Lord, when we say to Thee, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law,” Thou knowest that the most wonderful thing Thou canst show to us is Thy Son. And so, Lord, open our eyes that we may see Him this morning.
It used to be written of men that they said, “We would see Jesus.” And, O Lord, grant in Thy mercy that when we leave this place, we may be able truly to say, “We have seen the Lord.” Be it so, for Thy name’s sake. Amen.
We come to the last of these hours, at this time, in which we have been occupied with the great transition. Having said at the beginning that the whole Bible is occupied with God and humanity, the Old Testament is occupied with an old humanity, throughout showing how utterly unreliable that humanity is, and eventually proving it a failure as the Old Testament closes.
I expect you have noticed that, not in chronological order but in spiritual order, the Old Testament closes with Malachi. What a sorry picture—the closing of the Book in failure.
The New Testament is occupied wholly with the introduction and development of a new humanity, brought in with the Lord Jesus Christ. From that point, the whole of the New Testament is occupied with this new humanity, of which Christ is the representative: its birth, its growth, and its eventual and ultimate glorification.
That is the general background of these morning hours this week. We came two days ago to the inclusive vision of the Lord Jesus, and began—we shall never have finished, though we stayed here all our lives—began to see what there is in Jesus Christ, what He has brought in, and what the Apostle Paul, and the others of course—John, Peter—but Paul, I think, in a fuller way than any, saw in the Lord Jesus when, as he put it, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”
But what an immense revealing that was, which grew and grew all through the life of the Apostle. We said that four things came to the Apostle in that vision, that heavenly vision, that inward seeing of the Lord Jesus.
Firstly, in Jesus glorified, he saw, according to the eternal thought of God, the place, the nature, and the destiny of humanity—the humanity after Christ.
Then he saw the nature and dynamic of a life ministry, of a ministry through this long dispensation between the ascension of the Lord Jesus and His coming again. What ministry is—the vocation—he saw this when he saw the Lord Jesus.
Then he saw the nature and purpose of the Church, now and unto the ages of the ages. These three great things he saw, and then he saw a fourth, with which we are going to be occupied this morning.
Jesus of Nazareth glorified—the Man in the glory. As he gazed and gazed inwardly upon that, seeing that vision, that revelation, he saw these three things that we have mentioned. Then he saw the immense significance of Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and exalted.
These are the things, of course, which fill all his writings. You have to approach them with these four things before you. Let me repeat: the immense significance of Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and exalted.
We are totally incapable of sensing, recognizing, conceiving what happened to this man, Saul of Tarsus, when he saw the Lord Jesus.
You see, he had thought of Jesus the Nazarene as an impostor, a false teacher, a false leader, one who was leading people astray. All the feelings of animosity, hatred, and bitterness of which that great soul was capable were against this Man, Jesus of Nazareth.
He made it his life business, with his tremendous natural abilities, his training, and his knowledge, to blot out any remnants related to that Man, Jesus Christ. He viewed the cross of Jesus Christ as His deserved crucifixion.
He viewed the death of Jesus of Nazareth as death—as dead as we know it—the end; and that in shame, deserved shame, deserved ignominy, deserved disgrace. And, more, from his Jewish standpoint, he viewed that Man on that cross as cursed of God—as cursed of Almighty God. This was his mind about Jesus of Nazareth.
When he saw Jesus on the way to Damascus and was smitten with the light, not knowing at that moment who it was or what it meant, he said, because of the overpoweringness of it, “Who art Thou, Lord?”
I say, we can never enter into the tremendous convulsion that must have taken place in this man when there came back, in answer, “I am Jesus.” I am Jesus—that One about whom you have had all those thoughts and feelings. “I am He. I am Jesus.”
I say, we cannot enter into what that man must have felt at that moment. But it was then, and from then, that he began to see that this Jesus, the Man glorified, was in the central place of power, capable of smiting even such a man as Saul of Tarsus to the ground with one stroke, frustrating him, leaving him to be lifted up by men and led by the hand, blind, to the place where he was going.
The overwhelmingness of it! He began to see, in that light, that it was not a crucifixion merely, and it was not a death such as he had thought death to be. But that Jesus Christ crucified was all that his after-life and teaching show him to have seen.
What he saw first of all was that that death, that ignominious death, that shameful death, that awful death, was his own death. It was what God thought of him. It was God’s attitude toward him.
He could say, “That Man on that cross, like that, in all that state of degradation, shame, helpless weakness, despised and rejected—that was me. That was me. That was what God thinks of my humanity.”
He died for me. But, you know, the meaning is, in my place. He died; I died. That was my death. And that was God’s estimate of me—Saul of Tarsus. Oh, what a revolution! He had a great idea of himself and his own abilities, but this was God unveiling Saul of Tarsus.
He died in my place. That was my death. A new idea about death! All over, he saw that. I am keeping close to his teaching, and not reading in anything or making up something. You can sit down for yourself and prove everything that I am saying from the New Testament.
He saw not only that death, that awful death, as a judgment upon a kind of man—his death. He saw that it was the death of the whole human race in Adam.
What does he say?
Because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.
Another verse says, “in Him.” Therefore, it was the death of the whole race. As in Adam, all died. There is a new conception of the cross of the Lord Jesus: the death of the whole race, the humanity to which we belong by nature. Therefore, all died.
But then he came to see this also in the death of Jesus: it was not death as an end; it was a death that destroyed death. In a sense, it was a death which was the end of death.
He tasted death for every man, true; but then He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. So Saul came to see all this when he saw, by revelation of God, His Son revealed in him.
He saw more. He saw that that cross was, to use the word we have used before, a cosmic death. That is, it reached out beyond the individual and beyond the race to that whole encompassing realm of evil forces which had brought about this condition, making that judgment necessary.
As He went to the cross, He said:
Now is the prince of this world cast out.
And later the Apostle said:
Having despoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
A cosmic cross, a cosmic death, touching the uttermost bounds of the lower heavenlies, destroying him that had the power of death. So he came to see all this when he saw by revelation of God His Son revealed in him, as he put it.
Well, that is so much as to Paul himself. To come further over this matter of the cross, resurrection, and exaltation of the Lord Jesus: if the revelation of Jesus Christ comprehends all those three things that we have said—comprehends the destiny of humanity, the nature and dynamic of all true ministry during this whole dispensation, and the nature and vocation of the Church now and in the ages to come—then all these mighty things are centered in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
Mighty, mighty thing was the cross to him.
God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We preach Christ crucified.
I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
For all this content is in the cross of the Lord Jesus. He saw that the cross of Jesus Christ was the climax of humanity—the climax of humanity. It was the zero hour of the old Adam race.
The place at which, in the darkness—more than natural darkness—God said, “The door is closed. The door is closed upon a certain kind of humanity. This is zero for that humanity.”
You see, we take a lifetime to learn that. The Holy Spirit, when He gets hold of our lives, is always bringing us back to that one fact and putting His finger upon this, that, and something else, and saying, “You know, that went out in the cross. The cross has closed the door on that. If you bring that in, you are countering the work of the cross.”
Now, I could stop there, you know. For instance, the letter to the Hebrews, as well as these Corinthian letters, gives terrible, terrible warnings against going back upon the cross, crucifying afresh the Son of God, and treading underfoot the blood of our redemption. The apostles have a lot to say about that, but that is controversial, I know, and it is not our subject. But there it is.
The cross has said, “An end, no,” with a whole kind, type, and way of a certain humanity. The Holy Spirit is trying to teach us this. If you are sensitive to the Holy Spirit, you know by the bell what the Holy Spirit will allow and what He will not allow. Oh, you ought to.
Oh, young Christians especially—with all of us—how important it is for us to know the Holy Spirit in this way. You go to this one, to that one: “May I? Should I? Can I?” No need for that at all. And if anybody begins to tell you, “You may,” or, “You may not,” they are doing the wrong thing.
You ought to know in your own heart, by the Holy Spirit, if you are born of the Spirit. You ought to know the Spirit making you uncomfortable about certain things—not whispering in your ear in words and saying, “No, you must not do that,” but inside: “I am not so happy about this as I once was. I do not feel so free to do these things as I once did.” You know what I mean, do you not?
The Holy Spirit is only bringing you back to the cross and saying again, “Zero to that. The end of that. That belongs to the old humanity.” I must not start with too much detail, but this is a very practical thing, the cross.
The cross is not just a historic thing. The cross is not just something in the Christian creed. The cross of the Lord Jesus is a devastating thing on one side, a terrific thing. It takes us a lifetime to learn how much that is true. However, the fact is here from the beginning: it is the zero hour of the Adamic race.
It is further the registration of the subjection of the prince of this world. “The whole world lieth in the wicked one,” says the Apostle. The whole world is in the lap of the evil one. By nature, we are in that realm, in that kingdom.
The great word is this: transition—translated out of the authority of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. But by nature, we are within that kingdom of the prince of this world.
At the cross, as we have said, Jesus said:
Now is the prince of this world cast out.
What did He mean? Not the annihilation of the devil; we know that right well. Not that he ceased to be a being or to have power. Something better than that, perhaps. Something better than that.
You know, there is such a thing as victory, and there is something that is more than victory. There is being a conqueror, and there is being more than conqueror. What do I mean?
Well, not many of you—a few can remember, although in America perhaps you do not take much account of it or know much about it—but some of us lived through the great Boer War in South Africa.
You know how that went on: the devastation and desolation that war saw in South Africa. At last the British gained the upper hand, as they used to do, and they captured some of the Boer generals.
There was General Botha, one of the great generals of the Boer army. They captured him and put him in prison. He was conquered.
As Botha watched the British, watched their way and their life, and learned the truth about them, he began to change. At last, to make the story short, he became one of Britain’s best counsellors and allies.
The life of General Botha is a wonderful thing. How highly he was honoured and respected! Even into the First World War, he came as a helper, a great helper, on the side of the British. What had happened? Oh yes, he was conquered, but there was more than conquest: the enemy was made an ally.
Oh, you say, “Is Satan converted?” Oh no, no, he is not Botha. I suppose the analogy breaks down here. But what do we find in the New Testament?
I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel.
Those things which befell through satanic activities—the Lord has taken hold of Satan’s works and made them serve His ends. That is more than conquering, perhaps. Of course, I would rather that the Lord had wiped him out altogether, but perhaps it is better that the Lord, in His all-authority in heaven and on earth, makes the enemy in the long run serve His purpose. That is more than conqueror, is it not? He is an unwilling servant, we know.
But you have this through your New Testament: saints in Caesar’s household. Oh, there! Well, the cross, you see, was the real setting forth of this subjection to Jesus Christ of the prince of this world.
Further, it was the sentence of death upon the world itself. I am keeping to Paul again: the sentence of death upon this world which lies under a curse.
Jesus Himself, as He came to the cross, in prayer lifted His heart to His Father in the presence of some of His disciples:
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil one.
The world is banned—the world system, the world spirit, the world influence—is banned by the cross. No such thing as a worldly Christian. If you are worldly, you are contradicting your Christianity. However, that is the cross: it pronounces the death sentence upon this world.
Well, that is the negative side, but the cross has another side. In Jesus Christ, it was the D-day of a new creation. D-day—what is that? Deliverance Day.
Peter must walk in here and say to us:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
who by the power of God are guarded through faith.
The D-day: a new hope, a new creation, a creation brought into new life, new hope, through the cross in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now all that surely does give us a much larger conception of the cross.
I am not going to be able to cover all the ground of these three things, so I will mix up the next two—the ministry and the Church. The ministry and the Church issue from the cross, inherent in the cross. No Church without the cross; no ministry without the cross.
Hence, the cross is the ground upon which the Holy Spirit encamps for ministry. You understand why it is that such an assault has been made upon the cross—to get it out of the preaching, or put other complexions upon it which may be true of it.
When, in the power of the Holy Spirit, you live the life of the cross and minister Christ crucified, the Holy Spirit comes on that. It depends on that. Do you want to know where the Holy Spirit encamps, takes up His position, or cooperates? He takes it up always on the cross.
You will never come through to a genuine knowledge of the fullness of the Holy Spirit unless the cross is the foundation. It is the only safety in the midst of many things that are false and counterfeit. I want to know about everything: what place has the cross there? Not as a teaching, a theory, a doctrine, or something in the Bible, but what place has the cross in the life?
The Holy Spirit’s camping ground is Christ crucified, as preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says, “Here is the wisdom of God,” the wisest thing from heaven, “and the power of God,” the most powerful thing from heaven: Christ crucified.
I repeat: the message of the cross is not just a doctrine. It is the message of human life—human life.
Before we can preach the cross, we must know it. It must have done something in us, and something drastic. The preacher, the minister, the ministry, must be a crucified minister. It must be quite clear that it is not a doctrine of the cross that is being given, but the person who is giving it is a crucified person.
That searches a lot, does it not? Oh, let us be careful about talking on the cross. Be careful how you speak about the cross.
Many people come to me and say, “I came to the teaching of the cross so long ago. I came to the message of the cross.” Has it become something more? It is much better to say, “The cross, by the Holy Spirit, did something in me. There is something in me that made it far more than a doctrine, a theory, something to talk about.”
Indeed, is that the trouble? “What you are speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” Yes, there is something in that. I want to see what you are saying.
Well, here it is, you see: ministry has got to be administered by the Spirit on the ground of the cross. What will the Holy Spirit allow in ministry? What will He allow in ministry, and how will He disallow? You learn a lot about that, you know.
In the days when I was very much in the preaching realm, before a big crisis, of course I worked hard to get good sermons. I collected everything to make up a sermon: quotations from this man and that, this poet and that poet.
One day, later, I was preaching, and in the midst of my sermon I made a quotation. I quoted a man—perhaps I ought not even to mention him; you would know his name altogether. I quoted him in my sermon to make a point.
At that point, the bottom fell out of my sermon—and out of me too. Oh, the whole thing went, and I had to struggle to get through to the end. I went home. What had happened? What had happened? Everything went out at that point.
Then I got to the Lord, and I looked at that poet, a very famous poet. The Lord said to me, “Do you know that poet is a modernist, a liberal theologian? He does not believe the great truths of Christ’s Person and work. And you drew him in this morning as your ally to make your sermon a success.”
I learned a lesson—a life lesson. If really we are under the cross, dear friends, we will know what the Spirit will allow and what He will not allow. We will find that the cross means that the bottom does fall out of everything in that realm.
Do you understand this? Am I being too detailed? Oh no. For ministry—and I have defined what ministry is—not pulpit ministry, platform ministry only, but the function of the Christian: to minister Christ. That is ministry, giving Christ.
This ministry must come out of the cross, because there it begins. The cross must be the source of all true Holy Spirit ministry.
As for the Church—its nature and its purpose, now and forever—what has God in mind from eternity about this elect vessel? What is it? What does it exist for in the divine counsels?
Only to be itself the vessel, the embodiment, of all this meaning of the cross. As with the ministry and ministers, so with the Church. It must be a crucified Church to preach a crucified Christ and to bring, by the Holy Spirit, all God’s knowledge to men.
The Church is a crucified Church. You look at the beginning and see. At the beginning of these meditations, we saw the devastation that took place, not only in the world but with the disciples—how their own humanity was devastated at the cross, scattered and desolated. They were men who had got nothing, nothing left, when they came to the cross of the Lord Jesus.
In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the Church begins. He gathers the scattered fragments, and here and there He is putting the vessel together again, but on other ground.
Why did He tarry forty days? To make sure that they were on new ground, that they had really grasped the significance of the resurrection as a new ground. Why did He lead them out as far as Bethany and go from them, in full view, into glory? To let them know that the Church is on new ground, and on heavenly ground now.
The headquarters of the Church is not at Jerusalem; it is in heaven. All is to be gotten from heaven now, because of this Man who is exalted. He is the Governor, but it is heavenly. Am I using language that you do not understand, or is it too familiar?
Christ is installed in heaven as the representative of this new humanity, and the Holy Spirit, sent down from heaven, is to govern everything, deal with everything and everyone, firstly on the basis of the relegation to judgment of the old humanity, and then the initiation and development of this other humanity. That is what the Holy Spirit is here for.
The writer of the Hebrew letter makes it very simple about fathers and children and sons, does he not?
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord.
Chastening, as a father chastens his son. Well, what about you fathers who have sons? What are you doing with them? You may not put it in this way, but this is how the New Testament puts it in meaning: “I am going to make a man of you. I am out to make a man of you. Sometimes you may not feel very happy about what I am doing, the way I am doing it, but I am going to make a man of you.”
Paul says to these people, “Quit you like men.” That is, a manhood that the Holy Spirit has come to develop: a kind of man coming to full stature of manhood in Christ. These are his actual words, as you know. They apply, of course, to the sisters as much as to the brothers.
One Man in Christ—all one Man in Christ. The translators have not given us the full translation: “all one in Christ Jesus,” but it is all one Man; it is masculine. All one Man in Christ Jesus. The work of the Holy Spirit is to make a man of us—ah, but a man according to that Man.
Is this according to that humanity? Everything that is human. That is why Jesus was here for those three and a half years: a Man amongst men, but different from all others, conformed to the image of His Son.
Now, I am going to close soon, but I want to get very near to this. Not only the nature of the Church—this is the nature of the Church—and the Church’s vocation, but the position of the Church now and in the ages to come.
Because this is a very large matter, I am going to focus upon one thing and try to help you. I am going to base this upon the matter of prayer.
I am convinced that, in all the recovery that has to be made, the recovery of prayer, in the way in which I am going to speak of it now, is very, very important.
Have you ever seen, dear friends, what the position of the Church is, if it is in its right position and rightly constituted? Now, I am not speaking about the Church universal, though it applies there. Let us come to a local church.
Where is Christ? He is seated at the right hand of God. What does that right hand mean? The place of power, the place of authority, the place of government. He is there as Head of the Church, which is His Body.
He has been vested with all authority in heaven and in earth. Have you sometimes questioned that? Christ’s authority here in this world, when you see things going as they are going? Wondered about that—all authority in heaven and on earth?
Now, dear friends, if you have a nucleus of the Church in any one place, rightly constituted on the basis of the cross, the resurrection, and the exaltation of Jesus the Lord, you are united with that throne.
If you get to prayer on that basis, as such an instrument, you are going to touch things in the heavenlies and on the earth. Have we lost something? Are we missing something?
I have, I think, probably told here a personal experience on my first visit to the United States in 1925. I was talking to a brother at my side at breakfast this morning who is from Boston, and that experience took place when I first met him in Boston.
I had come out, and I was just learning the great principles of the Church, the cross, and the Church. I had come out to speak at a convention in Park Street Congregational Church. Of course, that is well known now.
I went into my hotel, into my room, my bedroom, and as I got in there, an awful sense of conflict and darkness came over me—an evil, terrible sense. This was so terrible; I had to go almost immediately to this ministry. I said, “I am no good. I cannot trust this. Something has got to happen.”
It was really what Abraham knew, what is called “a horror of great darkness.” That is what it was for me. I began to use what means I knew, fighting the enemy, using the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, against the enemy, and pleading the blood. Nothing happened.
There I was, traveling up and down that room, trying to fight the spiritual battle, never getting through. I cried to the Lord, “Lord, what does this mean? What are You saying? Have I got out of Your will? Ought I not to be here? What is it?”
It came to me so clearly: “Just stand into the prayer of the Lord’s people.” Now, that is very simple, is it not? But I stood there in my room and said, “I stand by faith into the value of the prayer of the Church on my behalf, in the name of the Lord Jesus.” The whole thing went, right there. We went through.
Now, of course, that is not the end of the story. I wrote back to London to my brethren in London and told them of my experience. One brother wrote and said, “Will you please let us know exactly the time that that happened? Making allowance for a difference of five hours between London and Boston, give us the very hour that that happened.”
So I told them. They wrote back and said, “In that very hour, we were met for prayer. We felt that you were having a great battle, and we felt that we had got to take up that battle for you and pray it through. And we did.”
Have you seen what I mean? Forgive the personal reference, and forget that; but the principle remains. Three thousand miles’ difference in world time—just nothing. That very moment, the Church prayed far away; something happened. The enemy in the heavenlies was touched—authority in heaven—and the situation on earth was touched—authority on earth—in touch with the throne.
So, do you think we want something like that now? Are there not forces of evil in the heavenlies that need to come under the impact of that all authority in heaven? Are there not situations, even in the Church or the churches, where that authority on the earth needs to be brought in to change them? The Church is the vessel of that, the instrument of that.
Oh, for local companies on that ground: the power of the cross and the authority of the risen and exalted Lord. Ask the Lord about that when you get back where you are.
Oh, be careful of a technique about prayer warfare and attacking the devil directly. Be careful; he will make a mess of you. He will wait his time. But get hidden in the cross.
Remember, this is not your strength, your wisdom. It is a crucified vessel that is going to do this. But, oh, the Lord does need a recovery of that kind of vocation.
I am not going to stop here. I have said the vocation of the Church in the ages to come. Oh, it may not be then against the devil, because I quoted a Scripture the other day and told you I do not understand what it means.
“Know ye not,” said Paul through the Corinthians, “that we shall judge angels?” We shall judge angels. That does not mean that angels are doing wrong and are going to be brought into judgment by us in eternity. It means government—telling them what to do, what is required of them. At least, I do not know what it means, but it means something. We shall judge angels.
It is the Church that is going to be the administrative instrument of Christ through the ages to come. It has got to learn administration now. That was the point of those words of Paul to the Corinthians: “You are going to the courts of this world to get judgment from worldly men, worldly wisdom. Cannot you learn to judge amongst yourselves?”
You ought to, because in eternity you have got to judge angels. You had better learn now. You are going to judge angels; you had better judge these things, instead of taking them to the courts. You ought to have wisdom and judgment now.
Learning—oh, we are in a school, a wonderful school—learning to fulfil such a vast vocation in the ages to come. In the ages to come. This is the school for that.
If we are really, through the cross, under the Holy Spirit, under the anointing Spirit—and we are all baptized in one Spirit into one Body—if that is true, perhaps we have got to get clearer as to what that baptism is, what that anointing is, and what that Body is.
But is it not that we are now under the Holy Spirit’s tuition—not a theoretical tuition, but under His tuition—that we shall graduate, when the Lord comes, into that vocation to which we have been called and to which we have been appointed from eternity, in the counsels of God, to be His governing vessel in this universe?
It is beyond you, is it? It is beyond me. But this is what Paul teaches. It has begun now.
Now, unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God.
What a wonderful vocation! How far we fall!
Now, this morning, that is enough, I am sure, for you to wrestle with. Much more could be said, but that is quite enough for now. Be quiet about it. Think about it.
All this, dear friends, all this that I have tried to say to you, the Lord has tried to show you, issues from an experimental knowledge of the cross of the Lord Jesus. It does. You have seen now what that cross means on both its sides.
May it not be a subject, a doctrine, a teaching, a theory, but the mighty reality that it is in every realm. We pray.
We are very conscious, Lord, that when we touch realms like this, there is much that tries to battle and stifle, and make it difficult both to speak and to hear. So that now, at the end of this course for this time, we must appeal to Thee as on the throne, to exercise Thyself and Thy authority, Thy power, to make these things realities—living realities—to us.
Not the subject of the Banner Convocation in 1968, not the theme that certain people followed in their ministry, but, O God, save us and bring us into the good of what Thou dost say. Make it live. Make it a power enough to register in earth and in heaven.
In the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.