal, intellectual, or
religious, the path is the same-to " depart from iniquity" is the responsibility
of the saint who names the name of the Lord. Vessels of honor and of dishonor
-precious and vile-may be there. The Hymenaeus and Philetus may have to be
condemned, but the true soul must " purge himself from these," that "he may be a
vessel unto honor, sanctified [or, separated], and meet for the Master’s use."

Let me remark as to that word, "purge." It is found but twice in the original
tongue of the New Testament scriptures. The first place we find is in 1
Corinthians 5:7 : "Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye
are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." This marked
the responsibility of the whole church of God, set up on earth as "an unleavened
lump." She was to maintain her place in this, and to "purge out" all that
savored of the old leaven-the evil which was then creeping in at Corinth, as
this chapter shows. But she did not, as a whole, do this. She soon became
indifferent to the evil, which soon, alas became her characteristic, and not the
holiness due to Christ. Now comes the second use of the word. The individual,
finding himself in the midst of " a great house," filled with "vessels to honor
and dishonor," was to "purge himself " from such, by standing apart from them,
as from all this which dishonored the Lord, in order to be a vessel unto honor
for the Master’s use. But when a soul has taken this step, it might engender a
Pharisaic spirit in him, in standing thus apart because of his Lord, and so we
have next, " But follow righteousness, faith, love, peace with them that call on
the Lord out of a pure heart." He would find others who, like himself, had grace
given to be separate to the Lord, and he was to walk with such, in holiness of
conduct, and a pure heart likewise. But this separation to the Lord has, so far,
only a negative character. But this is the responsibility of the " house of
God," now become like " a great house" around him. We want something more,
therefore; we require a positive ground of action for our souls in the midst of
the scene. Here, then, comes in the never-changing truth of the unity of the
body of Christ, of which he is a member. This abides here on earth in the midst
of Christendom. It is within that sphere that the Holy Spirit maintains, in
unbroken unity, the body of Christ. Granted that outwardly it is broken to
fragments to our vision, and the members of that body are scattered in every
section of the professing church; granted, too, that it is utterly impossible to
restore it to its original state, that no skill or power can ever set it right
again-all this is quite true; but then I am ever responsible to set myself to
rights, before everything, with God. I am a member of Christ, and separate from
evil; well, I am not the only one whom God has called so to act for Him, because
He is holy. I find others also; we meet as His members to worship the Father, to
remember our Lord; but it is as members of Christ, and as acting in the truth of
that body of which we are members-we can be together-and on no other ground!-(I
mean no other ground according to God.) We are thus in a breadth of truth which
embraces every member of Christ on the face of the earth! This is " endeavoring
to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." We can neither keep, nor
break, the unity of the body-that is kept by the Spirit Himself intact, spite of
every failure of man. But we are called to "endeavor to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace."

What, then, is this unity? It is the power and principle by which the saints are
enabled to walk together in their proper relations in the body, and as members
of Christ. It may involve my separation from one member because he is attached
in practice, or religiously, to that which will not stand the test of the word
of God. It may call me to walk with another who is walking in godliness, and in
its truth. I may find a true soul who sees the truth up to a certain point, but
no farther; I can enjoy with such all that he enjoys in the unity of the Spirit.
Suppose fresh light reaches his soul, and he refuses it, then we part! I must
never weaken the path I am called to by compromise with him of the truth. All
this involves the body of Christ; it is the ground of action, because the Spirit
of God maintains it. This unity, too, excludes individuality most fully. No one
can take an isolated place. If he is called to stand alone in some locality
because of the word of the Lord, it puts him in communion, and on common ground,
all over the world, in other localities, with all who are walking in such a
truth. It excludes individuality, too, when together with others; one might be
tempted to act in independency of other members of Christ-to take action
himself, not in communion with the rest. It throws us outside every system of
man, too, but keeps us in that unity which is according to God!

Now here is the divine and positive foundation under our feet for this day of
ruin. This is not merely a negative path. It is wide enough for all, because it
embraces all in its breadth, whether they are there, or not. It is exclusive of
evil from its midst, as known and accepted; to admit it would cause it to cease
to be the unity of the Spirit. It is not merely the unity of Christians-which is
the effort of the many to effect, often to the refusal of the truth of the body
of Christ. How often do we see the effort to be together apart from its truth,
merely as believers in the Lord. Men may make many unities, and attach Christ’s
name to them, and call it the church. God attaches unity to Christ, not Christ
to unity! Then it must be true in nature to Him whose body it is; it must be
practically holy and true. (Revelation 3:7.)

Trial may come in, and the enemy seek to mar this effort of the faithful to act
for God. Discipline, too, may have to be resorted to, to keep those thus
gathered together true and right. When this is so, the action taken in one place
in the Spirit, and in obedience to the word, governs all others, where the
people of God elsewhere are thus acting in the truth. The Lord’s table being
spread, as that in which we own the unity of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians
10:16-17) is in the midst of those gathered together in the name of Christ.
(Matthew 18:1-35) One in communion at it in one part of the world, as with those
who are endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit, is in communion with all,
wherever they may be found. One ceasing to be in communion in one place, ceases
in all. Thus individuality is impossible, apart from unity; or unity from
individuality.

It is only in the church of God, or in its principle, we have both maintained.
In popery we see unity, but no individuality; in other sects individuality, but
no unity. In the unity of the Spirit we have both, and there only.

Then the cry of others is, " You want us to come to you, and hear the truth; why
do you not come to us?" The question is most natural, but the answer is plain:
We never can make wrong right by mixing with it; we desire your blessing; we
desire that you who are not with us may act on what you are, as members of
Christ, by one Spirit, and with us on the only divine platform on earth! You
would be the first to blame us, did your conscience bow to the truth, for having
weakened or falsified it by mingling with error, in order to win others to be
with us. Your title is clear to be at the Lord’s table with us, if you are a
member of Christ (we assume that you are walking in uprightness of soul before
God). We dare not ask other terms than this for your being in your true place. I
have heard it has been said by others that we look for more-such as exacting
promises that you go to no other gathering of Christians, and the like. This
would be unintelligent in us in the strongest way, we would be making more than
membership of Christ, and holiness of walk your title to your place. Your coming
to help us to be faithful to the Lord should receive a hearty welcome from us in
His name. Let us not suspect any other motive in those who come than our own
desire, through grace, to do the same. Often have I seen souls come in all
simplicity, who would be scared away had they been placed under a condition; for
when they came, they found His presence there, and never left again! A soul
finding itself with Christ would not likely seek to wander away again to other
paths, even though it may be a pathway of reproach " outside the camp’ with Him.
A word now, in conclusion, as to the place of those who are together, in these
last days, in the truth. We sometimes hear of being "a testimony." I ask, To
what? And I reply for all, We are a testimony to the present state of the church
of God, not what it was once, but what it is. But suppose we are really thus a
testimony to its failure, this involves much more than at first sight we would
think. We must in such a case be as true in principle and practice as that which
has failed! Though but a fragment of the whole, this must be really a true
fragment. This will ever keep us lowly in our own eyes, and nothing in the sight
of others. As long, therefore, as we are a testimony of this character we shall,
by grace, never fail! The Lord alone will be our strength and our stay in days
of ruin, and perilous times of the last days. In the great sphere of the
profession of Christianity on earth-the responsible church, or " house of God,"
where His one Spirit dwells and operates, there is a divine current in which the
faithful will be found. In one of the great lakes, or inland seas, of
Switzerland we find what will illustrate my meaning. One of the great European
rivers runs into this inland sea at one extremity, and out at the other; but it
is found that the current of the river is traceable all through the vast sheet
of water. There are also, as a matter of course, the eddies and the back-water,
which is near the current, and the dead water outside its influence. Thus it is
in the professing house. There are those to be found in the current of the
Spirit within the great professing body; there are others whose position would
be near it, though not in the stream, but, as it were, in the eddies which are
close at hand. There are others who have turned aside, and been drawn into the
back-water, and never seem to, recover. Others, too, who are found in the
dead-water, out of the reach of the current, or even of its influence. It
becomes, therefore, a very real question for each" Where am I?" " Am I like a
chip, or a withered leaf, in the eddies, or in the back-water, or in the
stream?" If in the last, we are carried along in that one path, in the freshness
and energy of the one Spirit of God, in the truth of that one body of Christ, of
which we are living. members; faithful to Him who loves us, yet will-less and
obedient in His hands, who can use for His own glory, and the blessing of
others, the weakest vessel, if in the current of His Spirit, in the truth. F. G.
P.

(Concluded from page 184.)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 71: S.     THE RED SEA AND THE JORDAN
========================================================================

The Red Sea and the Jordan.

Romans 6:1-23 and Colossians 2:1-23.

Why are we said to be co-risen with Christ in Colossians 2:11, before we are
said to be co-quickened with Him in Colossians 2:12? The doctrine of the Epistle
to the Colossians lies between that of the Romans and the Ephesians. In Romans
the believer is dead with Christ to sin, dead to the law, but not risen. Romans
6:1-23 does not go so far as being risen with Christ. Our responsibilities, as
in the old creation, are discussed most fully; all are under sin, all under
judgment before God. The death of Christ - His precious blood presented to God -
meets all our guilt, and we are justified freely by His grace, through
righteousness. Our state then is taken up from Romans 5:12 and onwards, and
deliverance from that by our having died with Christ to sin and from under law,
which had its application to our old state, as in Adam. Romans 6:1-23 unfolds
this truth with regard to sin; Romans 7:1-25 as regards the law, which is the
strength of sin. But we are not seen as risen with Christ. The nearest approach
to such is the statement of Romans 6:8 : "Now if we be dead with Christ, we
believe that we shall also live with Him;" and this verse leads us onwards
towards the Colossians - putting it as a result of the doctrine there unfolded -
forming the link with that Epistle. The saint, however, is not risen with
Christ; but is dead with Him to sin, and to the law. In Colossians we get a step
further. Here he is risen, co-raised with Christ, and he is dead absolutely. "Ye
are dead;" not merely dead to this or that, though "with Christ." He is "dead
with Christ" - "dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world" - but he is
not in heavenly places yet. He has a hope laid up in heaven; and his state is a
subjective one suited to heaven, though not there. In Ephesians we find his
responsibility in and of the new creation unfolded; and he is not only dead with
Christ to sin and the law (Romans), with the hope and result before him in the
words, "If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall also live through Him" -
(Romans 6:8), nor merely "dead" absolutely and co-risen with Christ
(Colossians), but he is co-quickened, co-raised, and co-seated in the heavenlies
in Christ Jesus, both Jew and Gentile. He has left the place of death as a
sinner, and the world as formed for the first man, and he is brought into the
full place of being in Christ Jesus in heavenly places. This ground has been
gone over before, and I do not follow out what has been before many; but desire
to present other features of truth.

First of all, let me remark that I do not think we find the typical teaching of
the "Jordan" in Romans 6:1-23. It is the Red Sea; though, like it, Israel passed
through, and enjoyed full deliverance from their enemies. In the type they saw
sins, and death, and judgment all behind them. Sins were their part; death was
Satan’s, who wields its power (Hebrews 2:1-18); judgment was God’s part; and all
are passed for ever. They were, so to speak, dead to all these. But remark, it
is never stated that they came up out of the Red Sea. Historically, of course,
we know it was so; but it would have marred the type to have recorded it, as it
would in Romans 6:1-23 to have said, we were risen with Christ. It is fully
stated afterwards that the people came up out of the Jordan; and there it was
needed to say so, but not before. Thus the Red Sea is one aspect of the truth -
that which is seen in Romans 6:1-23 - and like as in this chapter (Romans 6:8)
we have to look out for more. So in the song of Moses (Romans 6:16) they
anticipate the truth, yet to be experienced, in their passing over the Jordan,
and being planted in the mountain of the Lord’s inheritance - in the place He
had made for Himself to dwell in; in the sanctuary which His hands had
established. But they only looked for this in the hope of faith. They are not
therefore said to have come up out of the Red Sea, as they are not said in
Romans 6:1-23 to be risen with Christ. But in Joshua 4:17; Joshua 4:19, we read
that Joshua said to the priests, "Come ye up out of Jordan." "And the people
came up out of Jordan," which rolled on in his channel as heretofore. And they
were thus cut off from the world, as the death of Christ has done for us. And as
at the Red Sea they looked forward to the Jordan, so now at the Jordan they look
back at the Red Sea, as we read: "For the Lord your God dried up the waters of
Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did to
the Red Sea, which He dried up from before us, until we were gone over." (Romans
6:23) The Red Sea and the Jordan thus coalesce, and form two sides of the same
truth, though quite distinct. We cannot confound, and we cannot separate them.
Romans 6:1-23 does not take in the Jordan and risen with Christ, though it looks
out for it. Colossians 2:1-23 does not take merely dead to sin and the law and
the type of the Red Sea, though it looks back at it, as we shall see. Exodus
14:15 does not say that Israel came up out of the Red Sea, though they sang a
song, which looked for more to come. At Jordan they are said to have come up out
of the Jordan, and are taught to look back at and connect it with the
deliverance of the Red Sea. Let the Red Sea and the Jordan coalesce for a moment
in our minds, and let us drop out the wilderness from our thoughts. (Ephesian 1
does this; as will Israel’s future deliverance, which bases the nameless Psalms
114:1-8 on this likewise - "The sea saw it and fled, Jordan was driven back.")
Let these two waters lie together, and let the wilderness lip of the Red Sea
touch the side of Jordan eastward. Israel enter death from all who pursued at
the Egyptian lip of the sea, and rise on the Canaan side of Jordan in full and
complete deliverance and redemption, into the land of promise. The wilderness is
never in the purpose of God, though it is His plan to test and prove His own
heart and ours. When He announced this purpose He left out all allusion to it.
"I am come down to deliver them . . . and to bring them up out of that land into
a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place
of the Canaanites," etc. (Exodus 3:8.) When Moses proclaimed it, He said, "I am
the Lord, and I will bring you out . . . and I will bring you in unto the land."
(Exodus 6:6; Exodus 6:8.) When Faith accepted it, it sang, "Thou in thy mercy
hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou shalt bring them in,
and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance." (Exodus 15:13; Exodus
15:17.) And When Experience looked back upon it with the words, "And He brought
us out from them, that He might bring us in." (Deuteronomy 6:23.)

Now when we turn to Colossians 2:1-23 we find an apparent difficulty; but, like
all such, if we wait on divine instruction we shall get it from God. "If any
lack wisdom, let him ask of God," surely applies in directly even in these
things. Why are we said to be "risen" with Christ before we are said to have
been co-quickened with Him? (Colossians 2:12-13) Let me draw your attention to
it for a little. I must leave full details aside in doing so, interesting though
they are. One first thought in his mind is to establish their souls (as all
others whom he had never seen in the flesh, Colossians 2:1) in conscious union
with Christ in glory, and this without naming the bond - the Holy Ghost. He saw
the danger in the want of this; and how the soul was open to every device of the
enemy; and he would unfold the glories of Christ as he never had before, and
give them the consciousness of "completeness in him." To have even named the
bond of union - the Spirit of God, to such a state would have been to occupy
them with the Holy Ghost rather than Christ Himself, and damage their souls.
Instead of this he would lead them most blessedly, as in Colossians 1:9-14, into
the true experience of the Spirit in the soul which is at peace - 1:e. the
thoughts begin with God, and flow downwards from the light of His glory into the
conscience of him who is their recipient. The Spirit of God reasons ever from
God to us; and when the soul is at peace and the heart free, the reasonings and
experience of the soul flow in the same direction. How strange, and yet how
lovely, then, to find the apostle in the one passage praying to God, writing
Scripture, teaching the saints, and giving the true experience of the soul who
stands in grace, by the same words! In Colossians 2:12-14, he begins in the
light of the Father’s presence with praise, and by seven steps he reasons
downwards from His heart, to the conscience of the worshipper, giving them the
true direction of thought, when the soul is right with God.

1. "Giving thanks unto the Father."

2. "Which hath made us meet."

3. "To be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."

4. "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness,"

5. "And hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son,"

6. "In whom we have redemption,"

7. "And the forgiveness of our sins."

We learn this in the inverse way, from us to Him from the depths of the need of
conscience, to the light of the Father’s presence. We see this in the order of
the offerings, and in their application. How in the unfolding of the doctrine of
them He begins with God, and in their application to the sinner he begins with
him, and so on constantly.

I allude to the first chapter of Colossians, because it helps us in the second.
It gives us our apprehension, experimentally known, what we have through grace.
Colossians 2:1-23 gives us God’s side rather. He looks at Christ Jesus, the
Lord; He beholds Him in whom dwelleth all the completeness (pleroma) of the
Godhead bodily, as man. In Him "we are complete." From Him he reasons in the
same way as in Colossians 1:1-29 - from God downwards to our depths of need.
Here Christ and His identification with His people, that they may be thus
"complete in Him," is his theme. Again we find seven steps in the train of
thought:

1. "In Him dwelleth all the completeness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are
complete in Him." "God is complete in Christ for us; we are complete in Him for
God," as one has said.

2. "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in
putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." He has left
the scene, given up His life here below, and all that connected Him to this
scene and Israel His people. He is gone on high, the beginning of the creation
of God.

3. "In whom also ye are co-risen through the faith of the operation of God, who
hath raised Him from the dead." Remark here that in Colossians 2:12 I have
omitted the first clause - "Buried with Him in baptism." I would read that
clause as a parenthesis. Just as Romans 6:8 was the link forward with Colossians
(see also Exodus 15:16), so this parenthesis is the link backwards with Romans
6:1-23. (See also Joshua 4:23.) This, too, relieves us from any controversy as
to whether en ho should be translated "in whom" or "in which;" either
translation being possible from the original words; the spiritual sense alone
determines the true translation. Read Colossians 2:11-12 for a moment, omitting
the parenthesis, and the meaning is plain.* "In putting off the body of the
flesh by the circumcision of Christ . . . in whom also ye are co-raised through
the faith of the operation of God," etc. This leaves baptism its own true
meaning, that of the person baptized being buried to death. It does not, in my
mind, go farther than that, and just ends there; the person is buried to death,
as we read in Romans 6:1-23, "Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism unto
death." Read the first clause of Colossians 2:12 as a parenthetic link
connecting us with Romans 6:1-23, and read what follows as in connection with
"Christ in whom ye also are co-risen," etc., and all is plain. Faith in God’s
operation comes in there and clears baptism of the thought of resurrection,
though it follows where there is faith in God’s operation.

*Some may question this interpretation, but it is left for the spiritual
judgment of the reader. ED.

4. "And you being dead in your offences, and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
hath He co-quickened us together with Him."

5. "Having forgiven us all the offences."

6. "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us . . . nailing
it to His cross."

7. "And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly,
triumphing over them in it."

Thus we see the reason why the co-raising us up with Christ should come before
the co-quickening; because the Spirit of God reasons in the true divine order -
from God in Christ to us, and down to all our ruin in which we lay, by the seven
steps of His truth. (1) Complete in Him; (2) circumcised in Him; (3) co-risen
with Him; (4) co-quickened together with Him; (5) forgiven through Him; (6) the
law nailed to His cross; and (7) the whole power of Satan destroyed.

Now let me notice another thing which is very fine. The seven steps of
Colossians 1:1-29 give us our subjective consciousness, what we possess and know
in our own soul’s experience, what we have from God. Those in Colossians 2:1-23
give us rather the objective unfolding by revelation - what is in Christ for us,
apart from our experience, though known to faith, of course. Both lines of
thought reasoning from God to us, whether in a revelation objectively presented
in Christ, or what our own souls consciously possess in Him. F. G. Patterson.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 72: S.     THE VINE.
========================================================================

The Vine. The vine, as the symbol of a fruit-bearing system on the earth, is
used in a remarkable manner, and runs through a large body of Scripture. We read
in Psalms 80:8, that the nation of Israel is likened to a vine which the Lord
brought out of Egypt, casting out the heathen from Canaan and planting it there
to bring forth fruit. Then in Isaiah 5:1-7, we learn all the care and culture He
bestowed on His vine that it might bring forth grapes, "fruit meet for him by
whom it was dressed." The result was that, instead of fruit answering His
culture, it brought forth "wild grapes." And He says in Jeremiah 2:21, "I had
planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed; how then art thou turned into
the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?" And so the Lord permitted the
"wild boar out of the wood" to waste it. He also says, "I will take away the
hedge thereof;" "I will lay it waste;" and "I will command the clouds that they
rain no rain upon it." It was only fruitful in iniquity and false to Jehovah.
"Israel," He says, "is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself."
(Hosea 10:1.) So the Lord gave him up to the Gentile king, Nebuchadnezzar, to
rule over him, commanding him to submit to this punishment, as of the Lord.
(Read Jeremiah 27:1-12, especially verse 12.) Under their last king, Zedekiah,
they might have remained tributary, as we read in Ezekiel 17:1-24 :, the kingdom
might have remained "a spreading vine of low stature" under the Gentile king;
who took an oath from Zedekiah, and allowed him to remain in his land. But this
"vine of low stature," instead of observing the oath which Nebuchadnezzar
accepted of Zedekiah, and remaining tributary, he sent his ambassadors to Egypt.
Or, as the parable in Ezekiel 17:1-24 : says, "this vine did bend her roots
towards him;" and so the king of Babylon took him captive, and broke down his
city and laid it waste, and so it ceased to be the "vine" of God in the earth;
it ceased to be fit for anything but "fuel for the fire." (See Ezekiel 15:1-8 :)
And into this vineyard which had been laid waste, at last came the Lord Jesus.
Israel, as Jehovah’s vine, had been brought out of Egypt. So Jesus replaces and
recommences morally the history of that people, and we read, "Out of Egypt have
I called my son." (Hosea 11:1; Matthew 2:15.) The Lord then replaces Israel,
which had been set aside as a fruit-bearing system on the earth. He presents
Himself not as the best branch of that vine, but, "I am the true vine." The root
of the new fruit-bearing system on the earth; and the disciples then become the
branches. Abiding in Christ, and Christ in them, they would be fruit-bearing
branches — the Father glorified in them — and so they would practically be
Jesus’ disciples. This lasts in principle all through the time of the calling
out of the Church, but the point is fruit-bearing on the earth; not as raised
and seated together in Christ in heaven, where there is no purging or pruning,
nor fruit-bearing. When the present time of the heavenly calling shall have
passed, and the Church shall be taken away, Israel comes before God again, not
yet as owned, but previous to the kingdom being established in the world. We
find their state in Isaiah 18:1-7 aptly described as a "vine," returned to their
land by the help of some great maritime power, but not yet owned of God. "Afore
the harvest [the harvest and vintage are figures of the last acts of judgment
which take place before the kingdom is set up in glory], when the bud is
perfect, and the sour grape ripening in the flower;" when all seems to man’s eye
to go on well, the Lord does not interfere but considers apart in His dwelling,
and then suffers the apparently re-established, fruit-bearing vine to be again
trodden down and destroyed by the Gentile powers. And the end of what is again a
corrupt fruit-bearing system in the world finds its judgment at the hand of the
Lord in Revelation 14:15-20, as the "vine of the earth" whose grapes were fully
ripe, and which are then cast into the great winepress of the wrath of God. The
Lord Jesus-Jehovah is seen in Isaiah 63:1-6 coming from this judgment of the
vine of the earth and winepress of the wrath of God, in which the nations of the
world share (see Isaiah 34:1-17 :), His garments red with judgment; and He comes
to renew His relationship with the spared remnant of Israel, for the "year of
his redeemed is come." And the result of all this is, that Israel again becomes
His fruit-bearing "vine" in the world. "A vineyard of red wine," which the Lord
Himself (now that they had failed under the old covenant) will keep night and
day, watering it every moment; and "He shall cause them that come of Jacob to
take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with
fruit." (Isaiah 27:2-6.) F. G. Patterson.


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  CHAPTER 73: S.     THE WATER OF PURIFICATION."
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The Water of Purification."

Numbers 19:1-22.

How rare it is to find the child of God walking in the consciousness of his true
position before Him! Numbers there are (and we bless God for the numbers) whose
souls have felt the sting of sin, and who are trusting in Jesus, but who have
not yet realized the full results of the work of Christ for their souls; and
thereby fail to walk in the consciousness of sonship before the Father — fail to
walk so as to please God, through the world; as those who have been separated
and redeemed for a higher and a better scene. Such souls have doubtless felt
more or less deeply the fact of indwelling sin. Like the Jew of old, who when he
committed a sin, brought a sacrifice — again and again a sin and a sacrifice —
they have daily recourse to the blood of Jesus for cleansing from the workings
of sin in their members. They do not see that sin has been once and for ever,
effectually and completely, put away from before God. Such is not the christian
state. It lowers the whole tone of practical Christianity, reduces the
apprehension of the value of the blood of Jesus almost to the level of the
oft-repeated sacrifices of the Levitical ceremonial, and weakens the
apprehension of the character of purity and holiness of the place into which the
believer has been brought, the unsullied presence of God, there to walk before
Him. Jesus "died the just for the unjust to bring us to God." The believer has
been called into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:8.)
"Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 John
1:3.) God has "called us from darkness into His marvellous light." He has "made
us meet for the inheritance of the saints in light." And He has set us to "walk
in the light as He is in the light." He has done all this in such a way that He
can have us there without lowering the unsullied holiness of His presence in
light. When the believer has realized, even in some measure, that God has thus
brought him to Himself, and accepted him in the Beloved, and has apprehended
somewhat of the holiness of walk conformable to the place, it is then that he
can estimate the provision that God has made in the work of Jesus, as typified
in Numbers 19:1-22 :, that the believer may thus enjoy unclouded fellowship with
the Father and the Son. He can see in it the great fact that it is God’s thought
that the worshipper once purged should have no more conscience of sin; and yet,
such being the case, that when he is conscious of the workings of indwelling sin
in his members, he has no need to go back to be re-washed in the blood; and,
more than all, he learns in the precious type before us the jealous holiness of
God, who will not go on with even a thought of sin in His child; and that in
this type the provision He has made for all these exigencies stands in marked
and precious precision before the renewed mind.

Let us now look at its varied and beauteous features. We read, "This is the
ordinance of the law which the Lord hath commanded, saying, speak to the
children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is
no blemish, and upon which never came yoke." In this the person of our Lord
Jesus Christ is brought before us. One wherein is no blemish and upon whom never
came yoke of sin. In His own person, free from every stain or taint of sin, take
Him when you will, and where you will, and as you will, from the womb of the
virgin to the cross, and you will find One who, while surrounded by evil on
every side, in the midst of evil, and in contact with it, notwithstanding never
was de-filed, beauteous in the perfection of personal purity as man in the midst
of a defiled world; One who, ever above the evil, adapted His heart to the need
around; never in fellowship with evil, but morally above it; perfect in the holy
calmness and evenness of divine goodness and love, in His perfect pathway
through the world. Paul, while such a wondrous instrument in the hands of God,
had to say, "I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest." And again, he
"had no rest in his spirit, because he found not Titus." Moses too "spake
unadvisedly with his lips." As one has beautifully said in words that I deeply
enjoy, vessels "such as Paul are chords on which God strikes, and on which He
produces a wondrous music; but Christ is the music itself." Compare them both in
Matthew 16:1-28 : Christ could be on the mount in glory with Moses and Elias,
and be owned as Son by the Father Himself; and He can be on the plain in the
presence of the multitude and Satan; but although the scenes are different, He
is alike perfect in each. In 2 Corinthians 13:1-14 : Paul could glory as a man
in Christ, one who had been in the third heavens; but when he comes down into
ordinary life, he must have a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble, lest he
should be exalted above measure. Thus was Jesus, and thus He walked — never
equalled. The Lamb for God’s altar must be without spot and blemish, and such
was He! But when we turn to look at His cross, we find something else; perfect
in His person, as perfect in the act He came to accomplish, we find Him then. We
read, "And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger and
sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven
times." Would that the trembling one, whose heart has not yet found peace, or
the anxious one whose conscience is still unpurged, the weak one who desires to
realize all the blessings of acceptance and forgiveness, — would that such would
read aright the soul-emancipating truth conveyed in the verse before us! We read
of a sevenfold sprinkling at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
This suggests to us two thoughts. First, the place where the sprinkling was
accomplished; and secondly, the value of the act that was done there. In Exodus
29:42-43, we read about the place; and it was the place of fellowship or
communion between God and Israel. "There will I meet with the children of
Israel." There was the blood of the unblemished heifer sprinkled seven times
before God, at the place where He met His people.

Seven is the well-known number which conveys to us the thought of perfection in
spiritual things. Every claim that a God of righteousness and truth and justice
and holiness could righteously demand was answered there according to the divine
standard of these things, in the sevenfold sprinkled blood. His holy eye saw
before Him that which responded to every claim as to sin and uncleanness, and
proved Him a "just God" and yet "a Saviour" — "Just and the justifier of him
that believeth in Jesus." Sevenfold was the sprinkling of the blood of the
unblemished heifer; and in its sevenfold perfection was the blood of Christ,
once offered to answer every claim of God and need of the sinner. He "made peace
by the blood of His cross." But in verse 5 we learn something more; we read,
"And one shall burn the heifer in his sight, her skin, her flesh, and her blood
with her dung, shall he burn." Here we get another view of the cross of Jesus,
that meeting place between God and the sinner. We learn here that Christ was
entirely consumed by the fire of the judgment of God on account of sin. The
accents of His soul at that moment were, "I am poured out like water, and all my
bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my
bowels." Entirely was He consumed by the fire of judgment on account of sin; the
very levity of thought and sins we think so lightly of, wretched creatures that
we are, — for these was He consumed to ashes, in exhausting the cup of wrath for
His people!

Again, in verse 6, another phase of the cross unfolds before us. We read, "And
the priest shall take cedar-wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the
midst of the burning of the heifer." Another wondrous truth is here, one we may
deeply ponder with subdued hearts before God. How many are the schemes around us
to improve man, as he is, and to adorn the world which has departed from God.
Here we find them all judged and set in their true light. Nature from its
highest to its lowest is typified here; "From the cedar that is in Lebanon to
the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." This takes in the full range of the
natural man. Let it be the moralist or the philosopher, the teetotaller or the
drunkard, the amiable or the churl, all are included here. "That which is born
of the flesh is flesh," and never can be anything else. No doubt many of the
schemes of morality, and self-improvement, and reform, have done much for men;
but this, while good in its place, never alters the great fact that "the carnal
mind is enmity against God." The cross has revealed this, has written death upon
all its varied plans, for improvement and amelioration; and the word of God
comes alike to it all, "it must be born again!" This is its sentence after 4,000
years of probation and trial; it had been "weighed in the balances and found
wanting." And again, every human glory of the world, and its attractions found
its true measure in the cross. The "scarlet" was cast into the burning of the
heifer. "Now is the judgment of this world." "The world hath not known thee."
"All that is of the world . . . . is not of the Father." "The world is crucified
unto me, and I unto the world." Thus we have seen in these verses, brought
before us, the person of the Christ of God; the value of His cross before Him;
and somewhat of the deep meaning of that cross, and how it puts everything in
its right place — the flesh, the natural man, and the world.

Now to apply this to the conscience of the believer who has been called to walk
in fellowship with Jesus. Such an one has doubtless rested for acceptance more
or less in the cross and bloodshedding of Jesus. He has been washed in the
precious blood, it has been sprinkled on his conscience by faith, once and for
ever in its divine efficacy and sufficiency. Then has come his walk before God,
in the light of His presence, within the veil. Being there makes him feel the
consciousness of indwelling sin, of sin in his members. Perhaps in an unguarded
moment the evil fruit has come forth in the form of sins, which has clouded his
perception of his place, and his communion with the Father and Son has been
interrupted. How then is he to be restored? How has God provided in His jealous
holiness against the least thought of sin in the practical walk of His people?
The sevenfold sprinkled blood precludes the thought of the sin ever coming into
His presence. He sees before Him that which has answered every claim according
to the divine holiness of that presence. Nevertheless it has clouded the soul of
His child, and He will not permit him to enjoy his place and fellowship with Him
while the cloud remains.

We read then in verses 11, etc., "He that toucheth the dead body of a man shall
be unclean seven days, he shall purify himself with it on the third day; and on
the seventh day he shall be clean. But if he purify not himself the third day,
then on the seventh day he shall not be clean . . . And for an unclean person
they shall take of the ashes of the burnt heifer of purification for sin, and
running water shall be put there in a vessel, and a clean person shall take
hyssop, and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon . . . . him that touched a
bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave. And the clean person shall sprinkle
upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall purify
himself and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water and shall be clean at
even. But the man that shall be unclean and shall not purify himself, that soul
shall be cut off from among the congregation, because he hath defiled the
sanctuary of the Lord; the water of separation hath not been sprinkled upon him:
he is unclean." Here we learn first of all, that even contact with evil, or its
smallest workings, defiles. Completely and perfectly has the soul lost the
enjoyment of its communion with God: seven days was the Israelite unclean. As
perfectly as had the seven-fold sprinkling answered the claims of God at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation, as well as the need of the convicted
conscience which approached there; so as perfectly had the soul lost its
fellowship with God. And God would have one feel the loss, and feel it deeply
too. The unclean person lay two days under his defilement; he must feel the
privation of communion with God. There was no haste in bringing the water of
purification till he had this adequate twofold testimony (as required under the
law) that he had lost his communion, and that he was in the truth as to his
state. Then, having lain two days under his uncleanness, the clean person was to
take the ashes of the burnt heifer and running water, and with hyssop sprinkle
it upon the unclean person the third day. When we have fully felt the want of
communion, through having lost it, then we find these two things — the ashes and
the water. To the Israelite, it was for purifying the flesh from ceremonial
defilement; with us, it is spiritual purification. The ashes proved to the
Israelite that the sacrifice was entirely consumed: it was the memorial of the
perfect offering which had been consumed outside the camp, some of the blood of
which had been sprinkled before God. To us, it is the remembrance of the
sacrifice of Christ, once offered in its perfection, brought to our minds by the
Holy Ghost, (typified in the running water; see Ephesians 5:26) proving to us
that He was entirely consumed on account of sin, by the searching fire of
judgment. The ashes testified that the sin was gone for ever. When the soul has
felt that it has lost communion with God through carelessness or sin, the
sacrifice of Christ, in all its perfection, is applied to the conscience by the
Holy Ghost. The first application on the third day did not restore the
Israelite. Nor does the first apprehension of the sacrifice of Christ, as
applied by the Holy Ghost to the conscience of the believer, restore the soul to
communion. It is the sense of the sin having been put away by the sacrifice of
Christ; and then the second application, is the full restoration of the soul to
God, with the sense of His grace triumphing over the sin. The unclean Israelite
purified himself the third day, but the result of the second sprinkling on the
seventh day, was that "he shall be clean" — perfectly restored.

How perfect in all its divine precision is the figure before us! It shows the
jealousy of God about the holiness of His house, and the care He has shown that
there should be practical holiness in His people and truth in the inward parts;
the type divinely provides for both. And then we find, verse 19, that after his
full restoration to communion, he had one thing more to do — he had to wash his
clothes and bathe himself in water. He was to cleanse himself, by the washing of
water by the word, from every defiling circumstance which surrounded him; and to
cleanse himself, as having been in those circumstances and having thus become
defiled by them; to lay the edge of the word to them, so that they might not
affect him again in his walk, and that he himself might not be found in them so
as to become defiled.

Such are some of the wondrous beauties of the type of the red heifer. We find
that not only as sinners has the grace of our Saviour God given us a place
before Him, the work of Christ having fitted us to be there, and the Holy Ghost
having brought us into the understanding and enjoyment of our place; but that as
believers, God (the Father, Son and Holy Ghost) is engaged in keeping us in the
place, in practical holiness, and fitness to walk in fellowship in the power of
the Holy Ghost with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. F. G.
Patterson.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-f-g-patterson/
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