We do pray again, Father, that we may be able to get our priorities established. My goal is God Himself—not this or that, or even blessing for ourselves, but God Himself.
We ask Thee that tonight we may really have a touch of God upon our lives. We pray that this may be, in the case of many here, a very definite impact of God upon the life.
Take the Word. It is written:
Thy word is as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.
And sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder.
Thy word is a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path.
And many other things do say to us that it is the Word of the Lord, in all these meanings and values, that is spoken here tonight. For Thy name’s sake. Amen.
I wonder if you know anything about the eleventh chapter of the Gospel by John. Well, we had a whole day in it yesterday, and we have not exhausted it by a long way. We will take another dip into it tonight and just read a short section: John 11:38.
Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
Jesus saith, Take ye away the stone.
Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
So they took away the stone.
And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: but because of the multitude that standeth around I said it, that they may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin.
Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
The last clause is what we want for this evening: “He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, Loose him, and let him go.”
I would just like to place alongside of that a fragment from John 10:10:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
We have said that here we are in the presence of God manifested in the flesh, in the Person of Jesus Christ, His Son. And, being in the presence of God, we are being made aware of God’s mind concerning man. What Jesus says is the expression of the mind of God for man.
I think you have learned that what is written in this whole Gospel by John is more than a historical story, a collection of sayings and doings on the part of Jesus Christ. In every one of those sayings and works, in every part, there is a setting forth, in one way or another, of some eternal and unfathomable truth, because it comes from God.
God is unfathomable, unsearchable, incomprehensible—profound beyond our understanding. There is a depth and a fullness never, never to be exhausted, either in time or in eternity. Anything that emanates from God involves, or indeed carries, all that significance with it.
This is not just human language. These are not just the words and works of a man. Every fragment contains the profound depth of God. This chapter, marked out in the organization of the letter for our convenience as John 11, is a wonderful example of what we have just said. Every verse goes far beyond the thing itself that is said or done. It is so comprehensive, so far-reaching, so full of depth of meaning.
I have been reading the Gospel by John, and of course this chapter, for over sixty years, and have spoken on it many times in many parts of the world. But we are still in the presence of that which is beyond us. I am not just giving you something that has been said before. There is always something that we have not seen or learned before.
Now, that does not mean that what I say tonight you have never seen. But what I am saying is that there is a fullness here that, however much you have seen, there is more yet of what God means by the fragments of this chapter.
We are always wrestling with our limitations to understand, to grasp, and sufficiently to utter what is herein contained. Some of us are very poor at this business, and we know it.
A little grandson of mine heard I was coming to America. He is in this country, and he said to his mother, “What is Grandpa coming to America for?” She said, “Well, to preach.” And he said, “To preach? He is not very good at that, is he?”
Grandpa fully agrees. Oh, you know, what you have to put up with! My grandson says so. He is about that size.
Well, it is just like that, you know. That is just how we feel when we come into the presence of the divine stature of God’s Word. I think those of you who have been here, especially yesterday afternoon, realize something of the vastness of this chapter. I trust that we shall see a little more—by no means the fullness of what is in the fragment which we have just read, especially in John 11:44.
Before we come to that immediately, let me just say this one thing which is necessary, I think, and which leads up to it. We must recognize the aspect of this Gospel.
First of all, it is a backward aspect. That is, John wrote this Gospel long years after all that is in it was completed. The whole thing was finished as to the actuality of the content. All that is here lay in the past when John wrote it. It was something completed as to history. John is writing from that standpoint—the backward aspect.
But then you will notice that the Gospel itself is written on the forward aspect. That is, it was all written in the light of the day that was to come. Jesus is heard saying repeatedly, “In that day, in that day, in that day.” When? In that day.
And that is related to the day of the Holy Spirit: “When He is come, in that day.” Written for the coming day. And we are living in that day—the day for which this Gospel was written, the day, the dispensation, of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus was making it perfectly clear that what He was saying and what He was doing in the flesh related to that day which was yet to be: the day when the Holy Spirit inaugurated the present dispensation. This Gospel, therefore, is written for us, precisely because we live in that day.
Perhaps you are asking, “Why this? Why is he saying this?” It is simple, it is obvious. We know it, do we? I have said that in order that we might recognize that this verse, John 11:44, belongs to us. It is written for us in the day in which we live—this very dispensation day. It belongs to us.
Now, what about the backward aspect of this Gospel? Written after it was all actually accomplished in history, it was the objective side, and everything was outward. It was all outward. All that Jesus was doing was outward. His meanings were put into outward things, ways, and means: the objective.
The day for which all that objective was done and said is the day of the subjective—when it is taken from history without and made history within; when it is no longer something just outside of us, but is now something to be planted inside of us.
That is the real meaning, as you understand, of the coming of the Holy Spirit: to lay hold of everything in Scripture which is objective and place it right within the center of the life of the believer, so that it becomes part of the very inwardness of the believer’s life.
If we do not recognize these things, we may miss our way in reading the stories and just think of them as wonderful stories of what Jesus did. This one in particular—the raising from the dead of Lazarus—is a wonderful story. But it was done, and it was recorded, in order that it might become, in our experience, a very part of our own being.
Now, that is the foundation on which we build what we have to say as to this whole Gospel. May I add another word, which I hope will also have some value to you?
It is always necessary and important, in the light of what we have said, to take account of the correspondence between the Epistles in the New Testament and the Gospel. Because the Epistles are, after all, only the subjective expression of the objective Gospel.
How can I put that to help you? Well, you read your Gospels. If you like, read this chapter, as we shall see as we go on, and you see the story—the account of what happened, all the parts of it, the phases of it, the stages of it. All right, very wonderful.
But when I come to the Epistles, I am told what that means. It is there that I get the explanation for my own life. This will remain history, two thousand years ago, until I come to see what God meant that to be in my own life. And I find that out in the Epistles.
Always read your Gospels in this twofold way: what is in the Gospels is somewhere explained in the Epistles. Read the Epistles, and you will say, “This is explaining what is in the Gospel.” So read your New Testament in that way.
We have to look at the Book of Acts and the Epistles for the real meaning of the Gospel before we shall get the real inward value of the Gospels.
Now, having said all that, we come to this verse in John 11: “He that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes.” As the margin says, “grave-bands.” “And his face was bound about with a napkin.” Jesus said unto them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
Do you know, you have a vast amount in the remainder of your New Testament after John that is exactly in keeping with this, telling you what that means for us. Here is what it meant for Lazarus and his sisters, but what did that mean in God’s mind for us?
First of all, it is possible for us to have life by the Word of Jesus Christ—resurrection life, divine life, that which is called eternal life. It is possible for us to have that life by which we have been brought from the death of our natural state into this newness of life, by the fiat of the Son of God, and yet to be limited in every way while we have it.
Limited in ministry: hands bound. Limited in progress: feet bound. Limited in understanding: a wrapping around the head. No real liberty. Those three things are three of the major things in the teaching of the apostles.
Let me repeat it, for it is so true, and it is true of multitudes today. It is one of the problems in Christianity. People, through simple response to the Word of the Lord Jesus, have been born again. They are His people; they are children of God; they have divine life.
It is so possible, and it is actual in numerous cases, for Christians to have the beginning of the Christian life—real, true life—and yet to be limited in almost every way as to that life. That life is limited in them.
Here the symbolism is: bound hand, bound foot, bound head. The hands are the symbols of ministry, of fruitfulness of life.
Will you tell me that there are not many Christians—Christians who believe in the Lord Jesus and have that saving faith in the Lord Jesus—whose ministration of life, whose fruitfulness of life, is exceedingly limited? Bound. Tied up.
Oh, how many Christians are just tied up in this matter of real performance, real ministry. And when I use that word “ministry,” I am not talking about platforms and Bible preaching. I mean that ministration of the Lord Jesus—the ministration of the Lord Jesus.
In the next chapter—and there ought to be no chapter divisions; they are only for convenience—Jesus came back to Bethany, and there it says that they made Him a supper. Lazarus was one of those who sat at meat with Him.
Think what the whole thing would have looked like if Lazarus had still been tied up in his grave-clothes. But no, he was able to share with the others in his experience.
And if you think I am trying to make something of nothing, look again. It was at that point that the Jewish rulers took counsel to put Lazarus to death also, because by reason of him many believed. By reason of him many believed.
That is what I mean by loose hands—ministry, fruitfulness. Many believed because of him. Is it not true that multitudes of Christians are not in that release of life where many believe because of them? They remain isolated, tied-up Christians.
But in the meaning of hands—hands of fruitfulness, hands of service, hands of the ministration of Christ, hands of the testimony of Jesus—they are still in the grave-clothes. That is why Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.” Lazarus had life—alive—but not abundant life until he was loosed.
Now you get into your Epistles, and with that fragment only see how much there is about the life of the believer being an effective life, a fruitful life, a responsible life, a life that is really producing something.
Indeed, we could say that, amongst other things, this is one of the major purposes of all the letters that the apostles wrote: to get these Christians—and did I remind you again that more than ninety percent of the New Testament was written to Christians? That is impressive, and that is challenging.
They wrote their letters to Christians in order to get these Christians, who had life, to have it more abundantly; that is, to be loosed in this matter of their newness of life.
Perhaps that is enough for the moment on that. We will come back to it in a minute. What is true of the meaning of the hands is true of the feet: bound hand and foot.
Again, is it not true that many, many Christians—yes, Christians, born-again believers—are making no progress in the spiritual life, are not going on? You meet them perhaps three, six, or ten years afterward; you meet them again, and they are just where they were then before. They have not gone on.
That is their feet bound about. They are not going on. They are not making spiritual progress. They are not gaining ground. They are not overtaking. They are not, to use Paul’s phrase, “attaining.” There is a state of spiritual stagnation, spiritual illness—feet bound.
That is not God’s idea. Jesus, God incarnate, said, “Let him go. Loose him. Go, release those people, that he may walk, that he may run in the way of My commandments.”
That is God’s idea for us. So I am not only stating it; it is a challenge as to where we are.
What about this head, bound about the eyes, bound about the mouth? The eyes in particular come first. Is it not true that there are many who are the Lord’s, who are really not seeing more and more, ever more, of what He has for them and through them?
Many Christians see no further than a hand before their eyes. It is a little world in which they live, a very short horizon of spiritual perception, understanding, apprehension, and spiritual knowledge. A small world.
Their heads are wrapped around, their eyes covered over. They have life, but that is all.
Now, having said these things in order to indicate what we mean by the grave-clothes that are here even in a verse, let us look at this again. Lazarus came forth. He had life. But at that moment when he came forth, he was still in contact with the grave—still in contact with death in a way.
There was still that about him which spoke of the sepulchre and the limitations of the sepulchre. Again, what are these limitations?
Well, we turn over to our Epistles. Do not be afraid; I am not going to go right through all the Epistles. But I will give you just enough to indicate what is meant.
If you turn to the First Letter to the Corinthians and have any knowledge of what is in that letter, you will know what we mean by a grave touch—the grave touch still upon born-again Christians.
Paul opens that letter by addressing them as saints. That means those who are the Lord’s. But as he writes on and on, an awful situation is unfolded, is it not? They have life, oh, but you cannot say they have it abundantly. The grave-clothes are on, and the grave touch is still there.
In the First Letter to the Corinthians, it is the grave touch of the limitations of the natural life. Christians, but bound and limited by the ties of the natural life. That is the word the apostle uses specifically:
The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them.
That is limitation, is it not? You proceed into the letter, and you find that these people are just behaving as worldly people behave. Their behaviour, their conduct, their procedure is just exactly as the world’s.
Someone has done a wrong to another believer—one believer to another—and apparently it was going on in more than one case at Corinth. As a result, the believer against whom the wrong was done thought this was criminal, worthy of being set right in a court of law in the world. So he hauled his fellow believer before the judge in a worldly court.
Exactly what the world does. Exactly what the world does. That is an instance of a whole handful of things like that going on in Corinth, some worse than that.
Divisions: “There are divisions among you.” And when there are divisions among you, are ye not carnal? Not spiritual—carnal.
Well, gather up the whole of that letter. It is a terrible story of those who have life, who are the Lord’s, just behaving as other people do, living in the way that the world lives.
You will find the women behaving as the worldly women did in their dress. It is touched on in their demeanour, in their behaviour, even in the assembly. I do not pick out the women particularly, but I am indicating that here is the spirit of the world amongst believers in Corinth.
Read it again in the light of this: all that is keeping them still in this bondage, this limitation of their spiritual life—the life that they have—is grave-clothes.
You are not surprised that the Corinthian world is not feeling the impact of their testimony, that the church in Corinth is not counting in the world, because the world has got into the church and its members individually.
In this sense, the grave-clothes are still on them, by reason of the limitations which come upon the spiritual life when the natural takes charge, governs, controls, and directs. Terrible limitations. Spiritual life, yes, but not life abundant.
Do you see what I mean? Their testimony is bound—still something of the grave. And that letter to the Corinthians was written with the same spirit, the same idea, the same intention, and the same object: “Loose them. Let them go.”
Paul is striving to get these Corinthians loosed as Christians—loosed, liberated, set free into the fullness of the life which they have.
You pass from Corinthians into Galatians, and no one who knows that letter will deny the truth of the statement that here you are in touch with the grave, very truly.
You know what all of the letter to the Galatians is about, do you not? You know the two prominent words, do you not? Liberty. Liberty.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with a yoke of bondage.
Sonship—not servanthood and slavery, but sonship, the liberty of sons. Those are the two great words of this letter.
But what are the grave-bands there in Galatia? They are the grave-bands of tradition, of legalism, and all such things.
You know, dear friends, it is very, very easy to get tied up with these grave-clothes. The persistent peril through the ages of Christianity is to crystallize itself into something set, something fixed.
You have some light, some revelation, something of the immense truth—a fragment of it. Not long before you begin to pull that into a set system and make it the limit, and say, “This is what you must believe. You must come within this horizon, and you must behave like this.”
It becomes a great system of “you must” and “you must not,” and there is no difference between that and the Old Testament, “Thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” Christianity has fallen into that pattern and is continually doing it: circumscribing the great revelation, making Christ smaller than He is.
Crystallizing truth into something fixed and set: “This is how.” And the meaning is, “This is the ultimate.”
Now, you notice that when the Spirit did come, as we have the record in the Book of Acts, the one thing that these old Jewish disciples experienced was a marvellous emancipation from that bondage—Judaism.
The Holy Spirit was working all along against any fixed barriers. Peter would argue that he was a Jew, born, bred, and dyed in the wool, and that nothing unclean had ever entered his mouth, according to Leviticus 11.
All right, Peter, you are putting your interpretation upon the Scriptures, and you are putting your limits upon what Christ has done by His Cross. What God hath cleansed, make not thou common.
The Holy Spirit reacted to Peter’s traditionalism, legalism, limitation, and bondage, and made him go and do what he would never have done otherwise.
How, again and again, right to his death, the words of the Lord Jesus to him in the last chapter of this Gospel were made good:
When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.
That principle was being applied over Cornelius and his house in Caesarea—the Gentile. Peter was made to go whither he would not. He was saying, “Not so, Lord.” The Lord was saying, “Yes, Peter.”
“Whither thou wouldest not.” Heaven’s reaction to this legalistic limitation—the grave-clothes on an apostle.
That was not the only battle that Peter had on that matter. We will not stay with it. You read again, and then John says that when the Lord Jesus said that to Peter, He signified by what manner of death Peter would glorify God.
We have not got the manner of death, but Peter, years afterward, wrote and said, “I am about to put off my body, the time of my departure, even as the Lord Jesus showed me.” Even as the Lord Jesus showed me: another shall gird thee.
Tradition says Peter was crucified. Crucified. Only Jews could be crucified by Gentiles. Because Paul had Roman citizenship, they never crucified him; they executed him by beheading.
Peter was selected for this kind of death, even as his Lord died, as the Lord had shown him. He was girded by another and carried where he would not choose to go.
But the way of the Spirit is the way that goes against our limitations, our death-clothes. It takes us where we would never have thought of going. Indeed, our theology would not accept that way. Our doctrine, perhaps, might be against that. Our tradition would forbid it. But the Holy Spirit says, “This is the way. Loose him. Let him go.”
That is Galatians, is it not? I said to you that you need the Epistles to explain the Gospel, and one verse in the Gospel contains all this.
I hasten to close with one other thing. You move into the letter to the Ephesians.
Having come through the loosing of the hands in Corinthians and the loosing of the feet in Galatia—to walk in liberty, to stand fast in liberty—now you move to the head in Ephesians: taking the napkin from the head in Ephesians, and doing it thoroughly, tremendously.
Ephesians has to do with the napkin around the head. What do we mean—around the head? Paul hardly begins that letter before he bows down in prayer unto the Father of glory:
That He would grant unto you… a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.
“You may know.” The eyes of your understanding enlightened; the napkin taken from the head. It is a wonderful revelation, this letter to the Ephesians—how great it is as to the eyes of the heart being unveiled, unbound.
It concerns the greatness of God’s people’s calling and vocation, the immensity of that for which they have been brought into union with His Son. How great it is. How great it is. Beyond all our grasping—believe me, no exaggeration.
“You may know.” There is one little prefix missing in our translation which is the key to the whole thing. The apostle says, “You may know.” We know.
In the New Testament, we have that word given to us in part and in whole. It is not given to us in our translation, but it is just this: knowing in itself is applied to our beginning knowledge of the Lord.
To use John:
This is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
Knowing this is life—the entering into life, the receiving of divine life. But when Paul is speaking about knowing, he is using a compound Greek word which we do not have in our translation: epignosis, full knowledge.
You know, these Ephesians knew. For the space of two years, Paul ceased not to preach unto them the whole counsel of God. They knew, and on the initial knowledge they had come to the Lord. But now he is praying, at the end of his life from his prison, that they may come into full knowledge.
Full knowledge. It is more than life; it is life abundant. More than seeing; it is seeing with the great range of divine purpose and meaning for our calling and our heavenly rights.
Will you tell me that all Christians are like that? But are there not many—I have some in this very place—around whose heads, while having life in the Lord, there is a napkin obscuring their spiritual sight, limiting their spiritual sight, narrowing down the range of their comprehension of the great purpose of their calling?
Real revelation, dear friends, is not, as I have rather put it, just information. It is liberation. It is liberation.
Saved, and saved fully and wonderfully, is to be released. You often say about this man Paul: there was nothing on earth, or in hell, or any combination of both, that would have changed that rabid, fanatical Pharisee into the greatest friend that ever Jesus Christ had.
That light from heaven—nothing would have done it but that. That light from heaven, and the napkin taken off: a man set free, there all up and down in the greatnesses of Jesus Christ.
I think we may see that one verse in the whole of John’s Gospel contains the Bible: God’s mind for man, God’s fullness for His people.
“Loose him.” He has got life, but loose him. Let him go.
I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.