We remember, O Lord, that it is written:
He spake, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.
By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and the earth created.
Our prayer, Lord, is that Thou wilt speak and act; that Thy word may be Thine act. Not just words, Lord, but words of power—divine fiat—by which something is done. Make it like that, even now. In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
The matter that the Lord has laid on my heart for these morning sessions is that of what has come to us, and what we have come to, by the coming of the Lord Jesus.
I want to lay down two fragments of Scripture around which we shall move at present. The first is in the Old Testament, in the first book of Chronicles, chapter 12, verse 32:
And of the children of Issachar, men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.
The other is in the New Testament, in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2:
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son.
Knowledge of the times. At the end of these days, God has spoken in His Son—or, as you see in some translations, Son-wise.
These Scriptures, and their contexts, are set in a time of crisis and change—very great crisis, very significant change.
In the Letter to the Hebrews, the reference to the end of one time and the introduction of another represents a tremendous crisis: what Dr. Campbell Morgan called “the crisis of the Christ.” I am sorry that he stole that wonderful way of putting it; I would like to have been the originator of it.
That is what is before us: the crisis of the Christ, which is, of course, the crisis of the dispensation. The Hebrew letter brings us not only to the great general movement from one age to another, but to the specific application of that movement to our own time.
As in the setting of the passage in Chronicles, so in this letter to the Hebrews, the important thing is not merely to know of a change of time, of regime, or of divine economy, but to have understanding of what the change is.
It is of immense consequence not only to know that there are different dispensations and different economies in the divine sovereignty, but for the Lord’s people to know the nature of the times in which they live.
I venture to suggest to you that perhaps the most important thing just now is for the people of God to know the nature of the time in which they live, so far as God is concerned.
There is an immense amount of confusion and far-reaching conflict in Christianity just now. Many people do not know just where they are. What is right? What is not right? What is the truth? What is not the truth?
And I repeat: the important thing—the supremely important thing—is to have knowledge, understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do now; what we ought to do now; what Christians ought to do now because of the peculiar and particular nature of what God is doing now.
I think you would agree with me that this is very vital.
Throughout the Bible, of course, we have many crises: many movements through a crisis from one state, position, or order to another. I am not going to mention them, but you know that it is so.
The Bible is marked throughout by reaching a point from which everything takes a new complexion and represents a new thing in the movement, the going, of God. God is moving, moving by stages; and every stage is marked by some crisis.
When we use the word crisis, we mean that we are brought face to face with something of tremendous significance which is going to govern the whole future and make all the difference in the future.
From the divine side, these crises are onward movements—God moving on. From the human side, they are God moving back, because things have deviated on the human side.
Things have gone off the direct line of God, and other things have come in which God never fully intended, if He intended them at all. They were not in His original pattern. There has been deviation.
So the crisis arises with this twofold meaning: God is going on, but in order to go on, He must bring back. He must take His people back to the point from which they departed.
That is exactly where we are. God is going on. He is not giving up. He is not defeated. He is not having to revise His programme. He is going on.
But from the standpoint of His people, He is having to pull them back. “You have gone off the line. You have moved away from My intention. You have deviated. You must come back to the point and pick things up again with Me.”
“I am going on. If you want to go on, you must come back and rejoin Me at the point where you deviated.” That is perfectly clear. The two aspects of any crisis are always there.
The crisis, therefore, is perhaps very often one of leaving an entire arrangement, economy, order, or development—leaving it in its entirety behind—and moving with God in a new entirety, on new ground, to what is wholly and originally according to His mind.
These are things involved in these crises. This is the method of God.
I believe that the Lord wants to show us this week something of the present crisis in Christianity. And if that is too big a word, or seems too objective, then the present crisis in your life and in mine, in relation to His original thought and His full thought.
Now we have to put in this: man never really learns anything theoretically.
You are not going to learn anything by volumes poured out upon you in words from this desk this week. That sounds pretty hopeless, does it not? Then why come here? Why have you come to talk to us?
No, you are not really going to learn anything by all this. I say, really learn. Man never really learns anything except by experience.
Take that in. Underscore it. God knows that, and that is why God is so practical.
That is why God would take years and years—centuries, three or four thousand years—governed by this fact: men do not learn by what they are told; they only learn by experience. They have to have a history with God, under the hand of God, before they learn anything.
You think you know something. How do you know it? How have you come to know it? By attending conferences? No, no. There can be a terrible tragedy along that line.
I know definitely of people who have had the fullest teaching for many years—twenty, thirty, forty years. You could hardly have more than they have had; and at the end they have jettisoned the whole thing and washed their hands of it.
“They know it all,” they say. “We know it all. You cannot tell us anything more.” All right, all right.
So you may come here year after year and think you know. Well, how do you know? God knows that we really know nothing except by history, by experience.
This sounds very elementary and simple, I know, but we have to get down to this. We are coming to the point of spiritual understanding of the times—our time—and knowing what Israel ought to do.
I ought to put an hour in here, in parentheses, on two Greek words in the New Testament. I took the trouble to go through the New Testament with these two Greek words, and I got a surprise after a good many years of studying it.
I found that I had sheets of paper full of references, and the whole thing divided into two columns on two words, both of which are translated by the English word know.
They are two entirely different words, in two entirely different realms. One whole column is the word which means knowing by information. You know because you have been told, you have heard it, or you have read it.
The other Greek word means that you have a personal experience of that thing, and you know it because it has done something in you and become a part of you. It is your history. It is your experience. It is your life. It is you.
The New Testament can be divided by those two Greek words. I am not quoting Greek; I am just telling you what is there.
“This is life eternal, that they may know Thee.” Not by information, but by having an experience of Thee. This is life. Something very definite.
Well, I must not go on with that. I have just indicated it and pointed it out. Here we are with Issachar, with knowledge of what Israel ought to do. Our New Testament is built around these two words—different kinds of knowledge.
We have said that the Bible is marked by crises, and that with our New Testament we are brought to a new time-mark of crisis. Everything for you, for me, and for all the Lord’s people is really going to depend upon whether we have this spiritual discernment and spiritual knowledge of what God is really doing now.
Not in general, but in particular. Oh, if only this week could bring us all into that discernment. This is going to be more than a Bible conference with words and teaching. It is going to have tremendous issues.
And let me say at once: I hope you are here for a crisis. I hope that you are here prepared to be turned upside down and inside out, prepared to leave a whole regime if God says that He is finished with it, and to embrace His present economy and commit yourself to it.
You will be found out on that as we go on. This is the important matter of recognizing and understanding what really happened when the Son of God, Jesus Christ, entered history and came into this world.
Perhaps you think you have given an answer to that question: What happened? I know some things you would say. But I am convinced—and it does not very much matter what I am convinced of, but for what it is worth I put it this way—that very few Christians today really understand what happened when Jesus Christ came into this world.
That is what we are going to spend hours upon, trusting the Lord to give us the opening of our understanding.
The coming of Jesus Christ into this world, into history, split history down the middle. It split history down the middle.
On the one side, finish; on the other side, beginning. A great, great, immense divide was represented by the entering into history of Jesus Christ. You have got to understand that divide.
I mean, of course, three phases in relation to Him. First, there has been the historical.
I do not know how it has been with you. Perhaps you have come in at a later point. But I remember when I first came to the Lord and became interested in the things of Christ, it was the time when everything was being made of the historical Jesus.
The books most read were those classics of the life of Jesus, or the life of Christ. Some of you know Farrar’s Life of Christ, and all those things: the Jesus of Palestine, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Jerusalem, Calvary, and Gethsemane; the Jesus of the three and a half years, or the thirty years; Jesus of history.
Everybody was interested in that. They watched Him walk and go, speak and act, here and there and everywhere; and it was all written up as the life of Jesus. Well, that is what engaged us.
There is nothing wrong with it, of course. It is quite good. Actually, some of you are still reading lives of Christ on that level. That was a phase—and maybe a phase still.
But then there came a change, and we passed into what we might call the theological or doctrinal Christ.
After that, all this arose about the person of Christ: the virgin birth, the deity, the Godhead, and all that is called the fundamentals of the faith of Jesus Christ—the theological and doctrinal. My word, what a phase it has been.
What a tremendous battleground the person of Jesus has been. Two phases. I wonder whether this second phase is passing. It is not with some; for many, it is everything.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course. I am not here saying that it is wrong to be occupied with the person, the deity, the eternal Sonship, the virgin birth, and so on, of Jesus. No, you are not wrong. That is all right. You have to have that.
But get over it. Get over it. Sooner or later you will have to get over it. It just will not do the thing. I was on the verge of saying, “It will not do the trick.” It just will not get you through.
Your theology is not going to get you through into a realm of such terrific spiritual conflict. If you are very faithful, it will be struck at, at its roots—perhaps shaken—and after all that you know in that way, you may not stand.
People are not going to get through the final crisis on theology or Christian doctrine, though it may be fundamental.
There are your two phases. They may run concurrently, or they may be more or less defined as periods. But there is another—a third—which is the ultimate, the supreme. It is about that that we are going to speak.
It is the spiritual. You can have the historical, and you can have the theological, without the spiritual. Though you may have all that, if you have not the spiritual, you are not going to survive.
You have not touched the real heart and core of the great divide, the great change that has taken place through the coming of Jesus Christ.
It is the spiritual life of Christ that matters, not merely the historical. It is the spiritual understanding of Christ, and not merely the theological, that matters. If you do not understand that, hold on for a day or two; we shall be getting nearer as we go along.
These three phases are clearly recognized, are they not? We have come now to the last: the spiritual—the revelation of Jesus Christ inwardly by the Holy Spirit. Supreme, absolutely essential, indispensable.
As I said, when God moves—and He is moving now on this line, if you can discern—He is, of course, moving onward, but He is moving backward. If you get hold of that last thing that I have said, you will see how true it is: God is moving back in order to move on.
What is the New Testament based upon? The historical life of Jesus? No. The theological life of Jesus? No. It is all there, but that is not its foundation.
The real root of Christianity—this new dispensational crisis and movement—is gathered into words of the Apostle Paul. Paul so much represents in himself, in his own experience and history with God, the nature of this whole dispensation.
In simple but profound words, it is all gathered up:
It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.
That is something more than the objective experience on the Damascus road. That was the turning-point in the great crisis. It was the impact upon him of a meaning which was to begin then and unfold through all the rest of his life.
“It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” That is it. Not to me—in me.
Paul later wrote, as was quoted here last night, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him—the true and full knowledge of Him, of Christ.
That is inward. Right deep down at the very source and centre of our being, God has made us to see the significance of His Son, Jesus Christ. Out of that Christianity comes—true Christianity.
Anything less than that is dangerous Christianity: dangerous for the individual, and dangerous for the church. That is what I mean by a spiritual crisis: the spiritual aspect, beyond and more than the historical and the theological or doctrinal—the revelation of Jesus Christ within.
That is it. The Lord alone can do that. Paul had to pray to the Father of glory to do it. But it can be done, and it can be done here.
It can be done so that we go away saying, “I have seen. I can never be the same. A whole range is left behind. An entirely new order has come in for me. I am out of something, and I am in something else. I have seen—I have seen Jesus Christ.”
That is the focal point, dear friends, of the message that I have to bring to you.
Now, the Bible—let us get back again onto our larger line. I must keep this end in view, much as I dislike leaving it.
The Bible is divided—and this is child-talk—into two main divisions: what we call the Old Testament and the New Testament.
But note that this is more than a division of books: Genesis to Malachi comprising so many books, one half; then Matthew to Revelation, so many books, the other half. Oh, but it is much more than a division of books.
It is this great divide, this great spiritual divide.
The four Gospels—what do they really mean? When you stand back and ask the question, what do they represent? There are two things I am going to say about them.
First of all, they introduce the Person Who Himself is the crisis—the Person Who is Himself the Christ, and Who brings in and precipitates the crisis and changes the dispensation in its entirety.
They introduce the Person Who does that, and Who is that: the crisis of the Christ.
But you know, of course, that while all four Gospels differ in their details and contents, each containing what the others do not choose to include, they all head directly up to the Cross.
Every one of them has this characteristic in common: whatever other differences there may be, they all end with the Cross.
The Person of the crisis is introduced, and the crisis itself is the crisis of the Cross. The Cross is the crisis of the change that has come in with the Person.
Here is the Person; here is His earthly life, walk, work, and teaching. But none of that can become of any value to anybody until the Cross has been planted over it all.
You can have all that is about the historic Jesus and the theological Christ, and nothing may happen, until all that is in those Gospels is brought right up to the Cross. The Cross makes effective the crisis of the Person.
So that the result and issue is this: really, between the two divisions of the Bible—between the Old Testament and the New Testament—right there is the Cross.
Right there is the Cross. You have to put the Cross between Malachi and Matthew, so far as the books are concerned. Put it right there.
Because on one side of the Cross, all that goes before and leads up to Malachi, so far as the arrangement of the books is concerned—the Cross says, “No.” No more. No; finished. That is done.
On the other side of the Cross: yes, all things new.
If I had a bit of paper, I should draw a big cross. I would draw a thick line right down the centre, from top to bottom—not only on the Cross, but from above the Cross, from heaven, down through the Cross, to the earth. A wide line: no man’s land.
Then, on one side of the Cross, I would write one word: Not. Not, not, not. One big, comprehensive word—NOT—as big as the Cross.
On the other side of the Cross, the onward side—not the backward, the onward side—I would put one other word: But. Not, but.
Now, dear friends, I have said something that can take up all your time for the rest of your life. Do you know those two words are two governing words throughout the whole of your New Testament?
If you like, make a closely analytical study of your New Testament in the light of this, and underline every occurrence of those two words. You will have an immense new comprehension and revelation of the meaning of Christ, of the difference that He has made, of the great divide, and of what we are in: not, but.
I dare not launch out onto it. It applies to everything.
It is made to apply to the very beginning of Christian history in the individual. Open the Gospel by John. Where are you at once?
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Here is your great “not” at the very beginning—“but of God.”
If I went on to show you how it applies to everything in the New Testament, we should be occupied for a long time. We are going to come to it later in some particulars. But here we are: that Cross is the great divide, standing at the centre, looking backward over all that has been right up to that point, and saying, “Not—not any longer; no more; finished.”
The Cross is God’s great “not.” The resurrection is the positive—the great “but.”
“Neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” It is wonderful how those two words open up everything and give us an insight into what has come to us and what we have come into with the coming of Jesus Christ.
This is the great division, with the Cross there between the Testaments: the end of Malachi, a tragic book of the failure of everything in the old order; the beginning of Matthew—hope, light, everything great and new, the great beginning of a new order of things.
The end of a system, and the beginning of an entirely new one.
The Cross of the Lord Jesus has written these two words large over the whole history covered by the Bible. The Bible is intended to comprehend human history, and human history is comprehended in these two words: not, but.
There is something here which I think may be helpful. I hope it will be.
The Cross is a very practical thing. With God, it is not merely a doctrine, or just the doctrine of the way of salvation and redemption. It is not merely the theology of the atonement and all such doctrine.
It is certainly not merely an historic thing represented by the crucifix. The Cross is an immensely practical thing with God, intended to make actual this divide.
Although you may know all about the message of the Cross—and I think you do—you may be full of the teaching of the Cross. But the real test of the knowledge that you have about the Cross is whether this divide has been made in you.
Has the Cross resulted in the leaving behind of one entire regime, system, and order?
“Oh, I know,” you say, “of course it means that I have left the world and the things of the world.” Oh, it is almost nonsense to talk like that. You do not know what you have got to leave behind.
But you will learn, under the hand of God, what the Cross means about elimination, moving away further and further away, and coming to that in Hebrews.
I am battling all the time not to anticipate too much. But we are going into this Letter to the Hebrews, and you will come to a phrase which, of course, you know:
Let us therefore go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.
What does that mean to you—without the camp?
It takes a long time to learn what that means, and it means going through some literally terrific, devastating experiences of our soul-life.
This is the work of the Cross. It is a going out—an immense going out. But it is unto Him. Oh, it is unto Him. That is another immensity, is it not?
You see what I mean. The Cross is a tremendously practical thing, forcing this gap, this divide, wider and wider as we go on.
The fact is, like it or not, that as we move more and more in spiritual understanding and apprehension of the meaning of Christ, we find ourselves more and more alone, so far as many Christians are concerned, and certainly so far as the traditional system of Christianity is concerned.
Well now, to bring this preparatory and introductory word to a close, let me say again, coming back to the starting-point: progress in the life and purpose of God, with which this Letter to the Hebrews has to do in its entirety.
You know that, do you not? “Let us”—that is one of the key phrases of the whole letter. “Let us go on.” “Therefore let us leave.” “Let us beware.” “Let us go on.”
What I am saying is that progress in the life and purpose of God, for the individual and for the church, depends—if you forget everything else, write this inside—upon spiritual discernment.
Spiritual discernment: this kind of spiritual knowledge and understanding as to the nature of this great change that has come with the Lord Jesus.
Now, if you go back with me for a moment to our Old Testament passage, 1 Chronicles 12, look at the chapter. Have you scanned the chapter? It is a new movement, is it not? It is crisis—a turning-point.
David is out there outside the camp. He is in the wilderness; he is in his cave. And now there are coming to him men of all the tribes—of many of the tribes—just nuclei, just a few, a kind of remnant of Israel, coming to him outside the camp.
They are described by various characteristics: men of valour, of courage; men of strength, great strength; men with ability to make war; men committed with all their might, for it says they came with a perfect heart.
Very good. All these coming ones, following David, are characterized by these things. Then right there comes this change of complexion, it seems—a new and different category: men of Issachar, who had understanding of the times and knew what Israel ought to do.
Right at the heart of this return movement, this new movement of God—which is a recovery movement—there is placed this contrasting, almost striking thing: men who had understanding of the times and knew what Israel ought to do.
I venture to suggest that with all the driving force of these other men—their muscles, their physical force, and all their side of things—without these men of Issachar there would have been something lacking which might have spoiled the whole movement.
I believe it is put there to show that with all that is being done, rightly and with good intention, the thing that must be there, right at the heart of everything, is spiritual understanding, spiritual discernment, spiritual knowledge.
Knowing the significance of this time. Knowledge of the time. What does this mean? This is not merely something happening that men are doing. This has a meaning—a deep, profound, divine meaning.
These people had seen it. They had understanding as to the meaning of this present time. And because they had understanding, they knew what Israel ought to do.
Do you not feel that this is important? Very vital.
“Well,” you say, “what did the men of Issachar really see? What was it that they understood? What was it that they knew Israel ought to do?”
Oh, something. Look at the context again. It is historic in illustration, of course, but spiritual in principle. The answer to that in this dispensation is the Letter to the Hebrews.
What do you have in your Letter to the Hebrews? God, having in old times proceeded in one way and adopted one method, has finished with those times and methods. At the end of those days, He has spoken in His Son, Whom He appointed Heir of all things.
You have come to God’s chosen, sovereignly chosen; God’s elect, God’s appointed, God’s intended Ruler; God’s principle of heavenly authority amongst the Lord’s people. That is all that David means.
They knew that Israel ought to turn back to David and put David in the place for which he had been anointed of God. That is simple, is it not, in language? But do not forget that it represented something.
You have still got Saul alive, you know. You have still got the old regime of Saul. He is not dead yet; he has his forty years’ run. And, my word, what a problem it is.
God’s man, the anointed man, is not in his place fully. He is on the way there. But this is God’s way.
Now you have the Letter to the Hebrews, and there you are. What is the movement? The final movement, the full movement, which embraces all the parts, gathers up all the fragments, and makes everything fullness and finality.
Fullness and finality are the words to write over the Letter to the Hebrews. It is a Christ movement: spiritual understanding of what He is and what He represents in the universe of God.
Spiritual apprehension of Christ. The words sound so feeble, do they not? Perhaps familiarity robs them of their strength. But, dear friends, everything for Christianity—everything for Christianity’s destiny—depends now upon an adequate apprehension of the meaning of Jesus Christ in God’s order of things.
This is going to be devastating—devastating to a whole system, a Christian system. Simply devastating.
It is going to be a big “no,” God-written, over a whole Christian system.
Although they are not intelligent as to this, people do sense strongly—and with a growing sense—that they have got to do something to keep Christianity intact.
I believe that the whole ecumenical movement is a tremendous effort to save Christianity from collapse. The whole World Council of Churches is an attempt to put Christianity on crutches and save its reputation.
Men are doing this with tremendous effort because there are those who say, “Christianity has had its day. It no longer means anything.”
You say, “Well, that is infidelity; that is apostasy.” But, dear friends, do not make any mistake: if you are going on with God, you are going to come into spiritual experiences in your life with God where you will be tested on every point of your Christian life as to whether it is valid.
You will be tested as to whether this will stand up to the situation, whether this is going to get you through.
The things that you believe most strongly, and think you know most fully, are going to be touched. Do not make any mistake about it. In your life, you will be tempted to question the very deepest realities of your past conviction.
Men and women in this world are going through that now. I think of some who have spent long years in prison, and I read what they wrote before. I have to say, “I wonder if they believe that now. I wonder if they hold to that now. I wonder if that is getting them through now.”
They made tremendous statements about the sufficiency of Christ and so on. I wonder. I believe they will come through, because He is Lord and the heart is right with Him.
But mark you, I am simply saying this: the great question of the real spiritual significance of our faith, of our Christianity, is going to be put sorely to the test.
It is going to be found out then whether it is Christian tradition, Christian doctrine, Christian theology, and the generally accepted Christian system—or whether it is Christ.
It is Christ. We are going to be stripped down to Christ—stripped down to Christ—to the place where we say, “All I have left, after all my learning and teaching and Christian work, all I have left is the Lord Himself.”
But is that going to be a fatal position? Not at all.
You know the old woman on the ship, do you not? In the midst of a storm, she looked at the captain and said, “Captain, are we going to do something?” “You had better pray,” said the captain. “Oh, has it come to that?”
Yes, we shall be reduced to Christ. And then we shall find out where we are: under the “not,” or under the great “but.”
Now, Lord, for these things to interpret, explain, and apply—give the understanding. Our reaction to it all is this: this flesh cannot. This flesh cannot. We in ourselves cannot. We know it. But Thou art sufficient.
Our hearts are open to Thee. Our hearts, we trust, are truly toward Thee.
Make use of this feeble ministry to give interpretation of future experiences—Thy dealings with us, Thy strange ways.
O Lord, open our eyes. Give us spiritual understanding. We ask in the name of Thy Son. Amen.