Through the passages of Scripture which were read to us this afternoon, I want to add one or two this evening. I remind you that those passages were in the book of Genesis, Chapter 15 through Chapter 17:8; then in the letter to the Romans, Chapter 4:17-24; and in the letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 11, and verse 8.
I want to add another fragment from that same chapter in the Hebrew letter, Chapter 11. Continuing to refer to Abraham, the record goes on at verse 9:
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Then, in Revelation Chapter 21, beginning at verse 9:
There came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were laden with the seven last plagues; and he spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
Her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
having a wall great and high; having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
on the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
And he that spake with me had for a measure a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.
And the city lieth foursquare, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs: the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.
And he measured the wall thereof, a hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.
And the building of the wall thereof was jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto pure glass.
And from Revelation Chapter 22:
And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,
in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
We continue where we left off earlier. We were speaking about God’s governing thought of enlargement, bringing to remembrance His words to Abraham: that the immense increase which was purposed concerning his seed would, however, be effected along the line of the testing of faith.
This is not just general teaching. These things are very practical and appropriate learning at this time.
The whole work of the enemy, by every means and agency, is to limit what is of God; to reduce it; to make it as small as he possibly can and keep it so.
God’s thoughts are to the contrary. But God’s thoughts do not just operate and come to realization automatically. He is dealing with living people, not with a mechanical world. It is in a people that His thoughts are to have their fulfilment, individually and collectively.
For that realization, all the work of the enemy has to be overcome. The work of the enemy is not only from the outside; it is from the inside. The enemy has got a very strong and deep foothold in human nature—in you and in me.
It is not a small thing to enlarge unto the enlargement of God. There is a lot in us that ever seeks to frustrate God, ever seeks to limit God.
That foothold of the enemy in us by nature is something that ever stands in the way of God’s thought, as a positive thought, to resist God. The foothold in its nature is unbelief, underneath.
There is not one of us here tonight, no matter how advanced may be the point of our spiritual progress, who has no battle remaining with the unbelief of his own heart.
The sin which doth so easily beset, which retards, arrests, and impedes us in the spiritual race, is unbelief. You know that that exhortation to lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, is a part of this letter to the Hebrews. All of it is concerned with going on—going on to fullness.
Here is this which, in the metaphor of the race—running with patience the race that is set before us—is this impeding thing which is to be laid aside as the so-easily-besetting thing. It is unbelief.
It follows immediately in the original text, without any chapter division, upon the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, which is the letter of faith.
Thus, in that general way, it is very applicable to our present need to speak about this matter of faith and enlargement. Or, as it was with Abraham, so it is with us all.
But, of course, it has particular and specific application in the work of the Lord—in a ministry, in a testimony, in an instrumentality of divine purpose.
There are times when the direction and course of everything seems to be to close it up, to hold it, contract it, and bring it to an end. And because of that, there is a tremendous test of faith—a tremendous test of faith.
Those concerned are thrown into the vortex of a great conflict as to whether God, after all, meant this, intended this, was after this—or whether, in view of the accumulation of frustrating, crippling, limiting efforts and activities, some mistake has been made.
The whole thing has got to be reviewed and revised. Under the pressure of the enemy, God does place very hard questions. It is a time of testing of faith.
What is true collectively becomes so true in individual lives from time to time. The point is this: from all that we have seen in the Bible, and all that there is for us to see there, the argument is this: that the very testing of faith is God’s way of enlargement.
Fresh enlargement will come by fresh testing. That is the order of things; it ever has been.
See, here is Abraham. God has announced to him, with an oath, the covenant—what His thoughts are about this great enlargement: “Thy seed shall be as…” Then in the procedure, “I will multiply thy seed greatly.” He has not left Abraham in any doubt as to His thoughts about enlargement.
But look at the testing into which Abraham was brought immediately. He had, thinking naturally, every ground and reason for saying, “I made a mistake in thinking that God meant that. I misunderstood what the Lord meant, or I have been caught in some illusion.”
It would have been very easy for Abraham so to react under the pressure, under the trial. But the point is this: the Lord has done, where Abraham is concerned, far more than ever Abraham thought.
Oh, you see, that great multitude presented to us in the last book of the Bible—a great multitude which no man can number, ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands—they are the seed of Abraham. Not Jews: believers, children of faith. Everyone who has reposed faith in God is the seed of Abraham: a countless seed.
The point is, it has come to pass. But, oh, see how Abraham was tested on this matter of enlargement. They put him to it, and progressively so. It was not one battle fought once and for all and got over, but there through a long life, till he was a hundred years old.
Again and again, in different forms, at different stages, and with accentuating intensity, the enlargement was raised as an issue. But every test passed meant some further enlargement.
We have said that that is the key and law of the Lord. “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” The sin of all sins, where God is concerned, is unbelief.
Here is a word that we must hide in our heart against the day when we feel that we are being so tested and tried and pressed by the situation and position in which we find ourselves that it must mean limitation; it must work out to curtailment, if not to an utter end.
The Bible, all the way through, argues the other way: that such testings of faith are alongside of God’s expressed and revealed mind, and that these tests are the way for the realization of that purpose. In the first place, enlargement is the thought of God.
So much for an added word upon enlargement. We pass to our second word: establishment.
If spiritual enlargement is the need of the Lord’s people—and, oh, how true that is—how small, how petty, how little, how mean, is the spiritual measure of all of us, of the Lord’s people generally. It is distressing and heartbreaking how little Christians really know.
I do not mean good very much upon that. This is a thing which is more and more forced upon consciousness: oh, what little there is of the Lord Himself in the Lord’s people, speaking generally of ourselves; and quite a lot there is that is not the Lord.
If spiritual enlargement is a need, and if the work of God—the testimony of Jesus—needs releasing and enlarging, is there not equally this matter of establishment: the establishing of the Lord’s people?
I could use quite a lot of words; indeed, I will use quite a lot of words which give a slightly different complexion to that word establishment.
If God is after enlargement, He is certainly revealed to be desiring and working towards something that is solid, something that is substantial, something characterized by:
Those words touch the situation very, very vitally. It cuts away, of course, the basis of our trust in feelings. He does the same with our theories, even theories derived from the Bible.
God is not going to allow us to rest on mere theory. He is going to bring us to realities and actualities.