Dear friends, as we come to the end of these days together, in which very much has been said, it is my desire and concern that everything shall be brought into some very practical issues. I think all that we have been saying has its very practical meaning. What I mean is, to have for us one or two quite concrete issues from it all.
I do not propose to give another discourse, but to try to gather things up in this way: that we are faced with these concrete issues from the whole message.
We have been ranging over great distances of divine truth and purpose. We have been occupied with one particular matter: that of God having, in an ordered way, realized the perfect expression of a heavenly order, which was instituted and carried so far at the beginning of history, and then was broken into and upset by one with a great following, who revolted against what God had purposed concerning His Son.
In a vaunting pride, he sought to displace God’s Son and to supplant Him, to take Himself that place, exalting himself and saying, “I will,” as in, “I will be equal with the Most High.” Pride was found in his heart.
If we had pursued the course that we were following this morning and this afternoon—the things which brought the disruption, and therefore their opposites to recover the order—the next would have been humility, as over against pride. There is nothing more disruptive in God’s universe, as it has proved, than pride.
It was pride which said, “I will,” and which, in so saying, meant, “I can, and I ought.” We know something about that. That brought in this terrible history of disruption.
The Son of God, in His cross, reversed that completely; and, humbling Himself, becoming not master but servant, emptied Himself. Well, that is an indication which we shall not follow further this evening, but it has to do with this terrible state of things which has come in: disorder, derangement, conflict, and confusion.
God’s Son, Who was the Heir of all things, appointed by God before the world was, Himself came and took up the challenge—the dispute of His rights—and the state of things resultant from that rebellion. He took it up and, in His cross, fought through to victory, to secure in Himself and by His cross ultimately the realization of God’s purpose in an ordered universe.
That is what we have seen. God is a God of order, and all His purposes and ends can only be reached and realized along the line of heavenly order in expression.
Now we have the whole thing: the significance and meaning of Christ personally, as Christ, and His work, related to this matter which had its culmination in the cross and His victory—this matter, again, of making room for that heavenly order to be re-established.
Let it impress us sufficiently again: it is concerning that that the Holy Spirit is here. His mission is to work out all that Christ did in His cross, and that comprehensively relates to getting a divine order.
No life under the government of the Holy Spirit will be a disorderly life. No company of the Lord’s people under the government of the Holy Spirit will be a disorderly company. No department of life under the Holy Spirit’s government will be other than an ordered thing, growingly an expression of a heavenly order.
The Holy Spirit is committed to that, and He is the custodian of it. The New Testament is some marvellous revelation of that one thing. Where, in the New Testament, you have the divine order developing under the government of the Holy Spirit, you find a wonderful, spontaneous, and organic development and progress.
Those first days, months, and years of the dispensation of the Spirit, which we read in the Book of Acts, were a time of wonderful spontaneous growth, development, progress, and fruitfulness. We see a wonderful system at work: the Spirit, the Master Strategist, His way of making contacts just at the right moment. Oh, it is a wonderful story of a heavenly order in operation under the hand of the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament shows that, but it also shows that where that order was interrupted or interfered with, trouble at once arose, progress ceased, and everything was in suspense. So it was at Corinth for a time. See it both ways.
That is of tremendous importance to you and to me and to all of us, dear friends: to recognize that our own personal spiritual progress, development, and attainment for the divine purpose in our lives means that we are to be fitted into the divine order, like wheels in a machine or members and functions in a body.
This will not happen willy-nilly, on the one hand, and it will not happen unrelatedly, on the other. We have got to come into a great heavenly system of things and be a part of a whole, and not just bits in ourselves—independent freelancers, a law unto ourselves—but a part of a systematic whole under the government of the Holy Spirit.
That is the only way to keep on growing, keep on going, go on and on and on. There are many things that start and stop, those individuals who just go so far. There are many ministries that just get so far and stop. There are many servants of God who go so far and stop because, in the main, they are unrelated. They do become, at a point, misfits. They are not in a pattern, a great divine pattern, in which all the parts are really vital and, as we say, consciously related in a very real sense.
Now, that is exactly what Christ fought through in His cross: this whole disintegrated, broken-up system of things, to secure a new creation in Himself in which a divine order would be expressed.
And it is—there is not a far cry from Calvary to Pentecost, or from the cross to the church. The cross has accomplished, and it has accomplished that in essence, actually and potentially. It is almost as though—indeed, it was as though—there were a vessel already prepared and waiting in the counsels of God to receive the deposit of Christ’s work in the cross.
The church spontaneously comes in when Calvary’s issues are settled in Christ. I say, it is as though this vessel, to receive the deposit of the meanings of the cross, were waiting—waiting tensely for the moment of its birth.
Do remember that the church is not a New Testament idea. The church is an eternal idea. It is only born in time; it was not conceived in time. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”—that “us” is the church. God conceived that vessel long before Calvary became an actual necessity, but in His foreknowledge He conceived the vessel in which He would deposit all the values of Calvary and develop them corporately and universally.
So that the church is the eternally foreknown and forechosen, elect vessel in which this new heavenly order, recovered, should be deposited and developed until at last all the fullness of Christ will be manifested in His church, in fullness and by the church.
The church, in that union with Christ as body to Head, will show this tremendous work over the evil one and the evil powers to have been accomplished. He is working in the church—that is, in you and in me, and all who are baptized into one body by one Spirit. He is working in us to displace the disorder that Satan has brought in and to establish a heavenly order in us, individually and collectively. That is the meaning of the Holy Spirit’s activities in our lives: making effective the cross on both sides, destroying the works of the devil and establishing the works of God.
So I say, the vessel seems to be there, just waiting to be born. When Christ had been glorified, the Holy Spirit came, and it was so spontaneous—so spontaneous. They did not have a great organization to bring a church into being. They did not do anything at all to say, “Now, we must make a church.” It came in like that spontaneously, as though it was just waiting for the moment of its birth.
For the simple reason that Christ in His accomplished work and the church are identical in the purpose of God. They are part and counterpart.
But what is this church? Here we have got to be very practical. Of course, I have used the word in its universal sense and in its divine conception as a whole. Now, the church with which we are familiar on this earth is that church in the thought of God, in the mind of God—what is intended to be wherever God can have it on this earth.
The test of the right to use the word, to apply it, is the work of the cross there manifested in a heavenly order, a spiritual order. Is that there? That is the only justification for using the word in its New Testament meaning: the church.
Now we have seen that when Satan struck his blow, the first result, in effect, was to get man out of his divine environment. God was his environment. He lived in God. God inspired him. He lived and moved and had his being in God in a very, very real way.
God was his environment. Environment is a lot, is it not? You and I know that quite well. How often we say, “Oh, do let me get out of this,” meaning something in which we cannot live, we cannot breathe. It is not our life. “Let me get out.” And then, on the other hand, we know where we want to get. That is our life.
Now, God is the environment of His own people. But the effect of Satan’s work was to take man out of that divine environment, put him outside of it; and outside of that environment, he had no protection. He had no protection. He was uncovered—uncovered.
It has proved to be a very, very terrible thing to be without divine covering, without divine encompassing and overshadowing—to be open, to be exposed, without God.
I think, dear friends, that had its culmination in the cross. That is exactly at the heart of that terrible cry from the cross:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
It was in the consciousness of His naked soul, the covering of God withdrawn from Him. We have got to taste a little of that to know what it means. It is a terrible thing not to be able to find God when you need Him, to find that He is gone, He is not there, and you do not know where He is. He is just not available. A terrible thing.
That is exactly what happened at the beginning. Man lost his God and lost his covering, his environment with God. The Lord Jesus tasted the full meaning of that, because no man has ever yet tasted it; and thank God, by His grace, it is not necessary for any man to taste that forsakenness, because Christ did it for us.
But that is the awful thing which would happen. You see, He entered into the full consequences and meaning of what happened at the beginning when Satan pulled man out of his divine environment, robbed him of his covering. Now Christ took that up, and He plunged the depth of that and swallowed that up in His cross for every man.
In so doing, He restores that environment to man. The work of Christ is to bring man back into God—into God, his old home, his own place, his right environment. When man gets there, he knows his home. Once he gets there, he knows that is his place. It is coming home. Man’s soul says, “This is home.”
Christ, in His work and in His person, accomplishes that restoring, bringing back into God—that we have lost God. That is all the teaching of Christ, is it not, in parable and in other ways?
But we have said that what Christ did Himself in the cross is to be deposited in the church. And the church, as we know, has got to be in representation everywhere on this earth.
The churches are following a divine plan, divine order. In the divine order, it is necessary to have them. They must be. Church is not just one general, abstract thing. It is here and there. So far as this company is concerned, it is Richmond, and Deal, and Sandown, and Glasgow, and how many other places. It is a very practical thing, this matter of the church—a very practical thing, a very real thing.
What we have in the Book of Numbers is the arranging of the whole nation into tribes and putting them in their place for their inheritance. That is just part of the Book of Acts: the arranging of this new nation in its locations—order in location, churches.
This first thing has got to be true: if you are not really in a good nucleus of Christ in any place, you are missing the way to spiritual fullness. It is essential to you. You are just a law to yourself, an individual, a freelancer, either in Christian life or in Christian work and ministry, unrelated on Christ’s ground and church ground. You will just go so far.
I say again, you may be a misfit, moving from one thing to another but never fitting into a whole pattern of God. Believe that.
This first thing has got to be true of every representation of the church, wherever it is: that it is the divine environment for its members. In other words, it is there that the Lord’s children have got to find their divine encompassment. It is there that they have got to find their divine covering.
You and I need covering. Now, of course, there is an evil one in this universe who is trying all kinds of pulls to get us out of our covering; and once getting us out, what havoc he will make of us.
If he can break up this oneness, this fellowship, this spiritual association in any one place, he will make awful mischief of it and bring terrible dishonour upon the Lord’s name by what he does in those who are responsible.
This is a most solemn word, dear friends. We need the church for our safety. We need the encompassing of the Lord’s people for our very life. We need it for our physical well-being, because our physical well-being is so largely bound up with spiritual matters.
That is taught in the Word so clearly. The enemy can strike at our bodies if we get out of cover. We can bring that on ourselves if we forsake that provided encompassment of the body of Christ, or the church of the Lord’s people.
All this in the Old Testament about the house of God, dwelling in the house of God, and longing for the house of God, has its deep, deep eternal meaning. It is there that you find your safety, there that you find your covering. Oh, how I could spend all my time on that. It is a very solemn matter.
The first thing that Christ has done by His cross is to have recovered this divine environment, and then He deposits it in the church. It is a dangerous thing to break away from a God-established order of that kind corporately. We have seen havoc along those lines.
Now, this is immensely practical. It works both ways; it has got to be viewed from both sides. Those of you who are of a local company, and especially those of you who have responsibility in such a company, must remember this: the first thing that that company exists for is to provide covering and protection for the children of God, to compass them about.
If I understand such things as James 5:14 about the anointing of the sick, it is just in line with this. It is somebody who has become exposed and smitten, and the elders, as the church representing the church, close round and bring that one back under the divine covering where there is life.
The principles are everywhere. It is tremendously important that we recognize this. It works in that way: to get out and to be alone, to be apart, means loss at least. It may mean much worse.
And the worst, of course, is for those who know the truth and who have tasted of this oneness, then violate the principles of the body of Christ. The worst is for them. It is a terrible thing.
That contains the second thing: when man was drawn out of his environment, allowed himself to be drawn out, responded to that which drew him out, and lost it, he lost the greatest thing that God ever intended man to have. That was incorruptible life, the life that could not see death. He lost it.
Well, it does not need a lot of time or many words to show that that is the thing that Christ dealt with in His cross. We could, in one sense, say that the whole meaning of Christ’s work, in life and in death, was to recover this lost eternal life.
Is that not how John winds up his Gospel? There he says that everything Christ said and did—and if it were all written, the world would not contain the books—had one object: that, believing in Him, you might have eternal life.
Eternal life: that is life that cannot die, cannot see death, cannot be touched by death—incorruptible life; life that defies death, conquers death, goes on through death in life.
Christ fought out the battle of death and life, and in His resurrection has brought it back.
Begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and that fadeth not away.
I am He that liveth, and I became dead; and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the keys.
This whole matter—what man lost with his environment in the garden at the beginning, life, the tree of life—is recovered and restored for man in the Man by His cross. But it does not end there. The church is waiting as the vessel for that deposit.
That in the body, as in the Head; in the church, as in the Christ; this life shall be found. This reign of life should be found, and the Lord’s people may find in that relatedness, that fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that corporate unity, their life.
That should be, wherever there is such a representation of Christ and the church, the testimony: Jesus has conquered death. It is not a testimony in doctrine and in word; it is a testimony in experience.
I said earlier, this is the thing the Holy Spirit is working out in the Christian life, and oh, how real it is—how sometimes terribly real it is—to come through a death experience and to know Him and the power of His resurrection. It is very practical, that. It is an integral part of the very history of things from the cross to the New Jerusalem.
But note again: it works both ways. Violate this divine order; do despite to this vessel, this corporate life; and your life will be affected. Recognize it, abide in it, fall into line with it, cherish it, honour it, and you find that there is your life. That is very true: there is your life.
You are in a battle with death. You really are in a battle with death. While this is such profound truth, it is simple—simple.
This evening, at the fellowship meeting, a lot of people said, “We came so tired; we are going away so fresh.” Well, I do not know whether that is true—how far that is true—but it ought to be like that. It ought to be like that.
I mean, the togetherness of the Lord’s people ought to be a matter of life too—ordinance, really, spiritual life. Well, that is the new heavenly order, you see: life recovered and deposited in the church, and deposited in every representation of the church.
When things were upset at the beginning, another thing happened. Man lost the light of the knowledge of God—the light of the knowledge of God.
He made, or he was tempted to make, a bid for knowledge—knowledge—but under Satan’s instigation it proved to be darkness, not light. The kind of knowledge that man would be well without, with disasters. That bid for knowledge, the light of the knowledge of God, which is man’s very life, was lost.
He was blinded and darkened. That is what the Word says about man: blinded and darkened and alienated from God. Well, that is true. The heavens were closed. A great dome was placed over man’s spirit: no communication with heaven, no light shining through.
The Lord Jesus took up that whole matter of darkness in the cross, and it was darkness indeed. The very phenomenon—the darkness for three hours—was a symbolism; it was a demonstration in nature of what was true in the spiritual world: darkness.
Christ entered into it—not only the literal darkness, but the soul’s light went into that awful darkness, that outer darkness. He went into that and overcame it. He wrestled with the darkness of man’s state and destroyed that work of the devil, came out across on the other side.
We can see how, as soon as the Spirit came, a new reign of light began. Men are seeing. Men are having their spiritual eyes opened everywhere. Marvellous! It began in the apostles themselves, who had been blind and in the dark, bewildered and not understanding at all.
Now they are seeing the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Sun has risen again for them: new light.
Now, I have clarified a lot of ground there, but you see how true it was. We come to the practical thing: this is another thing that Christ accomplished in His cross to be deposited in the church.
It is in the church that we ought to be receiving our enlightenment, our instruction, and our knowledge of God. I do not mean that you cannot learn anything with the Lord alone, but the church is in existence by divine appointment as the place of our education.
Not only teaching from the platform, not only Bible teaching—that is not what I am thinking about only. It is that, but there is much more in spiritual education than that.
I am quite sure that there are many here tonight who would agree with me when I say that we have learned more in fellowship than we have learned in any other way. Our spiritual education has been advanced more in our relationships with the Lord’s people.
Yes, we do learn a lot of things, do we not, by relatedness? We learn love. We learn patience and forbearance—all those graces of the Lord Jesus which could never be learned if we lived on an isolated island somewhere just by ourselves.
Here together we learn Christ, and we see the light of the glory of God in His face. It is a place of spiritual education. That is my point. Great value, in that sense.
So we could go on, but we are going to close. And I say, this is a very practical thing, and it is a very challenging thing to us. I am sure that you would agree that this is what we need—what you need, and we all need these things. These are the things that make up life, that mean life. They are.
But sadly enough, this is not true of so many companies who are supposed to be representations of the church.
Well, you must decide, dear friends, what it means where you are concerned. And you will, I think, in the light of this little that I have said, recognize why Satan is so set against the church and any true representation of the church.
You, of course, meet difficulties as a Christian, just as an individual Christian; but you get on church ground, and then the story begins. The real battle begins then.
Oh, if there is one thing that he is against, and will do everything either to prevent or to destroy, it is a genuine expression of the heavenly order in a company of people anywhere. He will upset that if he can; he will break in upon that if it is possible. He will stop at nothing to do it.
Oh, let us be alive to it—be alive to it—because of what this means: what it means to God for the realization of all that was ever in His heart. His church is necessary to that.
And because of what it means to the enemy: to find all his trouble and pains and work spoiled—spoiled. Think of it now: when, by the grace of God, two disrupted believers come together again, Satan loses heart.
When two groups of Christians who have been divided come together again on the ground of Christ and His cross, it is a tremendous amount to the powers of evil.
Lord, help us to see. This is very vital. Send us back with a new incentive and motive and, by His grace, determination. The Lord shall have, so far as we are concerned, individually and as two or three or more, a true vessel in which the heavenly order is found because the cross is truly expressed there.
We pray.