We are continuing in this great matter which the Lord has sought to bring before us for these days. This evening, we are going to lift out of the matter one section.
Let me remind you of the all-governing truth which we are considering. We must be perfectly clear as to what it is that God is particularly doing at this time in world history, and therefore what it is that we, who are the Lord’s, are called into.
The thing that God is doing in this dispensation is the formation of a spiritual and heavenly Israel. In doing that, He is repeating the laws of the earthly Israel in a spiritual way. He is following along the lines of His ways with the old Israel, but now on a heavenly basis and not an earthly one.
He has left the earthly basis of the Old Testament and has moved onto a heavenly basis in the New Testament. He has moved from the temporal to the spiritual, and the spiritual is far greater than the temporal.
Now, we are going to see this tonight in the Gospel by John. This Gospel is all one with the letter to the Hebrews, because it is just a part of the whole thing that the New Testament represents.
John’s Gospel is the embodiment of this matter of the spiritual Israel in a very wonderful way. There are two things so clear in this Gospel: one is the Jewish background of the Gospel; the other is the spiritual background behind the Jewish. The Jewish background is being brought to the front, and it is being made the ground for the whole dispensation.
Well, let us look at this. I have sixteen marks of the Jewish background of this Gospel by John, but I promise you that I will just keep to the time. We will take as many as are possible this evening.
We note, in the first place, that once again, as in the letter to the Hebrews, the introduction and presentation is of God’s Son.
In the new movement of God to the heavenly Israel, His Son stands right at the door. We are all familiar with this wonderful presentation of God’s Son at the beginning of John’s Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him;
and without Him was not anything made that hath been made.—John 1:1-3
And there is more to it than that, as you see. The point is that God has founded the dispensation upon His Son. God’s Son is the governing factor in this whole dispensation.
Now we go on to what I have called the Jewish background of Christ. The first figure of the sixteen which I have before me is Jesus as the Lamb of God.
In John 1:29:
On the morrow He seeth Jesus coming unto Him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.
And again:
And He looked on Jesus as He walked, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God.
—John 1:36
Now, we know that the whole Jewish system was built around the Passover lamb. The lamb was the very basis of everything in Israel. The Passover lamb was the constitution of them as a nation, and the blood of the lamb was the greatest governmental factor in all their history.
It would be impossible to count the lambs that were offered in Israel through those many centuries. There would have been many millions of lambs slain. There would have been an ocean of blood from all those lambs.
And now John beholds Jesus and says, “The Lamb.” This is God’s Lamb: “Behold, the Lamb of God,” distinguishing Jesus, marking Him out as the unique Lamb—the one Lamb toward which all the millions of lambs have ever pointed.
Just as the blood of the lamb was the foundation of the old earthly Israel, so we know that this Lamb of God is the very foundation of our whole Christian life. So Jesus is the foundation of this dispensation.
In the upper room in Jerusalem, Jesus made the foundation of the church for this dispensation in the Passover. While there are other features of the church’s life, the central feature is the table of the Lord. Everything centres in that table. Everything gathers around that table. Everything issues from that table.
If you had gone into any assembly of the Lord’s people in any part of the world in New Testament times, you might have found different things in different assemblies. But you would have found one thing which was the same in every assembly: there was the Lord’s table, the Lamb of God at the centre of everything.
Note that right from the very beginning, God takes up the principle of the earthly and makes it the spiritual reality of the new. That which was earthly and temporal in the old Israel is now heavenly and spiritual in the new Israel.
Now we look again at John 1:43:
On the morrow He was minded to go forth into Galilee, and He findeth Philip: and Jesus saith unto him, Follow Me.
Philip said:
We have found Him, of Whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
—John 1:45
That is the first part of the Jewish background: Moses and the prophets. But we go on. Nathanael said unto him:
Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
—John 1:46
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said:
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
—John 1:47
Nathanael said unto Him:
Whence knowest Thou me?
Jesus answered:
Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
—John 1:48
Nathanael answered Him:
Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art King of Israel.
—John 1:49
Jesus answered and said unto him:
Because I said unto thee, I saw thee underneath the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.
And He said unto him:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
—John 1:51
Do you need to have it pointed out that there is quite a lot of Jewish Old Testament in that picture? Moses and the prophets, the Israelite in whom is no guile, and Jacob’s ladder—it is all there.
I think that He is saying, “There is a transition from that old to a new, and that transition is in Myself. The prophets and Moses speak of Me.” The Israelite is not the Jacob in whom there is guile.
But the really big thought in this part concerns the closed and the open heavens. When Jesus said to Nathanael, “Thou shalt see the heaven opened,” He was pointing to an entirely new dispensation.
The one characteristic of the Old Testament Jewish system was a closed heaven. It was on pain of death that any man came into the presence of God in the old dispensation.
What a terrible place that was—that mountain where God was. There were thunders, and lightnings, and earthquakes. Even Moses said:
I exceedingly fear and quake.
—Hebrews 12:21
The people were told that they must not draw near. It was said that even if a beast touched the mountain, it must die. The whole of that system, that dispensation, was saying, “Keep out.”
Come in where God is, and you will die. A closed heaven: no way for the people into the presence of God. Everything said, “Stay out.” People knew that it was a terrible thing to come into the presence of God. It meant death.
The high priest had to have very special provision to go into the holiest place, and in making that provision God said, “Lest he die.” So the Jewish system was a system of judgment and death—a system of the closed heavens. No way through for man.
But then Jesus said, “Ye shall see the heaven opened.” The way between heaven and earth, between God and man, is made clear. By His own blood, He would open heaven so that man could come through into heaven.
Therefore, we can come to Him by the new and living way which He has made for us in His blood. Jesus said:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
—John 14:6
So the second Jewish picture is a closed heaven. The second feature of the New Testament is an open heaven, and we are enjoying that tonight.
We do not stand outside in fear and trembling, wondering whether perhaps we dare draw nigh. We can come with boldness to the throne of grace. Oh, this new dispensation is a better one. This new Israel has privileges which the old never had.
That is what God is doing in this dispensation. He has done it in His Son, and many, many who have been shut out are now finding their way in. God has provided for all an open way in His Son, Jesus Christ.
We pass into John 2. In the first eleven verses, which we will not read in full, we have the account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee.
There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was bidden, and His disciples, to the marriage. Then the wine failed. The mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”
The mother of Jesus said to the servants:
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.
—John 2:5
When Jesus knew in His heart that the Father’s time had come—and that was a very important factor—He acted. Remember that Jesus would never move on any ground whatsoever without knowing that His Father wanted Him to move, and He waited for that.
In His heart the Father said, “Yes, go on.” He said to the servants, “Fill the waterpots with water,” and they filled them up to the brim. He said, “Draw out now, and bear unto the ruler of the feast.”
When the ruler of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and knew not whence it was—but the servants which had drawn the water knew—the ruler of the feast called the bridegroom.
He said unto him:
Every man setteth on first the good wine; and when men have drunk freely, then that which is worse: thou hast kept the good wine until now.
—John 2:10
Now, where is the Jewish background? We said yesterday morning at the Lord’s table that the Lord’s table, amongst other things, represents the Lord’s marriage with His people.
In the Old Testament, it was a marriage covenant that was made in the Passover. Jeremiah 31:31 speaks of the day when the Lord took them by the hand and became a husband unto them. That was on the Passover night.
Now, Jesus knew what He was doing at Cana. Oh, how many times we have heard people talk about Jesus being of a social disposition, and therefore He was, of course, quite happy to attend marriages. That is not the meaning here. Jesus was always acting on spiritual grounds.
The marriage between God and Israel had broken down. Israel had violated the terms of the covenant of marriage with the Lord. Israel had, as the prophets said, become an adulterous nation. They had gone unto other gods, and they had broken their covenant with the Lord.
The marriage broke down. Here, you have it in figures. I do not know what was going on behind this, but we can judge from a lot of other things that God was behind this failure of the wine.
Because of the spiritual significance, the wine just had to fail. It represents the old marriage relationship which had broken down. It says that that relationship has come to an end. There has got to be a new marriage, and there has got to be a new marriage supper of the Lamb.
The old one has broken down. The salvation of the marriage relationship between God and His people is in Jesus only. It was He who saved the situation here, and everybody knew that something very wonderful and supernatural had happened.
This was not natural. This was heavenly. This was supernatural. So is that marriage relationship between Christ and His church.
There is a movement from the old Israel, who has failed and been put aside, to a new Israel which lives by the life of Jesus Christ.
We look again at the next thing. This is number four in the series: John 2:13.
And the passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
and He made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen;
and He poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew their tables;
and to them that sold the doves He said, Take these things hence; make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise.—John 2:13-16
His disciples remembered that it was written:
Zeal for Thy house shall eat Me up.
—John 2:17
The Jews answered and said unto Him:
What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?
Jesus answered and said unto them:
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
—John 2:19
The Jews therefore said:
Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in three days?
But He spake of the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this.
There is no need to point out the Jewish background. The Jewish background occupies the temple at its centre. The temple in Jerusalem, for them, represented everything.
Jesus is for the destroying of that temple, and Jesus is the replacement of that temple. He said in another place that not one stone should be left upon another. But what is going to take its place? God must have a temple.
Jesus said, “I am the temple of the new dispensation. I am going to take the place of this Old Testament temple, and I am going to be all that that temple represented, but in a fuller and better way.”
The temple was the place where men thought that they would meet God. Men will meet God in Me in a more real way than that. The temple was the place to which people went to be taught about God. They will learn more about God in Me than ever they learned in that temple.
The temple was the place where men went to worship God. It will be in Me that men will come into touch with God for worship.
That means that wonderful revelation which we have in the New Testament: Christ and all His members being made one temple for God. Christ is our temple.
In Him, we find all that ever a temple was intended to be. But there are people who have gone astray about this. I go to many places that are called churches, and the word is applied to the building.
When you hear people praying in those places, they usually put it something like this: “We have come into Thy house today. We are glad to be in this place, the house of God.” And they are talking about the building.
My dear friend, you do not need a special building to give God a temple.
Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
—Matthew 18:20
People gathered into Jesus Christ constitute the temple of God. It is not a special building; it is people who are in Christ Jesus.
This is what God is doing in this dispensation. A lot of people have lost their special buildings. A lot are not allowed to meet in special buildings. But they are gathering, two or three, in some hidden-away place, and they are enjoying all the privileges of the house of God because the Lord is there.
The temple now is Christ and those who are in union with Him. So He said, in this way which they did not understand, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Christ, in resurrection, is the temple of this dispensation.
I wonder if, inside, Christ was smiling when He said this. He knew that He was just tripping them up. He knew what they would say: “Forty and six years was this temple in building.” It looked as though He had deliberately misled them, but He was leading on to the nature of this new dispensation.
There is only number four out of sixteen. I have ten minutes left, and I will just take another one. John 3—and everybody knows John 3.
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
—John 3:1
Do you know the rest of the story of Nicodemus? I will not read it all now. What have we got here in Nicodemus? Surely we have a representative of the old Israel.
He is of the sect of the Pharisees. They claimed to be very representative, and he is a ruler of the Jews. So he is Israel in representation. He is a son of Abraham after the flesh. He is the embodiment of Abraham after the flesh.
What does the Lord Jesus say to him? A son of Abraham, an inclusive representative of the children of Abraham after the flesh; an embodiment of Israel, too. I look upon you, Nicodemus, and all the seed of Abraham after the flesh which you represent.
And Nicodemus, in that representative capacity, you must be born again.
The seed of Abraham after the flesh does not stand in the kingdom of God. You know, that is Paul’s argument in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians:
They are not all Israel, that are of Israel.
—Romans 9:6
There is a natural thing, and there is a spiritual thing. Jesus was saying to Nicodemus, in his representative capacity, that the natural seed of Abraham does not stand. He must be born again. There must be a seed after the Spirit.
In other words, there must be a new, spiritual, heavenly Israel.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.—John 3:6
No flesh stands before God. Therefore, I said unto you, “Ye must be born again.” The new Israel in this dispensation is the Israel of those born from above.
These are not sons of Abraham only; they are sons of God.
But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name.
—John 1:12
There is a great deal of difference between children of Abraham after the flesh and children of God after the Spirit. And it is not only a great difference; it is a different species altogether—a higher race, a heavenly people.
Well, with number five we must close tonight, and go on, perhaps, if the Lord will, tomorrow night.