We are much too far advanced in our time and message to do anything very much by way of retrospect to help those who are just with us. But suffice it to say that we are being occupied at this time with the relationship of the Lord Jesus to God’s great heavenly, eternal order.
Having looked back to that order in its primal beauty, glory, and nature, we have seen the disruption, upset, and dislocation which were brought in by rebellious powers in heaven, who, by reason of their rebellion, were cast out.
Then their leader came into things here with this one object: of spoiling the work of God and upsetting that heavenly order which had been introduced into this earth. All the terrible story resulting from a disturbed and upset divine order makes that word, and its meaning—heavenly order—the key to the Bible.
But we are particularly seeing the relationship of the Lord Jesus to that whole matter: why He came into this world; why He lived long enough on this earth to manifest the laws of that heavenly order in His own Person; all that was bound up with His union with the Father, in His teaching and in His works; and then why He died as He did.
All was related to the recovery and establishment of the heavenly order in this creation.
No wonder He was marked from His birth for destruction. No wonder the prince of this world, having a very ready instrument to hand in Herod, sought to curtail that life at its very beginning. No wonder, all the way through His public life, there ran that hatred—that malicious hatred—and it is repeatedly stated that they sought to destroy Him.
He was here to destroy the works of the devil.
To this end was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.
—1 John 3:8
And that meant to destroy the destroyer of God’s heavenly order.
Now, we have covered a lot of ground in that connection. Today we have come to the point where we are seeking to put our finger upon some of the things which were the cause of that disruption and upset, and which have got to be destroyed—firstly, in the individual believer.
Remember that it opens a window upon a very great deal in our individual Christian life: that which the Son of God was manifested to do—destroy the works of the devil—begins in the individual believer, so far as the practical outworking of it is concerned. Then it has to spread and extend through all relationships—personal relationships and church relationships.
The works of the devil have got to be destroyed. We are seeking to find out what those works are that have to be destroyed.
I am not going to take you again this afternoon to passages which were before us this morning. I come straight to the truths themselves, without the illustrations and symbolism.
This morning we saw that the first blow at that heavenly, divine order, at the beginning, was struck with the weapon of a lie. The enemy brought with him a lie about God, about man, and about the laws of God.
Well, it is all right so far. But when man exposed himself, or opened himself, to that lie—gave ear to it, gave attention to it, permitted it to stand—the lie entered into the very constitution of man, and through man to the race, and through the race into the whole system of this world.
We spent the morning trying to show the devastating effect of untruth and, therefore, the tremendously vital importance, in the reconstruction of a heavenly order, of truth.
Oh, let me repeat once more: only in the divine order can the divine end be reached. There is no other way.
Now this afternoon, then, we come to the second of these things which, on the one side, helped the disruption of this creation and, on the other side, spells the recovery and reconstruction.
That is unbelief and faith.
There are so many parts of Scripture to which we could come at this time in this connection. May it suffice for the present to remind you that, when at last the work is done, the recovery is perfected, and all the damage is repaired—the works of the devil having been completely cast out—and we have that wonderful symbolic representation of what is heavenly in nature and order, the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, there are some very significant things said there.
We have this, for one, in Revelation 21:8:
But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars,
their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.
The unbelieving come in the category at last. It was an original work by which the creation was thrown into such confusion, and it is the final work of the triumphant Lamb that sees unbelief in the lake of fire.
As I said, there are many Scriptures that I could quote, and to which I could turn you, on this matter of unbelief. You will probably be recalling some. But there is that very significant statement regarding the whole generation of Israel which came out of Egypt.
God’s thought and will were that they should enter upon that which would be a wonderful earthly representation of the heavenly order. It is written over the whole of that generation:
They could not enter in because of unbelief.
—Hebrews 3:19
It is the great frustrating, the great limiting, the great spoiling thing. It disappoints God and man.
Well, let us look at this. What is its nature? What is the nature of unbelief?
It is nothing less nor other than a vicious slandering of God.
“Has God said?” You can hear there something unholy—something which would bring God Himself into question.
Unbelief is all that we can say that is against God. It is discouragement of God. “Hath God said?” There is the note of discouragement there.
It is the defaming of God. It is calumny against God. It is libel against God. It is detraction from God. It is casting an aspersion upon God. It is all that, and much more. That is unbelief.
Unbelief always calls God into question, always takes something from God’s character, puts something upon God which does not belong to His nature. It is a terrible thing, this unbelief.
We know quite well, in saying all these things, that we are hitting ourselves pretty hard. We are not saying this objectively about other people, or about you. We are taking ourselves very severely to task, facing the truth in our own hearts.
We know quite well that unbelief, or doubt, is always weakness. It always has the effect of disintegrating the life, just shattering its unity and pulling it to pieces.
Thus it weakens our souls. It weakens our hands in the work of God, or in any part of life. It arrests our progress. Oh, how true these things are, and how much more can be said truly about this terrible thing, unbelief.
If you were going to buy a newly built house, and, wanting to be very sure, you brought the builder along, and you said to him, “Will the foundation really hold up that house?”
And he said, “I am not sure.”
“Will that roof really be weatherproof and watertight?”
“I do not know. I have my doubts.”
“Will those floors really sustain the weight that I want to put on them?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, will the whole thing stay together?”
“I cannot tell you.”
What would you do? Well, I know what you would do. You would say, “You can have your house. That is not what I want.”
But perhaps you would turn to him and say, “Have you ever thought of a name for your house?” Again, he might say, “No, I do not know.” Well, I will give you a name for that house: Doubting Castle.
Doubting Castle.
And we might just put in there a little parenthesis from our brother John Bunyan. Remember Doubting Castle? This might be very appropriate just for today, for some of us.
Christian and Hopeful had been having a good time by the river, really enjoying the time on the banks of the river as they walked along. But good times have a way of passing.
As they went on, they came upon a very rugged piece of road—so different, and hard going. After a time, they began to complain about the road and the hardness of the way.
Then they began to ask questions as to whether this was right, whether this ought to be, whether the King was really kind in asking them to come along such a road. While they were so occupied, they came to a little bypath in the road.
It led off from the main road, and it led into By-path Meadow, in which was Doubting Castle, the residence of Giant Despair.
And because they were trespassing—how clever Bunyan was!—they were trespassing; they were where they ought not to have been. Giant Despair espied them, came out, dragged them in, and flung them into a dungeon.
Here is another touch of genius. Bunyan says they had very little to say to each other now because they both knew they were in the wrong. They had been rejoicing together, talking about the Lord and the things of the Lord, and having blessed fellowship. Now that was all brought to a stop.
In Doubting Castle, under the shadow of Giant Despair, there they lay—everything suspended.
But after a while Christian recollected. He recollected that he had the key of the castle in his bosom.
And he said, “What a fool I am, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon when I can be walking at liberty. I have the key.”
When he said that, Giant Despair’s limbs began to tremble and to fail him, and his fits recommenced to take hold of him. He was unable to keep them in his dungeon or his castle.
Well, that is it: unbelief—the ravages of unbelief. It is forbidden ground. It is By-path Meadow. It is off the main road. You and I have visited it more than once. We have been caught.
But there it is. That is what has happened to man, and that, let us be honest, has happened to us perhaps more than once. We have allowed this sinister thing to come in—asking questions about the goodness of the Lord, about the love of God.
We wonder whether our hard road is, after all, not a contradiction to His goodness and His mercy. Once we get down that road, we are getting off the track. Once we let that thing begin to have a place, it will not be long before we are in the grip of Giant Despair.
It is like that, dear friends. We know it is true. Well, this world is there. Many Christians get there.
All that remains to be said is that faith—faith—is a mighty, mighty weapon in the Son of God for destroying the works of the devil.
Now you see His life here. Why did He live here? He did not come into this world with anything whatever to rest upon as a guarantee or assurance of worldly success, or, from the natural standpoint, that His mission would be successful.
He came in denying everything that this world requires for success, and so He lived. He had no wealth. He had no worldly influence.
He was brought up in a place which itself represented a handicap to His life—a town with a bad reputation.
Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
—John 1:46
And so He lived right the way through, with everything lacking that this world demands for success, and with not very much present that was set against Him—in a very atmosphere of malice and hatred.
Yet He lived and went through an utterly dependent life on one thing only, and that is faith in His Father. Faith in His Father.
And who shall say, in the light of the record, that that faith was not put to the test very, very severely? It was. It was right to the last breath. He was assailed. He was assailed.
If there is any meaning or truth at all in the statement that He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin, He was tempted nevertheless. Satan came to Him in the wilderness with this very thing—the insinuation of the devil again:
“If God were Your Father, He would not let You hunger—let You hunger.”
That is the serpent.
But the fact is that, under the severest testing of faith, to the end, He went through.
Those two last cries on the cross:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
—Matthew 27:46
That is the cry of a tested faith, is it not? “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” You and I will never have, by the goodness and mercy of God, to cry that cry; but you and I, in so much smaller ways, have more than once said to the Lord, “Why?”
But then, I am so glad that there was a change from “My God, My God, why?” into:
Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.
—Luke 23:46
That is it—faith’s triumph, back in the realm of absolute confidence in His Father. And He yielded up His life.
But you see, He was, in His own life and Person, recovering and re-establishing this law of the heavenly order. It is brought back by triumphant faith.
It is, in the first place, the assurance of God—the assurance that God is the Saviour.
With strong crying and tears, He prayed that He might be saved from death, and He was heard in that He feared.
Meaning, of course, as that word always does mean in the Bible, not that He was afraid, but that He trusted. He trusted God for His salvation. The assurance of salvation—that is faith in God.
Then there is the assurance of purpose and calling.
Satan tried to destroy that in the wilderness: to get Him off to experiment with God, and to resort to some other kind of method of fulfilling His vocation in capturing the dominion of the kingdoms of this world.
“Do it in Your own strength. Do it in the popular way. Do it as other men do it. Do not do it by faith. Do it by works. Do it out from Yourself.”
Trying to raise a question—“If, if”—all the time raising a question as to whether, with all that was against Him and all the strife that was confronting Him, He could fulfil His mission. He was called to this work, and faith triumphed in the matter of His calling, His vocation, the purpose of God in His life.
You and I are tested along the same line: as to God and the assurance of God; as to salvation. Many, many a man or woman who has lived a long life in walking with God has had that supreme test before the light closed, on the question of assurance of salvation.
In fact, I read through again last week the life of Dr. A. B. Simpson. There was a man who walked with God—he did. There was a man to whom the Lord talked. Was there ever a man who was used of the Lord? He won worldwide a wonderful testimony.
In the closing weeks of his life, he was under a dark, dark cloud, questioning whether he was really saved. Brethren had to gather around him and fight that battle in prayer for him. He came out triumphant before he went.
But Satan, you see, never, never gives up this thing of trying to spoil everything by insinuating unbelief—questions about God. It shatters everything.
Because he knows—the enemy knows—that faith, after all, involves everything, just as unbelief involves everything. It is not one of those things that you can isolate and separate. It involves everything.
That is why, through the apostle, in prescribing the armour against principalities and powers, he puts this in: “Take the great shield of faith.” That is what it is. It is not in our translation, but that is what it is: the great shield, the overall shield.
You may have all the other pieces of the armour and all the other places where it fits, but you have got to cover in with faith. Even your righteousness has got to be a righteousness by faith—every bit of it. The truth, good as truth is, is of no avail except by faith. Faith involves everything.
That is why the enemy struck at faith at the beginning and never ceases to strike. That conflict will continue to the end.
We have related this matter to building. This is the second pillar of the seven pillars of wisdom with which she is building her house. If the first is truth, the second is faith.
And there will be no building without faith. There will be just the opposite: everything will go to pieces if there is unbelief, if there is doubt. We know it so well. It is true.
So Paul cries:
The life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
—Galatians 2:20
Now, I am very glad, dear friends, that that is the literal way of putting it, and what that means. You and I are so often found helpless in battle because we feel we have not got the kind of faith, and the measure of faith, that is called for.
You know that; I do. Perhaps this afternoon, as we speak of this tremendous thing, we feel almost appalled at our little faith.
But it is the faith of the Son of God. He perfected faith in Himself. He ran the battle of faith completely, and in His cross He met that whole realm of unbelief—that evil thing—and conquered it in His cross, as we have seen.
These principalities, powers, and hosts of wicked spirits compassed Him about like bees, all concentrating for one final blow, one victory: to make Him doubt His God.
He came through triumphant over them all, and in that way He stripped them off and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His cross.
Now, we know this is one of almost our platitudes, and yet how slow we are to appropriate it. We know that the Holy Spirit came precisely to make good in us and in the Church what Jesus did in His cross.
That is a part of our doctrine, at any rate, is it not? But that is why the Holy Spirit came: to guide us into all the truth, to take the things of Christ, show them to us, and make real in us all that was true in Christ.
The Holy Spirit, therefore, has come to implant faith, to nurture faith, to strengthen faith, to bring the faith of the Son of God alive in us and to increase it in us.
Oh, if it is my faith, that is not going to get through. It is a poor thing. If it is His faith, it is a mighty faith that has already conquered in history.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
—Galatians 2:20
Faith is the gift of God. Faith is the work of God.
Let us ask the Lord to strengthen the faith of the Son of God in us. As together we are built up, so the building will go on—a structure that proves by its testimony that the works of the devil have been destroyed.
And this work in particular: may it never be that we cannot enter in because of unbelief, but rather that we are of those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.