We are continuing along the line which we believe the Lord has indicated for us at this time. As there are those who were not with us earlier, in the briefest possible way I will try to link them into this consideration and then go a little farther, as the Lord enables.
We began with a fresh contemplation of the greatness of Christ. Then we went on to remind ourselves that everything which has to do with the realization of God’s great purpose in creating man, this world, and the universe is a matter of knowing God in Christ, because knowing God means knowing Christ.
Every aspect and detail of God’s will, God’s way, and God’s end for us is a matter of knowing the Lord Jesus. All progress, all life, rests upon that: knowing Him—the knowledge of Christ.
The Christian life is meant to be one of continuous growth and progress. But that only takes place as we come to know, and still go on knowing, the meaning of the Lord Jesus.
This progress will not stop when we leave this world and when time gives place to eternity.
Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end.
— Isaiah 9:7
Stagnation is no mark of life. Life will be ever manifesting itself in new and more wonderful forms. Therefore, the knowledge of Christ, which in time and eternity will be the secret of growth and progress, will continue in heaven. It will take eternity—not to exhaust it; it will want a few eternities to exhaust the knowledge of Christ—but to know, even as now in the greatest degree we cannot know.
All growth, progress, and fruitfulness rest upon this growing knowledge of the Lord Jesus. But seeing that He is so vast, so immense, so many-sided, we can only see Him from one standpoint at a time. We have to move around and see Him from every angle.
At this time, we are looking at the Lord Jesus from one of the many angles—one point of view. This particular aspect of His significance is that He, in His Person and His work, stands related to an eternal, heavenly order.
He Himself, in His wonderful, complex Person, is the very embodiment of all the principles and laws of a great heavenly order. When everything is conformed to Christ and takes its character from Him, it will be one glorious, harmonious whole, perfected into one: everything—not two, or three, or ten thousand, but just one glorious unity.
That is what we are seeking to grasp at this time: the relationship of Christ to this eternal, heavenly order.
We have, of course, laid our foundation in the Word of God. We have allowed that to come to us in one marvelous statement through the Apostle Paul: that in the fullness of the times, God has determined to gather together, or re-gather together, all things in Christ.
Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.
— Ephesians 1:10
The very word contains that idea of re-gathering. It implies, if it does not declare, that there was a glorious order at one time, when everything was as God meant it to be.
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy.
— Job 38:7
It implies that this order has been lost. In the place of that order there has come disorder, and it declares that it is going to be restored in Christ. That is the great significance of the Lord Jesus. Understand, we repeat: He personally is the embodiment of that, and His work is related to that.
This has led us to the place where the great revelation divides into four. First, God is the God of order. We will go a little farther on that this afternoon, though it altogether defeats us; it is so great, so full.
This fact—God being such—is clearly revealed, firstly, in His creative work, in His creation; secondly, in the great representations that we have in type and symbol in the Old Testament; thirdly, in His redemptive work; and fourthly, in the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
In all these four ways, there is wonderful revelation that God is the God of order. Think, just for a minute or two, of the first of those: revealed in creation.
While, of course, we are confronted with so much in this present world and system which seems to be disorder, derangement, discord, and confusion—even in nature—there is still discernible in nature a wonderful background of an ordered system.
That is something which, of course, has engaged men throughout their whole lives and is a marvelous universal source of instruction and fascination. Here is a brief extract from a big work by one of the most outstanding biologists. He writes thus:
The hosts of living organisms are not random creatures. They can be classified into battalions and regiments. Neither are they isolated creatures, for every thread of life is intertwined with others in a complex web. This is one of the fundamental biological truths: the correlations of organisms in the web of life.
No creature lives or dies to itself. There is no insulation in nature. One organism gets linked on to others and becomes dependent upon them for the very continuance of its race. Flowers and insects are fitted together as hand in glove. When we learn something of the intricate give and take, supply and demand, action and reaction between plants and animals, between flowers and insects, we begin to get a glimpse of a vast organization in the creation.
Well, take it. It is worth it. You will see that that gathers up into a few sentences something capable of tremendous enlargement. Seek everywhere.
Behind this creation there is a mind. Behind this creation is a mind that loves to have things properly ordered and regulated. Behind this creation there is a perfect spiritual system. God is the God of order.
What is true in natural history is seen to be true everywhere else. God has arranged the year in seasons. God has arranged the cooperation of heaven and earth; the heavenly bodies govern the movements of the moon, the tides, and so on. We would not know where to stop if we allowed ourselves to go on with this.
There is one hymn in our supplementary book that we have never sung here yet: “The Spacious Firmament on High.” Notice that the conclusion of that hymn is, “It all declares a mind divine.”
If we wanted to go on with this, we would not have to go far away to the celestial bodies or to objects outside ourselves. We have only to have a little intelligence about our own human bodies and see that the human body in health is a marvelous system of related, dependent, interdependent, cooperating functions, principles, and elements.
I think that anybody who really has any knowledge of the human body ought to be the greatest worshiper there is, and ought to be bowed before the wonder of this thing. We could be held by the grip and fascination alone if we were to spend our time upon it this afternoon.
But there it is: the marvelous unity in diversity. It all speaks of this hand-in-glove principle—one thing fitting into another in perfect harmony and symmetry.
We have done no more than state the fact that wherever you can trace the hand of God, before the other hand comes upon it—either the hand of man or the hand of the devil—you find this beautiful harmony, this wonderful order.
Coming to the Old Testament, anyone familiar with it need not have exhaustive proof of this great fact: the Old Testament representations of God’s mind.
We begin with God bringing order out of chaos. Where everything begins, God, who is the God of order, reacts against this state of chaos, and His reaction issues in a wonderful order, beautiful order, perfect order.
What is true as to God bringing order out of chaos seems to be a principle working all through the Old Testament. You see it at work in representative people.
Here, dear friends, is the glory and the tragedy of Israel. Israel was taken out from the nations to be the embodiment and manifestation of a heavenly order on this earth. That is the glory of Israel. The tragedy of Israel is that Israel ended in chaos.
However, there it is. You see them in Egypt, and what was true in nature was true spiritually and morally of Israel in Egypt: chaos, no order, darkness, barrenness, frustration, confusion, hopelessness. That was the state of the people in Egypt.
But see them in Exodus. Exodus is the book of emergence from all that. They are not a rabble, a crowd of refugees, going out into the wilderness. They are ordered by their ranks. Trace these matters as you read carefully. No, they are not just a mixed-up, disorderly crowd running helter-skelter to get out of Egypt. See them marching like an army, in their appointed order.
It is order out of chaos. See them at Sinai: God has given His pattern for their national life. No one ever looks at one of those pictures of Israel assembled around the tabernacle without seeing something of this.
I am not saying that it was as clear-cut as that in reality, but there is no doubt about the exquisiteness—the ordering—of the hosts in their tribes. There they are: marvelous symmetry, marvelous balance, marvelous arrangement; the tribes under their own particular banners, in their own particularly appointed places, in relation to that central object, the tabernacle.
Then there is the order of service. Exodus is coming out from chaos to order, and there is the order established in the wilderness. Leviticus is the book of the ordering of worship, and what a marvelous system that book is: the order of worship.
It is not just that God said this and that were to be in the way of sacrifices, offerings, and feasts. You will notice a marvelous sequence, an ordered sequence, where need is met at every point. It is a progressive order: development of worship, of approach to God, all under a specified and particularized government. Wonderful book, that Book of Leviticus.
Move into the Book of Numbers, and the very name of the book indicates what it is all about. This is the book of their marchings through the wilderness. Everything is numbered; everything is tabulated; everything is ordered.
Then, when you come to the temple, this is one of the things that ought to overwhelm you: marvelous, meticulous order about this tent. Every detail, every measurement, the size of everything, the place of everything, the material of everything.
And what shall we say about the courses of the singers and the courses of the priesthood—all in course, round the clock? Everything is prescribed for.
When the Queen of Sheba came and looked at the order of the house, there was no more spirit in her. That was the impressive thing. Everything was so quietly, harmoniously, beautifully regulated. It all speaks of a Master Mind.
That is God. He gave the pattern for that. He gave the regulation for that. Even although that was disrupted and the captivity came, and they passed their seventy years in exile, the return of the remnant and the rebuilding of the wall and the house are again marked by this.
We have read and studied the Book of Nehemiah from other standpoints. Perhaps we have not been impressed with this particular feature of it: wonderful organization. Notice that one whole chapter is taken up with “next unto him,” and “next unto him,” and “next unto him.” It is all arranged; it is all ordered; it is all, if you like, organized. We can use that word in the Old Testament; we cannot in the New.
Nehemiah represents a master organizer in the things of God. All this is under divine direction. It all points to this: God is the God of order.
We must be impressed with this, friends. It is not something to be contemplated objectively or historically. You and I have got to be tremendously impressed with this. See how God is very particular about how things are done, what things are done, who does these things, and the relationships which obtain among those who are employed.
God is very particular. As we have said, this is not just because God likes to have things just so—He is made that way. We know quite well that real progress, real fruitfulness, and real achievement demand order.
We come into a place that is all upside down and disturbed, with everything all over the place, and we have got a job on hand. We begin by saying, “Well, we cannot do anything until we have got this straightened up.” That is God. We cannot get on until we have got it straightened out. We shall never get anywhere until things are put straight.
That begins in the individual life. We shall come again to that. But I do not want just to pile a lot of data upon you. This is something of very vital spiritual consequence: that we get it into us that God is particular, and He is not going to overlook or side-pass anything.
He will have it so, or He will not have it at all. He will be patient. He will wait. He will do a lot to get it so. It may take years to get it so, but that is to our loss. If He could have it His way, He would get on with His work forthwith by having things according to His order.
Frustration, delay, and unfruitfulness are always due to this absence of God’s way of doing things, God’s object in things, or what God wants done, and the way in which He wants it done.
That is perhaps enough by way of emphasizing the fact that God is the God of order. I have only opened to you a window through which you can see a universe.
We come to the next thing: disruption and disorder.
There is a sense in which the Bible throughout is occupied with the confronting of this long-drawn-out, obdurate, incorrigible disorder, and with the evil forces which are behind it. You meet it everywhere: the battle for this, the bringing in of order, the preserving of it, the dealing with interfering forces. It is found almost everywhere in the Bible.
The Bible shows the source of this disruption and disorder. I am not wasting time, dear friends, to gain your assent to the fact that disorder is. We are all too aware of it everywhere in this universe, in this creation. There is a disrupted order; there is disorder; there is a great schism everywhere. That is true, is it not?
Well, taking it that you agree that it is so, the Bible shows us where it came from. The Bible shows us the range of it. It shows us its entrance into this world, its development in this world, its nature and its effects, and its main cause.
This disorder, the Bible shows us, began in heaven. Scripture tells us of the revolt that took place in heaven. It speaks of one who rose up to challenge the supremacy of God and of His Son, the Heir of all things.
It shows us that there was a great complicity between that one and a vast host of angels who are said not to have kept their first estate, but are reserved in everlasting chains.
And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, He hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
— Jude 1:6
This revolt in heaven—that is where it began. Then it entered into this world. It entered through the door of man. We know the story of this entrance. It was a disrupting element that came in. It was a rebellion against God.
The first result? The first result was that man himself became a divided creature—a center of civil war in his own nature. Man is by nature no longer a unity. He is himself a clash, a turmoil.
The psalmist prays:
Unite my heart to fear Thy name.
— Psalm 86:11
“Unite my heart.” Our hearts are divided things. Man is a division. A man in himself is a conflict. It started there and then spread.
When I speak of man, I am including the man and the woman. This became true of them in themselves individually, and then, of course, it became true of them as two: to divide the husband and the wife.
He struck right home at that marvelous oneness. Scripture goes out of its way to describe and emphasize the oneness: they shall be one flesh. There is so much to say about that oneness of husband and wife. But this disruptive influence and power came in and divided them.
From husband and wife, it reached to the family. It is not long before you find the family disrupted: Cain and Abel, one murdering the other, destroying family life.
From the family, it reached out to embrace the whole race. Do you know how the Book of Genesis contains the story of racial disruption and confusion? It has become universal.
It is in the lower heavens: the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, the prince of the power of the air. You can breathe it; you can sense it in this world—antagonism, hatred, malice, and much more like that.
It has come right into human life, the individual, and right into human relationships, the nearest to us. It has come right into the family, and what a problem family life is now. What a key it is for so much more, until the race is shot through and through with this disrupting and dislocating spirit and power.
Yes, it is here. We see where it came from, where it started, how it came in, its range, its development, its nature and effects: to set every man against his brother.
Its main cause—its main course—that perhaps is a very important thing. It is all important, but this is something with which we must stay for a moment.
The main cause: remember that the Bible always regards this matter as rebellion—a rebellion, a spirit of rebellion.
We know it in our own natures. Under stress, under trial, under pressure, we truly know this to be right in our constitution. There is something that rebels, and would even rebel against God and His ways, questioning His wisdom and His love.
It is a terrible truth and fact that we are ready to face, if we know ourselves at all. The seat of this rebellion is in man himself. He is a disruptive being—not only disrupted in his relationship with God, but disrupted in his own personality. Man is a divided creature in himself. We are that. We are there.
The spirit of rebellion came in, and that word iniquity, which is such a characteristic word of the Old Testament, has its roots in this very idea of rebellion.
Now, the real nature of this thing lies here. Perhaps we can illustrate this best by looking at the physical body. The doctors can close their ears for a minute.
There is something about the laws of physical health and disease. They tell us that it is all a matter of the environment of the living cell. This is a quotation, not mine: “It is the cell environment that is responsible for whatever disease affects the human body—either in the immediate environment of the cells the presence of poison, or the absence of some essential ingredient.”
That is too technical. You can pass over the technicalities if you like, but they have come down on this: all these millions of living cells are environed by this lymph stream, which provides what is necessary for their life. This lymph stream is their environment.
If some poison gets into that stream, or if something essential to their life is lacking, then the living cells fall into disease, and the body in its whole order is upset. Sickness is only disorder, is it not? It is disorder.
I take the illustration. God has written His spiritual laws in all His creation, and I think preeminently in the human body. You see, all this disorder results in sickness. All the pain and agony brought about by this disruption are due to man leaving his environment.
God is our environment. God is man’s true environment. In Him there is no darkness at all, no poison. In Him is all that we need for our life and for our health.
Man left his environment. He took himself out of the environment of God. He took his life into his own hands to say what he would do and not do, what he would have and not have.
He became a law unto himself, rebelling against God, His law, and his environment. What happened? He entered into an environment of poison and a fatal lack of what was necessary to his very life.
Now, friends, take up your Bible. Start again. What is it for? This whole Bible is about bringing men back to God, bringing men into God, restoring man to his environment.
For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.
— Acts 17:28
That is a fundamental truth of the spiritual life.
There is one thing I suggest to you which, if you could grasp it, would be such a tremendous help to you. When the Lord says anything—and the Lord says anything—it may look on the face of it to be something very simple, not at all profound and wonderful.
Anything that comes from the Lord, though it be apparently very simple, contains all the vast knowledge and understanding that the Lord has. Not to take account of that simple thing, you may think, may bring you into a vast amount of trouble.
When the Lord Jesus says:
Abide in Me.
— John 15:4
Oh, that sounds so simple. It sounds so ordinary: “Abide in Me.” But it contains all this history; it contains this great principle and truth. If you get out of your environment, you are exposed to all the poisons, all that creates spiritual disease.
“Abide in Me,” for your health’s sake, for your life’s sake, for the sake of everything. “Abide in Me, and I in you.”
You have got that? You look again at any seemingly little thing that the Lord says, and if you could see, you would find you have got a universe of meaning in it.
The main cause of it all is getting out of your rightful sphere in God. That is what happens. Surely, as we shall see when we come to the redemptive work: get back. Get back into your place; get back into your covering in God. Forsake your wandering, which is a way outside. Leave your independence. Come in.
This carries with it the whole matter of the absolute, undivided, unquestioned supremacy and sovereignty of God in the life for us now, in and through Jesus Christ.
Put that another way: absolute surrender, yieldedness, unquestioning acceptance of the authority of Jesus Christ as Head. That is the way of life, the way of health, the way of fruitfulness, the way of progress.
We know so well that frustration, limitation, unrest, barrenness, and all that are because there is still some unyieldedness to Him in the life. Adam took things into his own hands and said, “I will be the lord of my life. I will say what I will do and what I will not do.”
There was set up this independent mind and this independent will, to cause all the trouble. We are like that naturally, and I am afraid we have not got so far away from it in grace.
We meet a man or a woman who has a mind of their own, a will of their own, and a way of their own, and who will never be taught by you or told by you what they should do. Unteachable, unbending—no.
Dear friends, though it might be on a right matter that somebody is very firm and very strong, let us remember that there is a vast deal of difference between human strength, natural strength, and spiritual strength. They are different kinds of thing altogether.
If you meet a person who, immediately you touch them or begin to talk with them, lets you know that they are not going to take anything from you, they have got their minds made up, you may be meeting something that will disrupt the spiritual body—the corporate body.
It may bring about real unrest, not only in their own life but in the life of the community of which they are a part.
Sweet reasonableness, openness to instruction, to counsel, preparedness to learn—that is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who said:
I am meek and lowly in heart: take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.
— Matthew 11:29
I hope you see more than I am able to say. Here is the fact of this great disruption; here is the real nature of it: moving out of God.
Oh, we ought to check up. One does not want to make the Christian life difficult—however difficult—but we ought, dear friends, to be more prepared to check up on this: “Did I say that in the Spirit, or did I say that in the flesh? Did I do that in the Spirit, or did I do it in the flesh?”
You see, the mark of real spiritual measure is when you find a person like this. You have had them; I have. People have said something, and I knew when they said it, and the way in which they said it, that they were saying it in the flesh. Then they came back a little while afterward and said, “What I said, I said in the flesh. Please forgive me. I was not in the Spirit when I said that.”
Oh, you see, it makes a lot of difference, does it not? A lot of difference. There is a way for the Lord when it is like that. We shall get somewhere when it is like that. But it does mean weakness; real humility means grace to abide in Christ.
Somewhere I must close this. Perhaps you already know it is a very simple thing, but in the New Testament the word salvation is really the word health or soundness.
The Lord Jesus said to the poor man in his helplessness:
Wouldest thou be made whole?
— John 5:6
The word whole is exactly the same word as you will find elsewhere translated salvation. Being saved is being made whole. It has this idea behind it of disorder in the body.
Salvation is putting right spiritual disorder and making us whole—making us whole, making us complete, making us sound. It is a health matter. That is salvation.
Let me close with this: pain. Pain. All pain is because of disorder. Pain is nature shouting, “There is something wrong.”
That is true in the physical. You may kill pain. Lots of things are provided for killing pain. Well, I am afraid I am one who says, “Thank the Lord for that.” Nevertheless, no sensible person knows that the killing of pain is getting rid of the trouble.
No, you may kill the pain and silence the cry, and the trouble that is really there will work itself out in your death. Killing the pain does not mean that you have healed the disorder.
The world is trying to silence this cry of pain, to numb this ache, to go on as though there were nothing wrong. But it is there.
What is true in the physical is true in the spiritual. Pain in our spiritual life, pain in our corporate life, is the cry that something is wrong. There is disorder somewhere. Things are not as the Lord intended them to be.
There is a dislocation in the joints. There is a fracture in the fellowship. There is a disease—a sin—in the body. Something is wrong if there is pain.
Dear friends, we cannot just take something to numb the pain and silence the cries, and go on as though it were all right. No, the thing will work itself out, and God knows. God knows. We have got to stop.
Stop and say, “What is it? Where is the disorder? Where are things wrong? How is it that this is against God’s mind?” Until we can get our hand upon that, there is no hope for clearing up the situation. That is the question: what is it?
Disorder is a spiritual disease.
Well, I must stay there, I think, and come back again later on. But have we said enough, on the one side, to show how God is committed to an order—in man, in man’s relationships, in His church? We have got to come to that later.
God is committed to it. He will not move apart from it. We must have it. The cry of all the prophets, rightly understood and interpreted, was the cry for recovery of a lost order.
That lost order, that disruption, is due to one thing in the main: man’s life out of God.
For us, it is a matter of how much our life is in God. We have some life in God, but we have some life in ourselves. We have some life in man, in other people.
On one side, we seek a life with God by prayer and study of His Word. Then we get into the world and allow men of another mind, who despise Christians, to influence us. We adjust ourselves to them. We hide it. Like the chameleon, we take the colour of our environment.
Oh, to abide in the one environment—whether in the meeting, in the secret place, or in the world—to abide in the Lord.