EU 26:1-15{THIS chapter describes the action that was to take place consequent upon the people reaching what was the purpose of God. I turn back to the third of Exodus to see what that purpose was, and read at the seventh verse: " And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the 'band of the Egyptians, and to bring them out of that land into a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey." That is the purpose of God.
Now this purpose, beloved friends, we cannot keep it too simply before our hearts. I find that He has a purpose about' me, and that it is this: to bring me out of one place into another place.-The prodigal's place is in the Father's house though, as to himself, he may not have come upstairs yet; and that is the case with many saints. I may not have reached it yet, but I know the desire in my Father's heart about me.
Saints make their necessity the measure of God's action for them. It is true that my necessity is met; but it is never the measure of God's action for me. If we make our necessity the measure, we never get beyond it. God never gives us anything that we do not value. Everyone in this room has what he values. He may think that he has not; he may think that he values more than he has; but the fact that he does not is shown by his not possessing it. God says you do not value more, therefore I do not give you more. He does not cast His pearls before swine; it is according to the amount of interest that you take in it that you have it; according to your appreciation of the truth is the measure of it that you have; “unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly."
Nothing is more manifest than that God's purpose is to have me in this spot. Your Father in heaven has a spot for you; a spot that it is His desire you should occupy; and your occupying it will alone satisfy His heart. Your Father wishes you to be there: the love of the parent wants the child to be brought into the sphere where he himself is. You may occupy it or not, but, if you do not, you have never fulfilled His purpose.
The idea is beyond all human conception! My Father desires that I should occupy this place of nearness to Him. That such a thing as this should be made known to a poor heart like mine, is to me the climax of everything! it is irresistible! I may be below the mark, I may lose the idea, but that is what is in His heart;- it is His ideal; and I wonder at myself, that I am so little moved by it. My Father has a spot for me, and the only question is whether I will occupy it.
Well, beloved, there is only One who ever could occupy the place of standing between God and me. Only One knew what the extent of my offense was, and only One' knew what the love of the Father's heart was to me a poor prodigal. Only One knew the extent of my offense against God, for I must be equal to a person to know how he feels about a thing; and none knows the love of the Father to me but that One; and He says, I bear the one, I declare the other; from sin and Satan I bear them' every one, and I declare thy name unto my brethren. He encounters everything in the twenty-second Psalm, and comes in after it all like the sun shining in his glory upon the scene.
It is not only that there, is a purpose in my Father's heart about me, but His only beloved Son has accomplished that purpose for me. He has come forth to do all God's will, and, having done it, He has returned" up there, and is set down at God's right hand, far 'above all principality, and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, and has been made Head over all things to the church. It is not, as people often put it, a ladder that goes up to heaven, but a ladder that comes down from heaven; therefore the moment I put my foot upon it I am connected with heaven. The One who measures my distance is the One who is the measure of my nearness.
Yes, says the Lord Jesus, I have prepared it for you; there is a spot in the Father's house that is yours; you have title-indefeasible title to it; and, if you do not occupy it, nobody will; it will be unoccupied, that is all.
You are not true to your life if you are not in the place where your life is. The "great supper," is not salvation, as the Commentators say. Ask any-child what a supper is. and he will tell you it is an entertainment. But no one knows anything about entertainment; they have no sense of anything of the kind. People talk of deliverance, but that is not riches. John's gospel comes in to supply that. There He talks about “the gift." He says, I will tell your poor heart what will satisfy you. He brings in the fourth chapter as a contrast to the second, and the saint who is not in the fourth has gone back to the second-to earthly joys, and earthly religion. In the second the wine is out, but in the fourth the Spirit is in. In the third, He died because of me that I might have life because of Him; and in the fourth there is a sufficiency of everything; you will never thirst, the Spirit is in you; you need never go outside yourself, for the Spirit of God in you springs up into everlasting life, and leads the heart practically into the knowledge of a scene where there is perfectness of- blessing outside of everything here.
I have spoken of the purpose of God, and I will just recall for a moment what I have said. God has a place, a spot- for me. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." It is vague, says Isaiah. Now that is the idea of many souls. I have often appealed to souls, and said, Have you any idea of what heaven will be? They have perhaps had some vague thoughts about it, and I have said, You have not got beyond Isaiah. In Corinthians we get the contrast to this: " God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit;" there is the accomplishment of the purpose. One has done it, and He says, I bring you into a new condition which entirely eclipses the old one. In the fourth chapter you are superior to the man who could not get on without wine; ' and you have yet another thing: you have not only that which is superior to the man, but in the seventh chapter,. that which is superior to the earth; rivers of living water flow from you;, you minister to the earth instead of its ministering to you. How am I made superior to all" here? By the Holy Ghost.
All that I am stating now is in order to show that there is a spot in God's own mind for us; that He has a purpose that He has accomplished for us. In Isaiah we get that purpose, and in Corinthians the Spirit of God shows us that it is secured to us. So that first there is the purpose; second the accomplishment; and third what remains for us but to enjoy it? He says: " The Son of man must be lifted up; and faith is simple when I turn away from my ruin, and when my eye is occupied with Himself. I want to give you the connection of the Spirit of God. If, as a: believer, you are not walking in that new condition which the Spirit of God has opened up to you, you are going back to man and earth. What we have to learn „is, that we have to to do with a Man in heaven, and that we have to-do with the place where Hi is. For, though We are united by the Spirit to that Man that is in; heaven, yet you have to go to heaven to enjoy the Man that is in heaven,. I say that because I see practically how it works.
It is the purpose of God first that He has that place for me, chosen by His love. I cannot tell how it draws me, that love! The Lord says: " I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." I used to read it, " finish her work," but it was His work. He says I have answered to the heart of the living God in what I have communicated to that poor woman. I heard a benefactor say once: " It is a nice thing to make anyone happy by giving them twopence!" Now that is a benefactor and nothing more. Christ was happy because He had done God's work.
The third thing is the enjoyment of this purpose, which can only be by the Spirit of God.-Now I notice that people practice all sorts of deceptions upon themselves., I will just mention one of them. I hear a person say: " I have such sweet communion with Jesus;" and I am quite astonished when I come to talk with him, and inquire a little closer into what this sweet communion is, I find it is his sense of the compassion. and interest that the Lord has shown to him in the trial he has been passing through. In fact it is Jesus sympathizing with him-coming down in grace into his circumstances-it is sympathy, not communion. I do not know anything more injurious than calling low things by high names. For instance, people call prayer meetings worship meetings. A person coming to a meeting and getting his feet washed at it, will say, oh what a blessed season we have had! Well, it is a blessed season when you have the Lord dealing with you, but, if you have really met Himself, you will scarcely speak of it in that way. We use too many figurative expressions about our experiences, and lose an immense deal by not allowing the truth to come out in its reality to us.
Though united to Christ in heaven, there as your Head, yet you must also know what it is to be in the place where He is. What many want is to get the Lord down into their own circumstances; but you must find the Lord in the place where He is. Many want Him down here; and he does minister to my wants; He came down here purposely to meet death in a double way, therefore all the sympathy that I "need I meet with from Him in my circumstances here. But besides that He says: “I go to prepare a place for you." The only thing that will satisfy my heart is being in company with tie One who has won my heart; in order to enjoy a person you must be in the place where that person is. Now that is what this chapter in Deuteronomy is. You are cote into the place, you are dwelling in it, and then you find out what a wonderful thing it is to be occupied with the Person who dwells there.
Now let me turn for a moment to the epistle to the Ephesians. In this epistle the whole thing turns upon the fact, that Christ Himself has gone up; therefore the first chapter opens at what I will call the oracle. Everything is accomplished, we are. in unqualified possession. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." The apostle is not expecting anything; he is expressing what comes out in this chapter in Deuteronomy: worship-the out-flow of a heart that is fully satisfied with the portion it has got. What is worship? Why a heart that you can not put any more in. A person in a certain sense is ecstatic when he is in worship, though he may have only just been converted; worship comes out; he is occupied with the One from whom he has received the blessing; he says: " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;" that is worship. Worship is not occupation with the gift, it is occupation with the Giver. Worship is the heart detained by the object that controls it. A heart looking for blessing is not really worshipping.
So here you get, as I say, the oracle. Now in olden times if you had gone to consult an oracle, as people were in the habit of doing, you would have had nothing to say, you would have only had to listen. Thus here it goes into our portion, telling us seven blessed things that God has given us in Christ; our calling comes out. But, at the seventeenth verse, there is a change; the oracle turns round and takes part with the listeners; the apostle turns round and begins to pray. This servant, who has been so wonderfully used of God to open up to us our calling, turns to pray joins, as it were, us who were the listeners, and says: " 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 heart 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." The moment I get the prayer, I get the divine energy; and I must have this divine energy, to carry DJ. e into the thing that is already mine I feel as I read this prayer that I must say Amen to it; and, according as I say Amen, so is my heart rising up in intelligence as to the fact of the place that is already mine. Really, I am there 'through grace; I am quickened together with Christ that is my possession in life. But, mind you, I have another thing; now comes my possession in practice. I am rising up to what, as I say Amen? I am rising up to the place where God has put me in Christ, and God has set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places. It is just as much the grace of God to put me into heaven as to take me out of hell.
People think that because they have this place in gift that they therefore have it in practice; but many a man has a property who does not know how to use it; it is not the fact of having possession of it that ensures your enjoyment of it. Scripture warns us against this; " The slothful man roasteth not that Which he took in hunting."Oh, but he has it! say you; and has he not had a great deal of trouble in hunting it?-Yes, but he has not used it; he has not turned it to account. Everybody knows an artisan of first rate energy and ability by the way in which he finishes his work; he shows his want of energy when he cannot give a thing the right finish. The finishing is most important; and, I say it with grief in my heart, that where I find a great deal of intelligence about the truth brought out in the Ephesians, there is often very little heart about it.
I have sometimes said to people: Did you ever lose a night's rest trying to get hold of your 'heavenly place?-There' is nothing to in more sad than the way in which people will allow that they have not got it; and yet the little earnestness they show in seeking to get it. The saying of a Man who had traveled all over the world often comes to my mind; he said: “The people who, care least about their religion, and are least interested in it, are the Christians." I am sure we ought to lie upon the ground and ask our God to do with us what He will, so that only we may be in the spot our Father has chosen for us. Can you not say: Oh, I know what I am! but take that thing out of me that hinders me from rising up to that only spot that will ever satisfy my heart.
I often wonder whether I am ever in an agony about those I know. Here, the apostle is for those he had never seen.' He does not mind losing an hour's rest that he may pray for them that they may • reach that spot. Yet that poor creature there will, not stir a finger, would not lose an hour's rest 'himself, that he might get it. The apostle was in "all agony about people whose faces he had never seen in the flesh.-What for? That they-might live correct lives? No, but that their hearts might be comforted by being brought into the consciousness of their being united to a heavenly Christ. I am united. O Christ. You are brought into association with Him in the spot where He is, and then you are made acquainted with the fullness that is in Him. If you do not know that sphere where He is, you cannot come down and be connected with what is of Him here.
Now just another point to show you how it is " that things begin to decline among us.- It is, the way in which people hold the truth of the unity of the body. I will tell you how this truth was revived; it was in this way. A brother well known among us awoke up one morning with the thought: I have a Head in heaven, and, if so, there are many others on earth who have got a Head in heaven; and therefore we are members of one another.-You are united to Christ as Head over His body, and you are brought into association with each other because of your union to Himself. It is a question of holding the Head. I must have to do, with the One who is the source of it all. I have to do with Him. I have to do with the Head, and not with the members.
In one moment we may be introduced into a region of unspeakable delights, as the apostle Paul was when he was caught up into the third heavens, but it takes a long time before we are fit to live that out down here-before we are fit to be instruments of the truth we have learned. I am sure I was fourteen years a-r.ter I knew what the heavenly calling was before I was able to match it in my life. We have to be put in circumstances to test us. Instead of Paul finding that he was going to be something wonderfully great when he came down from being in such a region, he found that he had a thorn in the flesh to buffet him. If I get up higher in heaven I am only all the lower on earth; higher in the new order, but lower in the old. But I am content to be nothing if only the power of Christ may rest upon me. It was a terrible thing that Satan could thus take hold of Paul and make a lodgment in the man. But so it was; and Paul found himself a crippled thing-not able to turn his talents to any use at all. I am made conscious of my own cripplement, so that it may be a new power altogether that is working in me. I have to do with that blessed One where He is; and I believe, when you are a few minutes there, you cannot but get a sense of what a contrast this place is to everything else.
But have I to come down into this rude world again?—Yes, like an exotic from the equator in a northern clime, by some unseen power I am maintained here in a scene that is contrary to me-I am sustained here by the divine energy of the Spirit of God. Christ's body is here, and it is as we draw upon the Head, we find what it is to represent Him here. Angels look on at the wonderful fact, that the Man the world refused is now represented by His people on the earth. As we draw from the Head we become useful members. It is not that Christ's body is only forming now, but that it is here to represent Him; and we drop, into Christ's first interest here in the measure in which we come from Him in heaven. My first interest here becomes His body.
An evangelist perhaps will say: My business is to go out to preach the gospel to the world.-Yes, so it is; but your business is to go out from the church to gather sinners, and to bring them in as a recruiting sergeant brings his men to the doctor to pass; otherwise you are a detached persona The Lord always keeps up the complement of the body; you have to recruit the ranks, and, if you do not go out from the body, you do not know your business at all. Every member is necessary, but every member is not acting. The evangelist says: There are empty places in the heart of Christ, and I am going from the heart of Christ to bring those in who will fill them.
Well, to go on with our chapter. As I have been saying, I make this distinction between possession in life and possession in practice. In the first chapter of Ephesians I am in possession of life of the place; and the apostle's first prayer is that I may practically get hold of that place, where, he winds up with telling me, Christ is seated as Head over the body. And now I go on to the second prayer which is the fulfillment of the twenty-sixth of Deut. 1 am in possession, and what is going to occupy my heart? Why the Person who brought me. there. When I reach heaven what will occupy my heart but the Christ who has brought me there? As one has said, the apostle, having got his first prayer answered makes the second-that your heart may be a basket for Christ. Christ, is to dwell in your hearts by faith-for what purpose? It is that you " may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and depth, and length,. and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." You have come now to ecstasy.
I will seek to explain what I mean by ecstasy. The apostle uses the word, and I cannot find a better he says that to God. he is beside himself. It is the fullness of Him that filleth all in all, and you cannot take it in; it is like trying to put an ostrich egg into a small egg cup; it cannot get in. You are ecstatic, and the result is you Worship. You cannot but say, "unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end." You are entranced -in the glory will be the climax of it-but even now you are entranced with the blessedness like the Queen of Sheba.
People think it will make them so melancholy; they talk of the things they will have to give up. Why do they talk of being melancholy? It is because they have not taken in what is the "great supper "-that wonderful entertainment-that wonderful scene of divine festivity-" the riches of his glory." And the heart gets the full blessing of it by looking at the thing?-No, but by looking it the accomplisher of it.
And now it is: “That Christ may dwell in my heart by faith." I grow in the knowledge, in the certainty of it all. “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is breadth, and length, and depth,, and height; and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge." It is the cube-the whole area. I feel one is feeble in speaking of it, and I know why; in one way I am thankful of it-for one cannot take a person farther than one has been oneself.
Christ wins my heart. in humiliation; He satisfies it in glory. My heart is first won; second, united; third, I am in ecstasy; fourth, I worship; fifth, I am made suitable; sixth, I go out in service. It is the heart that has been made suitable to Himself of which' alone it can be said: “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her." Service comes in after the rest; the tithing comes in after the worship. I lay my basket down before the Lord, and then I go out in service for Him.
But how can I be the servant of a heavenly Christ if I have not been in company with a heavenly Christ? It is in glory that He satisfies my heart. He has won my heart by the way in which He has extricated me from the things in which I had involved myself down here, but it is up there that He satisfies it. Often in your service you have allowed things here to dictate to you. One's friends 'often study themselves, not you, when they wish to minister to you. That is not real manners. Most heavenly people have learned their manners from books. Now “book manners” never count for anything; it is only company that teaches manners. You must be in company with' a heavenly Christ if you want to learn heavenly manners.
Tell me what your difficulty in service is. My difficulty is to know what I ought to say. Sometimes in going to a place to speak, I have such difficulty to know what the Lord would have me say. It would be easy enough to choose a chapter and to speak on it, but the question is, is it the one the Lord would have? I really do not know sometimes what I am to say; that is my difficulty; it is not what the people would like, it is what the Lord would like. All I can do is to look to the Lord and rest in His selection.
Well, I must end where I began. It is a thing that should stir your heart, the knowledge that there is a spot that your Father in heaven has assigned for you. You cannot say: Well, now I am filled with all the fullness of God by being in Christ; there is nothing farther than that. You cannot bring your basket and lay it down before the Lord until you are practically in all the blessing and glory of that place-that wonderful place that throws everything else into the shade.
There were things that I thought I never could give up. Sometimes even now I almost wish I could take interest in some of them. When I sit in a corner of a railway carriage and hear people talking about politics, and know that I could talk as well as any of them, and sit by silent; or when they offer me a newspaper and I refuse it-a fool for Christ's sake. I have got more than communion about these things; I have got taste-divine taste. One look at that wonderful light has made me give them all up; I have got taste. And what now? I feel this scene irksome.
I cannot understand how people who do not take a heavenly place ever can get on here. I wonder people do not break their hearts at the oppression that goes on all around them, at the cruelty to animals that they see. I am sure would if I did not know what it was to belong to another scene. If I did not know what it was to belong to heaven I could never go past a man beating a horse, or see any injustice done; I should have broken my heart, and spent my life in trying to set things to rights, if I did not know that I do not belong to this scene at all.
Well, may the Lord lead your hearts into that bright scene. Let it be the place that you seek for-seek as hid treasure. May it be a real thing both to your hearts and mine Will you not be ashamed that a little thing here should so occupy your heart, when you have such wonder, ful portion up there? My heart must get into it! I do not put your own benefit before you, because that is not the thing; but I say, nothing should satisfy your heart, because nothing will satisfy your Father's heart, but your being able to come in before the Lord as in this twenty-sixth of Deuteronomy, and saying: I am come into the pine which the. Lord my God has given me; the Lord Jesus Christ is the One who has brought me in; I delight in the One who has brought me in; I lay my basket down before Him, and worship the Lord my God.