You know, we are just keeping on with ideas and information, filling the mind, thereby blocking the channel to the spirit. But we can do nothing but appeal to Thee, trusting that the Spirit of truth will Himself pierce through the mind, the head, right down into those innermost recesses, and make the Word of God what it is said to be: sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.
Lord, let this be the effect of the ministry already today, and now, and onward. We look to Thee in our need, in our helplessness, apart from Thee, for Thine own Word and for Thine own Name. Amen.
You will remember that yesterday morning, in our consideration, we stopped short and broke off before we were finished. But what was on our hearts was this matter of the unsearchable riches of Christ—the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
So we simply proceed with that this morning and do not follow on to another aspect. I want to say that this is going to be probably the most difficult thing to grasp, to understand, perhaps to expect, in our goal this week.
Peter, referring to all the letters of the Apostle Paul, says, “Our beloved brother Paul.” But in the next breath he says that in all his letters there are some things hard to be understood. Whether Peter meant that for himself—that he had not grasped it all—or whether he was speaking about other believers, I do not know.
But I am not Paul, and I am not asking you to read my letters. Nevertheless, I do feel that what is on my heart this morning will be difficult to understand, and you will be required to give very close and careful attention—honest attention—to every sentence. Every sentence has such a much wider context than we can mention.
Having said that, I trust I have prepared you for some hard work. I am sorry that it comes at this time. I was waiting and watching for the opportunity to get to my brother this morning, so that he might go right on in the second session. I could have come on this afternoon, all right, but I did not get the chance. He did not give me the chance. He will suffer for that!
So we will come to this: the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. Again, we are going to let Paul help us as our interpreter, or our pointer.
The corollary of inheritance is, of course, heirship. And heirship is found in the Bible. Heirship means sonship, with a particular connotation.
At that point, we turn, just to refresh our memories on this matter, to the First Book of Chronicles, chapter 28. We will take two verses from this larger study: verses 5 and 6.
This is David speaking:
And of all my sons (for the Lord hath given me many sons),
He hath chosen Solomon my son
To sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.
And He said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build My house and My courts;
For I have chosen him to be My son,
And I will be his father.
The Lord is leaping right ahead of David, is He not? Of course, as we have said with another issue, a greater than Solomon is here—Jesus. So there is the focus of this matter.
You will notice in these verses, as in others in this context, that there was a selectiveness about this matter. “The Lord hath given me many sons, but He hath chosen—He hath selected—Solomon, my son.”
We know that David had many sons. We do not know very much about most of them. One or two come out conspicuously, like Absalom and Adonijah. But of all his sons, God selected Solomon, the son of David, at the point of ripeness and maturity.
Sonship came into full view. The principle and reality of sonship emerged from a long history of maturing, ripening, and being brought through.
This maturity, out of which this sonship came forth into being and into light, was through a long history of suffering—after bitter experience. First, there were the sufferings from without.
Here is where you must bring the mind more than I can say. Here is a brief statement, but oh, how much gathers around it. No sooner was David anointed as a youth than trouble started in his life.
Oh, what a long-drawn-out period of suffering and discipline under that man Saul—from the day that Saul looked upon David with a jealous eye and hurled his spear, hoping to transfix him, right on through those years of being hunted among the rocks, the hills, and in the desert.
David cried:
I am like a pelican of the wilderness;
I am become as an owl of the waste places.
I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the housetop.
And to Saul he could say, “After whom is the king of Israel come out? After a dead dog? After a flea?” You know it all. A long, bitter history of suffering came upon him from without because of the anointing.
Here you have got to do some changing of your thinking. “Holy anointing! If only we had the anointing! The Lord will anoint us—won’t that be wonderful? Oh, that will be power!” All right. On the day of the anointing, troubles began—opposition from without, persecution from usurping, envious, jealous forces.
Then came that second period of suffering. It did not stop when Saul was out of the way. David may have thought, as we often do, “If only Saul were out of the way in my life, then…” David had that thought on more than one occasion, and Saul was at his mercy.
David’s friends said, “Now you have such a job. God has delivered him into your hands. This will be your deliverance from all your trouble.” But David refrained. He proved himself worthy after being anointed.
But then Saul passed, and the troubles changed. Now came a period of suffering through David’s own soul, through his own faults. Formerly, it was suffering not through his own fault; now, through his own fault.
You remember Absalom—the murderer—whom David brought back to Jerusalem without repentance, without contrition, in pride. Have you heard the story of how David suffered because of that weakness on his part? It was a weakness of sentimentality as against divine principle.
I think that David never really got over the effect of that episode with Absalom. I believe it registered something in his life forever after.
Then there was that great mistake of numbering Israel—the uprising of conceit and pride, commanding that there should be a numbering. One narrative says that Satan moved David to do it; the other does not say that. But even this carnal-minded, unspiritual man Joab saw through it.
Joab said, “The Lord make His people a hundred times as many as they are; but why doth my lord the king desire this thing?” Nevertheless, David brushed that aside. “Go ahead.” Judgment followed. You remember the consequence: the angel of the Lord, with his drawn sword, and the mowing down of the people.
This was the reaction to his pride. He wanted to multiply for his own glory, but the result was reduction. It came through the exposure of his heart, coming out of his own mistakes.
Again, he would bring the ark to Jerusalem, intending to catch the ark and bring it on a new cart—carrying the testimony of the Lord on a bit of mechanical contrivance, a bit of organization which had its origin amongst the Philistines.
As they came to the threshing floor, the oxen stumbled. The ark was in danger. Uzzah put forth his hand, and the anger of the Lord smote Uzzah there, and he died before the Lord.
David was offended with the Lord. He was angry with the Lord. He turned the ark aside into the home of Obed-edom, where it remained for a long time—perhaps for years. We can only imagine what David must have been going through because of that mistake.
That is policy in the face of principle. Have you got that? This was policy in the face of principle. Policy—what is policy? What is diplomatic? Not principle.
How much of that there is, even in Christianity. But here it is written loud and clear: the Bible does not hide the failures of its best. David must have suffered intensely over this mistake.
Then there was Bathsheba. We started with it; do not go over that bad, dark story again. But how that tragedy pressed itself through David’s heart. “My sin is ever before me.” Nothing through his own heirship was easy.
Let me say this at once: if you are ever looking for a man—be he a man of God, of the highest status and standing—who is faultless, you are going to be disappointed. The Lord is going to allow you to be apparently disappointed, because there is only One.
Again, there is this matter of sovereign grace. If we were not believers, if we were not under the hand of the Lord, the mistakes that we make, the blunders that we make, the wrong things in our lives, would be our entire undoing. We should be sorry as those who have no hope.
But while it is true that in the lives of believers there are very often these shocking mistakes, God sovereignly has hold of them. That is what we are coming to. He brings the consequence about because of those foolish things and weaknesses.
Then I think it must have been a poignant night after David had gathered and stored all the materials for the house of the Lord—to realize his lifelong ambition of finding a place for the Lord—when Nathan was sent by the Lord to him: “Thou shalt not build the house.”
That must have been a stunning blow. I think through the hours of that night David must have had a very, very deep, dark time. All his life and vision, all his preparations for its realization—shut down. “Thou shalt not build the house.”
But here are the sufferings through which this man went, which brought him to maturity—spiritual maturity—and made him the man to whom the Lord could refer again and again, and yet again, with pleasure and delight.
The New Testament has nothing in it about the dark side of David’s life, and yet it mentions him over thirty times. How wonderful the Lord is. How gracious.
All his sufferings, of every kind, were used by the Lord to bring this man to the place where the Lord could look upon him as “a man after Mine own heart.” A man after God’s own heart.
Now, out of all that emerged sonship. It was not until Saul’s rebellion was completed and David had rest that the Lord spoke about his son and brought Solomon into view as the selected one.
I want you to keep your finger on that word selected and hold it as we go on. As we come down from Solomon, David’s son, over to David’s greater Son, to the New Testament, we find that sonship has a peculiar connotation.
Sonship in the New Testament is not just birth into the family of God—a male child. Sonship in the New Testament is something more than birth into the family, and it is something different.
I stress this personally because I feel this to be one of the most vital issues, perhaps, that confronts us. Yes, sonship in the New Testament is more than birth into the Lord’s family.
Of course, birth and childhood contain potential sonship. We are sons of God in the sense of potentiality, but not absolutely—not absolutely.
There is a special word in the New Testament related not to childhood as such, but to sonship. That word is adoption. You are familiar with it, are you not? You can look it up. I cannot give you all the references now, but that is it.
Adoption in the New Testament is something different from birth, from being a child in the family.
I was talking to a Hebrew scholar last week, and I raised this question with him. I said, “As far as I have discovered, this idea of Paul’s about adoption has no place whatever in the Hebrew economy. I cannot find it at all in the Mosaic economy, in the Old Testament.”
He said, “You are right.” I said, “I will go further. Since you are a Hebrew scholar and also a Greek scholar, I cannot find it in the Greek world, this idea that Paul has about adoption. I can only find it in the Roman world, as a part of the Roman system.” He said, “You are right.”
Then I got this and wrote it down:
Illustrating Paul’s acquaintance with Roman law, the process of legal adoption by which the chosen heir became entitled not only to the reversion of the property but to the civil position of the father, as well as the rights of the adopter, became, as it were, the other self of the adopter.
The heir, by adoption, became the other self of the one who adopted—one with him. This was a principle and a practice in Roman law.
He was placing one who was already a child in the family in the position of responsibility, to represent and act for the father who adopted his own child for that purpose.
There was a ceremony of adoption of his own child. The boy who had been with him through the years in the family—his own child—came to the day of adoption, when he was placed and given the father’s honour, the father’s responsibility, the father’s trust.
From that time onward, he was no longer merely a child but a son. He was, in effect, the other self of his father.
Now Paul has lifted that right out of the Roman economy and brought it into Christian teaching and truth. He uses it again and again. Dear friends, I would ask you to note that with that word adoption, it is usually in the future.
Romans 8 speaks of “waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” and of “the manifestation of the sons.” Of course, this thing has a serious future. It is something more than being a child of God.
Adoption is child-placement. That is the Hebrews term, if you like to read it separately: “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,” and He chastens every son whom He receives. The word concerns the sons whom He places.
Adoption is child-placement in the meaning of sonship. Now, is that difficult to understand?
Let me say, then, that sonship in the New Testament is the highest and greatest theme that ever God has revealed to man. The greatest thing that God has revealed is this destination to which He has called us: sonship.
You know that the Letter to the Hebrews is wholly based upon this. It says that God has spoken in One Who is Son. The original does not merely say “in His Son,” though that is true; it says, in effect, “in Son.” And the whole letter goes on upon that basis.
This means the full concept of God in creating man: representation of God.
Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.
What does that mean if it is not representation of God? When you see the man perfected, you will see God in expression. Whether it be the city, the bride, or the body—whatever figure is used—when the work is finished, there will be the representation of God.
That is the destiny for which God called and created man: responsibility. I think our brother would have gone on this morning, if we had had more time, to the real meaning of the city—not only its nature, but what is a city?
What is Washington? What is Paris? What is London? It is the administrative centre of the whole realm, the governmental focal point.
The New Jerusalem is only a type, a figure, after all—a symbol of the church glorified. But it speaks of a predestined position to govern the nations that walk in the light thereof. This is something special, something specific, something different: a governmental position and responsibility through the ages to come.
Friends, the Lord put His hand on Solomon. “The Lord hath chosen Solomon my son.” The throne was immediately in view—the governmental disposition and responsibility.
Do we see? Sonship emerges in this great trust from God throughout the ages to come: government.
We have often said, and I believe it is quite true, that the world rulers of this darkness are evil spiritual powers in the heavenlies. There is no doubt about that. Think about the activity in the unseen realm: principalities, powers, world rulers of this darkness, wicked spirits in heavenly places.
They are governing this world. They are influencing this world. They have a great deal still to do with the course of this world. It does not set the Lord aside as supreme Lord—He is using all that, making it subject to His Name—but there they are. They have not been annihilated. They rule there.
I confess to you that one of the most difficult problems I have in the New Testament, one which I have wrestled with a great deal, is this: Paul speaks of Christ as above all rule, authority, principality, and power, in this age and in that which is to come.
Yet here is Paul, seeking to pursue the course of his divine vocation, to fulfil the eternal purpose of God, saying, “I would once and again have come unto you, but Satan hindered us.” You can get down to that one and give me the answer if you can.
But there is a place where he is very active. He does have powers of frustration and interference. That is another line by itself, but it would take too long.
These evil forces are the forces which are so much influencing men and things on this earth. They are going to be displaced. For the government of the new creation—the new heavens and the new earth—they will be wiped out, put into the abyss. But God never believes in a vacuum.
Their place is going to be taken by the church. Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? “You shall reign with Me.”
This, dear friends, is part of the inherent content of sonship. It is the throne, the rulership, the great trust and honour that God confers upon the son.
This takes up what our brother has been saying. It is the explanation of chastening—the child-training.
Hebrews 12 says:
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
And scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
“God dealeth with you as with sons.” We have had fathers of our flesh who chastened us as seemed good to them. Shall we not be much more in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
Oh, that has a deep conception, has it not? The Father of spirits—the spirit which was born again, not our bodies, no, and not our souls as such. This training, this discipline, goes right to the depth of our inner being. It is a huge matter. It focuses upon us in a very true way.
You may have a lot of trouble, all sorts of things. You may have rheumatism, you know. You may have this or that infirmity in the body, and you may just write it off as that: “Oh, my rheumatism is bad today,” or whatever it might be.
If you do that, your only recourse is for the doctor. As far as that goes, he can help you. But if you realize, “This is touching me deeper. This is touching my relationship with the Lord. It is touching my walk with the Lord. It is touching me in the realm of my spiritual life,” then you have got the key—the right key—for the discipline.
Then it is not just a physical or bodily experience. It is your spiritual training. And it is wonderful, is it not, what the Lord can do?
I have often told the incident of thirty years ago. I was speaking at a heavy convention in the south of England, and after the meeting a brother came to me. I had not met him before, but I discovered that he was a doctor.
He said, “Mr. Sparks, my wife is an invalid. She has been confined to bed for twenty years. I wish you would come along and pay her a visit, have prayer with her. I think it would be a help to her.”
So I said, “I will come this afternoon.” I went home and prayed about this: “Oh Lord, make me a blessing for this dear woman.”
I put myself in that position, you see—someone going to help somebody in trouble. I arrived at the house, and the doctor opened the door. “Come in, come upstairs.” He showed me into the bedroom.
I was expecting to find a poor, suffering woman, distressed in style and countenance. But I saw there something radiant—something radiant. The very room was filled with the peace of God.
I sat down by the bed, and she began to talk to me. If ever there was a flowing out, a stream of light and glow! You think I could pray for that dear woman, be a blessing to her? I went away feeling that she had ministered to me.
I remember it to this day. Yes, she could have lain there and moaned about her suffering, long-drawn-out and all that. Instead of that, it was the glory of the Lord, because she was taking it in the right way—as her spiritual training.
I expect to find people like that in very high places in the city, in the kingdom, carrying great responsibility.
My last touch with Miss Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur—how many of you know that name? You know her books and her wonderful work in India.
My last visit with her was when she was bedridden. She had been lying there for several years, in weakness and helplessness, much battle. I was shown into the room, and I wondered what I was going to say to this person that would be helpful to her.
At that time I was being very much persecuted and ostracized, and she had heard all about it—all the very bad reports about this man. What was I going to meet there?
She smiled beautifully. “You sit down,” she said. “I am so glad to meet you, because you are a fellow lover of my Lord, and that is all that matters.”
The atmosphere of that room was the beauty of holiness—the peace of God. If you went out of the way to give the Lord like this, precious!
Oh, you see, there are sufferings, and the Lord’s intention in our suffering is our spiritual maturity and rightness, with a purpose.
This purpose is: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” It is the throne that is in view—not just getting into heaven, not just getting there somehow, but having an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom.
That means being brought into great responsibility because we are qualified to take it. So the work of God is in us.
Now, in the few remaining moments, let me bring you right up against the thing, because you may be thinking that this is some particular teaching that I have got into a lot of trouble for, I suppose, in my own experience.
But this is not a teaching, and this is not something I have concocted. This is something that has come to me along the lines of a very big challenge. It is the challenge of the New Testament.
Friends, you are brought face to face with what I have said and am saying; you are really brought face to face with your New Testament. Take it on the broadest issue.
Why is it that more than ninety percent of the New Testament was written for Christians? If you are a Christian, if you are born again, if you have accepted the Lord Jesus, have you got everything? What more is necessary? Why the New Testament, then?
The New Testament, with all its entreaties to believers, its admonitions to believers, its exhortations to believers, and its warnings to believers—why all this, if there is not something more than merely these initial things?
That is the question. Is there another difference between a child and a son, or between being in the family and obtaining the inheritance—the inheritance?
Well, that is the broad basis. What about Paul personally? I cannot get away from it. You cannot put blinkers over this matter. Look it straight in the face—this man, in his letter to the Philippians.
Oh, this man is at the end of his long life of devotion and service and suffering. No man suffered more for the Lord than this man. Here he is in his prison, in his last days, saying:
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended:
But one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind,
And stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal
Unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Do you believe that Paul was afraid of losing his salvation at this time? It would involve the righteousness of God, would it not, and a lot of other things too? Oh no. He had seen something beyond being merely saved—marvellously saved, wonderfully saved, fully saved—but coming on to that which is in God’s mind.
He says to the Corinthians, “Lest, having preached to others, I myself should be rejected.” Oh, God forbid! Yes, I should be disapproved, set aside from the prize.
No, Paul’s fear was not the fear of losing his salvation. I cannot believe it at all. You come to this letter to the Hebrews, and as I have said, it is built upon this matter of sonship from beginning to end.
Then sonship is set forth under the figure of a race: a great cloud of witnesses in the heavenly gallery, and we down here in the arena. “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith.”
For the joy that was set before Him—remember, the original means set before Him as a choice—He could have gone straight into glory from the mount of transfiguration, so far as His own rights were concerned. But He came down the mountain, and instead of glory then, He endured the cross, despising the shame.
You know, this sonship can be sabotaged. If there is one thing the enemy will try to do, it is to come in between Christians being saved and their attaining unto the full purpose of their salvation.
Just as truly as the nations sought to bar the path of Israel as they moved over into the land, saying in effect, “You shall not pass,” so these forces in the heavenly realm oppose our path as we come to the inheritance.
That is why the Christian life becomes a conflict. Use our brother’s language: “Cheer up—it is going to get worse.” Yes, it is becoming more and more intense for believers to hold on and go on.
Ask some of our brethren in the Far East about that—in Siberia, Thailand, and other places. Oh, it is becoming intense and difficult to hold on our way. It is a battle.
I do not understand the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation unless what I have been saying is true:
To him that overcometh,
Will I grant to sit down with Me in My throne.
Well, if I do not overcome, what is at stake? My salvation? You see, this thing has been sabotaged by certain interpreters and commentators who say that those people to whom the letters in Revelation were addressed were not Christians; they were only professing Christians. I do not believe it.
I do not believe there is any logic in what is in those letters if they were not written to Christians. But here, to believers: “Let no man take thy crown.” To believers: “To him that overcometh.” The high point of overcoming is, “Sit with Me in My throne,” whatever that means.
Now this is a matter of vital consequence, really. Perhaps what the Lord will bring to us as a challenge is related to Hebrews again, which says, “Let us go on, not laying again the foundation.” Let us go on, let us go on.
Everything—not that these things are unimportant, but the purpose of these stages—is bound up with our going on. It is going to be costly.
But I am quite sure that, though sometimes even this assurance and glow becomes clouded, you and I, if we go right through, come to glory, and find our place in that great day of adoption—our place—will say that it was worth it.
God has sovereignly intended us to be in that responsibility, great responsibility, for governing the nations that walk in the light thereof, governing the earth. We shall say, “It was worth it, brother. It was worth it.”
“I was tempted to just shut down and be satisfied with being saved and getting into heaven, but I am glad I never did compromise. It was worth it.” The Lord help us to go on.
In all this, we leave that touch of Thy finger, Lord, where we see and understand how much it will mean if we agree to go on.
It may be a lonely way, not understood by perhaps the majority of Christians, ostracized even by leaders amongst Thy people—a lonely way, a difficult way.
Help us, Lord. Oh, help us not to cast away our confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.
Enable us to withstand, and having done all, to stand. So help us, God, in the Name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.