I would like you to turn with me to three Scriptures this evening. I want to read from the Ephesian letter in two places.
Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands;
that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.
For He is our peace, Who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition,
having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that He might create in Himself of the two one new man, so making peace;
and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
and He came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh:
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.
So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,
being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone;
in Whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
in Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
And He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ:
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:
that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error;
but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, Who is the head, even Christ;
from Whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer? Let us not look upon this as simply a little thing we do, but let every one of us take what is ours in the Lord for this time.
Father, we just want to come into Your presence concerning Your Word this evening. We want to recognize before You that without You we can do nothing. I can speak a lot of words and define a lot of truth and doctrine, but, Lord, unless You are my ability, then Your voice will not be heard in mine, and nothing of eternal value will be done this evening.
And if our hearing is merely academic or mental, then, Lord, we shall hear a lot of truths, but it will not have any effect or influence on our lives. O heavenly Lord, God of all flesh, and God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah, You have told us in Your Word that these things are hidden from the wise and prudent and are revealed to children.
We call upon You this night to grant to us that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Oh, Father, we commit our time to You, that in every part it will be filled with Your presence, with Your speaking, and with Your working. We ask it in the name of our Messiah Jesus. Amen.
The theme of this conference is the unfolding of God’s recovery work in the church. It has been left to me, by the grace of God, to give something concerning the actual recovery itself.
Before, however, we can even speak about recovery—the constituents of recovery and the principles of recovery—we need first to ask ourselves: What is being recovered?
We do not want to put the cart before the horse. I hear a lot of people talking about the church, the church, the church; the body, the body, the body. I hear people talking about recovery and restoration, but when you begin to inquire a little as to what exactly it is that God is recovering, there seems to be a blank silence, a kind of vacuum.
Therefore, I think it is very important for us this evening to ask ourselves: What is it that the Lord is recovering? Is it an organization? Is it an institution? Is it a system of truth, or a kind of church government—a kind of pattern that is being recovered?
Of course, there is organization in the church. God help us if we do not have any organization. It is the origin of our organization that is the problem. Does it come out of ourselves, or does it evolve from the Holy Spirit?
An organism has an organization—a highly complex organization—but it is developed out of the life within it and is modified and adjusted all the time. It is perfectly true that there is a pattern, but God help us if we see a pattern and not the heart of the matter. Then we are left with legalisms, the kind of periphery, all the things that do not really matter; and the heart of the whole matter is left veiled, as far as we are concerned.
Is God recovering a denomination? No, I do not think that needs to be said here. But I will ask it: Is God recovering a denomination? We human beings are past masters at producing denominations.
We only have to give ourselves a generation for any move of the Holy Spirit, and we have produced, in some cases, magnificent denominations. Is God recovering denomination? Is that what His recovery is? I think not.
Is God merely recovering truth, as if that is all the recovery work of God—a set of sound and pure doctrine? Now, I have to say that sound doctrine must never be devalued. Sound doctrine lies at the heart of everything, and true theology—that is, the knowing of God Himself in His Word—is essential to everything.
It is a real understanding of theology that keeps us from error, and from being deluded and deceived, in the many things that have happened through church history. But is God merely recovering truth that we can recite or study?
We also have to ask whether God is recovering merely non-denominationalism. I fear that in Christendom today, basically, denominationalism has had its day. We are living in quite a new day. The feeling is that we should either be interdenominational or non-denominational.
And all that really matters is that God is recovering something non-denominational. But denominationalism is a symptom of a disease. The disease is far more deeply rooted than the sectarianism it produces. The disease is organizationalism, or institutionalism.
You can have non-denominationalism and be as organized and as institutional as anything in the long history of the church.
People seem to think that God is recovering informality. Providing we do not meet in cathedrals, or in chapels, or in places with spires or belfries, that is all that satisfies us: a kind of informality.
Now, there is nothing more wonderful than informality. But it still remains to be said that if God is going to all this trouble simply to restore or recover some kind of informality, one wonders whether it is worth it.
The fact of the matter is, there must be something more. So I want to devote this evening to speaking about what is the heart of the matter. I want to speak about the heart of God.
Now, in one sense, we often say—because we have to use Sunday-school language, after all; the whole Bible really uses simple, childlike figures, phrases, and pictures—we often say that God has a need.
Of course, this is quite incorrect. God cannot be God if He has a need. I do hope that sinks into everybody here. The very name of God, which we speak of in the circles in which I live as the unmentionable name of God—“I AM THAT I AM”—means that the very nature of God is self-sufficient.
There is a sense in which God does not need us. If He does need us, He is the projection of our own mind. So we have to say that right at the very beginning.
Yet we also have to say that if God has a heart—and God has a heart, so to speak—then His heart desires something. When He created mankind, He created them with a very real goal, a very real purpose, a very real objective.
He did not just create us to people the universe. He did not just create us to reproduce and multiply. He did not just create us as some higher form of the ape, starting with primeval slime and slowly working up, with man as the apex of this marvelous animal kingdom.
And providing men and women do to others what they would have others do to them—that being the golden rule and the highest rule—that entirely satisfies God. But God never created mankind merely as a supreme type in the animal kingdom.
He created mankind with a constituent in his makeup which makes him absolutely unique. He created him spirit, soul, and body. In the moment that God breathed into man spirit, God created an order, if you like, entirely different from anything else.
The angels are spirit. There are Christians who have this mentality that one day, after we have been saved, when we lose this wicked body, we are going to be spirit—pickled forever in ether, without end, playing harps and singing an endless hallelujah chord, ever and ever and ever and ever.
As if God could be satisfied after, so to speak in human terms, a million years of a hallelujah chord. Apparently, this idea of the future ages satisfies some people.
But God created man in a different order. If He had only wanted us to be spirits, we would have been angelic, but He never created us such. If He wanted us to be part of the animal kingdom, He would have created us just body and soul, but He did not. He created something quite unique.
We are the only part of creation that has within us something of God, so to speak. This is what the old preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes meant when he said that God has set eternity in the heart of man.
Now, my dear friends, when God created Adam and Eve, when He, so to speak, in His mind created you and me, He had a goal—an objective—in view. It was something to do with His heart, the desire of His heart, the longing of His heart, the yearning of His heart.
This whole matter of recovery is essentially to do with the heart of God.
His heart’s desire is found in a number of ways in Scripture. I will only mention four in the New Testament.
First, He desires a home. Did you hear that in Ephesians 2:22? “In Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.” A habitation of God in the Spirit—a dwelling place of God in the Spirit—a home.
I do not think there can be a single person here for whom the word home does not have some emotive feeling. We do not think of a home as a school, a hospital, a dentist’s clinic, a university, or a business office. We think of home as a place of love, warmth, relaxation, and rest. It is our centre from which we go out and to which we return. Home.
God has used this simple, childlike idea of a home and has said that He longs for a home. The first picture we have at the very beginning of the Bible is the Spirit of God hovering over a void, over an emptiness. It is without shape; it is without form and void.
The Holy Spirit again and again touched things all the way through the ages, but the first time the Holy Spirit ever came home was in Jesus. When Jesus was born, He was born as the home of God. When the Holy Spirit came down upon Him and dwelt upon Him, that is what John said.
He said that the Lord had revealed to him that the One upon Whom the Holy Spirit abides, or dwells, is the Messiah.
The second time the Holy Spirit came home was on the Day of Pentecost, when our risen Head produced one hundred and twenty members of the body. In that moment, the Holy Spirit came home—not to visit, not to inspect, but to dwell.
That is why, at the end of the Bible, in almost the very last verses, you hear these words: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.” It is almost as if the yearning of the Holy Spirit from the very beginning of creation, when He hovered—and the word in Hebrew is of an eagle hovering, trying to find a perch, trying to find a place of rest and not finding it—the Holy Spirit has at last found God’s home.
Home. My dear friends, may I just say something about recovery? Anything that is called recovery that does not recover the church as home, as the home of God, falls short of what God wants.
Very often, all we have had is a set of tools, some new testimony to choose. But God is longing for a home. “In Christ, builded together”—hear it—no one of us can be the home of God. “In Christ, builded together, for a habitation of God in the Spirit.”
To speak again in a childlike way, as a Sunday-school-type way: God wants a place in which He can relax. God wants a place where He can rest. God wants a place where He can be Himself—not just official, but Himself.
God longs for that: a place of love, a place of union, a place of fellowship, a place of communion. This is the church He has set out to recover.
Then there is another term used in the New Testament, and it is also very interesting: a bride. A bride.
If I were to turn you again in the Ephesian letter, to Ephesians 5:25-27, we read:
Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that it should be holy and without blemish.
Then, in Ephesians 5:32, Paul says:
This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church.
He was speaking of marriage. Here again, the Holy Spirit uses the most childlike language, in a sense, and says that God’s heart desire is for a bride for His Son. He is looking for a bride for His Son—in one sense, we can almost say His other half.
Entirely wrong theologically, of course, to speak of the Lord needing another half, as if the Lord needs to be complemented, as if He needs someone to balance Him. But here it is: the Bible begins with a marriage, and it ends with a marriage—the marriage of the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb. That cannot be coincidence.
It means that this Book is a love story—a divine love story. God has set out from the very beginning to win mankind to Himself, not only to redeem mankind.
He does not want any old woman. There is an idea in some places that all the bride is is a kind of beautiful face. She adorns the Lord. She sits there beside Him, smiling sweetly, showing her white teeth, with her hair beautifully done. She is a Hollywood star—nothing between here and here, but that does not matter.
Because all the Lord wants is someone who will be a kind of little puppet. She is just part of the drapery, part of the surroundings. That is not what the Lord wants, if I understand the Bible and all the trouble that our Lord has gone to in order to win this church and present her to Himself without spot or wrinkle, that she might be holy and without blemish.
It means that our Lord is seeking those in whom the very nature and character of the Husband have been wrought. Something has been done in this bride, in this church, that has made them not just followers of the Lamb, but lamb-like. The nature of the Lamb is in them.
They can reign with Him because they are identified with Him in every way. This is what God wants to recover.
According to Scripture, woman was taken out of man. This, of course, today is very unpopular, because women feel that somehow or other it makes them unequal. My observation is: I have never yet met an unequal woman.
Women are the most remarkable constituent of mankind. Their influence from behind is always far greater than when they are in the fore, and history proves it. This is one reason why the Word of God says women should be so careful, because when they get too much to the fore, far from getting what they want, they end up with a whole lot of emasculated men. That is exactly where we are getting today.
According to Scripture, the woman was taken out of the side of man. God put him to sleep, took out flesh and bone, created woman, and then presented her to man. In Hebrew, it is very simple: man is called ish, and woman is called ishah. So simple. No inequality there—ish and ishah. They are two halves of one whole.
That is why the two become one thing. Women are different from men, if you have not observed that fact. Women are different from men in many ways. For life, for a home, for a family, you cannot have just a man, and you cannot have just a woman. You have to have a man and a woman.
God instituted this right at the very beginning as a picture of an eternal truth: that He longed for a kind of human being, a kind of man, a kind of mankind that would be able with Him to go with Him, to create, as it were, with Him, to move into the ages to come and all that God has for those ages. This is the bride.
There are many other things I could say about the bride, but that is the simplest way I can put it now. In my estimation, the bride is the overcomer. But I will leave that matter for now.
Then there is a third term used in the New Testament, and only in the New Testament: a body. A body.
Now here is something very interesting. This term would be almost funny—and I am not trying to be irreverent—but it would be almost funny if it were not that the Holy Spirit has used it. Can you ever imagine referring to any collection of people as a body?
We are so used to it now. We say, “Well, it is a body; they have a body of people over there,” or, “Our body.” But really and truthfully, it is extraordinary when you think about it. The people of God were never referred to as a body in the old covenant.
This was the truth kept hidden for ages and generations which has now been revealed. Is there anything more intimate to you than your body?
As I have often said, have you ever seen a living headless body? Now, some people do not use their heads, but they have to have heads on their bodies to be alive. Some people give the impression that they are living death, but so long as there is a head and a body together, they are alive, even if the life is very muted.
But once you have taken a head off the body, it is the end. You can put the body in the medical faculty of a university to be studied by medics, but it is no longer alive. You can pickle it, keep it, preserve it, keep it in a deep freeze—but it is dead. Church history has many such deep freezes.
Once the church has been separated from her Head, the only way she can be kept alive is by putting her into some kind of frozen state.
Now, my dear friends, this matter of a body is very, very important. For everywhere through the New Testament we are told that the church is His body. He is the Head of the body, which is the church. You will never find anywhere that the body is mentioned without the Head, and you will never find the Head mentioned without the body. These two terms belong to each other. They belong to each other.
We have somehow or other managed to get an idea about the church as the body of Christ as if the church can exist without the Head, as if you can alienate it from the Head, divorce it from the Head, and it will go on.
An organization can go on. An institution can go on. A tradition can go on. A system can go on. But an organism such as the body cannot go on without being livingly joined to a head.
Here we have something else which gives us some understanding of what the Lord is desiring. What is His heart’s desire? It is for a body—something so close to Him, so intimate to Him, so one with Him, so in fellowship with Him, that it is like your body joined to your head, and your head joined to your body.
We then have a fourth term. Of course, there are other terms. We have the vine, for instance; we have the household of faith; we have the temple of God. But I think of the city.
Here is something very interesting about the city. When we come to the end of the Bible, we discover to our amazement that this bride, this wife of the Lamb, is the city. This city of God, this New Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven, having the glory of God—it is a bride.
This is the most amazing wedding of two quite different ideas and terms. Nowhere in human life do men ever think of their wives as cities. It is the most extraordinary combination of ideas.
Yet this city is a home. We are told that God and the Lamb dwell there. There is no temple, it says; they are the temple of the city. The city is, as it were, in Them, and They are in the city. They are at home.
This is what it means in Hebrew when it says at the end of the book of Ezekiel that it shall be called Adonai Shammah—the Lord is there. It does not mean the Lord is blessing it, behind it, leading it, or using it. It means the Lord has come home—finally home. He is there forever, eternally, to stay.
A city. We find the city is called a bride. We find the city is so joined to the Lamb that there is no way of distinguishing it, in one sense. It is transparent.
Now, who would want to live in a city that was transparent? Every single wall for see-through! Transparent as crystal. This is a picture of this union—this idea between Head and body. Somehow they are joined together in one.
Now, my dear friends, this is what God desires. It says, if you want to look at it, in Hebrews 11:16:
But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city.
He hath prepared for them a city—that is, all the old-covenant saints, all those Jews who were gloriously saved by the grace of God. When we turn to Hebrews 12:22, we read:
But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
This is the city God’s heart has desired from the very beginning. My dear friends, that which God wants to recover is not just a whole number of things—not just a home, not just a bride. It is something far, far more substantial, far more essential than that.
It is the very meaning for the creation of the universe. It is the very objective of the Lord Jesus’ saving work on the cross. It is the very reason He came into this world to die: that He might redeem us.
No wonder the devil has sought to rob God of this treasure. No wonder there has been colossal conflict and controversy over this matter from the very beginning.
Witness church history—the whole ebb and flow of church history, with all its defeats and failures, sins and departures, and all its story of faith, self-sacrifice, triumph, and fulfilment.
This is the battle you and I find ourselves in today. By the grace of God, we are not so far off the consummation. We do not know how far ahead it is, but we are moving steadily, day by day, week by week, year by year, to the consummation.
We are infinitely nearer to that consummation than at any other time in the history of the church. Let that encourage you.
Now, my dear friends, I want to go a little further. For the sake of any new among us, for whom this whole matter may be new, you hear us talking about recovery, about some of these great men in the church, and about some of these things in church history, and you wonder: What does it all mean?
You take your Bible, and it becomes, I think, clear. Of course, the Lord has to give you that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. I am very conscious that when you talk about a matter like this, I can stand here and talk till kingdom come, and you will not see anything.
In fact, the one danger is that you will try to set something up on the basis of what you hear, if it is a mental appreciation of this truth. But when the Holy Spirit—here is the foolishness of preaching and teaching—we have to preach, prophesy, and teach, knowing full well that only God can give the revelation.
But in some amazing way, God gives revelation when He finds hearts that are humble enough and open enough.
When you take the Bible, I have never been able to understand—as someone who was brought up without a Bible until I was twelve years of age, and who had never, ever looked in one; I did not even own one—how people can say it is filled with myths and legends and inaccuracies, with dozy scribes in Middle Eastern summer afternoons getting things into the Script that should never have been there because they were half asleep.
I find the most amazing thing about the Bible: I find the beginning corresponds to the end.
Genesis 1, 2, and 3, and Revelation 20, 21, and 22, have the most amazing correspondence. This correspondence becomes all the more remarkable when you know that until almost the third or fourth century after the birth of the church at Pentecost, the book of Revelation was disputed and debated.
At times it was put with Luke. At other times they said it should not be in the New Testament. Only finally did it come to rest as the last book of the sixty-six books of the Bible.
But when you look at this correspondence, it is remarkable. Here is something even more remarkable: if you take the first two chapters and the last two chapters, and dismiss Genesis 3—which, of course, it is impossible to do—and Revelation 20, then you have the beginning and the end of a matter without sin and without the fall.
This cannot be coincidence. In the first three chapters, you have heaven on earth. In the last three chapters, you have a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. In the first three chapters, you have time ushered in; in the last three chapters, you have eternity ushered in.
In the first three chapters, you have the river of life. In the last three chapters, you have the river of life flowing out from the city to all the earth. In the first three chapters, you have the tree of life in the midst of the garden; in the last three chapters, you have the tree of life on either side of the river of life, bearing fruit twelve times a year for the healing of the nations.
In the first three chapters, we have a garden into which God places Adam and Eve; in the last three chapters, the garden has been transformed into a city—a garden city, but still a city. Something has happened: out of the garden has been produced a city.
In the first three chapters, we have Adam and Eve, and then the fall, and the whole sad story of mankind begins. In the last three chapters, we have a redeemed multitude that no man can number.
In the first three chapters, we have earthly marriage—Adam and Eve brought together. In the last three chapters, we have eternal marriage, or heavenly marriage—the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb brought together forever.
In the first three chapters, we have the introduction of death, mourning, crying, and pain. In the last three chapters, we hear the glorious words:
There shall be no more death, neither mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.
In the first three chapters, we have three materials mentioned, and you have to follow the river in that garden to find them: gold, precious stone—onyx—and bdellium.
Bdellium is a very interesting thing. When you break it, it is an aromatic plant which exudes something that looks like a pearl. It was sometimes used in necklaces when it hardened. Some of the rabbis say that this word bdellium in Hebrew actually means “the river pearl.”
But you have three materials. It is very interesting. Why in the world should they be mentioned? What is the writer trying to do by telling us there is gold if you follow the river, and that there is onyx?
You will remember that the twelve stones, upon which were engraved the names of the tribes of Israel, were all gathered upon the shoulder stone, which was onyx. So we find that onyx is the stone that, as it were, is comprehensive. It gathers up all the others.
When we come to the last three chapters of the Bible, there are only three materials, and out of these three materials God has fashioned a city and has fashioned a bride: gold, refined so that it is transparent as crystal; precious stones, not only formed in the deep, dark places of the earth but worked upon until they have become the twelve foundations of that eternal habitation of God; and pearl.
There are the twelve gates of the city. A pearl is produced by a bit of worthless grit that falls into the softest part of the clam and irritates the clam until it puts a coat round it, and another coat, and another coat, and another coat.
So every one of those priceless pearls that rich ladies wear has at its heart a worthless bit of grit.
This is the story of the city: gold, the nature of Christ; precious stone, the fellowship of His sufferings; and the pearl, inexplicable suffering. Out of these three things the city is made.
Now, my dear friends, do you think that is coincidence? Do you think it is coincidence that the Bible could begin and end like that? Surely it means the Bible has a theme. Somewhere between all these things we find in the first three chapters and all these things we find in the last three chapters, we find the answer.
Now, I do not want to be fanciful. But if you take your Bible and open it more or less at the centre, what do you come to? You come to two little books: Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, both written by Solomon.
Most Christians do not understand how the book of Ecclesiastes ever got into Scripture. They say it is the most dull and empty and boring little book. It is just things you do not find anywhere else—quite wrong things, some people think.
But, my dear friends, you can never come to the truth of the Song of Solomon if you have not discovered the truth of Ecclesiastes. The recurring theme of Ecclesiastes is vanity: vanity, all is vanity. Everything under the sun is vanity.
Let me put it another way from the Hebrew: empty, empty, everything is empty. Let me put it another way: futile, futile, everything is futile.
Until you and I learn that lesson—and how many Christians need to learn—we are putting our treasure in the wrong place. The Song of Solomon is meant to be wed with Ecclesiastes.
Here is someone who, as it were, explored everything, did everything imaginable, and had enough money to do it. He built parks, had zoological gardens, and had wonderful architecture. He married a thousand women. No, I should not say that here, but it certainly represents some experience.
King Solomon used to go down to En-gedi for his honeymoons, and the story is, in my part, where I live quite near En-gedi, that he was very rarely out of En-gedi.
But in spite of that, he said, “Vanity, vanity, it is all vanity.” Many people think, “Maybe I married the wrong person. If I had married someone else, life would be a little different.” After you have married a thousand, you realize there is something more.
Really, I am not joking. Some people think that if they could only have enough money to have great grounds and lay them out, they would feel fulfilled. He did it, and found it all futile.
The magnificence of Solomon—his gardens, palaces, and temple—was proverbial. But he says, “It is empty, empty. Everything is empty.”
Then we come to the Song of Solomon, and here we have the most amazing thing. Now, being a Jew, I accept certain traditions among us. One of those traditions, which I believe to be right, is that the Song of Solomon was a vision given to King Solomon in the night by God.
Solomon, from the very beginning, understood it to be a picture of the Lord and Israel. So here, at the very heart of the Bible, in the old covenant—buried there in the old covenant—we have the heart of this whole matter that explains the first three chapters of Genesis and the last three chapters of Revelation.
Here is God seeking for this bride. Thus He wins her, and of course she is interested. Think of the status. Think of the status. She is going to be something.
Then she becomes very blousy. She says, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.”
Then she goes through a few experiences, and after those experiences there is a subtle but significant change. She says, “I am my beloved’s, and he is mine.” That is a subtle but fundamental change.
But then she goes through a few more experiences, and then she says, “I am my beloved’s.” The Lord has brought her to a place where she can so trust Him that she does not have to lay claim any more to her rights—not even to a crown, not even to an inheritance. She trusts Him.
The last picture we have in the Song of Solomon is incredibly beautiful. She turns to her husband and lover and bridegroom, and she says, “I have a little sister, and she has not grown up. What shall we do for her?”
The bridegroom says, “We will do this, and we will do that, and we will do the other, so that she may grow up.” What a wonderful picture of what God does with us.
Most of Christianity is built on this: “My beloved is mine. Mine, mine, mine. The crown is mine. The salvation is mine. Eternal life is mine. Everything is mine.” We are only interested in what is mine.
We will go to any meeting or any conference if it is something to do with what is mine: my fullness, my power, my status, my position, my gifts. It is not necessarily wrong, but you see what I mean. We are so interested in me.
It takes the Lord a long time in the church to bring us to the place where we can say, “I am His, and He is mine—His inheritance, His will, His goal, His end.”
Oh, my dear friends, I have to watch the time. It is even more wonderful when we get to the place where our life is so laid down that we do not bother any more about my crown, my reward, my status, my position, or my ministry. It is just Him.
When I look at this, I begin to understand something. I can see now what God is recovering. I can see why the enemy has tried to rob God’s people of this matter and to rob God, above all, of this.
For there is an enemy who has said, “I will be like the Most High. I will exalt my throne to the stars of God.”
This, dear friends, is God’s eternal purpose. That is why we read those wonderful phrases which our brother Joshua Yu spoke last night, when he said that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to a purpose.
Then there are those wonderful words in Ephesians 3:11:
According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Or, to put it another way: according to the eternal purpose which He secured, or realized, in Christ Jesus our Lord.
My dear friends, this is our high calling. This is why the apostle says again in the Ephesian letter, “Walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.” How few Christians even know what the calling is.
We have lost so much that we think the eternal purpose of God is salvation. We think that the eternal purpose of God is merely to get us converted, and once we are converted, that is it. We think that the calling of God is just to be saved.
Of course, it includes that. But the eternal purpose of God is that you be saved unto that purpose of Him—to the fulfilment of it, to the securing of it.
This high calling of ours is described in Philippians 3:14, in that most remarkable testimony, in my estimation, in the New Testament:
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
That is such a mouthful that most people never get it. Think again. Here again: the on-high calling. Where is this on-high calling? The on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus. On-high calling in Christ Jesus. Unto the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
“I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Oh, dear friend, do you not find this marvellous?
We will have to end now, I think. But this is the explanation of history. I hope it excites you as much as it does me. I do not mean church history—all history. It is the explanation of history.
God chose Abraham, and out of Abraham He brought a people. That people was to be a chosen vessel to God, through which should come the covenants of God to all the nations of the earth; through which should come the oracles, or revelation, of God to the whole earth; through which should come the promises of God to all the earth; and through which should come the Messiah.
The Messiah would finish the work of salvation for all nations.
God began with the Jewish people and has gone to the ends of the earth. Now, from every tongue, kindred, people, and nation, He is calling out those who will be His home, His bride, the body of His Son, the eternal city.
My dear friends, it began with the Jews, and in the end it will end with them. But that is another matter.
So finally, we ask ourselves: What is the church?
From what I have said, I hope it is perfectly clear: the church is not an organization, though it has organization. It is not an institution, although it was instituted by our Lord. The church is not a denomination—I hope that is perfectly clear—unless it is the denomination of those called Christ’s own.
The church is not even a congregation of believers, although it does consist of believers. It is a congregation, but if we stop there, we have not understood it. Then we stop with an Old Testament Christianity, where it is a matter of a congregation or an assembly of believers.
The church is oneness with the Lord Jesus. It is as simple as that. It is my oneness with the Lord Jesus and your oneness with the Lord Jesus. If I am one with the Lord Jesus and you are one with the Lord Jesus, what has happened to you and me? We have to be one.
What is our oneness? It does not consist in the colour of my skin. It does not consist in my national background, my racial background, my denominational upbringing, my social class, or anything else.
My oneness with you depends upon the simple fact that you are one with my Lord and I am one with Him. So He is our oneness.
Now, this sounds wonderful when we talk about it, but when it comes down to practice, my word, we have some problems. It is as simple as that.
We get these complex theological equations about the church which are so monstrously complex that you have to have an academic brain of the highest order to unravel them. They are rather like these incredible pictures painted by incredible painters, where you need a pilot to explain them to you—an eye up here, a foot down there, a hand here, and a bird flying right across.
I do not understand some of this stuff. I know I shall get into trouble with some who do understand it, but I just do not understand it.
A little while ago, I said to the mayor of Jerusalem, “I hope we are not going to have any more of these dreadful things that are appearing all over the city.” These artists think they would like to give something to the city of Jerusalem; they like to feel it is there in Jerusalem.
We had the most incredible things being given to us: a huge thing up to those lights in girders, which looks like a huge crab on top of one of the hills, painted orange. Then, just behind my home, we have a whole great lot of cubes of stone, as if they had fallen out of heaven, all at different angles—just cubes for people to write graffiti on.
They say, “Well, this is natural art.” But then I wonder why we cannot leave natural art as natural art. This is the kind of thing we find in the countryside. Why not leave it like that?
However, I must not go into this matter too deeply. My point is this: the way the church is sometimes explained is so complex that most believers stand there with their mouths open, saying, “What is it? What is it all about? I do not understand it. You have got to be a theologian to understand the church.”
So they put it into a realm where nobody ever will understand. My dear friends, the church is simplicity itself.
The church—listen very carefully—is Christ, the new man in two parts. He is the Head, and we are the body. That is why, when the Holy Spirit came, the first time He found home was in Jesus, and the second time He found home was in the second part of Christ: the body.
New man. So the church is simply this: you are one with Christ, and I am one with Christ. Christ lives in you, and the same Christ lives in me.
In those early days, there was no great problem. If you were in Christ and Christ was in you, you found everyone else in the village, town, or city in whom Christ was found and who was dwelling in Christ. Everyone who was one with the Lord Jesus—you just found them.
Today we have a much more complex situation, with every conceivable type of group, assembly, fellowship, organization, tradition, institution, and everything else. Sometimes we are told to choose where we like the service best.
We are told, as I remember one book putting it, that it is like a greengrocer: go where you feel you get the best vegetables and the best food. But that seems to be a very poor way of looking at it.
In the recovery of the church are a whole number of features that are essential to it—to the church. Essential, not merely secondary, but essential.
The person of Jesus: as foundation, as cornerstone, as Head of the corner, and top stone. I am going to leave that until tomorrow. I just mention it.
Another matter of recovery is the absolute headship of Jesus. What a mess we have made in the church. My dear friends, what a tragedy we see today on the Christian scene.
Anybody who enjoys this dreadful business that has hit the headlines for the last six months should be ashamed of himself. There are those who delight in it as some kind of evidence that charismatics are evil.
My dear friends, it is our family—our family—and it is our Lord Who has been disgraced.
Any one of us can fall into the same trap unless we allow God to do such a work in us that we come under the lordship of Jesus in such a total way that we are prepared for the cross in our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit.
The whole problem is empire-building, which is in every one of us. We want status. We want position. We want ministry. We want power. We want influence. We can throw stones at these others, but that is all that has happened on a much bigger scale.
Once you have built your empire, you have to finance it, and continue to finance it. You become a slave to the system you have produced.
Dear friends, what a need there is for us in these days to know the headship of Jesus.
What a need there is for us to know how to maintain the unity of the Spirit. We all talk about it. We all look down our noses at the United Nations; we call it the disunited nations. We say Christ is the answer.
But, my dear friends, everywhere one goes, it is division, faction, disunity, alienation, and disaffection—everywhere among Christians.
It is all very well for us to speak about Christ as our oneness and Christ as the answer, but oh, to know it in experience.
So, my dear friends, all these constituents of recovery are to do with the Lord Jesus. They are all to do with His person, His headship, and His life.
How exciting it is to live in this day and generation. There are others who would have liked to have lived in ages gone before. People are always telling me how they wish they had been there when Lazarus was raised from the dead, or when the five thousand were fed.
They wish they had been there in the early church. I bet they would be as disaffected within weeks as they are now.
People always look at the early church with rose-coloured spectacles. “It was so wonderful.” They altogether forget that within a generation there were all kinds of things. Paul and Barnabas could not get on. Once Paul and Peter had a row in public.
Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead in a church meeting and, furthermore, were carried out and buried on the spot. Some kind of church meeting that was.
There were Jezebels teaching the deep things of Satan. There was Nicolaitanism—that is, the whole priestly caste imported from the Greek mystery cult. My dear friends, it was no bed of roses.
Leaders of the church were martyred. Persecution came again and again. Nobody knew when the next round of persecution was coming. But we still insist on looking at it through our rose-coloured spectacles.
Our big problem is that we are looking for the perfect church. There is no such thing as the perfect church down here on earth. If you find the perfect church, let me tell you something: you have not found the church; you have found an artificial counterfeit.
You see, my dear friends, I could take, by selection, thirty, thirty-five, or even fifty of you. If you were prepared for the discipline and prepared to do exactly what I say all the time, I could take about fifty of you, and I reckon within ten to fifteen years I could batter you and beat you into shape.
You would say the right thing. I would give you studies—deep studies, simple studies, all kinds of studies. I would examine you to make sure you got it.
We would weed out all those who fell short, so that in the end, instead of being fifty-five, we were only forty. We kicked out the troublemakers. Now finally, with my forty of you, we have the perfect church. We are the church in Richmond.
Then what about our prayer meetings? Because we do give you freedom in a prayer meeting, and at one prayer meeting someone prays, “Lord, we are so concerned that all the unsaved people around us in Richmond—save them, Lord.”
Then something happened, and suddenly three thousand get saved. No! The church in Richmond is three thousand and forty. Only the trouble is, we have homosexuals, lesbians, alcoholics, drug addicts, swindlers, prostitutes, adulterers—all saved.
Now, nobody here who has been a few years in the Lord is going to tell me that these people’s problems are answered overnight. We all know that these cases take time. Take, for instance, drug addiction or alcoholism. My word, a person can get saved, but to get them delivered and straightened out so that they become normal is a decade of ministry.
Now what has happened to our perfect church? Suddenly, someone is not telling the truth. Someone over here is testifying to things they do not experience. Our church is no longer perfect, but it is a real church.
Our big problem in Western Christianity, and indeed Christianity throughout the world, is that we are all seeking the perfect church. So we all go to a new church and say, “Oh, it is perfect. Look at them—those lovely shining faces, the way they sing, the way they take the Lord’s table. It is all perfect.”
But when we have been there for one and a half to two years—generally that is about as much time as you need—we suddenly become quite disillusioned. We are thinking of leaving. “It is dreadful,” you say. “Dreadful.”
“Mother So-and-so always has the same thing. So-and-so, every time they pray, it is just like taking the order—it is the same thing. And the Shows cannot get on with So-and-so. They never get things booked right.” We are disillusioned. We feel the ministry is poor, especially when we get corrected on something.
So now we are looking for a new fellowship that is perfect. We go from fellowship to fellowship, from assembly to assembly, from group to group, always looking for the perfect church.
Paul spoke of silly women—and I do not know why he said women, because I have known some men in the same category—who go from house to house, meaning house church to house church, ever learning and never arriving at the truth.
It is a perfect description of so much among us—not just women either—going from group to group, ever learning, never arriving at the truth, at reality.
My dear friends, may God help us in all this complexity to find that foundation which is the Lord Jesus. Once we have found it, may we stay on it by the grace of God with everybody else who is on that foundation, and go through together in the days that lie ahead.
I wonder sometimes how much longer we have left to us for church building. I really do. I sometimes wonder whether the day is almost gone.
My dear friends, let us learn the lessons God would teach us now. If this is so precious to God that He has sought over many centuries to recover this whole matter, let us, by His grace, be found in what He is doing.
Shall we pray?
Heavenly Lord, You know the heart of every one of us here. Give us that revelation of Yourself. The apostle Paul said that he was not disobedient to that heavenly vision. Lord, we pray that that kind of vision may be given to us.
May the eyes of our hearts be enlightened, that we may know You, Lord, in a deeper way, and begin to understand what it is that You are seeking to do in our day and generation.
How, Lord, in a right way, how proud we are that we have this great history behind us—all those who have gone before, going right back to the beginning of time. But how proud we are even of those, Lord, in this age, in this New Testament age—all those who have been in the vanguard of everything You have done through these centuries, through these generations.
Lord, open our eyes and fill us anew with Your Holy Spirit, so that we may be enabled, O Lord, to be faithful witnesses and functioning members of the body of our Lord Jesus. We ask it in His precious name. Amen.