To friends who have been with us throughout this time, and to those who have joined us only this morning, be patient with me if I say a few words to bring everyone into line with what the Lord has been saying.
We are occupied at this time with what God is particularly doing in this dispensation. It is very important that all Christians should know the special character of the time in which they live.
We have seen that God, in this dispensation, is forming a heavenly and spiritual Israel. We put special emphasis upon those two words: heavenly and spiritual. That is the particular nature of God’s work in this dispensation.
We are saying that God has left the old Israel, which was an earthly and temporal Israel, and has moved on to form this heavenly Israel. God has taken a remnant from Israel, represented by the twelve apostles, by the Apostle Paul, by the one hundred and twenty at the beginning, and then by the three thousand Jews on the day of Pentecost: a spiritual remnant of Israel.
He then extended this spiritual Israel to embrace the Gentiles, and He has been going on with that work ever since.
There are two things that I want to say before I go further. First, I want to correct a possible misunderstanding.
The heavenly and spiritual Israel, which is the Church of Jesus Christ, is not an afterthought of God. It was not brought in because Israel failed. Please be very clear about that.
There are those who teach that the Lord offered something to Israel, Israel excluded it, and then He had to do something else. So, they say, He got the idea of the Church. It was, supposedly, an afterthought—a kind of emergency movement of God.
That is entirely false to the whole Bible. That is one thing we are seeking to show in these days.
Everything in the Old Testament, including Israel, had Christ and the Church in view. It was all leading on to Christ and the Church; and Christ and the Church take up all the divine thoughts of the past and embody them in themselves.
The Church is the eternal thing. The Church was in the heart of God before time was, before the foundation of the world. There is no afterthought with God; it is a before-thought of God.
The Church may have come in at a time of emergency, but from all eternity God had this particular work in view. The Church was eternally intended to be the Body of Christ.
I want you to keep that in mind in all that we are saying. It is a very important matter.
The other thing that I want to say, or emphasize, is this: this new Israel, the Church, is essentially a spiritual thing.
As truly as Christ is here now in a spiritual way, and as truly as Christ is in this world by the Spirit, so the Church is here in a spiritual way. Christ is no longer here in physical presence; He can only be known, and we can only have fellowship with Him, spiritually.
As truly as that is the case with the Lord Jesus, so it is with the Church. In the minds of many Christians, there has got to be a revolution about this matter.
The word church is taken up and put onto almost anything. We speak of this church and that church: the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the Anglican Church, and how many more? We think of all these as the Church.
From heaven’s standpoint, that is not the Church. These things may represent one or another aspect of truth, but none of them has the whole truth. Put them all together, and they have not got all the truth. The truth is in Jesus alone.
The Church is a spiritual thing. You cannot look upon anything material, or any people in a place, and say, “That is the Church.” You are only in the Church in so far as there is something of Christ in you.
It is Christ in us that makes the Church. The Church is a unity in Christ.
The Lord Jesus never looks upon so many loaves of bread all over the world whenever there is a gathering at His table. I suppose that on any one Lord’s Day there are millions of loaves of bread being broken. I do not know how many.
Heaven never sees more than one loaf, and heaven never sees more than one cup. The loaf is Christ; the cup is Christ. By our partaking, we are united in Christ. It is oneness.
I am not quite sure whether the translators were correct, but I think there may be something in it. When they translated the words of the Lord at the Supper, the older versions said that the Lord said:
This is My body, which is broken for you.
I think there may be very real truth in using that word broken. The later translators have left out that word and have said:
This is My body, which is for you.
Perhaps that later translation dismisses a false idea, because the word broken has so often been taken to mean that this is one piece, there is another piece, and another piece all over the world.
Christ is not divided. Is Christ divided? No, Christ is not divided.
The Church is a broken thing on the earth, broken into many pieces down here; but in heaven it is seen as one. The sooner you and I see from heaven’s standpoint, the better.
If this man or this woman is in Christ, it does not matter whether that man or woman is in our denomination or not, whether they are in our sect or not. If they are in Christ, they are part with me and with you of Christ.
The Church is a heavenly and spiritual thing, not an earthly and temporal thing. That is a very important thing for us to recognize.
Along one line, we are tracing God’s ways with the old Israel. Along the other line, we are seeing that He takes the spiritual laws of the old Israel and perpetuates them in the new Israel.
What He did in a temporal way with the first Israel, He is now doing exactly the same thing, but in a spiritual way in the new.
Our last word yesterday morning was that God’s glory, in Abraham, reached its climax in sonship, in death and resurrection, and as represented by Isaac. Sonship is the climax of God’s glory.
We are back in the Letter to the Hebrews. What is the climax of that letter, and of all God’s movements as contained in that letter? It is found in one fragment:
Bringing many sons to glory.
That is the climax for the glory of God. As it was, in a temporal way, in Abraham, so it is in a spiritual way in the new Israel.
But the idea of sonship did not begin with Abraham and Isaac. It only came out in Abraham and Isaac. It was right back before them in eternity.
This idea of sonship is God’s cherished secret from before times eternal. That secret is hidden in Abraham’s seed after the flesh, but it is brought out in Abraham’s seed after the Spirit.
The Letters to the Romans and Galatians are concerned with that particular matter. In Romans 9–11, they are not all Israel who are of Israel. The natural children of Abraham are not Israel in the fullest sense. It is the spiritual children of Abraham who are the true Israel.
When you go into Galatians, that is explained very carefully. The Apostle reduces it to this one thing. He refers to the promise made to Abraham:
In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.
This is the thing that got Paul into a lot of trouble. He said that God did not say, “In thy seeds,” but, “In thy seed”; and that seed is Christ.
It is not the many natural children of Abraham. It is Christ and the companions of Christ. As it is written:
He shall see His seed.
He shall see of the travail of His soul.
This heavenly Jerusalem is the spiritual seed of Abraham, which is Christ. God only recognizes His spiritual children.
This is taken up in the phrase that has governed our whole time together:
Holy brethren, companions of a heavenly calling.
We are companions of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.
This spiritual and heavenly Israel is called the companion of a heavenly calling. For a few minutes, I want to dwell upon that heavenly calling.
What was God’s intention in this world concerning the first Israel? As we said last night, it was that they should mediate light and life to the nations. That was their divine calling.
The nations were to receive life through their life. Israel was to be the channel of divine light and life to the nations of this world. That was their calling.
We could take quite a lot of the Old Testament to show that, but I will take only one illustration.
All the sons of Jacob were focused in one son, and that son was Joseph. If it had not been for Joseph, that whole nation would have perished.
Not only the sons and families of Jacob, but all Egypt would have perished. The world would have perished, in a sense, apart from God’s strange and sovereign dealings with Joseph.
When Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt and he made himself known to them, they went down before him. They began to apologize and tried to excuse themselves. Poor, miserable, wretched fellows they were, bowing down before Joseph, their brother.
What did he say?
Do not be sorry.
Fear not.
Do not be miserable about it.
You meant it for evil;
God meant it for good,
to send me before you to save much people alive.
Joseph was the inclusive representative of all his brethren. God intended all Israel to be a minister of life and light to the whole world. “To save much people alive”: there is Israel’s calling in the old dispensation.
Abraham’s seed was intended to be that. But that seed of Abraham failed God, and instead of fulfilling that heavenly calling, they contradicted it.
We need not dwell upon the failure. If you ask where Israel has been for the last nearly two thousand years, they have been just where the Lord Jesus said they would be:
The children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
That is the story of the earthly Israel through all these past centuries. Thank God for all those who have escaped from the outer darkness and are rejoicing in Christ Jesus. But that is where the nation went.
The last stroke of that was in the year A.D. 70. But God had not finished with Israel. He still had in view a prince with God. That is the meaning of the name Israel.
This heavenly, spiritual Israel, to which you and I belong, is called into the vocation of Joseph. God has transferred that vocation in a spiritual way to us.
We are here in this heavenly calling to minister light and life to the world. That is to be our heavenly calling now.
That is why the Lord said to His new Israel:
Go ye into all the world.
They were to begin at Jerusalem, then go into Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Wherever you are, your heavenly calling is to bring light and life from above.
At the beginning, the Church settled down in Jerusalem—the earthly Jerusalem. They were very slow to move away from earthly Jerusalem.
So the Lord took a big hammer and brought it down upon the Church through persecution. They were all scattered abroad. The Lord was saying, in effect, “The new Jerusalem is above, and the heavenly calling is to all the nations.”
That is the heavenly calling of the spiritual Israel now. But that has got to come to fullness afterward, and that fullness is represented at the end of the Bible:
The holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.
This is not a material and political world center. This is the Church—the companions of Christ—represented in the symbolism of a city.
The last word about that city is this: the nations of the earth shall walk in the light thereof.
In the midst of the city there is the tree of life, and the leaves of the tree are for the health of the nations. You notice that I have changed the word. Our translation says, “the healing of the nations.”
It is not correct. The nations then will not need healing, thank God, in eternity; but they will need their spiritual health ministered to.
Remember, by the way, that the word salvation in the original is the word health. It is a state of being in good health. That is the meaning of the word salvation: being in good health.
Of course, it means spiritual health. The nations will then be the nations that have had the gospel and responded. Righteousness shall cover the earth.
Right at the center of the nations will be the Church, and through the Church light and life will go out to maintain the health of the nations.
We do not need salvation now in the sense of being saved. But why have you come here? You are all saved people. What are you doing here?
You are here because you want your health looked after. You take your morning breakfast to keep your health good. You have come here to the Lord’s provision, to the table which the Lord has prepared for us, to keep our health good and to make our health better.
So the leaves of the tree are not for healing, but for the health of the nations.
When everything has been said and done, and you have gone right through the long, long story, at last you come to the end, in the last chapters of history in the Book of Revelation. The last picture is of the heavenly Israel ministering light and life to the nations.
Perhaps some of you Bible students, you people who are very interested in doctrine, are troubled by a question in the light of what I have said. Does this mean that the Church is one thing and there are a lot of people who are not of the Church? In other words, the city is one thing and the nations are another?
I am not going to enter upon an argument about this. But I am going to bring you back to the Letter to the Hebrews for your answer.
The answer in this matter is in one little word of two letters:
If.
We are become companions of Christ, whose house are we, if? The whole letter, in one sense, circles around that little word.
This is the height of the heavenly calling. I leave you to answer the question by studying this letter again.
It does seem to say that everybody will not be the city. If everybody were the city, where is the country? The city is the center. It is the seat of administration, the seat of government, and the seat of light.
The whole country derives its values through the city, and it does seem that this is the truth that is here. It is possible to get into heaven, but not be of the city.
Well, if you have trouble with that and disagree with me, it does not worry me. I can only say: go back to the Word.
My dear friends, I cannot understand this letter on any other ground. Why is this letter charged through and through with this urgency to go on?
I do not believe that if you do not go on, you forfeit your eternal life. But I do believe that if you do not go on, you will forfeit your inheritance.
That is the teaching of this letter, and I see why the whole of the New Testament, after the Gospels, has this one object: to get Christians to go on—to go on to full growth.
This is Abraham’s spirit. We are going to see, at some point, that Abraham looked for a city whose Builder and Maker is God.
This is the city that Abraham was looking for. I am going to close with that thought this morning.
God put something into the very constitution of Abraham which had two effects. It made Abraham a very discontented man. Abraham was possessed of a holy discontent.
He went up and down the land. He saw the land. God gave him the land, but all the time Abraham was saying, “This is not it. There is something more than this. I can never be satisfied with this.”
In one sense, Abraham was a most discontented man. On the other hand, he had a vision of what God was going to be. The New Testament calls it the heavenly country.
He was looking for a city whose Builder and Maker is God. No city on this earth answered to what was in the heart of Abraham.
Do you think I am exaggerating? Do you think I am making that up? What did Jesus say to the old Israel?
Your father Abraham saw My day, and he rejoiced.
Right down the ages, Abraham had a vision. Nothing in this world could satisfy that vision. His heart was ever hungry.
He was a man who never settled down on this earth. People round about him must have said continually, “Hello, Abraham, are you packing up again? You are putting down your tent again? Where are you going this time?”
That was always happening with Abraham. He could not settle down anywhere. There was in his heart this vision and this hunger—something that God had done in him. Nothing but the heavenly could satisfy him.
I have given you the Letter to the Hebrews again. “Let us go on,” says this letter continually. Let us go on.
Let us not settle down. Let us never be satisfied with anything less than God’s fullness. That is the message of this letter.
In the end, it is represented as a race. We are running a race. The goal of the prize lies ahead.
Let us not stop in the race and turn aside. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.
Your father Abraham saw My day, and rejoiced. The sons of Abraham are still to be like that: looking unto Jesus, never settling down with anything less than God’s fullness.
I am quite sure that where the Holy Spirit really has His place in the heart, that heart will be a going-on heart. That heart will never settle down to anything less than God’s fullness.
There are two different kinds of dissatisfaction. There are those poor, miserable people who are never satisfied with anything—always discontented, and in a wrong way. I am not appealing for people like that.
But there is spiritual discontent:
Not that I have already attained,
neither am I already made perfect;
but one thing I do,
forgetting the things which are behind.
That is the nature of a truly Holy Spirit-governed life. It will always be pressing on to something more of the Lord.
These are the true heavenly things of Abraham, which are Christ. We leave it there for the time being.