We do ask the Lord to pick us up once more, in the hand of Thy Spirit, to refresh us and to revive us, and to carry us on toward the goal which was within Thy heart in bringing us here. And do give to this hour something of really vital importance. Do this in us, and then throughout. In the name of the Lord Jesus, we ask this. Amen.
We are going to resume where we broke off this morning: this matter of the riches of wisdom and knowledge, as in the all-comprehensive, unsearchable riches of Christ.
May I just say this? What I feel and believe the Lord is really speaking to do with us at a time like this is to bring us into an understanding of what a true Holy Spirit Christian life is.
None of us expects that we shall come into all that is being said at this time. It would be too great a burden upon us individually and altogether to make that expectation—to reach all that is being said in one week. But it is important for us from time to time that we should be made to know, if it is by reminder or shown for the first time really, what a spiritual life is according to the Word of God.
Then you may go away, and the Lord will have ground upon which to work for all time to come, bringing you into that. That is why the Apostle Paul said:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.
Now, it is this spiritual wisdom that we are concerned with at this time: the riches of wisdom.
You will remember that we reminded ourselves that the chief connection of wisdom in the Word of God is the building of the habitation of God—the building of the house of God.
In Solomon, representatively and typically, the summit of the Old Testament is found in Solomon and the building of the house. David said:
Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding magnifical.
— 1 Chronicles 29:1
The house of God is the masterpiece of wisdom. And so it is in the New Testament. The masterpiece—not of time, but of eternity; not of earth, but of heaven—is the building of God’s spiritual house.
We are seeking to see something, if it be but little, of what that house really is, and the wisdom which builds that house.
I need hardly remind you that it has been the thought of God from the beginning, before He set His hand to creation, to have a place here where He Himself could dwell. He came into the garden. It was His thought, desire, and longing—the mystery of it, of course, is beyond us—to dwell amongst men.
That was the governing thing in His speaking to Moses concerning the tabernacle:
Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.
— Exodus 25:8
All this pointed toward the day when He would be present in the Person of His Son, and in the corporate expression of His Son, the church. Emmanuel, God with us, is the climax of everything. For when we reach the end of the Bible, we find:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them.
— Revelation 21:3
That is the last thing. So the building of this house for God is the governing object of this dispensation—the building of this house by God the Holy Spirit.
Solomon is referred to in a comparative way by Stephen, who had seen, I think, at that time more than any other apostle had seen. Stephen said:
Solomon built Him a house. Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands.
— Acts 7:47-48
The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, yet it is His desire and pleasure to dwell with men. That is always the first test of whether anything is a true representation or expression of the house of God.
The idea and language of the house of God, stripped of everything else, come right down to this: Is God there? Is that where you really meet God? Can you say that every time you touch that, you touch God?
My, that is testing, isn’t it? Testing for you, for me, because you know the Word says that ye are a temple of the Holy Ghost. In this context God has said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them.” And again:
If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy.
— 1 Corinthians 3:17
It is a very consequential thing, isn’t it? It raises this issue for us personally: when people meet us, come into touch with us, when we pass amidst people and have passed through this life, is it possible for people to say, “When you met that man, that woman, you touched God. You met God. There was something of God about that person”?
I think we could have nothing more challenging than that. What is the influence and impact of our having passed through this world and this life? What registration can we make that will abide? Will those who knew us and had anything to do with us be able to say, “Well, you know, that man had something of God about him,” or, “That woman—I came to know something about God by having come to know her”?
The same must be true of our gatherings, whether a little handful, two or three, or larger. The only justification for our existing and speaking of ourselves as a house of God—or any other term that means the same thing—the only right that we have for meeting together, is that anybody who comes in meets God and goes away saying, “We have met the Lord today. We have been in the presence of the Lord today. The Lord has been there today.”
Wonderful thing, isn’t it, when that is possible to say? Oh, it does challenge us. It will do a lot of things with us once we get home. That conception, that truth, that reality of the house of God, once it is registered in us, will be revolutionary.
I am tempted to remind you of that wonderful little sermon by Dr. A. J. Gordon, How Christ Came to Church. Have you read it? How many of you have read this? Oh, yes. But that has so often challenged me, and I think I would like people to read that—it takes ten minutes—every time they gather together. Just read it.
He had his dream on the Saturday afternoon, partly while he was preparing his sermons for the next day. He dreamed he was in his pulpit, in his service at Clarendon Church, Boston. The door opened when the whole congregation was seated in the crowded church. The door at the back opened, and in walked a stranger.
He said, “My eyes were drawn to that stranger. I saw him turn to the usher, find him a seat. The usher looked, and then led him down the aisle and found him just one seat, and the stranger stepped there.”
Gordon said, “The service started and proceeded, but I could not get my eyes off that stranger. Something about him held me. There was a look on his face as though he had had some great sorrow.”
He sat and listened. He listened to the choir. He looked at the congregation. He looked at the ornate building. He was taking it all in.
“But,” he said, “I could not take my eyes off that man. He held me all the time I was preaching. I decided that as soon as the service was over, I would find out who that man was. I would make contact with him.”
“So I closed the service and made my way down, but before I got there he was gone. I said to the usher, ‘That stranger that was here, do you know who he was? I did want to speak to him. Do you know who he was?’”
“Oh, yes,” said the usher. “Don’t you know who that was? That was Jesus of Nazareth. That was Jesus.”
“Oh, I am so sorry that I did not speak to Him, make contact with Him. Why did you let Him go?”
“Oh,” said the usher, “don’t worry. He has been here today. He will come again.”
Then Gordon went back. He said, “I sat down and thought, ‘Jesus of Nazareth has been in my church, at my church. What did He think about our congregation? What did He think about our choir? What did He think about my preaching? Jesus of Nazareth—what did He think about it all?’”
Well, out of that, of course, came Gordon’s two books: first, He Has Been Here Today, on the life of the Lord Jesus; and then the other, He Will Come Again, on the second coming of the Lord.
But I mention that. It is just a parabolic way of presenting what I am trying to say. You see, it is the presence of the Lord that makes the house of God—not all these other things, not even the congregation. It is the presence of the Lord, and if that is not true, that is not the house of God.
Well, that He might dwell amongst us—that is the idea. Wherever we are, people should be able to say, “You know, I met with a certain little company in such a place today. I went to such a place, and I met God. I met God.”
You cannot be frivolous. You just cannot be frivolous. You cannot be careless if that is true. Well, let us get on. This is what is meant by this thing that God is seeking to build by the Holy Spirit today.
Then we went on to say that the house of God is the embodiment of the truth. It is, in its nature, the truth. To the woman, the Lord Jesus said:
Neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
— John 4:21, 24
It is not a geographical location. It is not necessarily here or there. Neither nor, but the great thought comes right down to this: in spirit and in truth. That is the house of God.
We were pointing out that the Lord Jesus came as the very temple of God Himself, with the intention to extend His own Person, gathering into Himself, in corporate organic relatedness, born-again believers, in order that He might in Himself—and therefore in them—undo the historic lie.
“God doth know… ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” Yes, you may have a wisdom independently of God, and if you have it, well, that will be the realization of yourself and of everything. If you have that wisdom, that will realize everything.
A lie, right at the inception of human life. You know as well as I do that that lie is working out for destruction. We stand almost holding our breath as to what is going to happen next in this world because of this lie: that man has sufficient wisdom to fulfil and realize his own destiny.
Oh, the satanic lie of humanism and all such ideologies. The embodiment of the truth is the house of God—you and I individually and together—to embody the truth, because Jesus said:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
— John 14:6
The truth is the destroyer of this lie, this basic lie, in the creation, in the whole world system, this deception. Man is living in a deception. He is a deceived creature. The heart of man is deceived—deceived.
This lie needs a lot of breaking up. It has too many aspects, of course, for us to comprehend or even mention. But anything that is not real is not true. Anything that is pretence—make-believe.
I got myself into a lot of trouble once when I changed “make-believe” for “make-up.” So it is—something that you put on to give an impression which is not true. Not you; that is just a case in point.
I was shocked last week when the economic problems of England were being dealt with in Parliament, and it was announced what the exports of Britain were. Amongst them were so many million false eyelashes. One of the great exports! My, what have we come to? And all for make-believe.
Well, forgive me, sisters. I am not out to deal with those things as such, but there is so much in the system which is unreal, untruth, make-believe, artificial, pretence. What other words can I use to say the same thing?
In Christianity, in its organized form, there is so much that is pretence—pretending to be something, putting on something, literally. And it is not true. It is hollow—not true. They have a very religious manner during an hour of service, but it is not true. Get outside, and really it is no more true than in those realms where it is most pronounced.
I remember once, during the First World War, I was in Malta, and I went to the festival of Corpus Christi in the cathedral at Valletta. They had been marching around the town with the seven expressions of the cross—these huge representations of the cross in lifelike figures—marching around all the morning, sweating under this thing. Then they all came into the cathedral for the festival of Corpus Christi, and I was there sitting on a chair.
Then the priest—the bishop—came and elevated the host, and they all went on the ground. Because I did not, they turned and looked at me as though something should happen to me, as though I should fall through the bottom in the judgment of God. They said, “You don’t see him kneel down.” I did not kneel down. I sat where I was.
Then it was all over, and we went outside. We were not outside five minutes before these people were all at one another’s throats, with the most awful scenes of carnage, quarrels, and abuse—not an hour after all this.
Now, that is an extreme expression. But, dear friends, see how hollow and unreal all religion can be. If it is in a more modified form, it can be even in what we believe to be very devout. It is in the soul. It is all of the artistic and aesthetic temperament—unreal.
Do you know, there are several things in the Bible which are said to be an abomination to God. If you look into your New Testament, into your Gospels, you will see that the thing which was most abominable to the Lord Jesus was hypocrisy.
Oh, He could bear with a lot of things. He could bear with sinners, a harlot, and all that. But bring Him into touch with hypocrisy, and He was moved to the depths. The most vehement words of denunciation, the most powerful things that came through His lips, were against hypocrites.
Why? Because He had come as the very embodiment of truth—reality, utter transparency—without a shadow of what was suspicious, doubtful, or questionable. His whole being recoiled against a lie, strangely enough in religion.
No, the house of God is that. You and I must be that. God help us to be clear, transparent—no guile, no deception, no falsehood, no pretence, no make-believe, nothing that is not the genuine thing.
I started by saying that we are here to know what true Christianity is according to the Spirit, and that is it. That is it: in spirit and in truth. It is not ritualistic. It is not sacramentarian. It is not any of these things which people think make a church. It is in spirit—pure, clear spirit—and truth. God help us.
Well, that is it. You see, spiritual wisdom is something so contrary to worldly wisdom—so contrary to worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom cannot fathom this thing, cannot get hold of this thing. Its wisdom is altogether a different type of wisdom from spiritual wisdom.
If I can illustrate: many years ago, I knew an old wit—one of those people, you know, of whom there are not too many. We could do with a lot more of them. We call them eccentrics, but there is something different, something rather peculiar about them.
I knew a man like that. He had a wooden leg, before the days of artificial limbs, stomping along with his wooden leg; you could hear him coming. He was in a country town, and he went into the marketplace one evening. There was a great crowd, and in the midst was an infidel, jeering at God, laughing at God, making fun of the idea of such a Being as God.
He was making the people laugh with his jokes about the idea of God. So he went on, and my friend listened until he was finished. Then my friend said, “I wish you would come along and see me tomorrow morning. We will have a chat.”
“Oh, yes, I will come.”
The next morning the infidel went along and found my friend sitting in his garden under a big oak tree. Now, the infidel, in his laughing at God the night before, had said, “Well, look, here is an idea. This will show you how silly God is, if there is One. Here is a mighty oak tree, a massive thing of hundreds of years old, and the only fruit that God can put on that majestic tree is a little acorn. Here is something almost like a weed crawling on the ground, and God puts on that a watermelon—a great big watermelon.”
“Now,” he said, “if there were such a Person as God, surely you would think He would put the wonderful big fruit on the oak tree and the little acorn on the crawling weed.”
My friend knew what he was doing when he invited him to come. He was sitting under his oak tree, and they began to talk. It was at the time when the acorns were beginning to fall. An acorn fell right on the top of the infidel’s head.
My friend said, “Get down on your knees and thank God Almighty that that was not a watermelon.”
Well, I am not wanting to make you laugh, but sometimes you get home a point with a story. The wisdom of this world—you see, in the wisdom of God they are so different. Spiritual wisdom is so different from natural wisdom. They are as remote from one another as the heavens are from the earth.
The Lord is needing to teach us spiritual wisdom and understanding, for only with that can His house be built. It is going to be the embodiment of truth and the embodiment of His wisdom in a mystery.
When Paul was making this great comparison between the wisdom of this world and spiritual wisdom in his first letter to the Corinthians, he said:
Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.
— 1 Corinthians 2:14-15
He is an enigma to this world. He is unfathomable to this world. Of course, you know that, do you not? You are in the Lord; you know the world cannot understand you a bit. It is like that. There is a hidden wisdom.
We speak God’s wisdom in a mystery.
— 1 Corinthians 2:7
It is that wisdom that we need to know for building up one another, for building the house of God. But I must hurry on—this old clock.
The next thing is that the house of God is the expression of the livingness of God. Livingness is an essential and primary feature of the house of God—livingness.
You see, it is the house of the living God, the house of the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit Who is the Spirit of life. The whole mark of the house of God is livingness.
It is a test again—a test for you and me, a test of our meetings, our local company. What is the contact with us? Do people coming amongst us find that they are able to say, at least, “Well, I did not understand all that was said. I could not grasp all that they were talking about, or the preacher was talking about. But the thing that I found there was life. Something answered to a deep desire in me, a deep need in me. Those people have got the secret of life”?
Life—livingness. That stands not only over against the days of Christ and the days of Israel’s spiritual declension, but it stands in Christianity today. Life is over against and opposed to mere formality.
Formality—the blight, and I can call it nothing other, the blight of crystallization. Is that what I mean? God does something, moves in life; notice is taken of it. It is not long before men take hold of that and crystallize it into something static.
“This is how it is to be done. This is what you are to believe.” Before long, the whole thing is boxed in—our teaching, our truth, how to do it in assembly life. “This is how we do it. If you do not do it this way, well, you do not belong to us.”
Oh, the curse of such a phrase! You hear it again and again: “He does not belong to us.” And what they mean is, “He does not come within the strict orbit of what we believe, what we practise, and how we do it.”
The whole thing has been crystallized and set and fixed. The dead hand has come upon the thing of God. That is the history of Christianity, is it not? Again and again, when God moves, man takes hold of it and systematizes it and says, “This is it.” Immediately, the Holy Spirit’s liberty is quenched.
The Holy Spirit’s prerogative to do as He will, and to make innovations if He wants, is not allowed—if not allowed.
Now, there is a liberty which is licence; I am not talking about that. There is that abominable thing of crying all the time to have innovations, to do something unique and unusual, to make an impression of life. That is not what I am talking about.
But, dear friends, this matter of livingness means that the Holy Spirit is perfectly free there to make His own order, to check us up on our fixed things, break through our barriers, our limitations, our prejudices, and do something unusual.
Something unusual. Of course, that was the difficulty of the great transition from Judaism to Christianity. Poor James had a bad time over it, and even Peter had a bad time over that transition, where the Holy Spirit had taken things in hand and struck against rigid tradition, calling upon them to do things that they would never have done unless they had surrendered to the Holy Spirit.
Livingness, you see. Oh, this incorrigible tendency to legalism. Legalism is not only the Mosaic law and Judaism. It is a persistent tendency all the way along to reduce things to a form and order—man-control, man-control.
Then it is not long before the element of exclusiveness arises. “If you do not do it our way, you are outside the pale. You are outside.”
Oh, the Holy Spirit is much bigger than our conception. The Lord Jesus is far greater than our minds. His wisdom surpasses all that ever we have imagined.
That is one of Paul’s superlatives, is it not?
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.
— Ephesians 3:20
I notice that some people put the word “can” there. Well, that may be right: “all that we can ask or think.” There is nothing to stumble at, but the word is “above all that we ask or think.” I never thought of that. In my wildest moment, I never thought of that.
I have gone round this problem and approached it from every point of the compass to see how it could be solved. Then the Lord came in with a point that was not on the compass, and just like that, solved it. I never thought of that. That was outside my universe of imagination. The Lord did it so simply—a wisdom which is not of this world.
I close by reminding you that this life, this life of the Spirit, this life of His wisdom, is a very sensitive life. This life of the Spirit is a very sensitive life. It is.
Anyone, anyone at all, who lives in the Spirit, knows anything about life in the Spirit, really is a person who is sensitive—very sensitive. They are not hard.
I believe you know, and of course you do too, that the Holy Spirit makes gentlemen of us, and ladies. Perhaps you do not use those words in this country so much; you talk about men and women. We mean something more than that when we speak of a gentleman and a lady.
Yes, there is a female person—you can say, “That woman.” But you can also say, and we do say, “You know, she is a lady.” He is a man, just a male person; you can say, “That man.” But you can say, “He is a gentleman.” Do you know what I mean?
I believe that the mark of the Holy Spirit is courtesy—courtesy, sensitiveness to what is proper, what is good, what is, if I may use the word, nice; what is kind, what is thoughtful.
It is not riding roughshod over all sensibilities and hurting. No, I believe—I have said years ago, and got into trouble for saying it—that I have often felt that in making a present of a Bible, I would also like to make a present of a good volume of etiquette.
I give that statement, but you know what I mean. Sometimes Christians can be so discourteous, so rough, so rude, so insensitive. Is it not true? The Holy Spirit is not like that. He is gentle. He is kind. He is thoughtful. He is sensitive.
I remember going some years ago to a garden we have in London where rare plants are collected and cultivated. I went, and the curator took me around. As we were going round, pointing out this and that and telling me about these things—all the camouflage in nature and so on—we came to a wonderful shrub standing upright, looking so strong and healthy.
He stopped and said, “Will you touch the leaf of that shrub as gently as you can?” I stretched out my hand and, so gently, touched just the leaf, and the whole thing went down—collapsed to the ground.
“Do you know why?” he said. “It is a plant of the jungle. When some wild beast comes through the jungle and just brushes against that, it collapses, and the wild beast jumps out of its skin and rushes away.”
This sensitiveness is the salvation of that shrub from the ravages of the wild. Then I saw the shrub, after a minute or two, come up again, so upright as before. A marvellous thing in nature—God’s wisdom in nature.
But I believe, you know, that we should be more like that as we grow older—more sensitive, more an expression of the Spirit, Who is Himself easily grieved.
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
— Ephesians 4:30
He is easily entreated, very sensitive. You know, one of the most difficult lessons that I have found to learn is this gentleness of the Holy Spirit.
In seeking guidance from the Lord with all my heart, I have poured myself out to the Lord for guidance on some matter. I have expected the Lord almost to send an angel from heaven, to open the heavens, speak out, and say in unmistakable terms what I ought to do. He never does it.
But I have noticed that the slightest touch of something—just the slightest touch—the voice, gentle and still, is hardly perceptible. I have noticed it, not always taken note of it, but I have noticed it.
Afterward, either for my joy or for my sorrow, I have remembered: “If only I had paid heed to that very gentle touch of the Spirit, it would have saved me all this trouble.” It is so gentle.
You know, that is the way of spiritual education: to learn, to learn how the Spirit quietly governs the life, so that we in our own spirit have a registration. We have said something about someone or to someone, and inside the Spirit gently—not in words, but this is what it means—registers, “That was not right.”
The growth in the life of the true Christian, the spiritual life, is just this: that you know somewhere, partly inside, in the spirit of you, “That was not right. That was not true.”
May I give you another instance, to bring it home? This goes back years. I was with a friend of mine in Ireland when I went for an annual convention.
He said to me, “You know, we had some special meetings recently, and we had so-and-so”—mentioning a well-known servant of the Lord—“we had him as the speaker.”
Now, I knew that this man’s one message was the Holy Spirit. He never spoke on anything else but the Holy Spirit. My friend said to me, “We had so-and-so, and in a conversation between us alone, your name came up. I saw his face drop, and he said, ‘Oh, I could never have fellowship with Austin-Sparks.’”
My friend said, “Why? Why? I know him very well. He comes here for our annual convention every year. The Lord is with him and uses him. Why? Tell me why.”
This dear man gave him eleven reasons why he could not have fellowship with me, and they were the most terrible things. One, to give you an example, was that unless Austin-Sparks baptizes a person, they are not properly baptized. “He teaches that. He says that.” Eleven things—some of them worse than that.
Well, my friend said to him, “You know, I know that you are wrong. I know that you are wrong altogether. But why not write that in a letter to me? Put them down, and let me send it to him, and he will give you his answer.”
Well, he demurred. It was a long time before he could be persuaded to give the promise, but he gave the promise and went away. Presently he wrote the letter. There they were, all tabulated. My friend sent it on and said, “Here you are, old man. Here is your chance.”
I looked at these things. I did not know what emotion was going to be uppermost. I could have wept. I could have been angry. Oh, yes, all the emotions sprang up in me. The whole thing was a tissue of untruth.
I wrote back, repudiating categorically, denying the truth of any one of these things. But at the end of my letter to my friend, I said, “After I have said all of this, the thing that puzzles me, the thing I cannot understand, is that a dear man of God can go up and down the country speaking of the Holy Spirit, and then he can tabulate so many things that are not true about another brother, and the Holy Spirit never tells him.”
The Holy Spirit never says, “That is not the truth.”
Now, I am not just saying that it was a doctrine only with that man. But you know, you can say, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” and you may believe all the teaching and truth, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and be talking about it all the time, and the Holy Spirit never has a chance to say, “Look here, this and that that you are saying, that you are doing, is not the truth. That is false.”
This kind of Christianity is a very practical Christianity, friends. The Holy Spirit is very practical. He does not believe in our doctrines as such. He only believes in reality.
Well, I think, although I have not finished, I have said enough at present. You see, the house of God is this: it is where those who belong to it are very sensitive to the Holy Spirit.
Life is sensitive. Whenever we, by word or deed, touch something that is not true, not right, not living, we ought to shut up inwardly—feel it, know it, have a bad time about it until we get it right, get the cleansing of the blood over that and the Lord’s covering—or have a bad time.
That is the way of spiritual growth. Thank God, there is another side, and it would not do for me to dwell on the merely negative side. Yet it is very positive after all.
You know, it is a lovely thing to have the Lord well pleased. It is a grand thing. Without congratulating yourself and patting yourself on the back and saying, “What a good boy am I,” the Lord’s smile can be upon you, and you can feel, “Yes, the Lord is well pleased.”
Perhaps the grandest thing that could ever happen, or will ever happen to us, will be knowing how full of faults and failures we are and have been, and then the Lord will say:
Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.
— Matthew 25:34
Ah, I think if ever we have fallen on our knees in utter adoration—astonished, bewildered adoration—it will be when the Lord, if ever it is, says:
Well done, good and faithful servant.
— Matthew 25:21
I have often said in years gone by, the epitaph that I want written over my life is the Lord’s words to Daniel:
O man greatly beloved.
— Daniel 10:11
Would you not want that? What could be better? “O man greatly beloved.” It will be according to how we live the life in the Spirit, and so walk with Him Who was meek and lowly in heart.
Lord, we commit this all to Thee. We are going to get up out of these seats now; we are going out of this place. What are we going to be occupied with next? Are we going to spend even these ensuing minutes lightly?
We do pray that if the Spirit has been present, speaking, His hand may remain upon us. May we abide under the hand of the Spirit, while in joy and gladness and blessed fellowship, nevertheless in the quiet holiness of the presence of the Lord, well-pleasing unto Him.
Hear us, and accept our worship, through our Lord Jesus. Amen.