Today, we have been giving ourselves to seeking to see and to grasp something of the significance of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work in relation to the whole created universe.
We are really gathered around one thing: that He is the key to everything, and that only as He comes into His place will the creation, and all that is in it, find the explanation and answer to its existence.
That has taken us along several lines. We have seen that there was a primeval order in the creation, of which He was the centre and the sphere, as the Son eternally appointed heir of all things—an order expressive of God, Who is the God of order.
We have seen that all progress, all fruitfulness, all satisfaction, all worthwhileness, is a matter of Jesus Christ. But, so far as we are concerned—that is, Christians and all mankind—it is a matter of knowing Him. Knowing Him.
We have touched upon this matter of order as essential—essential to progress, essential to the realization of God’s end. Order is a key to everything.
We went on this afternoon to see something of the disruption of that order: the interference with it, the breaking in upon it, the result—disorder, and all its painful consequences. Pain, spiritual pain as well as physical pain; pain in the creation.
The apostle has put it: the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, because things are out of order.
We traced the course of that disruption, beginning apparently somewhere outside this present world, in heaven, where there was an uprising of a leader with a great following of angels—apparently in revolt against God’s destined place and purpose for His Son as the heir of all things.
It was a bid for that position—equality with God—the displacing of God’s appointed One. That brought a disruption in that realm. The leader and his followers were cast out: angels which kept not their first estate.
We saw the leader of them, no doubt with the following, invading the earth, breaking in. The Bible opens with that story, and the beautiful order of creation was upset.
In the first place, man—the order in man, the balance, symmetry, beautiful harmony in man’s own life and constitution—was upset and disorganized.
Immediately there was the culprit, and the man and his wife. So that you can, right there, almost at the first mention, detect something that had come into their fellowship: the one blaming the other for what had been done.
That momentous ordinance of God, with so much bound up with it in the purpose of God—the marriage relationship, the two as one—was affected. And then, of course, the family: the family, with this working out to one brother murdering the other.
Jesus went right away back to that and said that Satan was a murderer from the beginning. From the family to the race, that book which records all this brings us to the whole race in confusion in every way.
The order, universal—in the upper realms of this earth, the lower heavens, what we mean by the cosmos, the earth and this environment—was shot through and through with this disruption, this schism, this strain, this conflict.
Just shattered to pieces: spiritual progress in the purpose of God arrested; all the beauty of the Lord marred.
Well, that is where we were late this afternoon. This evening, we come to the significance of Christ and His cross in relation to that.
The cross of the Lord Jesus stands right at the very centre and heart of that whole cosmic disruption. The cross is the heart of redemption.
But redemption relates to the whole range of satanic interference with the order of God. Cross, redemption, salvation—far, far greater things than dealing merely with men’s sins. They deal with sinfulness, which is much more than sin.
And sinfulness is traced right to that one—the one who made this assault upon God’s appointment, God’s economy, God’s order.
The cross of the Lord Jesus stands pre-eminently related to that whole realm and range of disruption and disorder, from centre to circumference. It relates to that.
The cross is no small thing. It is an immense thing. For as far as this that has happened in the universe reaches, so far the cross reaches.
And we must look upon the cross, and upon redemption, in the light of this once-existing divine order, then its upset and disruption, and then its recovery and eternal establishment beyond any more fear of another thing happening again.
So far the cross reaches; so far Christ crucified has His significance. The redemptive work of the Lord Jesus in the cross follows the whole path that we have noticed of this mischief. It follows that very course.
It is important that you and I should recognize the order of this thing, the sequence of it. The very first realm in which the cross has its application is the realm of the spiritual hierarchy of evil. It does not begin here; it begins there.
In remembering our Lord’s crucifixion and death on that day, the very heavens were affected. Darkness was over the face of the earth. There was a great earthquake. The veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom.
Heaven is involved and is breaking in. There is a tremendous thing happening in that realm. We read the Gospel account, of course, and we have only the events, the associated happenings.
But there was a man who was given an insight into something more which is not in the Gospels and could not at that time be revealed. He tells us that in His cross, He despoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His cross.
Having despoiled the principalities and the powers,
He made a show of them openly,
triumphing over them in it.
That is where redemption begins: the very heavens. By that, I take it, the lower heavens, not God’s presence. Those heavens were defiled by this revolt, and by the cross they were purged.
The forces—the disrupting forces of the order of God—were met in the spiritual world by God’s Son on the cross. Far too deep and full of matters for us to dwell upon at length, but there is a very real practical value in this.
After all, dear friends, we are not dealing in the first place with circumstances. We are not dealing in the first place with conditions. We are not dealing in the first place with effects and results. We are dealing with causes.
When there is a breaking in, in any realm, of those disruptive, disordering forces—in an individual life, or in a community, or anywhere—the usual way is to find a scapegoat, to blame somebody, and to begin to look at one another; to put it down to this, to that, and to something else.
In so doing, we are missing the point and missing the way, and we will never clear it up like that. We will only make it worse. We have got to get behind this. There is something behind it—or, rather, there is someone behind it all.
I do not know what you feel about it, but with all the desire that we may have—and it is a very real one—not to become demon-minded, or demon-conscious, or occupied with these things, you are more and more forced to realize that there is a whole system of iniquity and animosity to the things of God at work in this universe.
More and more, it seems that these forces are nakedly at work. They are there in the air. They are like a blanket upon you, especially when there is something of the Lord on hand.
The thing just recurs like the seasons. When the Lord is in view for something more, it just happens. It is not coincidence. It is not just chance. It is not imagination. The thing is far too desperately real, calculated to put you right out of the fight—strategically so.
It is a very, very important matter. We could say much about it, but this is in a realm that is over things, that encompasses things. Circumstances, happenings, feelings, and all that—they are secondary. It is what is around as the source of them.
Now, the Lord Jesus in His cross has something to say to that realm. You and I will never know victory over things until we know the value of the cross and the blood of Jesus in that background realm.
Victory has got to be won in that realm, or applied in that realm, before things will give place. Oh, take that to heart. Take that to heart. Remember that.
We are just being played with—played with—by these evil forces. They get us to do just as they want us to do because we have either lost, or never have had, this key to the situation: that Calvary touches the cosmic realm of evil.
The path of redemption begins there, as the trouble began there.
The next thing on the way, as you notice, is man. This whole thing, great in its range and far-reaching, terrible in its nature, is focused down upon man. He is the next point of assault.
The object is to disrupt him, divide him, make him in himself incapable of functioning simply because he is divided. You know that it is true: if you are divided in yourself, or amongst yourselves, you are just paralyzed. You cannot do anything. You cannot get anywhere.
The devil knows it, if you do not. So he comes in from the outside and brings this disruption down to man himself, so that man becomes a paralyzed creature simply because he himself is in division. His nature is divided.
The order, the beautiful order, balance, and symmetry of his own personality is upset. Man was created in an order. I am not saying with the order of spirit, soul, and body, but there is an order. That order obtains in Christ.
You have a man in peace, a man in rest, a man in strength—a man who is accounting for something. Upset that man in himself, in his own constitution, and throw him all out of gear and out of order: where does he get?
Well, that is what the Bible means by vanity. The creation, says Paul, was subjected to vanity. That is, you shall not get through. It is imposed. You cannot, like this, get anywhere—get to your end.
Redemption by the cross of the Lord Jesus is intended, dear friends, to come to us individually, to recover and restore a harmony in ourselves. It may be a long process, but we do know that there is a beginning made when the new birth takes place, when we come to the cross of the Lord Jesus.
As to our condition, our need, as to ourselves, that cross becomes effective just at the beginning of the Christian life. It is the testimony of all who have come that way that a wonderful sense of peace comes into the heart.
Peace is only another word for harmony, you know. It is not just that everything is quieted down. Oh, no. It is that now you have got in line—true line—with the purpose for which you were made.
You are on the path now. You have been all over the place, but now your feet are in the way. Something of the peace of the end comes into the beginning. There may be many conflicts presently, but the beginning is like that.
It is even true with a little child. A child does not understand all your theology and doctrine of atonement and justification and all that, but the little child can know what it means to receive Jesus into the heart.
When that is done with a little child, you want to see something. Something happens. It is not imagination. A joy comes in. It is the beginning of a life readjusted, reharmonized—the conflict gone out, so far as the person is concerned.
Like that, in new birth, it is the beginning of the new creation, which in its completion will be a beautiful reproduction of a lost harmonious order. It begins with us.
Christian life, from that beginning, from that starting point, is just the school in which we learn the way of harmony, the way of life. What is it? It is everything centred in and governed by the Lord Jesus.
You see, here we have these statements, so familiar with them that they have almost lost their real meaning to us: in Him all things hold together. He is the integrating centre of this universe.
He brings the broken parts together and forms them. He takes hold of the cords which are all out of tune and tunes them again to a harmony. In Him all things consist.
When Jesus has His place, things begin to be like that—a reconciling.
I say, the Christian life is the school of learning to let Jesus have His place. And when Jesus has His place, you know as well as I do that, so far as our inner life is concerned, things are far more restful, more sure, and certainly more fruitful.
It is just that. But that is a tremendous thing, because we say, “Jesus having His place”; that sounds so elementary. Yet you see how comprehensive it is. He is the centre of a harmonized universe.
He has His place; He begins to harmonize the inner life. And the more place He has, the more unified we are, the more peace we have.
We know quite well how true it is in the opposite: when He is not getting His place or His way, everything is unrest. That is very true. His place—His place in every department of our lives.
From the individual, His significance there is the unifying of the heart—the unifying of the heart. One heart. One heart. Not a divided heart, but a unified heart.
It is a deep work, a great work. Perhaps it is a long work, but that is the business of life: the unifying in Christ of everything. That is, Christ becoming the single factor who makes of everything a single factor: “For to me to live is Christ.”
A single factor, unifying the whole life.
Satan is not going to leave that alone. He is going, by every possible means, to assail it—if he can, to interfere with it.
But here it is, you see: he cannot destroy Christ. He has been destroyed by Christ. And the work of the cross of our Lord Jesus is the ground upon which we stand, and must stand, against all that interfering work of the evil forces to bring us again into inward confusion and uncertainty.
They try it all the time. Stand your ground on the cross. Stand your ground under the blood when he tries to rob you of that quiet assurance that all is well because of what He has done in His cross.
You move into the corporate life from the personal. This is the pathway of the evil forces, and this is the pathway of the cross.
As we were saying this afternoon, this most sacred relationship, which was the ordinance of God at the beginning—husband and wife—must be in Christ.
Is it necessary for me to say to young people who are contemplating that union: be sure that it is in Christ? Be sure that it is in Christ to begin with.
There is no guarantee, or even hope, for all that it means in the purpose of God unless it is in Christ. And there are tremendous things bound up with that relationship in Christ.
But if it has taken place, this is one of the sacred things that the evil forces of the evil one will never cease to assail. You perhaps have not realized the tremendous damage that the devil can do when he can separate two in that relationship, come between them.
It is a focal point of his constant attack: to divide that. That relationship is a real battleground through life. There is so much for the Lord in it.
If it has been in any way interfered with—I know I am only speaking to some, perhaps the majority—how are you going to put it right? Not by mere human attempts. You have got to get back into Christ.
It is only getting back onto the ground of Christ that will put that right. You may have the man pulling in one direction and the woman pulling in another—no real togetherness.
One has one mind and one has another; one will and another; one interest and another; one light and another. It is weakening. You know it is frustrating. You know it is desolating.
It is only when the two get onto the ground of Christ crucified that that thing can be dealt with and put right. Everyone has got to let go their natural ground and take the ground of Christ crucified as to themselves.
But, dear friends, the Word of God makes it perfectly clear to us that, in the beginning, that ordinance of God, that relationship, was after all a representation of something far greater.
This is, in its testimony, a church matter. “I speak of Christ and the church,” said the apostle, in speaking of that relationship.
The real principle is the principle of corporate life anywhere, anyhow, in Christ—maybe two, three, the local company, the larger company, the Lord’s people. The principle is one.
The enemy will stop at nothing to get in between, to divide. And the only, but the sure, means of preserving that unity is the cross of the Lord Jesus at work in an inward way in us all.
That is a tremendous thing, but it will do it. If only that cross becomes really a subjective reality in all concerned, that is the end of all divisions. It is the pathway.
This extends beyond the individual, beyond the two or three, beyond the little group and company, to the church universal. We can see that eventually it will reach the whole inhabited world when Christ has His place.
Oh, the great multitude, out of every diversity of nationality, climate, and kindred, will be on the ground of the Lamb slain—the cross of the Lord Jesus—in a perfect harmony.
We said this morning: singing one song in harmony. The high notes, the low notes, and all the notes between, as they cry, “Worthy is the Lamb.” A glorious chorus.
Redemption follows that course. The cross of the Lord Jesus relates to that one thing: an end where all is reunited in Christ.
We placed John 17 as the foundation this morning. You know, the great—perhaps the highest—note in that chapter is in a little clause: “that they may be perfected into one.”
That they may be perfected into one.
Perfected into one—the end of His prayer, the end of His travail, the end of His redeeming work.
Then the great arch-adversary of the divine order can do no more. His work is finished. His power is at this point. The cross stands victorious over this long history of disruption.
I see no hope for unity anywhere other than in the cross of the Lord Jesus—Christ crucified put in His place. Put in His place.
Although the battle goes on, the enemy is always trying to make a show of disruption and disorder, and to give a sense of it. If the cross has really done a work in this human heart, there is a basic something that will triumph over all that.
It is an amazing, glorious thing. Yes, all this activity, all this work in circumstances that seems to contradict any unity at all, all this striving of the evil forces to make an impression and a show—yes, where the cross has really been planted in human lives, there is something that survives all that.
It comes out on the other side of the biggest assault, the most disruptive assault of the enemy. The survival is because that cross is victory. Not going to be: it is. He has done it by His cross.
You see, not only as a foundation fact upon which to rest, but as a progressive testimony, where the enemy has less and less occasion, opportunity, and ground for his work.
More and more, the cross of the Lord Jesus has to express its meaning in our hearts and between us. It is a case of a growing place of redemption by the cross in us.
There will come a time when that redemption will be perfected. It will be complete. The glory of the Lord, following the line of restored order, will fill everything.
That is all for today. It is a big order—a great price. It is a great cross needed to do that work; we all know. But He is sufficient.
And He has already given us tokens—tokens we know in our own hearts. But this is true. The evidences are about us and within us that, where He, the Lord Jesus, is concerned, the main significance of His person and His work is in relation to this eternal heavenly order which God is going to have.
It is the battle occasion of all the ages, in which you and I are. The Lord give us grace to stand our ground on the cross.