"According to the grace
of God which was given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder I laid a
foundation; and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take
heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay
than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if any man
buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood,
hay, stubble; each man's work shall be made manifest: for the day
shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire
itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is. If any
man's work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a
reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss:
but he himself shall be saved; yet so as through fire. Know ye
not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him
shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are
ye." (1 Cor. 3:10-17).
"Because it is
contained in scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner
stone, elect, precious: And he that believeth on him shall not be
put to shame. For you therefore that believe is the preciousness:
but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders
rejected, The same was made the head of the corner. (1 Pet.
2:6-7).
"The foundations of the
wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones.
The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third,
chalcedony; the fourth, emerald." (Rev. 21:19).
My first word, reverting to the matter of Christ as the
foundation, will be a corrective word. We must be very clear and
very sure as to what it is we are here for, and what it is we are
after. There may come to us great blessing and enrichment along
the line of enlarging revelation of the things of the Lord. These
may make a great impression upon us as being very wonderful, very
rich, very full of suggestion, with the result that we find
ourselves beginning to talk a great deal about these things that
have come to our recognition, our knowledge, things that we would
say have been shown to us or have been revealed to us. Slowly we
are drawn into the way of speaking about truth and light and
revelation in certain terms, with a certain phraseology and a
certain association, and before we know where we are, we have
become people of a certain kind of teaching, a certain form of
teaching, of teaching couched in certain phrases and a certain
language, and we cannot but relate that to where we got it. Do
you see what is happening? Some thing is being
constituted, and that is accompanied by many perils, many
dangers, and sooner or later we find it working out not so much
to good as almost to bad. As we have said before, it can so
easily become a divisive thing, a separating thing, a thing
marking off lines of distinction between those who have this
light and this knowledge and this kind of teaching, and those who
have not got it. We can hardly avoid making distinctions, it is
just the way of things.
Now, it is not unnecessary to
say this. It is very necessary that we here today should look
this straight and fully in the face and just get ourselves clear
on the matter. Why are we here? Why are we here on the earth as
Christians? What are we after? What is our business? What is
Christianity all about from start to finish? For every fragment
of light and revelation, from the most early beginnings through
all the stages of enlargement and increase to however full a
measure there may be at the end, has to do with one thing and one
thing only, and if that is not the result of apprehension of
truth, of knowledge, of light, teaching, then we are putting up a
false building and everything again is in a realm of falsehood,
artificiality, unreality. What is it that we are here for and
that we are after?
Christians
on the Earth to Reveal Christ
Well, as I see it, the Word of
God has only one thing to say in answer to such a question, and
that is the revelation, the manifestation, of Jesus Christ; that
the Lord Jesus should be seen, should be manifested, should be
here in very truth, that all can see Him, and all can know Him.
You say, that is almost like an anticlimax to all that you have
been leading up to. We expected something much more than that.
No, that is just it, and, if I am not mistaken, the longer you go
on as Christians, the older you get, the more you know, the more
you come to dread any kind of teaching or any amount of teaching
that does not result in a very real knowledge and expression of
the Lord Jesus. That is, you will feel more and more unable just
to be content with teaching. Because of the serious demands and
the intensifying difficulty, the growing pressure, the
discipline, you will constantly and growingly feel: Yes, but what
is it all about after all, where does it lead us to, what does
this represent of value for life? And we know very well, do we
not, that it is only the Lord Himself who can meet our need, who
can really stand up to all that which comes upon us, the Lord
Himself, and we have to come back constantly to this: Oh no, it
is not the measure, the degree, the kind, the form, the nature,
of our teaching, our truth, our way of speaking, our
interpretation, our language. It is not that. It is the presence
and the manifestation of the Lord Jesus commensurate with it all.
Do these two things keep in even balance? Or are the ideas,
thoughts, the great things of the mind something very wonderful
in themselves and very wonderful as we contemplate them, yet are
apart from the real everyday manifestation of the Lord and
knowledge of the Lord? Are the people who think they have more
light and more revelation than perhaps others have, really
manifesting commensurately more of the Lord Jesus than others?
That is the question. That is the deciding point and factor in
everything.
If you or I claim to have more
light, more revelation - God forbid that we should ever
make claims like that! - but if we should think that it is so,
the proof and the value is - do people see more of Christ in us
than others? For God never moves beyond his Son, He never moves
to theories or teachings or doctrines or things that we call
revelations. He only keeps within the compass of His living Son
in manifestation. Do you understand what I have been trying to
say? It is very simple and very foundational. It is the measure
of the manifestation, the seen, recognized presence, of the Lord
Jesus - whether His presence is liked or not, that is another
matter. His presence may rouse a great deal of antagonism and
hostility or it may answer to the quest of many hearts. The
effect, one way or the other, is consequent upon His presence,
His being recognized, and it is just how much we are manifesting
of the Lord Jesus; after all our teachings and our conferences
and our meetings, how much we are manifesting of the Lord Jesus,
how much He is found in us. That is the deciding factor on the
value of everything. So the mark of testimony is not what we call
‘the testimony’, which for so many has come to mean a
certain form and compass of teaching. No, the mark of testimony
is Christ Himself manifested in a living way. That is the word of
correction with which we begin.
We are led by that to these
foundations again, or to this foundation which is many-sided. The
foundations in Revelation are many-sided, but the foundation is
one, it is Christ in His many-sidedness. Here in the Revelation
it is all manner of precious stones. Peter says, “For
you therefore that believe is the preciousness” (1 Pet.
2:7). So the foundation which is to give its nature and character
to everything that is put upon it, that is built upon it, that
rests upon it, is the multiple preciousness of the Lord Jesus.
The
Preciousness of Christ to the Father
Now, that preciousness is His
preciousness to the Father, in the first place. “Behold,
I (that is God speaking) lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect,
precious” (1 Pet. 2:6). If we were to investigate the
preciousness of Christ to God of course we should come very
clearly to the conclusion that what is precious to God is that
which answers to His own nature, that without which God cannot
do, that which is to Him the thing He just must have. It is
precious because it is indispensable to God, and if we looked at
that which is indispensable to God, we should find that it is the
constituents of His own nature. By contrast, we should see what
God hates, what He casts away, rejects as refuse, then we should
see what is precious to God. We have said that pride is an
abomination to God, something cast out. Then what is precious to
God is meekness, humility. Peter says “the incorruptible
apparel (ornament, A.V.) of a meek and quiet spirit... is in the
sight of God of great price” (1 Pet. 3:4), precious.
That is a virtue of Christ - meekness, a contrast to pride. So we
should go on, but we are not going to take up these precious
stones one by one.
Christ’s
Preciousness Ours Through Faith
We take up the word ‘preciousness’
and say, this being the foundation, that what Christ is to God in
the satisfying of His own nature and all His divine and holy
requirements becomes ours through faith. “For you...
that believe is the preciousness”, the manifestation of
the beauties and the glories of the Lord Jesus. Oh, do try to
free your mind from this being some sort of an address on a
subject, do try to realize this, that this is not something for a
meeting, for a conference or for our times of instruction in the
Word! This is something that has to go with us tomorrow and the
day after, where we are in homes, dealing with the everyday
people in life, in business, out in the streets, in our journeys.
It is there every day that the beauties, the excellencies of the
Lord Jesus must be in manifestation. It is not what we preach, it
is not that we are preachers giving subjects, but behind the
preaching, behind the teaching, meeting with us, in the work day
by day alongside of others, there is possible the discernment,
the registration of Christ - though people may not know what it
is. There is something of the beauty of the Lord our God resting
upon us, something that speaks of Christ. It is no use our
preaching about God’s thought and desires if people find us
wrangling and awkward and difficult and discontented and so on.
It is Christ, the beauties of Christ, the preciousness of Christ
to the Father which is the foundation, and all that is put on the
foundation must correspond to it, otherwise it is going to be put
in the fire, and there will be nothing left.
You see the glories of Christ.
Let us ask the Lord to create in us a passionate ambition to
express the Lord Jesus more than anything else. Not to preach
great truths, or to be preachers, teachers, anything like that as
such, but to express the Lord Jesus, that out of Himself, His own
presence, His own measure, His own nature, our opportunities for
preaching, if we are going to preach at all, will come, not
because we can talk, but because it is known that we have
something of the Lord. Do not let us live too much in the upper
stories of the house of God. The house of God is one, and it has
a basement and it has a kitchen. We do not want to always live up
on the top flat, so heavenly, so spiritual, so abstract, so high
up in truth that the practical things of the kitchen are left
unattended to. What would you say if you went into a house and
were taken upstairs and shown a very glorious, wonderfully
adorned upper flat, and then somehow you managed to get down to
the kitchen and found the most awful filthy mess, out of all
consistency with what you found upstairs. You say, there is
something wrong here, this does not tally. There is the kitchen
aspect of the spiritual life: all those practical, everyday,
humdrum things where the beauty of the Lord must be seen, just as
much as up there in the heavenlies in Christ. Do not let us live
exclusively up there. We must live down here. That is what the
Word of God does. That is what Paul did in his Ephesian letter.
He wrote half of it about the heavenlies, then, without breaking
it into chapters, he went straight on with his letter: “I...
beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were
called”, and then - husbands, wives, children, parents,
masters, mistresses, servants - that is coming down to the
kitchen, bringing the glory of heaven with you. It is a very
important side of things. Preciousness must be found down here. “As
in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6:10). Do not let us be
people who are so occupied with high-up things that we think it
beneath our dignity for such ‘spiritual’ (?) people to
light the fire and wash the dishes and clean the room and so on.
We may think that is not our job - we are more spiritual than
that! There is nothing that displeases the Lord more than people
coming to meetings and neglecting their homes, and thinking it is
another realm. It is not; it is this realm. The highest thing
that you can know is the manifestation of Christ, and that is
perhaps more tested in those monotonous, everyday, humdrum things
of standing in queues and all that sort of thing. Yes, but Christ
is still there; not two worlds, the same world. Oh, forgive this,
if it needs forgiving, for its simplicity. We must bring
everything up to a high level. What I am trying to say is, do not
be people of high ideas, great conceptions of truth, divorced
from a practical presentation, expression, manifestation, of the
Lord Jesus. Let it be Christ. That is the proof of the value of
anything that we have.
“For you that believe
is the preciousness.” Here is all this that is true of
Christ. Go through John’s Gospel again in this way. Here are
all the things that He says He is. “I am the bread of
life” (John 6:35). “I am the light of the
world” (John 8:12). “I am the good shepherd”
(John 10:14). “I am the true vine” (John
15:1). “I am the resurrection and the life” (John
11:25). Here is the great I AM saying what He is. And then you
notice how frequently He links with that a ‘shall’.
The ‘shalls’ of the ‘I am's’
in John’s Gospel are tremendously impressive - not always
using the exact word, but in the context you will find the same
conclusion. But here are some of the ‘shalls’.
“I am the bread of life”; “he that eats this
bread shall live for ever” (John 6:58). “I am
the light of the world; he that follows me shall not walk in
darkness” (John 8:12). The link between what He is and
ourselves is this, “he that believeth on me”.
What I AM shall become true of him. “He that believeth
on me shall never die” (John 11:26). “...shall
not hunger” (John 6:35), shall never wander like sheep
without a shepherd, he shall have a governing, controlling
reality like a shepherd in his life. “Shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life”. What I AM
shall become true. “I am the resurrection, and the life;
he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live; and
whosoever lives and believes on Me shall never die.” What
I AM is made good when you believe.
Now it is not what we are. I am
dead; He is alive. I can never be other than dead, but He as the
life can become life in me in my death, if only I believe. I am
hungry, spiritually starved; He is bread, and I need never
hunger; although I shall always hunger in myself, yet He will
become the bread to supply me. Think of it! I need never hunger,
I am down there in the country, isolated, getting no fellowship,
no food; I am away in some place where there is no spiritual
bread, and He says, “He that eats Me shall never hunger.”
Is that dependent upon where I am, what my situation and
circumstances are as to available spiritual meat? No, it is
Himself, not place; it is Himself, not circumstances. But how can
it be? - “He that believes”. Lord, I am
hungry; You said that if I feed on You, I need not be hungry; now
I take You at Your word, feed me with Yourself. Be very
practical. I do not suggest experimenting with the Lord, but try
it. You see the link between the preciousness: I am so unholy, I
shall never be anything else; but He is holy, He satisfies God in
the matter of righteousness and holiness.
The inclusive word of Peter on
all the points (whatsoever it may be that He is that we are not
that we need Him to be to us) the inclusive word is “I
lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that
believeth on him shall not be put to shame.” Look at
ourselves, what is going to be the end if we are left to
ourselves? Well, there is no doubt about it, we can see the end -
shame, failure - that is the end if it is left with us. “He
that believes on Him shall not be put to shame.”
Strange how Peter misquotes the passage from the Old Testament.
The Old Testament that he is quoting here says, “He that
believeth shall not be in haste” (Isa. 28:16). But is
it a misquotation? Are you making haste? Why are you in such a
hurry to save the situation, to do something about it? Why do you
get worked up into this spirit of, ‘We must do something, if
we don’t do something the whole thing is going to work out
in disaster.’ Peter, under the Holy Spirit, just covers that
and says, “not be put to shame”. You need not
get excited and rush hither and thither in haste to try and save
the situation. “He that believes on Him shall not be put
to shame.” Unto you is the preciousness if you believe,
and if you believe you will not be ashamed. You see the link of
faith with what Christ is.
Christianity
Not a Matter of our Soul-Life
Then here in the context of Paul’s
word about Christ the foundation, he says some people build on
that foundation a lot of rubbish, a lot of mixture. When we begin
to investigate we never have to look very far to find out what
the rubbish is. You do not have to make a list of things as to
what Paul means by this variety of stuff: “gold, silver,
costly stones, wood, hay, stubble”. You have only to
look at his letter and the immediate context and you will soon
discover what he is saying. You Corinthians are trying to build
up a Christianity firstly out of your own soul-life. “Now
the natural (soulical) man...”. That is his word to the
Corinthians, and when you look at 1 Corinthians what a lot of
soulicalism there is: this wisdom of words, this wisdom of the
world, these likes and these dislikes and preferences and
partialities and antipathies, and then their jealousies. That is
no good on this foundation. Do not bring your own soul-life into
relationship with Christ; it will not tally and it will not go
through, it will go up in smoke. Are you trying to make your
Christianity a matter of how you feel? You will have a composite
kind of Christianity of so many varieties, nothing consistent at
all, a perfect patchwork. Some patchworks are very clever,
patchwork cushions and quilts, marvellous things, very clever,
but you find no design, inconsistency, every colour
under the sun. That is the soul-life in the realm of its
feelings; one feeling today, another tomorrow. You are up or down
temperamentally in your soul; there is nothing consistent. Are
you going to put that on Christ? It will not go with Christ at
all. Your soul-life in the realm of your mind: all the
conflicting reasonings and arguments, attempts at getting some
settled mental conclusion about things. You never will. When you
think you have arrived at a very good logical conclusion about a
matter, something will come along and upset the whole thing.
Robert Browning said about an infidel that he beautifully got to
the place where he had created a theory which satisfied him that
there was no God at all, and then he said, a sunset upset it all.
You never get through that way. Your soul in the realm of its
mental exercises and conflicts will never tally with Christ. And
as for our own soul-will, strength to do, we may feel very
strong, we are never going again to be caught like that, never
going down that street again! It is not long before we are there.
Oh, how ashamed our souls make us! How ashamed we have been
because of the instability of our feelings or our wills or our
thoughts. Ashamed! Ashamed! Ashamed! Our souls are making fools
of us all the time. “He that believes on Him shall not
be put to shame.” Paul says that this soul-life
business must not come on Christ. It is a contradiction. It is
not what you are, it is what Christ is.
When you cannot see and
understand and work it out mentally, when you cannot feel
anything, no feelings at all, or when they are very bad feelings
- that is one realm, that is just what we are. Christ is not
that, and we have at such times to say, Lord, this is my
infirmity, this is how I am, but you are other; I transfer my
faith to you from myself and from these things. Christ is the
foundation, and all that we build on the foundation has to be
Christ Himself. He is not only the foundation, but He is the
whole building in every part.
I have only indicated what I
mean. It is a real desire that we should be more and more taken
up with the Lord Jesus, not with teachings, truths as such. Thank
God for every bit of revelation that comes for our deliverance
and help, but do not let us regard the revelation as something in
itself and begin to make that the means of propaganda. No, it is
the Lord that comes through it, becomes more to us by it, the
Lord Himself. If we do not see the Lord in everything, there is
something wrong, and it will miscarry if it is not the Lord. So
do not let us speak about this truth or that, about the Body, the
church, one thing or another, but the Lord. There is no church
but Jesus Christ Himself. There is no Body but Jesus Christ
Himself. There is nothing but Himself. He is all and in all. “Unto
you that believe is the preciousness.” Let us be sure
that we are not trying to build up something, a Christianity or a
church, or a movement or anything that is simply composed of
truths and doctrines and teachings, interpretations and so on,
but that it is really Christ in us, the hope of glory.