Just the briefest possible word by way of retrospect to the gatherings and hours which now lie behind us. The specific matter which the Lord has laid upon us for this time, as we believe, is this: we have been seeing that, in all the great and many-sided significance of the Lord Jesus Christ, not least by any means is that aspect of His standing vitally related to an eternal, heavenly order.
He is the centre and the embodiment, the full content, of an eternal divine order. He was that in creation; He is that in redemption; and He has shown Himself to be that in the ages to come. Great one little order! And by that we mean orderliness, not just system: a marvellous ordered system.
We spent that time showing how He, being the expression of God in that respect, reveals God as a God of order.
Then we went further to spend not a little time seeing that the whole universe, as we know it now, which is so far, far removed from the idea of order, is the result of an interference with that order—of breaking in on it to disrupt the order of God, firstly by displacing God’s Son from His position in relation to the creation.
So we have, as the result of that interference, the disruption, dislocation, confusion, and chaos in this universe. It is all evil.
And, as we said last night, it is something which, on the one hand, all men are aware of and confronted with. On the other hand, all their efforts from age to age to rectify it—by their councils and confederations, institutions, and every means in every realm—all their efforts break down and are proved hopeless.
There never was a time in the history of this world when men were more conscious of this conflict in the whole system of things, this disruption and disunity. Perhaps there never was a time when men were striving with greater effort and utilizing more resources to try to overcome this. Yet it defeats and defies them every time and in every effort. Confusion only grows.
Men are always brought to a standstill in their efforts to bring about something like a composure of the world, an order which will bring rest to this troubled earth. No, it cannot be, because there is a ruler of this world. There is a whole evil system determined that God’s order shall not be.
The success of that evil system in defeating God, there and always along the line, is confusion and disruption. It does not only work objectively, as from the outside; it has come into the very nature and constitution of men and things. It is in us. It is in all. Well, we have spent a lot of time on that.
Now today we are coming to put our finger upon some of the major causes of this situation, with a view to seeing what the remedy is, or what the remedies are in particular. We have seen that the remedy in general is the Cross of the Lord Jesus. There is the focal point; there is the uniting centre: Christ crucified.
But that encloses quite a lot of things, and it is upon just very few of those that we are going to spend our time. It is very necessary, again at the outset, that we should have present to mind, and have clearly brought before us as the background, that disorder always means weakness, loss, and frustration wherever it is found—not only in the cosmic realm, but in the individual life, in the Church of God, in local expressions of the Church of God, and in homes.
In every realm where there is disorder, it spells loss. It spells weakness. It spells frustration. It means arrested progress. You just cannot go straight on where there is chaos. You just cannot do anything where there is confusion. You are brought to a standstill, and the whole prospect is covered with hopelessness until you have got things straightened out.
That is where God began with the chaos at the beginning. In order to move toward His ultimate purpose in His Son, He had to deal with the chaos and bring order. That is not only a fact in history; it is a great spiritual truth for the Church.
Paul tells us that because of that disturbance and upsetting of the divine order at the beginning, God pronounced something upon this whole creation. He pronounced that which Paul called vanity.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it.
— Romans 8:20
Vanity is written large over the whole creation. Vanity is not our modern idea of vanity. Vanity in the Bible means that all efforts, all inventions, all that is called progress, will not cure or remove some fatal lack or deficiency in the constitution of things.
You are so familiar with one simple historical illustration of that. You remember that a curse was pronounced upon Jericho. The curse worked in this way: nothing came through to perfection. It just went so far, then stopped and dropped into death.
Many years afterward, in the days of the prophet, the sons of the prophets came to him from Jericho and said, “There are many good things here, many things that are present; but there is one thing that is wrong, and that bars everything. The waters are deficient in some quality.”
So they did their digging, planting, and cultivating. They gave their energy and time to seeking to produce fruit. Things began to grow, and there seemed to be prospect and promise. But just when it looked as though they could expect success, it all fell off the trees. It never ripened; it all fell to the ground. There was a fatal deficiency in the waters of Jericho.
Remember how the prophet dealt with it? “Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein.” Salt is the great preserving element, is it not? He cast it into the waters, and the waters were healed.
Now there you have, in a very simple parable, this great truth. From the day when God subjected the whole creation to vanity, it has only gone so far. And how true that is, is it not? For every step forward—and there seem to be very big steps forward—every step forward in history has only produced new problems of its own, and very often fatal problems.
You have a disease or a malady, and someone through research finds what is expected to be a remedy. Well, it does seem to touch that particular trouble, but it raises a lot of others. Penicillin is not the remedy for everything; it creates its own problems. You know what I mean. It does not clear out everything. Something else has to be faced by the very employment of it. What is true in that is true in everything.
We can see it probably in this atomic age more than ever: progress, advance, invention, development, discovery—yes, but what problems, what perils! Men are holding their breath because of their own discoveries and inventions. Their hearts are in the grip of a terrible fear because of what they themselves have brought to light.
It is like that. The whole creation, however far it goes, is caught in a terrible vicious circle.
Now this is a fact which, of course, is clearly demonstrated on every side. Man is building a mighty tower to reach unto heaven, but he is holding his breath for his tower, because the bigger the tower, the greater the threat of disaster. He is feverishly harassed into buttressing up his tower with conferences, defence programmes, and whatnot.
No, we are not moving farther away from fear and dread. The whole creation is subject to vanity.
Well, that is the situation. But what is the cause? We are not thinking that in a little time and company like this we are going to solve the world’s problems, but these things come very near all the time. They press into our lives, and they press into the Church of God.
We are confronted continually, in the realm of the Christian life in its various aspects—individual and collective—with this matter of disorder as the means of frustrating progress.
Will you, dear friends, take this and listen to this: God can only reach His full end on His own order, by His own order. He has an order. He has an order for your life and for mine. He has an order for our local companies as expressions of the whole company of the Church. He has an order for the Church, and that order has to come into our localities and into our local expressions of the Church.
The word order, and what it stands for in the mind of God, governs our progress, governs our fruitfulness, and governs the realization of the divine purpose. God is not going to get there willy-nilly, neither are we.
That is a very important thing. If this conference serves one purpose alone, it should serve that purpose: bringing us face to face with it. If there is frustration, if there is arrest, if there is sinking of heart, if there is a sense of despair, or if we find ourselves in weakness and helplessness, we should ask and seek: “Is this because, in some particular or particulars, the divine order is violated?”
There may be sin in other ways, I know, which has the same effect. But this is one thing that has always been a most fruitful work of the devil: to disrupt the people of God—their relationships, their fellowship, and their harmonious going on together. Bring in the discordant note, and spoil the music.
We must look, then, to this matter of order. What we who are concerned with God’s purpose have to be sure of is, on the one hand, the grounds of insecurity; and, on the other hand, the essentials to strength, to progress, and to final triumph.
In other words, what was responsible for the disruption which is in the universe with such sinister, frustrating power everywhere? There are several major things. We put our finger upon one this morning.
We will read one or two passages of Scripture. Firstly, as inclusive in principle, from Proverbs 9:1:
Wisdom hath builded her house;
She hath hewn out her seven pillars.
Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars.
Pause for a minute before we read more. Mark two things about that. The pillars are the supports of any building. The safety and duration of the building rest with its pillars.
We will call to mind the end of the life of the judge Samson. When the Philistines gathered and crowded that mighty hall, built it to capacity, and climbed upon its roof, they wanted some entertainment for their holiday. So they called for the blind Samson to be brought, that they might make sport of him.
They brought him, and there he stood in his blindness, everybody making sport of him. He said to the lad who brought him in, “Just lead me to the pillars upon which the house rests.” Then he prayed to the Lord, “Just this once, Lord, just this once, vindicate.”
He took hold on the two pillars, bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell. Greater were the number of the slain in the day of his death than in all his life. It is a matter of tremendous importance, the pillars in a building.
The other thing you know so well is that wisdom is always connected with building in the Bible. Solomon was the man of proverbial wisdom, and he built the great temple. It was by that God-given wisdom that he built something which was the wonder and marvel of all who saw it.
The Apostle Paul speaks of himself as a wise master-builder, according to the wisdom given, laying the foundation. So we could go on: wisdom is associated with building, and wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars.
This divine house of which Paul speaks—the Church of God, the pillar and ground of the truth—has a sevenfold support. This house of God, this marvellous house of God, His Church, rests upon seven pillars. Take them away, and the house falls.
The creation was built upon these pillars. When they were interfered with, the creation collapsed and disintegrated. Seven, of course, is a symbolic number: that which is spiritually complete. We leave those details. I am not thinking that we shall be able to speak of the seven tonight, but we can, I think, speak of two or three of them today.
Undoubtedly, the first of these pillars is the pillar of truth. The pillar of truth.
Now we can go over and read one or two other passages. Take the Gospel by John, John 8:44:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.
In John’s first letter, 1 John 2:4:
He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Revelation 21:27:
There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie.
Revelation 22:15:
Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.
Sooner or later, dear friends, everything will stand or fall according to whether it rests upon truth. Perhaps there was never a truer thing more proved in history. Anything and everything false has its own doom within itself.
God has given a very large place to this matter. He Himself is the God of truth. The declaration is, “In Him is no lie.” The Word of God is a mighty revelation of the fact that God is intensely jealous over truth—burningly jealous for truth.
The Psalmist cries:
Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.
— Psalm 51:6
He holds a lie in abomination. We have seen that He consigns all liars to the lake of fire. He excludes from the New Jerusalem everyone that loveth and maketh a lie.
That is expressive of the burning hatred of God for what is not true, and of His love for the truth. Jesus Christ Himself is the truth:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
— John 14:6
He is called the faithful and true Witness. The Holy Spirit is called by Him the Spirit of truth:
When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.
— John 16:13
And the Church, of this great magnitude, is the pillar and ground of the truth. On the other hand, as we have seen, Satan is called the liar and the father of lies.
This whole beautiful creation, its whole structure, collapsed when the lie entered in. The lie disintegrated everything. That lie runs through the constitution of this world order as it is.
It is in man. Man is a lie. He is not what God meant him to be, or made him to be. He is a contradiction, a denial. That is not the truth. You look at man as God meant and means man to be, and man knows quite well that there is something in his very constitution that is not true.
In the world itself, the whole world system, there is this lie. It is in commerce. How rare downright, transparent honesty is in business and commerce! What a problem that is for anybody who really wants to be straight and honest. It is difficult to get on in this world if you are going to be like that.
In society there is quite a lot of falsehood—make-believe, pretence, acting, exaggeration, imitation. All these things are forms or expressions of something false.
They call it make-up; it is really make-believe. It is not true, not true: pretending to be something that is not true. Society is like this. The world is like this: a mixture.
Oh, how artificial and false it all is! It is only the Christians who really sense that, I suppose. When we were in the world, we had some sense of how artificial and unreal it all was—keeping up a pretence, keeping up a make-believe, making an impression without the substance behind it. There is a lie at the heart of the whole world system.
Ah, yes, but in religion it can be like that: pretence, make-believe, show, making an impression without reality behind it. The Lord Jesus, the Truth—fiery, scorching Truth—looked upon the leaders of religion in His day and said, “Hypocrites!” Play-actors, pretending what was not true.
Yes, it is all like that everywhere and in everything. That is the cause of the disintegration, the confusion, and disruption of everything. That is the first cause.
Nothing can stand. Nothing can stand and abide which is not true. Sooner or later, it is going to be found out. By that very thing, it will collapse; it will go to pieces. It has the very seeds of its disruption in itself if it is not absolutely true.
So here is this revealed fact: God’s building has, in the very first place, the pillar of truth erected.
I am the truth.
I will build My Church.
Those things go together.
Now, with that as the whole background, dear friends, it is touching us, and it has got to be applied to our position. Our position must be true. Our personal position must be a true one.
We never, never stand; never go through unless our position is a true one. If there can be any doubt, any question, any uncertainty, any contradiction in our position, we are not safe. We are not safe.
The Lord, in His gracious sovereignty—which often seems so hard and so unkind—has allowed to come into the order of things such things as storms, blizzards, and hurricanes.
When they pass, you see their effect. There are many, many things laid flat on the earth—trees lying there, uprooted. There are other things that stood and went through, and are going to face the next one stronger for this.
It is a parable again. You and I individually, collectively in our local company, and the Church as a whole—God knows how true it is today—are allowed to pass into terrible shaking storms, storms that threaten our existence and continuance.
When they have passed, there are those who have not stood up, who have been carried uprooted by the trial, the testing, the storm. You go to some of those trees and say, “You see, the reason for this is that you were too superficial. There was not reality in your position. Your position was not true. That is all.”
The Lord has brought to light a false position. He does that, dear friends. I say it is hard; it is very hard. No one likes that kind of experience. No company likes that. But in His gracious sovereignty it is necessary. It is necessary. He must have what He does have true—true.
Something that proves the truth of God in its very being. God is unmovable, unshaken. God endures for ever. Something of that has got to be produced in everything that is of God.
In the final issue, the company that will be there around the throne will be the company that has come out of much tribulation, washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne. Into them has been wrought something of the steadfastness of God.
But here, do believe me: we will not stand unless our position is true. We have to look into our position from time to time. Indeed, the Lord forces us to it.
We have to say, “Now, is my position, as I am and where I am, a true one? A right one? Is it of God? Or are there other elements in this?” Search your heart over this. Find out why we are where we are, why we believe what we say we believe, and what lies behind it.
Our position must be a true one. Our life must be a true life—not carried on by emotion, by other people, or by system and order around us, even church order. We stand on the ground of a life with God of our own, a life with God of our own which does not depend for its continuous strength upon anything outside. It is between us and God. That is the only true and safe position.
Our testimony must be true. Not just true in the Bible, not true as being in the company of people who believe it, hold it, and teach it; but in every part true of us.
If the testimony is the power of His resurrection, that has got to be true in us—in you and in me. We have got to embody the power of His resurrection in our life day by day. If the testimony is the unity of the saints in Christ, it has got to be in us. You have got to be that testimony. Our testimony has got to be like that: true, real.
I speak with solemnity, and I would not resort to lightness, but I read a little while ago of a good man who had had a very wonderful conversion—come right out, as we say, of the blue into something very wonderful and very real. He had it printed so that he could distribute his testimony to everybody.
The years had gone on. He tried to keep up this thing of the past, but at last it had lost its reality, and his life was no longer aglow with that testimony. Indeed, there was a good deal more that spoiled the testimony. He tried to keep it up, living on the past.
After some years, a Christian man called on him, came into the home, and began to speak about the Lord. He asked this good man of the house whether he knew the Lord. “Oh, yes, I know the Lord. Wife, go up and get my testimony. It is up in the attic.”
Away she went, and there was a long noise of turning things over up there. Then she came slowly down and said, “Daddy, the rats have eaten your testimony.”
It has got to be real, up to date—not out of the past, not hanging on paper, but right here, now, today. Our testimony has got to be real in the truth.
Our fellowship must be true. There is that wonderful word of the apostle: “unfeigned love.” It is so easy for us to pretend in this matter, and to be sentimental or to use sentimental language about one another: “Our dear sister.” “Ah, dear brother.”
Is it true? Is it true? Unfeigned love. The fellowship must be true.
Our positions with one another must be true. They must rest upon the truth, not the strength of our own convictions, which may be folly, but the strength of what is actually true.
Prove your conviction. We can have tremendous convictions, you know, and be quite sure that we are absolutely right in our judgment, conclusions, and position in this matter and that matter, with this one and that one—so positive—and yet it may be utterly false, utterly false. It is just possible like that.
I could give you some illustrations of that very thing, but perhaps it is not necessary, and it would not help. Dear friends, our ears have got to test what they hear.
So easily we hear things said about people, places, individuals, and companies, and we take it at once and are affected. We are put on an utterly false position with the Lord. The Lord is not with us in that. Sooner or later there is going to be an exposure of the falsehood in that, and we are going to be ashamed.
Our ears must test what we hear, coming from whatever source it may. We may think the source most reliable and trustworthy; nevertheless, pause and say, “I wonder if that really is true?”
We must make sure, because this thing is going to affect and influence us, make a difference in our attitude and conduct. Let us be quite sure about it. Oh, that God’s people would do that, that God’s servants would do that, that the leaders of God’s people would do that—not take up reports, rumours, criticisms, and judgments, and do so partisanly.
Jesus never did judge after the hearing of His ears.
Our eyes must verify what we see. We can be so misled by taking things as they appear.
I am going to borrow something here, and my brother there will not mind if I illustrate what I mean, though I know other people might not. We are at prayer. I happen to open my eyes, and I see my brother with his eyes open, looking at the one who is praying, and looking intently—almost, it would appear, critically.
Now, if I did not know, and you did not know, we might say, “Why is not that brother entering into the prayer? Why has he not his eyes closed? Why is he weighing every word like that, seemingly so critical?”
See how you could misjudge a brother if you did not know that he was deaf and was really eagerly entering into the prayer by following the very movements of the mouth—the only way in which he could enter into the prayer. You see the possibility of a terrible misunderstanding: judging after the sight of the eyes.
No, it will not do. We must verify what we see. “Did it really mean that? Is that the truth about it, or did it only appear like that?” We are constantly misjudging one another in that way, putting a motive or a reason upon somebody’s behaviour which was never meant at all and is not true.
How everything is spoiled in the building! It is either broken up or arrested. We must be on the ground of the truth in every way.
Our homes must be on a true basis. Our business, as far as we have any power over it, must be true—true business.
I had a friend who was the head of a business, and he put up on his desk these words: “God first.” All the travellers came into his office, and again and again a traveller made some suggestion as to how he could get business and do business, but it was not quite straight. It had something in it that was not quite square and clear.
He always said to the traveller, “You see that? If you have anything to propose that is out of harmony with it, our business ceases at this point.”
Oh, I know, but what is that going to do for business? You cannot build even a business for permanence and the blessing of God—which is important—on a false foundation, with something that is not true.
When we have said all, dear friends, our spirit must be true. Our spirit must be true.
It is, after all, a matter of His eyes as a flame of fire, is it not? His eyes as a flame of fire came to the church. Those eyes of flame are looking things through and through, and lighting upon the false, the untrue, the inconsistent, the contradictory, and challenging the whole existence of that church on the basis of the truth.
Truth can be a very beautiful thing. It is a beautiful thing. But truth can be a very terrible thing.
In this house which He is building, and in which you and I are fellow-builders, there can be no painted pillars, no imitation marble. It has got to be true right through. Wherever you probe it, and however deeply you get into it, you will find it is the same. It is the same; it stands up to the test.
You see, the issue is whether it will stand for eternity, whether it will go on to the end, whether it will fulfil God’s purpose in its existence. That is the test of everything, is it not? Who wants it to be otherwise?
However much passing or transient glory might come to us by compromise, by mixture, by misrepresentation, by pretence, by show, by anything that impresses the natural man, it is not worth it if God does not put His seal upon it—the seal of life.
How good, as we had it clearly this morning, how good it is to see brethren dwelling together in unity.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
For there the Lord commanded the blessing,
Even life for evermore.
— Psalm 133:1, 3
Something genuine. The Lord establish us in the truth—the truth in us.