Addresses

Preface

Given In Toronto, Canada, March And April, 1942.

Loizeaux Brothers, Bible Truth Depot,

19 West 21st Street.. New York City

First Edition, June 1942,........3,000

Preface

An Explanation

The following addresses are the result of a number of the Lord’s people in Toronto wishing for ministry calculated to help and establish young believers and to lead them on somewhat beyond the fundamentals of the faith. The meetings were well attended to the end, covering a period of about two months and the fellowship was both happy and hearty throughout. What the actual results were we must await the coming day to know, when the fire will try and manifest “every man’s work of what sort it is.” It was a strenuous time for the stenographers, already more or less tired with their usual day’s occupation, taking down the rapid utterances of the speaker; may they find their reward! I am here offering a pronounced apology for constant repetition at times, even to painful reiteration in some of the papers. It is a relief, however, to remember that the infinitely perfect One, during His ministry recorded in the four Gospels, constantly in substance repeated what He had said before to give special emphasis to His teaching, as, for instance, in the parables with small verbal differences. Just here I would pay a loving tribute to the memory of our much esteemed and beloved fellow-laborer, Mr. Winsor Chase, who was quite an expert in placing somewhat involved sentences with their ambiguity into a clearer light. How much we miss him—gone to glory, since these addresses were given, where all is light!

May the reader discern the Spirit’s teaching, notwithstanding any weakness of the earthen vessel, and reach Christ the blessed One who has said, “He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me” (John 6:57).

Address One The Three Calls of Peter

March 18, 1941

We are going to look tonight at the “Three Calls of Peter.” The first call is the Sovereignty of God; the second call is to Service, and the last, and third, is the call of Separation to Christ. Let us read John 1:40: “One of the two which heard John speak … was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.” This beloved man Andrew, who brought his brother to Christ, was a very quiet man. He and his brother were very unlike in that respect. Peter, we know, was a very blessed and impetuous man. He may have made mistakes, and he did, but he had a warm heart for Christ, and it characterized all his actions. He was different from his brother Andrew, but Andrew was converted first. He was converted by John the Baptist’s ministry and, as we might say, belonged to the Baptist Assembly, at that time. He saw the Lord walking along one day, and he heard John the Baptist say, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” and the next day, a little later on, he heard him say “Behold the Lamb of God.” One of the two disciples which heard John the Baptist speak was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He broke with John the Baptist because he had found a new centre. He asked the Lord, “Master, where dwellest Thou?” The Lord Jesus replied, “Come and see.” Andrew and the other disciple came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day.

You see beloved, Andrew had found a new center. He obeyed the divine invitation when he said to the Lord, “Master, where dwellest Thou?” and Jesus replied, “Come and see,” and from that moment this blessed man, Andrew, deserted his own master, John, and followed Jesus, and stayed with Him that day. He had found a new base. What I mean by a new base is the place from which you start, a place from which you work, and a place whence you go and to which you return. He saw, Where He dwelt and abode with Him that day. This was a wonderful thing. Christ took him in entirely.

That day, Andrew found his brother Simon. He had so enjoyed the company of the Lord in the day that he spent with Him, he said to himself, “I must not keep this to myself; I must go and find my brother Simon. I must get him to enjoy it too.” He went to find him. He wasn’t a man who spoke to crowds. He was a man who was made for individuals. That was characteristic of him. He brought his brother along. John’s Gospel says, “Jesus beheld him.” Christ says to him, “I know you, the man you are. I know your character, I know you are zealous, I know your impetuosity, and I know your heart.” Jesus beheld him and said, “Thou art Simon, son of Jona. Thou shalt be called Cephas, (thou art, and thou shalt be called), which is by interpretation, a stone.” There we have what he was and what he would be. “Thou art Simon, son of Jona,” said Christ, That was his natural name. “I am going to make a new man of you,” Christ continued, “I am going to give you that wonderful thing, the New Birth. Thou shalt be called Cephas. Now you are Simon. That is your natural name. That is your name after the flesh. I am going to make you a man after the Spirit. I am going to take you out of your Adamic standing and give you an entirely new one. ‘Thou art Simon, but thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone’.”

Just here, beloved, I would like to ask you, Do you know the meaning of these two things—“thou art” and “thou shalt be”? You are born of the flesh, under the judgment of God, and you are under condemnation for your sins, but “thou shalt be.” I have got a future for you. I have got another name for you. “Thou art Simon; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” This is really another way of saying, “Ye must be born again.” You must take up, in measure first, that you are a guilty sinner, under the judgment of God, and making your way to perdition. He revolutionizes you and takes you out of the quarry, and you are put into a building. “‘Thou art Simon, thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.’ I am going to have a building, Peter, and I am going to make you a stone in that wonderful structure.” I trust everybody here, tonight, has gone through that divine curriculum, the new birth. Thou art a child of Adam, under divine judgment for your sins, but there is something to take place in you before you take your place as a living stone in my habitation.

“Thou shalt be called Cephas. Has everybody, here, passed through that wonderful transition, from “thou art” to “thou shalt be”? Present and future tense! Everybody has got what Simon had, that is, a proper natural name, but when the Holy Ghost works in us, we get a new name. Cephas! And this name Cephas implies the Lord Jesus Christ is to have a building. You remember later on, in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16, the Lord Jesus said to Peter, the same Peter, “Whom do people say that I am?” He told the Lord what they said of Him, and the Lord asked, “Whom do you say I am, Peter?” Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” and the Lord said, “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Assembly.” “I am going to have an Assembly, a big one, a Church, and I am going to make you a living stone in that wonderful structure.” You see, we get mention made of it the very first time the Lord met Peter, for He called him Cephas, a stone. “On this rock, I will build My Assembly, My Church, and I am going to make you a living stone in it.”

Look now at the Sixth Chapter of 1 Kings. Here, we see how a wonderful building was put up by Solomon. Note verses 7, 18 and 21. When Solomon was building the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, over 150,000 men were at work. That was no small job. There were 3,600 overseers and about 150,000 workmen. These stones had to be blasted, hewn out of the rock and chiselled. All kinds of things had to be done to those stones before they were ready to be put in the building, and made into a structure in which God might dwell. (This is one of the most important things in the Bible—that God is to have a dwelling-place.) You will remember in the Tabernacle in the wilderness He had a temporary one, but now Solomon is building a House. The very first time the Lord Jesus meets Simon, He said, “You are going to be made a part of that building.” “Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.”

What a lot of things must take place before Peter becames a stone in that building. There is the blasting, and moving amongst the rock to bring those stones out, and then they are chiselled, and, at last, they find their way to the house, and yet, there is no stone seen.

When you are brought to God, dear hearer, by the wonderful work of the Holy Ghost, there is a great deal of blasting—something to get you out of your surroundings, a regular shaking-up, a bringing-out. And—do you know?—that is the very process that people do not like, and again it says there is no sound. There is neither sound of hammer, nor axe, tool of iron or chisel, heard in the building. It is that quiet work of the Holy Ghost. It is right, of course, to speak loud enough for people to hear you, but, remember, there is the living, quiet work within. No sound of axe is heard. It is the deep, real work of the Spirit of God. The blasting is the divine working and the moving of it out of its surroundings. In that particular aspect, there is no sound heard. It is the unhindered work of the Spirit of God, creating that New Birth.

“Thou art Simon, and thou shalt be called Cephas, a stone,” and God, the Holy Ghost has been chiseling you, blasting you, and bringing you out from your surroundings, and then you shall be put in the building, there, and there is no stone seen. There is cedarwood on top of the stone, and there is gold on top of that. I am put into Christ, and you do not see me at all. Covered with Him, there is no stone seen. You do not see me. Cedarwood speaks of His humanity and gold speaks of His Deity. I am here, like a stone, and you are here, like a stone, covered with Christ’s perfections. No stone seen, and no sound of the hammer heard, and wonderful is the work of the Holy Ghost within! I do not think much of your conversion, if there was no blasting, chiselling or divine moving from your surroundings. I have no faith where there is nothing but a mere human audience. “No sound of hammer heard.” “The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” This is how Cephas was brought forth. “Thou shalt be called Cephas, and now you are a stone in that wonderful building.” Thank God, we are not seen. God does not see us through Christ; He sees us in Christ, and that is a very different thing, covered with Christ; no stone seen. He does not see us at all. We are in Him. His beauty is put upon us. There is no stone seen; that is we are covered with cedarwood, His humanity, and with gold, His divine glory. Are you in Christ?

You say, “Where is that rough stone? Where are its rough edges? Where are those little ups and downs in it? These stones must have had a great many ups and downs in their makeup.” Now there is no stone seen. Take heart, Christian, for God sees you in His Son, covered with His Divine perfections. The man you were, He does not see. He does not see you, but Him. God has taken us from the quarry of sin, and the darkness of sin, and wrought in us, by the Holy Ghost, and put us into Christ; and there is no stone seen. Our dark surroundings, all that we were in the flesh has been judged at His cross. Now we are complete in Him. “Thou art Simon, a man of the flesh, but I am going to make a new man of you. ‘Thou shalt be called Cephas’.” Has He changed your name? You know all along God changed peoples’ names, as He changed the man. He called Abram—Abraham, He called Jacob—Israel, He called Saul of Tarsus—Paul the Apostle. “Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone.” Get hold of this divine idea, that God is to have a dwelling-place, not merely of individuals, for “we are built together for a habitation of God.” And now the very first intimation of it, is when He says, as He sees Peter coming to Him, “I know you, I know your character exactly, and I know you are ready to run, ready to make haste, ready to speak, ready to do this, that and the other thing.” Thank God that all that we were was judged at the Cross, and removed from the sight of God. “Thou art Simon.” We were removed from the sight of God, and now we are in Him, that Blessed one, covered with His perfections, no stone seen.

What is seen? The cedarwood and the gold, the f humanity and Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ! Made complete in Him! We are builded together. Here we have a little picture of it in the very opening of this very first chapter of John. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation,” and when the Lord Jesus Christ said to Simon, “Thou art” and “thou shalt be,” “old things passed away.” That does not mean they are passed away in you but that everything is new in Christ. Have you no love of money, love of popularity, etc.? You say, “I have given up this, I have given up that,” but there are some things you have not given up. All things have passed away in Him, but not in you. You say, “I have given away the pipe,” etc. Everything is not new in you, but in Christ. “Old things have passed away, all things have become new, and all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.” I have found, beloved friends, how very much more might be said about “Thou art” and “thou shalt be,” but now I am in that Blessed One, before God, covered with His perfections, no stone seen. What is seen is that we are in Him, before God, in His perfections, in His nearness, a living stone in this wonderful building. That is the Call of Divine Sovereignty. You know, dear friends, the new birth is divine sovereignty. “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God!” It is God’s own act. You know the stone is dead. But you say, “I am alive.” Yes you are alive in Romans, but you are dead in Ephesians, “dead in trespasses and sins,” but in Romans you are very much alive. There is a need of looking at all Scripture. The man who goes in for what is called “election” is too much this way, and the man who goes in for “free will” is too much the other way. They are both there. There is your own responsibility in conversion, and divine sovereignty in it as well. There the stone is in the building and covered with gold. Who put it there? Who brought it there? That stone did not bring itself out of the quarry, and throw itself into the building and cover itself with the gold and cedarwood. Who brought it there and put it there in the building? God’s own will brought it there. “Of His own will begat He us,” “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We are passed from death into life, and put in Him. But do not throw the other out, when we have entered this, but keep them both open. We come to it now in the case of the Apostle Peter. First of all the Call of Divine Sovereignty, God acting, Himself, toward us, as they acted towards those stones in the quarries, blasting them, and bringing them out, and making the whole building. Beloved friends, that is one side of the truth, and a very right side, but not all.

Shall we turn now to Luke 5:3 for the sake of brevity. In John’s first chapter you read, at the beginning, how Peter got a call out of the quarry, out of the pit, out of the darkness, to be a blessed stone in that Heavenly building, and how he goes off, and he is fishing again, and the Lord comes again and sees him the second time. He says, “Let down your nets for a draught.” Peter replies, “We have toiled all night, and have taken nothing, but at Thy word, I will let down the net.” Down the net goes, and up come the fish from every quarter.

You know, beloved friends, the sea is His, and He made it, and every fish in it. Here they come in their thousands. The net broke, and the ships began to sink. Peter now is completely smashed to pieces. This is not divine sovereignty. This is Peter judging himself now. This is not an act on the part of God, but it is an act of his own volition. When Peter saw the sinking ships, when he saw that breaking net, he cried, “This must be God.” He fell down, shaking like an aspen leaf, down at Jesus’ feet and exclaimed, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” That is a very queer way of departing—falling down at His feet. That is what the light of God does. It penetrates, overwhelms, shakes to pieces, discovers. There was Peter shaking like an aspen leaf, but he got to Jesus’ blessed feet and he said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” I know what I am in myself now. You found me the other day. You came to me in the darkness of the pit, but now, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Beloved friends, we never really grow till we learn that lesson. The man who does not judge himself never grows spiritually. It is an absolute necessity. If I am to be anything for God, I must take Peter’s language, “I am a sinful man!” What is a sinful man? A man full of sin! Now Peter discovers himself in the light of God. There is nothing about that in the first chapter of John. It is all God’s side. “I will make a new man of you,” but now when He meets him the second time, and the light of God penetrates him, uncovers him, lays him out, when he sees those sinking ships and the breaking net, he says, “This must be God.” He shrivels up in His very presence, and says, “Depart from me, for I am, I am, I am——” I am is a great deal worse than anything I ever did. What you are in yourself is worse than everything you ever did. You must learn that lesson, beloved, if you are to grow—the judgment of yourself, what you are in your own eyes, not only what God sees. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

Then came those wonderful words, “Fear not; from henceforth you shall catch men.” That is the second call, the Call to Service. But when is he called to service? In the best day he ever had in his life! In other words, Peter gives up a commercial life, on the very best day he ever had in it, loaded ships, nets full of fish, overflowing business, and at that moment the Lord Jesus said to him, “Fear not; from henceforth you are the man to catch men, because you tremble yourself.” The man who does not tremble will never make others tremble. If you can get up on the platform and get over the subject, without trembling you will catch nothing. If you think you can do it, you are the man who cannot do it. What are the qualifications for catching men? Shaking all over! And when I hear, sometimes, a dear young fellow say, “I cannot speak. I shake all over,” I say “you are the one for it.” You will never make other people shake, if you do not shake yourself. If you can trot up the stairs to the pulpit, light-heartedly, without trembling all over, you are not the one to do it. A young man, I remember, trotted up the stairs, light-heartedly, letting the people know that he could do it, thinking that he would give them a regular volume of magnificent oratory, and, when he arrived at the top, he could not say anything. He felt so ashamed of himself, he turned round and came down, shamefacedly. An old Christian said to him, “If you had gone up as you came down, you would have come down as you went up.” Are you in our Lord’s blessed service? You say, “I cannot do it.” No; but He can do it.

Here, Peter finds himself in the light of the glory of the Christ of God, who could bring the fishes, and whose fishes were so many that the net was broken, and the ships began to sink. He says, “This must be God.” He folds all up in the glory of Christ. And the Lord Jesus says, “From henceforth you are the man to catch men.” The man who trembles, the man who knows his own incompetency, the man who knows how inadequate he is for it, is the man who can do it. Think of Paul, the Apostle, perhaps the greatest man who ever lived, who said to the Corinthians, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” Beloved, those of you who engage in something of the Lord’s blessed service, keep up that spirit of your non-sufficiency. I am an insufficient, sinful man, but the Lord says, “Fear not, from henceforth you shall catch men.” That is your qualification, your own nothingness, your own trembling.

I remember, as a youth, standing among the beloved old brethren, trying to frame something to say in the meeting. How I trembled and shook! Never mind; your shaking is better than your self-confidence. Here, Peter gets his qualifications from the pierced Hands. He says, “From this time you will catch men.” Wouldn’t you like to catch men? Are we getting men? Are we getting after them? Are we seeking after them? You say, “Tell me the qualifications.” Trembling, your own nothingness, knowing your own insufficiency! Say to the Lord, “I know my own rottenness, ‘I am a sinful man, O Lord’.” Possibly the greatest man who ever lived, the Apostle Paul, could say, “Unto me, who am less, than the least of all saints—less than the least of all saints—is this grace given. I should preach among the Gentiles the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” I hope you are trying to win somebody for Christ. You say, “I cannot do it.” But that is the one qualification you need, that you may do it. Your shaking limbs, your trembling heart, feeling how incompetent you are—those are your qualifications.

Once, a man who was very nervous stood on the battlefield. Suddenly he heard, “Hist! hist!” and a cannon-ball whizzed by. His knees began to shake. He said to his legs, “I see you are shaking, but if you knew where I am going to take you, you would shake a great deal more, but we will go.” That man was no coward. That man was nervous. A nervous man shakes before the thing comes off, in anticipation, but a coward runs away. But that man said, “My legs are shaking, I am going all to pieces; but we will go.” “My grace is sufficient for thee.” Take your second call, your call to service. Are you in it? In what? In His blessed service! To every man his work! I do not know what yours is, but I do know we are all called to it in some way. “From henceforth you shall catch men.” That is a great business. The blessed Lord is sufficient.

A little boy in Scotland had been fishing. He had not tackle worth anything, but he had lots of fish. His fishing-rod was not worth much. He had no lovely basket to put the fish in, when he caught them, but he caught them just the same. He met a gentleman returning from fishing, who had a wonderful outfit, rod, tackle, bait, everything but fish. He said, “My lad, what is it all about? I have got everything. I have got a grand outfit and all it takes, but no fish. Look at you, with a bit of a stick, a bit of string, and things that are not worth anything, but lots of fish.” Then the little lad answered, “Sir, the fish will not bite if you do not keep yourself out of sight.” How am I to hide myself? God has given me His own Son, covered me with His beauty, but, practically, we know very little about it in our pathway here. How can I get out of sight? You may retire, to leave room for Him. “They saw no man, save Jesus only.”

Beloved, I urge you to join the “From henceforth thou shalt catch men.” You are not a fluent speaker. Think of the men, who were not fluent speakers, who have brought people to Christ. I honor them. They were not silver-tongued orators, but they got someone for Christ. Have you entered the ranks? Henceforth, from the time that you shake, you have taken your own value of what you are, a sinful man in yourself, no good in you. That will make you lean on Him. Keep yourself out of sight. You know, when a dentist takes out your tooth he does not dangle his forceps in front of you. He somehow gets them up his sleeve, and he says, “Is that the one?” Then it is out. Let it burn its way into your heart, beloved brother and sister. I hope you wish to join the ranks. What ranks? Serving Christ! When are you going to start? “The very thought of it makes me shake all over,” you say. You know that wonderful man, Spurgeon. I have heard him speak. When I call him a wonderful man, that does not mean I take everything he says, but I take him in the aggregate. He used to bring up half-a-pint of blood sometimes, before he spoke. What he passed through before he faced those six thousand people he used to address every Lord’s Day! It cost him something. This was Peter’s day, when the Lord started him in His service, shaking as he was all over. “Fear not; from henceforth You have learned yourself. You see your own nothingness. You are shaking all over.” “From henceforth, thou shalt catch men.” Have you ever got anyone for Christ? Don’t you desire to do it? Would you like to do it? Cast yourself on Him, let down the net for a draught.

Shall we turn, now, to Matthew 14:25. I think, beloved friends, in all the history of that dear man Peter, what we read here eclipses all. On the day of Pentecost he was used in the conversion of three thousand people, but morally speaking he was a greater man, here, in the fourteenth of Matthew, than he was in the second of Acts. He got a great haul, that day, on the day of Pentecost. He was the speaker that day, and God used that beloved man to win three thousand souls. But now we find him, and the other disciples, on the tempestuous sea. A storm is raging, and they were brought to their very wits’ end, and then the blessed Lord came along, walking on the sea. Do you believe that He walked on the sea? Some people do not believe it. Professing Christians! Why! they are rank unbelievers. They are not believers. What is the Law of Gravitation to Him? Who made the Law of Gravitation? Who put gravitation in this universe? Why, He did! He is walking on His own estate. The sea is His. The earth is man’s. The heavens are the devils’—the prince of the power of the air; that is the devil’s sphere. “The earth has He given to the children of men.” He made it, of course, but He gives it to them. But the air belongs to the prince of the power of the air. The hosts of darkness are in the heavenlies! That is their habitation; that is their seat. But the sea is His. He is walking on His own estate, that Blessed One, on that awful night, during that storm. They see Him, and they are afraid, but He said, “Do not fear; it is I. I that called the waters into being and rolled them out. I that put the stars in their orbits. It is I; be not afraid.” Then Peter said such a lovely thing. Do not tell me he denied the Lord. I know it. We all do. But did we ever get three thousand souls. Peter said, “If it be Thou, bid me come to Thee on the water. If it be Thou. I want to get nearer to you. I want to be at your side. I want to be in your company. “If it be Thou, bid me come to Thee”; That is a wonderful sight. Peter is getting out of the boat on that tempestuous sea. It is all very well to criticize him. What would you have done? You would have said, “I cannot walk on the water. I cannot possibly go.” The devil will do everything he possibly can to keep us away from Christ. If you cannot see the difference, I think I can. When he got out of the boat, he made for Christ. “He walked on the water to go to Jesus.” Are we hearing Him say, tonight, “Come.” He said only one word. Peter said: “If it be Thou.” If there is one man here, who does not want to get near to Him, I trust you will change and want to get near to His blessed side tonight.

“If it be Thou, bid me come to Thee on the water.” That is not the sinner’s “Come,” but this is another “Come”—“Come to Me to find in Me all your heart’s satisfaction! I know you want to be near Me.” I watch that blessed man put his foot on liquid. You say, “He began to sink.” He did not sink, he began to sink. We never shall sink, if we make for the Lord. Is He our heart’s object? Do we want to get nearer to Him? There is one word He has for you, and that is ‘Come.” Come nearer to Him. Peter put his foot down on the water. As long as he kept his eyes on the Lord, he did not sink. It was when he saw the wind boisterous, he began to sink. The devil is the wind in figure. He will keep you from getting nearer to Christ in the heavens. He is the “prince of the power of the air.” Every beloved brother and sister here tonight says, “I would like to be nearer Him. I would like to know His company better, the reality of it better.” He says, “Come.” “He walked on the water to go to the Lord Jesus Christ, but when he saw the wind boisterous, he began to sink.” Oh, be sure of this, if your heart is set on Christ, there will be some wind. It is a curious thing to see the effects of the wind, while their cause is unseen. You see it make boisterous waves. Behind those waves is the wind—opposition to Christ—hostility to Him. But Peter landed there all right. He began to sink, but’ the Lord put out His hand and lifted him to His mighty bosom. I would like to be Peter, rather than those other brethren. It is the easiest thing in the world to look on—not participators but spectators. Get out of the crowds, who are spectators, lookers on. That is what the sons of the prophets were. They were all viewing. I do not want to be always viewing. I want to be near Him. Peter landed there. As he was sinking, the Lord put out His hand, and put him right on His mighty bosom.

That is his third call. What call? The call to Separation to Christ. Come. Come to Him. Come to Him, not as a sinner coming to a Saviour, but a saint coming to be satisfied, to that blessed Lord. Lord, bring us nearer to Thyself.

There we have Peter’s three calls. He had the Call of Divine sovereignty. He received the Call to Service, and that call doesn’t come when you cannot get anything else to do. It is one of the best businesses you ever could have. What fish Peter got that day! What a lot of fish he got! What a quantity of fish he had to sell! He left it all. Christ is saying to us everyone here, tonight, “Enjoy Me, be associated with Me; know My boundless, measureless, changeless love.”

Address Two The Forgiveness of Sins: Divine Forgiveness in Two Aspects

March 26, 1941

Shall we read Hebrews 10:14: “For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Also 1 John 1:8: “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Again, Hebrews 10:12: “But this Man after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God.”

As no doubt most of you very well know, the Epistle to the Hebrews is one of contrast and not comparison. For instance, no priest ever sat down in the continuation of his service as long as he lived. He never could take a seat. He could not say to you, “Take a chair,” because he could not take one himself.

In this Epistle we begin with the first chapter: “When He had by Himself made purification for sins, (He) sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” I want to speak to you this evening on a very elementary subject. That is “The Forgiveness of Sins; Divine forgiveness in two aspects.” There are at least seven aspects of Divine forgiveness in the New Testament. If you mix them all up together, you will have what they commonly call an Irish Stew and you cannot tell “t’other from which.” What I mean by that is, if you ask ordinary Christians, “Are your sins forgiven? Are they gone forever? If the Lord came this moment are you perfectly sure you would reach the Father’s house instantly?” the great majority would hesitate because they mix up these different aspects of the Divine forgiveness altogether in this stew which I am referring to, and they cannot tell one from the other.

The two aspects I want to speak on tonight are “God’s forgiveness to the sinner the moment he believes the Gospel,”—we shall call that eternal forgiveness, while the other one is the “Father’s forgiveness to the child who is in the family.” God’s forgiveness once and forever the moment we trust the finished work of Christ, and then the Father’s forgiveness based upon confession.

We have been reading a verse just now from Heb. 10:12, telling us that “This Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God.” You say: “What? Has He sat down forever?” Yes, in connection with your sins He has, and that is the point in view. He sits down in Chapter 1 because of who He is. He sits down in Chapter 10 because of what He has done.

You know how this marvelous epistle begins. It begins with God. “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers, by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory,” etc. It begins with the word “God,” “When He had by Himself,” not by His blood, not by His work on the cross, but by Himself. It is the glory of His Person that is in view in chapter One. He is God the Son who speaks in the last days and nobody can talk after Him. He then takes His seat on high and sits down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, in virtue of who He is. Would you go and sit down in this country or any other country where there are what we might call English people, alongside King George when he is enthroned in majesty, and much more is the glory of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ. When He had by Himself made purification for our sins He sat down at the right hand of God.

That is our vision, dear friends, filled with Christ, for that is what this epistle is about. Everyone has to clear out to make room for Him. He procured a more excellent name than the angels. Moses has to go, Aaron has to go, and the angels have to go. Everyone has to make room for Christ. You say: “When is He going?” He is never going. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. That is in Chapter 13. He has turned out everybody, but He is forever. The Lord Jesus the same yesterday, today and forever.

I believe, dear friends, that is how the thing works morally; that is, as you get a bigger vision of Christ, as the Holy Ghost illuminates the eyes of your heart to that Blessed One, things have to go. Everything, I repeat, goes in Hebrews. Anyone who knows their Bible knows that He has obtained a more excellent name than angels. Moses, the mediator of the old covenant, Joshua, the man beloved of the Lord, all these names have to evaporate to make room for that of the Blessed One.

Then, I repeat, in Chapter 13, when all these things have been dispensed with, He comes in to stay. Get a larger view of Christ then, dear friends, and things will have to go. He sits down in Chapter 10 because of what He has done. He sits down in Chapter I because of Who He is. “When He had by Himself.”

Beloved friends, you believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I am sure. If there is a change in the punctuations of our Authorized Version, our translation of the Word, you want to know why it is changed. “When He had by Himself purged our sins,” He goes and sits down in virtue of who He is, at the right hand of God. Now in Chapter 10 we read, “This Man after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down.” Yes; have you got it? That is the punctuation. He has sat down forever in connection with your sins and will never rise up any more to put them away. If the window were open and you were to get up now to shut it, you would never get up any more to shut the window because you have already shut it. You might get up to shut the door. The Lord Jesus may come tonight to take you to the Father’s house, to meet Him in the air. He will come again surely, but, beloved friends, He will never rise up any more from where He is to put your sins away because He has done that forever. He has offered one sacrifice for sins and has forever sat down in relation to that one thing. Do you know it? “Do I know what?” That your sins are gone forever in virtue of the Glorified Christ sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high. He sits there because He has put them away forever. He will get up to do something else but He will never rise any more to put your sins away.

You have heard perhaps that “A Crowned Christ and a clean conscience are moral correlatives in the economy of grace.” If He has sat down there forever because He has put my sins away, then I am clean here. He is crowned there. I am clean here. Let me repeat it: “A Crowned Christ and a clean conscience are moral correlatives in the economy of grace.” Do you know it, dear hearer? As you look through the opened heavens that Blessed One is sitting there. Sitting in heaven means that the work is done. “He has sat down” occurs about eight times in Hebrews, and Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum: We have such an High Priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the Heavens.

Sin does two things. It defiles the conscience and it is an offence against God. Of course, it does many other things, but sin at least does these two. It defiles the conscience; for that I need cleansing. It is an offence against God; for that I need forgiveness. Please do not mix up words. Do not mix up things. Differentiate them! To be cleansed is one thing; to be forgiven is another thing.

When my little boy is going along the road there, he slips into a mud puddle. When he comes to the house, I look at him. Perhaps he thinks I am going to punish him, but first I find out what happened. He slipped into a mud puddle. He merely slipped in. He could not help it. But when I look at him with all that mud upon him he seems inclined to tell me an untruth. He says, “You know little so-and-so; he pushed me in,” and he tells me a lie. If he had slipped into the mud accidentally, he would not need forgiveness, he would need cleansing. He has done nothing morally wrong. He could not help slipping. But if he said, “Somebody pushed me in,” and it was untrue, he needs forgiveness.

Differentiate between these two verses in Hebrew 10. Differentiate between cleansing and forgiveness. The verse for cleansing is verse 14: “For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified/’ Does it take your breath away? Are you perfected forever? “Why! Did I ever say I was?” But you see, the Bible says you are anyway. Perfected forever! That means God does not see a spot upon you, and never will. If He did, you would be damned. If I have got one sin upon me tonight, I am bound for the lake of fire.

“By one offering He hath perfected forever.” That is, in the sight of God, through the value of the blood of Christ, I am perfected forever, not a spot on me. You never need the blood but once. You do not need to be cleansed in the blood of Christ, but once. It is not only one Sacrifice on the cross but it is one purging, that is, one application. “That the worshippers once purged should have no more conscience of sins.” The moment the precious blood of Christ was applied to you by the Holy Ghost, you were what the Bible calls “perfected forever”; not a spot on you, and there never will be.

Of course, every Christian knows that Christ will never die any more, but every Christian does not know that one application of the blood puts away your sins forever. That is exactly what is said here, “By one offering He has perfected forever them that are sanctified, “and the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins,” that is, no more cleansing. You say, “It is all a dream; you imagine it,” but when the blood of Christ touches you, it is not only a dream but a doctrine— divine teaching. The moment it is applied by the Spirit of God I am perfected forever, not a spot on me, and there never will be; that is, there is no more cleansing. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” That has nothing whatever to do with any tenses. It is the blood, the abstract value of the blood, which cleanses from sin. Whether you believe it or not, that is what the blood does. The moment you trust, you are cleansed forever. God never sees a spot on you.

But I must not linger too long on this, but there is a tremendous lot of bad doctrine around as to what the blood does. It is the eternal abstract value. If you do not trust it for yourself, it will be no good for you. The moment you do, you are perfected forever. You will never need any more, to be washed in the blood, though you will need the washing of the water by the Word all along the pilgrim pathway.

The other thing I want to call your attention to is in verse 17: “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” That is forgiveness forever. Verse 14 shows I am cleansed once for all by the precious blood, no spot on me, but in verse 17 is forgiveness. “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” But you say, “How am I to know that?” This is how you are to know it: “Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us” (verse 15). “To us,” not “in us,” this time. Why is the Holy Ghost a witness to me in the Book I hold in my hand? This is a quotation from Jeremiah. “Whereof the Holy Ghost is a witness to us.” When you trust the blood you are cleansed once for all, and the Holy Ghost comes into you when you trust the blood.

But this is a witness “to you,” you say. Well, here it is quoted from Jeremiah. “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more forever.” I want to ask you, “Do you believe that?” It is the simplest thing in Christianity. It is your beginning there. I am cleansed once for all in the atoning blood, perfected forever. Am I forgiven forever? Do not look inside to see if you are “perfected forever.” Is the Holy Ghost a witness to you in the Book?

“Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” Dear hearer, are you sure of all this, absolutely sure? You cannot have any doubt if you take God at His word.

Some years ago, when in the Rocky Mountains, I went to see a dear man I had often heard about, Dr. Sydney Smith. At one time he was a clergyman in Ireland, and then came to the States to study medicine. He was a very fine gospel preacher. I knew he was living somewhere in the Rockies, and went to see him. I had not been in his house very long when his wife said, “Sing him, ‘No more’.” I said, “You have not sung me anything yet.” But I was not long in suspense. He went over to his harmonium and began to sing a hymn he had composed:

“I will give you a piece of good news today,

My sins are remembered no more,

For Jesus has taken them all away,

My sins are remembered no more.

No more, no more, no more, no more,

My sins are remembered no more;

For Jesus has taken them all away,

My sins are remembered no more.”

Then I knew what she meant when she said “Sing him, ‘No more’.”

Now, beloved friends, the Spirit of God in this one chapter tells us that we are perfected forever, cleansed once for all and that our sins and iniquities are remembered no more. Are we all perfectly sure of that? You ought to know it by the Scriptures themselves. I trust if you have never known it before you will know it tonight. Divine forgiveness and Divine cleansing are made sure to you by the blessed Scriptures themselves.

Shall we turn now to 1 John 1:8, 9: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I hope, dear friend, you confess your sins if you are a believer. Do not ask forgiveness for all your sins at once. If you want to be a backslider, lump it all together when you go to bed at night and ask God to forgive you. You have confessed nothing yet. Very early in the morning you had a bit of a tiff with the milkman; then about 11 o’clock you told somebody else—well, it was not a lie, but it was not exactly the truth; and so it goes on. Other things happen. Then you go to bed at night and you ask the Lord to forgive you. If you want to be a backslider, that is the way to do it. I say it reverently: The Lord might say, “When are you going to confess anything? You have confessed nothing yet.” That small row you had with the milkman, that something else you did throughout the day, after all you have confessed nothing yet.

I urge every Christian here tonight to confess to God what you have done. Tell Him what it was the milkman did that made you angry at half-past seven, and the other one at 11, and someone else at 5 o’clock. If you want to get to be a backslider and drift away on the rocks, keep from confessing. I am speaking now to the believer, who commits sin. You say, “Is it possible for a believer to commit sin? Why, you told us just now he has no sin upon him.” No, but he has sin in him. If you tell me you never have any wicked thoughts, you are lying. Why, they come into your mind and you cannot help it. They pass through your heart. You do not want them to, but they come. You have sin in you but not on you. What is more, dear friend, that sinful nature will never change.

The Lord said to Moses, “Put your hand into your bosom.” He put it in and brought it out leprous, because under those ribs of his there was a moral nature that can do nothing but sin, the sinful Adam nature. It will be there as long as you live. It is not your master, for “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” but it is in you. You know very well it is in you. I cannot help a bird flying over my head, but I can help letting it make a nest in my hair. I cannot help sin coming along, but I can help nurturing it, cherishing it, dwelling upon it. But you say: “We have no sins; there are no sins on us; they are gone forever.” Yes, but you have the sinful nature in you, my dear brother and sister. You know it is true. The sinful, vile nature will never change. From it emanates all kinds of wicked things. “Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders.” You do not have to ask it. It comes without asking.

Supposing I do commit sin, what will it do? It will break my communion. It will not break my relationship with God, but it will break my communion with Him. How am I going to be put right? Confess it. “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” Do you do it? I urge you, beloved in the Lord, very earnestly to cultivate the habit of confessing right out to God what you have done. Tell Him that you have prevaricated with the milkman; tell Him you told a sort of half lie. That will keep your conscience alive. But remember, dear friends, that sin was put away by the blood of Christ. If you commit it now it breaks your communion with God your Father. If you are to be put right with Him in restoration, you must confess it. “If we confess our sins.” “I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord; Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If you leave out the last part of the verse you leave out the best part. If I confess to the Lord, He forgives me. I urge you to do it. Cultivate honest dealings with God.

We are told in Ps. 32:1, 2: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered… and in whose spirit there is no guile.” Guile means dealing with God; hypocrisy is dealing with men. Be real with God. Be honest with Him. Tell it out to Him. Keep nothing covered up. “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive.” Nothing can break our relationship, but a very little bit of a thing can break our blessed communion with Him. I trust you enjoy communion with Him, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Beloved Son. Have quick reckonings with Him. Do not wait till the end of the day to confess your sins. You can tell it all out right away, and “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

You will find in Numbers 19 that when a man became defiled, he had to be sprinkled with the water of separation. The ashes of a red heifer were obtained and put in a clean place by themselves, and clean water put in. The man was then sprinkled with that water on the third day, and seventh day, and when thus cleansed he could re-join the congregation of his people. There are two stages in restoration. We do not jump into it. There is the third day and the seventh day; he was sprinkled with water, the water that came from those ashes. The red heifer had been reduced to ashes, and clean water was put with them to sprinkle the man who got denied in the wilderness.

There are two stages, beloved friends, in our recovery. The first is that in which we are all broken down, and the second is when His arms are round our necks, hugging us to His bosom, restoring us to communion.

Have I said enough on the forgiveness of sins for one who is in the family of God? This forgiveness is judicial, forgiveness in virtue of the blood of Christ. I do not mind repeating myself; the moment you put your trust in that precious blood you are cleansed forever. God sees no spot on you. You are perfected forever. That does not mean you are perfect. It is the efficacy of the blood that perfects us in the sight of God. He does not see a spot on us and never will. As His children, we are in a new relationship. God is our Father. We are His children—and you won’t mind me saying it; though perhaps you will not like it—a saved sinner is a phenomenon. I am not a saved sinner; I am a saint. Every believer is a saint. We have passed out of the region of being sinners. Then what are we? We are “the beloved of God, called saints,” or saints by calling. We are in the family of God. We are made the righteousness of God in Him. Did you ever see a black, white man? Did you ever see a fat, thin man? Did you ever see a millionaire and a poor man in one person. There is no use saying such things. They are contradictions. If you are cleansed by the atoning blood, if you have received the witness of the Holy Ghost to you, you are in the family of God. Everything is new. You are no longer in the old relationship. You are one of His children. As far as I remember, I do not see anywhere in the Bible the expression “child of God,” It is children always, because we are in the family. We are God’s children; we belong to the family of God.

“Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God.” It takes more to be a son than to be a child. Turn to Galatians 4:3 and see if it does not: “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.” The new birth makes you a child; redemption makes you a son. “To redeem them that were under the law that we might receive sonship, and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” You never saw over a store “Smith & Child.” It is always “Smith & Son.” “Son” means to be grown-up, mature.

Unconverted hearer, you have been bought if you are not redeemed. When you trust the blood of Christ, you are redeemed and brought back. You are then in the family of God. You are one of the sons of the Father, and because you are a son He has sent “the Spirit of His Son into your heart crying, Abba, Father.” But, beloved friends, there is children and sonship. “Son” in Scripture means mature, grown-up, of full age, whereas in Galatians you are said to be just like a slave if you are under law; “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage.” Then God sent forth His Son and He redeemed us. When we trust that Son, the Spirit of the Son comes into us and we cry, “Abba, Father.” We have the blessed consciousness that that relationship exists.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Ah, beloved friends, get hold of that second part. If I sin, I tell the Lord about it (I should, at any rate), go right into it with Him. He forgives me and He does more than that. He removes every shade of distance. “Cleansing us from all unrighteousness” means He puts me at ease with Him. I am back into the old place; I am where I was before I lost communion.

I remember my dear father when I was first converted. He said to me one Sunday evening, “You are not going to meeting tonight. You are always going to meetings. You must stop at home with me.” I was only a youth. I sat there, got very uneasy on my chair, twiddled my neck-tie, looked at the ceiling, and not a word passed between us. The atmosphere was frozen. At last my father broke the silence and said: “I think you had better go to that meeting.” I remember I ran all the way, I think it was two miles, and I heard a sermon about a man I never heard of before. His name was Mephibosheth.

I want to get close to you, beloved, if I can. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us” from everything that creates distance between our hearts and Him, from all unrighteousness. I once heard a brother say, “If you have never known nearness you will never feel distance.” When our Blessed Lord was here, one man leaned on His bosom and only one. Peter did not, nor Andrew, nor Philip, nor Bartholomew, but one man placed his head there. No wonder he wrote John’s Gospel. The Gospel of John, to put it briefly, is the revelation of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father’s bosom. Here is a man who leaned on the Son’s bosom. “There was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus loved.” I want to ask you a brotherly question. In all your life did you ever get there? We have been to His feet and received forgiveness; we have stood at His side to serve Him. Have we felt the palpitation of that Heart, the love of which passeth knowledge? “There was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus loved.” That is the blessed man who wrote the Gospel of John. “Faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us” from everything that creates distance. When that brother said “If you have never known nearness, you will never feel distance,” it went through me like a dagger. Numb spiritually! We are spiritually numb because we have never known nearness.

A man is coming down the street. He passes by and takes no notice of me. Why should he? He does not know me. Another man is coming down. He is a pretty good friend of mine. Somehow, when I draw near, he looks in a shop-window. He stares and stares in the window but does not see me. Then my wife comes along, and she completely ignores me. You ask, “Do you feel it?” If I am not made of wood I feel it. Because I have known nearness and intimacy I feel keenly their loss.

What is cleansing from all unrighteousness? What is unrighteousness? It is what is not suitable—not enjoying relationship! That is unrighteousness. Look at my father and myself that night. He did not speak. I did not speak. He said nothing. I said nothing. It is possible, beloved in the Lord, for you to be spiritually numb, not dead, but numb; divine convictions in you have become more or less numb. The reason we do not feel it is because we have never known nearness. If I have never been to that Blessed Bosom, I shall not miss it, and I can treat sin in a very light way because I am spiritually numb.

He does two things then. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” and “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” In the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel the Lord poured water in a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet. The chapter begins with these words, “When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father… He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet.” Peter says, “You shalt never wash my feet.” The Lord said, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me.” “You will have no real communion with Me. I want you to have communion with Me when I get there. I am going to cleanse your feet along the way, removing the dust you pick up along the road.” Then Peter went too far the other way and he said: “If that is the case, wash me all over.” Then the Lord said, “He that is bathed, needs not save to wash his feet.” But he needs feet-washing. We have all had the bath, the new birth, the washing of regeneration, but we need our feet washed all along the road. If He does not do that, we will not have any part with Him in communion. Those two go together.

“If I have never known nearness, I will never feel distance.” Let us hasten back then, beloved, to that Blessed Bosom. Let Him wash our feet to remove anything that hinders, that brings distance, that brings shadow, that brings any unrighteousness. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” to remove any shadow of distance. First, there is the bath all over, then the basin for the feet, and then you lean on the Bosom—The bath, the basin, the bosom!

I will put the questions to myself: Do I know what that means? Do I know the heart of Christ? Do I know the love of Christ? Do I cherish it? Do I ever really get there and put my head on His bosom?

There are other things, but these are two aspects of forgiveness. If you are unconverted, dear hearer, as you sit on that seat, and you trust the precious blood of Christ, the blood shed on Calvary, you are perfected forever by the one Offering. You are brought into the family of God. Now if we sin after that in relation with God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, we must go and confess it. Tell it all out. “He is faithful and just to forgive us,” and not that only, but also “to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” from every distance.

I used to leave that last part out but, thank God, I do not now. At any rate, I know He forgives me if I confess, but I know He does more than that. If I let Him, He will remove every shadow of distance. Have you not known blessed intimacy with Him? Have you not felt the pulsation of that heart of love? If you have known it and have lost it and want to get back, take the divine way to get back. Let Him have His own way with you.

“There was leaning on Jesus’ bosom, one of His disciples whom Jesus loved.” Doesn’t He love everybody like that? He loves everybody in a general way, of course, but this is a particular kind. There was one of the disciples whom Jesus loved leaning on His bosom. I urge you, dear friends, cultivate the blessed thought, “I would like to be there in unclouded communion with Himself.”

Address Three The Resurrection of Our Bodies

March 27, 1941

“Behold I shew you a mystery.” A mystery in the Bible is something never before developed, an unrevealed truth about to be revealed. There are several in the New Testament, and each one brings to our knowledge something that had not been known before. In this blessed chapter of realities we have made known the blessed truth of the resurrection of our bodies.

If you read 1 Corinthians 15 carefully, you will see that it covers more ground than any other chapter in the Bible. It covers the whole period from the cross to the destruction of the last enemy which is death (ver. 26). Moreover it is the great resurrection chapter, a truth so bitterly denied even in those days. When speaking to the Sadducees Christ said, “You do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” The power of God is resurrection. He is not the God of the dead but of the living. It may surprise you that many today deny this truth, and even some who claim to accept the Bible as the Word of God. The devil is clever, and if he can rob us of that truth he has robbed us of everything. To prove his point the apostle cites seven proofs of the resurrection. First of all, Christ rose the third day according to the Scriptures. He put the Scriptures at the head of the list, and rightly so. The other proofs are the testimony of Cephas, the twelve, five hundred brethren, James, all the apostles, and last of all Paul.

“And last of all He was seen of me,” says Paul. He placed the Scriptures first and himself last. On that never-to-be-forgotten Damascus Road Christ met Saul of Tarsus, and He said, “Why persecutest thou Me?” He did not ask him why he persecuted Peter or the Church, but, “Why persecutest thou Me?”—a risen and glorified Christ.

Paul never lost sight of that vision. After forty years it was still clear before him. What made Paul the wonderful man that he was? Every Christian has been baptized into Christ and made a member of His Body, and as the physical body responds to the dictates of the mind so we as members of His body are subject to the dictates of the Holy Spirit. What wonderful people we would be if we responded fully and immediately to the call of the Spirit! Paul did, for that vision was ever before him. If you are to be a man of power you must know Christ, where He is. If you are to be a converted man you must know Christ where He was—on the cross.

You see, in addition to the “last of all,” there is a “first of all.” What is the first of all? “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” I ask you, dear friends, Have you ever considered this first of all? There is life in a look at the crucified One before there can be power in a look at the glorified One. I believe it would make different Christians of us if by the power of the indwelling Spirit we would fix our gaze on the glorified Man at God’s right hand. That will change me to His likeness—gazing upon Him. It is not stargazing. It is viewing the living Man in glory. Paul could never forget that look. “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”

Elijah said to Elisha, “Before I leave you, tell me what you would like.” “A double portion of thy spirit,” was Elisha’s answer. “If you see me when I am taken, you will have it, but if you don’t, you won’t,” was the promise given. Elisha saw his master because he meant to. I am very glad if you read your chapter today, but have you seen His face? I ask myself the same question. That is what will change me to His moral likeness—gazing on Him. Gazing on His moral perfection, His Deity, His undefiled humanity, enthroned on the right hand of the Majesty on High. Paul saw that vision, and he never lost it. In writing to the Philippians he could say, “I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Let us look now at verse 45 of our chapter. “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit.” The head of every man is the Lord Jesus Christ. We get that in chap. 11:3. He is the firstborn of creation; He is also the head of every converted man. The last Adam— a quickening spirit. Much has been said about the victorious life. Beloved friend, you have it if you are a Christian. Every believer on earth has the victorious life, but not every believer is always victorious. When did Christ give to His own that life? you ask. Read John 20.

When our Lord arose He had no graveclothes on Him. Lazarus had. “Loose him, and let him go,” commanded the Lord. The Lord however was free from all these encumbrances. He was ever master of the situation, and when in the evening He presented Himself before them, He breathed upon them and said, “Receive ye (the) Holy Ghost.” He breathed into them His own victorious life. Just as God breathed into Adam the breath of life, and he became a “living soul,” so Christ breathed into His disciples the Spirit of life. Every believer has this life of power and victory.

The first Adam—a living soul. The last Adam—a quickening Spirit. “The second Man” (ver. 47) means He supersedes the first; “the last Adam” (ver. 45) means there is no one as head after. The last Adam is Christ, and He has breathed into you that life if you have believed the gospel. There is no need for the injunction, “Loose him and let him go,” for the graveclothes are gone. He, who went down into death and triumphed has freed you from them and given you the victory. Romans 8:1 puts it this way: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” His life is a victorious one, a life with no fetters to it, a liberated life. May I go where I like? No! You may go where He likes. You have liberty to follow Him, to glorify Him, to manifest Him. I repeat, dear Christian, every Christian has that life, and there is no other life. It makes you free to serve Him, to honor Him, to follow in His footsteps. Remember that that life can never be annihilated, but goes on forever and forever. The last Adam—you are of His genealogy. We stand in association with Him, and He is a life-giving Spirit.

That is not all, dear friend. Just as we are liberated now and freed spiritually, so in a coming day we will be free from this body of corruption. We are going to have a glorified body. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Here it is, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” Now the twinkling of an eye cannot be done in stages. The transition is immediate.

“At the last trump.” This is taken from the practice of the Roman Army and it is not uncommon with Paul to use such expressions to bring out his meaning. The Roman Army had three trumps. At the first trump the soldiers picked up their belongings and got ready; at the second they took up marching positions for the advance; and on the third trump they started off. The first trump has been sounded. It is the gospel. We have heard it, how Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, brought us forgiveness of sins and made peace with God. Have you heard it? Are you packed up and ready? The first trump is the gospel that brings salvation. I hope, dear girl, that you know your sins are forgiven. I hope, dear boy, that you are saved, and are resting on the finished work of the Lord Jesus. You of riper years say, “I heard the trump fifty years ago, and packed up for glory.” Praise God for all who can say they are packed up and ready to go.

Then I heard the next trump and formed ranks with the other Christians. How many of them? EVERY ONE who is a son of faith. The house of God is one. The Body of Christ is one. The brethren are one. You may call them narrow or tight, you may call them what you like, but they are sanctified by the Spirit of God. Beloved, we should walk with everyone who is sound in the faith and godly in life. When we hear the second trump and respond we fall in with everyone who is really Christ’s. But now we are waiting for the third, the last trump.

There is nothing in Corinthians about the meeting in the air. That is in Thessalonians. We shall meet Him in the air, that is true. We are going to a great open-air meeting, and I hope you will be there. If you are not, there is no heaven for you after that. In Corinthians we have a mystery unfolded. “Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” It is possible, dear friends, blessedly possible, that the last trump may be heard before tomorrow morning comes.

“I’m waiting for Thee, Lord,

Thy beauty to see, Lord,

I’m waiting for Thee, for Thy coming again.

Thou art gone over there, Lord,

A place to prepare, Lord,

Thy home I shall share at Thy coming again.

E’en now let my ways, Lord,

Be bright with Thy praise,

Lord, For brief are the days e’er Thy coming again;

I’m waiting for Thee, Lord,

Thy beauty to see, Lord,

No triumph for me like Thy coming again.”

I hope, dear friend, we are on the tiptoe of expectation. Don’t tell me about the revival of the Roman Empire or the Antichrist for the moment. The Lord is coming before that. Those things will come to pass in their allotted time, but the first thing is the blessed Lord is coming again into the air. Are you ready for the last trump? Are you saved? Are your sins forgiven? Can you say by the grace of God—“I am saved”?

“Behold, I shew you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” Isn’t it wonderful? We shall be changed. We shall be like Him. We shall be with Him, where He is. He was in many places during the first day after His resurrection— at the tomb, in Jerusalem, on the Emmaus Road. Now He is risen. He has a spiritual body, a heavenly one, and we shall be like Him. God meant it to be so. He wants His people to be like His blessed Son. We shall not enter into the fullest enjoyment of what this means until He comes and transforms this material body of ours into one like His very own. Do you remember when you were saved? How your heart glowed! How you longed to see His blessed face! You longed to be in His presence and to share His glory! Is it so with you now? I greatly fear we lose sight of that blessed hope and wander off into a labyrinth.

A little girl was crossing the ocean and on the way over a Christian lady spoke to her. When asked about the Lord Jesus Christ the little child had to say she didn’t know about Him. The Christian sat down and told her the whole story of the birth and life of our Lord Jesus Christ and at the end she said, “Then they killed Him.” “Killed Him! Why did they do that?” cried the little girl, and she began to weep. “But He is not dead now. He is alive, and He is coming back some day to take those who are His to be with Him for ever. We shall meet Him in the air. Will you be there?” When the ocean journey came to its end the little girl called goodbye to the Christian and said, “Farewell. I shall be there.”

Will you be there? Your wife will be there. Will you? Is everyone in this Hall tonight saved? I shall be there. “We shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” Be ready, dear hearer.

Perhaps you ask the question, What kind of a Christian should I be? Read the last verse of our chapter. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” My friend, your heart should be where Christ is, and it should be your constant delight to serve Him. “Be ye stedfast”—not half-hearted. Let nothing distract you, and go in for the work with all you have.

Now we come to our final point: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (ver. 26). Death is destroyed at the coming of the Lord for all Christians. Verse 55 reads, “O death, where is thy sting?” It is gone, for death has no power over us when Christ comes. He triumphed over death and the grave. The victory was His. There is no death in the Father’s House. No undertaker can be found there. Can we not exclaim, “Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Jack the Ripper,” a depraved maniac, terrified the women of London years ago. He murdered women in cold blood in the back streets of that city. He can’t kill any one now, for he is dead. The last enemy to be destroyed is Death. Death and Hell are to be cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. There is no death in heaven. What then is the end for the Christian? It is eternal life. It is not the coffin, nor is it the funeral, nor is it even the grave. The end is everlasting life with the Man who triumphed over death and hell.

But I must speak plainly. There is no death in the lake of fire. It burneth for ever and ever. That fire is never quenched, and all who fail to flee to Christ for salvation will find their eternal abode there. Oh, sinner, let me urge you to claim Christ as your Saviour now. For the believer it is everlasting life, for the Christ-rejector it is everlasting torment, and your choice is made here on earth. You can escape hell by fleeing to Christ.

Not all or every Christian shall be on the Father’s Throne. Christ will occupy the throne when He reigns in the Millennium. Then as King of kings and Lord of lords He will reign a thousand years. At the end of that time He hands back to His Father the kingdom, but in the end we shall reign with Him. What a wonderful day that will be when we shall reign with Him and be like Him. We will praise Him throughout eternity, giving glory to Him who sits upon the throne. That, my dear fellow-believer, will be our happy portion for ever and ever. Amen.

Address Four God Manifested in the Flesh

March 28, 1941

We will turn to the 3rd Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, verses 15-22, and Chapter 4:1-13. We have the servant John the Baptist preceding his Lord and Master in His wonderful ministry, and God was mightily using him to stir the nation up. They had long fallen into a state of very great indifference as to Jehovah. For hundreds of years, they had lapsed more or less into dead formality and routine; God’s service had become a mere piece of religious machinery, and now God raised up John the Baptist to go before the Messiah and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, and we know how marvelously God used His beloved servant. The devil thought the very best thing he could do was to get rid of him, and he was put into prison and afterwards beheaded. It was not until after John was put in prison that the Lord Jesus took up His ministry.

Now we are to get what we have never had before in the world’s history—a revelation of God Himself in the Person of the Son. We are told that God in His essence, in His essential glory, cannot be seen, “Whom no man has seen or can see, dwelling in the light which is unapproachable,” and now, for the first time, we see God manifested in the flesh, God come in human form that we might see Him, hear Him and know Him. “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels”—the first time that angels ever saw Him really in His moral glory. They had seen certain kinds of displays and manifestations of divine power; but God in the revelation of His own blessed Being and Person had never been seen before. Now the Son is here to reveal the Father, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” God, so to speak, has been out of view and now the Lord Jesus comes to reveal Him.

John had been baptizing the people in the River Jordan. Thousands of people flocked around him to have the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Do not confuse that, dear friends, with Christian Baptism. It was the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. All kinds of people went and took their place in the waters of death. That is what John’s baptism represents—figurative of death and judgment. They went into it and John baptized them.

When they were all baptized, the Lord Jesus came along. They did not follow Him in baptism; He followed them. It says so here—“When all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized, the heavens were opened.” I need not say to Christians here, He had no sins to confess, but He identified Himself with those who had. That is what is meant in another part where it says, “Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness.” What He meant was—These men are doing a right thing by going into the place of death and judgment, and taking their place in the River Jordan, and I am going to identify myself with them in it. That is fulfilling righteousness— doing the right thing. Their sins and their condition brought them there. I am going, the sinless One, to identify Myself with them.

Then, beloved friends, for the first time in the whole world’s creation, the heavens were opened upon a man. When the blessed Lord went into the waters of the Jordan, the heavens were opened. They were never opened before. There had been pictures of it in the book of Ezekiel, but never really in effect. When the heavens were opened and the Lord Jesus stepped into the River Jordan, He was the delight of God in heaven; God was glorified in that Blessed Man. To show He is different from all the rest, the heavens were opened. They went into it because of their real condition before God —guilty and unrighteous, confessing their sins: He went into it to associate Himself with them, and as He stepped into those waters, God wanted to let them know, very particularly, they were not to confuse Him with any of the rest. He is One, all apart by Himself, and the heavens were opened to Him; and what was open to Him is open to you and me, dear friends. To those others who went in, hell was wide open for them.

He is different from all the rest. He is what the learned people call “sui generis.” He is one by Himself—He belongs to another class; a real Man, a holy Man, God and Man in one Person. The heavens delight in Him.

They all went in confessing their sins and God wanted to distinguish Him from all the rest, and as He went down into those waters which pre-figure death and judgment, He took His place in association with them.

God tells of His delight in Him. The heavens are opened. The opened heavens, I take it, means—“A man on earth in perfect acceptance in the glory of God.” Glory salutes Him. God tells us that He delights in that Blessed One.

Then the next thing was—“The Holy Ghost came down upon Him.” He needed no blood put upon Him before He had the Holy Ghost given to Him, the reason being His sinlessness. We never get the Holy Ghost till we rest in the precious blood of Christ. We must have the blood first. But here, as in the type, the consecration of the first high priest (Lev. 8:12), is One who needed no blood put upon Him. He will shed His blood for others and make atonement for them, but not for Himself; but He Himself is anointed, not baptized, with the Holy Ghost. The Lord Jesus never had to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. He said He would be anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, and sealed with the Holy Ghost. Sealing means that this is God’s Blessed Son. I appropriate Him to myself. I delight in Him, and so the Father’s voice is heard next: “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

What has He come here for? He has come here to reveal the heart of God. He has come here to vindicate God in respect to sin. He has come here to annihilate the hosts of evil; He goes down to those dark waters to identify Himself with those who were confessing their sins.

I want you to notice, beloved friends, there are two things brought before us, the literal and the figurative, in this wonderful act. The literal is, the Lord was baptized—the heavens were opened to Him and the Father’s voice was heard saying: “This is my beloved Son.” The reason for this was that Christ, personally, was absolutely pure, absolutely holy, absolutely sinless, absolutely perfect, and the glory of God, I say, was opened upon that blessed One. Such a thing never happened before He came into the world. Now, it is not only personal, but it is representative; it is not only a real fact, but it is a figure of something else. The real fact is that the Lord Jesus was baptized and took His place among those people who were doing the right thing. Then the Father’s voice saluted Him and the Holy Ghost came down upon Him. These three things are now ours, in a lower sense. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, beloved friends, the heavens are opened for you. Of course, if you are in your sins, the mouth of hell is open for you, but if you are a believer in Him—just as the heavens were opened for Christ because of His personal perfectness, they are opened for you because He has been to Jordan, the place of death and judgment. It is not only a fact but a figure. The fact is, our Lord went down and He came up again—a figure of His own death and resurrection, and as the heavens were opened for Him because of what He is essentially, personally; they are now open for you and me. We are “accepted in the beloved.” He is accepted—the heavens are open for Him. I do not mind repeating it, it was because of His personal perfectness. “In Him was no sin.” “He knew no sin.” “He did no sin.” He could not commit sin. He was the absolutely sinless One. Now we are brought into His place before His God and His Father. That is the figure of the thing. Tonight you are “accepted in the Beloved” and the heavens are open for you if you are a believer; and I trust, friends, you will enjoy that, and that you will bask in the unclouded light of the glory of God. If He was there in divine favor because of His blessed personality, we are now in Him, accepted in the Beloved. Hear the Father’s voice—“This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased,” and see the heavens opened for Him. Beloved, they are open for you. O, drink it in; bask in the blessed sunlight of it.

I once knew a man who was paralyzed almost completely from head to foot on the one side of his body. He was a wonderful Christian. He said to a friend one day, “Do you know John’s nine monosyllables all in a row are my joy and delight whilst down here below?”

“No,” replied the friend; “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Well here they are: ‘As He is, so are we in this world,’” answered the sick man. Is He free from judgment? So am I. Is He in divine favor? So am I. Are the heavens open for Him? So they are for me and that is true of every Christian here tonight “As Christ is,” we are told in John’s Epistle, “so are we in this world.” It is not when we die and get to heaven; not when we pass out of this world, but, “so are we in this world.” His nearness is our nearness; His favor is our favor; His relationship, our relationship. Not as the Eternal Son—no one ever shares that, but He is more than the Eternal Son, He is also the Son of God born in time and He has brethren. “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren.” “The firstborn among many brethren.” That is a wonderful relationship, dear friends. In a certain sense, there is nothing higher than being the brethren of Christ. This means we partake of the life and nature of the blessed One who came into the world, the Son of the Father. He accomplished redemption, and that is pre-figured by His going down into the Jordan and coming up out of those waters of death and judgment, and standing firm on resurrection ground. I repeat, His relationship as the firstborn among many brethren, is our relationship. His nearness is our nearness. His acceptance is our acceptance. Do we enjoy it? Don’t think you are wasting your time when you sit down a moment or two, or stand, if you like, and bathe yourself in the boundless, measureless love of the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and I repeat, if the heavens are opened for Him, they are wide open for us. Not because of anything we have done, but because of what Christ has done. His blood has made it possible that we should not only have access into the light of the glory of God, but that His Father is our Father. “This is my beloved Son.” He did not need to be redeemed to be made a Son; He is a Son by virtue of who He is. “Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee,” refers to Him being born the Son. “Thou art”—This is My beloved Son, “this day have I begotten Thee.” Put the two things together—He is both the Eternal Son and the Son of God, born in time, born in a manger, born of a virgin, born by the power of the Holy Ghost. So, beloved friends, appropriate to yourself that which belonged to Christ inherently. What is His by right and title is now made ours by the redemption work. We stand on resurrection ground. His Father is our Father, His God is our God, but never till the Lord rose from the dead could He say those words.

He said to Mary Magdalene when she wanted to clasp Him by the feet (John 20:16-18): “Touch Me not. I want to teach you Christianity; your holding Me by the feet is Judaism. Keeping Me down here is Judaism.” He would not let her clasp His feet.

You say, “What has that got to do with Judaism?” Judaism is a system of material things. Holding Him by the feet. We have not come to the mount that might be touched—we belong to a divine system, a heavenly system, a spiritual system. She wanted to touch Him, that beloved woman, to throw her arms around Him, but He said, “Don’t touch Me. I am not yet ascended to My Father, but go to My brethren, and tell them I ascend to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.”

There are three things then:

1. The opened heavens,

2. The Father’s voice,

3. And the coming down upon Him of the Holy Ghost.

May I say once more, beloved friends, the Lord Jesus was never said to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. No individual man was ever baptized by the Holy Ghost. It is a collective act “By one Spirit, we are all baptized into one body.” In Acts 11:15 Peter in defending his actions in the household of Cornelius said, “The Holy Ghost fell on them (that is, on the Gentiles), even as on us at the beginning.” On the day of Pentecost, the Jews as a company of believers were all incorporated into the Body of Christ, and in the household of Cornelius, the Gentiles came into it; and now by one Spirit, “we are all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free.” There is a tremendous lot of cloudiness about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. No individual man as such, I say again, was ever baptized by the Holy Ghost—not even the Lord Himself. What is baptism? It is a burial—to put out of sight. Buried with Him in baptism into death. Something to be put out of sight! Was there anything in Christ to be put out of sight? No; certainly not. No; He was not baptized with the Spirit, He was anointed with the Holy Ghost, sealed with the Holy Ghost, full of the Holy Ghost, but never once was He said to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, because, I say, baptism means something to be put out of sight, and there was nothing in Him to be put out of view. He was the Holy One of God. Baptism is not for power; baptism is for unity. “By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free.” Every believer in Christ shares in all the operations of the Holy Ghost. May I repeat, baptism is a collective act, not individual. We share in that baptism because, individually, we pass into it.

Supposing, for instance, a man gets saved tonight, trusts in the blood of Christ. He is then sealed with the.Holy Ghost. He passes individually into that wonderful unity which took place at Pentecost and in the household of Cornelius, when they were all baptized into one Body. Now he is brought individually into it—a member of Christ’s body.

The three things that belong to our Lord Jesus in this chapter are now ours on the ground of His redemptive work. He has gone down into those waters of death. He has come up out of them again and says, “My Father and your Father—now go to My brethren.” “He that sanctifieth and those that are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them”;—Body? Bride? No; but “brethren”—because all share His life and nature. My wife does not share my life and nature. My boy does. We have one life. I don’t want to puzzle you, dear friends—one is union and the other is unity. Unity of life and nature! The brethren of Christ all belong to that, whether it is Christ the Head and the Body, or the Bride and the Bridegroom—it is all made into one—two made into one. It is Christ and the heavenly Bridegroom—the two made into one. We are in this blessed One—brethren of His. Here then—“He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb. 2:11).

I walk down the street in rags. I see my brother coming along. He is a multi-millionaire. When he sees me, he doesn’t see me. You know what I mean—he does not intend to see me; he looks in that shop-window. What do I say to myself?—speaking after the manner of men. “I am as good as he is any day. I haven’t got as many dollars, but his father is my father; we come of the same stock. We are in the same unity.” It is the same with all Christians on earth—all the brethren of Christ. “He is not ashamed to call them brethren”—a unity of life and nature!

Now we pass from the scene of His baptism where He identified Himself with those who went into the Jordan. He is come out of it and now He is going to face the enemy (Luke 4:1-13).

While we are at this point, I would like to ask the higher critics, Who saw the Lord Jesus Christ tempted of Satan? Who saw it? Luke did not see it. Matthew and Luke give to us the details of our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness at which we are now going to look.

He is come from the Jordan where He was baptized and the heavens were opened for Him and the Father’s voice saluted Him, and the Holy Ghost came upon Him, and now He has come out of that to face the enemy in the wilderness. It was necessary for Him to face the enemy. The devil had been the victor up till now—he had won all along the line. Now he is going to meet one Man in the wilderness. No doubt that Man is God as well as Man. He reaches up to all the infinitude of the Godhead, but is really and truly Man; and now He is in the wilderness, not the Garden of Eden, but here He is the Last Adam, the Second Man, facing the enemy, not in the beautiful Garden of Eden where there were all those lovely things round about. The wild beasts are there, the devil is there, and he is going to tempt Christ for forty days. Forty implies the full term of testing. Israel was in the desert, as you know, for forty years. Moses was twice in the mount of God for forty days. Christ has to be tested. If He loses the battle, I am damned for ever. If the enemy wins the day—if our Lord is defeated here in the wilderness facing the enemy, we are all lost for ever. It is the way of the cross. If the enemy defeats Him in the wilderness this disqualifies Him for Calvary. What a sight. Heaven looks on at this wonderful Man alone in the desert, tempted by the enemy. Satan says “If Thou be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread.” The Lord is hungry. It says, “He was afterwards an hungered.” The devil knows he has got an assailable point. Mark my words very particularly, the enemy knows he has an assailable point, not a vulnerable one, but an assailable one. He knows He is hungry. He says “If Thou be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread.” Christ’s answer amounts to this— I say it reverently:—“I am not here to command, I am here to obey.” “He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” When He was there with the Father from all eternity, He commanded everything, He ordered everything. The angelic hosts waited upon Him, but now, He is here, the dependent Man on earth, facing the enemy. How will He face him? His blessed words are, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God.” Let me ask you, dear friends, have you ever been hungry? If I were hungry and could turn stones into bread, wouldn’t I do it? Of course; anyone would. Well, He wouldn’t do it, for the simple reason that He waits for God. He does not act because He is God. He waits for His Father’s voice—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God.”

Putting it morally, we all have stones here. Wouldn’t you like to change them into bread? Wouldn’t you like to change your circumstances? I am bound to say when I really search myself honestly, I am afraid I would. I would certainly wish to change things. I smart under them. I would like to turn that hard stone into soft bread, and change my circumstances. Well, He would not, for the simple reason He waits for God. If it is His Father’s will, of course, then He would say, I shall turn the stone to bread. I will do it if it be His pleasure, but not because I am hungry. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God.” Every word—that is what the Bible is—that comes out of the mouth of God. Let me put it to you kindly. Wouldn’t you like to change your circumstances? Of course; anybody would. I tried to change mine for seven years. If I could only get out of this into that, I thought, I would be able to serve the Lord better.

And it is yourself at the bottom of it, and I believe there are those here tonight who say, Yes, if I could only change my conditions, alter my circumstances, make them better than so and so, I certainly would do it. I say again, He would not—He waited on God.

He did at one time, as we all know, turn the water into wine, but that was His Father’s pleasure, that was His Father’s will, but He would not turn the stones to bread. He was a dependent Man. He was the most dependent Man that ever walked this earth, yet He created everything. The sun, moon and stars were created by Him, the five continents were created by Him. He will not turn stones to bread unless it is His Father’s will. It would save us a lot of trouble if we only would stop trying to alter our circumstances unless we find it is the will of God. Don’t change your circumstances for the sake of changing the condition of things around you.

So the Lord’s first temptation brings out His dependence upon God.

Now the devil, we are told here, takes Him to a high mountain and shows Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. You ask how could the devil do that in a moment. I don’t know how, but I know he did; that’s all. “He showed Him all the Kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.” I believe everything that is in that Book.

In these three temptations, we exhaust all the temptations that there are. The first temptation is natural—turning the stones to bread. The second is worldly. He showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

Satan says, “I will give you everything if you will fall down and worship me.” The Devil is a most wonderful being. His description in Ezekiel 28, is marvelous. We are there told that he had been in Eden, the garden of God. He had those wonderful stones which described his great glories, and yet he was the great enemy of God and man. Satan says to the Lord here, “All this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.” What a most marvelous being he was! I think he was probably the most wonderful being God ever created. He says to the Lord, “All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.” The Devil, dear friends, can give us a very great deal. He dazzles our eyes with the glittering tinsel of a poor empty world. Here is One who is his master, and He did nothing that you and I cannot do. The Lord could have banished him in a moment, removed every difficulty, but no, He is teaching us a lesson. In Luke’s third chapter He is before the Father, His Father, our Father, His God, our God, and the heavens are opened. In the temptation in the wilderness, He is our pattern on the pathway through this world—in the presence of the Devil. The Devil will never let us alone to the end. He will be after us to the very last hour. Don’t think that because you are converted thirty, forty, fifty years that you have got beyond the power of the Devil, or that you are at the end of his testings. I have heard of men praying, “Lord, keep me from being a wicked old man.” I can quite understand a man saying that. The Devil always hopes to make you a backslider, to lure you in some way into the world. Here he is trying to dazzle the eyes of this Blessed One—All the kingdoms of “this world” and “the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me.”

It is not wrong for you to have a few dollars, as far as I can see. The wrong is indicated in, “They that will be rich fall into a snare.” God may give you material prosperity, and the Devil will keep his eye on you all the time. One day he hopes to lure you, to dazzle you. “I will give you that,” he said to the Lord. What does He say to him? He says, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord Thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” He is the theme of our worship, and not all the glitter and tinsel of this poor Christless world can be compared to Him; but remember, the Devil could bring it before us at any time; he could give us all the things that lure the eye. If we are catching the bait he lures us, but here is One who is invincible. We say He is invincible in the first instance, because He is dependent upon God; in the second instance, He is devoted to God. “Thou shalt worship the Lord Thy God, and Him only.” Do you mark your Bible? Mark that word “only.” Him “only” shalt thou serve. His whole heart is devoted to God His Father. Here He is doing nothing, saying nothing, that we cannot do. In the first instance, depending upon God, saying “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of God.” Beloved, what wonderful Christians we would be if we only followed Him.

What I am saying is that the enemy can give to us all kinds of things to lure and seduce, to make us worldly, and we are worldly enough. “Love not the world neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in Him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:15, 16). We lust for what we have not and we are proud of what we have, anything that will distinguish us from anyone else. We think, I must get that. There are only two things in the whole material world, lust and pride, wanting what we have not and pride in what we have. The Lord answers Satan completely: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Shall we not choose that? It is the highest peak, dear friends, we can ever reach—worship and service. There is the enemy dazzling my eyes, seeking to lure me, to seduce me, to get me into the world, into his ways. The devoted one says, “Give me worship and service.” Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve.

Now the Devil takes Him, not to a high mountain this time (ver. 9) but to Jerusalem, and set Him on a pinnacle of the temple and said: “If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over Thee to keep Thee. The Devil left out the words, In all Thy ways’.” He is subtle, “He shall bear Thee up lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.” The Lord answers and says, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Satan took Him to a pinnacle of the temple, the highest religious position. Now we are in danger on a pinnacle of the temple, a great brother, a successful evangelist, eminent something, this and the other; now I am getting on a pinnacle of the temple—a religious place.

Don’t you know, beloved friends, we may escape the Christless world, and then we want to be something among the people of God? We make that our sphere to be something there, something on our own account. “He set Him on a pinnacle of the temple.” He was on a religious pedestal, the highest place. It is a blessed thing to be used of God; but there is another aspect, and the Devil took him up there, to a pinnacle of the temple. It is not the world in this case; it is religious position, and the enemy can so work upon you and so seduce you in that way that you may fall into snares never dreamed about.

Wherever you find anything in connection with the pinnacle of the temple, and we want to rise to the top, there we get dizzy. We centre in ourselves. We have lost our true centre. Who should be my centre? Christ!

You remember that, in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, Andrew found his brother Peter and brought him to Jesus. They stayed the day with Him, and the next day Andrew goes on his missionary work, but he had got his blessed centre. Have you already got your centre right? “They came and saw where He dwelt and they abode with Him that day.” Christ was their centre. If Christ is my circumference, my centre will be all right. Then I will not get dizzy by any religious position I may get into.

Here where the Devil has put Him on a pinnacle of the temple as told by Luke it is the last temptation, but it is not the way it happened. Matthew tells it as it happened. Luke gives it to you in the moral sense, and he puts this temptation last, because it is the most seductive of all; the most subtle of all—religious position. Am I wanting it? Am I assuming airs in it till I get dizzy with my self-emulation? Satan said to the Lord, “Cast yourself down from here, God says He will take care of you; you won’t be hurt.” His answer was superlatively divine. His blessed answer amounts to this—“You tell Me that God will take care of Me; if I cast Myself down I won’t get hurt. I know Him so well I won’t put Him to the test.” “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God.” If a man really knows his wife will he put her to the test? Do you put your mother to the test? I would call that moral brutality. You do not put one to the test whom you know in your heart of hearts. You say, “I am going to put God to the test, He will preserve me from being hurt.” That is why I shall not put Him to the test. I know Him so well, and know His heart so well, I won’t put Him to the test. “Thou shalt not tempt”—that is, you shall not try Him to see if He is as good as His word—“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

These three temptations, beloved friends, exhaust the Devil of all that he has to use, all his artillery, all his schemes natural, worldly, and religious. If he can’t get me in one way he will try to get me in another. What do these temptations bring out as regards our Lord?

His dependence upon God.

His devotedness to God.

His confidence in God.

Here, now, is the Lord “in the wilderness.” Every word in the Bible has a meaning. The Lord could have left out those words in the third chapter of John, and you could leave out, “in the wilderness,” but it is in the wilderness we are tested.

“’Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love

That has made me a pilgrim below,

And ’tis there, when I reach Him above,

As I’m known, all His fulness I’ll know.”

Beloved friends, it is here we have temptations—natural temptations, turning stones into bread; worldly temptations—all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of the religious temptation—when I want to be there and shine on the top of the pinnacle. Only as judging that shall I really set forward and advance in the power of the Holy Ghost.

In the third chapter of Luke, we see the Lord Jesus under the eye of the Father, living under His blessed eye and the heavens opened, and we are brought in by redemption. Now I repeat these three-wonderful things:

The opened heavens.

The indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

And God calls me one of His sons.

They were not children merely, they were sons. Look at that little fellow on the floor. Can he say “Daddy”? You would give the world to hear him say “Daddy.” He is the most helpless thing. But you say, “He is alive, but he is not a grown-up son.” We are born again by the operation of the Holy Spirit. We get the new birth—born of the Spirit. “Sons” mean that you are grown up, you are developed, have reached full age.

“Even so…when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive sonship. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father.” In chapter three of Luke, we have our blessed Lord under the Father’s eye. In the next chapter, we have Him under the eye of the Devil in the temptation for forty days. He wins the day. He wins every battle; the enemy is completely routed. Natural temptations, worldly temptation and the spiritual temptation, all fall flat before Him. But, beloved friends, do not forget that we ourselves have Him for our example. He is our pattern in this world—under the eye of Satan. He is the pattern of our place before the Father in perfect love. He is the pattern of our pathway through the world and the temptations of the world, when the Devil and the flesh all beset us. How can we win the day? By keeping our eye on that Blessed One. As we hear Him say, “I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do, and now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self, with the glory I had with Thee before the world was/’ May we say it and mean it, dear friends:

“Oh, fix our earnest gaze

So wholly, Lord, on Thee,

That, with Thy beauty occupied,

We elsewhere none may see.”

Address Five The Bridegroom with You

April 1, 1941

Turn to the fifth chapter of Luke, verse 20: “And when He saw their faith, He said unto him, Man thy sins are forgiven thee. And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?... And after these things He went forth and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and He said unto him, Follow Me. And he left all, rose up, and followed Him. And Levi made Him a great feast in his own house, and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them… And He said unto them, Can ye make the children of the Bridechamber fast while the Bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them and then shall they fast in those days. And He spake also a parable unto them:… No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith the old is better” (Luke 5:20-39).

I want to call your special attention to verse 35 of this chapter: “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days”; and also to verse 37: “No man putteth new wine into old bottles.” In reading the Gospel of Luke it is a help to see how he puts things together for a moral purpose, not as they happen consecutively. What I mean by a moral purpose is that they are not put in their chronological order as in Mark’s Gospel, nor in their dispensational order as in Matthew, but certain events in the Lord’s life are taken out of their chronological order, as they were given, and are put together that He may teach us different lessons in regard to the subjects on which He is speaking.

What we are going to take up tonight is the difference between Christ on earth and Christ in heaven. “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.” And then He tells of the things that will take place when He reaches the Father’s place on high. Blessing will come to us in Christianity which could not be ours in Judaism. In other words, dividing the subject concisely, it is what the Lord Jesus does here, at the beginning of which we have been reading and what He does subsequently.

First of all, He forgives the sins of the man who had been brought to Him. He had the palsy, and friends carried him. I do not know whether he had any faith at all, but when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the man, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” The scribes and Pharisees said, “Who is this that can forgive sins? Who can do this but God alone?” Then He said, “That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” He gives the man two things spoken of in Psalm 103: He forgives his sins, and He heals his bodily sickness. That is what is prophesied of the Messiah that when He came into the world He would dispense forgiveness to Israel and heal their diseases. That is what we call governmental forgiveness. Governmental forgiveness was for the people of Israel while they were under God’s divine government. If they behaved themselves well, blessing would come upon them. If they did not, judgment would overtake them.

Now, our Lord was here, the blessed Messiah, giving His earthly people forgiveness and healing. He said, “Your sins are forgiven,” and, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” He forgives iniquities and heals diseases, of course, if the man had faith in Christ, his forgiveness was more than governmental which means the moral government of God over man in this world, and not eternal government. It does not go beyond time. I mention this because people are sometimes puzzled. They say: “Well, if the man had no faith, how did he get his sins forgiven?” The presence of the Lord here as the Messiah of Israel brought with Him blessing for His people who had got away from God and were suffering under His governmental hand. When they complained He said: “The days will come when the Bridegroom will be taken away from them.” You are reminded of this—“Then shall they fast.”

Why do the disciples keep on feasting? John the Baptist fasted. Why do not you do the same? They cannot fast as long as the Bridegroom is here, because while He is here they are going to dance, sing, and be happy. His presence on earth brings with it real, true happiness. The manifestation of Christ gives a key to what we ourselves shall be, for He is now in heaven, and I want to go there now. My heart is there now. If He were on earth, my heart would be here. Can they fast as long as the Bridegroom is with them? They should have been feasting on that day, because “the days will come when the Bridegroom will be taken away.”

In this chapter are some striking things. He said to one man: “Thy sins are forgiven.” He said to another, to Levi, or Matthew, “Follow Me,” and Matthew left everything and followed the Lord. That same Matthew made Him a feast in his own house. He does not tell you that in his Gospel, He, leaves it for Luke to tell you, but it is a lovely little touch. Do not tell people what you do. If others want to talk about you, all well and good. It is all right to have blessed happy fellowship, but when we begin to exalt a man to a pinnacle, we are not doing very much good. Levi made Him a great feast in his own house. Yes, but he did not say a word about it in his Gospel, but Luke tells us here.

Therefore, there are three things here in connection with Christ—forgiveness, following and feasting. First, He said to one, “You are forgiven,” to another “Follow,” and then the man that followed Him made Him a great feast.

Then there arose a complaint. They said: “He does not do the right thing. They are all feasting, having a good time, and they do not fast.” Then comes the wonderful verse: “They cannot fast while the Bridegroom is with them, but the days will come when the Bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then shall they fast in those days.”

What do you think we shall have when the Bridegroom is taken away? Everything new. Here it is in verse 36: First of all, there is a new suit of clothes. If Christ is glorified, I want to know how He got there. If our Blessed Lord is now in the glory, on God His Father’s throne, how did He get there? There is only one answer to that—by the way of the cross. On that shameful cross He put everything connected with the law away, what I was as a man in the flesh, in my sins, in Adam. On that cross He made atonement. He glorified God in the highest heaven. He put away sins. And because of that wonderful work, everything is new, and the first thing we get is a brand new suit of clothes. I am in it. You cannot put old cloth in new. You cannot mix Christianity and Judaism, law and grace; there is an entirely new thing. But, beloved friends, if I may keep up the figure, that brand new suit of clothes was woven at the cross. Everything was secured at the cross. There He laid the foundation of God’s righteousness in the forgiveness of sin. Now the first thing we get through Christ glorified is a perfect new standing, a perfect new place in Him; no mixture; not old cloth and new; not Mount Sinai and Calvary; not Moses and Christ; not, He will do this and I will do the other. It is an entirely new standing.

I would like to ask you if you have it on you? No man can put a new piece of cloth in old. They do not agree, it says. No, they do not agree. On the Mount of Transfiguration the Lord Jesus was there, Moses was there, and Elijah was there. Peter said: “Let us make here three tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” God removed the law-giver; God removed the prophet, and there was Jesus only. You must not put old cloth with new.

The fact is, beloved friends, there are very few Christians who understand clear-cut Christianity. I say that advisedly. We so often mix some kind of ritualism, some kind of formality, some kind of routine with it. God says all that is put away. You must not mix old things and new, shadows and substance, Mount Sinai, I repeat, and Calvary. So when those disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration looked, “they saw no man save Jesus only.” He, Himself, did the blessed work upon the cross whereby we get this brand new suit in Him. “We are made the righteousness of God in Him, we stand before God in Him, and I trust everyone in this hall has Christ for his righteousness.

In Him you are complete, in Him you stand, in Him you are perfect. That brand new suit is all woven out, so to speak, by His sufferings on Calvary’s tree. Are you mixing anything? Your feelings, your realizations, your ritualisms, your something or other, mixing it up with the work of Christ? Do you stand alone on this solitary fact; not Moses; not Elijah, and Christ, but Jesus only? “We are made the righteousness of God in Him.” I take that to mean a cloth without a single flaw; not a stitch of Adam’s race, Adam is the guilty man who was turned out of Eden. He never gave us any standing before God. What are you clothed with, dear hearer, as you sit there tonight? Are you “the righteousness of God in Him?” “He is made unto us wisdom and righteousness.” That is the new cloth.

Remember this, “When the Bridegroom is taken away.” If He had been here still, where would we be? If there had been no Calvary, if there had been no shed blood, no atoning work, where would we be? The claims of God’s throne were perfectly met there for me when He died on that shameful tree. Now He is in heaven at God’s right hand and we are in Him. That phrase “in Him” occurs about seventy-two times in the New Testament. That is the new suit. I hope everyone in this hall has it on.

The next thing is in verse 37: “And no man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better.”

It is new wine in verse 37. The new cloth is Christ. I am in Him. The new wine is the Holy Ghost and that is in me. That is the new wine in the new bottle. You know, wine in the Old Testament means earthly joy. New wine is joy of the Holy Ghost. They had that on the day of Pentecost. The people said: “These men are full of new wine.” They never said a truer thing. They said it sarcastically, they said it ironically, but it was perfectly true because the new wine was joy in the Holy Ghost. Have you got that, dearly beloved friends? Is that joy in you?

The wine is in the bottle but I am not in the cloth; that is what we call objective and subjective. The objective is what is true of me in Christ, and the subjective is what is true of me in the joy of the Holy Ghost. These two always go together. You cannot have Christ in glory and the Holy Ghost not on earth. He is here, according to the Lord’s word, “If I go not away He will not come to you.” On the day of Pentecost He sent the Holy Ghost, and what overflowing joy they had! Of the Thessalonians we are told that “they received the Word in much affliction, with joy in the Holy Ghost.” They were so full of joy that they did not think of their afflictions.

On the Day of Pentecost those looking on thought the disciples had been drinking to excess, but Peter stood up and said it was only the third hour of the day; these men were not drunk as they supposed, but what they witnessed was the fulfilment of that wonderful promise. There was new wine, new joy through the presence of the Holy Ghost on earth. Very few Christians realize that the Holy Ghost is in us just as much as we are in Christ. We are in Christ, and the Holy Ghost is in us. “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” Those two things are really the foundation of Christianity—a Glorified Man in heaven who did all the work on Calvary’s tree, and when He got there, He sent down the Holy Ghost to be His representative, to bring with Him the love of God into our hearts. “The love of God is shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us.” I do not ask God to send Him. How can I ask God to send the Holy Ghost? Why, beloved friends, He is here. In John 14 the Father sends Him; in John 15 the Son sends Him; in John 16 He comes Himself. You should read these three chapters about the Spirit of God. He says in one chapter: “Whom the Father will send,” and then, “Whom I will send,” and He is in every believer. That is the new wine in the new bottle. Do you enjoy it?—the joy of the Holy Ghost? We may grieve Him. We often do, but we do not grieve Him away. “Grieve not the Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.”

So, beloved friends, that is in keeping with our Lord’s words: “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast.” He went to the cross and there He accomplished the work of our redemption on the ground of which we receive this wonderful new suit “the righteousness of God in Him,” and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost to dwell in us.

We know one day the Bridegroom is coming back, and, if the Lord will, I hope to speak on the coming again of the Lord Jesus to take us to the Father’s house, and then if the Lord will, on when He comes to set up His kingdom.

What we have here is the Bridegroom going away, and I repeat again, in going away He goes by the way of Golgotha, He goes by the way of Calvary; and there does that mighty work on the ground of which we get this brand new suit. There is not a stitch of the Adamic nature in it. It is in Christ, complete. We are “accepted in the Beloved.”

Then, dear friends, the subjective idea is that the Spirit of God is in me, and I joy in the Holy Ghost if I do not grieve Him. I do not grieve Him away, but if I do grieve Him I do not enjoy communion. I do not enjoy the new wine, the joy in the Holy Ghost.

Please look at the first verse of the following chapter, Luke 6 where we get a sentence which has been a stumbling block to those who study Theology, “the second Sabbath after the first.” What I want you to notice, beloved friends, is that we are now on resurrection ground. He has accomplished redemption and given us this new place in Him before God and we have also the Spirit of God in ourselves, and we come to “the second Sabbath after the first.” The reference is evidently to Leviticus 23:9-16. Turn to it and notice the words in verse 9, 15: “On the morrow after the Sabbath.” That is the first day of the week.

Let us come back again now to our chapter in Luke. Remember, the disciples are going through the cornfield. When you get to the cornfield, you are in the land, on the resurrection side. You say, “I wish you would make yourself plain.” Well, I will try to. There are three kinds of food—manna, the passover and the old corn. Manna is Christ come down, the Passover is “Christ our Passover sacrificed for us on the cross,” but the old corn is Christ in glory, the Eternal Son gone back to God, “the old corn of the land.”

In this chapter we are told that it was “the second Sabbath after the first.” When is the first? The first is when the corn is ripe, and then no one must touch it until the second Sabbath after the first. The first the Corn is ripe, but on the one that follows you can put out your hand and take it; but be sure that you take the wave sheaf and wave it before Jehovah on the morrow after the sabbath. It is the risen Christ. He is the Wave Sheaf. 1 Corinthians 15 speaks in plain words of “Christ the first fruits.” First fruits of what? Of the resurrection harvest. “Afterwards those who are Christ’s at His coming.” Leviticus 23 carries us on to the great harvest-time that lies ahead. It points us first of all to Christ’s resurrection. You must not touch a bit of that until you have waved the Risen Christ Himself on the first day of the week. He rose from the dead “the morrow after the Sabbath.” He is the Wave Sheaf in the great Resurrection Harvest, a foretaste of the wonderful day that is coming.

“Christ, the first fruits,” the first day of the week. To me, beloved friends, it is simply marvelous. It says, “on the morrow after the Sabbath” the priest was to wave it. That is your day, Christian. You are not a Seventh-day Adventist. The first day of the week is yours, and there is the risen Christ waved before Jehovah. I mean He stands on the resurrection side under the eye of God, the first fruits of the great resurrection harvest which is yet to come when the Lord comes back. In the meantime there is the Wave Sheaf. Read it, please,—for it is well worth it—in Leviticus 23:10-14.

“On the morrow after the Sabbath.” The Wave Sheaf, I repeat, is Christ risen. As you know, He rose on the first day of the week. He is the Harbinger of the great harvest that lies ahead. He is the First fruits. That is why you must not touch it until the second Sabbath after the first, because it was then they went through the cornfield and plucked the ears of corn. They must not touch it till Jehovah has had His portion. Think of the Blessed God welcoming His Son, the risen One who was raised from the dead, in the glory waved before Jehovah on that triumphant day.

Now while the disciples are passing through the cornfield, they are hungry, they began to pluck the ears of corn. The disciples can have their portion, but not until Jehovah has taken His after the first Sabbath when the corn was ripe. Then on the second Sabbath they began to appropriate it to themselves. I hope, dear friends, you have a keen appetite for the old corn of the land. The old corn of the land is your proper Christian food. Manna is what came down from heaven—the Incarnate Christ. We do not know Him after the flesh, as a man of the flesh. You remember it says, “The manna ceased.” We did not know Christ in that way. What I mean is, that He is not bodily flesh and blood.

“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” There is a glorified Man in Heaven today in a different condition from what He was when He was down here. Down here He had flesh and blood. In resurrection He has not flesh and blood. He said: “A spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see Me have.” He is the same Person in a different character. We must go to heaven to feed on Him. “Go to heaven?” you say, “How can you go to heaven?” You can in your mind; “Set your mind on things above.” I hope you have been there today. It is an easy thing, if you will only let the Holy Ghost have His way with you.

“The old corn of the land,” I believe, simply means the Eternal Son of God there in a different condition to what He was when He was here, no longer in flesh and blood, but in a glorified condition. If you are to be stalwart, you must eat the corn. That is your food. It says, “The manna ceased.” You did not know Christ on earth. A new food is introduced after that. Feed on what He is; pluck the ears of corn; appropriate Him in His glorified condition. I would to God we did! I would to God we fed more on Christ glorified, and plucked the ears of corn! We may preach; we may be able to talk and give it out; but how much am I feeding? “Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in you.” That means, appropriate His death. But, dear friends, He is no longer dead; “He is alive forevermore” at God’s right hand. I must feed on Him where He is.

We are suffering, dear friends, from not eating enough. Some of us eat too much physically and get indigestion, but the appropriation of Christ here is something more. We must feed more, dear friends; masticate more, assimilate more; that is what makes us strong in the Lord. We might turn to Joshua 5 for a moment. “And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the selfsame day. And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year” (Joshua 5:10-12).

The fruit of the land of Canaan was the old corn, and our Lord is the old corn, the Eternal Son, now glorified in the highest heaven. If I am going to be spiritually stalwart, I must feed on Him, on Christ where He is. By the Spirit of God Luke has grouped these things together.

Let us now turn back to our chapter, Luke 6: “And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day? And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did when himself was an hungered, and they which were with him?”

How marvelous that He should bring that wonderful picture before them about David and his men eating the shewbread at that time. David was rejected; he was a fugitive; he should have been on the throne, but they would not have him. The rejected king and his followers go to the priest, and then take the shewbread and eat it. You say, “They had no right to eat the shewbread.” They certainly had, because the King is rejected. If King George VI were dethroned tomorrow, the whole constitution of Great Britain would go to pieces, for he is the head of it. And the whole Jewish system has gone to pieces because Christ has been rejected. No one could eat the shewbread but the priests, and the Lord practically said they were all priests. Why have they become priests? Because the King is rejected. Do you not understand that the rejection of Christ has opened up the heavenlies to us so that we can feed on the Heavenly Bread? It is only lawful for the priests, but they are all priests now. They are identified with Him. I am rejected because they rejected Him, and the whole policy of the Jewish system has gone to pieces. Colossians tells us, “He made a show of them openly,” He did away with the Jewish system entirely by the death of the cross and began a new order of things in the resurrection.

Turn to Colossians 2:14 for a moment: “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross.” The whole system of Judaism was wiped out by the death of Christ and a new order began with the resurrection. But His rejection, if you will follow me, please, has made every believer a priest now. You say, “They are priests?” They have the right to the sanctuary because My rejection has dissolved the whole Jewish system. There is a new order of things, which is Christianity, and every Christian is a priest. “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us kings and priests to God and His Father, to Him be glory forever and ever.”

It is magnificent. Don’t you know what they did in the time of David? They could eat the shew-bread because the King was rejected. By His very rejection Christ has made the food of the Sanctuary available to every Christian because we are all priests. Do you understand that, brother? Do you understand that, sister in the Lord? As kings and priests we have a right to enter the Sanctuary. Christ took all the Jewish system away and nailed it to His cross. I am afraid, beloved friends, we are slow in grasping the new order, the basis of which is the cross of Christ and His resurrection.

That is why the first day of the week is ours; not the eighth day, not the seventh day, but the first day, the commencing of the new order of things in the risen Christ. That is not tight-rope-walking (Pardon the expression); that is not mere fancy. No; we want to make a clean break with Judaism and its system of things and get to the other side in connection with the risen Christ. So He says of David: “When he was hungry and they that were with him…he did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them…which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone.” It is lawful now that the King is rejected. The Lord Jesus has been rejected, and through that very rejection of His, every believer in Him has a right to the Sanctuary. Does it mean you, believer? It means all the people of God. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest.” It means that brethren on earth, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling (and I wish we availed ourselves of it), are priests! Oh, for more priestly grace to worship! It takes much more power to worship than to preach. I do not say we should jump up one after another, but I do say we should bring our own quota of adoring worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wish I could put it to you as I would like.

Have you not read what David did? He might have said: “I am a fugitive; they have refused me the throne; you have got Saul, you ought to have me. Knowing I am a rejected King you should share my fortunes.” “David and the men that were with him.” The veil is rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and God has come out, and I go in. In for what? To worship.

We are very far behind, beloved brethren. I am not here to scold, but to help you, if I can, to have more liberty and power in worship, and more material for worship. What is the material? Christ Himself. So the Lord said: “Don’t you know what David did when he was hungry. He was a fugitive, rejected. So am I. I am rejected; you are rejected in association with Me.” David and the men that were with him, ate the shewbread, which was not lawful but for the priests alone. But we are all priests. We have a new suit of clothes; new wine; new bottles; new food, the old corn of the land.

Then we have a new practice, and that is what we are coming to last. “The days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them. Then shall they fast.” That is the new practice. That is what fasting is, denying self and unworldliness, but having association with a rejected Christ. “Then shall they fast in those days.” He says: While I am here they are going to have a good time of it, but when I am rejected, cast out, then shall they fast.

More unworldliness is what we need; more enjoyment of the Holiest is what we need.

Now to finish. The Spirit of God puts a striking contrast in connection with the holy surroundings. “There was a man whose right hand was withered.” That is the next thing, a withered hand that cannot partake of the bread, the bread of the Sanctuary. If I have a withered hand, I cannot take it. You know the Lord said: “Stretch forth thy hand.” That is what He is saying to you and me today. The bread of the Sanctuary is there for us to appropriate. Put out your hand. I know it is withered, but I mean you to take it. Appropriate it. Eat Me. “He that eateth Me shall live by Me.”

We are living, beloved, in the days of the rejected Christ, sharing so to speak, His fortunes in that way. The day will come when He will be King over the whole earth, Monarch of the Universe, everyone bowing at His blessed feet. But now He is a rejected Christ. We ought to be unworldly, devoted to Him, appropriating the shewbread of the new Sanctuary, feeding upon it and giving to Him the results of our feeding—worship, praise, adoration, thanksgiving.

You say: “Where does the gospel come in?” You could not help it coming in. Do not think we are separating the Gospel of Testimony from all these blessed things we are brought into as believers. If our hearts are overflowing with Christ, feeding on Him, we shall let others know of the glorious blessings we have been brought into; a new suit, new wine, new bottles, new food.

A man once said to an old negro, “You seem very happy.” When he replied, “I am very happy,” he asked: “What makes you so?” He answered: “You know, I had a suit of rags on me, and the Lord Jesus said, Here is a brand new suit, and, you know, I took the new suit and threw my rags away.”

You do not seem happy tonight in your suit. You are looking on yourself, instead of changing to the new suit He is ready to give to you. This is a little illustration, but God has put us into His Son, covered us with His beauties; with His perfections; but how many cling to their own righteousness, their own rags, their own clothes. He says: “No man puts new wine into old bottles; no man puts new cloth into old.” You get into the suit and the wine gets into you. I do not get into the bottle, but I do get into the clothes. We are in Him, complete, perfect, accepted. He is in us in the power and joy of the Spirit of God. All these things are new—new suit, new wine, new food, the old corn of the land, new priesthood, and last—new character. “Then shall they fast.” You may fast, of course, if you like, and use it for mere physical fasting, but those who did it fasted for the Lord’s sake. I wish I were more like that. From a spiritual standpoint, fasting really means denial of self, not gratifying myself in worldliness, not giving the flesh a regular meal, but saying, “No! No! No!”

Address Six

April 3, 1941

Tonight I want to read with you from three portions of God’s Word. First of all from the Gospel of John, 14:23: “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” Now turn back to the opening verses of our chapter: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

Our second portion is found in 2 Peter 1:10, 11: “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things ye shall never fall; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Poor Peter, he knew how necessary this exhortation was, for he fell asleep when he should have been awake!

Our third portion is well-known. Turn with me to 1 Thess. 4:13-18: “But I would not have ye ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep…”

In John 14 we travel back up that road down which Judas had just passed as he left the presence of Christ. Jesus is alone with His eleven disciples. He knows the heaviness of their hearts, hearts made one through a common grief. With all their faults they loved Him. They were but men after all, and having companied with Him during the past three years it was grievous indeed to face the parting.

They did not understand the meaning of all this, so they plied Him with many questions. The Holy Spirit had not yet been given to lighten the way for them and to make plain God’s plans for them. They had but one thought in their minds, the kingdom. They had quarrelled with one another on the question. And now He tells them He is going away. It is all so confusing. They were travelling one way, and He another. They might have been concerned about Him. He was to be forsaken of God and left alone. Their minds, however, were on other things. What of the kingdom? In the midst of all this bewilderment come His reassuring words, “Let not your heart be troubled.”

“Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” Here, indeed, was a test of their faith. He was about to leave them, but they must believe in an absent Lord. They believed in God. Yet they had never seen Him. “No man hath seen God at any time.” It is impossible for man to see God and live. Now He was leaving them. They would see Him no more. Yet they must believe in Him. Nothing tests us like invisibility. In the wilderness the children of Israel wanted a god they could see, and Aaron made them a golden calf. They must have something tangible to worship, and Aaron yielded to their cry. That is not faith. It requires faith to believe in the unseen. It would require faith to believe in Christ once He had gone. He told them He was going away, but did not say for how long. It might be for a thousand years, fifteen hundred years, two thousand years, or even more. I wonder how strong your faith is, and how strong is mine. Am I as true to Him after seventy years? Am I as bright as the first day I surrendered my heart to Him and the blessed hope of His return dawned on my redeemed soul? Are you? “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.” The longer He stays away the more we are tested. How am I standing up to the test? Have I the same buoyant expectancy as I had when I was first converted?

“In My Father’s house are many mansions.” The disciples had never heard of that before. They had heard of Jehovah’s house in Jerusalem, and had read about Nehemiah, Ezra and Solomon in the Temple, but the Father’s House is a New Testament revelation. “Father” is a great Christian word— “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” “In My Father’s house,” not in THE Father’s house. How do you spell it? I spell it L-O-V-E. Nothing but love there! We will be there throughout eternity, the Father and the children. They are inseparable; they are correlative.

A brother in the Old Country being poor of speech asked another to read for him something aloud from God’s Word. The brother began to read John fourteen. When he came to the verse, “I go to prepare a place for you,” he who was imperfect in speech cried out, “It doesn’t say places; it says place.” Unnecessary places are disposed of. It is one place —the gathering centre of the redeemed. There is no distance there, no icy blasts, but only LOVE, reigning supreme. He planned it that way. There are no back or front seats there. It is a family circle—the Father and the children together. Show me the front seat of a circle. You cannot. In the Father’s house every son of God from Adam down will find a place. There in that circle of God’s favor all the redeemed of all ages will sit down together. I am not looking for the kingdom but for “MY Father’s house.” Paul will not have a better place than I there. In the kingdom he will, it is true, but not in the Father’s house. The same thing that took Paul in will take me in—the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

“In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” This is the first promise we have of the Father’s house or of the Lord’s coming to take us there. In that blessed sphere of divine relationship there is no breath of sin, only perfection. We all enter on the same ground, the blood of Jesus Christ. May I ask you if you have your ticket purchased? It is a one-way trip. There is no return from there. You will not just squeeze in, but will enter in one magnificent sweep. “I go to prepare a place for you.” How near completion it may be! Are you ready to go?

What are you looking for? Do not look for the revival of the Roman Empire. That will come. Look for Him. He will come first. He will not then return to the Mount of Olives. “This same Jesus will so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven.” When He said, I am leaving you, they were full of sorrow, but when they returned to Jerusalem after witnessing His ascension, they were full of joy. They knew He was coming back again. Does it fill you with joy when you think of His return? Are you looking forward to the Father’s house? You may have a free ticket to mansions in the sky tonight. You may be as sure of glory now as if you were actually in it.

Let us look at our passage in 2 Peter 1:10. Have you made your calling and election sure? It means making sure of yourself. How does God make things sure to me? By His Word. How do I make them sure to myself? By realizing them and enjoying them. Are you doing it? “Make your calling and election sure.” Are you making it sure to yourself? Are you a happy Christian? Are these things bubbling up in your soul? I am not asking you to look in. We must have something more than that. How do I make my election sure to myself? By enjoying it. Do you? I may hold things, but have they a grip on me? You say, “They are in the Word.” That is true, but are they in your soul? If you have them you will never fail.

It is a question of the kingdom here, and so it speaks of an abundant entrance. Everyone has an abundant entrance into the Father’s house but not into the Kingdom. We will not all have the same place in the Kingdom. Some just get in. Every believer will be there because he is born again. “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” However there are front and back seats there. Our place in the Kingdom is determined by our life and conversation down here. If you are a worldly Christian you will have a back seat. Abraham got right in, but Lot just got in, no abundant entrance, but a tight squeeze. If you are a member of the Starvation Army you will not have an abundant entrance. This is a serious matter. “If ye do these things.” Consider then whether you are making your calling and election sure, and whether yours will be an abundant entrance or not. If you are a worldly Christian you will have a back seat in the Kingdom. You will not have an abundant entry. This is a matter worthy of serious consideration.

The beloved Paul in his second letter to Timothy warns of the coming apostasy in the last chapter of the epistle. In this final message we see Paul and Luke travelling along together. Luke had a broad vision. Where Matthew spoke of them coming from the east and the west to sit down in the Kingdom, Luke said, “They shall come from the east, and from the west and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.” Paul had lost Demas who loved the world more than God. “Only Luke is with me,” he wrote. He was faithful to the end. You know, brethren, God can do without us. But my, what He can do with us! How diligent, then, we ought to be when we consider the goal set before us!—an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom! It is everlasting because it cannot be broken up. Babylon fell, and Rome fell, but this kingdom shall never perish. After holding sway over this perfect kingdom for a thousand years the Lord hands it back to the Father. Will your entrance into it be an abundant one?

May I give you an illustration to show you the difference between the Father’s house and the kingdom. A certain man has two sons, both of whom work with him in his business which he holds in partnership with another. The one boy says to himself, “This is my father’s business, and I am not going to worry myself about it.” He comes late to work and he leaves early. The other boy says to himself, “This is my father’s business, and I will put my best into it.” He comes early and he works late. The partner who has an eye for business notices this, and approaching the father he suggests that the boy who is giving his best to the work be taken into partnership with them. He also suggests that the other boy be asked to look for another job. When the first boy is told to look for another job he protests, saying, “Surely, father, you are not going to put me out. Shall I not sit at the same table with you and eat the same food?” The father replies, “Yes; you will remain in the same house and enjoy all the privileges of the family; but I make a distinction between business and the home, and you must seek a new job.”

All Christians will be in the Father’s house. We will share the same love and have the same Father. In the kingdom, however, there will be differences, differences that last for a thousand years. Your position in the kingdom depends upon your spiritual size. You carry that into eternity. What is my spiritual size? That I cannot tell, except that it will grow as the Holy Spirit takes possession of me. Our spiritual make-up begins with the new birth. My divine stature begins at that moment. The normal thing to do is grow. How do I grow? “For it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” There is spiritual growth and development in the measure that Christ becomes more and more to me as times passes on. Will its measure be a cup? Yes; but probably a very small cup. But whether it be small or big it will be full. Now we come to our last scripture: 1 Thess. 4:13-18. It answers the question, How are we going to get into the kingdom? “I would not have you to be ignorant brethren.” He is about to clear up a difficulty that was in their minds. Some of their brethren had already passed off this scene. What about them? “The dead in Christ shall rise first.” The dead will have first place. We who are alive and remain shall pause for a moment standing upon this earth. Then we shall be caught up together with them. Don’t you love that word, “together”? You have it again in the tenth verse of the next chapter. “Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live TOGETHER with Him.” We stand together for a moment together on the earth, we are caught up together, and we live together after we are caught up. Sin shall not enter there. You may not have been to many open-air meetings, but that is one you will attend if you are His. Will you be there, dear hearer? Can you say with Miss Burlingham:

“I am waiting for Thee, Lord,

Thy beauty to see, Lord.

I am waiting for Thee,

For Thy coming again.”

We are judicially waiting, but are we waiting in moral expectancy?

May each moment we live down here be filled with Christ, to live for Him, to live like Him, to live in constant waiting and watching for His promised return. Let us distinguish between the Father’s house and the kingdom. The Father’s house is our eternal abode; while our place in the kingdom is determined by our life and testimony on earth. May our works stand the test of fire! There is the good man with works who is both saved and rewarded, there is the good man with no works who is saved but not rewarded, and there is the unsaved man who had no reward and is eternally lost. Abraham belonged to the first class, Lot to the second, and his works were burned, and Lot’s wife belonged to the third class, and she was lost. God grant that we shall be found faithfully serving Him down here, and with eyes upturned live with this prayer on our lips, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Address Seven

April 15, 1941

And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”

I want to bring before you this evening, with the Lord’s help, the different ways in which Abraham looked. He had wonderful eyes. He looked behind him, he looked in front of him, he looked above him, he looked around him, but he did not look within him. That is one place he did not look, though he did look in every other direction. You might call him Abraham the seer. You know Samuel the Prophet was called Samuel the seer.

A servant of the Lord was once asked: “What is a seer?” and he said: “He is a man who can see. He is a seer.” When I heard that, I thought: “Nobody can say that.” If I talk, I am a talker; if I walk, I am a walker. That is merely adding another syllable to it. Abraham was a seer. As I have already remarked, he looked in every direction. His son Isaac suffered from weak eyes. That is why Jacob deceived him. Isaac was governed by his feelings. He could not see very well; he had dim sight. His father, Abraham, had marvelous sight. He is called “the Father of the faithful.” If we could only get his vision, we should get something more of his character.

In the chapter we have been reading he was told by God to go and take his beloved son, Isaac, and offer him for a burnt-offering, and Abraham got up very early in the morning, and it says: “He lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. Here is another looking. Those eyes of his were not only all over the place but in the right direction, as we see.

An unconverted man was robbing a cornfield, and his little boy was with him. Before the man could begin his operations he got very much frightened. He thought a policeman or a detective would be after him. He looked around about and all over the place. His little boy who was near at hand said: “Daddy, there is one way you did not look.” He said: “Which way?” The little boy said: “That way!” and pointed up. That frightened the life out of him and he got out of that place. He had forgotten God’s eyes were upon him. He had looked all about to see if any human eyes were upon him.

Abraham is not like him. He looked in front of him, above him, everywhere but inside. No wonder he is called the Father of the faithful. How much time do you spend looking at yourself. I do not mean at yourself physically, I mean morally and spiritually. You spend half your time at it, and when I say that, it is a very weak charge. Most people spend a lot of time in self-occupation. That will make you a spiritual dwarf. We do not grow by looking within and measuring ourselves, but we do grow by looking at Him. “We all with open face behold the glory of the Lord.”

Abraham takes his son to that mountain he saw in the distance to offer him there as a burnt offering. As they went up that hill together, Isaac said to his father: “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? We have got the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb? And the answer came: “God will provide Himself a lamb for the burnt offering.” That is what really characterized this book of Genesis. It is God’s provision for Himself, not His provision for you. He provided Himself a lamb for the burnt-offering and He did not provide a sin offering for you. He does this in Exodus, but here He provides a lamb for a burnt-offering for Himself. I wish, dear friends, that we were more on God’s side of things. We should grow very much more than we do. Somehow it seems natural for us to say: “Where do I come in? What has God to say about me?” That is what makes us so dwarf like.

At last they get to the place, and that wonderful man of faith bound his son to the altar and took the knife to slay his son. I would like you to meditate for a moment or two on what were the father’s feelings as he raised that knife, and if he really meant to kill his son. He, of course, knew that God would raise him from the dead. What a pang! What piercing must have gone through his heart as he raised the knife to slay his beloved son! As the knife was uplifted, he heard a voice saying: “Abraham, Abraham, lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me.”

Abraham looked behind him, and there learned the truth of substitution. He saw a ram caught in the thicket by the horns, and the ram was offered up instead of Isaac. But when did he learn the truth of substitution? When he was broken-hearted; when he was smashed to pieces within. That is the time to teach people substitution. Do not teach them substitution till they know something of real sorrow, real grief.

I want to explain the difference between propitiation and substitution. Propitiation is the death of Christ Godwards—the blood on the Mercy-seat to meet the claims of His Majesty, to meet the claims of His glory: but Substitution is the blood put upon the Mercy-Seat for me. “Whom God has set forth to be the propitiation through faith in His blood.” The propitiation side, is for Him, but the substitution side is for me. Do not hurry people, dear friends, into a confession of Christ. Do not teach them substitution till they know some agony, some conviction, some grief, about their sins. I ask you again: “What was the condition of Abraham’s mind as he raised that knife?” He was a broken-hearted man when God said: “Look behind you. There is a ram. Offer that up instead of your son, and learn the blessed truth of substitution.” I say, especially to you who are dealing with souls, do not try to push them into it, coddle them into it, or what I call “chocolate-cream” them into it. Let them get some feelings of what hell is, some broken-heartedness, some grief, some Divine conviction. Any other kind of conversion is not worth having. I am afraid many times we press people into things when they are not ready for it. Show me the broken-hearted sinner, the man, boy, or girl who realizes he is guilty. Then say: “Look behind you. Gaze on the Crucified One. See Him dying in your room and stead, bearing your sins.” Then teach them substitution, but do not teach them substitution while they are light-hearted, thoughtless and unbelieving. It has done a lot of mischief.

The chrysalis, as you know, becomes a butterfly. If you want that change to take place it has to have a breaking-up. It would make a very poor butterfly if it did not. And so with many conversions, they are thoroughly artificial. I have heard people say sometimes to girls: “What a lovely voice you have If you used that for the Lord how much obliged we should be!” and all that stuff. Show me a sinner on the brink of hell who realizes his condition, thinking about his sins, and afraid of being damned. Then when he is in that condition of mind you say: “Look behind you at the cross of Christ. See Him crucified, dying in your room and stead, bearing your sins in His own body on the tree.” That is substitution.

“He died for me upon the tree,

His blood is accepted, the sinner goes free.

That sinner am I who on Jesus rely

And come for the pardon God cannot deny.”

I would lay this upon the hearts of my friends who preach, anywhere, in the Sunday School, or in the open-air. Do not try, dear friends, to persuade people into it. It is artificial, it is hollow, and it does not last; it is not real. But you say: “He is convicted.” Thank God, he is convicted. Thank the Lord he is anxious, but the more anxious, the better; the more strongly convicted, the better. The more clearly he sees his sins, the better. Then tell him that Christ died for him, if you will, that Christ died for the ungodly. Bring him close up to it and then he will look behind him and see that Lamb of God on the cross bearing his sins in His own body on the tree. Have you ever, dear friends, been divinely convicted? Have you realized your sinnership? Do you know you are sitting on the very brink of hell fire, and that the Lord may come at any moment? Realizing that you say: “I would like to be saved.” Then you do not think of what others may say of you. You look behind you. First of all, you look behind to see what you have done yourself. There are your footprints in the sands of time.

In fact, a man did it literally once. He walked along the seashore for some distance. Then he turned around and saw his footprints. Something said to him: “What about your footprints in the sands of time? What about those secret sins of yours?” The poor fellow saw his sins staring him in the face in those tracks. Then he saw the waves of the sea come up and wash out all his footprints. He applied that as the blood of Christ which cleanses from all sin.

Abraham looked behind, but I say again, when did he look behind? With that sword uplifted, his heart broken, all smashed to pieces! That is the time to learn substitution. If any one of you dear people who are here tonight realizes that you are lost, hell is open, and that your sins are fastened upon you, we turn you to that Blessed One on Calvary behind you 1900 years ago.

“He bore an the tree

The sentence for me,

And now both the Surety

And sinner are free.”

Those are the old-fashioned kind of conversions that people used to have in times that are past. I do not say there are none now, but there are many less than there used to be. Oh, for the tearful eye, the arrow of conviction! Oh, for the brokenness about sins! Because the more you realize, beloved friends, your sins before God, the brighter you will be when you have looked behind you and see the Lord Jesus bearing those sins away forever. You have looked behind you first of all to see your sins, and then to see Him dying in your room and stead, and you know they are all gone and gone forever. Look behind you, and gaze on the crucified Saviour and see Him bearing judgment. The whole thing is over, as far as sins are concerned.

Then God brought Abraham forth abroad, and said, “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be” (Gen. 15:5). If I do not go to Calvary, I shall go to hell. Having seen the crucified One, God says: “Now look toward heaven. Do not stop there, move on to the Glorified One. Look now toward heaven.” God told Abraham He would give him a son. He was a hundred years old and his wife ninety, so it was a natural impossibility that Abraham should have a son. But, “He considered not his own body.” What a relief it is for the Christian not to look at himself! Take your eye off yourself. Nothing is more miserable, nothing is more dwarfing, nothing more grieving to the Spirit of God, than for a Christian to be spending his time in introspection—looking at himself. “He considered not his own body; he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief.” God had said, “Look now toward heaven. I will give you a son.” That is quoted, you remember, in Romans 4. We read about Abraham too in that same chapter. “For Christ was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” So look now toward heaven. He is glorified now. He is enthroned; He is raised; and if you want to be satisfied here, gaze on the glorified One. Look now toward heaven, not to get your sins forgiven, but to get your heart satisfied. There are many Christians whose hearts are not satisfied. They are not happy Christians. When we are preaching the gospel to people we say: “If you trust the Lord, you will be characteristically happy.” There is a great measure of truth in it, but a great many of the Lord’s people are not satisfied because they do not know Christ glorified though their sins are forgiven. But we must move on from that, to what God says to Abraham: “Look now toward heaven.”

“Oh, fix our earnest gaze

So wholly, Lord, on Thee,

That with Thy beauty occupied,

We elsewhere none may see.”

If you read the contents of these verses carefully, you will find that Abraham was the most popular man in the world at that time. Everybody wanted to see him. He had been down to a battlefield (he was only a farmer). There were five kings fighting against four, and Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was taken prisoner. Abraham gets four hundred men together out of his own house and goes to battle with them. He comes back, and they play a tune to him, “The Conquering Hero Comes.” Here comes Abraham! He has overcome five kings. Think of that! Only a farmer who has been to the battlefield, and he conquered five kings! Of course, the world’s population was small at that time compared to what it is now, but Abraham was the most popular man on earth at that time. Two kings went out to meet him as he is coming along, the great hero, Abraham. The King of Sodom went out to meet him, and the King of Salem came out to bless him and brought forth bread and wine. Abraham tells the King of Sodom: “I do not want anything. Take your goods. I want no rewards, as long as I have freed my nephew, Lot.”

Lot had been taken prisoner and Abraham had to go a long way to get him. He went right across the land of Canaan as far north as Dan to bring him back. That is the only time Abraham went across the land. God had said to him: “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.” But Abraham never went across the land till his nephew Lot was taken prisoner, and he had to bring him back. I learn in this, beloved friends, that Lot being taken prisoner was a great grief to Abraham, but that very grief was the means of blessing to him because it took him across the land.

Have you ever crossed the land? You say: “What do you mean?” Have you gone in your heart to heaven where Christ is now glorified?—walking the land in the length of it and the breadth of it? Abraham, I repeat, never did that till his nephew Lot was taken prisoner. Perhaps you have lost your money; perhaps you have lost your popularity; perhaps you have lost your health; perhaps you have lost your friends. Then God bids you go to heaven to see Christ glorified. I have heard many Christians say when such a thing happened: “My heart was broken, everything seemed desolate, but I would not have been without that for the world. It is the first time I ever came to know the Lord where He is. He satisfied my heart, the glorified Christ.” Look now toward heaven.

A man said to me one evening: “What are you going to preach from tonight?” I replied: “Where are you looking?” He said: “I am wondering what you are going to preach from.” I answered: “Here is where I am going to preach from tonight with the Lord’s help—Look now toward heaven.” Do not be self-occupied. There are many things in this world to break your heart, this awful war and the things that accompany it. There is enough to break everyone who has a heart, but do not dwell too much on it. Pray about it; look to God about it. “Look now toward heaven,” where Christ is glorified there on the Father’s throne.

When he comes back from the war—I mean Abraham—back from that battlefield, he is covered with victory. Everybody wants to see him. I think I hear them say: “He is coming; here he is,” and the whole world goes out to meet him, when he gets back home. The Lord said to him, “Abraham, I am your shield and your exceeding great reward.” He says: “Lord, God, what will thou give me? Everybody thinks I am overflowing; everybody thinks I am supremely happy; everybody thinks I am at the very top height of everything, but I am not satisfied. Lord, God, what wilt thou give? I want a son to satisfy my heart.” He continues, as it were, “Everybody thinks I am a great hero. If ever there was a happy man on earth it must be Abraham—victorious, conqueror of the five kings, but you know better, Lord. You know that under my ribs there is an aching heart. I have a steward, but I want a son to satisfy my heart.”

God replies: “I will give him to you. Look now toward heaven.” He gives him the glorified Christ in figure, the Lord Jesus, the glorified Christ in heaven, to satisfy his longing heart. I verily believe, brethren, that there are many Christians’ hearts that are sad and desolate. The music is not going on; the joy is not there. Do you know what you want? You want Christ for your heart. He says: “I will give you a son and he will satisfy.” That is what the Blessed One does in glory yonder. Look now toward heaven. There is the general happiness, of course, that belongs to every believer in Christ, but there is another kind of happiness. “That Christ may dwell in your heart by faith, that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length, and breadth, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God.” Let me ask you, Is yours a satisfied heart because Christ is your object yonder? Let us go in faith. “Look now toward heaven.” There are many things that are covered with veneer, but what we need more and more is the living reality of knowing Christ, where He is, glorified on high.

To see Abraham that day you would say: “If anybody should be happy, he should. You know what a wonderful warrior he is, not only Abraham the father, but Abraham the warrior, Abraham the victorious, Abraham the popular. Surely if any man is happy he must be.” But God knew he was not. He said: “Abraham, I am your shield and your exceeding great reward. What would you like?” And the reply comes: “I want a son who will satisfy my every craving.”

Whatever people may say to the contrary, there are crowds of believers today who do not know the satisfying blessings of the indwelling Christ. I must see Him where He is; I must go to Him. The Holy Ghost will take you; He will take you where He is, where the river springs up into everlasting life. Am I a satisfied Christian? Would God say to me: “I am your shield and your exceeding great reward, I would like to give you something; I would like to make you supremely happy?”

The truth comes out. In spite of Abraham’s popularity, his victories, his earthly glory, there was something lacking, there was a void. I honestly believe among the Lord’s people there is this kind of thing. We are not as we should be. Gaze on Him who is at the right hand of the Majesty on high. ‘Look now toward heaven.’

I have looked behind me, and seen my sins taken away. I look now to Christ glorified and dwell upon Him and then my heart becomes satisfied.

“Satisfied with Thee, Lord Jesus, I am blessed,

Peace which passeth understanding on Thy breast

No more doubting, no more trembling, oh, what rest!”

There was only one man who lay on Jesus’ bosom—John the Apostle. That blessed Bosom was open to all of them, but only one took it, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” There is nothing in which He delights more than when we get to that place—“the disciple whom Jesus loved.” We would do well to get to the place of that forward disciple, and know John’s appreciation of His love. Every believer has reached His feet. You know the night you were converted and heard Him say: “Thy sins are forgiven.” Every believer should stand by His side but, beloved friends, how few comparatively know the blessedness of what the Apostle John knew. The devil will keep you from it if he can. If you get there you will understand what the Lord meant when He said to Abraham: “I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.”

Now turn to chapter 13:14: “And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward and eastward and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to these will I give it, and to thy seed forever.”

Here they are again, those wonderful eyes. You know, dear friends, if the devil can get your eyes wandering over the universe, that is the way to get nothing. Our eyes are all over the place. They are not fixed.

“Oh, fix our earnest gaze

So wholly, Lord, on Thee.”

“And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him.” Lot was a worldly believer, and the worldly believer is the most dangerous person on earth. If I were working in an office, I would far rather have an unconverted man working with me. I could talk to him about forgiveness, but I could not talk to a worldly Christian. If I made him my companion I should get like him.

Do not think I am scolding but I know that worldly believers are most dangerous to a young Christian. They always compromise; they always have something to say in defence of worldliness.

The Lord spoke to Abraham after that Lot was separated from him. He wanted to show Abraham something spiritual, opening up things to him, but Lot was there, looking toward a worldly object, his tent pitched toward Sodom. He nearly died in Sodom, just saved by the skin of his teeth—a worldly believer.

You may ask: “What is worldliness?” “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but of the world.” I warn you, young or old believer, if you form continuous companionship with one who is worldly, he will eat your soul’s vitality out of you. He will not be burned in hell but he will be just saved by the skin of his teeth.

“After that Lot was separated from him.” You say: “Do you believe in separation?” I do not believe in sanctimoniousness, but I do believe in separation from this present evil world. That is what we need very much. “Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth.” “For their sakes I sanctify Myself.” That is, if I go to heaven, I am separating Myself from them so that when I get there, they will have Me for their Object. “For their sakes I sanctify Myself.” The Glorified Christ in heaven will engage your heart’s affections and will make you a separated man on earth. It will not make you a maniac; it will not make you an unhappy critic; it will not make you a fault-finder. It will make you unworldly, and give you a satisfied heart.

Here it is. “And the Lord said… Look from the place where thou art.” Where was he? In Canaan. Did he get to heaven? Canaan does not mean heaven. What does it mean? What else will you tell us? I will tell you all that I know from the Word of God. Canaan is the heavenly places in Christ where the believer is now in the glorified One.

When they got to Canaan they had to fight. Do you think you will fight when you get to heaven? Certainly not. All your fighting is down here. Canaan is a figure of the heavenly places in Christ. The believer is now “blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.” Put your foot down there. That is where Abraham was when God said this to him. He said: “Look from the place where thou art.” I have got to get there. How do you get there? My spirit goes there in the power of the Holy Ghost. I am blessed in the glorified One “with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.” You know that is where the devil’s power is. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies.” That is the devil’s sphere. That is not heaven, the Father’s House, where we are going when the Lord comes or when death takes us away, but this is Canaan, the heavenly country in which the Christian is blessed now with every spiritual blessing.” Have you put your foot down there in the power of the Holy Ghost? If you do, the devil will assail you. If you are sleeping, a worldly Christian, he will leave you alone, but the moment you put your foot down and say: “I am going in for this; I am going to put my foot down; I do not mind what the critics say,” the devil will assail you.

Now comes verse 17: “Arise, walk through the land.” When I read that verse two or three years ago I thought on this word, “Arise.” In other words, it means “Get into business; get out of lethargy; get some spiritual vigor about you; walk through the land.” You say: “You are a pedestrian?” Well, I would like to be one of these pedestrians and take a good walk.

Supposing some multi-millionaire said to you: “I am the head of a firm. We have an immense amount of property here in Toronto. You may have every bit of land that you put your foot upon in the next twenty-four hours.” If that were so, I wonder what time you would get up the next morning. You would think: “Every place where I put my foot today is mine.” You would walk till evening.

Arise! This is worth ten thousand times more than all the millionaire’s property and I am not sky-rocketing when I say that. “Arise, and walk through the land.” You say: “Of course I am going to heaven when I die,” but you are to go there when you live. It is living people who are “blessed with all spiritual blessings.” That is not a dream; that is not tight-rope-walking. All this is yours which they will try to argue you out of if they can; but, brother, get out of indifference and walk through the land in the length and breadth of it. Every place where you put your foot down, that is yours. O God, give us the blessed gift of appropriation that we may appropriate that!

“After that Lot was separated from him,” Lot who was after the well-watered plains of Jordan. He saw Sodom, a lovely place like the Garden of Eden, a mixture of those two things. That is how it presented itself to Lot’s eyes. The world mixed up with religious things growing around, like the Garden of Eden. What a mixture that is! Poor Lot! Saved by the skin of his teeth!

Let us get spiritual vigor. There is nothing wrong in that, but there is something wrong in going to sleep. “Arise! Arise and walk through the land.” Take a good walk. Walking is good for you physically, unless you are lame. It is a still better thing spiritually. Arise, get out of indifference, lethargy, self-complacency. Walk through the land. You say: “Am I dreaming?” This is the very opposite of dreaming. You are appropriating in the power of the Holy Ghost some of the blessings in the heavenly places. “Count your blessings one by one,” but you must get them before you count them; appropriate them, make them your own, go in for them. We need spiritual determination, spiritual vigor. “Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it and the breadth of it.” Everywhere you put your foot, that is yours.

So the man gets up sharp at twelve and says: “Every place where I put my foot today, that is mine. I think I will take a run. I am not going to walk often now.” At the end of the day he sees what he has appropriated. This may be a very poor illustration but that is why some people grow. They get rid of Lot, and then they take a walk around the land. The latest fashion, the latest expression, that is what Lot delights in. He was a great man for real estate. But God says: “Walk through the land, in the length and breadth of it.” How little, comparatively speaking, have I put my foot down in the heavenlies!

Someone said to a dear old man one day: “Are you going to heaven when you die?”

Whereupon he replied: “I live there.” They thought he was a little deaf, so they repeated it. He answered: “I am not deaf; that is where I live; that is my Home.” I presume the dear old man meant what he said.

“Arise!” How much do I walk through the land, in the length and breadth of it? Some people will think you a fanatic, and others will say you are trying to be extra-religious. Run the risk of that. It is worth it. And the Lord did not show this to His friend, Abraham, till Lot was separated from him.

Now let us look at John 8:56: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day: and he saw it and was glad.”

When did he see His day? Well, God spoke to Abraham the second time. The first time He spoke to him He said: “Look behind you.” The second time He said to him. “I will bless thee and multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand upon the sea shore. Thy seed shall posses the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed My voice.” (Gen. 22:17, 18.) That is what is called the coming Kingdom, Christ’s day. Abraham saw it. What wonderful eyes he had! “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day.” His day has not yet come. This is man’s day. We are living in man’s day. The day of Christ will soon be here. First He will come for us in the air, and we will go to reign with Him over the earth, and in that Seed all nations of the earth shall be blessed.

Now Abraham looks in front of him. He began by looking behind him; he looked around about, north, south, east and west. Now he looks ahead in spite of all the wars. The day of Christ is coming. ‘Thy kingdom come.” That is the Father’s kingdom. As you know, the Lord began that prayer with, “Our Father which art in heaven.” “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” There will be no difference between the two as far as the corresponding joy is concerned—joy in heaven, and joy on earth. The Lord Jesus sits on the throne of the Universe, King everywhere, Monarch everywhere; His blessed sceptre wielded over the five continents, and Abraham rejoiced to see that day.

That day will be ushered in by tremendous judgments. That is called “the day of the Lord,” but “the day of Christ” is another idea. The day of the Lord is thundering judgment clearing out the ungodly for His coming kingdom; putting the sheep into His kingdom; and putting the goats into hell-fire. He clears out of His kingdom everything that does not suit it, and reigns over the earth. Then the bells all ring, the birds all sing, and all creation rejoices. “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day.”

I know you cannot help being considerably occupied with the war. It is enough to break everyone’s heart. Do not lose heart. Do not always have a tear in the eye. Do not always be looking at the terrible condition of things. “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”

The whole creation too will rejoice when the blessed Son of God appears as the Universal King, His glory everywhere.

“Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run;

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,

Till moans shall wax and wane no more.”

Hallelujah! This is the last look. Do you look at that day? Heaven will hear the earth, and the earth will hear heaven and there will be corn and wine. These are poetical words. Poetical of what? Poetical of universal joy, gladness and blessing and fruit for one thousand years—a blessed, glorious reign. His day, that is, Christ’s day, Abraham saw it and was glad. If you look at that day a little bit more you will look less at the war. I must confess I pray about it. I do not want to be indifferent to the conflict but I do not want to be everlastingly looking at it, dwelling on it.

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day,” when all the unjust will perish and the Blessed Man survives everything and spreads His sceptre over the earth. One Universal Monarch! One glorious Kingdom! Our Blessed Lord the Centre and Sun in that day! All bliss! All happiness! Then all passes away after a thousand years, and the eternal state in which God shall be all and in all is ushered in.

Address Eight

April 22, 1941

We have been reading an aspect of the death of Christ in the 12th of Exodus and I want to read of three other aspects. There are four very significant and outstanding types of the Lord in the Old Testament, I mean as to His death. Of course, there are many others besides, but these four are related so that everyone will understand the typical nature of the Bible. The first one is the passover Feast; the second is the Red Sea; the third is the brazen serpent, and the fourth is the River Jordan. There are these four different aspects of His death, which is the foundation of everything. I am quite aware, dear friends, how easy it is to try and link types with things that you cannot say are strictly types. There may be illustrations but a type shows a vivid manifestation of what we have in the New Testament as the reality. In 1 Corinthians 10:11 we are told, “All these things happened to them (Israel) for types, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” We will look for a few minutes at this first one. “This month shall be to you,” the Lord has said here by the mouth of Moses, “the beginning of months, the first month of the year to you.” In Chapter 12 of Genesis, not Exodus, God called out His servant Abraham and told him he must get out of his country and from his kindred and his father’s house and go to a land that He would tell him of. He told him also that his seed would greatly multiply; that they would be greatly oppressed and persecuted, and at the end of four hundred years He would bring them out, not as individuals but as a nation. It is not the birth of an individual but of a nation, and God said to the people the first time as a nation, “This month shall be to you the beginning of months, the first month of the year to you.”

Everyone must have a beginning, and Abraham’s history had its beginning in Genesis 12, and Israel now as a nation are starting from the land of Egypt to the land of Canaan in the beginning of months. Everybody in order to be in heaven at least must have a Divine beginning, you must have a Divine start. It is what is called elsewhere, “Ye must be born again.” There was a natural beginning that brings us into the kingdom of nature, and there must be a Divine beginning to bring us into the kingdom of God. Many people may question “How do you begin? How do you start?” What is the very first thing that a man must do to start for glory? You will find that in verse 22 of Exodus 12: “And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.” That is how Israel is to begin, and that is how you are to begin if you are to be in the land of Canaan. The bunch of hyssop precedes the blood. Blood is not the first thing but the bunch of hyssop is. The man was to kill the lamb and the blood was poured into the basin, and then the man was to take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, and strike the lintel over the door, and the two side posts.

The bunch of hyssop means repentance toward God. Solomon spake of the cedar in Lebanon and the hyssop that springs out of the wall. The cedar tree is a lofty, proud, outstanding, beautiful thing, but the hyssop is common. You can pluck it out of every wall in the land of Palestine. It is so cheap, so worthless, that you would not give a thought for it. When a man takes a bunch of hyssop, he finds out his unworthiness; he finds he is worth nothing. It took Jonah a long time to get there. “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

When the dying thief on the cross said: “We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds,” he had the bunch of hyssop. When that woman was following the Lord in the Gospels she said: “Son of David, have mercy upon my daughter, for she is grievously tormented.” She had no right to call him the Son of David for she was a Gentile, but the Lord will not send her away. The disciples said: “Send her away; she is crying after us.” No, beloved friends, He will not send anybody away, but He will educate you. Here, then, she said: “Lord, help me.” He said: “You are not down far enough. It is not meet to take the children’s meat and cast it to the dogs.” She said: ‘Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table.” Now she had the bunch of hyssop, and heard Him say, “Great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”

So we might go on with other cases, but until you get the bunch of hyssop you have not made a definite start. Not the blood first, but repentance toward God—breaking down, owning your need. “Ye shall take a bunch of hyssop,” and unless you have taken it, you have never started at all. You may sing the hymns, hear the addresses and give a kind of assent to the gospel but unless you have taken the bunch of hyssop as the dying thief did, and as that woman did, and as Job did, you have never yet taken one single stride toward the glory of God. It is the very beginning. “This month shall be to you.” Never mind the other fellow. “This month shall be to you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.”

When I was a boy living in the sporting world, I knew a man who could run nearly 12 miles per hour, and another who could run 100 yards in 10 seconds. He always got a good start. He passed his competitors in a few moments. With his good start in a few seconds he passed the fellow who did not get such a good start. I wish to ask you: “Have you started? Have you begun? Have you taken the first step?” You have not unless you have the bunch of hyssop in your hand, or in other words, realizing your lost, ruined, hell-deserving condition. And the better start we have, the better we get on along the road. Some are born weak. They are constitutionally weak from the very beginning, largely due to the fact that they did not get a good start. The more you realize your lost condition, the more you appreciate the Gospel. The bigger your bunch of hyssop, the more you enjoy the great salvation. “Ye shall take a bunch of hyssop.” That is the way to begin for the Glory-land.

The bunch of hyssop comes first, and then it must be dipped in the blood in the basin. Now observe that in the opening of Chapter 12 of Exodus we have three steps. “Every man a lamb,” that is individually, and then, “Every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.” Then the next thing is the lamb for a house, and then in verse 6, “You shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.”

The first thing is, “Every man shall take a lamb.” Make no mistake as to this. You cannot merge yourself in the crowd. “They shall take every man a lamb” for himself. Your father, your relative, your friend, cannot take it for you. “Every man shall make your count for the lamb.” It is intensely individual. You cannot merge your identity; you cannot lose yourself in a circle of relationships. Every individual shall take this bunch of hyssop in his hand and it is for himself personally. In these days there is a danger of merging our identity, losing ourselves in the crowd, going and coming, coming and going, but here it is intensely individual. Dismiss for the moment the thought of your godly father, your praying mother, or that friend of yours who is a believer, and remember that you have to do with God face to face. “Every man shall make his count for the lamb”—I for myself, you for yourself.

It is wonderful privilege to be brought up in a Christian family, but there is danger in it too. There is the danger of thinking that because your father and mother and godly people have prayed for you for many a day, and a lot of other things besides, instead of making it an individual matter, you are merging yourself in the crowd. Here it is— “Everyone shall make his count for the lamb.”

The next thing is the lamb for a house. In other words, when I sprinkle the blood for myself, as God said to the Philippian jailer, through Paul when he asked: “What must I do to be saved?” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house.” God intends the household of every Christian man and woman to be saved, but you have, “Every man must make his count for the lamb,” which saves you from merging yourself, and makes it intensely individual.

The next thing is after I myself am sheltered by the blood and am redeemed to God, to say to Him: “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Do not imagine for a moment because your parents are saved, they will land you in heaven. It is a wonderful advantage, a tremendous asset to be born into a Christian family, but do not forget this—that even children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. Those who are privileged in the outer circle, the external circle, may never be brought into the inside one. The Kingdom of heaven has an aspect of profession as well as a living aspect.

Here is the second thing. First, “Every man shall make his count for the lamb.” Take that home, dear hearer. Do not allow the devil to cheat you out of the kingdom because you belong to a Christian circle of father, mother, family and friends. That will not land you in the glory of God. On the contrary, the outer darkness is always for professors. “The children of the kingdom are cast out into outer darkness,” those who are privileged by the reading of Scripture in the homes, who are brought up in a Christian way; that will make hell all the darker because of these wonderful privileges.

Now I come to the third point. “Ye shall keep it up to the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening”—not kill them, but “kill it.” Would to God we saw more of this! The first time it is intensely individual. Second, as a believer, I am to bring my household up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now it is the whole assembly of the congregation. Here is the unity of the redeemed. They shall kill it, why they killed thousands that night, yet it says, “They shall kill it,” “one lamb for the whole assembly. Revelation 5 shows John remembered it. There is the Lamb in the midst of the throne, and ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands who said with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” The more we get hold of these collective ideas the more we shall be knit together. One lamb for the whole assembly. First, for the individual, then for the house, and then for the whole Church of God. “The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” You identify yourself with all those who belong to the Slain Lamb.

This then is how we begin. “This month shall be to you the beginning of months.” Have you started? Have you begun the race? I repeat again, beloved friends, the better our start, the more of a start we have, helps enormously on the rest of the journey. Has everybody here started? “This month,” not next month, “This month shall be to you the beginning of months; it is the first month of the year to you.”

Then we have these three circles—individual, “Every man shall make his count for the lamb.” Salvation is a tremendous thing and meant for you personally. Then the second circle—the Lamb for a house. Finally it extends to the whole Church: “The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” We lose enormously, beloved hearers, by not understanding the collective principle. Some of our meetings are very poor in that way. When I go into the assembly I merge, I lose my identity. I, I, I, is unsuitable; it is “we.” We are no longer there as individuals: “The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” Anything else immensely destroys the idea of worship.

In the Passover there is the blood on the doorposts. God sees the blood. It is for Him to see, not for me. “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” The bunch of hyssop is the first thing, and the next thing is to use it. That is the next step. The Israelite strikes the upper door post and side posts with blood from the hyssop. He puts that blood there for himself. When God sees it He passes over that house: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” There is the start. I urge you, if you have never taken that start yet, start, dear hearer, before you sleep tonight. Make sure of it.

You apply the blood of Christ for your own soul. God sees the blood. It is for His eye, but you yourself strike the upper door post and the two side posts. The blood in the basin will not save you. The blood in the basin means that Christ has died for everybody. The blood on my door-posts means He has died for me. I put the blood there for myself.

“He died for me upon the tree,

His blood is accepted, the sinner goes free.

That sinner who will on Jesus rely,

And comes for the pardon God cannot deny.”

I presume there is not one here tonight who does not believe that Christ died for all. He did, but that will never get you to heaven. You must put the bunch of hyssop in the blood that is in the basin and strike; put it there for your own self. The blood in the basin means He died for all; the blood on the door posts means He died for me. I urge everybody who has never taken that blessed step to put that blood on the doorposts tonight. God will see you, and you will be as safe as He can make you. There is the start—the strike and safety. The start, the strike, and then I am saved—safe under the blood. Again I say, it is God who sees it. The blood is for Him in Exodus 12, but you have to apply it for your own individual self. Do not lose yourself in the crowd. Do not merge your identity by saying: “Of course, I know Christ died for sinners; I know He died for all,” but you must get on to another step, and that is the blood put there for yourself, a simple act of faith for God to see, and He passes over you.

The Israelites pass over in Chapter 14, but God passes over in Chapter 12. That means He will never judge you; He will never damn you. You are as safe as if you were in glory.

We have had three S’s—Start, Strike and Safety, and now one more word beginning with S from verse 15: “Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread.” That next S is Separation, no leavened bread found in the house. Leavened bread is outside; and no leaven in, that is inside—complete separation to Christ. Leaven, as you know, applies to either bad doctrine or bad moral standing, so that after I am saved and after I have started, after I have put that blood on the doorposts by striking with the hyssop, then I am to be a separated man. I am not to eat leavened bread. It is not to be found in my house.

Separation to Christ, dear friends, is a reality. I know we may use the phrase. I am quite aware of our sanctimony, but am I entertaining leaven in any way? Am I separated to Him? Not a bit of leaven was to be found in their house. None must be eaten by them.

Now we turn to the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Here, as you know, the Israelites have already started from the land of Egypt, and come to a place called Pi-hahiroth. The devil thought: “Now I have got them! The Red Sea in front, the Egyptians behind, rocks on the right side, and rocks on the left. Now I have got them shut in. They cannot go ahead. They cannot go back. They cannot climb the mountains. And here are the Egyptian hosts behind them.”

Now the Lord speaks to them through Moses: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of Jehovah, which He will show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, you shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” You know, dear friends, in this wonderful salvation we have a tremendous foe, the devil. They had to do with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and while they are saved from God’s judgment in chapter 12 they are not saved out of Egypt. They are not safe from Pharaoh; they have yet to be delivered.

These are distinctions, beloved friends, which the Scripture makes. I repeat again, they are safe and sheltered; they started; they have struck; they are a separated people; but yet they are not out of Egypt, the land of Pharaoh, but, thank God, Pi-hahiroth means the opening of liberty. They are completely shut in—the Red Sea in front, the Egyptians behind, and the mountains on either side, and the enemy says: “I have got you.” But, I say reverently, God says: ‘No; I have got you. You think there is no way out, no way through. Moses, speak to the people and say: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord.” That is not merely safety under the blood, it is salvation clean out of Egypt, that ungodly world which the devil is god and prince of. That is the meaning of Egypt.

There are four great types of the world—Babylon, Sodom, Jericho and Egypt. These are four different aspects of the world. Egypt is the world in its resources. Here they are faced in front with the Red Sea, the Egyptians behind them, the rocks on both sides, and the word is: “Stand still.” God now makes bare His arm and dries up the Red Sea, and makes a pathway for His people first. They stand still and see His arm made bare. A number of Christians do not distinguish between salvation by blood (or faith) and salvation by power. “Thy right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power. Thy right hand, O Lord, has dashed in pieces the enemy.” Now the devil is overthrown. The blood meets the claims of God in chapter 12, but the arm of the Lord meets the enemy in chapter 14. They stand still, and He makes a dry path before them. They walk over.

Have you taken that walk? If you have not, you are not saved as Scripture teaches. You are not saved according to the Divine pattern. You will never go to hell, never be damned, but what you want is deliverance, safety, salvation out of the world. They stood still and they saw His salvation. He made a dry pathway through the trackless deep in the Red Sea. The Red Sea is a figure of the death and resurrection of Christ. The blood on the doorposts is the shedding of His precious blood that will take us as far as the Red Sea. They walked down, and walked up on the other side. Read verse 30 of chapter 14. You see it is the Egyptians, the power of the world that held us in captivity, and the arm of the Lord is made bare in the death and resurrection of Christ, and the people walked over dry shod. Have you taken that journey? Have you walked out of this godless, Christ-rejecting world on the resurrection side. “He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.”

You may think the testing is no deliverance, but do you not see in chapter 12 you are saved from God’s judgment, and in chapter 14 you are saved from the enemy and delivered from the land of Egypt, that ungodly scene?—“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.”

It would be an immense help, beloved friends, if we all knew the meaning of Pi-hahiroth practically. It is salvation. It is a bigger word than being saved—deliverance from the world, that great moral system of which the devil is the god and prince. We use that word “saved” far too commonly. We say: “He is saved.” What do you mean by that? In nine out of ten cases he will never be lost; he will go to heaven if he dies. But, dear friends, we need salvation clean cut. We need to leave Egypt behind and walk across the Red Sea. “He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” That is the Red Sea, the 4th of Romans. The 3rd of Romans applies to the 12th of Exodus, “Whom God hath set forth to be the propitiation for our sins through faith in His blood.” That is the only time in the New Testament we are told to have faith in His blood. But in chapter 14 we leave Egypt behind; we walk across the Red Sea; and in His death and resurrection we stand triumphant on the other side.

Read the 1st verse of chapter 15. Here they are, a figure of the Risen Christ standing on resurrection ground with all His people with Him. That is exactly what Psalm 22 says: “I will declare Thy Name unto My brethren; in the midst of the assembly will I sing praises to Thee.” We join Him in His song in the Ps. 22:22: “In the midst of the assembly. It is now the Risen Lord and His beloved people standing together on the resurrection side, and there His song is their song, His victory is their victory, His standing is their standing. “The Lord has triumphed gloriously.” “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord.”

Here is the choir. Here is the divine blessed antitype of Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ standing on the resurrection side of the grave, and we are in association with Him. His song is ours; His victory is ours; His position is ours. “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel.” Now we are in association with Him; now we stand on His platform, His level. “He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.”

And now further on in verse 2: “The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him a habitation.” Now He has a dwelling-place. Habitation follows salvation. Most of the Lord’s beloved people have no regard for His habitation. They do not seem to think God has a house composed of all Christians, and that Christ is the Son over God’s house. He is the administrator in that house, the One who governs, controls and works.

I am not very fond of people saying: “The Lord led me this, that and the other.” What it says in verse 13 is, “Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to Thy holy habitation.” Has the blessed Lord guided you to His habitation, to the Church of God, at least in principle? Do not misunderstand me. Do not think I imagine those known as “Brethren” are the whole thing, but we can be in the truth, the reality, of it. It is just as much for others as for them. It says here: “Thou hast led forth Thy people whom Thou hast redeemed: Thou hast guided them.” Oh, beloved friends, we do not make enough of this! To be guided by the Spirit of God to His habitation, to find out that God has a certain Divine principle connected with His assembly! And when you have found it you will stick to it too. “Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to Thy holy habitation.”

We are quite satisfied to get to the habitation in the beginning with a song in our mouth, but has He led me by His Spirit to find out what His habitation is?—I mean the principle of it. “Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed: and Thou hast guided them in Thy Strength to Thy holy habitation.” We are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” As you know, beloved, the majority of the people of God do not regard their building together. It does not grip them. There is such a thing as being guided by Him to His holy habitation.

I meet on my travels here and there many a one who has left. What for? Have we lost today the Divine way of assembling?—“Christ the Son over God’s House,” and all that goes with it? There it is and there it will be to the end. If He has not led you there yet, I hope He will. I do not want to enlarge upon it but I pray very earnestly, beloved in the Lord, that you will stick to that. He has led you there. But how loosely we hold it. It has not gripped us as it should have done. It is not a matter of people having certain notions and becoming slaves to a certain way of meeting. It is a divine thing, if we are out of Egypt, to be guided by the Blessed Lord Himself to His habitation, the principles of it, the House of God, the Church of God, the Body of Christ, the holy Assembly.

Turn now to Numbers 21:9-11. We have seen in the early chapters of Exodus how the Lord delivered His people out of the land of Egypt. They stand with Him in triumph on the resurrection side of the Red Sea, and they sing the song together, and Moses leads. The Lord leads. He says in Heb. 2:12: “I will declare Thy Name unto My brethren; in the midst of the church will I sing praises to Thee.” He does not sing that song alone. The Lord joined us with Him in the song He has raised in resurrection. The type of that is Moses and Israel on the resurrection side of the Red Sea singing that great song of triumph to Jehovah.

Now we come to another figure, the brazen serpent. The brazen serpent was lifted up in the fortieth year after they had come out of Egypt. They had been forty years under the law; forty years tested in the wilderness. There is something in that. The Lord Jesus Himself says: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.” What is that? A testing place. The wilderness is what tests. What did testing bring out of Israel? Idolatry and apostasy. They said: “Make a god. Take us back to Egypt. We have had enough of this.” They were idolators, murderers and complainers. The wilderness brought out what the flesh was. But you know how far they travelled. For forty years they had been going round in the wilderness in a vicious circle. What they could have done in eleven days it took them forty years to do. From Mount Sinai, the mount out of which God delivered the law to them, to the glory land is only eleven days’ journey, and they were forty years on the way. The last of those forty years brought out such wickedness, murmuring, complaining, idolatry. They said: “Make us captives; take us back to Egypt.”

What is the brazen serpent? It is that aspect of Christ’s death in which the flesh is judged, not my sins put away, but the flesh in me judged, that sinful nature; that is the brazen serpent aspect of the death of Christ. When the Israelites looked on the serpent of brass they lived, but they did more—they set forth; they went right forward till they got to the land of Canaan. They are no more travelling round and round, and in a few weeks they entered the land of Canaan. We never grow until we learn to judge the flesh—the flesh in me. Oh, the horror of it! It does not improve you. You believe it does. Some people say: “How long have you been converted? What a wonderful thing!” No; it is not a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing if God keeps me. The flesh does not improve. It can murder, complain, disagree, despise the pleasant land, and say: “Take us back to Egypt,” but gazing on the serpent of brass cured them.

Look at those blessed verses Numbers 21:8, 9. It says they looked and they lived. Look and live, and that is far as we get.

“There is life for a look at the Crucified One.” But the moment you get that, this is what goes with it: “The children of Israel set forward.” They set forward, and they never ceased setting forward till they reached the land of Canaan. Judging the flesh, gazing on the serpent of brass, the flesh in me judged. Then you set forward for the glory land. In six weeks they got to Canaan and they had been forty years doing this. Christ showed that aspect of His blessed death in which our old man was crucified with Him, and the body of sin destroyed—saying “no” to the flesh.

Do not imagine all these types mean the same thing. It is the same death but not the same thing, the same idea; and the idea of the brazen serpent is that judgment in me of that vile flesh that never goes on a yard with God. I could never get one single yard ahead; I would go round and round. After they looked on the brazen serpent they set forward, and never ceased doing so till they reached the other side. That is the cure, beloved friends, of murmuring, hankering after the world, allowing the flesh to have its own way—the judgment of the flesh at the cross. The flesh was judged, and they set forward. The view in this aspect is the crucifixion of the flesh.

Shall we turn to Joshua 3: “The priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.” Jordan means our death with Christ, not our natural death, but our spiritual death in Him, not His death for us, but our death with Him. The Red Sea is His death for us; Jordan is our death with Him, our old man crucified with Him; and the Ark of the Covenant, a figure of Christ, goes into Jordan. The moment it does, Jordan dries up. That is another passover. What a number of passovers there are! In chapter 12 the Lord passed over when He saw the blood. In chapter 14 the Israelites passed over the Red Sea and got into the wilderness. Now they come to Jordan, and they pass over that.

Dead with Christ, risen with Christ, blessed in Him with “all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies.” I hope I am not puzzling you.

A dear old servant of Christ used to say sometimes to people: “Are you over Jordan?” They thought he meant literally dying, and thought he was not quite right. He meant, Are you dead with Him spiritually, our old man crucified with Him—dead with Christ, buried with Christ, quickened with Christ, risen with Christ, “Our life hid with Christ in God.” “When Christ our life shall appear we shall also appear with Him.” That is identification with Him in glory. It is a profound question to ask, and a serious one. Am I over Jordan? In other words, Have I got to the heavenly side of things in my intelligence? There is nothing about the undertaker, except the spiritual undertaker. You are dead with Christ. That is what Jordan means. So many hymns talk about when you come to Jordan. Beloved friends, you have already come there. It means you are dead with Him in Colossians, quickened with Him in Ephesians, and on the other side, seated in the heavens with Him.

These are not fairy tales, they are tremendous truths. Am I over Jordan? Am I getting some grapes? Am I eating the old corn of the land? Am I in the heavenly land in my spirit? That is when you are over Jordan, not when you actually die—not at all. When the Ark went in, Jordan dried up. “What will you do in the swellings of Jordan?” There are no swellings. The Ark has dried that all up and I walk over dry-shod.

There are then at least these four aspects of the death of Christ, and there are many others besides these of the Passover Lamb, the Red Sea, the Brazen Serpent and the Jordan. If you enter into them you will not only be saved out of hell fire and coming judgment, but landed on the other side. You say: “I am not dead.” No, you are not physically dead, but haven’t you died with Christ and got to the other side? Don’t you set your mind on things above? “Blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Him.” So at Eshcol in the land they got those lovely grapes, and it took two men to carry a bunch.

We ought to be on the other side now. We shall be on the other side when we die, but while I am alive my heart can go there. The Holy Ghost will take me there. He will take you there if you will only let Him. Put your foot down in the heavenlies. You say: “I like something practical.” Did you ever read this? “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenlies.” That means the moment you put your foot down as a heavenly man, the devil will be after you. If you go to sleep, he will leave you alone, he will let you doze on. Put your foot down and say: “I am a heavenly man.” If you do not live like it, you ought to. “Blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ,” not with Him. If we get over to that new land where the grapes are, we will know the giants are there. Ephesians 6 shows we must fight. “Having done all to stand. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.” You cannot advance, because you have got to the top. “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.”

May the Lord bless to us my wandering, scattered thoughts. If I am dying, literally dying, I want to go to heaven when I die. I will tell you what will take me. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin,” but if I want to understand His mind, and know I am a heavenly man on earth, and want to be something like Him here, enjoying spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, I need more than a verse, more than a chapter. I need the blessed Spirit of God to give me the spirit of wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of Him. Beloved friends, put your foot right down in that country. You say: “I am not putting my foot down.” But you can put your foot of the inner man down there and say: “Here I am, I am blessed with all spiritual blessings. I want to stand, and having done all to stand.” Stand therefore. Be sure, dear friends, if we are not energetic in the pursuit of the knowledge of God’s Man, we shall lose what we have got practically. We can never stand still in Divine life. We either advance or recede. We go on or go over. Stand still we cannot. May the Lord teach us more of the meaning of His blessed wonderful grace.

Address Nine

April 25, 1941

First chapter of John’s Gospel verse 29. I am reading this verse in order to lead us up to Nicodemus in the third chapter.

In the Gospel of John things are presented to us from a dispensational standpoint, as they are in Matthew. In Luke, they are presented to us in the moral aspect—grouped together for a moral purpose, not as they happen chronologically, what you might call topical teaching. Mark, as we all know, is from the servant’s standpoint.

John chapter 2, verses 1-3: “There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee and the mother of Jesus was there.” Just for the sake of brevity, I will read you the 11th verse.

John 1:29: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him.” The next day after what? You see, the Gospel begins with eternal realities—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then we step out from eternity into “certain days.” We leave, so to speak, that wonderful vista of glory in the eternal past, and we now step into dispensational days, beginning at the cross of Christ and ending with the kingdom. So that when John the Baptist sees Jesus the next day, he says, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” Everybody knows, of course, that this refers to the cross, but the cross has another very wonderful aspect, not that of bearing our sins, but of clearing out of the universe every trace of sin; that has not come yet, but we know it will come, when the Lord sits on the Great White Throne, and the heaven and earth shall pass away. The foundation of everything is the cross. God has yet to be justified in this scene, justified in the presence of the whole moral universe. It is a moral blot on God’s earth that sin should be here, and the Lord Jesus not only undertakes to remove our sins, but to do more than that.

It is the Lamb of God, not your Lamb, but God’s Lamb, that bears away the sin of the world; He looks right on again into eternity in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and then we have these “certain days” which typify certain dispensations. When John the Baptist sees the Lord he says, so to speak: “There is the remedy for everything, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” In the meantime, of course, every believer knows his sins are gone, but that is not the meaning of the verse—it is the sin of the world, and not till the Lord sits on the Great White Throne will that take place, but in the meantime, every Christian knows that his sins are gone.

Then the next statement dispensationally is in verse 33. That is Pentecost. We have the cross of Christ in verse 29, and then we have Pentecost in verse 33—the beginning of Christianity. When the Lord Jesus baptized with the Holy Ghost on that day of Pentecost, it was the first time anyone was ever baptized with the Holy Ghost. On the ground of the cross in verse 29, He sent down the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost to form the Church, the Body of Christ. That is the idea of being baptized with the Holy Ghost. But it does not mean that you are a powerful preacher. It means that God is going to have divine unity formed upon this earth. “By one Spirit we are all baptized into one Body, Jew or Gentile, bond or free, all made to drink of that one Spirit.”

Let us see the order of dispensational teaching. I repeat, first comes the cross, on the basis of which the sin of the world will one day be cleared out of it, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness shall dwell and God shall be all and in all. Next comes Pentecost, when the Lord sends down the Holy Ghost to put the Jews into one Body; and Acts 10, He puts the Gentiles into it; so that now we are told, “We are all baptized into one Body, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free, and are all made to drink into one Spirit.” Then further on in this first chapter of John, there is a man called Nathanael. He is under the fig-tree; that is the Jewish remnant after the Church’s day is over—that present day in which the Body of Christ is formed and the house of God is built. There is where Nathanael comes in. We get the house brought before us in verse 42 when Peter was told he should be called “Cephas,” which is by interpretation, “a stone.” In other words, God is going to have a building composed of living stones, “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” This runs parallel, in our day, with the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is one aspect and the House of God is another aspect, and it is taking place in our time. Then when the House of God is completed, when the Body of Christ is completed, and when the Bride of Christ is completed, there will be another divine movement in connection with the man called Nathanael, an Israelite in whom was no guile.

There he was in his hiding-place under the fig-tree. The Jews will, brought out of their hiding-place and set up again in this world. That is what the Lord Jesus told him: “You shall see greater things than that; you shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

In chapter two, there is a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and water is turned into wine. There are six stone waterpots which at the Lord’s command are filled to the brim with the purifying water, a real figure of Israel in a future day being born again when God will sprinkle clean water upon them. I am giving you these things as a dispensational chart. It is God’s dispensational chart. Not only is there a Jewish remnant typified by Nathanael, but all Israel is typified by the pots. All the converted ones will be gathered from one end of the earth to the other. What a process will they pass through! Why, it says, these stone pots were filled with purifying water; they will be born of water—not baptism, of course, but born of the water of the Word of God which will be sprinkled upon them in the power of the Holy Ghost. There will be a marriage in Cana of Galilee; Jehovah and His people brought together again. Not a remnant here, but all the truly born-again Israelites. The six waterpots of stone for the purifying of the Jews by the new birth—born of water as we are born of the water of the Word. That is what the new birth is. They have moral purification. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;” but when they will be born again, then the water is turned into wine. There will be joy; for wine is a type of joy. It is a marriage feast and Jesus is there.

I say, beloved friends, these are divine dispensational touches from the cross of Christ right on to the kingdom. You say, “Where is the kingdom?” In John 2:11: “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth His glory,” and His disciples believed on Him. In the coming kingdom that water is turned to wine. What joy and gladness there will be when Jehovah and His people are united! Then they will have the best wine last. He manifested forth His glory.” His glory is now hidden in the heavens, but in that day, the millennial day of the marriage of Jehovah with His people, the glory of God shines in His face, when they are first purified by that cleansing water; then that is followed by the wine of joy. The best wine last; and so we have reached the kingdom. He manifested forth His glory. Purified with the water of the Word, born again, they drink of that wine of the kingdom.

The reason, beloved friends, I am seeking to give you this, is that after it says the Lord “manifested forth His glory,” which is a figure of the kingdom, then Nicodemus appears (John 3:1). The Lord Jesus says to him, “You will not do, for except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” There is the kingdom already. In the marriage at Cana with its wine of gladness we have a miniature picture of the Lord manifesting forth His glory; and now there comes a candidate for that kingdom. He is a very fine candidate, M. P. (Man of the Pharisees), M. I. (Master in Israel), R. J. (Ruler of the Jews) and the Lord says: “You won’t do.” You are a candidate for that kingdom of which you have just had a picture, but you are not fit because you have not been born again: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. You MUST be born again” to be in the kingdom.

I need not say to any intelligent Christians—you must be born again to be in the Father’s house. However that is not the point I want to make here. The kingdom is set up in picture with the purifying water, the wine of gladness, and Jesus manifests His glory as He will do in the coming kingdom. Then a man presents himself to whom the Lord says, You won’t do. Nicodemus says, “We know that you are a Teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles except God be with him.” He was a remarkable man, yet he was not born of the Spirit of God. He was not fit for the kingdom, and neither are you, dear hearer, if you are not born again. If you are not converted, no matter how much you may appreciate the Lord in certain ways, you are not saved. Are you born again? We get a very clear statement of how this is in John 3:8 which I shall now read to you: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” The wind blows where it likes—divine sovereignty. We are born, “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The new birth is, beloved friends, necessarily an act of divine power.

A Christian lady adopted a deaf mute and wanted to teach the boy that God is everywhere. She also informed him by sign language that he must not tell lies. “If you tell lies you will have to have your tongue taken out.” He thought he would test her words to see if they were true. She had been telling him that God is everywhere. He looked above, around, and all about, north, south, east and west, and could not find God anywhere. Very much excited, he came to her and said—“If you tell lies you will have to have your tongue taken out. You told me that God is everywhere, I could not find Him anywhere.” Then she said, “Lord, give me a word for him.” It was a cold day, and his hands were blue and cold, and she took up a small pair of bellows which were by the fire and blew on his hands. He said, “You mustn’t do that; my hand is cold already.” She said, “What? “Did you see anything?” and again she blew. The light of God broke in on the boy and he said: “God is like the wind; you can’t see Him, but you can feel Him.” “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”

I will tell you what you can do, dear hearer, you can resist the Holy Ghost and be damned; but when you are born again it is the act of divine sovereignty, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. That is how Nicodemus is spoken to by the Lord; he is convicted in this way. “We know you are a teacher come from God.” I believe the very night that he visited the Lord he got beyond conviction, and I believe that that very night he was born of the Spirit of God.

Born of water is the purifying effect of the new birth. “Clean through the Word which I have spoken to you.” Do not confound being cleansed with water with being cleansed by blood. We are cleansed by blood judicially; cleansed by water morally. What do you mean by morally? Character! Born of water. The moment you are born again, you are a changed man, you have a changed character. I am afraid that sometimes we are very crooked in our theology. If a man talks of cleansing with water, you say he is not sound in doctrine. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin,” that is judicially it puts every spot away, but the new birth changes my character—“Clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” That is moral cleansing. The new birth, the divine nature that is in me, makes me a clean man in my habits. My tongue is clean, my thoughts are clean; “through the word which I have spoken to you.”

Now we have reached the kingdom by these stages, the Cross, Pentecost, the building of the House, the formation of Christ’s Body. A new Israel has been brought back to Jehovah, to the marriage feast and the best wine. Then Nicodemus presents himself, and the Lord Jesus says, “You will not do. You must be born again.”

Turn, please, to John 10:16. There is no such thing as “fold” today; although people must have it in their hymns. The fold is Judaism; the flock is Christianity. “Other sheep I have which are not of this (Jewish) fold, then also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” A totally different word is used here; any man who can read two Greek words knows the one is “fold” and the other is “flock.” So the Gentiles will be brought into blessed unity with the Jew. “Other sheep I have which are not of this (Jewish) fold; them also I MUST bring.” “Ye MUST be born again.” Notice these MUSTS. “Ye MUST be born again.” Then comes the other MUST. “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I MUST bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” One Body, one Building, one Bride, one set of brethren, one flock. How are they brought into the blessed unity of this one flock? There is another verse: “The Son of Man MUST be lifted up.” Here then is another MUST. John the Baptist says: “I MUST decrease, he MUST increase.” These four MUSTS go together to produce the new birth. “The Son of Man MUST be lifted up”; “Ye MUST be born again”; “Them also I MUST bring”; then John says, “I MUST decrease, He MUST increase.” These four blessed elements are at work to produce the new birth.

Now turn back again to John 3:8: “The wind bloweth.” Let this sink down into your hearts, brethren. The new birth must be the effect of divine sovereignty. “The wind blows where it likes. You cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes, so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Salvation is the mighty work of the Holy Ghost, and as I have already said: “You can resist the Holy Ghost and go to hell; and you will if you resist Him.” It is a very solemn thing for people to hear the gospel. Don’t resist the Holy Ghost if He strives with you, beloved friends. Give in; yield. But “the wind bloweth where it listeth,” and, therefore, dear friends, if you have not been brought to Christ, I urge you, if there is any movement of the Holy Ghost in your conscience, yield, and you will be in the kingdom. You will be in the kingdom by the new birth, and yet the operation is in the power of the Holy Ghost, in divine sovereignty—the wind does it. The wind blows along, and you don’t resist it. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.

I want to go a bit further in connection with the Holy Spirit. Please turn to John 4:13, 14: “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him, a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” A fountain of water—the new birth! The Holy Ghost forms a divine nature in us—born of the Spirit. That is why we hate wicked things and love divine things. Drop that pack of cards, drop that billiard cue and drop the theatre, because God has given us a divine nature which loves holiness.

But there is another step further. When I believe the blessed gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Holy Ghost comes to dwell in me. “The water which I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” That is, beloved friends, you are satisfied; you never thirst. Is it so? Do we never thirst? These things, beloved friends, are spoken of from the divine aspect. “The water that I shall give him shall be in him.” Not the new birth now, but the Holy Ghost forming the divine nature. This is the living water, the Holy Ghost coming to dwell in you Himself and springing up into everlasting life. I hope you are enjoying the springing well, and I hope, beloved Christian, you can say, I am a satisfied Christian; I never thirst. God has been gracious to me in a governmental way. I am not wanting anything particularly; I am not thirsting for worldly things; I am not grasping for money. I have in me a well of water that satisfies. I never thirst.” And the water that Christ gives him is springing up. Does it spring up? If He has His way it will spring up.

I never could understand that verse till I went to California. There I found wells springing up. In the Old Country, about the deadest thing in the world are those wells—no spring at all. They are as dead as ditch-water. I saw many of them there. There is a great big iron chain, and you look down into the well and it look like midnight down there; not a bit of spring in it at all. With a young fellow and his father, I went to California, where they had a ranch. They were supposed to get some fruit, I remember, but no fruit was forthcoming; but the boy was very clever and he said, “Father, I think we will have to get a specialist down here, one who understands water.” They got the specialist down, and the young fellow took me to the well to see what he would do. He put high boots on. He unscrewed the cap and dug down about four feet, and then when he removed the top of the well—whsh-sh-sh. I never saw water spring up in the air till then. It was really springing up—“Springing up into everlasting life!”

“The water I shall give you”—it is in you springing up, the Holy Ghost Himself springing up. Have you had any springing up today, brother or has this been a flat day? Not very enjoyable? A down-in-the-dumps day? I know, beloved friends, there is plenty of sorrow in the world. I am not making light of that, but if the Holy Ghost is in you as a fountain of water, and if you let Him have His way, He will lift you up—“springing up into everlasting life”—“up”—and that is what everlasting life is. He is in you, and springs up into everlasting life. If you go on with the world, you will be choked. You know Isaac had very valuable wells. Isaac’s father left them to him as an inheritance, and the Philistines came along and filled up those wells with earth, and it stopped all the springing. The Philistine means a worldly professor—a man who keeps the world; there will be a choking going on instead of springing up.

“The water I shall give him shall be in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” So that we are not only born of the Spirit, but indwelt by the Spirit. If things do not choke His blessed activities, He will spring up to where the blessed Lord Jesus is. In Him is eternal life. God has given to us eternal life—and is this life in you? It is in you, it is true; but when He talks of the source of it, He says this life is “in His Son,” the blessed Source of it. His Son is the blessed Source, and if the water had its way, it would spring up and reach Him in glory there. The water shall be “in him” a “fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” Do you not chide yourself sometimes for being a sort of grumbling Christian, getting in the dumps, feeling depressed, and so on? What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got the Holy Ghost in you, that living fountain? Let Him have His way and He will reach Christ in glory, springing up into everlasting life, and we will never thirst!

“I thirst, but not as once I did,

The vain delights of earth to share;

Thy wounds, Immanuel, all forbid

That I should seek my pleasures there.

“It was the sight of Thy dear cross

First weaned my heart from earthly things,

And taught me to esteem as dross

The mirth of fools, the pride of kings.”

“Shall never thirst,” never thirst—satisfied forever.

There is a very striking verse in Philippians. In chapter 4:11 the Apostle Paul says: “I have learnt in those circumstances in which I am, to be satisfied in myself.” That is how J. N. Darby makes it read. He was a gold medallist in Greek, and his translation of the Book was in front of the authors of the Revised Version when they were at work. He was one of the most wonderful men that ever lived, according to my estimation. He reads it in Philippians: “I have learnt in those circumstances in which I am, to be satisfied in myself,” because I have the Holy Ghost and the living water. It is not, “satisfied WITH myself,” but “IN myself.” You have the Holy Ghost, the living water, and if He has His blessed way, dear friends, He will carry you right up to where the Lord is in glory.

Now let us turn to John 7:38. In John 3 we are born of the Spirit; in John 4 we are indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and the springing up is in John 7. The water flows out from us and thirsty souls drink from that overflow. “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his inward parts —shall be”—pumped? No. “Shall flow rivers of living water!” Pumping is no good, Spontaneity is the thing. We drink of the hidden Christ in glory, and then the Holy Ghost flows through us. What blessing we shall have!! What power we shall have! Sinners, indeed, will be converted, and the people of God will be refreshed.

The only power on earth that is effectual is the Holy Ghost. He quickens the dead and seals the living. He is in the believer. Out of our inward parts, if we go to Him and drink, shall flow rivers. Would to God it were so! Channels of blessing! Don’t you want to be that, brethren? But if we are to be channels of blessing, we must go to Him and drink. Drink of Him, the Fountain-head of living water. In Genesis, the river went out of Eden to water the garden, and divided itself into four heads, one north, one south, one east, and one west. In Exodus, they had the smitten rock, and the river from the smitten rock in the wilderness. In Ezekiel, the water comes from under the altar; and in The Revelation John saw the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God. That is yet future; but what is it to come from now? Through you! Through me! “Out of his inward parts shall flow rivers of living water.” We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, born of the Holy Spirit. Indwelt with the Spirit! Satisfied because He is in us! A well of water!

Let us, beloved friends, see that we do not let the Philistines shovel in the earth of the well. Be careful, beloved children of God, that we do not let the Philistines choke the whole thing up. It is there, but the Philistines will put their earth into it. What did Isaac do? He re-dug the wells and threw the earth out. Some of us want to do some re-digging. The Holy Ghost is there, but He is grieved by our half-heartedness and worldliness. Dig out the wells, and then the water will spring up again. Do you know what they sang in Moses’ time? “Spring up, O well.” They took their staves and re-dug the well. Is there anything in you, my beloved children of God, that grieves the Spirit of God? If there is, judge it; turn it out, so that, ungrieved, He may work in you.

I finish with a verse which has been greatly misused, somehow. We do not seem to be able to get it all out: “Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,”—and there we stop. Oh, don’t stop there—“Now unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think—according to the power that worketh in us.” That is the Holy Ghost. Christ wrought for us on the cross objectively. Now the Holy Ghost is in us and we can say, “According to the power that worketh in us.” Is He working in me?—Clearing out the things that hinder? Am I a satisfied Christian? Do I never thirst? May we make more room for the Holy Ghost. He is all-sufficient. First of all, He satisfies, then the living water springs up into everlasting life, and flows through the believer, and out to those who are perishing around us in their sins, and the Christians get refreshed.

Address Ten

April 29, 1941

Turn to the first chapter of Ephesians, verse 3. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” Also verses 15 to 23; 3:14-17, 20, 21; 6:11-19.

The epistle to the Ephesians in one sense stands alone, because it opens out to us the eternal counsels of God, and His purposes, which, of course, were in His mind before the world began. God is the eternal I AM, and never changes His purposes and His counsels, and as there was no one to consult Him in those eternal by-gone ages, God delights Himself in doing exactly what He pleases.

In the ages past God had a divine program in His own almighty mind, and He does whatever He pleases, whatever He delights in, and the marvel is that in those eternal ages beyond He purposed what we are here told: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.”

Nothing, so to speak, delights the heart more than to know God has a free hand to do exactly what He pleases, and He delights in blessing, and so this marvelous epistle begins with thanksgiving to Him: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us.” Then in verse 16 we read, “I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom, and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” These two titles, “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” are the keys to the Epistle. They begin and end chapter one.

It is a very important thing to notice divine titles. It is “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as revealed to us in our time, not as Jehovah, nor as the Almighty, but as we know Him “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is how He reveals Himself. There is no mention of “loving Father” or “Heavenly Father,” but “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” which gives the thought of power.

“The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” speaks of Divine love. He has revealed Himself in these closing days by these titles, which give to us an opening up of the revelation of His name, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, therefore, without being too critical, terms that we often use, were suited to the time when the Lord was here upon the earth—He taught His disciples to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” which speaks of Him as the Father of Israel—but now the term is “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and I just want to bring to you a little of the Divine power, power towards us, power in us, and power through us. Paul prays in chapter 1:17-20: “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies.”

The power of God has taken our Blessed Lord from Joseph’s sepulchre and put Him in the highest heavens, crowned Him with all glory and honor and given Him to be “the Head of the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all,” but the wonderful thought is that He has put us there too. So in chapter 2, the words in italics, “And you hath He quickened,” rather spoil the sense in that verse. Not only has He put Him there, but He has quickened us together with Christ and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Him as we learn in verses 5, 6. Verse 4 reads: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” That same mighty power, which was exercised by our Blessed Lord has been exercised for the believer, raising us up, seating us in Him in these heavenly places. His power has put us in connection with the glorified Man up yonder in the heavens, “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.” Thus we are united to Him where He is. But in Ephesians 1, God delights in His own heart and yours. Let us hang on there for a minute or two. It delighted the heart of God “that we should be holy, and without blame before Him in love.” In His mighty activities in the past Eternity, “He hath chosen us in Him, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” In His mighty eternal counsels of the past that was His activity towards us and under His eye, “holy and without blame before Him in love.” Imagine yourself under the eye of God in that respect. Do not look at yourself, or you will spoil the whole picture. That is the heart of God, having us under His eye of compassion. Think of your own unworthiness, but do you not see God is putting us there to delight Himself in it, that we “should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Now that stands related to Him as God.

The next verse (chap. 1:5) speaks of the Father having predestinated us to sonship. Here we have the same thing coming out, that God is delighting Himself as Father, choosing us to sonship by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. If we would only stay in that pure light of unsullied love, what marvellous things would overflow our hearts. To think that God would delight Himself in doing this, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!! And now He sees me in Him holy and without blame before Him in love. He has exercised the same power towards us according to the working of His mighty power which was wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead. Quickened us, raised us, and seated us in Him in the heavens, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” That is His power towards us.

At the end of chapter 3 we have the other side of the picture—“For this cause, I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” Not that you should dwell with Him up there, but that He should dwell in your hearts down here. The first chapter takes us up there into the heavenlies, and chapter 3 strengthens us by might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith down here. He does not dwell in the heart of every Christian. That Christ may dwell in your heart means that He may be the very centre of your moral being, the very centre of your affections, and, in order for that to be so, the Spirit of God has to work in us. “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell.” The Spirit of God has to work in us, for the Lord Jesus Christ to become the very centre of our affections and activities by enlarging the sphere of our affections. In chapter one we are “in Him” in the heavenlies; the power of God has put us there, and we are with Him in every spiritual blessing, but now the Spirit of God has to strengthen us down here. “That Christ may dwell”—He has to work in us to this end, that the blessed Lord Jesus Christ may become the very centre of our affections. Tell me what is the first thing in your heart, and I will tell you what is controlling you. The man who is controlled by money or ambition, has it written upon his moral heart—you can tell what his activities will be. And so the Holy Spirit must work in us in order that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. “That ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” The length, breadth, depth, and height does not refer to the love of Christ, but to the Father’s eternal counsels. The figure of it comes in the story of Abraham in Canaan, where God says, “Look from the place where thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward.” Take in the vastness of the country. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith”—that clears out everything unsuitable to Him. We are not only in Him, but the Spirit of God has to work in us to make Him the very centre of our heart’s affections, and, to finish this chapter, “Now unto Him, that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” It was His power toward us that put us in the heavenlies, and now it works in us. There is nothing more important than the Holy Ghost working in us; and so the two things are put together. He is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” If He is working in me. He will remove the hindrances, He will warm the affections, He will make a larger sphere for Christ. And this is how He answers our prayer— “According to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages.”

And now we come to Chapter 6:10-12, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

There are three conflicts in the New Testament. In Romans 7, it is the old nature and the new nature fighting against each other, “When I would do good, evil is present with me.” In Galatians 5, it is the Holy Ghost and the old nature, and there the Holy Ghost wins over Adam. In Romans 7, the old nature wins every time, the flesh gains the mastery—“the evil I hate, that I do.” In Galatians 5, the Spirit of God gains the victory, and this is because He is the power. The new nature is not the power. To be born again, that in itself is not the power. The power is the Holy Ghost Himself. He came down at Pentecost, and He sheds abroad His love in our hearts. And so in Galatians 5, the Holy Spirit gains the victory over Adam. In Ephesians 6, it is the conflict in the heavenlies, and to gain the victory, the power to do so is in the heavenlies. But we must put our heads down, and we see that as it was with Abraham so it was with us; he took possession only once, when he put his foot on the land. “Everywhere your foot travels is yours.” He went across the land only once, and that was when he brought Lot back from being taken prisoner. He went to the north as far as Dan, and, wonderful man that he was, he did not lay hold of the Divine purpose in the way he should have done. “The Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward; for all the land, which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so, that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee/’ Have we, beloved, put our foot down in the heavenlies? Do we realize we are a heavenly people? Not that we ought to be, but that we are. 1 Corinthians 15:48 says that we are: “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” Beloved friends, we belong to a heavenly Man; the last Adam, the quickening Spirit, was from heaven, and we are blessed with all spiritual blessings with Him in the heavenlies. Have I put my foot down there? If I do not, I shall not have this conflict, for the devil will let me alone. Here we are told to have this conflict with our terrible foe; and, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” The Devil is sure to be after you to make you realize you are a heavenly man. He will drive you from the enjoyment of it if he can, but he cannot drive you out of Christ. But he tries to drive us from the enjoyment of the land in the heavenlies, and so I must put my foot down to realize it. “Everywhere you put your foot down is yours.” But we shall not have the heavenly conflict, if we are not in the heavenlies in our own souls. The two natures must be opposed one to another. “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord.” Put your foot down in the power of the Holy Ghost, saying, “I realize I am in Him, I stand before Him, holy and without blame before Him in love, and I want to realize some of the blessedness of these heavenly things, with which God has blessed us. Are we making them our own? If we are not, the Devil would have us quiet and asleep. Make it your own. “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly, and as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” We do not bear that image yet. Our mortal bodies are not made like His, but “we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.” Material blessings, earthly prosperity, are not the Christian’s peculiar blessings. God gives us great mercies and blesses us along the pilgrim path. “So-and-so is doing wonderfully well,” you say; “the Lord has wonderfully blessed him.” But money is not His blessing. Material mercies are not the Christian’s peculiar blessings. “All spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ.” I am not making light of God’s mercies to you, physically or materially, but, those in themselves are not God’s spiritual blessings to the Christian. Material prosperity has been a peculiar curse to many a person. I know a man now, whose father was converted, and I think this is true of him. I remember his father well, and the night he stayed behind after the meeting, to speak to me about his soul. He came back three times, and, when he came back the third time, he confessed the Lord as his Saviour. His son made millions of money, but today he is worldly, far away and indifferent, that is, to Divine things. His material prosperity has gone far against him spiritually. I freely admit it is a mercy to have a healthy body and to have material mercies along the road, but do not confound that with spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ. That is what He has blessed us with. Am I enjoying Him? Am I making Him my own? Am I walking through the land, so to speak? Are we enjoying spiritual blessings in the heavenlies? I am not wanting you to be cramped, or make little of the material mercies of God, but do not confound them with the spiritual blessings unfolded to us in this wonderful Epistle. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” And haven’t you noticed that he puts these titles in the New Testament in this way, but in John you will always find “Father” and “love.” In John 20, speaking to Mary Magdalene, He says, “Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father and to your Father; and to My God, and your God.” But, when you come to Paul’s writings, it is “God and Father.” One great reason is that John specially and peculiarly unfolds the Father to us, and puts Him first. These are not whims and fancies. They are there in the Scriptures. We are not trying to make up something outside of the Scriptures.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He has not only put His beloved Son at peerless heights of glory, but He has put us into association with Him where He is, and the more I realize my association with Him where He is, the more I appreciate Him, and the better will I represent Him where He is not. And I shall be walking with moral consistency in His blessed footprints here below.

We shall just look at Ephesians 6:10. What is the first thing He tells us? “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” That is His power through us. We have had His power towards us, putting us there. We have had His power in us, doing “exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think,” but now it is His power through us. It is only His might in us that can overcome the Devil. You remember in the temptation, the enemy sought to take the blessed Lord from the path of Divine obedience. “If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” I do not say it irreverently, the Lord practically said, “I am not hear to command; I am here to obey.” “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:3, 4). What a mighty victory he achieved! Think of it! In the desert the Devil is assailing Him on every point that he could, but the Blessed One overcomes in every temptation with, “It is written.” First, in dependence on God, and then in devotedness to God, and thirdly, in confidence in God. Believer, let us seek to realize, by the power of the Holy Ghost, that our association is with the glorified Man in the heavenlies, and that we are down here to trace His footsteps, to follow Him, and, if we do put our foot down in the consciousness that the heavenly places are ours in Him, we shall have the enemy after us. “Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand.” Why don’t you advance? Because you cannot advance in Ephesians; you are at the top. “Blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. Stand therefore.” First of all, I must put my foot down to stand. There is no armor for the back for cowards. You must not run away. “But having done all, to stand.” And if the Devil is assailing you, if he is attacking you, it is, in some way, a blessed proof that you are putting your foot down in the heavenly country. “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth—“Girt about with truth.” Not holding truth loosely, but braced up with truth. How much of it? Every bit of it. Your loins girt about with truth. This is part of the armor of the heavenly man, who has some realization that he belongs to the glorified Man, blessed, with Him, with all spiritual blessings and truth, and the Lord Jesus does not say, “I am true,” but, “I am the Truth.” The Way to the Father, and the Truth about the Father, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Here we have our loins girt, or braced up. In these last days of Modernism, we must have our loins girt about with truth. To give up the truth is to give up what is most important. Are we girt about? Do we read our Bibles as much as we used to? The loins girt about with the truth of God, so when the Devil comes along with the blasphemies of these last days, I know how to stand up against him. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” And so the first thing we put on here is truth. “Having on the breastplate of righteousness,” that is, we have a good conscience, maintaining a good conscience; as the Apostle Paul said, long ago, “Having a conscience void of offense towards God and man,” and upright before Him. That will give us immense power in dealing with the adversary, for once we become unrighteous or bigoted about truth, the Devil steals a tremendous march upon us. “Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” It is not having your feet shod with the gospel of peace, but the preparation of it. If I am walking with well-shod feet, following in His blessed footsteps, it will have an immense effect upon those to whom I speak. What prepares for the Gospel? Our godly walk, our well-shod feet, our ways.

I remember, long ago, in Indiana, the manager of a large Packing House had some dealings in business with a friend of mine. My friend said to himself, “This man seems different from the rest of the business men with whom I deal. He speaks no slang; he is not stupid, and is an aggressive man of business. But his manner, his whole deportment, made me think that there was something different there. And when we had done our business he handed me a card, and said, ‘Will you come to the meetings?’ This key to the whole business, this little card, was preceded by a manner which seemed different to that of the ordinary worldly man. ‘Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.’ It is not our preaching so much, but our feet shod with the preparation of gospel of peace. It prepares them, the actual life prepares for the gospel.”

A nephew of mine was an ungodly fellow, and one day a worldly neighbor addressed him as follows, “Jack, I have not seen you with a cigarette in your mouth lately.” “Well,” he said, “I have been brought to God and have been converted.” That man’s whole family had been brought to God, “Your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” The people with whom I work from day to day take stock of me. They take stock of the way we walk. And every time I say something, there is dynamic behind it. The man whose feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace has a part of the heavenly armor. You do not find this spoken of in Galatians or Romans. The conflict in Romans and that in Galatians, but not of this kind. This is seen in the man who shows by the grace of God, that he belongs to a glorified Christ in the heavenlies. He must walk here amongst men on earth, but he brings the pattern of that relationship and the power of it down here in practical daily life.

“Above all, taking the shield of faith.” If ever we need the shield of faith and its protection, we do now, when the Devil sends his fiery darts and insinuations of all kinds at the believer. But the shield of faith quenches all the fiery darts of the Wicked One. The prophet Habakkuk writes: “The just shall live by faith,” and the worldly man says, “It is all very well to live by faith, but I believe in a good meal of chops, steaks, etc.,” and he sneers at it. But that same man who says the just shall live by faith, in chapter 2 of his prophecy, shows you how to do it in chapter 3. He says, “Although the fig tree shall not blossom,” there is nothing left and the whole place is withered, “yet will I rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation.” After he says, “The just shall live by faith,” he takes the shield of faith and shows you how to do it. When the Devil comes with his fiery darts, the shield of faith quenches them. “The sin that so easily besets us” is unbelief. “Lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, and run with patience the race set before us, looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of faith.” So the shield of faith, here, is for quenching “all the fiery darts of the Wicked One.”

“Take the helmet of salvation; the helmet points upward, the helmet of salvation. Beloved friends, the Blessed Helmet of Salvation may materialize tonight. I do not say He will be here tonight. It speaks in Thessalonians of “the hope of salvation,” but in Ephesians of “the helmet of salvation,” because we are looked at as there. When our Lord comes to the air, we will have a glorified body—and that is the helmet pointing up—and salvation then will be complete. “He will appear the second time, without sin unto salvation.” It is a big word—salvation. I have been saved seventy years, and I have been saved all along the way, by the mercies of God. It is characteristic of the grace of God that saved me, though I cannot say I have never slidden back, never strayed in heart, but characteristically the Lord saved me; He saves me day by day along the road. We are saved by His intercession. “He ever lives to make intercession for us,” but here we have the helmet of Salvation pointing to the coming of our blessed Lord, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. This is not my sword, but His sword, the sword of the Spirit, searching us, taking us to pieces, to put us together. Not laying us down cold, but putting us warmly together. Yet He searches us, and a blessed thing it is to be searched, “Thou hast searched me and known me,” and again at the end of Ps. 139 David speaks of the same thing when he says, “Search me, and know me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

I realize how little I have been able to bring before you these three forms of power—power toward us, power in us, and power through us, for God does “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask of think, according to the power that worketh in us.” Beloved, that is what we want more of. In the end of the Epistle, the Enemy, the Devil is seen to be after us. And if I wish to be a heavenly man in my ways, conduct, and life before others, the Enemy will be after me. “Oh, you say, there is no harm in worldly pleasures, in cards, in dances, in pictures,” etc. These are little things. The Devil will be after us if we want to reproduce on earth the Heavenly Man, our glorious Lord, who is now at the right hand of God. And in order to win the title of a heavenly man, we must put on the whole armor of God, and “having done all, to stand.” May the Lord help us to do so, “Until we meet and soar away, To the bright realms of endless day, And sing, with rapture and surprise, His loving-kindness in the skies.”