Instead of reading one passage of Scripture, we are going to bring together a number of short passages. This will test your dexterity with the Word; it is scattered all over the place.
First of all, we take the passage which has been like a banner over this season, under which we have been gathering everything else: Jeremiah 17:12.
A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning,
Is the place of our sanctuary.
A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of our sanctuary.
Now, a long way on, to the Letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews 1:8-9:
But of the Son He saith,
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever;
And the sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom.
Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity;
Therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee
With the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.
A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning. Of the Son He saith:
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.
Then, back to the Psalms—to Psalm 2:
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,
And the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.
You notice that the context relates that to the Son.
Now another flight into the New Testament, to the Book of Acts, Acts 1:8:
Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you:
And ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria,
And unto the uttermost part of the earth.
“Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” “Ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
The Letter to the Ephesians. What conference would be complete without Ephesians? Chapter 1:
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.
He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Then Ephesians 1:9-10:
Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him,
Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times,
To sum up all things in Christ,
The things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say.
He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He made known unto us the secret of His will: to sum up all things in Christ.
And back to our prophet Jeremiah, to reread words in Jeremiah 1:4-5:
Now the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,
And before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee;
I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.
“Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance.” “I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations.” “Ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
I wonder if you have noticed a very obvious thing in the Bible: most of the great things were connected with mountains.
You only have to have that said, and your memory will take a flight through many a mountain on which some great thing took place—indeed, a point where heaven and earth met.
The value of a mountain is that it helps perspective. It gives a command of the whole situation. It brings all details and particular things into their right relationship, so that everything can be seen as not just something in itself, but as part of a whole.
There you get a sense of proportion and balance. These are some of the values of a mountain.
And, by way of parenthesis, do you not think that that is just part of the value such gatherings as these, which we call conference times, should be? We all feel the need to have our sense of proportion maintained and preserved.
We are right up against things too closely. The details press upon us; the immediate situation takes possession. Things immediately before our eyes and in our experience tend to become everything and exclude so much more. They get on top of us just because we are so close to them. The perspective is upset, and there is a good deal of confusion for this very reason.
These passages which we have read are themselves mountain peaks, and together they constitute one great, glorious mountain which could deliver us from this obsession with the oppressive things that are too close—just what we ourselves are going through.
So we have to leave spiritual insulation and isolation and climb to some vantage ground of the heavens.
That took its great place in our New Testament when the near view could have brought complete despair. The immediate happenings in Christianity, among believers and in the churches, could have produced in the apostle a hopelessness that would have cast him deep down in the valley of despair.
He climbed to the height. And you and I, dear friends—and the church ever since, to the end of the age—will owe a vast debt to that man’s climb up the mountain in spirit from his prison cell.
He repeatedly used that very mountain word: the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
Then we need to get up there again. May the Lord give us mountain energy today, to rise up as on wings, to see anew what we are called unto and what we are called into.
That is the saving vision. That is the redeeming view: what it really is that we are called into and unto; what we are in, if we are really in full fellowship with God.
What is it all about? What is all the conflict about? What is all the pressure about? What is all the discipline about? What is all the suffering about?
Is there some one thing that can and does answer all those enquiries and cries? Well, I am quite sure that sometimes you ask that question: “What does it all mean? What is it all about? Why this and that?”
The Lord will answer that cry. It will have been worth our coming here. So, we climb the mountain.
We are all familiar with a line of a very well-known, and I think greatly loved, hymn by George Matheson: “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.”
After his death, when the poem was found and the thought was to publish it, those who found it came upon one line in it which perplexed them. They could not quite grasp it or understand it. It seemed mysterious, abstract, and so they decided to change it.
We have in our version the line:
I trace the rainbow through the rain.
But George Matheson had written:
I climb the rainbow through the rain.
Quite a difference.
“I trace the rainbow through the rain”—it is all right; that is an artistic contemplation, a poetic way of speaking. But when George Matheson wrote that poem, he was in the grip of a tremendous spiritual conflict. For him, everything in life was rocking. There was a perfect deluge upon his soul.
He did not sit back in poetic contemplation and say, “I trace the rainbow through the rain.” He got there himself. He said, “I climb the rainbow through the rain.”
We have got to take hold of things, discover what lies there behind, and get hold of that. Ask ourselves, “What does it all mean? What is it all about? What is the explanation?”
There is one, and it does lie right at the heart of this that I have just said: what we are called into and unto. That explains it all.
These difficulties, trials, adversities, sufferings, and conflicts are very real—very real—for the saints. They are sometimes terrible. If that is true, the explanation must be one that is at least commensurate with it. The answer must at least be adequate to all this.
Think of all the suffering of the saints. We have some, but is it comparable to what some of the Lord’s people are going through while we are sitting here? It is not.
What justifies all this? What is an adequate answer? We are driven; we are forced to seek an answer.
Again I say, the only answer that is sufficient is that of what we are called into and called unto.
Now, in order to get that, we are going to take three cycles. The Scriptures which we have read—and they are only a selection from many more of the same kind—bring these things into view.
Firstly, all that which is comprehended by the repeated clause: all things. All things—you cannot get outside of that. That comprehends everything.
All things were created by God for His Son, whom we now know as Jesus Christ. That is the beginning of everything. They were created for Him, through Him, unto Him. He, we are distinctly told, was appointed heir of all things.
That is where we begin. All things, these Scriptures show, were integrated in Him, consisted in Him, held together as one whole by His Person—not only by His power, but by His Person.
There was a wonderful, harmonious unity in the creation, all centred in God’s Son and held to Him. While He was there, everything was harmonious and in accordance. While He was in His place, there was a beautiful oneness running through everything.
The great harmony of creation—He was the keynote. Everything came back to Him and moved from Him. All things were integrated and consisted in Him.
All things were disrupted by putting Him out of His place, or refusing to recognise Him in that place. That is, of course, a great story: heaven’s disruption—that to which an apostle refers when he says:
The angels which kept not their first estate…
Are reserved in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
There was discord in heaven to begin with, and it had to be cast out. Then it came into this world, disputing the creation rights and place of the Son of God. By that, everything here was disrupted and became disconnected.
The first picture of creation is a beautiful picture, but that changed.
We see all things now with something working like an evil leaven—a power which is all the time breaking up, never ending in its breaking-up work, leaving nothing whole. Conflict: a terrible story in history all through the ages of this evil thing working so that the last bit of unity is destroyed, the last bit of harmony disrupted.
The spirit of this age is not going to allow anything to remain integrated in Christ. Dear friends, does not that explain perhaps a lot—that where Christ is the more given His place, the enemy is the more concerned to break up and divide?
Sad history, is it not? You see it. Will anything survive this? Will anything escape? The most beautiful thing will become the object of the enemy’s attempt to break it up.
Disruption and disconnection. Partly, we have things all in chaos and confusion because He—the unifying, integrating centre of all things—is not in His place. That is the answer, the explanation: because He is not in His place.
It may be a terrible indictment upon some situations, but we have got to face it quite honestly and frankly.
That is the first cycle. The second cycle which the Scriptures present is this: the Son Himself, the Heir and Centre of all things, undertakes the work of recovery, viewing the chaos from heaven.
He voluntarily, stripping Himself of heavenly glory, undertakes to come down into it and recover that which has been lost. He undertakes the great work of recovery.
Now, that word recovery is a favourite word for us, is it not? The recovery of this and that which was God’s mind and thought. The first One who engaged in that work and ministry was God’s Son Himself, and He has committed Himself to that work of recovery.
Having undertaken it, He comes down and enters into this kingdom of disruption. He comes right into all this chaos, disorder, discord, and ruin—right into it Himself.
By His very presence, as we see Him in the pages of the records, He shows what a disrupted and discorded scene this is.
There is only one Person in the whole picture who, in Himself, is integrated, harmonious, balanced, and whole.
One of the impressive things about the Lord Jesus is that He Himself moved in this scene so harmoniously in His own Person. It is not an easy thing to do in this world, as you know, but He did it.
But, on the other hand, how that presence annoyed—and that is a very, very weak word—it perfectly roused these chaotic powers, so that they grew and grew and grew during that brief period of His earthly sojourn: an atmosphere of conflict, hatred, and discord, until at last it broke out in an awful storm, tearing the very creation, tearing the very atmosphere.
No one, no one, has any kind of control or mastery. The very elements are disruptive. This evil thing is all focused upon Him.
He entered into it to witness against it in the first place—in His own Person and presence—to be an offset to it, and to speak words which are in the strongest contrast to man’s state and condition.
What are His words?
I give you rest.
Ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you.
How such words clash with the condition!
Here, right in the midst of it, He was testifying against it, manifesting what it ought to be, and intensifying the condition that really was, to show how evil it was. You never know how wrong or evil a thing is until you get the absolutely right and good right in the heart of it.
He became, by His presence, the example and the witness—the personal testimony to what was intended, and against what is.
Probably your minds are running ahead of what I am saying. Mine is. You can see what the next cycle will be.
Having come in, and having been here long enough—and it proved to be long enough, though it was only three and a half years or so—to show the contrast, bring up the contrast, and testify against it; having brought it all out and shown it in words, deeds, and all His works; testifying against this wrong state and condemning it—
—having been here long enough to be a witness in the midst of it, He then, and this is our third point in the second cycle, took it all on Himself.
Took it all on Himself. Took on Himself the evil and the consequences of the evil that had come in. Drew it unto Himself—yes, verily, drew it unto Himself.
He sought not to ward it off. He sought not to argue Himself out of it. He knew what it meant.
The marvel of His silence! He could have made a case for Himself. He who again and again sent scribes and Pharisees, with all their trickery, subtlety, and attempted snares to ensnare Him, away like dogs with their tails between their legs—without a word.
“Let him that is without sin among you first cast a stone.” And they went out one by one, beginning from the eldest.
“Master, is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar?” You can see the trap they had laid for Him.
“Show Me a coin. Whose image and inscription is this?”
They said, “Caesar’s.”
Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s;
And unto God the things that are God’s.
You notice the effect of that? Completely they were defeated. They had to confess, “Never man so spake.” Who could do that sort of thing with the rulers?
Yet, in the day of His ordeal and trial, He could have put them all out of court. But the marvel: He opened not His mouth. He opened not His mouth—not a word.
As a sheep before her shearers is dumb,
So He opened not His mouth.
He was not putting it off. He was not keeping it at bay. He was letting it come on, even drawing it on. So He became sin, says the Word, that He might destroy him—drawing it on to its own destruction.
He became broken: “This is My body, broken.” He became broken in order that He might unite. The great testimony of the Lord’s Table: one loaf, one body. Through brokenness, He was broken that He might unite.
He became defeated in order that He might triumph. He became dead in order that He might destroy death for ever. He emptied Himself and became impoverished in order that He might be filled with all things—all things.
That is the second cycle.
But now we come to the third. Having done it, having accomplished all that in His Cross, and having received the great approbation and seal of heaven—of His Father:
Thou art My Son;
This day have I begotten Thee.
That refers to His resurrection.
All this scattering—and what a scattering had taken place. “All ye shall be offended because of Me this night; for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”
Oh, the scattering! Then He begins to gather these fragments, these broken, scattered fragments, together.
The Son brings in His sons and fellow-heirs. You can read again that first chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews: “Of the Son He saith.” Then it goes on about His brethren: “I and the children whom God hath given Me”; and later, “bringing many sons unto glory.”
In the third cycle, He, the Son, brings in His sons and His fellow-heirs. The phrase occurs: “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”
These sons are a family matter. We call that family the church; the New Testament calls it the church.
But in this third cycle, this is what comes so clearly into view with the passages read: this family, this church, this body, was eternally known by God and chosen by God in Him, the Son, before the foundation of the world.
That is very wonderful. Chosen in Him whom He appointed heir of all things, He also chose and appointed the heirs with Him of all things:
Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
And made known unto us the mystery of His will…
To gather together all things in Christ.
This church—foreknown, eternally chosen, elected—to this one great, all-comprehending, all-inclusive purpose.
Now, here is the point where you and I must be very clear and very positive. This matter of election, predestination, and so on, does not relate to salvation except insofar as salvation is the way.
This election, if the Letter to the Ephesians means anything, and all that is in harmony with it, relates to the purpose of God concerning His Son. We come to it through the Cross. We come to it through being born from above. But that is not the object, and that is not the end.
That for which you and I are born from above, chosen in Christ, and in time called into the fellowship of God’s Son—that, dear friends, is this purpose of God concerning His Son: to gather up into Him all things; to—and this is the real word in the original—reunite all things in Christ.
The church—do you see where we have arrived? The church is seen by God through the ages, through all the disruption, through all the cost, all the consequences, all the Cross and its agony. The church has been seen before it all and through it all as the vehicle, the vessel, the instrument of the Son to bring back that original pristine harmony and unity centred in the Son of God.
The church is called for that. That is the heavenly vocation.
Perhaps it is too big for little people like you and me to grasp that, to believe it. But we are part of a great thing. There is law in this, thank God. We have not got to take the full burden and responsibility of this individually, but we are related to something that is elected of God, called of God, for no less a thing than this.
And this—what a lot that explains, if it is true! What an answer, is it not, to all our suffering and our discipline?
If only we could hear what the apostle heard—what was present with him in his hours of anguish. Knowing perhaps more of suffering and sorrow than any other man of his time in Christianity, because he climbed the mountain, because he was seeing from the heavenlies, he could say:
Our light affliction, which is for the moment,
Worketh for us more and more exceedingly
An eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen,
But at the things which are not seen:
For the things which are seen are temporal;
But the things which are not seen are eternal.
These things that are seen are right on top of us, these close-up present experiences. But from the mountaintop we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
You need to get on a high mountain to view it like that, to get that balance in life.
Well, friends, I said that answers a lot of enquiries and questions—if that were true, if that is true, if that could come really to us and we knew it.
Oh, to be delivered from our familiarity with the Bible and this teaching! May it break upon us with its own real impact.
My brother, my sister, you are called of God in relation to a vocation which He foredetermined, in which you should have a part. It is no less a thing than this: that, in union with His Son, you should answer this whole challenge to His Son’s place, right this whole wrong which His Son has suffered, and be with Him at last in the righting, the adjustment, the recovery—sons in glory.
I say, if that is true, it is a great gospel. It is a great gospel.
No wonder the apostle felt it necessary, in the midst of saying these things, to fall on his knees and say:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
May give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him;
Having the eyes of your heart enlightened.
That is a prayer which we ought to pray continually, because only so shall we be saved in the hour, the day, of trial and suffering.
This church is the sovereign act of God—the sovereign act of God. It is God’s act; it is God’s thing. Before it existed in time, God had acted about it. It is God’s act.
We are brought into something that we never thought out, planned, intended, or understood. We are brought into something that is God’s thought and God’s own act.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you.
This church—it is important, as a part of the whole, to really understand the nature of this church. Again, we need deliverance from well-nigh two thousand years of distortion on this matter.
That word church—what a lot has been put on it; what a lot it carries; what a lot has to be stripped off it to get to its real meaning.
This is a spiritual thing. This is not a temporal thing; this church is a spiritual thing.
This is comprised, at the very beginning, of such as have been born of the Spirit and are indwelt by the Spirit. The measure of their churchmanship—if I may use that phrase—is only the measure of their spirituality, the measure of their spiritual life in its effect, its outworking, and its value.
This is a spiritual thing. This does not belong to this earth at all. This belongs to heaven. Its roots are in heaven; its life is in heaven; its Lord is in heaven; its everything is in heaven. All its government is from heaven.
But when we have said all that, we have to come back to this and re-emphasise it as we close for the moment: this church is an essentially vocational thing.
I do want you to get hold of that in these days: an essentially vocational thing.
Of course, the vocation can never be fulfilled unless the conduct is right. So the apostle, in this very connection, says:
I beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,
With all lowliness and meekness.
Character must be there, or there can be no vocation, because the calling with heavenly vocation rests upon character: that we should be holy and without blemish before Him. That is His mind.
The Holy Spirit, because of the greatness of the vocation, dear friends, is very meticulous and particular over details of conduct. You see, you cannot lift this great heavenly vocation out of the affairs of daily life here.
You cannot put your church position, your church doctrine, and your church mentality outside of your accounts, your money matters, your family life, and so we could go on. You cannot do it. All that is a part of the whole.
Walk worthily of the vocation, because that basic life affects your vocation. The Holy Spirit is particular, very particular, and sooner or later He will bring us all up sharp on this.
“Look here, you have got a great idea of church teaching and truth about the church, but you are not consistent with it. There is that which is inconsistent with it.”
Oh, what a challenge this is to you and me here this morning! I almost shudder to face it, tremble to look at it.
Let me put my finger upon this one point at once.
What I have been saying from the Word of God is true: that in Him, the Son, when all things were created, and for whom all things were created, there was—and we know not for how long—beautiful harmony, complete integration and coordination, all moving together as one whole.
Then it was all shattered, like a beautiful vase broken to pieces, and this terrible discord was shot through and through the creation, touching everything. We know that well.
If it is true that God had already determined that, by His Son and with His Son, the church should be the vessel and instrument of recovery, bringing into effect the reuniting of all things in Christ—
—where are we over this matter of unity, of oneness, of harmony? Or are we working to the contrary? What are we doing about that? The vocation is that.
Oh, the Lord help us not to play into the hands of, and work together with, this great adversary of the harmony of God.
It is a vocational fellowship with God and with His Son. It is all related to the Son and His appointed place in the counsels of the Father.
It is all related to the throne—the throne. Because it is in that throne, and by that throne into which He is exalted, that glorious throne set on high from the beginning, that this is made effective.
As we were hearing last night, the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ in everything, over everything, is affected by the state of the church.
It is related to the throne. Being related to the Son and to the throne, you see, it is related to the nations—the uttermost parts of the earth.
The message of the gospel to the nations is not only the message of salvation, redeeming love, and redeeming grace. Over and above all that, it is the message of the crown rights of God’s Son: the declaration, He is Lord.
We are not called to offer Him as Lord, but to declare that He is Lord.
But the lordship, the throne, has its seat and centre in the church. It must be here in ourselves, in our own hearts.
I wonder if I have failed. Have you really grasped, dear friends, that however you may feel about it yourself—you may feel you are too young, too inexperienced, to do something or other, to be in such a thing—if God has called you in Christ, that calling contains all that I have said for you in relation to the whole.
Perhaps this afternoon we will be able to get nearer to this thing in that way. But for the moment, the object the Lord is bringing before us is this: we are called with a great calling. That word calling can be rightly changed for vocation.
We are called according to His purpose. You ask, “What is that purpose?”
It is infinitely more than to have a body of people saved and glorified at the centre of His coming new creation—what the Letter to the Hebrews calls “the inhabited earth to come”—through which He will express this perfect harmony, maintain the government of this glorious integration, and be the coordinating centre: Christ in the midst.
This church, this city, is the metropolis of His creation. Because of them, everything—everything—is in peace; everything is in rest when He gets it.
We are called unto that: to serve Him in that matter.
But let us remind ourselves that this is not going to begin when we get there. The beginning of this is now.
We ourselves have got to be one person, not two or three persons. Do you understand what I mean by that? “This one thing I do.” I am to be truly one, my hope being set upon a single object.
There is one thing in God’s universe that unites my whole being. It unites my whole being. My spirit, soul, and body are concentrated, focused, and united upon this purpose of God concerning His Son. I am not a divided person.
We have got to be harmonised in that way by the interests of the Lord Jesus.
Together it must be so. Our personal divided interests must go—must go. Our ambitions must go. All secondary considerations must go. We must be a one people for the sake of the Lord Jesus and His rights.
We must go out to be His witnesses. And, as it was with Himself, it will be with us.
If only there is the right thing there, as the example and the witness, hell is stirred from beneath. That is a good sign, if it is.
It is no compliment to any Christian, any church, or any body of Christians in this world for the world to be able to go on without feeling its presence—the presence of Christ. No compliment at all to have an easy time like that.
Well, that is not a pleasant thing to say. We probably have to face that in practical ways. But that is how it was with Him.
Yet we have this:
Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
We have His victory upon which to count.