The briefest word, by way of helping any who are with us for the first time, to come into line with what it is that the Lord is concerned with at this time: our basic Scripture is in the first chapter of the Letter to the Romans, verse 4:
Who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead.
“Declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead.”
And we have noticed that the word translated “declared,” or in the margin “determined,” is, in the original language, the English equivalent of which is “horizoned.” The literal statement is that Jesus was horizoned the Son of God in resurrection.
We are moving within the horizon of resurrection. We have covered a lot of ground within that horizon, but not by any means all.
We are going further this afternoon, a little, in this consideration. I want just to refer you to one or two other passages and bring us to our special point for this hour.
In the Gospel by Mark, Chapter 16:
And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him.
And verse 9:
Now when He was risen early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons.
In the Gospel by John, Chapter 20:
Now on the first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, while it was yet dark, unto the tomb, and seeth the stone taken away from the tomb.
Verse 11:
But Mary was standing without at the tomb weeping: so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb;
And she beholdeth two angels in white sitting, one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou?
She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.
When she had thus said, she turned herself back, and beholdeth Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?
She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.
Jesus saith unto her, Mary.
She turneth herself, and saith unto Him in Hebrew, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto My brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.
Mary Magdalene cometh and telleth the disciples, I have seen the Lord; and that He had said these things unto her.
In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, and verse 3:
For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures;
And that He was buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures;
And that He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve;
Then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep;
Then He appeared to James; then to all the apostles;
And last of all, as unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also.
We have said, and it is necessary to repeat at this point, that for forty days after the resurrection, the Lord Jesus inaugurated and established an entirely new spiritual order.
We can say, with a good deal of truth, that that phase of the earthly life of Jesus ended in what, to all appearances, was one failure.
Failure in the world. He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not. Failure with His disciples.
He had given them a rich wealth of teaching, but how little of it they had understood. They failed to understand. There was a great deal that was meaningless to them.
Failure in His teaching ministry; failure in His works. He did many mighty works before their eyes, but they understood not.
It would have been impossible for them to behave as they did at the end if they had really understood.
Failure in His claims with His disciples. He had made great claims, but they understood not. It was failure in every way.
And His crucifixion—His crucifixion as such—well, this pictures someone who had terribly failed from start to finish, whose life had up to that point been a failure.
When the One taken and crucified, and Israel rejects Him; when all the disciples forsake Him and flee, you have to say, up to that point, so far, “Failure.” You write the word failure over that phase.
You must not read back into that what you know now. Take it as they saw it. Take it as they felt about it. Take it as seen by the world, seen by Israel, seen by those disciples—their verdict on Him and everything after that phase.
And these latter failures, where the disciples were concerned, were especially due to the narrow and earthly level of horizon within which they lived.
Their horizon—what a wrong one—was too narrow and small. It was of a wrong order and kind.
It was far too small for them to comprehend Him and understand the profound depths and vast ranges of significance within His words and His works.
I repeat: their failure was due to that small horizon within which they lived, and within which, for the time being, He was limited where they were concerned.
It was in themselves that the straitness was, and it was in themselves that He was straitened. He was in bondage, living in them.
Their mental limitations—what a prison for Him. He was trying continually to break through that small, narrow, earthly mentality of theirs, get them out somewhere beyond themselves; but no, no, no.
Now, the forty days after His resurrection were not only the evidence of His resurrection. We have perhaps been mainly occupied with that aspect.
And, of course, Luke does make that point: “To whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days.”
It is true that the forty days were entirely in evidence that He was risen. But that is not all.
The forty days were not only the evidence that He was alive from the dead; the forty days represented a complete change in the whole regime, the whole order of things, the whole dispensation.
And you know that that word dispensation, the word which in the original just means “house order”—house order, the order of the house.
This was a complete change in the order of the house. It is with that change that we are occupied just now.
That change is demonstrated very clearly, and I think very effectively, in the cases connected with the resurrection—these cases in which the Lord appeared after His resurrection.
They are not just making up the story. It looks like that: He appears first to Mary Magdalene, and then to these and to those, this one and that one. You may say it is just a story collecting a number of names and persons to whom He appeared.
No, that is not the whole thing, dear friends, by any means.
Each of these cases—I do not know how many of them we shall be able to take up—each of these cases contains some very deep law of the new dispensation which has been inaugurated by His resurrection.
That is why we this afternoon take the first happening and focus upon Mary Magdalene.
Now you notice—I hope you do—that the record is quite precise on this matter. It is not just a chance statement, a way of writing, or putting things in chronological order.
The Spirit of God always knows what He is doing when He inspires Scripture. The record is quite precise about this priority and precedence of Mary Magdalene, or Mary of Magdala.
A great deal that is merely sentimental has been said about this; we leave it.
This priority, this precedence, is due to the fact that it does contain the most definite and emphatic change of position and of relationship with Christ which comes in by resurrection.
This, of all times, was surely not the occasion for the Lord to administer a rebuke to Mary. There she was, alone, breaking her heart, pouring out her tears—twice taking account of the angels and the Lord Himself.
With her deep history of relationship with Him, and all that she had gone through by the cross, oh, it was a dark hour. She had come out early and made her way to the tomb.
Here is the picture of a heart bursting with grief—the loss, the sense of her indebtedness to Him, what He had done for her, and the disappointment that had come with His death: disappointment to her hopes, her beliefs, and her love.
I say, this of all times would have been the wrong time for the Lord of compassion to administer a rebuke.
When He says—did He say?—“Touch Me not”? “Touch Me not”? No, He never said that in the sense in which it is so often understood.
This was no rebuke. This was no lack of sympathy and understanding, no hardness of speech. No.
How did He say it? Well, the margin gives us a nearer interpretation, or translation. It says, “Take not so hold on Me.”
Literally, the words are, “Lay not hold of Me,” or, “Do not cling to Me.” That is a very different thing from touching.
It will bear this out when you recognize that, when other women came with Mary Magdalene and found Him, they embraced His feet and worshipped, and He said nothing.
Later He said to Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger, and see My hands.” And when He came to the disciples in terror, shut in the upper room, He said, “Handle Me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold Me having.”
Touch Me? Yes, Mary. But lay not hold on Me. Do not cling to Me.
And that introduces, as the very first thing in this new dispensation and order, the foundation principle of everything in this dispensation.
She is the first one; she represents the first and basic principle of everything in this new order.
If Mary had really wanted what she had been permitted to have, what did she want? She had been with Him, following Him, accompanying Him, waiting on Him, ministering to Him.
Always near, never far from Him; and then He had been taken away, cruelly snatched from her, laid in the tomb.
She is not going to lose Him again. She is not going to let Him go again. She is going to hold on this time. No one is going to snatch Him from her again. She will lay hold of Him; she will never let Him leave her again.
If that had been permitted by the Lord, it would have contradicted all His teaching.
“It is expedient for you that I go away. If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.”
“I go unto My Father. I go away.” There is an imperative, and this is essential. Everything for the future hangs upon this.
All His teaching, all His effort to make them understand—which, so evidently, they failed to grasp—all that effort to make them understand the supreme importance of His departure from this world, would have been contradicted if she had been granted what she desired.
But she received not a touch of Him—not just feeling Him, but holding Him, keeping Him, possessing Him like that, in that form, in that human way.
This would have been, not to her gain, but to her infinite loss, if it had been allowed. There was no unkindness, cruelty, or lack of sympathy. There was the infinite goodness of the Lord in this seeming unkindness.
How often it is like that.
This incident helps to indicate, or point to, the new way—the new way of having and possessing the Lord—which is characteristic of this new dispensation.
The new way of having the Lord, and the new way of holding the Lord—there is quite a new way. And who will say that it is not a better way?
Here is the great transition and change from what is outward to what is inward. That is no loss; that is gain. Christ in you is something better than Christ in Palestine.
You see, the change is from the outward to the inward, from the objective to the subjective: the Christ within.
“I will not leave you orphans,” He said. “I will come to you.” How did it work out?
“I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be in you. We will abide with you forever.”
The change from the outward to the inward is no loss. Indeed, it is a very great gain, is it not?
It was the great change from the earthly to the heavenly. “I go unto the Father. I go to prepare a place for you.”
From the earthly to the heavenly. And this, dear friends, is of tremendous significance for us in this age.
You know, I am going to make a statement which is bigger than itself. It covers far more ground than it may seem to you to cover, but it is open to your investigation and proof.
The statement is this: that because of failure to recognize and to grasp the truth that is here represented by this woman, and by what the Lord said to her—that is, the truth of the change from the earthly to the heavenly where Christ is concerned—failure to understand and grasp that accounts for more than nine-tenths of all the church’s trouble.
This incorrigible tendency of the human soul to bring things down to earth that are heavenly, to impose from there, and to make of a heavenly Lord another earthly, ecclesiastical, and applied order.
Bring things to the earth, crystallize, organize, systematize, and make them up. I say that accounts for more than nine-tenths of all the church’s trouble.
That is open to investigation and submitted to you for very serious consideration.
There is no fiercer conflict than that between the earthly and the heavenly, the spiritual and the temporal, the organized and the organic.
You will have no battle whatever if you keep on the earth. All the forces of evil will ally themselves with you and give you a more or less good time, an easy time.
You move away from their realm into the heavenly realm, which is antagonistic to their system, and you will find the battle is on at once.
You move into the realm where things are truly of heaven, of the Spirit, and then you know what Paul means when he speaks of our spiritual conflict in the heavenlies.
I say there is no greater conflict than this. The whole habit, this inveterate habit of the human heart, is to come down here, settle down here, get an easy situation here, eliminate the elements of conflict, and so compromise and yield as to get on easily without trouble.
That is the human heart, the human soul, like that.
Oh, the infinite difficulty that has been found for men to keep their hands right off divine things.
For men to keep their hands right off divine things.
Uzzah is not just an Old Testament character. He is an age-long principle: putting out his hand to look after, protect, preserve, safeguard, and steer the things of God.
Wherever that happens, the same result follows as did in his case: confusion in Israel, suspension of all progress of the testimony, the locking up of everything for a long period until it was put right.
I say, this difficulty has ever existed for men to keep their hands off the things of the Spirit of God and leave the Spirit of God to do His work, to have perfect freedom.
Oh, this holding on, this taking hold! What a dangerous thing. What a pernicious thing when you start working. What a terrible loss it would be—laying hold on, putting human hands on, not letting go, not giving the Lord the release which resurrection represents and demands.
Oh, we are afraid. Unless we do put our hand on, something will go wrong. There will be loss; there will be weakness.
But it has never proved that way—never proved that way. It has always been just the other way round.
This is the tragedy of church history. This tragedy began before the New Testament was closed.
It began before the Apostle Paul finished his course. Perhaps you have not recognized this, but those last letters of the Apostle Paul written to his son in the faith, Timothy, which contain so much about how men ought to behave in the house of God, about elders and matters of order in the church, were corrective of a thing that was coming in.
Not long after Paul’s departure, it became the established system of the kind of clericalism and ecclesiasticism with which we are familiar today, and thereby crippling the things of the Spirit of God.
It started up before Paul went away. What he was writing about was this: elders, all right; it is all right to have elders, but they are not ecclesiastics. They are not officers.
You begin to put your hands on it, organize this thing, and you are pulling things down to this earth. Confusion will inevitably follow.
A lot of light comes in through that window of statement. This is a tragedy.
It is ever like Israel in the later days—the scandal, the tragedy—when the elders came to Samuel and said, “Thou art old; make us a king like unto the nations.”
Oh, here we are. Here we are. Men must always make something, imitate, manufacture, make like. And this comes right through from paganism into Christianity.
I am hesitating whether to say this. I have quite a lot of letters from different parts, and I have had personal inquiries while I have been in America from leaders who are in the midst of a revolt against the established system of Christianity.
Both by their letters and by their personal approach, they say, “Will you tell us how to set up a New Testament church?”
It is everywhere. But there is only one thing: it cannot be done. You cannot do it, so do not try.
Oh, you can take your New Testament and say, “Now, this is the way they went to work; this is what they had and how they did it.” Right. And imitate it and make it like that.
But sheer imitation—it takes the Holy Ghost.
Churches are as much born of the Spirit as are individuals.
What is true of their inception and their birth is true of their whole history. If it is to be a history of power, of life, of influence, and effectiveness, it has got to be of the Spirit.
It has got to be on heavenly ground, and it has got to be out of men’s hands and in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
If men come in, that they may be instrumental, they must most definitely and positively be anointed men—men anointed of the Holy Spirit for that position and for that responsibility.
Not chosen, elected, or voted by people or by men, but obviously and manifestly anointed and fitted for that position. Everybody who has any spiritual discernment can say, “That man is anointed for his job.”
If that is not true, God have mercy upon us if we get into it. Suffer this, but it is a very important difference for our times.
We have come into the dispensation of the resurrection horizon—horizoned by resurrection.
Resurrection just means this: we are on different ground from that which we were on before. Something happened. We have gone through something and come out into something which is altogether different.
It is now a heavenly thing, in the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.
So Mary Magdalene: “They have taken away my Lord.”
Oh, both angel and Jesus, looking upon her, ask, “Why weepest thou?” Why weepest thou?
“They have taken away my Lord.” Oh, we know how she meant it. But do you know, dear friends, heaven has taken away our Lord—taken Him to itself—and it is no loss. It is an infinite gain.
We remain, really, and come into the good of the other side. She is there with them at the beginning of the story of the Book of Acts. She is gathered with them. She is there on the day of Pentecost.
She has emerged out of her tears and out of weeping, and from her mistaken sense of loss, come right into this great gain—this great gain: Jesus in heaven.
There is no loss to us, to the church. Really, the truth was that on that day when she thought He had been taken away, He was given to her in a way altogether beyond anything that she could have thought or hoped at the time.
In a fuller way, a more intimate way—oh yes, I mean much more intimate in spiritual speaking than two human beings talking to one another.
More intimate, and, thank God, more lasting. You see, men are never going to take Him again.
But if she got her request, she would have lost. She would have lost. The fact is, by losing in one way, she gained in another. It was never loss. None could take Him from her.
I wonder if Mary Magdalene ever read Paul’s letter to the Romans, and right on through Chapter 8, and came on to those mighty words:
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He catalogs all the things which do, in the human realm, separate; and he says, none of them—not all of them put together—can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
I wonder if she ever read that and reflected upon the garden and her tears. If she did, I am quite sure that she thanked God He never gave her her request. He had given her something infinitely better.
Sometimes, dear friends, we gain by letting go.
It is a law; it is a principle. We gain by letting go, and we lose by holding on.
But, oh, that is a business for the human soul to learn, because the soul does think, it does cling, and its greatest ordeal is how to let go to God.