The Epistle to the Philippians was the voice from the prison to the people of God of the apostle now in the hands of the Roman power. His only, word to them is, " Rejoice in the Lord." There was nothing else for them to do. Power had laid its hand upon the apostle, and he was in prison, so, in Philippians, he writes a catholic epistle to the church, to the congregation in general; here it is to the servant, and written much about the same time.
Paul does not touch upon what John does. Everything continues now as it was when John wrote; there is no actual new phase; the Book of the Revelation closes the whole history; John was subsequent to Paul. But this is Paul-the last words of Paul to the servant Timothy; and it involves a great deal, for it gives us a picture, not only of things inside but of things outside. It is not the question so much of things outside in the hands of the Roman power. The Roman power had done its worst; that is an important thing to get hold of. Man has used this power, not only to crucify God's own Son, but now to suppress the apostle to the Gentiles. I could not use this power, or have anything to do with it.
There are two crimes of which the world is guilty; every one admits the one, but the other people are slow to admit. The first man was turned out of the garden of Eden for sinning against God, and we all admit that. But we have committed another crime: the first man has turned Christ out of the world. We were turned ourselves out of Eden, and then we turned Him out of the world. People say the Jews did -it. No, it was the Roman soldiers did it; the cross makes it very evident that the Gentiles did it. Practically souls are very slow to admit this second crime.
I state it first in this broad way: that we have sinned against God, that we have been turned out of the garden of Eden-turned out of God's presence-and that He has sent His Son to bring us back into His presence. You have not got into God's thought unless you: know that His Son was sent to bring us back into His presence. As Christ is apart from judgment so are we in this world; I am as much out of judgment as Christ is on the throne of God, otherwise He has not brought us back to the presence of God. As the consequence of sin man is driven out of the garden, and then man drives Christ off the earth. That is the second thing that man has done; it is not only that man's-sin is there, but now "they have no cloak for their sin." They 'handed over Christ to the Roman sword, and the apostle sent to testify to the Man, not on earth but in heaven -that man they have now in their hands, in the power of the Roman emperor; there is where we find him; that is what closes the Acts of the Apostles.
The Gospel of Luke was written to one who was already acquainted with Paul's doctrine; Luke confirms Paul. In it the Spirit of God comes in to open out the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he ends with a Man gone to heaven. That which the entitled one does not get, the unentitled one gets-the younger brother; that is the principle of Luke's Gospel. This truth runs in parallel lines all through the Gospel, and, at the end, the Lord says: “I leave Jerusalem; I go up from Bethany.".
The Acts opens again with Jewish scenery—the Mount of Olives; and I go on through the book, gradually dropping one Jewish thing after another, until I leave Paul, the one born out of due time, in the prison at Rome. There the apostle writes Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,-Timothy, and Titus. -
It is an arduous thing to me to speak to you as I would wish to, for it is impressed upon me-I cannot tell you how deeply I have it impressed upon my heart-so much so that I am continually in distress of mind about it—that one of the most blessed things, one of the most wonderful things that God has ever done for us, we are likely to lose. To think that He should have favored me with the knowledge of what will suit my Lord on earth, and that I should shrink from it!
It is one of the most wonderful things that for eighteen hundred years Satan should have been able so to blind the eyes of men that they should not have had any idea as to what was the testimony of the Lord. And is there no danger now?
Well, first I would say, What is the testimony of the Lord? I will try to explain what it is.
Paul is here writing to the servant. Say what you will, congregations always take the color of the teacher. As an old brother once said: Do not tell me what you lecture upon, but show me your pupils. In dissenting congregations, where they have only one-man-ministry, the people will be a caricature of the teacher if he has any mind However, as to what the testimony of the Lord is.
There was always a testimony. Up to the cross, I need not explain to any here, that man was on trial. But man was not able to maintain the testimony. We are now on the same favored earth on which Noah was Placed; we are on the millennial earth. But Noah planted a vineyard; and what came out after his failure to keep the testimony was the tower of Babel, which brought out man's independence of God; they used the favors of God to enable them to do without Him; the true character of Babylon is elegance without God; everything that delights the heart of man, but God left out.
Then, in the person of Abraham, God calls His people to come out, and that stands good to this present day. Well, was the testimony maintained? Did it fall? Isaac sends his own son Jacob back to Syria, and then Genesis closes with Israel in Egypt, and the servant of the Lord there.
Up to the cross every trial was made of man; and then at last God sent His Son, found in the fashion of a man. At what age of man did He send Him? At the best age of man? No, but when man was in ruin, at the very tail of everything. And not like the first man did He come, grown up to maturity, but He was found as a, babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in manger-a babe, as has been said, that never had a temper.
Thus He comes in, and for thirty years leads a life of which we have scarcely a mention. We get just a passing notice of what it must have been in John, where he says, that if every one of the things He did should have been written "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." We get little touches showing us what the stupendous nature of that life must have been, until it culminates in the fact that He is found upon the Mount of transfiguration-as a man He is found there-and is declared to be the "beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Of David you hear such and such a thing recorded, perhaps one in a month that was worthy of mention; but every action, every word, every single movement of the Lord was so perfect, so full of grace, so expressive of what He was, that every single one of them is worthy of being recorded. I am speaking of Him only as a man in flesh now.
In the fourth of Matthew He says: As a servant of God, I am prepared to give up that which is necessary to life; I waive the claims of nature because I have a superior claim to govern me. And that is the God when:. I serve. What we find here in Him is what is stated in the eighth of Deuteronomy to be the result of the forty years wandering in the wilderness. He humbled me and led me forty years, so that I might learn to be dependent on Himself, and learn to give up that which supports my natural existence, so that I may live by "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord."
When God looked down from heaven He could not find a man to meet His mind until his own
Son stood before Him There He stood within the legal limits, but He said, I do not confine myself to the limits of the law, He says, I will not only help neighbor, but I will take care of him forever. “Take care of him, and what soever thou spendest more, When. I come again, I will repay thee." Christianity is above law. There He went up to that Mount of transfiguration; He went up as having answered to the mind of God, and was seen transfigured, His face shining as the sun, His raiment white as the light; there He stood, a man in the flesh; and, as has been said,. He might have passed away at" once by rightful title straight up to the right hand of God.
But He came -down again that He might take up those He was going to make His brethren. People often say, " Jesus is my brother." He never was my brother. We are His brethren now. "He is not ashamed to call us brethren." We are all a new type now. You have Him first as the unique One,-but now it is: "Behold I and the children which God hath given me."
How God in 'wonderful grace has turned all that man did into blessing! The very soldier’s spear is now turned round to bear evidence to the fact of what this One was. Such is God's grace that He-has really turned man's sin into richest blessing. Man refused Christ life here; he took it away from Him; but God gave it to Him there, and to us in Him.
The order is, that first Christ has died; He gives up His life; next, He is raised from the dead on the third day; and then they saw Him go up into heaven. You have that distinctly before your minds, that man refused Him life here; and that God raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His own right hand, and gave Him glory; and, as to ourselves, if "we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."
Now I have come to what I was leading to yesterday morning in the seventh of Acts, but there it is more intricate. We find Stephen, outside the apostles, offering Christ from the glory to come back again. He is the rightful King here, but He has been refused a place here. He had not yet sat down on the right hand of God, but we know from another place He is set down now. I turn on to the eighth chapter to see what the order is there. We have seen in the seventh, that the One whom God sent into the world they
refused when surrounded with humiliation as Joseph's son; and that now they will not have Him when He is offered to them in glory.
Now in the eighth you get another thing. We find the eunuch going in the opposite direction to the Queen of Sheba. She came from Ethiopia—" the uttermost parts of the earth," as it is called to hear the wisdom of Solomon. He has this back turned to Jerusalem, and as he is on his way to Gaza, the angel of the Lord says to Philip, you go down there; the Lord tells the evangelist to go to Him. He read Esaias the prophet: " He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth." See where he stops; it is at a most momentous point. The real significance in the action' of the eunuch is this, that, the moment he saw he had to deal with a Savior who had not to do- with the earth, he practically took the place in baptism of having nothing to do with it either. He says: If His life is taken from the earth I have nothing here but I have that, outside this whole
scene which has contented and satisfied my heart; I am contented to be nothing-to be a slave, the servant of Queen Candace. His life is taken from the earth, and, as for me, I- am satisfied to go to the uttermost parts of it.
And now see the progress in the ninth chapter, for the point I want to reach is "the testimony of the Lord." In the fifth verse we get Saul of Tarsus saying: "Who art thou Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest." The Lord now, as has been often said, connects Himself with the saints upon earth; it is not the saints in heaven. I see nothing but that one Man in all the saints on earth. The body is Christ. I do not understand anything about church militant and church triumphant. The distinction between the house and the body is this, that the Holy Ghost forms the body, and dwells in the-house; and, He dwells in the individuals that compose the body—in each member of it. The Lord says, That is me, that is me, each one that you are touching; I claim all that are mine to be connected with myself.
The character of the ninth of Acts is, that He walks into the scene, and says, I am the only Man. I walk into the scene and I claim to be the Man. I claim all to be mine. He connects it with no previous dispensation. He is Head of the creation in type, but in fact He is the beginning of the creation. I only see that one Man. I look round and I see but Him. As I look at every child of God I see but that one Man.
And for myself, is there any fear in my heart when I know that I have a Savior in the glory? The nearer I am to my Savior the safer I am. When I know that I have a Savior in the brightest place, I am most at home in the brightest place.
Well now mark what the effect of this is upon the apostle. “Straightway he preached Jesus in the synagogues" the Man whom he had seen. The word is Jesus-not Christ as we have it; it is Jesus as Son of God. One dwells on it with unutterable delight! God looked down here once to see a Man who met His mind. And now I look up unto glory, and I see there with delight that very Man who met it here seated at His own right hand, and I trace the blessing to the heart that sent the blessing.
So Saul goes into the synagogues and says, “Jesus is the Son of God." This is the first time it is preached. We cannot stay to dwell upon it, interesting as the subject is. We come to "the unity of the faith and the unity of the knowledge of the Son of God." " God dwells in him and he in God " is yours, if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I have got to the dignity of His person, and He leads me to the place where He is. This is " the rock " on which the church stands.
A great many people say they are " on the rock." I do not believe they know what the rock is. I say, Do you know that you are connected with the Son of God? If you are, then why do you not give up all the trifles -"here? Trifles? Yes! Everything is a trifle here when you see what you are connected with. I am of that Man; He is my Head; everything falls into insignificance before such a thought.
Well now I turn to a chapter in the second of Corinthians the twelfth where we find: " I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, ( whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable Words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." Here the apostle is speaking of a fact. Here he has to do with a Man in heaven. It is not only that I have to do with a Savior who is not here, but I know where the Savior is; here the apostle is taken into heaven.
This place does not minister to the flesh at all; there is no place for it here. If the flesh comes in in singing a hymn, then you are not in the presence of the Lord; if you were in the presence of the Lord, flesh would be ignored. Here I do not know whether I am in the body or not; therefore the true character of ecstasy is that it has no sound. Joy has a sound. Ecstasy is the rapt sense of the soul detained in the presence of the One who delights it. Worship is delight in the Person who controls it.
In this twelfth of Corinthians I have got to do with Christ on an entirely new ground. A man in Christ is taken into a new sphere. He does not know whether he is in the body or not; he is sustained there without knowing how. But when he comes back to consciousness he knows well enough that he is in the body. When he comes down, instead of finding that it is a 'higher thing for himself in humanity, he finds it is a lower thing. He has a deeper sense of how degraded he is as a man, because he has a more exalted sense of what he is in Christ.
All this was "fourteen years ago." He takes time to ripen before he can speak of it. I doubt not he had a great deal to be broken of during those fourteen years.
I would like to dwell a little on the epistle to the Ephesians, as perhaps it may help me. In it the apostle tells us what the calling is-the vocation, which I divide into seven heads. The first is the place: I bless " the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ "- those blessings _in Christ which the apostle has got here in the twelfth of Corinthians. The second is individual relationship: He has “predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself." The third is the inheritance: " In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." The collective relationship of the body is the fourth: “He gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness, of him that filleth all in a11." The fifth is the new man: He has " abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of- twain one new man." Now you have got the new place and the new Man; the earth is not our place, and the man here is not our man. Sixth, the Spirit: "Through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." He is the only link and connection that we have with Christ. What is your connection with man? The flesh. What connects you with Christ? 'The Spirit. It is quite simple; all the feelings in the world would not connect you with Christ; it is the Spirit only. Then seventh: we " are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." That is the calling.
Nov mark, you are to walk in all the power of this calling; you are to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith you are called." Therefore there follows in the end of the epistle a code of practice suitable to the calling brought out in the beginning of it. Romans is the justified man, and the practice there is suitable to a justified man. Ephesians is the heavenly man, and you get practice suitable to a heavenly man.. These are the only two codes of practice that I know of; all the rest of the epistles are corrective.—Here, in Ephesians, we get the apostle in the prison in Rome, and the Lord says to him: Now you come and instruct the church about what it is to be connected with the Man in heaven.
Now let me try to sum up what I have been saying, and to make plain what this testimony of the Lord is that we are not to be ashamed of. It is quite simple that, as you are united to a Man in heaven, and heaven is the place that you belong to, therefore, as His body upon earth, you are not in any wise connected with anything here.
I am united to a Man in heaven so that I may know that all my thoughts, and joys, and expectations are in another scene-a scene that is foreign to my birth and condition here; I am not without association with all that is here, but I must ignore the man that is here, and the place that he is in.
As I was saying, the epistles with the exception of Ephesians and Romans are corrective. The Corinthians wanted to give the man his place; and they did it licentiously. The Galatians said: No, we will keep the man in order. They tried to make a religious man of him; they said, we will make him a teetotaler. Thus the Galatians were worse than the Corinthians. We must be like the emigrants going out to the new country who burned their ships as soon as they landed, to preclude all possibility of return. A buried man has nothing to show. In Colossians the apostle is in an agony about their not holding the Head; for the great point is that I am united to a Man in heaven; that is the great truth. Then the epistle to the Hebrews has to do with earth.
The great point is that I am united to a Man in heaven. And the way in which that truth woke up again in the church any one can see who likes to read a paper that came out in the first part of " The Witness;" you will there find an account of the effect the truth of being united to a Man in heaven had upon a brother well known to us. He awoke one day with the thought, I have a Head in heaven; and if I have, there are many others all over this earth who have a Head in heaven too, and therefore we are members of
each other, and form one body.
Now what is the consequence of this? and why should people be ashamed of it?-Why the fact is, that if this truth were acted out it would make you-just like the man in ninth of John; no one would have him! he was no man's man! he is no member of society; he is only a man from heaven! If I have a Head in heaven I have the Holy Ghost on earth, so that I cannot have the man here; I am connected with the Man there. I have come from heaven to carry out heavenly things; I am not a member of society. People say to me, But is not that a nice society? I say, I do not know anything about it! I am a man from heaven.-Why if I were a man for earth, a citizen here, merely looking at things around me, my heart would be broken. I would. not allow a bit of cruelty; I would not let a horse be overladen, life would be unendurable to me on account of the oppression that goes on on every side, were it not that I know I am delivered from it all-that I am a heavenly man.
Now the apostle says: Do not be ashamed of it. You must refuse the man that is here, for that man will not do at all; neither will the place do where that man is.-The Hebrews wanted to go back to earth. Well then, he says, if you do you will lose your priest. Christendom says, You must get your priest to go to heaven. No, says Hebrews, if you do not go to heaven first, you will not get your priest at all, for He is in heaven.
There is another thing that comes out in this chapter: " all they that are in Asia are turned away from me." Where the apostle had labored most, there they had all turned away from him. Why? because they had all dropped into Peter. Protestants respect Paul. They have just got St. Paul's in London to correct St. Peter's in Rome; justification by faith was recovered by them, but not a bit more. But a mere building to say that we refuse St. Peter's is a very small thing! What is at the bottom of it? It is just simply getting rid of heavenly truth. There is nothing Satan is so pleased at as this. If you want to escape suffering from Satan do not touch this truth. He will allow you to do any amount of earnest work you like; he will let you be earnest preachers, he will even take away opposition to the gospel, so long as you do not touch this.
Now God's thoughts are towards man, but He comes in in His own divine way to carry them out. God never takes a suggestion from man; He has His own mind and purpose to carry out towards me, and it is not what I say that will alter Him a bit; He has a distinct mind as to what He is going to do; He is a wise Father. You will find if you stand forth, in any little measure and say, I ignore the man here, I reckon him to be a thing gone, that in a moment you will have every one against you. Why, you say, if you saw a poor person would you not help him? It is not a question of that at all, I would, do what the Lord in my circumstances, if I am in right ones; would have done to that poor person, not what he himself suggests to me. The effort of Satan now-a-days is to occupy people with good works, seeing after the poor, and things of that kind. You may not be able to understand it, but, the more heavenly your work, the less man will be able to see it, the less recognizable it will be. I am as clear as I am about anything, that, if you will walk in this path, you must in a certain sense be prepared to go alone. So the apostle says of himself: Only the Lord “stood with me."
There is a Man-God has a Man, a heavenly Man-that will measure you all, and He is not here. So I refuse the man here, because I belong to the Man in heaven, and I maintain Him here. I say, and I do not want to offend any here, but the highest thing to do-above all gift-is to maintain the testimony.
Suppose a disorganized army-an army that has been thoroughly beaten by the enemy, and all the soldiers hiding away in one corner or another, their accoutrements thrown aside, their uniforms discarded. Now, if some few of these gather together to recover themselves, what will be the first thing their officer will say to them? Why, Appear in your uniform! What is the use of getting together without showing who you belong to?
They say, You will limit your opportunities of usefulness. So you will. You will be a marked man; you will be no man's man. But I cannot help that; I am prepared to limit my opportunities because I have a higher thing than any work to do, and that is to maintain the testimony of the Lord.-Well, but what will be the effect of your course?-That separation will be more marked, and that, in the end, it will bring out
the truth that really will affect souls. You will be a good soldier enduring hardness; a wrestler striving lawfully for the mastery; and a husbandman laboring, and waiting patiently for the fruit.
But I must say a word on the different kind of snares that you will meet with, for I do not propose you a path of ease; but I do propose you a path of power. God never proposes anything that there is not power to meet. If I have power I do not mind a difficulty. A man of power says, I have got a greater force than your's to bring against you, so that I can crush your power, though I do not underrate it at all. "God path not given us the spirit of fear, but of power."
Now a word on the different snares.—Satan is set upon turning us aside from that which is the highest thing. I see, all through Scripture, the different ways in which Satan tries to turn the people of God aside from the testimony.
The moment the path of faith began, that moment there was two classes of saints on the earth; Lot and Abraham for instance. One class took the ground of faith and maintained it; the other lost it; when it came to the greatest testimony they could not carry it out. Lot was a sad case; he does not seem to carry out anything; he was in the land, but looking to the earth.
For my own part I never_ press any man to take the ground that I take. I am not saying it is not a blessed place; indeed the greatest favor God can do a man, next to his own conversion, is to bring him into the place we are in. I find that without taking this place, there is no occasion for faith; people can walk on just godly, without in some cases meeting any opposition at all; but if people would take this place, they would be not tolerated.
The second instance I come to is Jacob. He is a recoverer he has to recover lost ground. He has gone back to the world-gone back to Syria, but he recovers the lost ground. If you are going back to the world-looking over green fields-then I say you have lost your calling. Jacob, I think, is a very interesting type of our position. At the end of the thirty-third of Genesis he has come back to the true standing, after the night of wrestling in which he found the power to take it; he has bought a field, and settled down at Shalom to rest. And this is the special snare of the brethren: they have learned the true standing, and the true power to maintain them there, and then comes the danger; you are not safe; take care that you do not sit down to rest a bit, and cease to be a stranger and a pilgrim. I see a great many brethren settling themselves quietly down there, and satisfying themselves by, saying, I have ' come to the right place, I am in the right standing. But I say, What is your worship like? It 'is your altar that shows me the nature of your standing. It is Jacob's altar that I judge, for it is that tells where he is. He recognizes the true standing, but in his altar he only recognizes God in connection with himself on the earth, as the center of his own blessing. He makes himself the center, it is El-elohe-Israel. The testimony was what he had got in the twenty-eighth chapter; there he had seen the ladder going up into heaven -he had seen God Himself there. When he gets back to Bethel, the whole scene changes-God becomes the center of his worship; he calls it El-Bethel.
The first altar is just looking for God to show His interest in you-in relation to where you are in the circumstances of this life. Most people are judging and praising God by the way that He deals with them in the circumstances of this life. They will tell you, God did this for me, and that for me. If I were to sit down to have a talk with them, and were to ask them to tell me something of what God has done for them, the only thing they would talk to me about would be the mercies they had received from Him here-not a word about what he has given them in Christ nothing but temporal things. When you look at the altar at Shalem, you find: the man has forgotten his calling. If you are looking at temporal things, then you have ignored the Man in heaven. Jacob forgot his calling.
Then he goes to Bethel. In connection with his going there he has two oaks; one where he buries the earrings—sometimes we see the earrings not buried!-and the other where he buries Deborah. And now when he comes up to the true point God engages him-it is El-Bethel he is occupied with God, and that is true worship.
Well, only two points more. One is the two and and a half tribes. I see there are some who will fight for me, but they will not go a step over Jordan themselves; they will not transport all they have-their family, their property-on to that ground. They will take in your periodicals, they will stand up for your truth, but they will not go in themselves.
I will not say more about that, but just turn to the second point. In the prophecy of Haggai the children of Israel had been hindered from building the temple; there was a cessation of the work in the house of God, whilst they were evidently most assiduous in doing their own work. They were in the right standing, but. God's work was not the thing most in their mind, but their own individual blessing. This is very difficult to deal with. I see bowed down souls seeking comfort, who say, Oh I am praying and reading, seeking the Lord!-No, I say, you are not seeking the Lord you are seeking joy, blessing for yourselves-not the Lord. “Seek the Lord, and his strength, seek his face evermore." You have left out the thing that is of interest to the Lord-the house of God. Seek that, “and from this day forth, I will bless you." It is not worldliness, but it is seeking earthly blessing.
And now where is your heart, and what is your thought and purpose in this day? There is one thing that addresses itself with distinctness to our heart, and that is: " Be not ashamed at the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner."