Lord, we once again confess that unless Thou dost open the eyes of our understanding, we are going to listen to words, and we are not going to be really eternally benefited by our listening.
O Lord, grant unto us, grant unto us, that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Thy Son. Lord, let this be a time when eyes are really opened.
There is a veil over the heart of man naturally. He cannot, he cannot understand the things of God. There is a great deal of the natural about us still.
We shall never fully see until we are in Thy presence. But we know we can go on seeing more and more all our lives if Thy Spirit does His work in us. We pray that it may be so even in this hour, in this hour.
Now quicken us. Minister divine life to us. We being freed from all that would hinder, may really come forth in newness of life, for Thy name’s sake. Amen.
I bring you back again to this eleventh chapter of the Gospel by John, in which we were moving this morning, reminding you that this chapter represents the culmination of the life, teaching, and works of the Lord Jesus during the days of His flesh.
When we say “the culmination,” that is quite evident in what remains of the chapter beyond what was read. You notice verse 47:
The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, What do we?
The rest shows that this was the last of a number of such councils. In this last council, they decided definitely and finally that this Man must die. This must be the end of this.
So that here we have that which marks the culmination of His life and work at that time. The finality, note, the finality, is not merely the act which is the fullness of the very purpose for which He came. More than that, it is the fullness of divine counsel.
Behind this chapter there are these two wonderful things: the eternal counsels of God coming to their completion in His Son at this time, and then the counsels contrary to God to bring that Son to an end, to destroy Him.
The divine counsels are summed up in what is in this chapter. Now, no doubt you, dear friends, have read John 11 many times, and perhaps you think you know, if you were asked, what John 11 is about. You would, most of you who know your New Testament, say, “Well, of course, it is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.” Perhaps that is all you would have to say to it.
And so saying—forgive me if it sounds a bit critical of your apprehension—would indicate how really you have missed the way. We all, of course, have said that in time past. As we have gone on, we have come to see something more.
When I tell you that this chapter—of course, it is a long chapter, so far as words and clauses go in our arrangement—is not complete in itself, this chapter does contain all the major features and factors of God’s ways unto glory. You got that?
The end of all God’s ways and works is glory—His own glory. It sometimes seems a tortuous way. These sisters felt it to be so while it lasted. Sometimes it seems to be anything but glory.
You might very well decide, as perhaps they decided at a certain point, “The end is not glory. This is not glory. This is sorrow, distress, disappointment, despair.”
And all that, really, from God’s standpoint, is in the way of glory—unto glory. Let me repeat: when God takes anything in hand—I want you to lay hold of every half-sentence of mine—when God takes anything in hand, the end is going to be His glory. You need have no mistake whatever about that.
The end of all God’s ways is His glory: glory at the end. Read your Bible in the light of that, and you have your Bible in one chapter, the eleventh of John.
I have said this chapter contains the main features and factors in the ways of God unto glory. What are some of these main factors?
A very big one is the incarnation of the Son of God: the Son of God taking flesh; God manifest in the flesh. That is a big one, is it not?
The very purpose and object of the incarnation, of God taking flesh and becoming incarnate, is found in this chapter—the resurrection. Hold that thought.
The method of God in redemption—redemption is a big factor, is it not? No one will dispute that. Redemption is a big factor in the eternal counsels of God, and the method of redemption is the substance of this eleventh of John.
Another thing—and I am quite sure you would agree with those other two if you know anything at all about God’s ways—you would agree with this: God’s ways are very strange. God’s ways are very strange. They are beyond human explanation and comprehension.
While God is in process of moving toward His end, it is very difficult to follow Him. I was talking with a brother this afternoon. He made the remark that the Lord accommodates Himself to our makeup to help us through. I said, “Brother, I am sorry; I must qualify there. He does not. He does not.”
The Apostle Paul, who knew a good deal about the Lord, said of his experience, “Pressed out of measure.” There is another translation: “Beyond our strength.” Under the hand of the Lord, beyond our measure.
The Lord is always a bit ahead of us. It would not do for us to be equal with the Lord, would it? We would soon be taking the place of the Lord if we were right alongside the Lord in everything. Well, our dependence upon the Lord would very soon go.
So the Lord gets ahead of us, beyond us, beyond our measure; puts us out of our depth in order to enlarge our capacity. We would never grow if that were not true.
A simple way in John’s Gospel of putting that, by way of illustration, is: “When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them” (John 10:4). Of course, you have taken that sometimes as a comforting statement, but there is profundity in every clause of divine words, and this Gospel in particular reveals that.
When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them. He is always ahead of them, and they are always a bit behind Him. He is too much for them, in a sense. They have got to move on, and still move on, if they are going to come up to that degree of the Lord where He is. When they get there, they find He has gone ahead again.
Keep going, running all the time. The Apostle Paul explained this when he said, right at the end of his very full life, “That I may know Him.” “That I may know Him.” I have not caught up yet. He is still beyond me.
The mystery of God’s ways, the strangeness of what we call providence—spell it with a capital P—the strangeness of Providence: that is a major factor in God’s ways. It is in this chapter. It is.
Another thing, which is not a small thing, is the farsightedness of God. How much beyond our seeing He is.
Oh, let us come to the chapter. How much the Lord Jesus was beyond the seeing of these sisters and the disciples. They just could not see beyond this present happening, this present experience. The thing immediately before their eyes, that was their horizon.
But the Lord Christ here is moving on the principle of farsightedness, beyond the incident, beyond the present. However big this was to them, He was far beyond it. His horizon was far outreaching this thing, and He was acting accordingly.
The farsightedness of God is no small factor in the ways, works, and dealings of the Lord. You see that? It is all here in one chapter.
Sit down with it again. Spend much time with it. You can go on years and years with this one chapter. There is no saturation. Find how unfathomable are the ways of God, the works of God.
Now, having said that, let me step back for a moment and remind you of something here which we must get hold of. Believe me, dear friends, it is not just the teaching of John’s Gospel, or all the chapters, that I am concerned with as teaching.
This has got to come right into our very history. It has got to be taken out of the Bible, out of the history of Jesus during His time here, and put right into our history. We shall never get anywhere unless that is true. It is applied truth, not theoretical truth, that is here.
So let me say: the thing that comes out at us as we quietly and thoughtfully dwell in this chapter is that the Lord Jesus has this situation in His hand.
Let me put that another way. If this is God incarnate, it is God with Whom we are having to do here. It is God with Whom we are having to do.
When you come to this chapter, you see how the Lord Jesus has everything in hand and in His hands, and He is not letting it go out of His hands all the way along.
For the various aspects, He said He would go back into Judea. The disciples immediately reacted: “The Jews were but now seeking to stone Thee; and goest Thou thither again?” You must not go back there. You must not go back there.
See the move to take things out of His hands—to take His movements out of His hands, to govern His movements, His judgments, His decisions. But He is not having it. He is taking this thing in hand, and disciples or no disciples, He is going on. He has got something that He is after. He is in charge.
Messengers are sent to Him away up there somewhere about Lazarus. Undoubtedly, though it is not recorded, undoubtedly the story means this: “Lazarus is sick. Come, please come quickly. Come as quickly as You can.” That was from the beloved sisters.
That would affect it right out of His hands and rule His judgment, or rule His feelings, govern His movement, set a time that He did not set, take it over. No. “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.” There it was. He had it in hand.
I am not going to get it out of His hand, whether it is the appeal of those who appeal to Him, and it is stated; the appeal of a situation which could appeal to any sympathetic heart. No, that is not going to decide this thing.
It is in His hands, and He is going to decide the ground on which He works, the time in which He works, when He is going to move. Nothing, nothing will move Him.
The Jews, of course, had already criticized and put Him in a bad light and discredited Him. They said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of him that was blind, have caused that this man also should not die?” He should have been healed.
All these forces are at work in every realm, from the centre to the circumference of His relationships, to get Him under control. He is not having it. He has this matter in hand.
That is a very important thing. Why? Please just take it. He states it:
This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.
Yes, all right. But then: “And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there.” Oh, that is going to make sense.
Put yourself in the position of these sisters, with a beloved only brother slowly passing under what was apparently fatal sickness. Their hearts are wrung with distress, anxiety, breaking; and they know that He knows.
And this is His attitude: “I am glad I was not there, for your sakes.” Well, He has got hold of this situation, you see. He is in charge. We are dealing with God, and God is in charge.
If God is working through a certain end, you cannot hurry Him. You cannot take over from God and make Him do what you want Him to do. He is going to reach that end, and it may be a very trying way, perhaps rough on our natures, but He is in charge.
How glibly we sing our hymns. How superficial we are. The Lord is never superficial.
I watch what I am singing, and I noticed you sang two things this afternoon. I wonder if you were challenged on either of them, how you would feel. You noticed you sang, “Teach me to love Thee as Thine angels love.”
The Lord help us. The Lord help us if that is our idea. It is only redeemed souls who know the meaning of love to God, and angels do not know that.
You will only love God if you have been redeemed and saved from the depths. That is the only true love. The love of God manifested to man is in terms of His salvation. It is a two-way love on the basis of redemption, and angels know nothing about that. They have no experience of it. You want something better than angel love.
All right, I do not mean to criticize the singing. You mean that. Ah, but then you finished that last verse about, “I long to climb the utmost height,” and I thought, the utmost heights are only reached through the utmost depths, if this chapter is anything at all.
Well, you sing it again. That brings me, you see, to the point I am making just now.
You and I, dear friends—the Lord help us, the Lord help us—but you and I will never reach God’s full end only along the pathway of brokenness. That is what this chapter says.
If we are whole and substantial and well-knit and self-confident, we are not going to reach God’s end. No, no, no.
You see, God, right there at the beginning of the Bible and of human history, planted something in human experience which became the law of all true knowledge of God after that. The great issue in the garden was knowledge, was it not? Knowledge of good and evil—knowledge, knowledge, knowledge.
They made a bid for knowledge under the instigation and inspiration of the devil; they made a bid upon knowledge. God came along on that and, in that breakdown, established the law: a law by which He said, “You shall never have true knowledge, true knowledge of Me, only on this law.”
Everything that is going to be true and real in the future is not going to be got so easily as you thought. The law of travail was planted right at the heart of human life.
Remember the words, do you not? Travail was introduced as a law for the future. You and I know very well that true love only comes out of travail.
I will put it another way: we never value anything that costs us nothing. We can let it go very cheaply if we have not paid any price for it. But if we have paid the price, if it has been costly, if it means something to us—a real suffering or sorrow or travail—that is infinitely precious to us. We do not let that go. We do not let that go easily.
And so God came right at that point and put this law of travail into human life and human history, and said, “You tried to get everything cheaply. Cheaply. You will not get anything that is worth having without cost in the future.”
From that point, notice, all the way along, along, along, until you come to the travail of His soul—the travail of the garden, the travail of the cross.
He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.
It is the preciousness. It is the law, you see: the law that there is no reaching the heart of God and having true knowledge without cost. Peter learned that by the deep way, by the deep way.
You try to get things cheaply: “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us build three tabernacles: one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” I suppose he did not even say, “We will have some tabernacles; we will stay here.”
Peter was like that, but he went the deep way of utter devastation by the cross of the Lord Jesus. Years after, he wrote:
Unto you therefore which believe He is precious.
The preciousness. The last picture of the church is the city whose gates are of pearl. Pearl—the very symbol of agony, of blood, of tears. “That has hurt me. It is costly.” Very precious because it costs.
I said this is a comprehensive chapter, did I not? Come back to it. Here they are in this thing, these dear sisters. How they are baptized into the passion, the agony of the cross, and have to know a taste of death in order that they might know the preciousness of resurrection.
Would they come to it otherwise? “I am glad that I was not there, for your sakes.” Farsightedness, seeing that although He was running this risk of being terribly misunderstood, everybody—sisters and all—were misunderstanding Him, incapable of comprehending Him.
He accepted the risk in His Father’s hands. He is all beyond: “I am glad I was not there for your sakes.” What is the ultimate?
Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
I have got the end of all God’s ways: glory.
How rich, then, how far-reaching, we are in the presence of God. We are in the presence of profoundest realities.
Oh, that we might have the grace to find that the Lord has us in hand, dealing with us. We should not wrench ourselves out of His hand, but remain there until the inevitable glory.
I am so hesitant, dear friends, to just add words to words. I do want to make sure that what I say today is going deeper than your heads. It is easy for there to be Christian theory, doctrine.
First of all, as we began this morning, there has got to be the basic and utter committal to the Lord.
Now, of course, I suppose there are few here, if any, who would not say that they have surrendered their lives to the Lord. They are given to the Lord, and perhaps you would go farther and say, “I am utterly given to the Lord.”
You do not know what you are talking about. So I say that—but I say it out of long, very long experience.
We shall never get beyond the point, dear friend, where there is no more battle to get perfectly adjusted to the mind of the Lord. You heard it? It does not matter how long you live here. If you are walking with the Lord, there will be, right to the end, occasions for you to find it not easy to accept some new revelation of the mind of God for you. Indeed, you will have a new battle on this.
Well, that is what I meant when I said, “You do not know what you are talking about if you say that.” But that is not, of course, to discourage or to discount any consecration that you have made.
There has to be a basic and initial, fundamental committal in which we say, “Now, Lord, I do not know all that it is going to be, how it is going to work out, how it is going to cut; but I put myself into Your hands. I am Yours. I am committed.”
“You are my Master, and I want You to have the absolute mastery of my being. If at any time it becomes difficult for me to yield to Your mastery, I am going to seek to adjust to it.”
There must be such an attitude taken, which is complete. I ask you, not with the sum total of all that it means known to you, but I do ask you: has the Lord got the mastery of your being, of your life?
As we were saying this morning, it touches every point and aspect. You have got the whole field of your business, your business relationships, your business transactions. Are you doing business that does not lie in line with the glory of God?
That is, are you doing business that is a contradiction to the glory of God? I knew a young fellow who got on very well in business and had tremendous prospects, but he was in the biggest tobacco manufacturing firm in Europe.
Good position. Great prospects. It came up against this matter: whether the Lord was glorified in his doing that kind of business.
He decided, “No. That kind of thing is not to the glory of God. Indeed, as I see it working out, it is contradictory to God in human lives.”
He surrendered this position, came right out of it, and for a time was very tested by his action and by the position he had taken in faithfulness to God. The Lord looked after him in the end, but I am not throwing that in to say, “You will get a reward. You will get compensation.”
The point is not policy but principle. This world is governed by policy—by policy. What is politic? What is diplomatic? That is the whole spirit and law of this world.
The Lord Jesus Christ is not policy or diplomacy, but principle. The principle is the glory of God. That is what it means to be committed.
Your home is in the committal. Your domestic relationships are in the committal. Your social life and relationships are in the committal. So we can go on, you see.
It is not just getting on your knees and saying, “Lord, I am Yours. I give myself to You absolutely,” and then the Lord tomorrow says, “And what about this?” “Oh, I did not mean that.”
The Lord is very practical. Forgive me being like this, but we must be. You know, we are in very serious times. God is coming very near to His people to sift up, to sift out.
The end, the end, is going to be a tremendously sifting time amongst the Lord’s people. Peter says, speaking about the time of the end:
The time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
Sifting. And it will be sifted down to this: is your priority in life settled? Really settled? And is that priority the glory of God?
Then you will go through whatever happens; you will go through. You will reach God’s end: the glory. That is God with Whom we have to do.
I may seem to be dwelling long, perhaps. Come back to this chapter. We are dealing with the ultimate things, the eternal things, here. The chapter is just divulging these; these are light.
God’s attitude, God’s attitude toward humanity as it is—I am going to say a very difficult thing for you perhaps to accept. It is set before us in this chapter. We cannot get away from it, as much as it hurts us, as much as we do not like it.
The attitude of the Lord Jesus to this situation and all that comes with it is God’s attitude toward human life as it is.
Here in this chapter you find human life represented by a number of different aspects. You have got these wretched Jews, scribes, Pharisees. Well, you are not surprised at God’s attitude toward them.
But you move in, in the heart of it, to dear Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and these dear sisters—as far removed from scribes and Pharisees and ruling Jews as could be conceived. You would say, “Lovely people, lovely people.”
What is the attitude of Jesus? Non-committal. Non-committal. Holy reserve.
It says He stayed where He was two days. Then at last, when He came, Lazarus had been dead four days. Four days between receiving the news and arriving, and, as you know, the state of things which naturally would have prevailed. They mentioned to Him, “Lord, by this time he stinketh.”
Why did He let Lazarus die? He could have healed him, as He healed many others; raised others from the dead. Why not this one? Why does He allow the sisters’ hearts to be broken, torn, in sorrow and distress? Why is this His attitude?
This is God’s attitude to humanity at its best in Adam, as well as at its worst. Humanity at its best is something that God has set aside. You know, Adam. He is not going to patch it up. He is not going to give it medicine and cure it. He is going to say, “It is time.”
The only thing is resurrection: a new life altogether, a new life altogether; something different from the natural at its best—Adam at his best.
You think I am exaggerating, I am going too far? I want you to pick this up just from the beginning. Go from beginning to end.
Why, the marriage in Cana of Galilee. Here is a wedding, the wine failing, and that terrible predicament arising: “They have no wine,” says His mother, in a kind of appeal and expectation to Him to do something. “They have no wine.” Consternation is over the whole situation. There is no resource left.
Wine—the very thing that makes the feast, that makes life. “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”
The appeal, a predicament, the appeal, an opportunity, the appeal of another’s heart, fear, a difficult situation—no, not at all. None of this is going to govern Him.
There is something more in this than just touching this. It has got to be something that is above the natural. That is newness of life, not the old thing patched up. This whole thing must die, and then resurrection alone is going to be the answer.
That is the explanation: something different. The old creation is bankrupt. That is His attitude. It is bankrupt. The only prospect is a new-creation life.
This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and so forth His glory. Glory, the end of God’s ways. How? In something that is beyond all natural possibility.
That is the beginning. Lazarus is the end of the story. In between—oh, take them all. I dare not start. I remind you of Nicodemus, with all his religion and all his learning, to whom Jesus says, “Art thou the teacher of Israel?”
No, it is not teaching. All the religious knowledge, learning, systematization, and tradition is bankrupt. You must be born from above.
This natural life of yours will not be all right; it will not get you through.
Let us say that man a little later—thirty-eight years lying in that condition, struggling every day to get onto his feet or to get into the water. Try that for thirty-eight years, perhaps a dozen times a day, and see whether you have much hope left at the end of that.
Jesus comes on the scene without the use of the pool, without any artificial means, without the line of nature. He Who is the resurrection and the life.
Another sign, another showing how hopeless, how hopeless the natural is until Jesus comes in with another kind, another order of life.
The woman of Samaria at Sychar’s well—another story. Moral bankruptcy, is it not? Moral bankruptcy.
Go, call thy husband.
I have no husband.
Thou saidst well, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.
Moral bankruptcy. Everything, everything has been exhausted.
The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
“Oh, Lord, give me this water.” And so I could go on, you see, all the way along—the man born blind, blind, blind—until you come to Lazarus.
You have all this gathered up into Lazarus in one chapter, showing that the glory of God—“thou shouldest see the glory of God”—the glory of God is in something that only God Almighty can do with human life.
He is not going to patch it up. Men can do that. You call in the doctors, and they may help to keep this thing alive for a time. But no, He says, “Let it die.”
The glory is not in that kind of thing at all. It is in something absolutely new, different.
The end of all God’s ways is like that. I must stop for the time being, but I do pass this: it will interpret, can you see, in the light of it?
Have you suffered? Have you been knocked about? Really knocked about and suffered? What are you doing about it? What are you doing about it? Are you putting it merely and only into the category of things coming to men?