Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious:
And he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.
For you therefore that believe is the preciousness:
But for such as disbelieve,
The stone which the builders rejected,
The same was made the head of the corner;
And, a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.
The Letter to the Hebrews—traditionally so called—as it has proved to be in the dispensation, is a most serious document for the Church. It was written in a crisis, and it had to do, and will again have to do, with a crisis at a turning point in the dispensation.
It is not sure to our knowledge when the letter was written. Opinions differ only by perhaps two or three years, but it is very strongly held that it was written about A.D. 69.
In the year A.D. 70, the whole Jewish system, as centred in Jerusalem, in the temple, and in the priesthood, was swept away.
That was the year in which everything changed from what it had been for many centuries: an established system, a recognised and accepted system of religion, with its teaching and its practices.
In A.D. 70 it was swept into the maelstrom of the pagan world, hostile to God. From that day until this, there has been no temple in Jerusalem. The nation has been scattered, and the Jewish system has been practically inoperative as it was before.
Anticipating that turn in the dispensation, the Holy Spirit led to the writing of this matter—the producing of this document.
If read in the light of that great historic event, it is better understood and appreciated. Its significance is more clearly seen. Yes, a mighty age is represented in the Letter to the Hebrews: nothing less than the passing of a system, or an economy.
If we look into that and examine what it was that was passing, and what that signifies, we shall get some real abiding message from this letter. We shall see that what is here, in its real significance and abiding meaning, lies behind another crisis—a crisis which we are, in our day, seeing.
It is no exaggeration to say that you and I have actually come to live in a time when the whole complexion, I think, of the Christian position is changing.
I have got to try to be careful not to be misunderstood and wrongly reported. I know I am taking risks in what I am going to say. Nevertheless, we have got to be very fair and look things fairly in the face.
For something well over a century, God has been moving in a certain way which has not been His ultimate, fundamental, and supreme way, but which has been in His sovereign way.
For reasons which we need not stay to discuss or even point out, He has been moving by means of a system of things, realising much of His purpose. That method of the divine movement is completely changing.
The day of organised foreign missions—the high-water mark of organised foreign missions—is ending. We are seeing the close of that order, and that which is foreign is now being ground up in the nations.
It does not mean that God is finishing, or has come to an end of, His work. It is a kind of need now to come back to this situation here as represented by the crisis of this letter.
It was the passing of a system, or an economy, which was meant by God to achieve one thing. It did achieve that one thing up to a certain point, and then ceased to do it. From that time, its days were numbered.
The thing which it was meant to achieve in the economy of God was the securing of spiritual men and women.
The eleventh section of this letter—or that part of the document which has subsequently been marked up by that number, eleven—we would do well to dismiss those numbers from our minds for the moment and view the document as a whole.
At that point which, for our convenience, is registered with the number eleven, it shows how, by a certain economy over the ages, God secured spiritual men and women—a galaxy of spiritual men and women in that section.
It shows how God took out from the world and attached to Himself something intrinsically valuable to Him: men and women to whom the world was counted as nothing, and life itself as of no account, in comparison with this relationship with God and His purpose.
The economy was sovereignly raised up and used for that, and for no other purpose than to secure spiritual men and women out of the nations.
Not to secure adherence to an earthly system of religion, though that was a pattern of things in the heavens; not to secure adherence to a pattern, but to secure men and women in that which the pattern represented—something of heaven.
That is the all-governing law and principle of the Old Testament. The means was employed not to be an end in itself. The priesthood was no end in itself, and that is what is stated in this matter. The tabernacle was no end in itself. That whole system was no end in itself.
It was something used sovereignly by God, or meant by God, to secure men and women who saw through the pattern to the spiritual reality and became attached to that: men and women on this earth, but related to heaven—things that were real.
That was the system, and that was God’s meaning in it. And it did do that for so long.
The time came when it became something in itself, an end in itself, and it was no longer producing spiritual men and women. It was producing religious people who were still carrying on the forms, the ceremonies, and the whole paraphernalia of the system, but they were no longer spiritual men and women in relation to heaven.
The thing was going on, but it was empty—meaningless. It was not serving the purpose for which it was meant, and God wound it up.
God defined its conclusion. The Letter to the Hebrews was, in effect, carrying out that decision. If it was written in A.D. 69, it was only a year afterwards.
All that is written here about things which can be shaken being shaken, brought to the ground, was done in order that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
The whole letter, you see, is concerned with this: not with the perpetuation of a religious system and tradition, even something which God has in the past used to His end, but with men and women who are wholly, directly, and immediately related to the ultimate thing that God is after. That is spiritual men and women.
That system which was meant to secure that end, when it ceased to do that and just went on by its own momentum, by its own drive, because of its traditions, because of its antiquity, because of the past which was glorious under the hand of God—all that now gone—simply being carried on as something in itself, stripped and emptied of its real, original meaning: so far as God was concerned, that was finished in the year A.D. 70.
That is the crisis of this matter.
That system, though in the sovereign purpose of God, though meant to reach that end, was strictly governed by spiritual laws. I cannot underscore that heavily enough.
The whole thing was governed strictly by spiritual laws. It was not something in itself. No movement of a priest or Levite of old, no vessel that was used—nothing whatever at any point in that system—was something in itself.
It had behind it a spiritual meaning, its spiritual significance, and was governed by a spiritual law. Nullify that spiritual law and the thing is no longer even sacred to God.
The amazing thing is that, when that thing is in its right relationship with God, you cannot touch it without meeting God. Touch a vessel of the sanctuary in its right relationship, and you will die. You will die if you touch that altar.
The thing is vibrant with the very majesty, glory, and holiness of God when it is in its right relationship, because it is reaching the end. But get those same things, whether they be altars or any vessels—anything else—where the real spiritual object is no longer being served, and it is not so sacred. God can just hand the whole thing over and send it away.
There was a time when the Philistines were very glad to see the back of the ark. There was a time when that ark could be disposed of and no one felt its impact, no longer accompanied by any sign of God.
God does not care for the thing as such. It was, at the beginning, a wooden chest overlaid with gold, but it became something which was an embodiment of heaven. There was a time later when it was no more than a chest like any other chest overlaid with gold.
You see, things that God raises up—He does not commit Himself to them eternally so far as instrumentality is concerned. He only commits Himself to anything while the object for which it was brought up is being reached.
And God’s one all-inclusive object is to secure men and women who are spiritual people.
Anything—anything—that claims to be related to God which is not serving that end has no place, no sacredness, with God. The day will come when that can go.
Tremendous things to say, but it is perfectly true. It is true in history, and it is true today.
You see, I have a very great regard for the instrumentalities that God has used. When I speak like this, do not think for a moment that I am despising or undervaluing those sovereignly used instrumentalities.
God has used missions and missionary institutions, and many things like that. He has used them and blessed them, and many of them have been honoured with God.
As time has gone on, various elements have become dominant. One element is common: what is represented by the word foreign.
Oh, if men only saw, realised, and had spiritual perception and sensitiveness, how they would not only have thought, but how they would shrink—shrink—before that name, “foreign mission.”
That word has felt the doom of missionary activity. It is foreign. It is something that belongs not to the place where it is operating, but to something else.
You see, Christ is never a foreigner. He is never foreign. There is nothing foreign about Christ and the true Church, the Body of Christ. There is nothing foreign.
The very element of what is foreign has to be eliminated—completely eliminated.
I am not even meaning by that to accommodate yourself to native habits and customs, and so on. I mean becoming so much one in the spiritual concern, for the spiritual interest, that it is perfectly manifest that this is not something from the outside. This is from heaven.
This bears the impress of heaven. This is Christ, Who is not national, or anything like that, on this earth. This is something altogether different, not bearing this character of what is foreign.
We are not right up to that, dear friends, and it is because of that word that we are seeing this change. An entirely new orientation of the whole picture and course of things is being demanded.
If there is going to be a continuation of what we call evangelisation, it will be just by men and women and not by institutions. They may be business or professional men and women, but it should not be what they are professionally, as so-called missionaries.
It will be because they are men and women of God, because they are where Christ is, and not because of some institutional interest from somewhere else.
It is happening today. That defines the present crisis and tremendous changeover.
Everything that God uses is conditioned most strictly by spiritual laws. When the spiritual laws are not discerned and observed, that thing’s day is fixed. The end of that is certain.
It will pass, no matter what its tradition or its past may have been, if it has become something in itself and ceased to serve the divine purpose. It is wound up.
I want a lot of time—whether we shall be able tomorrow—to spend more time on this matter. I want time to think about this well: the conditioning of everything by spiritual laws. But there is the statement.
That system which was about to pass, that crisis of the dispensations which was imminent when the Letter to the Hebrews was written, was at most only for a matter of time.
However much we may say about Israel, past or future, it is only temporal. Even if there is a future for Israel—and some dispute that, though most believe there is—if there is, it will only be for a time. It will all give place to the eternal: a new heaven and a new earth, in which there will not be a Jewish nation and other nations, nor even distinctions from the Church.
It is at most for a time, and it was at most for a time. “Until” is a governing word marked over the history of Israel. The time factor is set in the eternal counsels and foreknowledge of God.
You cannot get away from this as you read the Bible: things are moving to a timetable, moving to a time plan.
I remember F. B. Meyer telling of one of the very early journeys by train. Sitting in the compartment of the train, on one knee he had his Bible, and on the other knee he had a timetable.
Someone sitting by, looking at him, said, “You do not tell me that you believe in that worn-out old big book, do you?”
He quietly smiled and said, “My dear friend, do you see that on my other knee I have a timetable? Do you know why I have got that timetable open on my knee?
“I am taking this long journey, and I see in the timetable that we are due at certain times at certain points. Now, the next stop will be so-and-so at such-and-such a time. I am watching to see if we are on time at each point.
“In this other Book that I have got here open, I find God’s timetable. There are time marks; there are certain things on hand. As I look back over history, I see that those things happened just when God said they would happen. Jesus came in the fulness of the time.”
And so he went on. He said, “That is why I believe the Bible. You do not want me to scrap the timetables of your country, do you, and say that they are out of date, outworn, no good, unreliable?
“They are proved to be something of value because here they say such-and-such a time at such-and-such a place, and within perhaps a few minutes we are there. No more can I scrap my Bible. I see God is working to a timetable.”
Dr. Meyer went further, and there were some other signs for the time, but that is sufficient for our point.
There is a timetable. The fact of everything being fixed in the foreknowledge of God—that things have a place with God, appointed beforehand that they should happen—is clear.
And yet, this is one of the difficulties and problems connected with such a fact: while the times were fixed in the foreknowledge of God, strangely they coincided and synchronised with certain conditions.
Those conditions were not brought about by God. They came about, and then something happened which had been before determined. The time synchronised with certain conditions.
I know, as for this letter, so much had been foretold and known beforehand concerning Israel and what would happen.
The Lord Jesus had, in a parabolic way, spoken and acted toward the fig tree. The fig tree withered from its roots, symbolic of the Jewish nation being set aside.
Well, I am not going into all the prophecy concerning this matter, but there it was. It would take place not just willy-nilly, but strangely enough, in the foreknowledge of God, because of certain conditions. So it coincided with God’s time.
The system had become a substitute for, or something more than, the essential purpose for which it was raised up. The thing had become a substitute for the purpose of its existence, or it had become more than the purpose. In some way, the real purpose had gone or disappeared.
Then the thing that was fixed to happen in a time synchronised with that condition. And God works like that.
There is a time fixed when God will sift out everything in Christianity—sift it all out—to find out just how far the real purpose of its existence is being fulfilled.
And the things which can be shaken will be shaken.
Spirituality in men and women is the thing which governs all this and decides the crisis—decides the crisis.
We shall come to the next side of individual responsibility. Why do you bear the name of Christian? How is that, a Christian? We call ourselves Christians. Do we have that name merely as a title, or is it found out how far we are Christ’s?
But it is Christ—how far it is Christ.
I wonder if I dare, in a parenthesis here, introduce something that I have read recently. It was only a dream of a little girl.
She said that she had a dream. In her dream she saw a glorious angel sitting on the village green where her home was. In his hand was a large measuring rod, standing up in his hand beside him.
As she looked at that measure, she saw written on it, “Christ.” There was so much of Christ: two inches of Christ, four inches of Christ, right up this large measure.
Then she heard the angel call. The angel called the name of someone known very well to her, who had a great reputation for doing a lot of things in Christian work—always running about here and there, always active in philanthropic interests in the name of Christianity, a very busy person in what is called Christian work.
She knew that person so well. Everybody thought that person was a very wonderful person, that she would stand well in the great day. The name was called, and this person came up very confidently, quite assured that she would stand well by the measure.
When she came up by the measure, she began to shrink in her stature, as if she became smaller and smaller until she was a tiny person down at the bottom of the measure.
Everybody looked with surprise. “Is that really all the measure of Christ after all?”
The angel gave her some strong but kindly words of advice, seeking to point out the difference between all the activities outwardly and the real measure of Christ inwardly. She went away very sorrowful.
One by one, people known to the dreamer were called by the angel. There was one person whose name was called, known by the dreamer as a very poor, weak little soul. No one thought a great deal of her.
She lived in a back place in very uncomfortable conditions. No one made great friends with her; they left her very much alone. They did not think she mattered at all.
The angel called her name, and she came forward very timidly, very fearfully.
Standing up by that measure, she came and stood by it. As she came into touch with it, she began to grow and grow and grow. Her whole stature developed and increased until she was bigger than all the rest.
The angel did not have much to say to her, but just a kindly word: “Yes, Mary. Yes, Mary, I know all about your secret burdens, all your secret sufferings, and how bravely you have borne the despising of others, and how you carried it all in secret to the Lord in prayer, drawing your strength from Him to go on. You count much in His sight.”
The dreamer had her name called, and she had to stand there. She was very fond of dress and worldly appearance and all that sort of thing. For her, the things of this world counted for everything.
Because she was popular, because people thought her a person always to be looked at and said that she was a model of a well-dressed person—the kind of person everybody would like to be—she thought that she might stand there before the measure.
But she found that, as she came, she also began to shrivel and shrink and to lose all her sense of self-importance.
The angel just quoted to her a bit of Scripture from 1 Peter:
Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel;
But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit,
Which is in the sight of God of great price.
I have risked introducing that. It seems fanciful and fantastic, but it perhaps gets to the point of this whole matter.
You see, God’s standard, after all, is the spiritual measure of His Son.
That is what really is inherent in this word from Peter: “I lay in Zion a chief corner stone.” Now then, everybody is measured.
The preciousness, that is, is to you that believe. To those who disbelieve, that same stone becomes a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. The chief corner stone is God’s measure of spirituality—the measure of Christ.
God is not interested in anything which is not productive of real spirituality. That is the point.
And Zion, as we have seen throughout this conference, is the Son—God’s thought for His people: the sum of the virtues, values, and victories of the Lord Jesus to be apprehended, known, entered into, and enjoyed through faith.
Zion is the great test. It is the great test of everything and of everyone. Yes, Zion is like God’s plumb line, to change the metaphor—the test of everything.
There has to be an answering to God for anything provided by Him. There is nothing that God has provided which can be treated as though it did not exist.
A very solemn statement—a very solemn, challenging, searching statement. Dear friends, if God has raised up anything, presented anything of Himself as to His Son, and brought us into the knowledge of Him, into participation in that, into association with Him—
If that has come within the orbit of our lives, it can never be as though it had never happened. Sooner or later, we shall have to answer to God for that.
That is the verdict already latent in the Book, which is the sum of everything.
He has so often pointed out the beginning of God’s weighing up: the presentation of the plumb line in the first chapters of the Book of Revelation, in the messages to the churches.
These were churches in Asia which the Apostle Paul was used to bring into being—churches which had received, in a very particular way, that wonderful revelation of Christ and of His Body which had been given in a peculiar way to Paul.
Those churches had had that ministry. Paul had long since gone to be with the Lord. As he was closing his life, all they which were in Asia turned from him—repudiated him, perhaps; at any rate, let him go, possibly from them.
You think that is the end? Oh, no.
Very well, those very churches are brought to the line of what Paul had given—to that which Paul had presented. That is the standard. That is the test. Sooner or later, you do not get away from it.
Perhaps it is not necessary for me to say that with such strength. It sounds so hard; it is like a frown, is it not? But what we are saying is this: God presented something which had spiritual significance.
The thing was kept on with, was held to, but the spiritual significance was lost. Eventually, they were judged not according to their continuation with the form, but according to their departure from its spiritual meaning.
It is like that. It is like that. It will be like that, now and at the end.
It is just that something which is deeper and more inward than the framework and the form, even though God may have used that, which finds us out. It finds us out.
Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone.
In architecture, a chief corner stone is that from which everything moves. It takes its rise from that; it moves from that upward; and it all relates back to that. The whole structure is related to the chief corner stone.
“I lay in Zion.” That is something which is to be the test.
Our time has gone for the afternoon. Otherwise, I should have gone on to show how Zion has been God’s instrument of testing in the past dispensation, and how that which Zion represents—spiritual quality and spiritual nature—is going to be a test for everything at the end.
I think I can stop there for the moment. We may go further.
But the afternoon contains, in the purpose of God, I believe, this one particular emphasis. If I am wrong, I am misleading you, and I would not do that. I submit it to your own inquiring observation with this question:
Are we seeing a change—really a change—in the whole complexion of things in this world so far as Christian activity is concerned? Are we?
Is this thing growing over the earth? You see, it is so different, is it not?
Some of us remember so well, in our younger days in Christian activity, how tremendously we were taken up with this whole scheme of world evangelisation along the expected lines.
Now let me say again: it is not for one moment an undervaluing of what God has sovereignly used, and He has used it. We today have not finished our lives yet. We may be getting on, but we have lived to see that it is no longer possible to do it in that way.
What is the use of appealing today for missionaries to go to China? In other places, too, the situation is becoming true, is it not? On the old lines, in the old way, it is impossible now.
That does not mean that the day has already arrived when missionaries will not go out into the work, but we can see the trend of things. It is a change. There is a change coming.
If there is going to be a prolonging of this matter—and I do not assume that world evangelisation as such is at an end—if there is going to be an extension of time or testimony in the nations, it is going to be in another way, on another basis.
I have said that it is going to be by men and women as such, not under some title or institution, but just men and women, perhaps professional witnesses, perhaps in business or in other ways, in the nations.
If it is going to be at all, that is the way for the future. Things change, do they not?
Why? What is the upshot of it? What does it mean from God’s standpoint?
Oh, you see, it is just this tremendous emphasis of God and of heaven: that God, in the consummation of the age, is going to come to the essential and the intrinsic and strip off the secondary—to get right to the issue.
Without going round it in long, drawn-out circles, get right to it. Look here, you people in the nations: you have got to know God firsthand, not by foreign names. You have got to know God for yourselves and be able to stand altogether without foreign help in any way.
Firsthand spiritual men and women, and parties growing in those nations—that is going to be true in every nation. It is going to be true here.
Something is going to happen which will throw us all back upon God. It will be different. We here in this place are going to be thrown upon the Lord.
In some way, it is going to happen that if we have not got a life with God and do not know the Lord, it does not matter what the setup is: it will not save us, it will not help us, it will not suffice.
We are going to be pressed into this, and we are going to be met with the question: Do we know the Lord, and are we spiritual men and women? That is the issue.
God will overturn anything to get that, no matter how long its tradition, no matter how much He may have used it in former times.
He is going, in the long run, to concentrate upon one thing: Do you know the Lord? How much do you know the Lord? What does your knowledge of the Lord amount to? How can it carry you through? How can it make you stand up?
Those upon whom you have leaned may prove to be broken reeds. You may find disappointment all round. You may discover things that shock you and could turn you aside and make you offended.
But you are being tested now according to Zion—whether you stand or whether you stumble. A stumbling block, you see.
If we are not really men and women who know the Lord—oh, do understand this. If I said nothing more, I could say nothing more important than this, dear brothers and sisters: what God is trying to do with us in our experiences is to make us know Him for ourselves.
Have nothing secondhand.
That will not make us independent of one another. It may make us perhaps the more dependent upon one another, but it has got to be like that.
God will shake everything that can be shaken in order to find out how much there is of that kind—conforming to Zion.