We have been following the movements of progress in the new creation, seeing that those movements follow, in a spiritual way, the movements in the material creation.
We are not going to make even the briefest ground cover. We are going to focus upon one feature this evening—the central feature in it all.
I want to read two or three fragments of Scripture, leaving the Old Testament passage about the creation of man. We will just come to the New Testament and have these fragments. As we are so much in the Book of Acts, we will look at two passages there.
Acts 2:32-33
This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses.
Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear.
Being at the right hand of God exalted, He had procured this.
Acts 7:55-56
But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God,
and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.
Hebrews 2:5-10
For not unto angels did He subject the world to come, whereof we speak.
But one hath somewhere testified, saying,
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
Or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;
Thou crownedst him with glory and honour,
And didst set him over the works of Thy hands:
Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet.
For in that He subjected all things unto him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we see not yet all things subjected to him.
But we behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.
For it became Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
Finally, in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15:
1 Corinthians 15:45
The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
In the first creation, crowned by the creation and the instating of man, we might say that he was the occasion of everything. That is, everything that had gone before led up to him, and everything that followed after came from him. He is the key.
The same is true—transcendently true—in the new creation. Man presented, and the Man instated: everything before leading to Him, and everything after moving from Him, coming from Him.
Man is the key to both creations. Man is a special thought of God.
But there is this that we have to be very clear about: in the first creation, man, we have never had God’s full thought about man—only God’s intention as to man, not its realization; God’s beginning with man.
In the new creation, it is otherwise. We have in the last Adam the full thought of God about man: perfect, complete, nothing more to be added as to Himself, as the personal expression and embodiment of God’s full thought concerning man.
And having perfected Him—He was made perfect through suffering—having completed Him, having finalized Him, He could glorify Him and instate Him there to be the first of a whole race like Him.
It is a great movement. A godly company of dear believers, who, whether in the full apprehension of this or not, I do not know, took for their name “the Jesus Family.” Well, that may only relate to a part of the family, so far as they are concerned, but that is what it is. That is what it is.
This whole new creation is the Jesus family. “Wherefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren,” saying, “Behold, I and the children whom God hath given Me.”
Only in a spiritual family is your child your brother. We know how that is meant. Timothy was Paul’s child in the faith; Timothy was Paul’s brother in the Lord. That by the way.
But there are two things with which we must be content this evening, and they are quite enough. We must be very clear about this.
On the one side, Jesus—we are using the name now just by itself, as it is used here in these passages—Jesus is God’s effective representation of His intent where man is concerned. He is instated at God’s right hand as the model, the pattern, for man.
Man is called to be conformed to that image—to come to His image—not as God, but as the Son, as man. That is the one thing that you and I must be very clear about.
On the other side, the Holy Spirit’s business in this dispensation—His real business, for which He has come, to which He is committed, and which explains all His dealings with us—is to reproduce that Man in the family, if you like; in the race; in the children of God.
That is the business of the Holy Spirit. Unto that, He may do many things. He may inspire unto evangelization, soul-winning; He may lead to various forms of activity. But none of these must be taken as things in themselves. If they are, they will surely fall short of the purpose of God in them.
Every Holy Spirit-inspired activity and concern—whether it be evangelization, or the salvation of the unsaved, or through all other means and ways, building up and instructing—every Holy Spirit activity has but one object in view: bringing many sons to glory.
That is, the reproducing of the Son in sons; reproducing Christ in a mankind called, chosen, elected by God.
To be very clear about this will perhaps correct some of our preponderances, our mistakes, and our deficiencies. See exactly what it is the Holy Spirit is doing. It will explain a great deal.
It is the only explanation of many things. Well, some of the greatest evangelists had their evangelization ministries cut short, and they themselves have been shut up and confined for years, unable to do any of it.
It looks, on the surface, as though there is a breakdown somewhere. Where is the Holy Spirit? Where is the sovereignty of God?
The answer is: God is more concerned for the increase of His Son in those concerned than He is for all their activities. We come to that as we go on, but these are the things that we must see.
Christ is installed as the full embodiment of this original thought of God about man—perfect. The Holy Spirit comes to make Christ, in what He is, real and increasingly full in men and women, to bring into being one great corporate man in Christ.
Now, you are so familiar with statements like this. We cannot get anywhere until we get the whole thing set. You notice that it was with the setting of that that everything commenced and proceeded in the New Testament.
It was not until the Man, perfected, glorified, and instated at the right hand of God, was in His place—His right place—that anything could go on at all.
There is a deeper, deeper meaning in the forbidding of the Lord Jesus to go and preach and begin the work until the Holy Spirit should come. Luke said, after He had given commandment by the Holy Spirit; and His commandment was, “Tarry ye in Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.”
The deeper meaning was this: the commandment was not only that they should receive the Holy Spirit and, in so doing, receive power; but He linked with that, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”
Unto Whom and what were they to witness? Well, listen to Peter. He starts this witnessing in Jerusalem, and it spreads. And what is the great note of the witness? “Being at the right hand of God exalted.”
Everything links up with that. Tarry, not only until the Spirit comes and you receive power, but tarry because, when the Spirit comes, it will be because Jesus is glorified.
Well, the last Adam—the last Adam. Do not misquote Scripture and call Him the second Adam. He is not. He is the second Man; He is the last Adam. No need for any more; no place for any more. Finality is reached in Him.
The last Adam is installed, is instated, because perfected and glorified. And being at the right hand of God exalted, He hath poured forth this: the Spirit of Jesus glorified.
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Jesus. That is one of His titles: the Spirit of the perfected, glorified, and instated Jesus.
As the breath of the new creation, He comes into the new-creation man corporately. That is what happened on the Day of Pentecost.
It was the fulfillment of that word in which the Lord Jesus reserved these men unto that day. He breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” They did not receive the Holy Spirit then. It was a symbolic act, and it was an act by which He, so to speak, put them in reserve for it. He said, “I put you apart for it.”
The actual receiving of the breath, corresponding to God breathing into the first Adam, took place on the Day of Pentecost. The church’s lungs were filled. The whole mechanism, this new spiritual body, started up in action when the breath came in.
It does not need argument to see that they were pretty helpless before that happened. It all started then: the breath of the new creation entered in. Remember that. It is not just history. We are not just looking back into the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit, dear friends, is the very breath of the new creation. In that breathing of Christ, we become organic parts of Christ: the body of Christ, members of Christ, the one new man.
Now, what we have to do, as quickly as possible, is to look at this Man being reproduced. It is a far bigger study than we can handle this evening, but it is perfectly clear—and on these things we must be perfectly clear indeed—that when the Holy Spirit came into them, a tremendous change took place as to an order of mankind.
To say that they became different creatures is hardly enough. I would like you to study closely and fully what happened to them and the change that did take place. I will indicate quickly a few of the things.
You know, from reading the Gospels—I think this is one of the values of the Gospels being bound before Acts, although they were not written before it—you know how earthbound these men were.
Their horizon was no further than the earth and that which they could see with their natural eyes. Their idea, for instance, of the kingdom of God was an earthly, temporal, and outward one. Their ambitions, expectations, hopes, interests, and activities were all within that small compass.
They were little men because they had such a little horizon. You live all your days in a little village, and you will be a little person. Begin to move over the world, and you get wonderfully enlarged.
These people saw nothing beyond Israel, nothing beyond this one little area—beyond their own native land, their own city. That was the country. They were earthbound men.
Look again: Jesus is in heaven. He belongs to heaven. I do not know where heaven ends, but I know that it is a mighty big place—capable of tremendously enlarging your conceptions of space, distance, and range.
Jesus is in heaven. The Holy Spirit comes down from heaven and enters into these people, and immediately they are changed—or they begin to be changed—radically changed from being earthly people to heavenly people.
For them, the center of everything is in heaven: the right hand of God. They become, in their very constitution, nature, and consciousness, heavenly people.
From that time onward, though right up to the last minute before the Holy Spirit came they were saying, “Wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”—that was their horizon. It is gone when the Holy Spirit comes.
The horizon is being pressed back further and further—yes, through crises, and sometimes embarrassing and painful crises. Nevertheless, it is extending, expanding. Heaven has become their range.
The heavenly people. I could, of course, spend hours on that in the Word itself. You know how much these people of the Book of Acts spoke later about this very matter.
Look at this man Paul. Of all men, his horizon had been this one: Jerusalem. And afterward, “made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.” He is talking about the heavenlies all the time.
I do think that he had a big place in the writing of the letter to the Hebrews. Whether he did it or not, he is there somehow all the time. It is all about this, is it not? The heavenly side of things: “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling.”
The fact is, whether they were born in Jerusalem, born in Galilee, or anywhere on this earth, when the Holy Spirit came, they were born from heaven.
Have an argument with me if you like, but I hold to it: these men were not born again until the Day of Pentecost. They were disciples, they were followers, they were given deputy powers and authorities, but they were not born again until the Day of Pentecost.
But then they were. By their birth they were born from above. Jesus had said that every man must be born from above. A heavenly kingdom demands heavenly people.
They were not only born from above, but they were enfranchised above—citizens. “Ye are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem.” “The Jerusalem that is above is the mother of us all.”
The apostles, after they came back from one of those deputations under authority, started to talk to the Lord Jesus about what had happened. They said, “Even the demons are subject unto us.”
Jesus said, “Steady. Steady. Careful. If you begin to gloat over the devil, you are on dangerous ground. Rejoice not in this. Rejoice that your names are enrolled in heaven.”
That is a safe place for you: to be citizens above, to be enrolled in heaven, to have the franchise of the heavenly city. Your safety is not to glory in anything that you are able to do against the powers of darkness. Your only safety and glory is that you have a heavenly citizenship and your names are enrolled in heaven.
You know that that is a New Testament idea, is it not? The Book of Revelation is just that: whose names are in the Lamb’s Book of Life, enrolled in heaven.
Born there, citizens of heaven. The apostle states it: “Our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Saviour.”
Not only born, not only enfranchised, but supported from heaven. This Book of Acts is a wonderful record of heaven’s support of its own citizens and countrymen, is it not?
Yes, heaven looked after them—provided for, sustained, carried them through, came to their help. Put it how you will, heaven was true to its own people. Heaven was their resource and had all their resources.
When those resources failed—when everything here ceased to provide them with any hope or strength—they went to heaven in prayer and got their resources renewed.
There is this, then, I find, dear friends—at least, I do not know whether you find it—I do not find all my prayers answered. I ask the Lord for a lot of things that He does not do.
But I do find this invariably: if I go and have a time of prayer, I am refreshed. I feel better for it. It is not imagination. You do not just change in a few minutes from utter jadedness, weariness, and strain—when it is impossible to go any further—and come back rested, refreshed, renewed.
Ten minutes in the presence of the Lord, drawing on heavenly resources—I do find that, at any rate, and that is something in this world. Try it.
Their resources were in heaven in every way. But then, note the beginning and development of heavenly character.
That is an amazing thing: the change in the character of these men. It was not just psychological; it was radical, it was constitutional.
We could, of course, take that up and look at it for a long time. But there is one point in this which I think we might just lift out, because I feel that, where I am concerned—and no doubt many of you are concerned—this is a point that needs attention.
Here is the most prominent man of this whole group, the whole 120 gathered there in that upper room on the Day of Pentecost. The most prominent is Peter. Now, just glance back.
He has been called the big fisherman. I do not know what stature he had physically, but I know he was a great talker. I know that he was always pushing in—aggressive.
You do not have to be a very little person physically to be a coward. There is no doubt about it: Peter was a terrible coward. When it came to the real test, they only wanted a serving maid in the hall downstairs to point the finger and say, “You are one of them,” to draw out of Peter a vehement denial.
I am not making light of what was involved for Peter if he confessed. But there is no doubt about it: moral courage was really not one of Peter’s strong points.
The Lord Jesus challenged him after His resurrection, you know, very thoroughly about this: “I will follow Thee, even unto death. Though all men forsake Thee, yet will I not forsake Thee.”
“Simon, lovest thou Me more than these? Do you?” He is being taxed on this very thing, where he had so ignominiously broken down in testimony to the Lord Jesus—public testimony to the Lord Jesus.
For a real test, you know—people who have it in their power to do something with you, perhaps to crucify you, perhaps to deprive you of advancement in your job or other things—that is it.
Now look at this: when the Holy Spirit has come. Jesus bore good confession before Pontius Pilate, we are told. He stood up to it. It was not Jesus Who cringed before His judges; it was the judges who cringed before Him. The moral courage of Jesus astounded Pilate and vexed the others.
The Spirit of Jesus came into Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and look: he is changed in this respect—among many others, but in this.
“When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John.” You can hear him speaking: “We ought to obey God rather than men. I submit to you, are we right? Ought we to obey men rather than God? You judge.” He is arguing this thing out, having no answer. It is tremendous—stand-up Peter, after the Holy Spirit came on him.
Jesus knew what would happen, and He said, “When the Holy Spirit is come, ye shall be witnesses”—not before. It will require the Holy Spirit to make such as you, Peter, a witness.
Now, my friends, it is a simple matter, but I do feel you and I need the Holy Spirit over this matter. We are not the witnesses to men that we ought to be. When it really comes to it, we show it. We do not do it. We will produce any kind of argument to get out of it.
Now, I am not suggesting that you rush out from this meeting, get hold of everybody, and begin. But you know, a lot of people say, “You would only make a lot of trouble, unnecessary trouble, if you begin to do that sort of thing.” Are you quite sure—quite sure—that you are not making that a cover?
What do those with whom you do business know about Jesus by your conduct in your business affairs? What do those who live around you know about Jesus by your life?
You see, here everybody knew, and they could not help knowing, when the Holy Spirit came into these men. In ever-widening circles, people knew.
And I believe that the real value in all this is not that we know that people know; it is that they know, even when we do not know that they are knowing. But there it is. The Holy Spirit is like this.
I wish that I could take up in far greater fullness this whole matter of the change in these people after the Holy Spirit came—the change in character. Yes, the Spirit of Jesus, and they are already beginning to be conformed to His image: His moral courage, His spiritual virtues, and much more.
It goes on. There are crises in this; that does not matter. The thing is, they are on the way—on the way. I like to read those letters of Peter, written so many years afterward, and see what grace had done in that man: the measure of Christ that had been made in him. That is the Holy Spirit’s work.
May I put my finger upon one other thing here? You notice the change corporately—not only individually and personally, but the change corporately.
Well, it is a simple statement, but I believe it signifies quite a lot: “Peter, standing up with the eleven.” There were 120 of them gathered in that upper room. It must have been a fairly large upper room—120 of them gathered into it, men and women.
In the synagogue, they would have been segregated. Men would have had to sit on one side and the women on the other. I do not believe that was true in the upper room. They were all mixed up together.
It is a beautiful representation that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female, but one new man. Do not misunderstand that statement, and I am not going to stop to explain what I mean.
But in Christ Jesus, it is one new man. Here is the beginning of that togetherness—together. From that moment of the Spirit coming, you find a togetherness moving and working and developing.
They had all things common, and not any of them said that the things which he possessed were his own. You would not have got that in the old days: “Look here, what is mine is my own—hands off.”
It is true even of the disciples. There were horrible suggestions, were there not? They were all for their own position and place in the kingdom, quarrelling as they went along with the Master. The Master sensed it and discerned that they were discussing who should be greatest in the kingdom—rivalries, jealousies, ambitions, personal self-centeredness.
It is gone from the Day of Pentecost. It is gone. They are welded into a corporate one. It has begun, at least, in a very wonderful way. That is what the Holy Spirit does when He really does get hold.
Do we not need that? Do we not need the Holy Spirit in greater fullness of power? You know all this tremendous activity and organization, all the talk about reunion of the churches and whatnot.
Oh, the immensity of the propaganda and the machinery! The whole thing would go out of the window if the Holy Spirit came in. It would cease—unnecessary, very nonsense—if the Holy Spirit got His place.
You would have all the unity that ever heaven requires. That is the only unity worth having, is it not?
I must close, reluctantly, on two other touches. One is this: you notice these people were always gravitating heavenward—always gravitating toward heaven.
Heaven was not only the place of their origin, from which they had come. Heaven was not only their support in a foreign and alien country. Heaven was their objective, their goal.
The one thing that governed them was this ultimate issue of being with Him in glory—heaven. Their spirits were gravitating heavenward.
They had lost the magnetism of this world. It was broken and nullified; it no longer pulled them. They were moving further and further away from this earth. You can see it happening.
The temple was an earthly thing, and you can see quietly and steadily how they were gravitating away from the temple. Jerusalem ceases to hold them. You can never put your finger upon the actual day and point at which they broke with that system and that center, but it happened.
You find them eventually out of the whole thing, moving away from every earthly tie. The wonderful thing is, it is a law of the Holy Spirit. That happens.
You and I, if we are Holy Spirit-governed men and women, are spoiled for this world. This world is losing, if it has not already completely lost, any kind of interest for us.
This is not our life. This is not our place. We have got to be here; we have just got to be here until the Lord says otherwise. But we do not like it. Our spirits do not like it.
So far as any kind of liking this world is concerned, it is the other way. We are coming more and more to feel how out of it all we are—not a part of it. The earth should not do us.
It is true: go to your business. But, oh, how much more you would like to remain in the fellowship of the heavenly people. You have got to go; the Lord calls you there.
They were like that—always gravitating toward heaven and moving inwardly, inwardly moving, away from the world.
One other thing, and I close for the present. You notice the wonderful enlargement that began to take place on the Day of Pentecost in this further sense: what we have so often called the universality of Christ.
The universality of Christ. You cannot fasten Christ Jesus down to anything that relates to this world. You cannot fix Him into any nationality. He fits into all of them, and He is a part of none of them.
You cannot fix Him into one language. He can be understood in every language, and He understands every language. So we could go on. This marvelous universality.
Look here: here is the Day of Pentecost, and what happened?
Acts 2:7-11
And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying, Behold, are not all these that speak Galileans?
And how hear we, every man in our own language wherein we were born?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia,
in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
Cretans and Arabians—we hear them speaking in our tongues the mighty works of God.
A perfect Noah’s ark—something of every kind. The universality of Christ.
It is the strategy of the Holy Spirit to make Christ meet the need of every kind of creature, in every nation and language, fitting in.
I do not know how many of the three thousand were represented in all those departments of humanity after Pentecost, but I think that alone is a marvelous exhibition of the universality of Christ—the Holy Spirit making known how great Christ is.
Oh, dear friends, the Holy Spirit does that sort of thing. He breaks down the barriers which are really national and temperamental. He constitutes this new man on the heavenly, universal principle.
The old wineskins of mere restricted nationalism burst when the new wine comes in, and it flows out, spills over, into all the nations.
Paul pleaded with the Corinthians, “Be ye also enlarged.” Our hearts were enlarged; be ye also enlarged. How?
Well, the only effective way of extricating us from our littlenesses, our pettinesses, our exclusivenesses—enlarging us to the dimensions of the heavenlies—is a mighty filling with the Holy Spirit. That is what He does.
There will be an effect. If you have any experience, any real experience, of the Holy Spirit, you have had a crisis in your life at a point where, before it, you were in those strictnesses and limitations of the old natural life.
And afterward—afterward, this crisis where the Spirit of God came into your life—you know this very well: the church ceased to be something sectarian, comprised of so many sects and departments. I will not use the other word.
Your horizon ceased to be something local. You became enlarged to the great dimensions of Christ and this church which is His body, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek—not both, neither—but only one new man.
People are taken out of every nation for His name, to be called by His name: the Jesus family. We are not going to adopt that name, but that is what it means.
Now, you see how we are launched into tremendous responsibility. May the Lord take hold of some of this. It really challenges us. It is not a statement of truth only; it is a challenge.
Am I like that—really? Has the Spirit of God done something of that in me? Is He doing it? Is He going on with it? That is the challenge.
Lord, make it true.