If you will turn with me once again to the New Testament, I am going to read in the Ephesian letter, in Chapter 3, those verses that we have read each evening: Ephesians 3, from verse 14.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
And then, in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, Philippians 3.
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh:
though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more:
circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;
as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.
Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ.
Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ,
and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith:
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death;
if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you:
only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk.
Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and mark them that so walk even as ye have us for an ensample.
And back to the Ephesian letter: one verse, 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.
So we bow together in a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank You that, as we come now to the ministry of Your Word, we can depend and rely upon You, because You have, Lord, made a specific provision for this time of ministry.
We thank You, Lord, because left to our own devices, we can use many words, outline many truths, give even sound doctrine; but, Lord, it will all be of no eternal value. Preserve us, Lord, from just adding to our academic knowledge of things about You.
We pray, Lord, that You will this night touch the eyes of our hearts. Give us vision, Lord, as we have prayed, as we have sung, to nerve us for the fight. Lord, open our eyes to see something of the fathomless depths there are in our Lord Jesus, something of a wider horizon, something of the goal that You have set before us. Lord, only You can do this.
And, Lord, I am entirely inadequate. I am thankful, Lord, that Your Holy Spirit is here and that He is able to take this poor frame and use it, Lord, to communicate the burden of Your heart. Do it, O Lord.
By faith, we all stand together, speaker and hearer, into that anointing, that we may know that touch of Yours upon my speaking and upon our hearing, so that Your purpose in this time may be gloriously fulfilled.
Thank You, Lord, for being with us in all the times we have had. Thank You for these young people and children. We thank You for them, Lord, and for the love that has gone into all the preparation of the times they have had.
Thank You, Lord, that as we come toward the end of this conference, tonight and tomorrow, You are going to be with us in an especial way. We thank You and praise You, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I want, as the Lord helps me this evening, to speak about the goal that God has set before us.
There is a tremendous emphasis in the New Testament on this. I think it is very largely overlooked in Christian circles.
We tend to think that conversion, being born again, our salvation, is the end of the whole matter. That is all that matters: to be saved.
Well, it is quite obvious that to be born again is fundamental and essential. If we are not born again, we cannot start in the race; we cannot enter the family of God; we cannot belong to the household of faith; we cannot be partakers of the commonwealth of Israel.
But that is only the beginning. And to make the beginning the end is a catastrophe.
Some people go further, and they feel that what is required is an experience of the Holy Spirit. Whether we call it the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or the empowering of the Holy Spirit—whatever we like to call it—we feel that is the end of the whole matter.
Once you have had that experience of the Holy Spirit, you have arrived. There is no more to be had. You have now come to the end of God’s purpose. His purpose is not only to save you, but to anoint you and empower you with the Holy Spirit.
There are others who feel that it is necessary to have an experience of the cross: that it is not only necessary to be saved, but we must know what it is to be crucified with Christ. And that is the end of the matter.
Once we have laid down our lives for the Lord, we have arrived. We have now entered into a new dimension, and that is the end of the whole matter. There is no more. That is it.
Some people have got the idea that church truth is the end of the whole matter: that once we have seen the church, once we have seen the real nature of the church, then all we have to do is set the thing up, and that is the end of the whole matter. That is all that is required. That is the end of salvation; that is the end of the matter.
But all these things, all these experiences, are only beginnings.
Every single one of these things—obviously, to be born again is the very beginning—but all these other things are but a means to an end. Even our fellowship together, even our being built up together, even our maintaining of the unity of the Spirit, is all a means to an end.
We have to, with very real sadness, note the tragic level of superficiality that there is amongst us who know and love the Lord.
There is such a shallowness. There is such a characterless type of Christian life—anemic, colorless, spineless.
I suppose the affluence of Western society has had much to do with this. It has produced a kind of lukewarmness that is quite satisfied with outward things and satisfied with basically a superficial knowledge.
But this is not the New Testament. It is not the whole counsel of God. It is not even the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
For once we begin to look at the Word of God, especially these letters that have been my especial assignment in these evening times in connection with the fulness of Christ, in connection with pressing on into that fulness, we discover that there is warning after warning after warning after warning:
Do not go back. Do not give up. Do not cast away your confidence. Do not settle down. Go on. Press on. Move on. Enter in. Lay hold.
You will find it everywhere.
There is no such thing in the letters that we have been considering as a kind of quietist passivity—a kind of, “We have got it all. We do not have to do anything. We just sit still. We know it all. We have it all.”
Let us just take a look. Consider, first of all, the phrases “goal,” “prize,” or “reward.” There is quite a lot there. We cannot possibly look at it all, but just a few Scriptures.
Take, for instance, 1 Corinthians 9. The first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 9, from verse 24. Listen carefully to it.
Know ye not that they that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run, that ye may attain.
And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.
I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the air:
but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.
Now, that is pretty severe talk. There is a prize. There is a race to be run. There is a discipline to be exercised. And there is the possibility of being rejected—not to do with salvation, but to do with the end of the whole matter, the inheritance, if you like, the goal of the whole matter.
Again, turn to Colossians 2:18. Just one little phrase:
Let no man rob you of your prize.
Let no man rob you of your prize.
Look at Philippians, the passage we read together, verse 14:
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
So there is a prize. There is a race to be run, and apparently not everybody obtains the prize.
Look again at 2 Timothy, the second letter of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4:7.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
He has fought the fight. He has finished the course, and he has kept the faith. So there is a race to be run, a course to be finished.
Then we find this call to go on, to press on, to enter in, or to lay hold. Look at Hebrews 6:1. I hope you do not mind this Bible study, but once we have gone through some of these Scriptures, then we will be able to say quite a lot about them.
Wherefore leaving the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let us press on unto perfection.
Or, to full growth, to completion, to fulness. Let us press on to full growth.
Or again, Hebrews 4:1:
Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
And verse 11:
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.
It is the Hebrew letter. Look back again to 1 Timothy 6:12:
Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called.
Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on life eternal. It may be yours, but is it your experience? Lay hold on it.
Or again, look back to Philippians 3, verse 12:
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
And verse 14:
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Is it not interesting that the apostle says in verse 15, “Let us therefore, as many as are full-grown, be thus minded”? And again, in verse 17, “Brethren, be ye imitators of me.”
Imitators in what way? Imitators in this pressing on, in this laying hold on that for which also he was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
And lastly, in connection with this, back to the Hebrew letter: a very interesting little phrase right at the beginning, in Hebrews 2:3:
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?
This, of course, is written to believers. How shall we escape? That is, escape losing the reward, losing the prize, losing our inheritance. How shall we escape such a loss if we neglect so great a salvation?
It is one thing to be saved; it is one thing to know the salvation of God. But are we neglecting it? Are we appropriating everything that has been given to us in that so great salvation?
In other words, the warning of God’s Word, especially in these letters, is this: if we do not press on, if we do not enter into what the Lord has already won for us, if we do not lay hold on that which He has freely given us, we stand to lose very much indeed.
Now, I would like to take you all one step further, if you are still with me and not fast asleep. I want you to look at this passage that we read together in the third chapter of the Philippian letter.
It is the most remarkable testimony in the Bible. I say that without feeling any possibility of contradiction. I think it is the most remarkable testimony in the whole Bible, certainly within the New Testament.
Here we have the veil drawn on one side, and we see into the heart of the Apostle Paul. We understand something of his spiritual character, something of the vision, the heavenly vision, that came to him and that, in one sense, obsessed him.
From the moment God gave him that vision of the goal, of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he could not be the same. He was spoiled for anything less, anything other than God’s highest and God’s uttermost.
It is the most remarkable testimony. Consider it, will you, for a few moments? I wonder how many of you read this, and, as they say in Irish English, it runs off you like water off a duck’s back.
What does Paul mean? Listen to this phrase, verse 8:
That I may gain Christ.
He says, “I count all things but loss, that I may gain Christ.” That is the most unevangelical language I have ever heard. What is he talking about?
You do not win Christ through doing things. Christ is God’s unspeakable gift to us. We receive the Lord Jesus by faith. He is God’s gift to us. It is grace, not works.
So why is Paul saying, “I suffer the loss of all things, that I may gain Christ,” or, “that I may win Christ”? What can he be talking about? Does he mean that he does not have Christ? Does he mean that Christ is not living in him? Does he mean that he is not in Christ now? I do not understand it.
This letter was written—I might just put in the historical footnote—after this apostle had already written the Roman letter, the first Corinthian letter, the second Corinthian letter, the Galatian letter, the first Thessalonian letter, the second Thessalonian letter, and the letter to Philemon.
Now, would you not, if you read the Roman letter, the first and second Corinthian letters, the Galatian letter, the first and second Thessalonian letters, and the Philemon letter, say, “This man definitely knows the Lord”?
There is no shadow of a doubt about it: this man knows the Lord. He is in Christ; he is joined to Christ; and Christ is dwelling in him. There is no doubt about it.
I have often said to some of you—but you will pardon me saying it again—if I had only been used by the Lord to write just 1 Corinthians 12, I would have been very excited. Or just Romans 8: it would have satisfied me. I would have said to you for all eternity, “Did you ever read the chapter I wrote?”
I would have been so thrilled just to have been used by the Lord to write one little portion of these letters. But this man has written the whole of Romans—Romans 1 through 16. Incredible!
I would have been happy to have written 1 Corinthians 13, but he wrote the whole thing. I would have been very happy to have written just 1 Corinthians 3 and 1 Corinthians 4, but he wrote the whole letter.
And Galatians, and 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon—before he wrote in this testimony, “I count all things but loss, that I may win Christ.”
What is he talking about? What is he talking about? If he has not already won Christ, or gained Christ, from what he has written in his letters, where does it leave me?
Have you got a knowledge of the Lord like he has? I must be in the outer rings of darkness.
“That I may gain Christ.” And then I think of another little phrase we have here. He says in verse 12, “Not that I have already obtained, or am already full-grown.”
Well, forgetting “full-grown” for one moment, what does he mean, “Not that I have already obtained”?
This man, in his second Corinthian letter, Chapter 12, tells us he was caught up to the third heaven and heard things that it is not even lawful for a man to utter. Now, I would have said that represents some kind of obtaining.
I mean, today, especially in charismatic circles, if you have only been caught up to the first heaven, you go all round the platforms of the earth telling everybody what you learned in the first heaven, what was revealed to you.
But here is someone who was caught up to the third heaven and heard things which, he said, he was forbidden to talk about, forbidden to share. And he says, “Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect, or full-grown.”
What can he mean? Where does it leave you and me?
Or I think again of verse 13: “I do not consider myself yet to have laid hold.” Well now, this is getting me so confused. I had always understood that when you are saved and when you are born again, you have received the Lord Jesus.
Now, from this testimony of the Apostle Paul—not written in the first shaky moments of his conversion, not written just a month or two after he found the Lord, but quite some time afterwards, when he had real experience and had been used by God in many, many marvelous ways—we find him talking like this.
What does he mean?
And then I think of another most extraordinary little phrase. Now, I am not going to stay on it; perhaps Brother Stephen will, even though he is dealing with the book of Revelation.
But in verse 11 it says, “That I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” Now, this is very interesting. Everybody is going to be raised from the dead, are they not?
There is a general resurrection, it says in the book of Revelation, of the good and the evil. Everybody is going to be raised.
Well now, here is a very interesting thing. In the Greek it says literally, “That I may attain unto the out-resurrection from among the dead.” So this is apparently a special resurrection.
Now, if that has not confused you, I do not know what will, because I am not going to explain it at all. I am simply saying that here, buried in this testimony of this apostle, is the most remarkable statement.
He says, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. I count these things but refuse, that I may win Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own.”
And then he goes on: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death, that I may attain unto this special resurrection.”
Apparently, this is not to do with salvation. It is something beyond salvation. It is the goal of salvation. It is the end of the whole matter, not the beginning—the end of the whole matter.
We find it in this marvelous verse, verse 14: “I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Now, this is a mouthful, so let us stop for one moment.
First of all, we have the high calling of God. The high calling of God.
We know that we have been called with a tremendous calling. I spoke, when I had the first evening on these letters, on the greatness of the calling and destiny of the child of God. We have been called with a tremendous call, a high calling.
So here is the first thing: the high calling of God. Everyone who is born of God, everyone who has been saved by the grace of God, everyone who has been marvelously delivered from the powers of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, has been called with a high calling.
The high calling of God—that is the first thing.
Now, will you please notice the second thing? It is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Not the high calling of God to do with the Lord Jesus, or the high calling of God about the Lord Jesus. It is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
It is as if God is calling us to something in His Son, something to do with the status of His Son, something to do with the future of His Son, something to do with the destiny of the Messiah. He is calling us into an involvement, into a partnership, into a sharing—something to do with His Son, the Lord Jesus.
The high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Then here is the third thing. Listen carefully: the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
So there is a prize to be won. There is a race to be run. There is a fight to be fought. There is a course to be finished. There is a faith to be kept. There is a ministry to be fulfilled. It is to do with a prize: the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Now, are you ready for the fourth thing? “Toward the goal.” Toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
So the goal is the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Oh, dear children of God, if this had only been understood by the people of God down through the generations, what a difference it would have made to our Christian life, to our gatherings together, to our whole mentality, to our whole concept.
We have such small horizons.
Would it not have been something if we had understood this? Now we begin to understand. Apparently, this winning of Christ is nothing to do with being saved, being converted, or being born again.
It is to do with something God has as an end of our salvation—something into which you and I have been saved, something over which God has brought us to a new birth.
Once we are saved, once we are born of God, once we belong to the Lord, then we have this prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. It is ours, and we have to press on.
Now, do you begin to get it? If we do not count things but loss, if we do not forget the things which are behind, if we do not stretch forward to the things which are before, if we do not lay hold on that for which also we were laid hold on by Christ Jesus, if we do not press on, we are going to lose the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Now, of course, we have to ask ourselves: what is this?
I do not personally have much problem on this point—the statement I am just going to make—and that is: it has something to do with being filled unto all the fulness of God.
It has something to do with the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.
In other words, now listen very carefully. Some of you may have heard me say it before, or certainly heard Stephen say it. But listen very carefully, because maybe the Holy Spirit will bring it into your heart in a new way this evening.
It is to do with gaining—not Christ as Saviour, but Christ as Bridegroom.
Did you hear that?
It is not to do with gaining Christ the Saviour. You do not win Christ the Saviour. He is given to you as Saviour freely by the grace of God.
So is Christ given to you as Bridegroom, but you have to go on. You have to grow up. You have to press on. You have to enter in. You have to lay hold on that for which also you were laid hold on.
Why do you think the Lord Jesus saved you? Why do you think He arrested you? Why do you think He brought you to a new birth? Why do you think He changed the whole course of your life?
He laid hold on you. Christ Jesus took hold of you. He arrested you. He apprehended you. He laid hold on you. But, my dear friend, what for?
That you might be His bride.
The breadth and the length and the height and the depth—to know the love of Messiah which passeth knowledge. That is the goal. That is the end of the whole matter.
That is why the Bible ends with a marriage. That is why, in the very last chapters of the Bible, you suddenly find the Father bringing the Son, the Lamb, and the wife of the Lamb together in a marriage supper, in an eternal union.
We are only betrothed at present; we are only engaged at present. We are not yet married.
And, as we all know, engagements can be broken off.
This goal, this prize, is something more than conversion or new birth. Let me say it again: something more than an experience, however deep and full, of the Holy Spirit; something more than even an experience of the cross, however radical and revolutionary it may be.
This goal is the end of all this.
Now, are you ready for something else? Go back to Ephesians 4 and verse 13. Do you think this explains something?
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
and of the full knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a full-grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
I have never been able to understand, in Christian circles—and I had a non-Christian background and upbringing—this idea that somehow or other we can live careless lives as believers.
Though saved, though born again, we can live careless lives; and when we die, somehow God is going to wave a kind of wand over us, and all of a sudden we become full-grown saints.
We can have been a total pain in the neck to everybody all through our miserable little lives, but evidently when we die, if we are saved, God is going to wave one over us and we become perfect, full-fledged saints. It is incredible.
Even the Lord Jesus, who was without sin, was made perfect through the things which He suffered—made mature, came to completion, came to full growth through the things which He suffered. How much more you and I.
Now, what I am trying to say is this; listen carefully. The bride that the Lord Jesus is seeking—He does not want some Hollywood-type film star, beautiful to look at, with nothing between the ears and nothing behind the eyes.
But there is some kind of idea that that is just what the Lord wants. He wants a kind of beautiful façade. She must not think, because He is going to do all the thinking. She must not work, because He is going to do all the working. She must not be anything. She is just a dummy. She sits there beside Him, looking pretty, on the throne, dressed magnificently.
You know the kind of idea. This is not what the Lord is looking for.
He wants people who have stepped in the same footsteps as the Lord Jesus, who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes.
People who, through all the vicissitudes of life—the circumstances and situations—have been made like the Lamb, have been conformed to His image, have been pressed until somehow they have come to maturity. They have grown up. They have become full-grown.
I think I might say, for the sake of all the ladies here, that in Ephesians 4, when it says “a full-grown man,” it does not mean a full-grown male. It means a full-grown person.
Now, we know ourselves it is impossible to marry a child to a full-grown adult. What kind of wedding would it be? What kind of marriage would it be? What kind of family could they produce? What kind of household could they set up?
Yet somehow, in Christian circles, we think that the first great multitude of kindergarten babies in the people of the kingdom of God are going to be married to the Lord Jesus forever. What kind of bride is it going to be? It is impossible.
Unless you and I are prepared for the disciplines of the Holy Spirit, unless we are prepared for the school of the Holy Spirit, unless we are prepared to be led into deep and sometimes very difficult paths, unless we are prepared to have our capacity for the Lord extended and deepened, unless we are prepared to come to places where we learn how to overcome as He overcame, by the same Spirit, through the same laying down of our lives, we can never come to the goal.
God is looking, if I may put it like this, for a queen for the King—one who has the same nature and the same life, has come to the same full growth, and has the same maturity.
She can be His helpmeet. She can be His partner. She can be His complement. She can share with Him in the ages of the ages to come.
As I understand it, that is what this Ephesians 4:13 is really referring to: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, to a full knowledge of the Son of God, to a full-grown maturity, a full-grown person, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Now I begin to understand what caught that amazing Jewish apostle. He has seen something.
The Holy Spirit has touched the eyes of his heart. He is no theologian. He is no sermon preacher. He is no mere Bible-study giver.
This man has caught a vision of the horizons of God. He has caught a vision of the end of the whole matter. He has suddenly seen that this whole creation and this whole universe—and beyond it, perhaps other universes—are dependent upon the Son finding a partner.
So that together, into the ages to come, they may go to fulfill the will of God and to do the works of God.
I know it is a very common thing in Christian circles, because we all get so weary down here and tired down here—more so than ever in the latter part of the twentieth century—to glory in those hymns that tell us we are going to lie on beds of flowery ease for ever and ever and ever.
Evidently, now we have to walk and work and war, but then, as one old hymn says, “Then to rest for ever.” We get the idea that we are going to lie down on these lovely beds and have angels come and give us tea if you are British, coffee if you are American, and Chinese tea if you are Chinese.
I mean, all these kinds of things. You sort of just see endless, endless, endless, endless rest—nothing to do except sing.
Now, I have nothing against singing, and nothing against really praising the Lord. I think it is the most wonderful thing. Of course, there is one sense in which we owe it to the Lord to praise Him and worship Him for all eternity.
But God is just not like that. He wants to be praised, and He wants to be worshipped, and heaven will be filled in the ages to come with the song of the redeemed. But, my dear folks, God wants to get on with the job.
I do not even know what the job is. But when He first created this universe and created this whole creation, even though in its present state it is in bondage to corruption, we see something of the original design of God.
How marvelous this world is. How marvelous its ecology is. How amazing its balance is. There is a universe in a drop of water, and there are universes beyond this universe. Somehow or other, all of it was created by God. What is His purpose?
Do you think that the Lord has exhausted Himself? Do you think He has said, “Well, I cannot do anything. I have done it all. When they fell, they ruined it all, but the only thing I can do is restore it. I cannot do any more. I have exhausted the whole bag of tricks. There is not any more”?
Oh, my dear friend, do not be stupid. Just do not be stupid.
God is infinitely creative.
And in one sense, He has held Himself up because this whole creation, which He destined for His glory, fell short because of man.
One day, when somehow or other He brings the bride and the Lamb together, then He will go on with the original thought.
That is why the prophets speak in terms that, well, they can only use human pictures. They speak of trees clapping their hands. Have you ever seen trees clapping their hands? Valleys singing for joy, and fields breaking into song? Never heard such a thing.
We have never seen an ox and a lion lying down together—not just eating, one over there and one over there, but actually sleeping, head on each other, lying down together. Children playing with a viper. This is what it says in the Book.
When it says, “The knowledge of the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea,” and even if it refers to the millennium, still the ages that are to come beyond it—that millennium is but the faintest picture of a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Now, the heart of this thing, the pivotal point, the focal point, the strategic point in this, is the obtaining of the bride.
That is why, when we come to the last part of the Bible, we see in the very last verses, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” It is almost a marvelous picture, as if the Holy Spirit has finally produced the bride and He says to the whole creation, “Come.”
Now, dear child of God, let me ask you a question. But you can only answer in the quietness of your own heart.
Do you not think it would be a tragedy if God saved you, brought you to a new birth, and you threw away your place in that bride through negligence?
But that is what a large number of us, even here, are in danger of doing: throwing away our place, our part in the bride.
We are neglecting our so great salvation. We are not laying hold on life eternal. We are not fighting the good fight of faith. We are not pressing on toward the goal. We are not entering in by faith.
Oh, my dear friend, when I think of all this, I think I speak to myself.
I think to myself, what would it be if finally I come to be with the Lord, find myself in the kingdom, and find that I am not at the heart of what He is doing?
That is what caught the Apostle Paul. That is why, once he saw the goal, once he saw the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, he was never the same man again.
He was caught by something so tremendous it spoiled him for anything secondary, anything less, anything poor.
He called it the heavenly vision. And in another testimony he said:
Wherefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.
Dear folks, we must finish this. But in reaching this goal, I would just like to give you one last illustration.
It is contained in the Hebrew letter, interestingly, because the Hebrew letter was written to Jews. And this Hebrew letter was very much to do with the land. It speaks very much about the promised land.
This land is a picture of this fulness of God. This land, in one sense, is a picture of the goal of God.
God’s goal was that the children of God should not only be out of Egypt, but that they should also be through the wilderness and into the land.
God defined that land. For those of you who want to see it, Joshua 1:4—there are many other places. He said exactly what it was, the extent of it, everything to do with it.
He also told them that the Angel of His presence would go before them. Find that in Joshua 1:5. You will find it in Exodus 23:20, 23, 27, and 28.
It speaks of the hornet driving them out, the Angel of His presence terrorizing them, so that all the enemies of His people would flee before them. It sounds marvelous. Sounds marvelous.
God has given this whole great land. He has defined it to His people. Then He said, “Do not worry, My Angel is going to go before you like a hornet and drive them all out from before you. You do not have to fear.”
We can almost get the impression that all we have to do is sit there and sing a hymn. No need for us to lay hold on anything, no need for us to enter in, no need for us to press on, no need for us to fight the good fight, no need for us to lay hold on life eternal.
No, no, no. God is going to do it all. He has defined the whole land from end to end, from top to bottom, breadth, length, height, depth—everything. It is all there. His Angel of presence is going to go before us and drive out all our enemies. When we get there, they will not even be there. They will all be gone.
And then He contradicts it all by saying:
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it.
In other words, you only have and only experience what you possess by faith.
You know, it is interesting when you think about it. These dear people were out of Egypt—saved. They were led by the Lord in the wilderness: a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. They were fed with manna and quails. They had water out of the rock.
All these things were in the wilderness, all these marvelous experiences of the Lord. But they were never meant to stay in the wilderness.
There is no fulness of life in the wilderness. There is no being filled unto all the fulness of God in the wilderness. There is no coming to the marriage supper of the Lamb in the wilderness.
You have to go over into the land and possess your inheritance. You have to fight the good fight of faith. You have to lay hold on life eternal. You have to enter in by faith and put the soles of your feet down and say, “This is mine by the finished work of the Lord Jesus.”
Then the Angel of the Lord goes before you. The moment you put your feet down, then the Angel of the Lord is there to drive out the enemies. Then the hornet of the Lord goes before you—but only when you put your feet down and say, “This is mine in the name of the Lord.”
I find this a tremendous illustration. I find it very interesting in the Hebrew letter: “Let none of us fail to enter in,” says the writer, a promise being given to us.
That none of us fail. We need faith.
And we need that other spirit.
Because when those spies were sent into the land, all twelve of them, they all saw the same thing. They saw a marvelous land, a full land. They all saw fortified cities and great fortresses, and they said they were walled up to heaven, with giants in the land.
Ten of them said, “It is impossible for us to go in. The difficulties are too great. The opposition is too enormous. The obstacles are too many. We cannot do it.”
And two of them said, “The Lord will take us in, and the Lord will give us this land.” They had another spirit.
Many of us know all about the heavenly vision. We know all about what God wants of us, but we say, “No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. Too many difficulties in my life.”
“My marriage is very difficult. My home is very difficult. My parents are very difficult. My children are very difficult. There are so many obstacles in my life. If you knew the obstacles I have, you would not talk like this.”
“Of course, I know there is a fulness of God. I know there is a fulness of Christ. I know you should be filled with the Holy Spirit. I know you should lay hold. But I cannot in my situation. I have got the most extraordinary partner, business problems, personality problems, cultural problems, background problems, inherited problems, family problems.”
“It is walled up to heaven. It is too much, too much. All right for the elite people, like Joshua, Stephen, Bernie, Caleb, and the squad. What, me? Too difficult.”
It is not as if Caleb said, “That is all right. Leave it to me. I will knock them all out.” No, that is where we get it wrong.
We think some Christians are really strong. They are like Superman—huge muscles—and they are just going to knock them, like Batman, all over the place.
So we get the idea, “Oh, there are some Christians who are super, super men and super women, born that way, actually. I wish I was like them, born that way. They just have to look, put their finger out, and it is gone.”
“But I am not that kind of person. I am the poor person, and I have so many difficulties. It is impossible for me to.”
No, my dear friend, that is not true. These other two, Joshua and Caleb, said, “Yes, there are obstacles galore. There are difficulties. There are enemies. There are fortresses. There are cities walled up to heaven.”
“But God has said, ‘This land is our land,’ and we can go in in His name and take it.”
They knew that all they had to do was put the soles of their feet down upon that promised land, and the Angel of the Lord immediately went into action.
The trouble with us is that we are waiting for the Angel of the Lord to go into action before we do anything. We want to sit there in an armchair singing a hymn and sort of waiting.
“When I see the Angel of the Lord move in and clear out all of these—once they are right out of the way, I cannot even smell them, they are gone completely—I will go in.”
But that is not faith. That is not fighting the good fight of faith. That is not laying hold on that for which also Christ Jesus laid hold on you.
What is your difficulty? Have you got a difficulty in your marriage? Why do you not you and your wife get together for the first time and say together, “In the name of the Lord, we put our feet down on this thing together.”
“We take this in the name of the Lord. This is not too much for the Lord. It is too much for us; we are not too much for Him.”
Have you got trouble with the children? Why do you not together speak, as it were, together pray together, take action, possess it in the name of the Lord?
Have you got problems in business? Why not speak? Why not lay hold on that for which Jesus Christ laid hold on you? Do you understand what I am trying to say?
I am not asking you to be presumptuous. I am asking you to put the soles of your feet down upon your inheritance.
The Lord wants you to be a testimony. The Lord wants me to be a testimony. He wants you to be evidence of His power to save. He wants you and I to be witnesses to His grace, to His deliverance, to His love, to His provision.
We have problems often in fellowship with one another so enormous that many fellowships fall to pieces.
Would it not be wonderful if we started as leaders to come and look squarely at some of these problems and say, “We put our feet down on this thing in the name of the Lord. We take it.”
Now, my dear friends, you understand? Faith. Another spirit. You need the Spirit of the Lord, do you not? So do I. Action.
One last thing. Remember Hebrews 6:12:
That ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Some promises can be inherited in a moment. You simply put your feet down, and immediately the thing becomes yours.
That is what happened when they came to the Jordan in harvest flood. The priests put the soles of their feet down through the water onto the riverbed, and instantly it dried up.
We could almost say, “Now, that is how it has to be every time.”
But when they came to Jericho, they had to go round the city once for six days and seven times on the seventh day. That was quite a lot of using the soles of their feet. They needed a bit more patience there.
Some people might have said, “Well, I do not know. I think Joshua lacks faith. Why could we not bring these walls down straight away? We saw it coming across the River Jordan. We did not have to get all hot like this, walking round this wretched city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day. That seems to me to be unbelievable.”
But he was patient.
There were other things, like Jerusalem, that took four hundred years before they possessed it. Think of that.
So there are some things that happen instantly, some things that happen over days, some things that happen over weeks, some things that happen over months, some things that happen over years, some things that happen over generations, and some things that happen over millennia.
But praise God, if He has defined the land and we possess it, it will be ours. So let us through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Well, I pray that God may help you and me to press on. What a salvation you and I have.
Do you know that to be part of the bride of Christ, there is not a single thing you need to add to the grace of God already available, nor a single thing you have to add to the power God has made available to you?
It is all yours, if you and I would only lay hold.
Do you want to be part of the bride? Do you want to be filled unto all the fulness of God? Do you want to come to a full-grown person, a full-grown man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ?
Your Lord wants you there. That is what He wants for you, and that is what He wants for me.
May the Holy Spirit come upon us with a fresh understanding, fresh vision, fresh clarity, and fresh faith, that we may enter in.
Shall we pray?
A moment of quietness.
Lord, we do not know what days we are entering into, except that in our spirit we all feel that things are getting more tense, more dark, and more difficult.
And, Lord, we are here, a company of Your children. We want to go on. We want, Lord, to forget the things which are behind. We want to stretch forward to the things which are before.
We want to press on toward the goal, to the prize of Your high calling in our Lord Jesus.
Father, open our eyes this night in a new way. Renew us in faith, Lord.
Every one of us has our own peculiar difficulty, our own peculiar situation, our own peculiar obstacles which undo us, Lord, every time. They seem so impossible.
But there is no mountain that You cannot remove, no mountain that You cannot make a plain before us, no mountain that You cannot make a way through for the fulfilment of Your purpose.
Oh, Lord, help us this night. Help us in a new and full way to follow You, to rise up and to press on with You.
Hear us, O Lord. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.