"A Candlestick of Pure Gold: of Beaten Work" Exodus 25:31

"The Testimony of Jesus" Revelation 1:9

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AN APOSTLE'S SUPREME AMBITION

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death" (Philippians 3:10).

THERE are few words in his writings which reveal how committed to the Lord Jesus this man was. The whole context is one consummate outpouring of his heart to the One whom he said had "apprehended" him, and he focuses all in a brief half sentence: "That I may know him."

The impressive thing about this expressed ambition is the time at which it is made. Here is a man who has had a revelation and knowledge of Jesus Christ greater than any other man up to that time. That knowledge commenced whence as he said, "it pleased God to reveal his Son in me". That beginning devastated him, and sent him into the desert to try to grasp its implications. Later he had been "caught up into the third heaven and shown unspeakable things, which (he said) were not lawful to be uttered". Between, and around those two experiences, there is evidence of an ever growing knowledge of Christ. Here, after all that, near the end of his life, he is crying passionately: "That I may know him."

The very least that we can say about this is that the Christ in view was a very great Christ indeed, who outstrips the greatest capacity and comprehension of man. This stands in such tremendous contrast to the limited Christ of our recognition and apprehension! How very much more there is in Christ than we have ever seen! But we must break down our verse. It is divided by its main words, and can be stated in its four phrases.

(1) The all-governing passion: "That I may know him."

(2) The effectual power: "The power of his resurrection."

(3) The essential basis: "The fellowship of his sufferings."

(4) The progressive principle: "Conformed to his death."

1. THE ALL-GOVERNING PASSION

"That I may know him."

Here a little study in words is both helpful and necessary. In the original language of the New Testament there are two words for 'knowing' or 'knowledge' or 'to know'. They run in numerous occasions and connections right through the New Testament. [97/98]

One of these words has the meaning of knowledge by information; being told, reading, by report. It is more the knowledge which comes by observation, study, searching, or talk. It is rather knowledge about things, persons, etc. The other word carries the meaning of personal experience, intimate acquaintance; and inward knowledge. Sometimes there is a prefix which gives the meaning of "full knowledge" (epi). The second of these words and meanings is that which Paul is using and employing here: 'That I may have or gain more of the knowledge of Him which is personal experience by personal acquaintance, by living, firsthand relationship with Him.'

This removes everything from the realm of mere theory, the intellect, and being told. It is the result and effect of an act of the Holy Spirit within. That is why Paul links with this knowledge "the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings". It is powerful knowledge, born of deep experience. And this is the only true knowledge of Christ! It is planted or wrought deep in the inner life.

2. THE EFFECTUAL POWER

"The power of his resurrection."

While there is a future aspect of the whole statement, that is, the consummation in glory, we must understand that in each of these phrases Paul is thinking of this life. Even in the next verse, where he speaks of attaining to the "outresurrection from among the dead", he is thinking primarily of present spiritual and moral out-raising. He had known something of this power already. His conversion was such. Again and again, in what he called "deaths oft" he had known it. Perhaps greatest of all were his experiences in Asia and Lystra (2 Corinthians 1:9; Acts 14:19-20).

Resurrection power and life are the knowledge of Christ. This is how we know Him, and this is available for every believer. It is for endurance, for overcoming, for fulfilment of ministry, for maintaining the Lord's testimony in the world; for every need which demands it in relation to the interests and glory of Christ. It puts life on a supernatural basis. It is the power of His resurrection, the greatest miracle in history.

3. THE ESSENTIAL BASIS

"The fellowship of his sufferings."

In this connection there are some things that we must at once set aside. There were sufferings of Christ which we do not share, and are not called upon to share, although sometimes there seems to be a very fine and thin line between them.

We do not share the atoning sufferings of Christ. There is a whole realm of suffering which was His alone. The work of man's redemption was His alone, for us. When He who was without sin was made sin for us He was alone, even God-forsaken in that eternal moment. Upon that fact the whole truth of His unique Person hangs, and the whole system of perfect sacrifice rests; the spotless Lamb.

But when all that is accepted and established, there are sufferings of Christ in which we have fellowship with Him. We also, for His sake , may be despised and rejected of men. We can be discredited, ostracised, persecuted, mocked, tortured, and even "killed", both in an act and "all the day long". Paul speaks of a residue of Christ's sufferings which he was helping to fill up for "His body's sake which is the church". This is another, and different, area and system of suffering. Paul looked upon this as an honour and something in which to rejoice, because it was for the One whom he so deeply loved. But he also saw that this suffering with and for Christ provided the basis for knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection This Apostle would agree that only those who know this fellowship truly know the Lord. We know that! It is perfectly evident that real usefulness in a spiritual way comes out of the winepress, and "they that have suffered most have most to give" There is nothing artificial about the fruit of Christ.

4. THE PROGRESSIVE PRINCIPLE

"Becoming conformed unto his death."

It is important in understanding the Apostle to realise that he was not thinking of conformity to Christ's death as the end of all else. His real meaning was that he should increase in the knowledge of Christ, know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings by becoming conformed to His death. His death -- Christ's -- was behind, something at the beginning, and the spiritual history of the believer is a working back to what that death meant. It meant the end of the "old man", crucifixion to the world mind and will; the closing of the door to a whole system which was not Christ-centred and Christ-governed.

All this had been stated and presented in Paul's earlier letters; but it was a meaning which had to be progressively made real and true in spiritual experience. The meaning of Christ's death -- Paul [98/99] taught -- was to be the inner history of the believer, and this would work out -- progressively -- in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. So that, by being conformed to His death, he would come to the fuller knowledge of Him and of that Divine power. It is ever so.

The all-governing passion opens the way for the effectual, and effectuating power, by the essential basis, through the progressive principle of conformity to His death.
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THE MISSION AND THE MESSAGE OF JESUS CHRIST

5. IN THE BOOK OF ACTS

THE importance of this book is best recognised if we were to estimate the importance of it being in the New Testament at all. I wonder if you have ever thought of what the New Testament would be without this book! Perhaps at some time you would like to read the New Testament and leave this book out. There would be a whole lot of questions that you could never answer, and you would be in complete confusion. This book, therefore, is of very great importance to the whole New Testament.

Historically, it is Luke's second volume, and it gives us the beginning and the spread of Christianity. It tells us how all the rest of the New Testament came to be written. That is the historical aspect but spiritually there is another aspect, and that aspect is backward and forward.

In the first words of this book Luke tells us of what happened in the past -- that he informed his friend of what Jesus began to do and to teach. That is the backward look. Then Luke proceeds to look forward. In effect, he says: 'Now I am going to tell you what Jesus continued to do.' But there is this particular thing that we must note: all that is in this book is the securing of the ground for the rest of the New Testament. All that is in the rest of the New Testament is built upon the ground of this book. After Acts the New Testament is occupied with the doctrine, or the teaching, and the book of the Acts is the story of how the ground was secured for the teaching.

As to the backward look, this book of the Acts takes up Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and makes those four Gospels actual. Now I want to remind you of one of the first things that we said at the beginning of these messages. You remember that we said that the best way of understanding the New Testament is to read a book and then having read it, to stand back and ask yourselves the question: 'What is the main impression that has come to me by reading that book? This is of particular importance with regard to the book of the Acts, for when we stand back, after reading it, we see the Holy Spirit making the Gospels real and actual in history. Pentecost truly governs this book, but it will be well for us if we stand back again from that word 'Pentecost', and if we ask ourselves this question:

WHAT WAS PENTECOST?

Can your minds work quickly enough to give an answer? If I asked you now just to put down on a piece of paper what Pentecost was, I wonder what you would say! I know what a lot of you would say: 'It was the advent of the Holy Spirit.' You would be quite right. Some of you would say: 'It was the baptism of the Holy Spirit', for that is the meaning of the word 'Pentecost' for a great many people, but when you press the question closer, what was, and what is, the baptism of the Holy Spirit? You know what a lot of people would say. It is not necessary for me to discuss that! However, what I am getting at is this: there is an altogether inadequate conception of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost has come to mean a very much smaller thing than it really is, and that is what I want to show in the first place. Not one of us will doubt the necessity of the Holy Spirit. Call it 'Pentecost', 'the gift of the Holy Spirit', 'the baptism of the Holy Spirit', or what you like, but, really, what was it?

TAKING UP THE GOSPEL BY MATTHEW

Firstly, the coming of the Holy Spirit was taking up the Gospel by Matthew. What have we seen to be the message of the Gospel by Matthew? We have seen it to be the absolute lordship and authority of Jesus Christ -- and that is the beginning of Pentecost. That is the first meaning of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and we do not know the meaning [99/100] of the Holy Spirit until we recognise that. Now read the book of the Acts in the light of Matthew! "They ... went everywhere preaching ..." (Acts 8:4), and what was the chief note in their preaching? Jesus Christ is Lord ! (Acts 10.36.) The absolute lordship and authority of Jesus Christ runs from the beginning to the end of the book of the Acts.

This is the primary test of our having the Holy Spirit, which ought not to be something subsequent to our conversion. This is not the extra gift, nor the second blessing. You look into this book and see! From the very beginning these people who came to the Lord came into His lordship. They accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, and they came under His authority, and that was the secret of the power of the early Church. I know it was that that cost them their very lives. If you stand on the ground of the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ something is going to happen, but do you want nothing to happen? Yes, things happen in this book. All hell was stirred to its depths, all men were compelled to give a reaction of some kind, and all heaven was very interested. The supreme thing in heaven and earth and hell is the lordship of Jesus Christ, and making Jesus Christ Lord is the first work of the Holy Spirit in a life. I do not just want to say these things; I do want them to be applied. I hope that no one will read this message without making Jesus Christ Lord in a new way, without making Him Lord in all the practical things of your life and in the way you behave in this world, in everything that people see about you, so that you are captivated men and women, young and old. So the book of the Acts takes up Matthew.

TAKING UP THE GOSPEL BY MARK

It also takes up Mark. What is the message of Mark? It is that a life under the authority of Jesus Christ is marked by a consuming concern that other people should know the Lord, a great passion that others should receive the Lord and that He should have a full place in them. You remember John Mark? I hope you will never forget him! That young man in a hurry! He had lost time. He returned from the work, and there was a period in his life which was lost to the Lord Jesus. Then he was recovered and his whole spirit from that time was: 'I must make good all the time that I have lost', and so John Mark is: "Straightway ... straightway ... straightway ..."

John Mark, therefore, is the representative of a life under the authority of Jesus Christ, and he takes the spirit of Jesus Christ and says: 'I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work.' Now you see in the book of the Acts how that spirit is found. "They ... went everywhere preaching", and if you say to me: 'Well, of course, that applies to the apostles', may I remind you that it applied to all the believers that were in Jerusalem "scattered abroad" (Acts 8:4); when the hammer of persecution came down on the Church at Jerusalem and the believers were scattered everywhere. The Greek word for what they were doing is very interesting. I notice that our interpreters have got into difficulty with this word! Well, if you don't understand the word, you know the thing. You can see it on the street any day, and after every meeting of a conference. Two or more people get together, and what are they doing? Well, they are just ... gossiping! That is the word. These believers went everywhere just gossiping -- gossiping the Gospel. They were talking, talking everywhere about Jesus Christ. That is actually what is said about them. That is in the book of the Acts -- but that is the later spirit of John Mark in Acts. He is moving everywhere and is talking about Jesus Christ. Do you see that this book of the Acts does take up Matthew and Mark?

May I just stop here to say something especially to my younger friends? It is quite evident that after his restoration John Mark was a released young man. Before that, although he was a disciple, he was just tied up, and his relationship to the Lord Jesus was in severe limitation.

Now what I want to say is this: You will never get your spiritual release until you become one who testifies. This is a law of the spiritual life. I do not present myself to you as an example. You may not believe it, but I was a young man once! I came to the Lord when I was in my teens, but for quite a time my spiritual life was locked up. Yes, I loved the Lord, I had given my heart to Him, but my life was all tied up until the day came when I stepped into the middle of an open-air meeting and gave my simple testimony to a large crowd of people. It was an awful business! I went home saying: 'I will never do that again!', but it turned out to be my release, and from that time my spiritual life was completely free. That is when I started my preaching life, and that has gone on to this day. The point is that you will never get full release in your spiritual life until you tell someone else about it.

I had a great friend, and he was a great soulwinner. I was not very much impressed with his preaching, but he was a wonderful personal worker, and I am sure that in eternity a great number of people will owe their salvation to that man. Now [100/101] he learned this principle. One day he went out and was wondering where he was to go to meet some souls and tell them about the Lord Jesus. He was just passing the army barracks, and inside the gate he saw two soldiers. One of them was on guard; he had his gun over his shoulder and was marching up and down. On the other side there was another soldier, just standing and watching. He had the stripes on his arm, and was just watching to see that things were done properly. My friend walked in through the gate, and when the soldier came to stand still, quite contrary to regulations, my friend asked him if he knew the Lord Jesus. Well, the result was that this soldier accepted the Lord Jesus. My friend said to him: 'Now that you have accepted the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, shout over to that other man and tell him what you have done!' He had much experience, and he knew quite well that while we keep it to ourselves we are not free. If you are an apostle, go everywhere preaching the Lord Jesus. If you are just a simple believer, talk about the Lord Jesus everywhere and you will be a true John Mark. The book of the Acts takes up that principle of the Gospel by Mark.

TAKING UP THE GOSPEL BY LUKE

What about the Gospel by Luke? What did we say about that? We saw that the message of Luke is the message of a new humanity, a new kind of man, and this new kind of man is after Christ. It is not mankind according to Adam, but mankind according to Christ. Is it necessary for us to point that out in the book of the Acts? The work of the Holy Spirit is not only to make Jesus Christ Lord and to make us active witnesses to the Lord Jesus; it is also to make us like the Lord Jesus. It is to reproduce the Lord Jesus in us, and this is the proof as to whether we have received the Holy Spirit. This is what Pentecost means: a change in our nature from Adam to Christ.

TAKING UP THE GOSPEL BY JOHN

And then we pass on to John. You remember what we said about John's message? Everything in this present dispensation is of a heavenly character and is spiritual in its nature. I will gather that up into one word. Near the end of John's Gospel he gives us that wonderful prayer of the Lord Jesus. Jesus is praying, is pouring out His heart to His Father, and the burden of His prayer is these men the Father had given Him. He is praying for them, and what does He say to the Father about them? "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (John 17:14). That is New Testament Christianity, and the work of the Holy Spirit is to make that true of every one of us -- "not of this world". Romans 12:2 says: "Be not conformed to this world", and do you know what the literal words are? "Do not take the fashion of this world." That is very searching!

Well, I must leave that word with you, especially to the younger people. Are you trying to be like the people of this world in your fashion? I will say no more, but I will ask you to ask your own heart about that. You will never overcome the world on its own ground. The Church has tried to do that, and the world has defeated it. Our victory in the book of the Acts is on the ground that we are not of this world. So the Acts takes up John, and, as I said, makes actual Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

TEACHING FOR THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

When the ground has been secured and men and women have responded to that fourfold message, then the teaching follows. We have the forward look from Acts. All these people in all these places mentioned in the Acts will receive the teaching for their spiritual life.

Now note this again. The teaching demands the position. Unless you are in the position the teaching will do you no good. You may have it all in your notebook, or, if you have a good memory, you may have it all in your head, but it will do you no good whatever unless you are in the position. We can only understand the teaching, and grow up into Christ, if Jesus Christ is absolute Lord. There are multitudes of Christians who have just come to a standstill in their Christian life. You try to talk to them about the fuller things of Christ and they look at you as though you were talking in a language they had never heard before. They do not understand what you are talking about. Well, they have come to the Lord, but for them the Lord is not absolute Lord, and therefore they cannot understand the teaching. They are still babes in Christ. For spiritual understanding and spiritual growth complete committal to the Lord Jesus is necessary.

Again, we cannot understand the teaching or grow up into Christ unless we are very practical in our Christian life. That is John Mark -- being very practical about the Christian life. Not just theory, nor doctrine, but practical life. That is essential to spiritual knowledge and spiritual growth.

Then we cannot understand the teaching or grow up into Christ unless we are dedicated to be like Christ. That is Luke -- manhood after Christ. If your heart is wholly set upon being like the Lord [101/102] Jesus He will give you an open heaven, that is, the Holy Spirit will come and teach you and work in you according to Christ.

Finally, we cannot understand the teaching, nor grow up into Christ unless we are not conformed to this world. There is really no such thing as a 'worldly Christian', that is, from the New Testament standpoint, but actually there are many Christians who are still of this world. Do you know, dear friends that this world lies under a curse? Do you believe that of the devil? He was cursed in the Garden of Eden. The symbol of Satan is the serpent, and the serpent has no wings -- it cannot get off the earth. The symbolism is that this earth is a cursed thing, and the Scripture says that "the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5:19). If you touch this world you touch death, that is, spiritual death. The Word of God knows what it is talking about, and therefore, with very great meaning, it says: "Be not conformed to this world." If you do Satan will make a mess of your life. Brother Watchman Nee always spoke of this as 'the earth touch'. If he saw any Christian who was not going on with the Lord, who had no spiritual power in his life, he said: 'There must be an earth touch somewhere.'

Does this all sound very serious? Well, it is serious. It is not my desire to he hard, but I am trying to help you to see the way of a true Holy Spirit life, and so I come back to what I said about Pentecost. Do you see how much greater Pentecost is than what people think it to be? This is what Pentecost meant in the book of the Acts, and this is what it will always mean. So I say to you what the Apostle Paul said: "Think on these things."
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GOD'S SPIRITUAL TEMPLE

[Harry Foster]

Reading: 1 Peter 2:1-10; John 2:13-22

THE TRUTH SOWN AND HIDDEN

YOU will notice that the incident referred to above took place at the commencement of our Lord's ministry, and it is very remarkable that there is nothing in the other Gospels of this nature which sets forth so clearly the determined counsel of God concerning the crucifixion and resurrection. He began to disclose to the inner circle of His disciples how He must be crucified, and rise again on the third day. Here we have quite a public statement right at the beginning of the Lord's ministry. This surely brings into view something of extreme importance, which gives a very big and comprehensive explanation of the mission of Christ in coming here, being crucified and being raised again -- "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

You will notice that the disciples, after the resurrection, remembered that He had said this, and we are told that they believed the scriptures and the word which Jesus had said. When the Lord Jesus did rise again, so unexpectedly to these men (although they had been told so often), they naturally would remember that He had told them that He would rise again. But we are expressly told here that it was not the fact of His resurrection that they remembered, nor the fact that they had been told about it beforehand, but that after He rose again they remembered this particular saying. It came back to them -- not just that Jesus was going to rise again, but this particular utterance of His. Surely that means something more than that they believed that it was written that Jesus should rise again! They came to understand something of the implication of the resurrection, and I think we find that in this particular chapter of the first letter of Peter.

Here is the real implication of Christ's resurrection, and a scripture is brought forth. He is to rise again. Yes, but His resurrection means this: that God now has, by the resurrection, a spiritual, heavenly, eternal temple in which to dwell. "Destroy this temple," the Lord Jesus said, "and in three days I will raise it up." He raised up God's temple which, in the first place, was the Lord Jesus Himself. The disciples remembered the scripture, and here in Peter's letter we have the Spirit's explanation of that abiding work done by the resurrection in the sense that God now has a spiritual, heavenly, eternal temple in which to dwell; and when we touch that we surely touch the final, and ultimate, and full purpose of God.

Peter tells us what the temple is for. On the one hand, it is that spiritual sacrifices might be offered up to God. On the other hand, we are told that it should be that from which His excellencies should be shown forth. It is a place for God's dwelling, in which He is to abide and find the satisfaction of His heart (represented by the spiritual sacrifices), [102/103] and from which He is to manifest His excellent glories to the universe. That is the result of the resurrection.

Now we may see something of the value and importance of this expression of the Lord's from the way in which it was taken up and twisted by His enemies towards the end of His time here on the earth. You remember that when they sought false witnesses against Him, nothing very much came which seemed to offer any particular charge against Him until two men came and said: "This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days" (Matthew 26:61). Why did they lay hold of this saying? Surely there were many other things which might equally well have been brought forth as charges against the Lord Jesus! Well, of course, as Jews that hit them and it rankled in their hearts. That is the human explanation. They could never forget a word that seemed to be against their temple. But there is something even deeper. Surely Satan's hatred is being manifested in this, and since it is to be shown what his finger is out against, there comes up this question of the destroying and raising again of the temple. It would seem that there is something there against which all the powers of darkness are ranged, something which, as far as they know, is of supreme importance and value. It comes up again when the Pharisees complain about the tomb not being sufficiently guarded: "Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive. After three days I rise again" (Matthew 27:63). That had remained in their minds and was something they could not forget. When we touch this question of God's heavenly dwelling-place, the corporate heavenly Man, immediately we come into a realm of intense and bitter conflict. This is God's ultimate purpose, as it is His first purpose. His heart has always been set upon this very thing, and that is confirmed by the way in which Satan rages against it.

THE TRUTH APPREHENDED

Now we pass into the time of the Pentecostal Church in the book of the Acts. We find there men who, because of their witness concerning the Lord Jesus and His resurrection, are in a realm of persecution and suffering, trial and difficulty. But it seems that, when we get beyond those first few chapters and meet this servant of the Lord called Stephen, we come into a peculiar realm of antagonism. Stephen comes forth as a man, and the first thing we are conscious of as he comes into his public ministry is that all hell is against this man. They have been persecuting the disciples, but they gnash their teeth on Stephen, and there is a tremendous uprising of all the rage and bitterness of hell against him. It is surely not going beyond the scripture to suggest that Stephen had a clearer vision of this very thing than the apostles had. We are not suggesting at all that there are any differences between these servants of the Lord, so far as their experiences are concerned. As we know, the Apostle Paul later on brought, by the Holy Spirit, a very clear explanation of the heavenly nature of the Church, and there have been some dear children of the Lord who have mistaken the explanation for the experience, and think that the Apostle Paul brought in the heavenly Church.

I think there is no doubt that these first chapters of the book of the Acts reveal that the saints of the Lord at that time had not the clear vision of what was involved in this heavenly temple, but that did not alter the fact that they were in the experience and value of it, and were living in fellowship with their blessed Lord, in heavenly union with Him; for we must always remember that the experience is one thing, and the explanation of the experience is a further thing. The experience does not wait upon the explanation. Let us not be too concerned if we have not the clearest understanding or explanation of things, but let us rather be deeply concerned that we shall be in the heavenly value of them and in the experience of them -- though, of course, the explanation as given by the Holy Spirit is of great value.

Then we come to Stephen. Stephen has met the awful force and power of the devil against him, and then he is brought before the Sanhedrin. Notice the terms of the accusation! The witnesses are false, but they are as usual distorting something which is true. "This man ceaseth not to speak words against this holy place, and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place ..." (Acts 6:13-14). Well, as in the case of the Lord Jesus, they were false witnesses, distorting his words, but there was something of truth in what they said. Follow through Stephen's explanation. Many good people imagine that Stephen did not answer the charge, but went off into a long story and then levelled a hot-headed explanation against the Sanhedrin, and suffered for it. Not at all! Stephen is a man filled with the Holy Ghost. He goes through the history of God's dealings with His children from the time when the God of glory appeared unto Abraham, and keeps this charge in view until he comes to the end of the story. He tells how Solomon built a house and said: "The heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what manner of house will ye [103/104] build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?" (Acts 7:49-50) -- and he stopped there. If God does not dwell in a house made with hands, where does He dwell? Stephen was reciting a well-known passage of scripture to men who had quite probably studied the scriptures and knew them. Now you know that when a passage of scripture is quoted and the one who is quoting stops before it is completed, how instantly in your mind you finish the quotation. This was a very familiar passage and perhaps every man in his mind said: "But to this man will I look ..." (Isaiah 66:2), and the Man who was very much in view was the Lord Jesus. That was why Stephen did not have to say any more to ram home the explanation!

Here is the point. You are speaking against the temple -- but what is God's concern? What is God's plan and place? What position has He in this great building? Well, the Almighty does not dwell in houses made with hands. Then where does He dwell? "... to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word." You do not have far to go before Stephen says: "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). A heavenly Man at God's right hand in the power of resurrection? They would not forgive Stephen for that! All hell rose up in an awful ferment of fury against him. Why? Because this is the ultimate, full thing of God. Where is God's holy, heavenly, eternal dwelling place? "To this Man will I look" -- the Lord Jesus Christ! He always was, of course, God's heavenly Man; but the value and the purpose of the resurrection is that -- as we see so clearly in 1 Peter 2 -- by His resurrection God not only has the Personal Man in whom He dwells, but also His corporate Man, His heavenly, holy, eternal dwelling-place.

Now this is the emphasis in my own heart. The Lord Jesus said that if that temple were destroyed, in three days He would raise it again. That raising again of His temple, His body, of Him who was, and is, the eternal temple of God, has resulted in this: that God has secured in Him, beyond any doubt, that which His own heart has sought from all eternity -- a spiritual temple in which to dwell, wherein to find His own heart's rest, and from which to manifest His glory.

THE VIOLENT REACTION TO THE TRUTH

You notice the reaction of the Jews to what Jesus said in relation to the three days: "Forty and six years was this temple in building." Herod was the man responsible, and he would not be forty-six years at a job without making a very good job of it! As a matter of fact, that building in which our Lord stood was one of the wonders of the world, and yet that was not where God dwelt. So the forty-six years and the three days not only stand in contrast as to time, but set before us this real contrast of what a wonderful building for God can be as against the heavenly temple which God has built for Himself. Oh, what a contrast! I cannot describe that temple at Jerusalem, but most of us have probably read some account of its beauty and wonder. But that was not where God dwelt. Where did He dwell? Peter tells us: "Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men ..." See the contrast! Here is a great, overwhelming, impressive, beautiful, magnificent building, and over against it a very ordinary Man. The Word describes Him as 'a root out of a dry ground, with no form nor comeliness, and when we see Him there is no beauty that we should desire Him'. No value was set on Him, and He was not esteemed -- and yet this is God's heavenly Temple. We need to pull ourselves up over this, for we have so often imagined that God's temple must be a world wonder. If it is full of God's glory it must impress people! We have to learn that God's glory is a very different thing from the world's glory, and does not impress the people on earth, for it is not revealed to them.

THE TRUTH STILL LARGELY HIDDEN

How many of the Lord's people are straining, striving, praying, and desiring that the Church here on earth should be a world wonder, impressing people by its magnificence, by its form, by its standing among men! No! That is not where God dwells, and that is not what He is doing. It is this Man, rejected by the builders, disallowed, despised, who is God's Living Stone, His heavenly Temple.

That refers not only to the life-time of the Lord Jesus, but, if you pass over to the time of the Epistles, you see a glory of God in man joined to Jesus Christ; but it is not very glorious and magnificent so far as earth is concerned. You remember the account that the Apostle gives in 2 Corinthians 3 in which he contrasts the glories of the Gospel with the glories of the law, and he tells how there was a great glory associated with the law when Moses came down from the Mount. That was a very impressive sight, but the whole point of the Apostle's account was to show how very much the new covenant excels that in glory. [104/105] It is of surpassing glory, so that that old time of the first covenant seems to have no glory 'by reason of that glory which excelleth'. So we might ask: If Moses was such an extraordinary sight, and this is a glory that excelleth, where is the man that is the herald of such a covenant? He is a despised outcast, broken, pressed, trampled on, beaten, imprisoned, scourged, discredited, poor, as having nothing. And yet, was not Paul, above all who have been on this earth, a wonderful example among men of the heavenly glory of those who are associated with Jesus Christ? There was no earthly magnificence about him, and he became even more discredited and despised; but that is always the way.

SUFFERING AND GLORY

Peter is the Apostle who speaks of glory, but he is the Apostle who speaks at the same time of suffering. He is amongst that company in the glory of God's heavenly, wonderful work, but you would not think so to look at them. They are going through fiery trials; they are suffering, and it is not a very heroic suffering so far as the world is concerned. They are suffering as Christians, and "Christian" was a very nasty word by which to be named in those days. We do not realise how much contempt a name can convey. Here are people suffering as Christians and they are people filled with the glory of the Lord. That is God's heavenly temple. There is a wonderful inward glory of fellowship with Him, but so far as the world is concerned, the Stone which the builders rejected is an unworthy thing. We need to remember that!

Even when we have laid aside our more wonderful ambitions concerning the Lord's work, and even when we come to realise something of the heavenly and spiritual nature of the Church, there often lingers with us a desire to make, perhaps of our little local assembly, a world wonder, something that shall impress people. Not to impress them in the sense of wealth and influence of course, for we may have got beyond that realm, but there is still sometimes the desire to impress people with the very spirituality and efficiency of the thing. 'This is an example of the heavenly Church here on earth!' No! If you are trying to get a spiritual work that shall be a world wonder, you are not doing what God is after. 'Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone' -- but it is rejected of men, though held in great honour by God and by those who believe. It is an honour which this world can never understand, and which the Lord does not allow to be displayed here on earth. It is quite obvious that in some cases He takes pains to remove those very things which might present something to be recognised by men. Thus He takes Moses and makes him a nothing, a nobody; He takes Paul, and all the things in Paul which might seem to be of value, even for the Church of God, have to be cast away, until he becomes this messenger of the Gospel a despised, rejected outcast. But Paul knew it was all right, for he had the vision of the heavenly side of things.

Forty and six years it took them to build the temple, and I understand that it was not finished then. That is the sort of thing that happens when you are trying to build something for God! It has not taken the Lord two thousand years to build His temple. He did not even take those three days of which the Lord Jesus spoke. We know His resurrection did not take three days, but was actually on the third day. What did God do? In the twinkling of an eye there was a finished work by the resurrection. It did not take the Lord Jesus time, for this raising of Him was a timeless thing, though actually there was a moment in time when He was raised from the dead. Man's building takes a long process and period, and then it is not finished. What God does He does in a timeless way, and it abides for ever.

The Jews were afraid that the Lord Jesus would rise again, because they knew that Lazarus had risen from the dead. When Lazarus arose the stone had to be removed and the grave clothes taken away, and they thought that, if only they could seal the tomb, even if Jesus did rise again He would not get very far because the tomb was blocked up. The angel rolled the stone away, but not for the Lord to come out; he rolled it away so that people could see that He was not there. In a moment God raised Jesus from the dead, and in a moment God had laid in Zion His Living Stone. By that raising He had in Christ that upon which His heart had been set through all eternity. In the resurrection that great and wonderful and eternal work was a finished thing.

FINISHED AND YET PROCEEDING

Looking at this from another point of view, we read about the whole temple growing and the Body making increase of itself. Look at it from a heavenly side and we see that this building is finished and the work is done. If, by the Holy Ghost, we can lay hold of this it will mean a tremendous strength to our hearts. God is not taking forty-six years, nor any time, to build His Church. There is a sense in which, by the resurrection, this is completed. It was as secure in Christ on that [105/106] resurrection morning as it ever will be. What strength to the heart of a despondent, struggling servant of the Lord who sees so little and desires to see so much of God's true, spiritual building! May the Lord show us, and give us grace to be ever reaching out to Him in earnest faith and prayer, that He may do His work; but we shall find strength for our prayer and strength for our ministry if we get God's viewpoint, which is that at the end of that third day Jesus Christ raised up God's holy, heavenly temple, a finished thing. Praise His Name!

BY MEN OR BY GOD

Now notice these forty and six years during which these men were building. They were trying to build something for God -- and that is just the trouble. God's heavenly dwelling-place is not like that. We read that it is a spiritual temple, and we shall understand something of that which is involved if we see the contrast. This great wonder of the world was what the Epistle to the Hebrews calls: "Of this building" (Hebrews 9:11). It was made with hands, with laborious planning and straining and effort to build up something with a good, strong foundation here on this earth, that God might have something for Himself. That is the opposite of His spiritual temple. And yet, how many of us have been engaged in that very thing!

You notice what happens when people try to build something for God ( for God, mark you!). Then they have to go on and try to maintain it for God, and before long they have got the thing in their own hands and are grasping it for themselves. You get a feeling that things are not quite right as soon as you open the Gospel by John, but you have not got very far before you find this most significant phrase: "Now the passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand" (John 6:4). You do not find that term in the Old Testament, for it was Jehovah's Passover. Now it is the Jews' Passover. They have got it themselves and are holding it and that always happens when people try to build something for God. And look at the state the building was in! Contamination had come into it, and it was a defiled thing.

Oh, the defilement and contradictions that come into anything that we try to build up for God! We may do it with the very best intentions, but it is a very dangerous thing to be a builder. These builders rejected the true Stone, and whenever people on this earth try to build up something for God, what eventually happens is that they reject the Living Stone. It is a sad thing, but true. The very fact that they are so busily engaged in trying to build something for the Lord brings them into the realm where they really reject the Living Stone and make their own edifice. You see the contrast. The Lord says: "Behold, I lay in Zion ..." It is not the earthly Zion now and is not built by human pains. It is a poor conception of the Lord's work to imagine that because the Jews would not have Him and He was driven out, He had to found a temple amongst the Gentiles. That at its best, when it was pure and spiritual for God, was only a type, but it was a shadow of the things which are to come. God says: "Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone ..."

A RESURRECTION TEMPLE

There are very practical issues from all this. It is by the resurrection that God's heavenly dwelling-place is obtained, which means that we need to know the resurrection. To know the resurrection is to be made conformable to His death, and in the final summing up it is, as the Apostle says: "That I may know him." Therein we have what is involved in being in that which is God's true, heavenly work -- to know Christ and to come into an ever-increasing knowledge of Him. That is the way, and that involves in actual, continual experience, this basis of death and resurrection. That was how God's purpose was obtained. There had to be the death; and then He rose from the dead, and in actual experience it was as a practical working thing. Our life in that heavenly temple means for us a continual series of experiences on this basis of coming to a place which seems to be utter destruction, and then God raising from the dead.

THE DEVIL'S HATRED

For one reason this is because the devil is always out against the thing that is God's chief concern. So, right up to the very end, when the Man-child is caught up to the Throne, it is in such an atmosphere, and that rapture is a resurrection from the dead. The dragon stands there ready to devour, and here are the saints of the Lord brought to the last extremity. And then God's purpose is fully and finally realised as, out of the very jaws of Satan, He catches up His Church. And this principle is the same all the way through.

This is encouragement for us, because it explains a lot that would otherwise be inexplicable. Why do we go through such terrible experiences? Why does everything seem to collapse and break up? Have we failed? Is it unbelief? Are we wrong? The principle of the heavenly temple is death and [106/107] resurrection, death and resurrection! For us it means a series of experiences when, for the moment, we seem to be utterly swallowed up. It is as if once again the challenge has gone out from the Lord to His enemies: "Destroy this temple!", and the devil takes Him at His word. But the Lord continues: "I will raise it up." That is the experience through which the Lord is bringing us, and it is necessary for this reason: that, so far as our personal and practical experience goes, God's building is largely a matter of His being able to break down that which is not of Himself. Perhaps that is the three days -- death really working, and the delays in our experience are often, not solely because of His building, but because through a certain period there is some breaking down process going on. We shall probably see that growth is more in the nature of swift acts of the Lord. We come to a new place, but the process is one of disintegration, of breaking down and despair. That is the way the Lord leads because, in practical experience, this resurrection can only be on the basis of death, and it is a continual application of the Cross making the death real, and putting out of the way that which hinders God. But let us always hold in view this fact: that it is by the resurrection that God has secured everything.

In one sense we are not waiting, and God is not waiting to be able to build His heavenly temple, to have His heavenly Man, for He has Him there already. The resurrection has done that, and our strength consists in laying hold of that, and believing that with all our hearts. Notice the abiding meaning of that which God does! The temple was forty-six years in building, but it did not last another forty-six years. The disciples could not believe that. When the Lord said: "Your house is left unto you desolate!" they came back and said: 'Lord, look at these buildings, these great stones!' Then the Lord said: "See these great buildings -- and there shall not be left one stone upon another!" Looked at from a human point of view: there is here a well-grounded and founded piece of architecture, so strong that it would seem to last for ever. On the other hand, here is a poor, frail Man, whose life, it would seem, could be taken away in a flash. Which is going to abide? From an earthly point of view the building will abide, and the human life is snuffed out like a candle. Those poor Hebrew Christians to whom the Apostle was writing were tremendously attached to all these things, and they found it hard to leave them, go right outside the camp and be united to Christ, whereas when they had a temple and recognition by the Roman Government they seemed so secure. They little knew how few years were to pass before not one stone of that temple would be left on another. The Lord said through that very Apostle that He was going to shake once more the heavens and the earth, and He reminded them that they were inheriting a Kingdom which could not be shaken, but it looked so different. It looked so precarious just to be in that heavenly position. There was no security for them here on earth, no recognition, and that is a very real consideration today for many servants of the Lord.

How we do want something that has a standing before men and is recognised, a kind of something that we can fall back on and feel secure! This attachment to a heavenly Christ is all very well, and we are hoping for it in the future, but while we are here on earth we want something more solid and more reliable. Not many years passed before that whole temple was in ruins, and a ploughshare was being driven through them. It was gone and now these people were really in a desperate plight, for they had nothing. But those who are united with the Lord, in heavenly union with Him, are unmoved, even though everything is reduced to ruins with not one stone upon another, and though perhaps the visible thing that represented the Lord here has gone. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision" (Psalm 2:4).

AN ETERNAL TEMPLE

Which is the most reliable? The temple looked such a great place, but the Lord said one day that a greater than the temple was there. It is worth while to be united with Him. When everything else is shaken, He is unshakeable, He abides, He is eternal. Having come to the Living Stone, we know that blessed position of being united with Him, where nothing can ever move or change God's eternal purpose.

We are not striving nor trying to climb up towards that position, and our strength is to recognise it. In the Epistle to the Ephesians we read that we are raised, we are placed there. It is true that there are plenty of enemies, but in Christ we are above the enemies. So in the Epistle to the Colossians we are told to seek the things that are above. What is the basis? That we have died and are risen with Him! That is why we are to seek the things that are above! It is something which was done once and for all in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Let our hearts lay hold of that. God has laid His Living Stone in Zion, and there we stand by His grace. - H. F. [107/108]
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FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

REGRET CANNOT FORGIVE

[Harry Foster]

ONE day in 1955 Mr. Macmillan's Private Secretary was walking up and down in his room at the Foreign Office with deep concern on his face and a letter in his hand. When a friend came in and asked him what was the matter he explained that the letter had come from somebody whom he had been at school with at Winchester.

When they were boys the writer of the letter had bullied him terribly. Perhaps the cruellest thing that this bully had done was to put Hancock in a trunk and sit on the lid, knowing very well that the boy suffered badly from claustrophobia and was terrified to be so shut in.

The years had passed and the bully had now written from his death-bed. He was suffering from cancer and apparently only had a few days to live. In his letter he was asking Hancock to send him an urgent message of forgiveness for all his cruelty at Winchester. He said that since he had grown up he had become a clergyman and had often been troubled at the thought of all the wrong done to Hancock, though he had never done anything about it. Now he was dying, and he only asked one thing. He longed for forgiveness and would be grateful if Hancock could send him a message by telegram.

This was the explanation of Hancock's present concern. It would be easy just to send a telegram of forgiveness only because his persecutor was now dying. It would be easy, but it would not be true. Patrick Hancock was not only a very gifted man; he was so truthful that he could not bring himself to tell a lie.

So he paced up and down his room, wondering what he should do. He thought over the matter all through the day, and then let a night's sleep pass before he finally made up his mind. This was the telegram which he finally sent to the dying man: "REGRET CANNOT FORGIVE. (Signed) HANCOCK." It must have been a hard decision to make, and a sad message to be received, but it was truthful. Though he regretted to say so, the fact was that he could lot forgive.

Why not? Perhaps because he felt that a death-bed repentance was not good enough. Perhaps because the injury done to him was so deep and lasting that it could never be forgotten. We do not know. None of us dares criticise this action of Hancock's, but what we can do is to rejoice that we have a Saviour who is able to forgive.

The Bible tells us that God cannot lie. That is good, but if it turned out to be a truthfulness like that of Hancock's, it would leave us all with the sad message from heaven: "REGRET CANNOT FORGIVE." Instead of that the good news of the Gospel tells us that God is able and ready to forgive all our past misdeeds, however they may have wounded Him.

It might be that the real difficulty was because the confession was only made from a death-bed. If the offender had gone to Patrick Hancock before he became a clergyman and had apologised like a man, he might in time have found himself able to forgive. Perhaps the bully had left it too late.

Be sure that you do not make the same mistake. Without waiting for the time to die, without waiting any longer at all, come straight to the God whom you have wronged and ask Him for His forgiveness. It is not only important to die in peace; it is important to live in peace also -- peace with God. This peace comes from forgiveness, and God who cannot lie has promised it. "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mightest be feared" (Psalm 130.34). - H. F.
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THE MOMENTOUSNESS OF JESUS CHRIST (2)

"God ... has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by (in) the (a) man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31).

"For neither doth the Father judge any man, but he hath given all judgment unto the Son ... and he gave him authority to execute judgment because he is the (a) Son of man" (John 5:22, 27).

HERE we have a comprehensive and emphatic statement concerning the place that the Lord Jesus occupies by the appointment of God His [108/109] Father. That place is shown to be inclusive and exclusive. That means that

1. God has summed up all things in Christ. Ultimately there will be nothing outside of Christ, and all that eventually is found to be outside of Christ will be removed from God's domain.

2. Nothing of God can be had outside of Christ.

In the Bible we have two revelations: one of man outside of Christ and the other of man in Christ. The emphasis is upon the word man. The Scripture above says that the final judgment of the world is in a man ; a God-ordained, God-horizoned man. And it is not by, but in that Man. What is in that Man in the matter of righteousness will be the criterion of judgment.

MAN OUTSIDE OF CHRIST

We know, not only by the statements of the Bible, but in our own hearts that man is marred and spoilt by sin. It is an ugly word, hated by all, refused acknowledgment by many, excused by many more, but, apart from those in Christ, not confessed or allowed recognition. In this connection it is very significant that, in a time of moral landslide and increasing depravity, there is a great revival of humanism -- the theory of man's inherent goodness and moral greatness: the total dismissal of the fact of sin as sin . It is called by any other name, even good in the making. It is not difficult to see through this artifice of the devil. It is to construct a humanity which, in itself , is its own saviour, and to wholly dispose of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This is almost the last word in human blindness. It is blindness to history. It is blindness to the moral de volution of recent times. It does not allow that the last decades have uncovered a depth of iniquity, wickedness, and "man's inhumanity to man", beyond description, and that in the areas which have had more education, scientific research, discovery, and "culture" (?) than anywhere else on the earth. Such is the master-deception of the devil! "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving", says the Word of God. We must ever remember that Satan's rebellion against God was on the decision of God to make man . He knew that the intention of God was to give dominion over the world to man, and that dominion he -- Satan -- both coveted and usurped by the deception of man. This is all very clearly implied in the titles given to Satan in the Bible as "The prince of this world", "the god of this age", "the world-ruler of this darkness", etc. Hence the double issue of man's deception, seduction, and ruin: man's separation from God: and the defeat of God's intention. Man, out of Christ, is such a man, even at what he -- man -- thinks to be the highest levels of intelligence, "culture" and "progress". The Bible says much about the sinister nature of "the wisdom of this world", and even foretells that apostasy will go hand-in-hand with the increase of knowledge. The subtlety of sin is that to try and eliminate its malevolence it has to be called by other names. The Bible does not hide the fact of man's sinful nature, not even to omit mention of the sins of the greatest of its men of God: Abraham, Moses, David, etc.

It is now possible to discern the momentousness of Christ. For this we have to go a long way back, even to a cosmic event before man's creation, when, the Bible tells us explicitly, God appointed His Son "Heir of all things". That was the point of cosmic controversy then, and has been ever since. The focal point of the conflict of the ages is the predestined place of Christ as Son of Man, the humanity according to God's intention, of which Jesus the Christ is the "Firstborn", Progenitor, "Pioneer" and "Head". Countless are the ways and means pursued to prevent, frustrate, and defeat Christ from coming into His own in a humanity conformed to His image. In other words, (a ) to discredit and displace Christ; and (b) to prevent there coming into being a people truly, by new birth, coming "into Christ". The great revelation of the New Testament is what is represented by that phrase "In Christ". The "fall" was not only a fall in level, from one higher level to a lower; it was a fall out of God! The momentousness of Jesus Christ is in His reversal of that, and in Himself restoring man 'into God', his right place.

This is the meaning of that darkest and deepest eternal moment at the end of the Cross when Jesus went out from God -- "Forsaken"; out into the direst distress; out, that in 'lostness' He might find us just where we are in God's knowledge and bring us back into God. "Christ died once, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). His body broken was the reality of which the veil of the tabernacle and temple was the type. Its rending, as between heaven and earth, man and God, opened a fast-closed way back into the realm of God. Surely that was a momentous moment: a momentous act!

Every aspect of Christ's person and work, and every aspect of the Gospel has to do with this. Moreover, every activity of the evil powers upon the Christian is with the object of cutting in between him -- or her -- and the Lord by weakening or damaging the one tie of that union, namely faith. [109/110]

Hence Christ's imperative "Abide in me". Satan "abode not in God" and see the consequences! Hence the momentousness of being in, and abiding in Christ, which is in God.

We return to where we began. God binds Himself up with His Son for man. All judgment is, and will be, on the basis of what Christ is and whether man is in Him or not. The whole Christian life, if it is true and under the government of the Holy Spirit, is a lifelong education as to the significance of Christ; the knowledge of Christ, and, seeing that it is not merely theoretical, doctrinal, theological knowledge, but very practical, wrought on the anvil and by the fires of deep experiences, it is knowledge which is a part of our being, our constitution. It is knowledge which represents something that has taken place in us. We are that knowledge.

When we first come back to God through Christ we have only a more-or-less understanding of the depth, the cost, the momentousness of what we have come into. But as we go on, the dealings of God with us bring us to an ever-deepening realisation and appreciation of what Christ is and has done. On the one side, the depth of our worthlessness becomes more terrible to our awareness. This is not for our desolation as the end, but to make us "know" how great is the meaning of Christ from God to us, and to God for us. The ultimate vision of the redeemed multitude is that of a worshipping people attributing everything to the Lamb.
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THE DIVINE MINISTRY OF DELAY

[J. S. H.]

ONE of the great dangers of life is that of losing sight of God's great design in the details by which that design is worked out, and it has been well said that we entirely lose the value of any experience if we isolate it. That is, if you take your sorrow and regard it apart from the great designing love of God, if you take your losses, your temporary setbacks, your momentary depressions, and dwell upon these things as if they were the only experiences of God's providence, and as if they were not related to the great central control of His love -- you will entirely miss their value. It is that we may be saved from such peril that we are meditating together thus on some of God's unlikely but never unkindly ministries.

With this brief recapitulation let me ask you to turn to the word which is the occasion of our thought this morning in regard to the Divine ministry of delay by which God oftentimes tests His people. I will ask you to turn to the words of Jeremiah the prophet, in the book of Lamentations, in the third chapter, at the twenty-fourth verse: "The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." It is especially on those last words that I want our meditation to be based: "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."

Let us frankly admit at the outset that one of the great difficulties of life with many of us is concerned with the fact that God sometimes seems to delay His answers to our prayers. The most perplexing problem of many a Christian life is just this: that God apparently does not answer, and apparently does not even heed much of our crying. By His grace our faith in Him has not been finally disturbed. By His grace this conflict has been carried on courageously in secret. Outside our own heart no one even suspects that there is such a conflict. But you know that there is, and I know that there is, and sometimes the only word that rises from our hearts when we come into God's presence is almost the last word which came from the Saviour's lips: "My God, why?" This is not the first question of the Christian life. Faith's first question is usually "How?" There is a stage in Christian experience when we are constantly saying "How?" -- "How can a man be born when he is old?" "How can these things be?" "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" "How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" These are some of the first questions of the Christian life. But as we go on with God, as life deepens, as its necessities become heavier, its sorrows more acute, and our perceptions more alert also, the question which rises from the heart of many a disturbed and distressed believer is: "My God," not "how?" but "WHY?" I have already suggested that what many of us are seeking at this time is not comfort, nor sympathy, nor even the lightening of our loads. We are seeking some explanation, some interpretation from God Himself as to what He is doing in these our lives. Some of us are distressed almost to the point of desertion -- desertion of our [110/111] own allegiance, and desertion of His colours, because He seems to delay, indeed almost to deny the things we ask Him.

Yet, I would remind you that there is nothing which the Word of God so amply encourages men to do as to pray. There are promises attached to prayer which do not attach to any other condition. There are riches which are covenanted to men as the result of prayer and waiting upon God, which they can obtain in no other way. And it is just because the promises with regard to prayer are so great, so high, so wide, that these delays of God perplex us, and we cry out this morning, "My God, why?" There are times in life when nothing but sheer belief in God's goodness saves us from despair, when nothing but simple reliance upon God's love, without any present evidence of it, can save us from hopelessness; when nothing but almost reckless faith in His omnipotent wisdom, will prevent us from sinking into positive moral apathy and spiritual lethargy. Therefore, it is my present endeavour to help some here to a recreation of that sheer belief, that simple reliance, and that reckless faith in God which trusts Him when His face is veiled, and they do not even feel the grip of His hand. Faber well sang:

"Thrice blest is he to whom is given

   The instinct that can tell

That God is on the field, when He

   Is most invisible."

That is the instinct which may God grant every one of us to have in these days.

Now these words were spoken by the prophet Jeremiah in a day when the nation's desire, its best desire, was perhaps never so evident. The people had begun to see the fulfilment of God's promises and the working of His providence. Their foes were being pushed from their land, the beginnings of recultivation were taking place, and the broken-down altars of God were being rebuilt. But all was being done so slowly that they could not reconcile the slowness of God with the implicit assurances upon which their faith in Him rested. They were impatient and restive under His apparent inactivity. Faith saw God's beginnings and, like the disciples of later days, "thought the kingdom must immediately appear!" There is a great deal to be said for the faith of a little child which cannot understand the reason of delay. But you will not misunderstand me when I say that there is a great deal more to be said for the faith of a grown man who has come to know that God has an entirely different scale for the measurement of time from those we commonly use. There is still more to be said for the faith of the man who is perfectly content to rest in the fact that a thousand years are as one day with Him, and one day as a thousand years. This was the faith of Jeremiah. He had looked into the depths of the Infinite God, and had seen that He was unhurried, and that His ways were the more certain because they were not the more obvious. So he waited calmly, and sought to renew courage and patience and hope in the people, just because these things were the expression of his own soul. Hence he says: "It is good for men that they are kept waiting, that they have to quietly hope for the salvation of God."

You will readily understand that these words of his are of infinitely wider application than to the Israel of that day. I believe they are apposite to the case of every one of us here today who is perplexed because, for instance, the expected deliverance from sin in his own life does not come as he thought it would. Or the petition he offers for some good of which he conceives himself to be in great need is not granted. Or the loved one for whom he prays is not immediately converted, and though he goes on praying he has almost lost heart about it. Or the revival in his world for which he has conscientiously wrought to the very last ounce of his strength, does not seem to be even on the horizon. We want to know why this delay, and what the spiritual good of having quietly to wait and hope so long.

I am very sure that when the last word of human experience about prayer has been said, we are still in the presence of the greatest of all mysteries. The man who thinks he knows so much about prayer, that he can frame a philosophy of prayer, really confesses that he knows little indeed. How prayer liberates spiritual forces, who knows? Why God has ordained that men should wait upon Him, uniting their wills with His in order to exert the saving power of His grace both in their life and through them in the lives of others -- who can say? With regard to this greatest of all subjects, there is really nothing further to be said than that which Paul said about all knowledge of God -- "We know in part, and we prophesy in part." But, thank God, we do know! What we know we know with a certainty which nothing can shake. But we only know in part. Therefore they are mere suggestions that I venture to offer you today, suggestions which have come with some degree of light and encouragement to my own heart in regard to this assertion -- that it is good for a man to wait and hope for the salvation of God.

It is almost unnecessary to say that there is no thought in this word of any man having to wait until God is willing to bestow upon him the primary [111/112] gifts of pardon and peace and forgiveness, the salvation which is His free gift in Jesus Christ. The sinner who cries for pardon, the weary and heavy-laden who ask for rest of heart, the lonely who seek the fellowship of love, are never kept waiting for the fulfilment of their desires. The prodigal is welcomed before he utters his prepared confession. The sinking man who cries "Lord, save me", is at once conscious of being grasped by the Hand of power. The Evangel of Christ bears the ageless superscription that "now is the day of salvation". In this respect, indeed, it is never God who keeps men waiting, but men who keep Him waiting. But, in regard to that aspect of His mercy which is concerned with the strain of our present discipline, with the anxiety of future uncertainty, with the relief of immediate discomfort, with the weariness of unremoved burdens -- it is in that realm of life that we want to know why God delays. Nor is it unnatural that we should be impatient.

For instance, here is a good man who reads that "All things work together for good to them that love God", but who sees nothing in his life today but chaos. His affairs have been completely ruined. His home has been invaded by sorrow and disappointment, until the nerves of all are on edge, and no one knows with certainty what an hour is going to bring forth of fresh calamity. That man has rested upon that Divine Word with implicit confidence in its truth, but the delay in realising its fulfilment has almost staggered his faith. Is it to be wondered at that he should be asking today what it all means?

There is a young man yonder, and there has been illumined to his soul's vision this word: "In all things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us." And yet he has been defeated even since he came to Keswick, and this morning his face is toward the ground, and not toward the Lord. He says, "What does it mean? I have rested my whole weight, as I believe, upon this promise of God, and my Lord delays His coming in power to me. What does it mean?"

There is the busy worker -- I have met him since I came to Keswick -- who has come from some far-off missionary field, in which for the last ten years he has been pouring out his life, seeking to live the life of a citizen of the Kingdom of God resting upon that word -- "My word shall not return unto Me void, but shall accomplish that which I please." And he confesses today that he has seen it accomplish hardly anything. What does it mean?

There is the great promise upon which every member of Christ's Church just now is building more solidly than ever a temple of hope: "Behold, I come quickly." It seems as though Christ was never so much needed as He is today. It seems as though international relationship can never again be restored as we have known it. It seems as though the scattered units of Christ's Church can never be gathered together again in one, save by His coming. And the Church cries out: "Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus." But there is not a sign of His coming. What do these delays of God mean?

I am going to suggest three things, and they are mere suggestions; but may they bring light to you, as they have brought to me in past days. The first thing I want to say about God's delays is this: It is only by enforced waiting upon Him that we come to know God with that knowledge which is the foundation of all character. I use the word enforced waiting upon God, because it is only by being forced to wait upon God that some of us ever do wait on Him. We are naturally impatient, we are naturally impulsive, we naturally chafe at anything like slowness, and God, by withholding the answer for which we have looked, keeps us at His feet in order that we may come to know Him. He is infinitely more concerned in the making and remaking of our lives than in the gratifying of our minds. He is infinitely more concerned in making us men and women of His own pattern, and to deepen His life in our souls, than to gratify some of the desires which we often express in unconsidered prayer. For we cannot come to know God, and inferentially we cannot come to know ourselves, in an hour. God's delays do not indicate any caprice on His part, but rather His concern and compassion for us. They are directed toward saving us from hurrying away from His presence before the lessons of His grace have been more than mentally received. God is preparing us, by keeping us waiting upon Him, worthily to receive, to interpret, and then to use the gifts He will yet give in answer to prayer and in fulfilment of His word.

I constantly see tourist visitors to London rushing about from Park to Palace, doing what they call the "sights". And after a fevered week they go back home thinking they know London. But do they? One of Ruskin's students once said to him, on returning from a first Italian visit: "Sir, immediately I entered the Gallery at Florence, I knew in a moment what you had always impressed upon us as the supremacy of Botticelli." Ruskin's reply was, somewhat cutting. He said: "Oh, you found that out in a moment? Well, it took me twenty-two years to discover it!" And there are a great many people who think they know God in the light of a single experience! We are kept waiting upon Him [112/113] that we may become of the number of those who really do know their God, and who consequently are empowered to do exploits. God is making us; do not let us be impatient under the process. God is making us; do not let impatience and impetuosity take us, therefore, from under the hand of the Master Workman. He is eliminating the flaws, and remaking the marred vessels. The two qualities which we need most -- endurance and radiance -- are not imparted to any man in a single hour. God keeps us waiting that in His presence, beholding His glory, we may be changed into the same image from glory unto glory.

The second thing I want to say is this. Many of our prayers must be passed through the refining medium of God's wisdom, that is, of God's love, many of them must be edited by God before they are answered. For well-intentioned prayer is not always well-informed. Like those who made requests of the Saviour, God often has to say to His children, "Ye know not what ye ask". If some of our prayers were immediately answered, the consequence would be almost certain moral and spiritual disaster. Our prayers have to be passed I say, through the refining medium of God's wisdom, sometimes with regard to their motive. "Ye have not because ye ask amiss." There are men and women, for instance, who pray for power while their real objective is pre-eminence. What they really mean by power is that which will make them prominent in His service. When our motives are altogether unworthy of the words we express, we have to be kept waiting until God turns upon us the searchlight of His love, and learning the untrustworthiness of our own impulses, we yield us to that gracious Spirit who makes intercession in us according to the will of God.

Not only in regard to the motive, but in regard also to the content of our prayers, Christ has to say again and again, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of; are ye able to be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?" For often we know not what we ask, and hence God's delay in response. I have seen children -- we have all seen them -- who have been utterly spoiled by the weak good-nature of parents who gave them at once everything they wanted. For human love may be entirely lacking in wisdom. But the love and wisdom of God are one. When He keeps us waiting for secondary mercies, it is in order to make us know the value of the primary and spiritual. We have to learn that God's "No" is just as much an answer as God's "Yes". We have to learn that God's "Not yet" is just as truly an expression of Divine love as God's "Immediately". The day will come to every one of us when we shall know that God's silence was in reality His most loving speech to us. For we shall see that while seemingly inactive God has all the time been working in us, bringing us into moral correspondence with His will, which alone capaciates men to receive His gifts.

Well do I recollect, some years ago, in the city of Dublin, a man coming into the vestry-room of a church and saying: "Sir, I want to thank you for that message about God's love. I believe every word of it now, but I did not six months ago." His eyes filled with tears; and as I said: "What does it mean, my brother?" He went on: "Six months ago my home was bright and happy, and the shadow fell. I prayed earnestly that God would save my wife and our infant. But he took them; and I have come to know that He took them only in order to bring me back to Himself, from whom I had wandered." God's silence in that man's life was His richest and kindest speech. And others of us have found this to be true also; and more of us will find it so ere these dark days in which we live have passed away.

The things we try to get rid of by prayer are often the very things we can least afford to lose. Some of those things we call burdens, of which we try to get rid in the Sanctuary, are the things that God has placed upon us for the steadying of life and the guiding of our energies into channels which otherwise we should overlook and miss. Paul learnt that there was something infinitely better than the removal of the thorn-pain -- infinitely better! Thrice he besought the Lord to remove it -- with what interval between those prayers we know not. But surely Paul, like the rest of us, was perplexed at God's delay. And he ultimately found that God was preparing something far better than the extraction of the thing which caused a throbbing wound -- "My grace is sufficient for thee." If he had not had the thorn-pain, like the nightingale which is said to sing sweetest when its breast is pierced, he had never learned the song: "Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me!" We learn, as we are kept waiting at His feet, that the cord which we would have had God cut, He disentangles, and so saves for purposes of His service. God's ways are always justified of His children, if they will patiently tarry His leisure.

Ere I pass on to the third and last suggestion I have to make, may I say that surely we get an illustration of all this in the burden of prayer which is increasingly descending upon us for our nation. There are not a few of us who are perplexed that God has not already intervened to stay this [113/114] terrible conflict. We look out from this place of quiet rest, and see across the Channel the sons of God being butchered upon the fields of France and Belgium; and we cry to God to give victory to the cause which is inherently right, and about which we have no shame. Yet He does not do so. After a whole year, and despite the sacrifice of thousands of precious lives, the battle-line is drawn substantially as it was at first. Why does God not put forth His power through our Forces, and by scattering the nations that delight in war bring this unspeakable strife to an end? Why have we no answer back from Heaven that our cry is heard? Why does He delay His coming when by one word He could end the whole conflict? Ah! it is not that God cannot, nor that He will not; but that an immediate victory for our land might only mean a revival, in the basest form, of our national sins. As a nation we are far from being morally ready for victory, for there are few signs in our common life that we have learned and taken to heart the lessons of this chastisement. That is why God is keeping our nation waiting. We have to be brought infinitely lower yet. We have to learn yet what the law of God stands for. We have to learn yet what the hideousness of sin in a man or nation means. We have to learn that sin brings pain and bloodshedding to man, as it brought pain and bloodshedding to God. Then when the nation is morally prepared and renewed I believe that victory will not be delayed by an hour. But it will not come one hour sooner. Hence the necessity of our quietly waiting for the salvation of God. Though remember, in the last analysis, it is not He who delays the answer to our prayer for victory. It is we who delay Him.* (*[footnote] Spoken in 1915 during World War I.)

The third thing I want to say is this. Faith can only be trained by being tested. As a man's muscles are only hardened by exercise, so his faith only becomes strong and ultimately invincible by being subjected to the discipline of strain. For until it accepts the will of God, not under compulsion, nor because there is no alternative, but by free choice and glad surrender, faith is lacking in essential quality. But when we are unmoved by the fact that we are kept waiting, calmly conscious that God's glory is intimately bound up with our lives and prayers, and content that if He can afford to wait, so too can we, one of life's greatest lessons has been learnt. For faith reaches its triumph only when its exercise ceases to be a deliberate activity and becomes an instinctive attitude.

Sometimes we learn this by our own impetuous efforts to hurry God. There are two conspicuous examples of this. Do you remember Moses and his undisciplined effort at the deliverance of his people? How disastrously it ended for him! God had to take him into the schoolhouse of the desert and keep him there for many a weary year. By his impetuosity he had embarrassed God; and so, too, do many of us. Do you remember Abraham with a wonderful promise to support him, with a vision so great that it staggered him, attempting to expedite God's purpose? You know the dark story of Hagar and Ishmael, and all that it afterward led to. Sometimes God likewise delays the promises of His faithfulness in order that we too may learn the utter futility of our every effort, and all the sweat of our souls, apart from Him. For remember that the faith of God must be vindicated in us before it can be verified through us, and before we can be His effective messengers to the world.

One last word. There is nothing in common between quiet waiting upon God and lethargic indolence. We have known those who excuse their non-participation in the enterprises of Christ's Church because of this necessity of quiet waiting on God. Let me say that there is no greater mistake than to wait for subjective manifestations and to neglect objective opportunities. True waiting upon God expresses itself in the expenditure of every energy of the soul at the clear directions for whose interpretation we do not need to wait an hour. Oh, the supine folly of the man who in these days of tremendous opportunity is content to "wait upon God" to open doors, to "wait upon God" to enlarge opportunities, to "wait upon God" to organise success and influence for him, while he himself does nothing in the way of sacrifice -- of giving himself, of losing his life, for the Kingdom's sake! God does not co-operate with dreamers. We cannot live in fellowship with God and let evil stalk unchallenged, by neglecting the wide-open doors of the world which call to our faith and our loyalty.

I cannot forget that God did once say to His people: "Stand still, and see the salvation of God." But I also remember that that word was given to men and women, a great host, who were walking in implicit obedience to His leadership, and who in that pathway had come up against the impassable. There are times in life when God says these words to us, but only when, like Israel, we are walking in the light of His will.

"We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;

We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;

Shun not the struggle! face it! 'Tis God's gift.

Say not, 'The days are evil! Who's to blame?'

And fold the hands, and acquiesce -- oh, shame!

Stand up, speak out, act bravely in God's Name. [114/115]

It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong,

How hard the battle goes, the day how long;

Fight on! fight on! tomorrow comes the song!"

As we wait upon God in this energy of implicit obedience to Him, He will vindicate all His delays. He will do it as we stand, like men who wait for their Lord, doing His will to the very utmost of our power, knowing that when He comes He will perfect that which concerns us; pushing the battle to the gate, in the confidence that at the strategic moment He will bring up reinforcements which shall mean the final factor in victory, quietly hoping for that we see not; saying to our souls again, and yet again, "We see not yet all things put under Him, we see not yet the fulfilment of our every desire; but we see Jesus crowned. Blessed be His Name for ever!" (Selected ) - J. S. H.
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THE CHURCH -- ITS NATURE, PRINCIPLES AND VOCATION

4. THE LOCAL EXPRESSION OF THE CHURCH

BEFORE leaving our consideration of the Church, I feel strongly that I should say a few things of vital importance as to a true local expression of the Church. I know only too well how difficult it is to find or secure any such true expression, but that is no reason why we should abandon the whole matter: rather is it a pointer to its value, for history and experience have shown that this is one thing that is of very great account where the adversary of Christ is concerned. To prevent or destroy such expressions has always been a major concern of the powers of evil. The true Church, universal and local, is a very great menace to the kingdom of Satan. This we have emphasised in earlier chapters. But let us summarise:

(1) The importance of the Church in local expressions

We must first remind ourselves that a solid block of the New Testament was written specifically to local churches; which churches had been the first result of apostolic ministry. That ministry, and all the suffering involved, had been vindicated in local corporate bodies of believers. It was for those churches that the apostles travailed, laboured, prayed and fought. The bulk of the New Testament had its supreme concern for such assemblies which, themselves, had known great sufferings in their very birth, and were in "a great fight of affliction" for their continuance and survival.

Then we must remember that the Lord's own personal concern for, and evaluation of local churches is made very evident by His direct messages to the seven churches in Asia with which the book of finalities (Revelation) commences. There is no mistaking the importance to the exalted Lord of local churches when we read those messages, the focal point of which is a clause in one of them "These things saith the Son of God." The Psalmist Would say: "Selah" -- "think of that!"

(2) This importance is to be seen in the specific values of a local assembly, when rightly functioning

(a) Here the principle that "No man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself" (Romans 14:7) is enunciated in relation to the local church in the messages to the churches in Asia. It is said of the church in Ephesus that through them "all they which be in Asia heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10 -- see 1 Thessalonians 1:8). It should be impossible for a local assembly of God's people to exist without it being known over an area far greater than its own locality. A living company will, sooner or later, be known abroad for what it has of the Lord.

(b) To enlarge on this, a local church should have, not only enough spiritual bread for itself, but basketfulls over to spare, and many beyond its borders should be receiving enrichment from its spiritual wealth. Is this not so very evident in history? Have not the Lord's people been feeding down the ages unto this day upon the bread ministered to and through those New Testament churches? Is it not true that multitudes have been fed, and are still being fed by the food ministered in local churches in many places in the last century? So the Lord would have it. The church which only ministers to itself and does not do so to the Church at large is committing a sin against the trust of life; it is a cul-de-sac, not a highway. Of course, it is particularly important that the ministry in a local church is truly anointed ministry. Not by man's appointment, selection or decision from either side. Not by studied-up and made-up addresses, but by illumination and inspiration as through [115/116] an open heaven. Not just keeping something going as a must, but by revelation of Jesus Christ. It must be evident to all that those leading and ministering are under a genuine burden from the Lord, and the evidence is life!

(c) The local church should, and can be a refuge, a covering, a protection to its own members. One of Satan's master-tactics is to isolate believers and then knock them out. This can be done by unwise and independent action, choices, movements, uncounselled decisions. The church by its prayers, and counsel, and fellowship is a Divine provision against the tragedies which lie in the way of independence and isolation. Co-operation and coordination in the physical body are a provision and a law against many diseases. So it is in the spiritual body corporate.

(d) The local church should provide personal ministries to the Lord's people, and to the unsaved near and far, and it should provide an encompassing safeguard and support for the fulfilment of such ministries. Those who go forth in the church's ministry should know that they are being upheld and stood with by those from amongst whom they have gone. Indeed, they should go as sent forth by the church!

The lack and absence of these characteristics in local companies is the cause of much weakness in the Church universal.

(e) Finally, a local church rightly functioning is a wonderful provision for the training of its members for service. Training is so largely a matter of being able to work corporately. How to live and work with others, and to sink individualism into fellowship, is a real part of the discipline which makes a fruitful ministry!

There is a real danger in departmentalism; the separation into isolated groups, so that these groups do not come into the corporate life and function of the church. It is possible to have groups associated with a local church which really have no true church life. This means weakness and loss. Moreover, the local church should be its own Bible School, for systematic instruction in the Word of God.

Careful reading of the Bible, especially the New Testament, will show that what we have said above is all there as exhortation, admonition, warning, instruction, and example.

Were I to add one more vital and all-inclusive thing, I would say that the absolute essential to such churches is a real work of the Cross in everyone concerned.
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THE ESSENTIAL NEWNESS OF THE NEW CREATION (1)

"Thou hast heard it; behold all this; and ye, will ye not declare it? I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, which thou hast not known. They are created now, and not from of old; and before this day thou heardest then not; lest thou shouldest say, behold, I knew them" (Isaiah 48:6-7).

" Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new" (1 Corinthians 5:17 -- R.V. margin).

"And no man putteth a piece of undressed cloth upon an old garment; for that which should fill it up taketh from the garment, and a worse rent is made. Neither do men put new wine into old wine-skins: else the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins perish: but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved" (Matthew 9:16-17).

FAMILIARITY with words and ideas very often takes something from their value. Few passages in the New Testament are more familiar to us than 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation ...", but the full force of the one governing word there has, I am quite sure, not fallen upon our hearts, and we have still very much to learn as to that essential newness of the new creation in Christ. Indeed, we may say that many of our troubles, our difficulties, our weaknesses, our failures, our problems, our perplexities, are the result of our having failed to grasp sufficiently the import of that one word "new". We have, very largely, proceeded into the new creation with a good deal that is old, or we have tried to do so, and we have discovered sooner or later that that cannot be done and we are attempting an impossibility. So it may be quite profitable for us to dwell for a little while upon this essential newness.

We begin by reminding ourselves, or acquainting ourselves with the fact that there are two sides to the new creation. There is the vessel, and there is that which is put into the vessel. It takes both of these to constitute what is called the "new creation", the human side, and the Divine side, but while newness applies to both sides, the newness is not the same newness. There are two main words which are translated into our English word "new", and [116/117] we are perhaps familiar with the difference between them. One implies something which is fresh, not necessarily just originated, but bearing the mark of freshness. The other word implies more strictly something which is quite recent, and which was not necessarily there before; it is not new in the sense that it has just come in; it is not something revived but something new. It is interesting to notice that the Holy Spirit uses the two words in connection with the two sides of the new creation.

In this vessel in Matthew 9 you have both words used. As to the wine-skins (translated in the Authorised Version as "bottles") the word used is that which implies freshness. When the Lord Jesus speaks of new wine He uses the other word, that is, something which is quite new, quite recent. When you pass to the passage in 2 Corinthians 5 and it is stated that: "... if any man is in Christ there is a new creation; the old things are passed away: behold, they are become new," there the word which means freshness is used twice. That is strictly consistent with the truth as to the real nature of the new creation.

You are dealing, first of all, with the vessel. Now, as vessels in the new creation we are not something which never was before, something quite recent. The vessel of the new creation is our old spirit brought back into life. Our human spirit fell out of fellowship with God, and that meant spiritual death. The new creation activity is to bring back the human spirit from spiritual death into life, and it is the same spirit, raised in union with Christ, becoming the vessel of the new creation.

That is, however, only half of the process. Something which was never in that spirit before is deposited in it; a life which is not fresh but new, recent, absolutely new, which was never in the human spirit before, is now put into that vessel, and that which is so completely new, says the Word, is never put into an old wine-skin. That vessel has to be made fresh, has to be brought into a state of life in order to be the receptacle of this utterly new life of the Spirit of God.

These are the two sides of the new creation. The point is that, first of all, something has to be done in the vessel, as well as something having to be put into the vessel.

That is a principle, to which God has bound Him self and which governs Him in all His activities. It applies in every direction where Divine work is in view. God never builds His new thing upon an old foundation. He never uses the old thing as the material for His new work. That has to be completely renewed. That He does not put His life, His new wine, into old skins is a truth which relates not only to regeneration, to our salvation, to the new creation man, but it also applies to every work of God. Whenever God does a thing the characteristic is newness. Although there may be an old vessel, that vessel has to be made fresh in order to effect God's end.

That applies to truth as much as to anything else. It may be Divine doctrine, God-given revelation, that which at one time, by the Holy Spirit, was living truth; but that can never be taken up at any subsequent date or period of time and used again unless it becomes fresh in the experience and life of those who come into it. It is just there that a very great many of the mistakes have been made: that what in the way of revelation was a living revelation so long ago has been adopted as truth without that subsequent generation, or those subsequent generations, coming into the living reality thereof. That is vital.

It applies to the new creation man. you cannot bring the old creation man over into the new creation without his becoming fresh in a living way. That applies to truth, revelation and doctrine. You cannot carry it on unless it is perennially fresh. Ezekiel's vision of the river and the trees on either side -- very many trees whose leaves never fade and whose fruit is continuous -- is simply a revelation or a vision of the Testimony being maintained by the principle of life in freshness right down the whole course of the ages. Truth has to be like those leaves which never fade. Truth has to be like that fruit, luscious fruit which is always there. All doctrine is not like that, but unless it is like that its essential element has gone. It is the essential newness of what is of God.

Every fresh step of God is marked by this freshness, this newness. God may have done that same thing again and again in the course of history, but the next time He does it, it is as though it had never been done before in the case of the people in whom He does it. That is the glory of things.

We have seen this work in simple ways. Some of us have been so familiar with certain things, and we have said those things again and again. To us they were living realities, but we have known of certain people who have heard them, who have listened to them, who have been under the ministry by which those things have been declared again and again over a course of, perhaps, years, and then suddenly, as by a touch of the Spirit, they have seen them, they have caught the inner sound, the truth has broken upon them and has become living to them. The result was that they commenced to talk about those things as though no one in all the world had ever heard them before, and as though the very person [117/118] who had been talking about them for years did not know anything about them! It is just like that. That is the living Testimony. It is the freshness of things, and things must be like that to be of God, for what is really of God is like that. It is not that we hold the truth, but that we have the life of the truth.

What is true in the case of the new creation man, and in connection with truth or doctrine, revelation or light, is also true in the direction of the work of God -- what we call Christian work. For everyone who enters into the Divine vocation, the calling to service, it ought to be as though there had never been any Christian work before. It ought to be as though they were the first ever commissioned. In their spirit, in their outlook, in their passion, it should be as though they were right at the beginning of things, as though the Christian activity, the Christian Gospel, was only just starting on its way. That is the consciousness which they should have, and that is just the opposite of entering into a longstanding, accepted, crystallized system of Christian work and becoming a part of a great existing machine. The freshness about things should be of this character: that in our service we are conscious that the hand of God has come upon us as though it had never come upon any other person, and as though no one else had been called but ourselves. I do not mean that to be taken in a wrong way -- that we are the only ones -- but that this thing is such a living, tremendous reality to us that we feel as though nothing had ever been done for the Lord before.

Do you understand what we mean by that? Christian work has become an order, as we have called it, a crystallised system of Christian enterprise, activity, organised work, and people are called upon today to enter into it, to take it up, and they do so and become a part of a great Christian machine for accomplishing a certain purpose. Then they go into some kind of a factory to be turned out a Christian worker. You are not surprised that these factory-turned-out workers have not got that thing by which men and women today are fed and brought into the full glory, beauty, gandeur and magnificence of Christ! No! The work of the Lord is something which, to the one who is apprehended of Christ Jesus, is as though there had never been any Christian work before. There is the freshness of life about it.

This applies to the thing which God does, for when He does a thing there is that about it which is fresh, and there is the sense that here is some thing which, as an element, makes this work of God a new work.

God must have newness of every kind in His vessels. If the vessel, or the vehicle, is a man; if the vessel, or the vehicle, is a revelation; if it is a collective instrumentality, or some piece of work which God is doing in the world, when it is of Him it bears that hallmark of freshness. There is no staleness about it, nor death. It throbs with vitality.

I believe the Lord has a very definite object in our being led to this thought at this time. Undoubtedly the need today everywhere is just this sense of God in a new way. There is plenty of work, plenty of doctrine, and there are many Christians; but, oh, for this sense of God, this sense of keenness freshness, vitality, and knowledge of God in all. That is the need. Without it things will go on as they are, and they are very dead, and tragically weak and ineffective.

The measure, then, of the newness of the vessel will be the measure of the newness of what God puts into it. God demands the newness of the vessel in order to commit Himself to it.

Look at that passage from Isaiah 18: "I have shewed thee new things from this time, even hidden things, which thou hast not known. They are created now, and not from of old; and before his day thou heardest them not; lest thou shouldest ray, Behold, I knew them." Is not that the attitude today toward a great deal? 'Oh, yes, I know it all! I know, there is nothing new about that! The doctrine and everything else, yes, I know it! We have heard that before! we know it! There is nothing new about that!' Dear friends, if you have caught the inner significance of this you are not talking mentally like that! You are seeing, and as you see you are feeling intensely that there is this need everywhere today. You have the intelligence of a living insight, and you know quite well that there is no hope whatever in simply propagating doctrine and truth and trying to do the old work in the old way. The need is not more work, more doctrine, more truth and more light so much as more of this living element in all.

There are two sides. There is the vessel, and there is that which is in the vessel. The vessel may be quite a good vessel doctrinally, and in other ways, but there needs to be also the deposit in the vessel, the new wine. So the Word says here quite clearly that there is a hopelessness about the old, and all the hope lies in the direction of renewal and freshness on the one hand, and of God's living, new deposit on the other hand.

What is the ultimate conclusion about this? It is the conclusion to which 2 Corinthians 5:18 comes: "But all things are of God ..." That allows the statement "... we thus judge, that one [118/119] died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him ..." That is the one side: everything having died as to its own self-productiveness. It cannot produce this Divine end and result. It has died to its own productiveness, and now it is unto Him, and when it is all unto Him then all things are out from God. When all things are of God, all things carry this vital element, this essential freshness of a new creation.

You and I should have heart exercise about everything that the Lord has brought to us. Do we really do that? Do we go back over what has been said and say: 'Now the Lord said such and such, and this and that comes out of it. What am I going to do about it? Do I know that in a living way? Does that really represent the Lord's mind for me, and His people? Is that something that the Lord desires for all His own? If so, on any one of these matters I must get before the Lord and definitely be exercised in heart about it.'

Piled up, mountains high, are words, language, teaching, truth and light, and the percentage of living, effective value in it all is all too small. If there is one thing about which we should lay hold of the Lord it is this: 'Lord, keep this Testimony a living thing! Do not let it become mere doctrine, mere truth, something to be passed on which will be taken up by others and talked about, and the phrases and terminology used. God forbid that that should be!'

The point is the essential newness of all that is out from God; the essential newness of that which proceeds from the Lord, and which is really related to the Lord; and freshness on the part of those who are concerned, and newness on the part of that which is coming out from God Himself. Let us pray very much about that, because that is the very essence of our ministry, and not only of our life and what we call our Testimony. Bread must have vitamins in it, and it is the same in spiritual food, for there must be a living attribute. There must be the newness; not old things dead but -- it may be old things -- living. "Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old" (Matthew 13:52). But if he brings old things out there is a newness about them that conveys the impression that they never were before, something, at any rate, which is altogether fresh.

The Lord maintain us, and all with which we have to do, in that essential freshness and newness which is the hallmark of Himself.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We acknowledge with gratitude the following gifts received during June and up to 28th July 1969:

Aberdare £3; Amsterdam, Holland £2 10s.; Auckland, New Zealand £1 10s.; Berlin, Germany £2; Blackburn £1; Bognor Regis £10; Bromley £1, £6, £6; Brynmawr £5; Calgary, Alberta £1 14s. 6d.; Chelmsford 10s.; Clitheroe £1; Compton Dando £2; Congleton £25; Dalbeattie 10s.; Didsbury, Alberta £4; Glasgow £25, £1; Godalming £1 1s.; Hastings £5, £5; Hexham 10s.; Horley 2s. 6d.; Hunter's Quay £5; Ilford £1; Kingswood £2; Lentran 10s.; London N.17 £1; S.E.22 10s.; S.E.23 £5, £5, £1, 10s., £3, £5, £4, £1; S.E.26 £2; S.W.19 £1, £1; Maidstone £5; Newcastle-on-Tyne £3 15s. 6d.; Norwich £3; Penticton, British Columbia £4; Preston 10s.; Schlieren, Switzerland £4; Sicamous, British Columbia £3; Surbiton £5; Swansea 10s.; Taipei, Taiwan £10; Tonbridge £5; Waterloo, Ontario £1 18s. 6d.; West Wickham £5; Worthing £20. Total: £219 12s. 0d.

Avila Beach, Calif. $5; Beaver, Pa. $5; Bellflower, Calif. $5; Birmingham, Ala. $15, $10, $15; Boston, Mass. $5; Boulder, Colo. $50; Bradenton, Fla. $10; Charlottesville, Va. $10; Chicago, Ill. $10; Columbia, S.C. $20; Conway, Mo. $2; Emmaus, Pa. $10; Ephrata, Wash. $8; Erlanger, Ky. $2; Fort Worth, Texas $5; Haddon Heights, N.J. $50; Harrisonburg, Va. $1; Jackson Heights, N.Y. $5; Lancaster, Calif. $6.50; Lansdowne, Pa. $20; Lexington, S.C. $5; Macon, Ga. $2; Martinez, Calif. $15; Minneapolis, Minn. $5; Monroe, Mich. $25; Monrovia, Calif. $1; Mount Holly, N.J. $50; Norfolk, Va. $10, $10; Ozone Park, N.Y. $50; Pasadena, Calif. $10; Pascagoula, Miss. $5; Pitman, N.J. $97; St. Petersburg, Fla. $5; San Diego, Calif. $10; San Jose, Calif. $10; Seattle, Wash. $2; Taichung, Taiwan $1; Tulsa, Okla. $7.50; Whittier, Calif. $10. Total: $600.00.

Orillia, Ontario C$5.15.
Maasshuis, Holland HFL. 20.00.
Chardonne, Switzerland Fcs. 50.00. [119/120]
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WITNESS AND TESTIMONY LITERATURE

The books and booklets listed below can all be ordered by post from the addresses given at the end of the list. More detailed information about the literature is available on application to the Witness and Testimony office in London.

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Printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Limited, Guildford and London [120/ibc]
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[Inside back cover]

MOTTO CARD 1970

The wording of the new motto card will be:

"Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Gen. 18:14

"There is nothing too hard for Thee" Jer. 32:17

"All things are possible" Mark 9:23

"That we should ... trust ... in God" 2 Cor. 1:9

Large size -- 9d. each (8/- per dozen)

Postage and packing -- on one card: 6d.; up to a dozen cards: 1/2

Small size -- 4d. each (3/6 per dozen)

Postage and packing -- up to a dozen cards: 4d.; up to 3 dozen cards: 6d.

The postage on cards sent overseas is a little higher than the above rates.

Orders for these cards may be placed immediately. They will be despatched as soon as available.
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[Back cover]

A WITNESS AND A TESTIMONY

The six issues of the magazine, bound together, to form a volume with light blue art paper cover, are available for the following years: 1956, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968. Price per volume (1 year): 5/- ($0.70).

Certain back issues of the paper are also available and will be sent to those who desire them at cost of postage only. Please indicate the date of the issue(s) required.
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POSTAGE AND PACKING: For postage and packing please add the following to the total amount of the books ordered:
Orders totalling less than £1 -- please add 2d in the shilling.
Orders totalling more than £1 -- please add 2/6 in the £.
To the U.S.A.: Please add 10 cents in the dollar.
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Orders for literature and requests for "A Witness and A Testimony" should be addressed to:
WITNESS AND TESTIMONY LITERATURE TRUST,
39 Honor Oak Road, London, S.E.23, England.
Telephone: 01-699 5216
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Witness and Testimony literature can also be obtained from: