We are, with the very slightest look back on all the ground so far covered, going to continue straight on from where we had to break off this morning.
This great matter is the horizon of divine purpose: that God has ordered everything by a definite and certain purpose. From eternity to eternity, God has been, still is, and, while time shall last, will be moving according to a specific purpose. Everything under His rule, which is universal, is governed by purpose.
We are not so much concerned at this time with what the purpose is, although there will be quite definite reference to it. In the conference at Easter, we were occupied with what the purpose is. This time, the emphasis is upon purpose itself—the fact of purpose.
We have been seeing that a great Old Testament interpreter of this matter is the prophet Ezekiel. We have also seen that the prophecies of Ezekiel have a counterpart in the Letter to the Ephesians and in the Book of the Revelation.
I mention that because I do want you at once to realize that we are not just moving in the Old Testament, in a time that has passed long ago. We are right up to date—very much up to date—in this matter. I trust that will come to you with divine impact as we go on.
We have seen, or we began to see, that the Book of Ezekiel is particularly a book of God’s reaction in purpose, because His people in general had lost that sense of divine purpose—that government of divine purpose, that tremendous incentive of divine purpose—and had just become a people with His name in a very general way.
There was a great deal of mixture and confusion, resulting in weakness and growing limitation. The Lord raised up the prophet Ezekiel, amongst others, but in a particular way, to call His people back; to enunciate the great reality of divine purpose; and to warn of the inevitable consequences of missing God’s way as to their very election.
Ezekiel is peculiarly characterized by this particular ministry. But it is not Ezekiel’s exclusive and unique ministry. It is the very thing which the Lord Jesus Himself took up, and it is the very thing that we find so clearly in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, particularly in that final church writing of his, the Letter to the Ephesians.
The emphasis is repeatedly upon this:
He is working all things after the counsel of His own will, according to the purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world was.
That is the note, and that is the outstanding note.
Coming back to Ezekiel, our interpreter, our great instructor in this matter of divine purpose, we want to note this afternoon some things that stand out most clearly as to God’s methods in this matter.
Is it necessary for me to repeat, for the sake of any newcomers, that the church is entirely elect for this very purpose of God in Christ? The existence of the church in the mind of God, from the times eternal, when it was chosen, as Paul says, in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world—the very existence of the church—is explained by this word purpose, as it is in the mind of God.
The Holy Spirit took up this matter from the beginning and has ever pursued it with diligence and energy right through history. Now, this is, in Ezekiel particularly, a revelation of the mighty, energetic goings of the Spirit of God in this very connection.
That is seen perhaps more clearly and fully with the Day of Pentecost, and immediately after, than anywhere else. That church, in the eternal thought of God as an elect instrument for that purpose, was then born on the Day of Pentecost. The Spirit came upon it and into it.
From that moment, those energies of the Spirit are seen to be moving—yes, moving—but producing in the church this sense of existing in relation to some divine intention. Mighty energy is not just the abstract energy of God’s power. They are a people who have the incentive and dynamic of a particular purpose.
They come to know that they exist for something, and they are beginning, by the Spirit, to see—and going on seeing more and more—what that purpose is through the teaching of the divinely raised-up ministers.
The churches are the local expressions of that work, that energy of the Holy Spirit, with this purpose in view.
Now, that brings the whole matter very near to us, does it not? We said this morning: here is a company—not a vast concourse of people, comparatively a small company of people here today—but representing quite a number of local companies of the Lord’s people, assemblies of the Lord in different places.
The purpose in God’s mind in the existence of such companies of the Lord’s people, distributed here and there on the earth, is just this: to be there in the hand and in the power of the Holy Spirit, with this mighty sense of vocation in relation to God’s purpose.
You can lay hold of that. It will help a great deal as we go on.
We proceed this afternoon to note some of those things which come out in the prophecies of Ezekiel, or in relation to the instrument himself, which show us God’s method in this matter of recovering and re-establishing His purpose in His people here and there.
In this connection, we have the three major designations of the prophet Ezekiel. They are full of instruction.
The first, you are very well aware—or you ought to be, if you have read this book at all—is the designation, or title, given to him: Son of man.
That is a unique designation of a prophet. No other prophet is so called. It is Ezekiel’s own title: Son of man. No fewer than ninety times in his prophecy he is so called. That is impressive. See how often—how often—he is so addressed, and that no other prophet is so addressed. It must surely have a meaning.
We said very early in this time that every prophet—every prophet of the four and the twelve—had a peculiar aspect of this purpose of God to which they were committed. This title indicates very clearly that the aspect of the divine purpose with which Ezekiel is himself identified is man: son of man.
Of course, we know that the Lord Jesus took as His own favourite title for Himself, the Son of Man. It was not given to Him; others did not use it of Him. He chose it Himself. He used it of Himself. Eighty-two times in the New Testament we find it: the Son of Man.
Now here we want to be careful and explicit. Ezekiel and Jesus are not identical because there is such a similarity in title. The Son of Man is unique. The definite article puts Him in a realm and category alone. There is no other such Son of Man. He stands by Himself.
But if Ezekiel, representing a function in the method of God—more than an individual, a function, a ministry—is called son of man, the similarity between him and the Lord Jesus is not in person; it is in function. You understand that? It is to be helpful.
What does this title, this designation, really carry with it in meaning and in fact? Well, surely on the very face of it, it means firstly identification with man in the purpose of God: coming into very close relationship with the human race in the very purpose for which God created it.
It is a word of identification. And, of course, in the case of the Lord Jesus, in a way deeper and fuller and more complete than in any other. But here it is: God has man in view. God has man in view.
God has not a system of things in view; not an organization, an institution, a machine—not a thing at all. God has man in His mind in relation to His purpose. Any movement of God toward His full purpose is governed not by things at all—not even religious things, not by systems, not by institutions. It is governed by this idea of man.
You see how much the prophets—and Ezekiel in particular—were identified with the people to whom he was sent, of whom he was labouring and suffering. He says, “I sat where they sat.” I sat where they sat.
I was not just a preacher standing apart and back from them, preaching to them or at them. I was not just some detached ministry. I sat where they sat. It is indicative: “I have an identification with the people.”
Son of man: you are a part of the people. You are a man. More than a prophet, more than a minister, more than an instrument or a vessel, you are just a man. You are a living person and a part of this very race which God has intended to come into His full purpose.
Son of man: identification—one with, one with.
There is much more in that, dear friends, for our instruction and for our correction, and perhaps lies on the surface. We have heard, and only heard, in the last day or two, of missionaries—so-called; God have mercy upon them—going from one country in the West to another country and telling the people of that country that they, of course, the missionaries, are much more civilized and educated than these people.
These people in the East must take note of this fact, and they begin right at that point of superiority. Superiority creates great problems, called government, and completely discredits the work of the Lord Jesus.
“I am a missionary, and I come from a civilized country and from a college education, and you poor people have none of these advantages. Therefore, boy, you have got to listen to me and do what I tell you.” God deliver from any such spirit.
That is not a servant of God in the sense of Ezekiel, son of man. Naturally, naturally, you are no different from any other. You must just take your place there in the realm of a common humanity.
It is not what you are according to yourself that matters; it is what you have got of God to give. That defines your ministry and gives you any right whatever to exercise ministry. All ministry, dear friends, must be on this basis: not of what anybody is in themselves, assumes to be, pretends to be, professes to be, or claims to be, but just what they have got of God. That is all.
Now, that matter is not only, as I was trying to emphasize this morning, for a certain class of people called ministers, missionaries, apostles, or prophets. That is for the church. That is for the churches. That is for the local companies.
We have got to be here on that basis: that it is only a matter of what we have got of the Lord that justifies our being here and claiming anything at all. But we could put it the other way: if we really have got something of the Lord that is altogether different from, and more than, what we are in ourselves, that really is value in ministry.
Son of man is identification—oneness with the people, with man. No one who took that position showed it more than our Lord Himself. There was no class with Him, of any kind whatever. He was one with those to whom He came to minister. That is clear.
This title, designation, son of man, means not only that we are one with and identified with, but that we are representative of others before God.
This is a great principle running through the whole Word of God. Right back in the early days, you see the principle that the instrument God will use is one who stands before Him in this identification as representing all others—being there as the representative of men before God.
Moses was that. Samuel was that. The prophets were that. But the Lord Jesus was there in the presence of God. He could say not only that He and they are one, identified, but, “I am here as representing them. I am here as them. I bring them in My very person before God.”
“I am not here in some isolated capacity. I am here in a corporate representation.” Israel was meant to be that for the nations: to bring the nations into the presence of God representatively.
Where they failed, they thought they were superior. They were special, and they took on an exclusiveness. Gentiles, they called dogs. They did not stand before God in this way and say, “Oh Lord, oh Lord, no better than all these, we bring them in representation right into Your presence.”
We being here is, in its implication, these people being brought into Your presence. You hear the prayer of Nehemiah. You hear the prayer of Daniel. You hear these men. They are not there alone before God. You see, all the people are present when they are praying. They are carrying the people with them.
Son of man means that. But it indicates the purpose. This is the important thing: we started by saying that God is concerned with man.
When God made man, man came from His hand, and that was the signal for God to say:
It is very good.
God rested from His labour. That to which God works, and in which He finds His satisfaction and His rest, is when He has man according to His own likeness and image.
Now that takes us back to the beginning of our meditation in the beginning of the prophecy of Ezekiel. The all-governing thing is a throne, and a man—or the likeness of a man—upon it above. We said then that it is that man in the throne who is governing all that takes place in that book.
Coming into the larger context, it is the man Paul presents to us at the beginning of his Letter to the Ephesians, raised at His own right hand, far above all rule and authority. It is that man in the throne who is governing everything—a man whom Stephen saw: “I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
When God finds His man—the great representative Man, Who has identified Himself with man to bring man to God—and God finds His Man, His Son, He takes His rest. He takes His rest. He is satisfied.
This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.
That is only the counterpart of, “It is very good.” “I am satisfied. I am at rest.”
But then the Spirit comes, as from that enthroned Man, to make that one enthroned Man—the glorified, perfected Man—to make what He represents in heaven true here in man on this earth; to really, really do this thing: to reproduce that Man in men, that mankind, here, beginning in the church.
Now, dear friends, this is where we ought to be helped and certainly instructed. What is the Holy Spirit doing? What is it that the Holy Spirit is doing in your life and mine, through all the experiences of harm, of suffering, and sometimes of disillusionment and disappointment—the hard way?
All the ways of God with us, all the Holy Spirit’s dealings with us personally, individually, and as companies of His people wherever they are—the one thing that the Holy Spirit is really settled upon, determined to accomplish if He can—what is the explanation of everything?
“All things work together for good to them that are called according to His purpose.” What is it? It is only one thing: the reproduction of that Man in you and me.
The introduction of Him into us by new birth and His Spirit; the development and increase of Him in us through discipline, through training, through all these experiences; the effects of suffering, adversity, godly sorrow—the sorrow that the Lord allows to come to us—the effect of our difficulties and problems: the right effect should be more Christ, more Christ-likeness.
When the Holy Spirit really does have His way, how true that is. We emerge from some period of experience—deep, deep exercise and distress and trouble—with something more of the graciousness, beauty, understanding, and sympathy of the Lord Jesus.
We have a larger knowledge of Him, in that way in which knowledge is only true knowledge: knowledge in our very being, in our very experience, in our very constitution. It is a part of us. Where did we get that? Where did that come from? How did it come?
It came in the deep and the dark and the trying ways. The Spirit of God has produced that Christ-likeness.
Son of man: the reproduction. I am conscious of the imperfection, coldness, of my words and way of putting it, but I see this as the answer to our travail. I have to ask my heart, “What is the Lord after in all this? What is He after?”
Well, personally, He must be after increasing the measure of His Son, this kind of man. What is He doing in the company of the Lord’s people passing through times of difficulty, darkness, pain, and travail? Producing His Son in greater measure.
Those words to the Galatians are so apropos of larger situations like this:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you.
That is right: travail unto the fuller formation of Christ in local companies as well as individuals, and through them expansively, as far as they will have it, to the whole church.
Here, may we not say that as the end of the dispensation draws near, and the consummation of the Holy Spirit’s energies comes into view, the church will pass into a time of travail and anguish in which it will have to discover and prove the Lord, and know the Lord, in a much larger measure than it does. That is the way the Lord is doing it.
Son of man. Son of man is conformity to the Man, the reproduction of the Man.
I must hurry on, because there is a great deal more than we have time to even look at.
The other two designations of the prophet indicate God’s method—God’s method, note, in relation to His purpose. We are greatly concerned about methods in doing the work of God, in fulfilling the commission: methods, methods, methods.
God has only one method, really. Well, I know that He moves in a variety of ways, but there is one method: to make His Son increase to fill all things.
But then there is this second designation of the prophet, mentioned in Ezekiel 12 and Ezekiel 24:
Son of man, I have made thee a sign unto the house of Israel.
Say unto them, “I am your sign.”
The prophet himself is the sign. There are going to be many signs in his behaviour, in what he does, what he is called upon to do, and how many strange things, peculiar things—some things that we said before the world would call mad things—the Lord called upon him to do. How many hard things, bitterly hard things.
They were all signs, but they were all gathered into the man himself. These were not things objective to him. It was the man—the man. I fancy the people who were watching him, watching him doing all these strange, singular, enigmatical things, saying, “Now, what is the fellow doing? Now, what is he after? He must be mad.”
They brought it all down on the man. That is the point. The things he did, the things he said, were not just things given out. They were enacted in his own experience. They were a part of his own history.
The man and his message—however that message came, by acts or by words, by experiences that came to him that others could see, such as the death of his wife—there was no enactment of his, no choice of his, something that came upon him: things that made up this man’s life, but things which were a part of himself.
The message and the messenger were one.
I am your sign.
“I am not just giving you signs. I am yours.”
Very often, things happening in the life of this man were, both to himself and to others, quite incomprehensible—quite inscrutable. Others had to say, “Well, I do not know what it is that man is trying to say. I do not understand what is going on there. All this, I cannot understand it. It is altogether incomprehensible.”
I am quite sure that Ezekiel must have felt that about his own experience sometimes. He was taken completely out of his depth. Is that not true of our experience? There are times when we find ourselves in a place where we just cannot understand what God’s meaning is in this experience or in that—in this that we are called upon to go through or to do.
One great “Why?” stands over our hearts and our minds in the ways of God. Why? Why?
There was a moment of eclipse in the life of the Lord Jesus on the cross, when that word broke from His lips, His heart: “My God, why?” Eternity alone could answer that fully, but time afterwards explains it. Why? We know why now.
Sometimes we are caused to go into experiences and depths we cannot understand, beyond our scrutiny. But God is doing something.
Now Paul has something to say about this, and I challenge you to explain it. I challenge you to explain it. I would be very glad if there is someone here who can explain it to me. I have been at it for fifty years, and I have not got the explanation yet.
Unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenlies might be made known the manifold wisdom of God through the church.
You understand that? Well, of course, you can give some kind of explanation: principalities and powers in the heavenlies are looking on; we are on the stage of this great theatre, and God is doing these things, and they are learning. But does that help us?
Do you find that that really comforts you in the hour of eclipse, in the day of darkness, a day of sorrow and suffering? Does it really comfort you to know the principalities and powers in heaven are learning something? I have to be quite frank and say I have never found much comfort in that. This thing is far too real, far too terrible while it is going on.
But here it is: in the inscrutable, unfathomable, incomprehensible ways of God, He is doing something which is producing instruction and a message, and making of the instrument a messenger—a messenger of life beyond the comprehension of the messenger himself.
God is doing something that outranges our intelligence. It goes beyond our understanding.
I have read through these chapters of Ezekiel’s behaviour. Look at him, what he is called to do. See these people looking on, and they say one day, “Now, what is the fellow doing? Look at him. He is digging a hole in the wall. Now he has gone into his house, packed up his baggage, got it on his shoulders, and he is pushing through that hole in the wall with his furniture on his back. What is he doing?”
See what I mean? He did lots of things like that. But he, in his own experience and history, was pre-writing and revealing the history of that people: the siege that was coming, their trying to break out of the siege and get through and escape, and take their furniture.
Their history was written deep in his experience.
Well, I do not know how much this helps you, dear friends, but the point is this: God is not so concerned with having preachers as such, or teachers as such, or churches as such, or any things as such.
He is really concerned to have a personal or collective, organic expression of His purpose, so that when—whether it be angels, principalities, powers, or men—look on, if they look with uncritical eyes, without prejudice, they can see something that God is doing.
God is doing something. We do not understand it, but God is doing something. God is saying something. That people, that person, is not just saying things, but is the living expression of something that God is doing.
Do I carry you with me? This must be the registration of our life. This must be the truth of our assemblies: that we really are the embodiment of something that God is doing.
We have often said here, in Honor Oak, that the Apostle Paul was the great sign of the dispensation. His charge was concerning the churches, the Body of Christ, the mystery.
See how the apostle himself not only received it in an objective way and then reproduced it secondhand. How the truth—profound and sometimes agonizing truth—of the Body of Christ was wrought into that man’s very history. He is that. He is that embodiment.
The message that he has is not something that he takes hold of and gives out. He is that before he speaks, and as he speaks. You can see it, and his history bears out what he says. It may be a suffering history, but it is the sign. He is the sign. He is the sign.
Message and messenger are not two things; they are one. This is reality—the reality that is called for.
Are we not tired, very tired, tired of teaching as teaching and doctrine as doctrine? There is a lot we are tired of in our Christianity, almost ready to jettison. I am not saying, “Give it up.” We crave for reality. Do you? Do you?
Be careful. Be careful. If you say that honestly before God, reality means that the things of God are going to be wrought into your very being by experience. You are going through them. They are not only going through you; you are going through them.
Now, we said at the beginning that Ezekiel was a committed man—a committed man. God, the Spirit, could do as He liked with his life. This is what it means.
Those of you who minister, those of you who minister or who want to minister, take this to heart. You find very often that either before something vital is coming through you, or not long afterward, you have a very bad time. You have a very bad time.
All hell gets very busy and rages against that which it knows is coming, either to spoil before, cripple and paralyse before, or soon after to take you into such a position as to make you doubt your own message, question your own message.
This sort of ministry is fraught with the most real, often the most terrible, experiences in the spiritual life. Many of you will understand what I am saying. Some of you do not; do not worry, but it is true.
I am saying all this just to get at this point. God does not want people to go about with Bible, giving Bible lectures and addresses and retailing things that they have studied up in the Bible. God wants men, people, companies who are the embodiments of His truth; who in themselves are the sign of His purpose.
They are the men, the manhood, that He is seeking to reveal for His own satisfaction. Ezekiel not only prophesied; he was the prophecy—more in what he was than in what he said.
Come to the end, very hurriedly, to the third designation, again mentioned in Ezekiel 3 and Ezekiel 33:
Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.
“I have made you a watchman unto the house of Israel.” If you look, you see the context is a very solemn one. If you warn, and the warning is not taken, people’s blood will be upon their own heads. If you do not warn, their blood will be on your head. “I have made you a watchman unto the house of Israel.”
A solemn vocation for the Lord’s people.
This is no new idea, of course. This is not exclusive to Ezekiel. We have it several times in Isaiah. We shall remember the great cry from Isaiah:
Watchman, what of the night?
And the watchman says:
The morning cometh, and also the night.
But here in Ezekiel, applied to this man right early in his commission—and you notice, it is in the third chapter that it first comes into view—what is the function of the watchman?
Are you, dear friends, taking all this to yourself? Because it does apply to Christians, and it applies to companies of Christians very, very definitely.
What is the function of a watchman? Well, the function of the watchman was, and is, to know and to voice the meaning of the hour, of the time: to have that intelligence about the situation.
Why are things as they are? Why are things going on as they are? What are the portents in things as they are? What will come if things proceed as they are proceeding? What does God want in this hour? What is He after?
To be the intelligence of the people in a day when that intelligence is at a discount, because the watchman functions in the night. His work is the work of the nighttime. “Watchman, what of the night?”
I repeat: to be intelligent for the Lord’s people at large. Many, for one reason or another, lack this intelligence, this discernment.
But these people—whether they be individuals, and I especially have the companies of the Lord’s people in mind at this time; they are the burden of my heart—these companies of the Lord’s people here and there, that they shall be there as a witness for God as to what the meaning of things is in their time.
Why are things as they are? How would God have them to be? What will happen if they are not changed, if they do not conform to God’s mind? It is a warning note. It is a note of exhortation. It is a note of information. That is the watchman’s business.
Alert, alive to the time. Is that true of our local companies? Is it true?
Through us, through us, may the people of God receive enlightenment as to the meaning of things, warning as to the peril of certain portents, certain courses, the arresting hand upon ways that are contrary to the will of God, to the mind of God.
Will the Lord make us more like that—eyes for His people, eyes for His people?
We have almost worn this phrase threadbare so far, as words are concerned:
He would grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened.
But not just for yourself; it is the whole church that is in view. They may benefit, may be saved, may be delivered, may be instructed by the spiritual discernment and enlightenment that has come to us.
Watchmen, watchmen. The watchman’s message must be an unmistakable one. No use of a watchman being out there on the watchtower in the night and giving a confused message, an indistinct note. “I cannot make out what he is talking about. What did you say?”
When the cry went out, if the watchman said, “Well, I do not know, really. I do not know where I am. I do not know what things mean at all. It is no use asking me,” what is the good of a watchman like that?
But mark you, many, many churches are like that, and many of the Lord’s people are like that. “It is no use asking me. I do not know where I am. I do not know the meaning of things at all. I do not understand.”
The Lord wants to bring out people who know—who know where they are going, know the meaning of things, who have a distinct note and message. Everybody who meets them ought to be able to say, “Well, they are people who know where they stand, and they know something that is very important to know.”
This is a very responsible ministry, a very responsible thing. Many, many may have their destiny affected by our faithfulness to this very ministry, or our failure in it.
Oh, do ask the Lord, in all your prayers, for your local company, just where you are: constitute us together as a people, a watchman, with intelligence, with knowledge, with understanding, and with a clear and unmistakable message to His people.
When they see you, when they meet you, when they hear you, they meet people about whom there is nothing indefinite, nothing whatever uncertain. They mean something very positive and clear-cut.
The impression that we give is: we know where we are, we know where we are going, and we are going people. Let that impress our definiteness.
Now, “I have made thee a watchman,” said the Lord. “I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel.” You notice what happens when the people, so largely and generally, rejected the watchman, rejected the ministry that God raised up.
Everything that God intended was lost where they were concerned. With the ministry went the purpose.
They found themselves in the end all lost—that is, completely confused, stripped of all meaning, helpless, impotent, limited, and bound.
When the ministry was rejected, the purpose was lost. It is a very responsible thing.
But it does give, surely it does give, to us something very vital in our quest. I know I am failing to get to you what is in my heart. I feel that, at any rate. But I do want to close on this note.
Dear friends, we are here as God’s people. Where we are, in our companies and as our companies, we are here for a very positive purpose, and positiveness of purpose must characterize us.
We must be a people upon whom God has laid a great burden, a great concern, a great responsibility. We must feel that. We must sense that. We must be committed to that. We must be.
Paul called himself a bondslave of Jesus Christ—just captured, captivated, and dominated by a sense, a mighty sense, that we have been called according to purpose.
God is working that thing in our history, as He worked it out in Ezekiel, in order that He may place us here and there and people will be able to say of us, “Now, he is not, and she is not, just a religious person, not just some ordinary Christian. My word, he or she, or they, have got something. They have got something.”
But you know, that is a costly way—a very costly way. I could not exaggerate that. To be like that here and there means sometimes being very torn to pieces, brought into perplexity beyond our power of understanding.
Paul says all this, you know. He does use these words: “Cast down, but not destroyed; perplexed, but not unto despair.” But out of it, out of it, comes this rich, effective ministry.
Oh, we have a very costly heritage, and we have a very vital calling. The Lord impress you with it.
May what is being said come upon us all. There is a need for recovery of this thing called purpose, strengthening of this element, this force, this dynamic of purpose. We are here for something in the eternal counsels of God.
God bless us.