You will turn with me to some Scriptures first of all.
We will begin again with Acts 7, from verse 2.
Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran,
and said unto him, Get thee out of thy land, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee.
Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Haran: and from thence, when his father was dead, God removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.
And He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: and He promised that He would give it to him in possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child.
And again, the Scripture we have read each evening, Hebrews 11:8.
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
In the Roman letter of the Apostle Paul, Romans 4, from verse 18:
Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be.
And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead, he being about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb;
yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God,
and being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
Then in Genesis 15, from verse 1:
After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
And Abram said, O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and he that shall be possessor of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?
And Abram said, Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.
And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This man shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.
And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
And he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him for righteousness.
And He said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.
And he said, O Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?
And He said unto him, Take Me a heifer three years old, and a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.
And he took Him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each half over against the other: but the birds divided he not.
And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away.
And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.
And He said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.
But thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.
And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full.
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces.
In that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land.
Then once more in the same book, Genesis 22, from verse 1.
And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Then in verse 9:
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
And He said, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son.
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
Shall we just have a word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we have so enjoyed the children singing. It encourages us so much to see those young ones and the word of God getting into them. We pray for them, Lord, that in the days You will give them, You will save them and bring them to be men and women of God, whatever the condition of the world in which they will live.
And, Lord, we want to thank You that we are here, gathered in Your presence. We want to thank You for the provision You always make for the gatherings of Your people. And, Lord, we need You.
We have come to this last session of ministry this evening. We thank You for the way You have spoken to us through these days, for the enabling power You have given, and for the anointing that has been upon all of us. We want to thank You and give You all the worship of our hearts.
But, Lord, now we want to ask You: will You be the anointing, grace, and power this evening, both in the speaking of Your word, the translating of it, and the hearing of it?
We need, Lord, to meet with You. We have heard a lot about the heavenly vision, but, Lord, we need the eyes of our hearts opened. We need, in some way, that You make all this ministry a reality in our life together, in our life as individuals, in our family life, and in our business life.
Lord, we commit ourselves to You. By faith, we stand into that anointing. Let it be manifest, Lord, in every way during the course of this time. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
My responsibility in this theme of the conference, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,” has been the life of Abraham.
And I think it is summed up in the words of Stephen shortly before he was martyred: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.”
Abraham saw the whole panorama of redemption. Would to God most Christian believers had the same understanding.
He saw that whole panorama, beginning at the point at which he stood, all the way through to the end, when that heavenly Jerusalem, the wife of the Lamb, comes down out of heaven, having the glory of God.
He saw it first in the way that a family was born to him when he was childless. He saw it, in one sense, by faith in the twelve patriarchs who would become the fathers of Israel, born to Jacob, his grandson.
He saw it by faith in a nation that would be created, born in unbelievable suffering and slavery in Egypt. He saw it in the coming of the Messiah through that nation.
He saw it in the gospel going out not only to the Jew—to the Jew first—but then to the Gentile; going out to the nations, by which men and women of every time, kindred, tongue, and race would be born of the Spirit of God and become part of the family of God, part of the household of faith, part of the body of the Lord Jesus the Messiah.
He saw the church. He saw the church as something so precious to God, so unbelievably precious.
He saw it finally in that city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God.
We find it all contained there. I think Abraham was the beginning of this vision in one sense. Of course, the Lord did something with Enoch and with Noah and with others, but with Abraham it was the beginning of the corporate—the beginning of the people.
Abraham—I do not know how much he saw in fine definition, with precision. That, I think, we have to leave to the Apostle Paul. But the extraordinary thing is that Abraham did not know the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
That was to come with the finished work of the Lord Jesus at Calvary and the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Paul knew the indwelling of the risen, glorified Christ by the Holy Spirit. And with the Apostle Paul, you have a definition about the body of Christ, about the church of God, about the Gentiles being fellow heirs, fellow partakers—partners, as it were, in the family of God.
Paul saw it so clearly, unbelievably clearly. Abraham, until we meet him and can ask him, I am not sure how clear he was in definition, but he saw it.
What is amazing to me is that there are thousands and thousands of born-again believers who have not got a single idea as to this heavenly vision. All they know is that we need to be converted, we need to read our Bibles and say our prayers, and meet reasonably regularly in church meetings. We have a routine.
Abraham would be a stranger to that kind of mentality. He saw something, and what he saw so gripped him that he could never be the same again. It changed his whole life. It changed the direction of his life.
From living an empty life—a life that God would describe as vanity—he led a life of unbelievable fulfilment.
Abraham became the father of all who believe, both Jew and Gentile.
I just think that—well, I will not say any more on this—but your birthright is to know the mysteries of God.
You ought to understand something of the mystery of the indwelling of the Lord Jesus. You ought to understand something of the mystery of the church, which is His body. You ought to understand the mystery of Israel.
These things belong to you. They are your birthright. They are not something fathomless, something unsearchable. They are your birthright. If Abraham understood these things in the old covenant, how much more should you in the new covenant understand these things?
I say it is tremendous. When I read Romans 9, from verse 3, I hear this matter echoed in the words of the Apostle Paul:
For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh:
who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;
whose are the fathers, and of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
What a catalogue. Will you notice that he does not say, “Whose was,” but, “Whose is”?
And then look at these wonderful words in Romans 9:25-26:
As He saith also in Hosea,
I will call that My people, which was not My people;
and her beloved, which was not beloved.
And it shall be, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not My people,
there shall they be called sons of the living God.
I find this simply tremendous.
Abraham saw it when the God of glory appeared to him. Whether he saw it all at once, I am pretty sure he did not. The Lord would have revealed it stage by stage, step by step. But he saw it.
And, of course, it is contained in Revelation 21. I will read it to you in Revelation 21, from verse 9:
Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
Her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal:
having a wall great and high; having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
on the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
You know, I find this—I mean, this was the city that Abraham sought for. You have the twelve patriarchs, and you have the twelve apostles. It is a wonderful thing.
Within this city there is no middle wall of partition. There is no Jew against Gentile and Gentile against Jew, but one new man.
This heavenly vision—this thing that knocked Paul out, spiritually traumatized him—Abraham also saw it, oh, from afar. He saw the whole counsel of God.
I get so tired when I travel. Of course, I am getting older, so I get tired anyway, but I get so tired of these pernickety, narrow-minded, mean-hearted believers.
I am told in some places, “We would like you to come and speak. Do not mention Israel.” Other places I am asked to go and speak, and they say, “Please do not talk about the Holy Spirit.” Other places, they say to me, “Please do not speak about being crucified with Christ.”
And so it goes on. Veiled faces. Not the whole counsel of God—veiled. They see only in part. They refuse to see the whole counsel of God.
But it seems to me that Abraham, called the father of all who believe, the father of faith, of the faithful, saw something of the whole counsel of God. He saw the whole panorama of redemption from his day to the end.
Now, that is enough of introduction. How can I—how can we—be involved practically in this heavenly vision?
It seems to me there are five things that I want to talk about this evening. I may not get there, but we will see how we go. And when I see you all asleep, I will stop.
The first thing is obvious: a living, working faith.
Without faith, it is impossible to please God. May I say it again? Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
You can have knowledge—knowledge galore. You can recite Scriptures. You can take the Lord’s table. You may have been baptized. But if you do not have a living, working faith, it is impossible to please God.
A living faith, as opposed to academic faith, is essential. It is essential if you are to grow in the Lord. It is essential if you are to have an understanding of the Lord. It is essential if you are to experience the Lord. It is essential in the service of God. It is essential in church life.
Living, working faith—it is the gift of God. It is not something that is natural to us. It is something that God gives to us, and it comes through vision. When you see the Lord, spontaneously faith springs into action.
It has always been the same. Abraham was a testimony to such faith. He had a living, working faith.
It was the kind of faith that joined him to the vision. He saw the God of glory. That living faith made him a follower of the Lord. He walked with the Lord. He became the friend of God.
It was a living faith that joined him to the vision. It was not academic, head faith, but a faith that worked—a faith that was relevant, practical. It had expression.
For instance, the Lord said to him that He was going to give him a land. Yet he never possessed that land.
As I said the previous evening, he even had to buy a field in it for a burial plot. That was the only small, tiny postage stamp of the promised land that he actually owned when he died.
And yet he had such a living faith that he believed God.
God said to him, “In thy seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” And it is amazing to me, when you read that passage in Romans 4, how he hoped against hope.
Did you notice those amazing words? Some people think that when they have faith, they must not look at reality. You must shut yourself away from reality so that you can have faith. You must not face the facts.
But the wonderful thing in Romans 4 is these words: “And without being weakened in faith, he considered his own body as good as dead.” Is that not beautifully put? As good as dead, he being a hundred years of age, and the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. She was an old lady.
I mean, I think most of us would say, “Do not, do not, do not do that. If you do that, you will have an evil heart of unbelief.” But this living kind of faith could face the facts, face reality, and still believe that God could do it.
And that is exactly what it says. It says he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform. Wherefore also, it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.
That kind of living faith joins us to the vision.
Here, folks, if we have seen anything of the purpose of God, if we have seen anything of the significance of our Lord Jesus, if we have seen anything of the church, which is His body, if we have understood anything about this wife of the Lamb, this city of God at the end of the Bible, it is only living faith that will join us to it.
So that we do not waver through unbelief, but at the end we are not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
Consider the lapses of faith. Abraham is called the father of all who believe, and is for us an amazing symbol of living, working faith. But Abraham had some incredible lapses of faith.
Almost immediately after the God of glory appeared to him, there was a famine in the land, and he went down to Egypt.
He moved out of the boundaries of the land that God had promised to him and told him to dwell in. Once he moved out, once he moved down, he got into a mess.
He was frightened that Sarah, so beautiful to look upon, would become the reason for his murder. So he said to her, “Do you mind? Just tell them you are my sister. I will tell them you are my sister; you say I am your brother.”
It was a half-truth. Now, we who are Jews are very good at this. It was a half-truth. In one sense it was truth, but what Abraham was saying was a compromise.
He would never have got into this mess if he had only stayed in the land.
You know the story. The amazing thing is that Abraham was not, as far as we can tell, the least bit conscience-stricken.
We all think of Jacob as the twister, but in actual fact here is Abraham showing a little bit of the twistedness himself. Something in the genes came down to Jacob.
It is interesting to me because he does not show any conscience over this matter, only when a plague hit Pharaoh’s household—particularly Pharaoh and his first wife.
When they probably asked the enchanters and wise men to explain what was happening, probably they said, “There is someone here who has lied to you.”
It was then that Pharaoh went to Abraham. Now listen to this. He said, “What have you done to me and to my house, that you told me Sarah was your sister? I never touched her.”
Actually, it was the Lord who stopped Pharaoh from touching Sarah. And here is the most amazing thing of all: believe it or believe it not, it is in the book.
Abraham came out with gold, with silver, with donkeys, with sheep, and with goats. Now, some of you may not particularly want some of those things, but the fact still remains that he came out with far more than he went in.
So amazing is God. So full of grace is God. So absolutely loyal to those who really want to follow Him.
The second time Abraham got into this mess was in the land, and this time it was with Abimelech.
You would have thought he would have learned. But no. This time he said to Sarah, “You just tell him you are my sister. I am your brother.” And the same thing happened with Abimelech.
And Abimelech came to Abraham and said, “Why have you done this to me? The whole household is barren. You are responsible.”
Once again, read the story: Abraham comes out with gold, with silver, with camels, with goats, and with sheep. It is an amazing story.
Abraham’s lapses of faith.
The biggest lapse, the greatest lapse, was over Ishmael.
You know, dear Sarah, she was so, so remarkable a woman. And she said one day to Abraham, “I think you might have been wrong about this son of promise.”
“You know, you are nearly a hundred, and I am approaching the same age. Look, we know God can do anything, but God obeys natural laws. You have to use your common sense.”
You know, I always hear this in church circles: “We must use our common sense.” I hear it on committees, amongst elders, amongst deacons. I do not know what else they all say. “We must use our common sense. God gave us common sense.”
Most of the common sense they talk about is unbelief. It is not common sense at all.
To me, common sense is very simple. If you are joined to the living God, there is nothing impossible. And if He has said that He will do this, and this, and this, common sense is to follow Him and believe Him. Is that not—do you not agree with me? That is common sense. I have never been able to understand anything else.
All this kind of thing where we get together and say, “What shall we do about the youth this coming summer?” Then they have a little word of prayer: “Lord, bless us, we pray. Now just give us Your mind.”
Then we all talk this talk, that talk, and the other talk. We will have this; we will have a barbecue; we will do this; we will do that; we will do the other. Then we bow our heads and say, “Dear Lord, bless this mind of Yours that You have given us in this discussion that we have had together.”
Then we wonder why nothing happens the whole of the summer. Nobody gets saved. Nobody gets met by God. No change takes place in the youth. Well, what is wrong? Common sense.
If we really believed God, we would get on our knees and say, “Lord, just help us. What can we do that the young people amongst us can be natural, spontaneous, with no weight placed upon them by us, but at the same time somehow helped into a real, living experience of the Lord?”
Dear Sarah said, “We must use our common sense. Look, I have a very nice young girl helping me. I think that is what the Lord wants you to do.”
And Abraham thought for a while, and he decided that that was the obvious thing to do. They had waited so long for this word of the Lord to be fulfilled that he decided, “Really, that is right. We have to obey natural law.”
And Ishmael was born. Do you know that the Lord did not speak to Abraham again after the birth of Ishmael for some sixteen years?
It was the greatest mistake that Abraham made. And the most amazing thing about it is that the Lord blessed Ishmael—both Hagar and Ishmael. He made a covenant with Ishmael and his seed, which has lasted to this day.
After all, the major part of the oil of the world is in their hands. It is so interesting.
But the troubles we face in the Middle East, and the troubles that the whole Western world is facing, all stem from the birth of Ishmael.
Well, I say then, listen to this amazing thing: you and I need a living, working faith.
In the end, Abraham learned. What I am trying to say is this: just because you have a living, working faith does not mean you do not have lapses of faith. Just because you have a living, working faith does not mean that at times you do not make mistakes.
But the grace of God toward Abraham is remarkable.
That is the first thing I want to say this evening. How can you and I be involved? How can we be involved in this heavenly vision? By a living, working faith, which joins us to the Lord, which makes us those who are followers of the Lord, who hear Him.
This brings me to the second thing: total obedience to the Lord.
Genesis 12:4 reads like this:
So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken unto him.
Is that not beautiful? So simple a sentence: “So Abram went, as the Lord had spoken unto him.”
This was probably the time when the God of glory appeared to him. We know it was before they came to Haran, when he was still in Ur of the Chaldees. But whatever the Lord said to him, Abraham went with the Lord.
That is obedience. When you ask me, “What is obedience?” it is to go with the Lord. It is not only to hear the Lord; it is to obey Him—to go with Him.
That is what the writer of the Hebrew letter says in Hebrews 11:8:
By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
Consider: Abraham did not even know where he was going. Can you imagine his friends and relatives left behind in Ur of the Chaldees? Can you imagine those business colleagues of his?
“What is Abraham doing? He has left. Where is he going?”
“He does not know.”
“You mean he has left his property, his home, his business, and everything? He does not know where he is going?”
“Well, that is what he says. He says he is going to get directions as he goes.”
“Oh, he must be—he must be—he has got a screw loose. Something has gone wrong with him. He was such an intelligent man, such a capable man, such a sophisticated man, and he does not know. What is he doing?”
“Well, he has got sheep and goats. Sheep and goats.”
“What do you mean? Has he become a butcher? What is he doing with sheep and goats?”
“Well, he is a herdsman.”
“A herdsman? Abraham? A herdsman?”
Is it any wonder that the Lord added to him, even when he made mistakes—more sheep, more goats, more camels, and gold and silver as well?
When someone obeys the Lord with total obedience, they sometimes make real mistakes, but the Lord turns it to good account.
The best example of that was David, King David, when he sinned in the most horrendous manner over one of his most faithful servants, Uriah the Hittite.
He arranged for him to be in the front of the battle and for the battalion to move backwards and leave him to be killed. Then he took Bathsheba, and she bore a child.
Only when that child died did David repent. The amazing thing is this: Bathsheba became the mother of both Solomon and Nathan, both of whom are in the Messianic pedigree.
Is that not amazing? So the Lord’s ways—I am not, of course, encouraging you to sin. But what I am saying is this: when there is total commitment to the Lord, total obedience, even when you make mistakes, even when you sin and repent, the Lord turns it to good account.
Disobedience over the land is something quite extraordinary. We have already talked about the lapses of faith when he went down to Egypt, but it is amazing. The birth of Isaac is also quite extraordinary.
The compromises he made when he did not obey the Lord were that he took his father, Terah, with him, and Lot.
Now, it is not very clear from the record exactly what happened over Terah, his father, because it seems, the way it is put, Terah actually took the initiative and said, “Let us go to Haran.”
But what is clear is that it is only when Terah died in Haran that the Lord moved Abraham on to the promised land.
But Abraham took Lot, and as I said, as Mr. Sparks used to say, “Lot was a lot of trouble.” And we still have Lot’s seed with us today. He became the father of the Moabites and the Ammonites, so this is still with us to this very day.
God had said to Abraham, “Get out of your father’s house, out of Ur of the Chaldees. Leave it all behind.”
Abraham obeyed, but apparently he took Terah and Lot. It took quite a while for the Lord first to free him from his father and, secondly—even longer—to free him from Lot.
But here, I think, is something we can all learn: disobedience has its consequences, and sometimes we have to live with the consequences of our disobedience.
Total obedience is a second vital constituent in not being disobedient to the heavenly vision. We have to obey.
What is that heavenly vision? What does it say? What does it mean? How practical is it? How are we to obey? Only God can speak to us.
I myself could not be part of a denomination. I myself would not feel free to be part of some kind of heavily organized work as such.
I know others who do not feel the same as I, but that is how I feel. I cannot obey the Lord and obey the heavenly vision and compromise on some of these things.
I do not have any problem going in and out amongst the Lord’s people wherever they are found. If one can build them up, if one can help them to go on with the Lord, we are one people. We are one family. We need each other.
But there are these kinds of things that come down to obedience, and the Lord tests us very much on these things, right down to the nth degree.
Then again, here is the third thing: the essential nature of Calvary.
It is very interesting that Abraham built four altars: the first one, Shechem; the second one, Bethel; the third one, Hebron; the fourth one, Moriah.
The altar is always, in the whole Bible, the symbol of Calvary. That is the place of sacrifice. That is where you can call upon the name of the Lord.
How else can sinners really come to God? How can they commune with God? How can they enter the presence of God? Only through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus at Calvary, through His finished work at Calvary, through the justifying work whereby He was made our sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
That is almost beyond us, but it is wonderful. These altars—four of them—are almost, you know, like the whole earth, the whole universe: the four corners, the four winds, the four seasons. It means universal.
Here is something so amazing: Calvary lies at the root of all Abraham’s journeyings, his pilgrimage. It began with Shechem.
Now, it is more than that. Let me just say, before I say something about Shechem, that it is more than just the finished work of the Lord Jesus, although I do not want to demean or devalue that work.
In that finished work, we were finished. We died with Christ.
Those four altars not only speak of the fact that Jesus died in my place, for me. They also speak of the fact that Jesus died as me.
Abraham was saying, “I am out of Ur of the Chaldees. I am out of Mesopotamia. I am out of my father’s house.” Before long, he was free of Lot as well.
That altar—Shechem in Hebrew means shoulder, shoulder, or your back.
Now, when you have a bad back like I have, you understand just how little you can live without it.
Why does it speak about the government upon the shoulder?
For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given;
and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
That altar means one thing. Abraham—it typified, it symbolized, the simple fact that Abraham was saying, “You are Lord. Your government—I will obey.”
It began with the lordship of Jesus. You cannot be involved in the heavenly vision if you are not under the lordship of Jesus.
While your brain, your thought life, your concepts are actually away from the government of God—if they are not governed by the word of God, if you have your own way of looking at things, your own way of coming to it—you cannot be involved in the heavenly vision.
We have only one head, and that head is the Lord Jesus. We cannot have a thousand heads. We have only one head.
Abraham built that altar, sacrificed upon it, and called upon the name of the Lord. It was his recognition that the government is upon the shoulder of the Lord Jesus.
The second altar is very interesting: Bethel and Ai. Bethel means house of God, and Ai means a heap of ruins.
He pitched his tent with Ai, the heap of ruins, behind him, and Bethel, the house of God, in front of him. Interestingly, east was at the back and west to the front. In other words, where the sun comes up, that was the heap of ruins, and he was journeying to the house of God.
Are you journeying to the house of God? There is no way you can be involved in the heavenly vision if you have not understood the house of God.
It is an amazing thing. Everywhere you look in the word of God:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.
Is that not amazing? Think of it. What is this dwelling place of the Lord? It is the Lord Jesus. But what is this dwelling place of the Lord? It is the Lord Jesus and you and me—everyone He has saved.
We are the living stones out of which this house of the Lord, this dwelling place of God, is to be built.
I always love the simple fact that, according to our Jewish tradition, David wrote Psalm 23 when he was a boy, not even in his late teens—in his mid-teens.
And in it he says—you know it, do you not?
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He guideth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Then he says this: “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” But there was no house of the Lord when he was a boy. There was no house of the Lord.
Again, in one of our traditions, David’s mother was a weaver of the tabernacle veil. Did she sometimes say to him, “You know, we have no permanent house of the Lord”? I do not know.
But all I know is this: something captured David that was to remain with him for the whole of his life. He lived for the house of the Lord.
He said, “I will not rest. I will not give sleep to my eyes until I have found out a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
If this were to consume us, would that not be something?
Have you turned your back on the ruin? You younger people probably do not feel you are a ruin. We older ones know we are.
Oh, that you could turn your back on the ruin. You make a lot of your young life—your hopes, your ambitions, your career, your marriage, the family you will have.
It is all ruin if it is not connected and related to the house of the Lord.
Only when you have the central point in God’s purpose, the heart of God’s purpose, will you know what it is to be in the eternal.
Well, dear folks, I could go on and on, but do you not think this is tremendous? He pitched his tent with Bethel in front and Ai behind.
There is a good deal more that one could say about this, because Ai was the place of judgment. That is exactly what the cross speaks: that old ruin, that old man, that old nature—judged, done away with in Christ.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature:
the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
The house of the Lord.
Then think of Hebron. Here we have something a little difficult because, in Hebrew, originally Hebron was probably a ford.
Now, there are no rivers in that area. I know it very well, so I can tell you there are no rivers. But there are seasonal wadis that carve great gullies in the wilderness. In winter, when those great cloudbursts come, you can only cross at certain points.
Originally, Hebron was called a ford. Then came the idea of association, fellowship, as I think dear old Fausset put it in his encyclopedia.
In other words, now you have come a stage further. Here is the third altar: it is to do with fellowship. It is to do with the association of those who belong to the Lord.
You know, what is fellowship? In the Greek word, it is simply to share. It is having in common.
What do you and I have in common? I can tell you what I have in common with you. I am a Jew. I have a background that is Jewish, although I was brought up not in an orthodox way.
I did not even know much about my background, except that the whole Jewish community in our area, including the rabbi, tried to help us, be with us, and guard us in our earlier years.
But I can tell you this: if you are not a Jew, and I am a Jew, in Christ we have one thing in common: it is the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus is my Saviour. He is your Saviour. He is my Head. He is your Head. He is my goal. He is your goal. My fullness is found in Him. Your fullness is found in Him.
Is that not amazing, that we are all in the one Christ? Whether we are Chinese, Koreans, Germans, Scandinavians, or British. Of course, the British like to think they are the only ones in!
But it does not matter who it is, who you are. If you are in Christ, there is only one Christ. There is not a Chinese Christ, or a Jewish Christ, or a Swedish Christ, or a German Christ, or an Italian Christ, or an Arab Christ, or an Indian Christ.
There is only one Christ, and we are all in Him. This one Christ is in all of us.
Now, He manifests Himself. He uses our background. He uses the cultural background we have, that somehow or other there is something very precious that is not obliterated.
You remain—some of you—Chinese. I remain Jewish. Yet there is no middle wall of partition. You remain English. Someone else remains Danish. But there is no middle wall of partition.
The third altar—Calvary—it is the basis of fellowship. Our fellowship grows out of the finished work of the Lord Jesus at Calvary and what He did with us there.
Then again, there is a fourth altar, and the fourth altar is Moriah. I shall say something more about that in a moment, but all I am going to say just now is that we have a problem here with this word, Moriah in English, Moriyyah in Hebrew.
We have a little problem because some of our authorities tell us that it means, “The Lord sees.”
Others tell us it is more than that, because it means that when the Lord sees, He provides. So, the Lord provides. We have it: Jehovah-jireh—the Lord will provide.
Others believe, and they are real authorities in Hebrew, that it means “chosen by God.”
Somehow, here when we come to Moriah, here is that altar: the Lord will provide. What an amazing experience Abraham had. He had moved from the lordship of Jesus to the house of God, to genuine fellowship, and to knowing the Lord as his provision.
For me, if you and I want to be involved in the heavenly vision and not be disobedient to it, there is no way apart from Calvary.
If I can take one other thing—I must watch myself on time—it is the covenant God made with Abraham.
What an amazing picture this is in Genesis 15, when the Lord said, “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.”
Dear Abraham had a problem. He said, “Lord, that is very wonderful of You to say that to me. You are my covering. You are the One who guards me and protects me. I am so thankful.”
“And You are going to be my exceeding great reward. You have said it again and again, Lord, about how all the families of the earth are going to be blessed through me. I am very thankful. You said I will be a blessing. You said, ‘Be a blessing.’ But, Lord, I am childless.”
“You said, ‘In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ I do not have a seed to talk about.”
And the Lord took him out and showed him the heavens and said, “Do you see those stars? Can you count them? That is how many your seed will be in the end.”
Then the Lord said to him, “Take a heifer, a she-goat, a ram, a turtle-dove, and a pigeon. Divide the heifer, the she-goat, and the ram. Leave the two birds undivided. Put the pieces one on either side, opposite to them.”
What is all this about? First of all, of course, all these creatures are to do with the burnt offering. But it was not a burnt offering, because the birds of prey came down to try and eat them; they were not burnt up.
So what do we have? Of course, it was the ancient way of a covenant. You made a covenant by taking an animal, splitting it in two, and then the person who was making the covenant walked through it.
What does this all mean? The Lord said to Abraham, “Take these things and do this.” Then a terror of great darkness fell on Abraham.
And the Lord said to him, “Know certainly that when you have become a nation, in another foreign land you will be enslaved, and you will suffer greatly for four generations. Then I will bring them out into the land.”
Then we are told what happened. When the sun went down and that great terror, horror of darkness fell on Abraham, a smoking furnace and a flaming torch passed between the pieces.
Now, most of the authorities, commentaries, and others tell us that it was to do with the children of Israel in Egypt. This smoking furnace was the suffering of the people of Israel in Egypt, and the flaming torch was the testimony that never was extinguished.
Well, I do not doubt that there is a tremendous amount of truth in that, because immediately the words of the Lord explain it in that way. But I feel there is something far deeper than that.
To me, the covenant that God Himself made with Abraham—the animals were divided, the birds left undivided, and then a smoking oven and a flaming torch went up and down between the sacrificed animals.
I think Calvary is again in view.
That smoking furnace—certainly the children of Israel were in it—but the Lord Jesus knew something about that on Calvary. He knew what it was to be in the furnace of affliction when He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Pentecost was the flaming torch. It was tongues of fire that came upon one hundred and twenty people, and within hours three thousand more were saved.
I do not have any doubt that here you had the most amazing covenant that God made with Abraham. He gave him some understanding that there would come a day when the Messiah would die and the fire of God would fall upon the redeemed.
Dear folk, if I may say this before I go to my last point: the great need in the fulfilment of a heavenly vision is a nucleus of those who are living sacrifices.
Whenever you have an assembly in which there is at least a nucleus of those who have fallen into the ground and died, you have the promise of a harvest. You have the promise of the dwelling place of God. You have the promise of the house of God. You have the promise of that city which has the foundations.
You need not only the smoking furnace; you need the flaming torch. You cannot do with one without the other. They both belong together.
It is a burnt offering that is the living sacrifice. It is amazing to me that the Apostle Paul, after giving us the greatest exposition of the gospel in the Bible in the Roman letter, ends it with:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
Out of that comes the body of the Lord Jesus. You read it in Romans 12:5: “So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.”
It comes out of a living sacrifice. When people are just important in themselves, want to lord it over others, want to be leaders, want to be in leadership, want all the time the glory that comes from that kind of thing, you do not have the house of God.
You do not have the body of the Lord Jesus building itself up in love. But where you have those who become living sacrifices, out of that comes the flaming torch.
It is fire. I do not mean strange fire. I mean the fire of God.
I wish I could put it more clearly and simply.
Finally, I want to say something more about that last altar, Moriah. It is, for me, the most remarkable event in Abraham’s life.
When the Lord said to him, “Take thy son whom thou lovest, thy only son”—is that not interesting? Three times the phrase comes, “thy only son,” ignoring poor Ishmael.
“Take your son whom you love, your only son, and make him a burnt offering in the mount that I will show you.”
It was Mount Moriah.
Remember, dear child of God, how essential Isaac was to the purpose of God, to the whole course of divine history.
Isaac’s survival, Isaac’s growth, and Isaac’s well-being were priority, from one point of view.
Abraham, who had waited a lifetime—until nearly a hundred years of age—to see this boy, this son of promise, being born to him, now saw in that son the whole purpose of God centred and focused.
Now the Lord came and said, “Take this son, your only son, whom you love, and make him a burnt offering.”
You have listened to me long enough that can I say something which I hope will sink into many in the Christian world.
There are many Ishmaels—things born of the flesh, things produced by the flesh. They have the concepts of flesh: the world’s ways, the world’s techniques, the world’s methodologies.
Ishmael may have looked more like Abraham than Isaac. If you saw this boy running around, you would have said, “Oh, it is obviously Abraham’s son there.” But Ishmael was not the son of promise.
You can have a Bible pattern. You can have a perfect Bible pattern. You can have a whole church routine. But if it is an Ishmael, it can never inherit.
Isaac may not even have looked like Abraham. Maybe he looked like one of his mother’s people. But he was the son of promise. He was born, if I can put it this way, of the Spirit.
Why did the Lord say to Abraham, “Sacrifice your only son”? Am I speaking? Can you all hear me at the back, or am I dropping my voice?
Why did He say, “Sacrifice your only son”?
The deepest lesson we can learn in the service of God is to let go of what we have seen born of God.
Now, I do not mean that in a wrong way. We are to be watchmen. We are to be shepherds. We are to be overseers.
But there comes a point when our flesh life grips the vision, and then, when that happens, the shadow of death falls on the whole.
I remember years ago, when I was in my twenties and when the work at Halford had begun. We had really prayed every single night for four months, and out of that came that work.
I became very exhausted, and I went to see Brother Sparks. I poured out my heart to him. I said, “You know, I am called to prayer, and I have travailed in prayer. I honestly believe, young as I am, that I travailed in prayer.”
“But now I have almost a kind of revulsion.”
Mr. Sparks listened quietly. Although Mr. Sparks could be a very severe man and a very stern man, he was actually a very loving man.
He looked at me and he said, “Love, your soul has got into it.”
“What?” I said. “You mean it is not of God?”
“No,” he said. “It is of God. This work has been born of God. But now your soul has got into it. Let it go,” he said.
Let me give you another little example from my own experience. When I was in Egypt, I became very, very ill with hepatitis—the kind that is very serious.
For quite a few weeks I was confined to bed in hospital. I was not allowed to go to the bathroom, not allowed to touch the floor with my feet. I had a special diet.
Every day a dear old missionary came up to sit with me in the afternoon. I was so depressed. I sat there without saying a thing, and she sat there without saying a thing.
I am so thankful. I cannot bear that kind of missionary who has to lecture you. She just sat there quietly.
Then one day she said to me, “You are very depressed today, more than usual. Can you share what it is?”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “I cannot understand the Lord.”
“You cannot understand the Lord,” she said. “Join me.”
I said, “Well—”
She said, “What is it that is troubling you?”
I said, “Look, in the camp, the Air Force camp, a whole number of those fellows are right on the point of receiving Christ. They have actually started coming to services. They are asking questions. They even asked for Bibles.”
“And,” I said, “when everything is happening, the Lord allows me to be laid aside.”
She listened.
And she said, “Well, well. If it is Lance’s work, it will disappear, and we shall say, ‘Hallelujah.’”
“And if it is the work of the Spirit of God, it will go on whether you are there or not.”
You know, it sank into my heart. Suddenly, I saw: I had got my hands on this.
I let go of it, and for the first time in weeks, I smiled.
She said, “Do not be fearful. If this is a work of the Spirit of God, it will go on.” And she trotted off. She cycled in the midday sun back to the home where she worked.
When I got back to that camp, I found that those boys—a number of them—had found the Lord. They had no one to show them. They had no books. They had just found the Lord.
It taught me one of the greatest lessons that I was to have to learn again when the work at Halford House in Richmond, England, came into being.
And that was: you can get your hands on the vision. When that happens, you become so protective, you become so, as it were, you stifle the vision.
God said to Abraham, “Take your son whom you love, your only son, and sacrifice him.”
That is what it means to fall into the ground and die.
Out of that comes new life, new power, new vision, new understanding—not for you. You already understand. You already see. But for others.
Your dying has allowed the Holy Spirit to fall on a whole number of others.
May the Lord take these simple little lessons and burn them into our hearts.
“I was not disobedient,” said the Apostle Paul, “to the heavenly vision.”
Abraham did not use those words, but he could have said them at the end of his life: “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
May you be involved in this heavenly vision that is given to us in our Lord Jesus.
Thank you.