It is a striking fact which is found in this Scripture, and is true at all times, and in all places in the world, that the displays of God’s power are always manifested in delivering from the active positive power of evil, which has been working beforehand. No matter what the circumstances may be, God’s power is ever thus displayed. It is the coming in of God into a scene, where the power of evil and Satan are, to deliver from it.
Now this putting forth of power is not rest; for God cannot rest where there is evil. The time will come when we shall enter the heavenly Jerusalem, and then we shall have rest; because then the glory of God and the Lamb will be displayed in a scene, where nothing that worketh abomination or maketh a lie can ever possibly enter. This is rest. There will never be rest till then. The power we read of in this Scripture is not rest, for it is exercised in a scene where evil is. In the heavenly Jerusalem evil is forever put away. In the Church we find lie-makers; Ananias and Sapphira arise, and lie to the Holy Ghost. That is not rest. In the heavenly Jerusalem there will be no lie; or, as it is expressed in other words, “There shall in no wise enter therein anything that defileth.”
It is not a question whether there may not be joy where God’s power is working: The power that overcame Satan in Samaria caused great joy in that city, but Simon Magus was there. It was power where evil was, giving joy, but not rest.
And then, too, we have the sorrowful side—that where God’s power works, there is in man the principles and roots of decay. This is always true, whether we speak of the Church, which, alas! is so striking an example of the decay of the power which is in this chapter, or whether we speak of the individual soul.
The power of God is working in a sphere of evil, and where the roots of decay are sapping the power that has been displayed. Thus, we see, it is not rest. We may get discouraged by the evil. That is all wrong. We are not to be “weary in well-doing,” so that it becomes a question of patience in a scene of failure and decay, and of grace to overcome as the evil goes on. We see it thus all through the Word. Wherever God set up anything this principle of decay appeared. God made this earth, and saw it “very good,” and rested from His work, but man never entered into that rest. He sinned,—evil came in, and the rest was gone. Look, too, at all the distinct puttings forth of power, whether in Israel, or in Solomon, or in the Church, and all closes in evil.
We need, then, power to be applied to the evil, that we may overcome. It is never rest here, but overcoming evil to enter into God’s rest. I do not deny that there may be seasons when the power of evil is less felt, God in His grace granting us refreshings by the way, just as the Ark in the wilderness went on one occasion a three days’ march before the people to seek out a rest for them. There are these mercies in detail. So, in our chapter, after the persecutions, God gave His people a season of quietness, and in the next chapter we read, “Then had the Churches rest throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied” (Acts 9). But these are seasons of occasional rest only. It is not rest in result. It is not the rest that remains for the people of God. Now what we need is the faith that overcomes in the scene of Satan’s power, as we read in the Word so often of “Him that overcometh.” We need a power superior to the evil through which we have to pass, as in the Psalms, “They go from strength to strength, till everyone in Zion appeareth before God.” The secret of this strength is in the heart living with Christ, and growing up into Him, who is above the power of evil which we have to overcome; entering into fellowship with the Father’s delight in the Son, which is beyond all the range of the evil that is against us, and carrying this kind of rest through the conflict, however varying the circumstances may be.
Take Israel for an example of this. We know what they went through in the wilderness, learning themselves, and learning what the wilderness was, often murmuring and chastened of God, but under all they never lost the cloud, the token of God’s presence, a guide at all times according to God’s mind, a witness of God’s power with them. It led them on all their way. It could not rest in the wilderness, but it wandered with them; and when, by their unbelief, they were turned back for thirty-eight years, the cloud turned back with them. It could not rest, but it never left them, leading them by day and by night, until in the days of Solomon we find it taking up its abode in the Temple.
Now this is what we need—to have our hearts above the evil and the principles of decay, which are in ourselves, living with Christ, and carrying this rest, where God Himself rests, with us through the world.
There are two things in connection with this presented in our chapter. The disciples preach “Christ,” and those who believe have the Holy Ghost. I was very much struck with that verse in reading the chapter through. “Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them.” He “preached Christ.” It does not say he preached to poor sinners, though we know lie did; but the Spirit of God puts before us what is before all other objects. “He preached Christ”; his primary object was not “sinners” but “Christ,” the delight of God before ever the world or evil was.
Let us see the sphere of blessing this opens out to us, The Gospel is the proclamation of One, who is God’s own eternal delight, presented to us as an object for our hearts, the “Wisdom of God,” and the “Power of God.”
It is just as we carry the secret of the preciousness of Christ by faith through the wilderness, that our hearts will have an object superior to all the circumstances of sorrow and evil that we are in. In the wilderness we need God’s wisdom to guide, and His power to overcome. Christ is both. This spirit of faith makes all the difference which we find in Israel on the one hand, and Caleb and Joshua on the other. They all went through the same trials, and were in the same sphere of evil, but the grapes of Eschol brought out the murmurings of the people; they thought of the children of Anak, and were in their own sight as grasshoppers—they lacked faith to connect the power of God with themselves, so that it was only a question of what their enemies were, and what they were in their own sight; whereas Caleb and Joshua, bringing in by faith God’s power and love, found the report good, the grapes of Eschol strengthened their faith, they thought of God’s promise to them, and said, “Let us go up at once and possess the land, for we are well able to overcome it.” What were the walls of Jericho to faith, though they were builded up to heaven? Because God was with them, they could not stand against the blast of ram’s horns!
But it is well for us to remember also, that if God was with them, one Achan in that camp is detected, and the power is withdrawn. It is not that He forsakes them, but He teaches them that He cannot go on with evil. So it is with us. God will not go on with evil. We must have all brought to light. These inward exercises are humbling, but most profitable. We get broken down and humbled by them. God cannot fail, we know, but if I take a wrong way He will not go with me in it. I shall find that there is no strength. But I will suppose that the soul is walking with God; and as Joshua and Caleb replied in faith, “If the Lord delight in us, he will bring us into this land and give it us, a land which floweth with milk and honey;” so with us, we find what God’s thoughts about us are, in His delight in Christ, which lifts us above the evil we are passing through. Our strength is that the Lord has delighted in us, and is leading us on through all the evil, to bring us out of it all to Himself.
Now, what do we find that the testimony of Philip was “He preached Christ unto them.” That which the Holy Ghost ever ministers is Christ. Philip preached this wondrous fact of Christ: who was God’s delight before ever the world was. We thus get at God’s mind about Christ before ever the scene of evil began. It is Christ, the object of the Father’s delight, and the world is only a scene come in, “by the bye”—an important thing it is true, because the platform on which God’s, eternal thoughts about Christ were to be displayed; but we go back to God’s counsels, and see His delight in Christ before ever the world or evil were.
Now all depends, dear friends, upon knowing this blessed object of the Father’s delight, living in Christ as He is in the thoughts of God from all eternity, seeing Him “Set up from everlasting,” God’s eternal delight! When I begin to look at myself, it is a perfect contrast to Christ; but before ever evil was, this blessed object of the heart of God was. After the world is over, He will still be the delight of God’s heart.
Our strength is in this blessed fact, that God has brought into our hearts One, who was a sufficient delight to Himself before ever the world was—equal with God, the “ brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” This is the immense fact, that this blessed object of God’s eternal satisfaction and delight has been revealed to us. It is not a matter of great knowledge, which we can only find in the highest truths of the Word, such as the epistle to the Ephesians. We find it equally in the 2nd epistle of Timothy and in Titus, when the brightness of the Church had faded away. He speaks of “the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.” He connects us with Christ in the thoughts and purpose of God before the world or evil were. He can go back to eternity and connect us with Him, according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. John, too, in his epistle, speaks of having “fellowship with the Father and the Son” in that eternal life “which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us.” In the gospel of John, too, we behold Him as the Word of God with God before there was a beginning, and then connected with us, “The life was the light of men.” In His divine nature no doubt the light of angels and of all; but He was specially the light suited to man and adapted to man. When manifested in time He was the eternal Person serving us.
In Titus, too, we have “the hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” That is promised us in Christ Jesus. This is not great knowledge, it is the testimony of Scripture to the Person of Christ as the center and stay of our thoughts, lifting us out of the evil and failure in ourselves, and connecting us with Him, who was the eternal delight of the Father.
Turning now to His coming in time, for I can but present a hasty, and I am sure too, a feeble sketch of this glorious subject, we find ourselves in a world where evil has come in. However, before evil appeared on the scene of creation, its being framed by the Word of God was with reference to the manifestation of the Son of God, Adam himself was only the “image of him that was to come.” Everything was made for Him, and bore witness to Him. “Abraham rejoiced to see “His day,” and directly evil is manifested, there is the promise to the second Man—the seed of the woman who should overcome the evil, crush the serpent’s head, and set its power aside.”
This promise was not made to Adam at all, but to Christ, who was what Adam was not, the “seed of the woman.” This is immense blessing to us that this Divine Person who was before the evil existed, has come into the scene of evil, has been manifested superior to it all. We have to be in conflict with it, as we read in Romans, looking for the time when God shalt “bruise Satan shortly tinder our feet;” and we know Christ shall put down evil by power, but in our own cage we have not to wait for our blessing until that day. But when it comes we shall be with and like Himself who has gone through all the evil, and been morally superior to it, to deliver us from it, and who will, in the end, entirely set its power aside.
Mark another thing, He was not manifested till evil had run to its full head. Man had been tried every way. Without the law he proved lawless, and under the law a transgressor, so that all the evil of man, as responsible to God, had come out, lawless and law-breaking before Christ came. His hatred to God in rejecting Christ I do not speak of, but his condition as responsible to God, and all the evil of man had come to its head before Christ appeared. “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” But when the evil had run on to its full head, God brought in an entirely new thing. “God was manifest in the flesh;” the eternally blessed object of God’s delight was manifested in the midst of the evil, the perfect expression of good in the midst of evil, and as a Man come into the world. I see in Christ not only God’s eternal delight before evil was, but I see Him come into the evil that I am in, the perfect expression of the good according to the mind of God.
There were Abrahams before, grace working in the hearts of men; exhibitions of love and kindness from God; but in Christ we find entirely another fact; in the midst of the evil was that which expressed the mind of God. “God manifest in the flesh,” “dwelling amongst us, full of grace and truth,” and this directly when He was manifested. At His baptism, before He began His ministry, God says, what He never could have said before, there was a man (and much more than a man I grant), but there was a man, in whom He was well pleased! There was not one thing in the world of which God could say, “I am well pleased,” but of Christ. What a stay is this to the heart, exercised about good and evil; and learning what there is in man, I see the good come where evil was, and God is well pleased in Him, and as taught of God I can say, if God is well pleased with Him, so am I! What a stay this is to the heart!
If we look at saints we get heart-broken. Even where blessing is, we know the power of Satan can come in, and spoil it all; but if I look at Christ my heart has rest, where God’s heart has His. There is complete satisfaction in the object I am looking at, and how near me has He come! He has dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth, and in the evil I am. He has manifested the good that God can rest in. These things angels desire to look into. They learn what their God is, as manifested in the flesh,— “seen of angels,” as we read. This is rest for the heart taught of God. I can rest where God is resting.
But there is more than this. Christ has not only perfectly manifested God here in the scene of evil, but He has accomplished a work to deliver us from the evil altogether. We have the Person first, and the work next.
As to His Person, He has manifested a good that nothing can touch, that which was the expression of the mind of God, and this too in a Man tried in every possible way by all the power of Satan, and by drinking the cup of wrath; but He went through all untouched by the evil. He is thus in Himself the center of our hearts, giving them rest in divine good where evil cannot enter.
But then IV has also accomplished a work for us, which takes us completely out of the sphere where the evil is. Man’s hatred and sin brought Him to the Cross as regards means, but He came there by the “determined counsel and fore-knowledge of God.” He was made sin before God. He went through the wondrous question with God, brought out before God, and in His own Person.
In the Cross was manifested all God’s righteousness against the evil, and perfect love above the evil too. All that God was in righteousness, in majesty, and in love came out, when He was “made sin for us.” It is the answer to everything that I can possibly find in the world or in my heart. Evil can never come out again as it did then. It will be displayed in the Man of sin, and gather in battle against the armies of heaven, to be destroyed by power, but it never can be displayed again as it was at the Cross. There is nothing in my heart that was not at the Cross. All the power of Satan, all the sin and hatred of man, all the wrath of God against sin came out there. Nothing more can come out than was found there; and in Christ made sin, and bearing our sins, I behold the triumph of good over the power of evil. I go to the Cross, and say, “It is all settled!” There stood Christ in my place as made sin for me, and I am made the righteousness of God in Him, and in doing it, He has perfectly glorified God about sin. The whole question of sin and of sin-bearing has been settled with God Himself in the Person of Christ, so that I can say, I am reconciled to God, because all that I am has been brought out and dealt with in the Person of His Son.
But not only is the question of sin settled in the Cress: God has raised Him from the dead, out of all the power of evil, all the sin and evil gone for us who believe, and this Blessed One beyond the scene of evil forever in the glory of God. Before the evil was He was the eternal delight of God; when the evil was at its height, He came into it and manifested perfection unassailable by it; and now, by a work that has forever glorified God about it, and put it away for all that believe, He has entered a sphere, and entered there for us in a life in which, through Him, we live to God, where evil cannot come. He is beyond the sorrow forever; and though I am still in it, I can say I belong to One, I live in One—He being Himself my life—who is beyond the evil and the sorrow, at the right hand of God.
I can now see not only what God has done for man, but where He can bring man, for Christ has gone into heaven as Man, and for men. He has not forgotten to feel for me in the sorrow. Though He could say at the grave of Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life,” He could weep with them at the presence of death; but while I have His sympathy in the sorrow, by the power of the Holy Ghost I can also say, I am “quickened together with him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” I can sit in peace at God’s right hand in Him.
The disciples feared when He told them He was going away, that He would forget them. How graciously does He take away this fear by telling them, that so far from forgetting them in going to the Father, He was going to prepare a place for them. If He could no longer stay with them in the scene of evil, He would wash their defilement from their feet, that they might have a part with Him where He was going. We now belong to Him who is gone up to heaven. Our portion is with Him where He is, that in the ages to come, as well as now, unto angels, and principalities, and powers, God might chew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us by Jesus Christ, and this is according to His eternal purpose, which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He has left us here for a season to exhibit Him, to be as His epistle, “known and read of all men.” But I can only exhibit Him so far as I know Him. All practical walk must spring from the heart’s acquaintance with Himself. It is only as we know Him we can bear witness of Him. He would have us, even in this world, so acquainted with Him, that our knowledge of Him should answer to His knowledge of the Father, not in degree of course, for He had divine knowledge, but in character. He says in John 10:1515As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. (John 10:15), “I know my sheep and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father;” that is, that as He knew and confided in the Father’s knowledge of Him as a Man on the earth, and knew and trusted in the Father, so He would have us to know and confide in Him, while hidden from our sight, walking in the consciousness that He knows us in all the love in which the Father knew Him, when He was upon earth.
This is what we are called to—entering into the consciousness of His delight in us, and the Father’s delight in us in Him, the heart living with Him in heaven. He strengthens our hearts; draws our hearts up to Himself, while there is nothing we pass through down here into which His heart does not enter.
What do you mean by going to heaven? Every one that goes there will enter heaven as the travail of Christ’s soul. They enter heaven as infinitely precious to God, not in themselves, but for Christ’s sake, because they are the fruit of His soul travail; and in one sense they help to complete His joy: His heart is set upon having us with Himself. “I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there may ye be also.” Just as a child whose happiness is the entire thought of his father and mother, who are planning his return home, so are we, only after a Divine and perfect love, the objects of the thoughts of the Father and the Son.
Oh, what an infinite blessing it is that we are in Him who is beyond all the evil, has gone through it all for us, and who in power will soon put down all the evil, and have nothing (I do not allude to the wretched souls who reject this love) in heaven or earth that can jar with the blessedness of God’s presence.
It is not only our own and individual blessings, but the Lord so counts upon our interest in Himself, that He wills that we should be with Him where He is, to behold His glory. What a blessed reflection that I shall see Hint perfectly glorified, and shall dwell in the presence of God’s glory as my home, entering into God’s delight in Christ, the divine object of His own love forever!
It was this dwelling in the glory of God which was so terrible to the thoughts of a Jew. At the Mount of Transfiguration, when the three disciples saw the cloud of God’s presence, which was familiar to their thoughts as the Shekinah, they feared as they saw the glorified saints enter into it with Jesus. It was entirely a new thing for a Jew that man could enter that cloud. Moses had talked with it, but he had never entered into it.
And here we come to another thought—the power of the Holy Ghost to bring us into this position in Christ, and to keep us there, giving us liberty from evil by feeding our minds and hearts on this divine object. If, in conscious weakness and self-renunciation, we lean on Christ, His strength will lift us above all circumstances, as we read, “I can do all things,” not in myself, “but through Christ strengthening me.” No matter what evil comes against us, even if it be to suffer and die for Him, as many have done, we are, through Him, superior to the circumstances. As we see in Paul, where death is before him, he does not know which to choose, for as Christ was everything to him, it would be evidently gain to die, for he would be with Him, whereas in living, he served Christ; so, without troubling himself as to what the Emperor would do with him, he decides his own fate. Christ loved the Church, and as it was good for it that he should remain in the body, he knew that it should be so. (Phil. 1) We see him entirely above all that even death could present by way of terror on his spirit. In Christ, we can say even death is ours.
Thus the power, dear friends, over every circumstance depends on being near Christ. Having Him before us as the object of our hearts, in lowliness of mind, feeling, if He puts us in the lowest place, it is just the one where we should be, walking with Him, and looking for Him, going through the world with every motive different from what governs the heart of the natural man, having our hearts fixed on who has passed through the evil, and is beyond it forever on the right hand of God.
May we, by the Holy Ghost, be continually feeding upon Him— “eating” Him, as Scripture puts it, so that our thoughts and feet may run in the current of His own mind