Will you please turn to Ephesians, the letter to the Ephesians? We want to read a few verses from Ephesians and Colossians.
Ephesians 1:22-23
And He put all things in subjection under His feet,
and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body,
the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Ephesians 3:19
And to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Ephesians 4:13
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Colossians 1:19
For it was the good pleasure of the Father
that in Him should all the fulness dwell.
Colossians 2:9-10
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
Dear Heavenly Father, we bow in worship, thanking Thee for Thy gracious love toward us. Who are we that, in these last days, Thou shouldst give us this opportunity, gathering us together and setting us apart to wait upon Thee, to hear Thy voice, and to do Thy will?
O Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy love. But at the same time, we tremble before Thee lest we allow this time to pass away without really hearing Thy voice and obeying Thy will. Do not allow us to come and to go as usual.
We pray that Thou wilt create within us a real hunger and thirst after Thyself. We praise Thee for Thy precious promise: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
So we come before Thee as empty vessels. If we are already full, Lord, pour it out, that we may really be filled with that which is above and not with that which is below.
Do have mercy upon us, that we will not take Thy Word lightly. O Lord, teach us how to tremble at Thy Word lest we depart from Thy truth.
So we wait upon Thee, Lord, together. May Thy Spirit move in our midst. O Lord, we confess that unless Thou, Thy Spirit, wilt open Thy Word to us, we are blind; we are helpless.
So, Lord, we pray that the Spirit of wisdom and revelation be given to us at this time, that we may really know Thee and come to appreciate Thy fullness. O Lord, our confidence is indeed in Thee. We give Thee all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Thank God for gathering us together again this time. I believe, brothers and sisters, you all realize that the theme of this conference is spiritual fullness.
I do not know how it strikes you when you hear about spiritual fullness. What is your reaction? Do you think it is too glorious to be true? Or do you think it is beyond our reach? Or do you think that you have known it all, that you already have it? What is your reaction?
As I meditate upon this subject, the more I meditate, the more I begin to realize the vastness, the greatness, the richness, and the glory of the fullness of God.
And yet it humbles me. It makes me feel how little of His fullness I know. I confess, brothers and sisters, the more I think about it, the more I think that I am not fit to speak on this subject.
So this time, I am not going to speak to you on spiritual fullness. I am not worthy. The more I think of His fullness, the more I feel how little I know.
The only thing that comforts me is that it does create in me a longing for His fullness. That is all I have. I long to know His fullness.
So, brothers and sisters, I dare not preach to you. What I will do is share with you my own meditation. I hope that you will go along with me as I meditate upon this glorious theme: spiritual fullness.
I hope, brothers and sisters, that you will meditate together with me. Hopefully, the Lord will create within us a deeper longing, thirst, seeking, and pursuing after His fullness, because this is the will of God. This is the hope of our salvation.
And I pray to the Lord that He will empty every one of us, that no one will think he knows or that he already has fullness.
Remember the church in Laodicea. They said, “We are rich, we lack nothing, we know everything, and there is nothing more to add.” Yet the judgment of the Lord was: “You are blind, you are naked, you are miserable, and you are poor.”
So, brothers and sisters, my prayer is that as we gather together these days, there will be a spirit of humility. If we feel full, may the Lord show us that we are empty, because only that which is emptied can be filled.
May the Lord help us these days. Dear brothers and sisters, I tremble before the Lord. We gather year after year, and the coming of the Lord is drawing nearer and nearer. Are we prepared? Are we ready for Him?
Can we see Him with empty hands and empty hearts? I believe it is the mercy of God that gathers us together again this time and gives us another opportunity, that we may really repent before the Lord and earnestly seek to be filled with His fullness.
Then, when we see Him, we will not be put to shame. This is my heart’s desire.
When you think of spiritual fullness, immediately it draws you to the prison letters of the Apostle Paul: the letter to the Ephesians, the letter to the Colossians, and the letter to the Philippians.
You find in the letter to the Ephesians, three times, the word fullness. The church, the body of Christ, is the fullness of Him who filleth all in all. Now, is that true?
In Ephesians 3:19, in the prayer of the Apostle Paul, he prays that our inner man will be strengthened, that Christ may dwell in our hearts, that we may begin to apprehend with all the saints the love of Christ which is beyond understanding, and be filled with the fullness of God.
Filled with the fullness of God—how glorious that is! Then you turn to Ephesians 4:13, that we may one day all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Think of that: the fullness of Christ.
Then in Colossians 1:19, in Him—in Christ—all the fullness of the Godhead dwells. Thank God for that. And in Colossians 2:9-10, in Him, in Christ, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and ye are complete in Him. What a promise!
Aside from the word fullness, you find in these two letters other words such as full, filled, riches, glory, complete, and perfect. All these words give us the impression of fullness.
So we believe that it is the will of God that He wants us to know His fullness—not merely knowing it mentally, but knowing it experientially.
Now, for our meditation during these two mornings, I think this morning we would like to ask the question: What is spiritual fullness? Where can we find it? Is it available to us?
Then, God willing, in the next session, we will meditate on how we apprehend spiritual fullness. We do not want to know spiritual fullness merely mentally. We want personally and corporately to apprehend that fullness to the glory of God.
So this morning, we would like to share together and meditate together on what spiritual fullness is. Do we know this fullness?
The natural man does not know the things of God. The world does not know this spiritual fullness. The only fullness this world knows is the fullness of sin, the fullness of iniquity, the fullness of violence, and the fullness of rebellion.
That is the fullness we know. It is all negative. We have no idea of that positive, spiritual fullness.
You remember Genesis 6. During the time of Noah, God looked upon this earth as man increased in number. God said:
My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever,
for that he also is flesh.
The world was full of violence. The wickedness of man—even the imagination of the thoughts of his heart—was only evil continually. God could not bear it any longer. God said, “I have to judge.”
And you remember the flood. Only Noah and his family found grace. That is the fullness the world knows.
Again, in Genesis 18 and 19, God came to Abraham and said, “I cannot hide anything from him, because I know he fears Me, and he will tell his later generations about Me.” God shared with Abraham that the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah had grown up to heaven.
The evil of those cities was so full that God said, “I come down to investigate.” He came down to judge Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities. They were burned with fire from above. That is the fullness the world knows.
In Genesis 15, God made a covenant with Abraham and promised to give him the land of Canaan. But God said there would be four hundred years during which the children of Israel would be slaves before they would come to possess their possession. Why? Because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.
How patient is our God! He will not judge before the time. He waits in His longsuffering. His longsuffering is misunderstood, but He does not want anyone to perish; He wants all to come to salvation.
But one day, when iniquity is full, judgment will not delay.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are living in a time no better than the time of Noah. As were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.
We are living in a time no better than Sodom and Gomorrah—perhaps even worse. We are living in a time like the seven tribes of Canaan. The voice of their wickedness rose to heaven, and heaven came down.
Brothers and sisters, we are living in a most perilous time, a most dangerous time. All we know is violence. All we know is iniquity. All we know is rebellion everywhere.
Do you think that our iniquity is almost full? Do you think the longsuffering will come to an end? Do you think judgment is coming to this world?
This is the time in which we are living. This is the day, I believe, of the fullness of sin and iniquity. Can you think mankind can degenerate so low as today? Things unthinkable and unimaginable are happening.
Thank God for His longsuffering. But for how long? I believe the day is coming. Judgment is at the door. We need to wake up, be ready, and be prepared.
As the Bible says, when people think of what is going to happen, they are frightened to death. But, dear brothers and sisters, to us the Word of God says, “Lift up your heads, because your redemption draweth nigh.”
But thank God, He loves us so much. He loves the world so much. He will not let us go.
He gave us hope. He shows us there is a fullness which is positive, glorious, spiritual—not earthly, not natural, not devilish, but heavenly and spiritual.
He wants us to know that fullness and even to enter into that fullness. Can you imagine that? This is our blessed hope.
Where can you find spiritual fullness? Not the fullness that we know on earth. I do not know how you feel, but I am tired of this fullness of iniquity.
We need glad tidings, and thank God, it is already here.
So, brothers and sisters, if we are going to meditate on spiritual fullness, we have to forget ourselves. In ourselves, there is no fullness. The only fullness in you and me is fullness of sin, rebellion, iniquity, wickedness, and violence.
May God deliver us from ourselves. We have to leave ourselves behind and go to the source of spiritual fullness.
Where is the source of spiritual fullness? You cannot find it on earth. You cannot find it in mankind. You cannot find it in the world. You cannot find it in yourself. It is not there. What is there is just the opposite.
So we have to return to the beginning: “In the beginning, God.”
Dear brothers and sisters, God is the only source of spiritual fullness. He is full from the beginning to the end. There is no development in God. Nothing can be increased, and nothing can be decreased.
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never changes. He is always full, to the fullest. That is God.
Brothers and sisters, when you think of the fullness of the Godhead, it is beyond us. Even the Apostle Paul was lost for words. He said, “What length? What breadth? What depth? What height?” It is immeasurable, incomprehensible, unfathomable, and indescribable: the fullness of the Godhead.
Consider the fullness of His love. Can we fully understand it? We know something of love, but human love is earthly. It is human. It is the best of man, and yet, when you compare it with the love of God, it is unlove.
Only God’s love is absolute, holy, self-sacrificial, and poured out without reservation—love beyond measure.
When you think of His righteousness, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. They cannot cover our nakedness. Just as Daniel cried out, “Because I see Your glory, my beauty is turned into corruption.” He fell down as dead.
Brothers and sisters, are you so righteous, so self-righteous, that you think you are the only one on this earth who can stand before the righteous God? You fool yourself.
No one can come into the presence of God without being smitten to death. His righteousness is the only righteousness that is right—absolutely right, pure, and holy. We have no righteousness of our own.
We shall repent in dust and ashes. That was the experience of Job, the righteous man in his world, perfect in his generation. How he held on to his self-righteousness until he saw the glory of God!
He said, “I abhor myself. I hate myself. I repent in dust and ashes.” The righteousness of God is beyond our understanding.
Think of the holiness of God. Sometimes we sing, “Holy, holy, holy, God Almighty.” But how much do we understand God’s holiness?
He is so absolutely separated. He stands by Himself. There is none like Him, no comparison. He is alone. He is different.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter tried to put Moses and Elijah on an equal footing with our Lord Jesus. God intervened because He said, “This is My beloved Son.” God took Moses away and took Elijah away. When they looked up, they saw nobody but Jesus. Holy!
Brothers and sisters, I question myself: How much do I know the holiness of God? I know almost nothing.
God is light, and there is no darkness in Him. There is no turning, no shadow. Light—eternal light, perfect light.
Brothers and sisters, how much light are we? We think we walk in the light, but compared with Him who dwells in light, who is light, our light turns to darkness.
We need to repent. We need the blood of our Lord Jesus to cleanse us. Even the tears of our repentance need to be cleansed by His precious blood.
God is almighty. We cannot even measure His mightiness. How much do we apprehend His mightiness? Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, but how much do we experience His mightiness?
We can go on and on and on, because God is infinite. There is no limit. He is full all the time. Nothing can take away His fullness, and nothing can add to His fullness. That is God.
We may have a little understanding of the fullness of the Godhead. We may have a glimpse of the glory of God. But, brothers and sisters, we cannot comprehend His vastness, His greatness, His richness, and His glory. It is beyond us.
The more I meditate on the fullness of God, the more I confess that I know nothing. I ask God for mercy. Oh, how I long to know Him!
But, brothers and sisters, when you meditate upon God and upon His fullness, you can almost say that you see it from afar, dimly, but you cannot get to it. God is a mystery.
He is so remote, so transcendent, far beyond our reach. We can think a little bit, but that is all.
If that is the case, it condemns us instead of justifying us. The more you think about God, the more your conscience smites you.
But thank God, He loves us. He wants to make His fullness available to us.
It is not His desire to let us know a little bit of His fullness and be condemned. That is not the will of God. The will of God is that He may bless us and share with us His fullness.
His love is such that He wants to share it with us. But how?
The Word became flesh and tabernacled among men, full of grace and truth.
If God remains in heaven, He is beyond us. We are condemned; we are finished. But thank God, He came into this world. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
Brothers and sisters, one day, in the fullness of time, God’s Son came into this world. The Word—the expression, the fullest expression of God—took up a human form and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth.
Brother, sister, do you appreciate what God has done? This is the only hope for us. He who is incomprehensible, transcendent, beyond us, and remote has humbled Himself.
Philippians says that He, being equal with God, counted it not a thing to be grasped, because that is who He is. He forever and eternally is equal with God—God Himself.
But the Son, for the love of God, emptied Himself. He could not empty Himself of His deity, because that is what He is. He is forever God. But He emptied Himself of all the glory, the position, the power, the worship, and the honor, and took upon Himself the form of a bondservant.
He came to the abandonment of God. He came to show us what God is. He came to show us the fullness of the Godhead—not a little, not almost, but full.
It pleased God to have His Godhead dwell in Him. In Him the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.
In other words, in that incarnate body, Jesus, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells. Nothing less and nothing more.
In other words, brothers and sisters, the fullness of the Godhead has been brought in incarnation from heaven to earth—to make it visible, to make it understandable, and to make it touchable.
In 1 John 1:1, it says:
That which was from the beginning,
that which we have heard,
that which we have seen with our eyes,
that which we beheld,
and our hands handled,
concerning the Word of life.
That refers to our Lord Jesus, because He is the Word. He was with the Father from the beginning. We heard about Him from the prophets, from the Old Testament. We heard that He was coming.
The Apostle John said, “We have seen with our eyes.” How true it is! They saw the incarnate God. They not only saw Him; they contemplated Him. They began to understand that He is not merely a man. He is altogether different. He is God manifested in the flesh.
That demonstrates God to us—the fullness of God to us. “That which we have touched”: because He rose again, He could be touched. He said, “Reach hither thy finger, and see My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into My side.”
The wounded hands and the bleeding side could be touched. We have, brothers and sisters, the apostles who fellowshipped with the Lord. Through their witness in the Word today, we can fellowship with the One who was from the beginning, prophesied by the prophets, who came into this world and rose again.
O, thank God that which is intangible, incomprehensible, beyond our understanding and beyond our reach, has already come to us.
The Bible says of our Lord Jesus that no one knows the Father but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. He declares Him.
The prophets may declare God in a limited and small way, in pieces and little by little. But in these last days, the Son declares the Father in fullness. The Lord says, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” Nothing less, nothing more. It is all here.
When our Lord was on earth, He was full of grace and truth. You know, He brings the grace of God to mankind. He brings the truth of God to mankind.
When you read the Gospel of John, the whole book illustrates how our Lord Jesus, during His days on earth, was full of grace and truth.
Nicodemus came to the Lord wanting to be taught, that he might be able to do something more to qualify him for the kingdom of God. But our Lord Jesus told him the truth:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee,
Except one be born anew,
he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Truly, truly. What truth!
The Samaritan woman came to Him. Our Lord Jesus said, “If thou knewest who it is that speaketh with thee, thou wouldst ask of Him, and He would give thee living water. It will become a fountain within thee, overflowing forever. Thou wilt not thirst.”
O, how gracious our Lord is!
The man who had been infirm for thirty-eight years was always hoping that one day he might be the first one to enter the pool of Bethesda when the angel stirred the water and be healed. But always somebody got in before him. Hope again, hope again—hopeless.
The Lord said, “Wouldest thou be made whole?” How sweet the Son is! How gracious! Full of truth, full of grace.
We can go on and on. That is what He is. He brought the grace of God to mankind. He brought the truth of God to mankind. He is grace. He is truth.
Outside of Him, there is no grace. Aside from Him, there is no truth. Every truth is in Him. Every grace is from Him. Brothers and sisters, this is our Lord.
He has demonstrated to us the fullness of the Godhead. What mercy! What love! What grace! What truth!
But if our Lord Jesus had come into this world two thousand years ago, lived for thirty-three years, shown us the grace and truth of God, forgiven sinners, touched the untouchable, healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead, cast out demons, and demonstrated to the world the spiritual fullness of God—what blessing and benefit would have come upon the world!
But, dear brothers and sisters, sometimes do you have this kind of feeling? “Oh, if I had lived two thousand years ago, if I had lived during the time of Jesus, if I had lived in Judea, if I had had the opportunity to see our Lord Jesus, to be touched by Him, and to hear Him, how blessed I would be! But unfortunately, I am two thousand years too late.”
Can it be true? It can be true.
If our Lord Jesus had come into this world, done all these things, spoken all these truths, and then, on the Mount of Transfiguration, ascended from the world and gone away, only those people who lived in the time of Jesus and had the privilege of seeing Him, hearing Him, and being touched by Him would be blessed.
The fullness of God would have come and returned to heaven. It would still be beyond our reach.
Thank God, He did not ascend from the Mount of Transfiguration. He could have done that. Heaven was ready to receive Him. But He refused.
He had to come down. He turned His face toward Jerusalem, Calvary, and death. That is what He came for.
He came to die, not just to live. Because if He did not die, we would all die. He alone would live.
But because He went to Calvary, on the cross He achieved our redemption.
In other words, all that He said and all that He did while He was on earth, He said and did on the basis of Calvary, of the cross.
How could He tell the adulterous woman, “I will not condemn thee. Go in peace”? It is true that nobody could condemn her, because our Lord challenged them: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Then He bowed His head and wrote on the earth. In other words, He was ashamed to see these people thinking that they were more righteous than that adulterous woman. But He knew they were just as sinful.
So from the oldest to the youngest, they had to leave. Until nobody was there. Nobody was fit to cast a stone, except the Lord.
He could do it. He should do it. He must do it according to the law. But He said, “No, I will not condemn thee.” On what basis? On the basis of Calvary’s cross.
He did not condemn because He condemned Himself. He took the place of that adulterous woman. “I die for you, and because of that, I can forgive you.”
Remember what He did on Calvary’s cross:
Father, forgive them;
for they know not what they do.
How could He ask the Father to forgive such a hideous sin—crucifying the Son of God? On what basis could the righteous God forgive? Because our Lord offered Himself as our substitute.
Dear brothers and sisters, everything He did on earth was on the basis of Calvary’s cross. Every truth He spoke is sealed by the finished work of Calvary’s cross.
It is the cross that consolidates everything. In other words, the fullness of God that has been brought into this world is now sealed for eternity.
People who lived before Calvary’s cross looked forward to that cross to be forgiven. People who live after Calvary’s cross look backward to the cross and are cleansed.
The cross has sealed and confirmed eternally for us the love of God.
We do not need to live two thousand years ago. We do not need to go back to Palestine in order to find Him. He is now in heaven and with us.
Everything that He has done and everything that He has spoken is available to us today. Thank God for that.
I cannot thank God enough for Calvary. He said, “It is finished.” All is done.
Now, that which was intangible has become tangible. That which was remote has been brought nigh. That which was a mystery is now a revelation.
So, brothers and sisters, as I meditate upon it, I bow in worship. How good is our God!
But then, even though Calvary’s cross is eternal, and has made all that our Lord did and said on earth eternal truth and eternal grace, how does it come to me?
The truth is there. The finished work is there. Redemption is there. Fullness is there. What was done on earth is no longer limited by time. It is timeless. Anyone can have it.
But how can all the fullness of Christ become real to me?
Thank God, He provides for that too.
Our Lord Jesus, even before His death, said, “Do not be sorrowful. I go for your sake. If I do not go, another Comforter will not be able to come.”
“I was in the flesh. I could be with you, but I could not be with you forever. But now, if I go, I will ask the Father to send you another Comforter—another One just like Me.”
“The only difference is that because I was in the flesh with you, I could not be forever with you. But when another Comforter comes, the Holy Spirit of truth, He is spirit. He shall be in you.”
“He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will teach you all things concerning Me. He will bring all things about Me to you and make Me real in your life.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Thank God, not only is there the finished work of Christ on Calvary’s cross to make it eternal, available, finished, prepared, and open; there is also the Holy Spirit to bring us into all truth.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of grace. He brings Christ into us and us into Christ.
So, in other words, it is by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us daily, hourly, moment by moment, without ceasing. He is there, bringing all that is of Christ to us.
That is, He brings the fullness of the Godhead to us. That is what the Bible says:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
Brothers and sisters, this is the secret. We thank God the Father. We thank God the Son. We thank God the Holy Spirit.
I would like to conclude by reading one passage, because I feel that is the only way I can conclude.
Romans 11:33-36
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
how unsearchable are His judgments,
and His ways past tracing out!For who hath known the mind of the Lord?
or who hath been His counsellor?
or who hath first given to Him,
and it shall be recompensed unto him again?For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things.
To Him be the glory for ever. Amen.