OH 8:9{IT is of great moment in a day like this for us to have our eyes open to what is coming on the earth, if not already come. Man is now seeking to adorn himself with what is of Christ, and the issue will be, a terrible one. We find the unfolding of the mind of God as to the church on earth in His judgment of her state in Laodicea. We see Peter in Matt. 16 receive the greatest possible light for the time, and at the same moment refuse the cross-not to save man, but to end him: full of light one moment; Satan at the next-the most awful combination. And in the same way we see Ephesus with the candlestick in one chapter, and Laodicea spued out of Christ's mouth in the next. What degradation! What can be equal to such a fact? Why did He not spue it out when it was Thyatira? Because Thyatira had not light; and it is when the church has light, and does not live Christ, that she becomes an object of the utmost contempt to the Lord.
It is difficult to tell how evil is communicated from one to another, whether in physical or spiritual things. The most learned of men cannot tell you how a' pestilence is carried; and just so when there is a Satanic virus abroad, we cannot tell how it is communicated. But the word of God tells us how we may find the antidote for it. In Timothy we find two things given us as a safeguard by God. First, " my doctrine:" " Thou hast fully known my doctrine." And, second, " Thou hast known the holy scriptures." Christendom has certainly overlooked one of these; it has separated them from each other. The better part of Christendom insists upon the Scriptures as a great thing, but they have sacrificed " my doctrine." I earnestly commend this latter to you, which is now part of the Scriptures.
To present my thought more easily to the comprehension of all, I turn to John's gospel, because he always prepares the saint with moral power for Paul's teachings. In that way he is a wonderful one to assist us to understand Paul. You never find a man who has fairly got hold of Paul's doctrine that he has not also got hold of John's. Paul puts John's truth in the reverse order. For instance, Paul will speak of " the God and Father," while John gives us " Father and God." John's point is to set forth the Son of God on earth; Paul's to unite us to Christ in heaven.
Three things mark a person who has really learned Christ. Let me state them. The first is preservation-not simply from evil, but from all molestation. Second, separation. Third, service. Necessarily service Must come in last. Necessarily I get in John 10; sanctification or Separation in chapter 17. In chapter 9., where we get the story of the blind man, We find him at the end alone with the Lord, who says to him: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen, him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him "
Now I do not wish to grieve a single soul, but I must state this positive truth, that you do hot understand preservation or separation if you have not been first in this place of solitude with the Lord. Solitude is where there is "-no man."
There are two great solitudes for the soul. The first of these you find in chapter 8., the second in chapter 9. " Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst:" this, I say is the first solitude, and into it every believer must enter. One is here condemned in the presence of the Lord-repudiated, by oneself. The two chapters are properly one subject, light, but light with a double action. In the first I find out what I am myself in the presence of the light; in the second I become the possessor of the light. Chapter 8 closes with His saying, " Verily, verily, if any man keep my sayings, he shall never see death;" while chapter 9. opens with a man getting light. The One sent of God into this world comes so close to us that a man believing on Him as the One, gets light from Him: In the first of these solitudes you take sides against yourself; no man stands for you, and you cannot stand for yourself. As the thief said, " We indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our sins." And who do you find in that solitude? The Lord Jesus Christ. This is an intolerable wickedness, say they of the woman; let, us stone her. But being left alone, she finds herself in that solitude in the presence of the Lord and His word: " He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
But now comes out another thing, and one that is a source of intense agony to the poor heart, and that is, that you cannot find any among the best of men who comprehends or supports the work of Christ; all oppose it when it is insisted on. Every good class of humanity is searched in vain. I look round, and I find no response nor aid. The neighbors, the Pharisees, the Jews, the parents, all see that he has got something, but they will not accept the fact that it is entirely of Christ. What is the terrible thing that is abroad on the earth? I am shocked as I see it, but what is the fact? It is that God is acknowledged, but Christ is refused-Christ who has come to establish God in power and grace in this scene; all the punier of man is used to refuse the man of God a locus standi. You are forced to the conclusion that the same religious men who would not tolerate a wicked woman. will not tolerate Christ. So man's religion lies somewhere between these two points. They cannot tolerate immorality, and they cannot tolerate what is divine.
All classes are brought to bear upon him, first the neighbors, then the Pharisees, who, I believe, were the most religious people of the day; I do not look at them, as is the general way, as being hypocrites; and after these the Jews and his parents.' The point in this chapter is, that all society does not supply one in it who will acknowledge in this work or understand it. It is not like Pharaoh wanting his -dream explained; the effort is to deny its source; it is the authorship of it that is in question, and it is not understood. The end of it all is, that the man himself is cast out from among them all, and finds himself in a solitude.
Look at the solitude in which he is. It is not that of the wicked sinner, saying, I deserve to be cast out; I deserve to be in this solitude, where I cannot say a word for myself. But here is one with a new light that none can understand, who, on that very account, is cast out by all; and this is an inconceivable solitude. If you have never traveled into it you have never yet understood preservation or sanctification. I press it, for I believe multitudes have taken the place of preservation and sanctification who have never been in this place of solitude. Poets tell us of what it is to be Where there is not a living soul to be seen; and I say it is a wonderful place for the soul when it finds itself in a place deserted by all-left by the best of men-because it has got what none can understand.
And this is where I learn Paul's " doctrine." He saw " the light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun," and fell to the earth before the glory of that presence in which he found himself alone, and from that day forth he was to be " a minister and a witness of the things that he had seen." He always had to get up to that point, no matter where he started from; he brings everything up to it. If I had time I could show you how, whether it be Romans, Corinthians, Galatians-every one of the epistles-he must work them all up to this point. That was his " doctrine." And it is in this solitude that I reach it, when I am outside everything that is of man.
I daresay there are many here who have felt what a terrible thing it is to be alone, deserted, without a creature Bear, and yet not to have got Christ. I believe many a soul has not peace just because, whilst deserted of man in our own judgment, it has never got into the presence of Christ. All the arguments in the world will not help such a soul; arguments will only cast you out; what you need is Himself.
Let me here say one little word of criticism which every careful reader knows. " Cast out," in Chap. 9:34, and "put forth " in Chap. 10:4, are the same word in the original. There is a saying in law which perhaps may explain this: He who does a thing by another does it by himself. If one person does anything instead of another it is reckoned to be the same as if that person himself had done it. So here. The Lord had given to the man this light, and it was on account of the light that he was cast out, so that it really was the Lord Who had put him out.
The Lord says to him, "post thou believe on the Son of God? And he said, I believe, Lord. And he worshipped him. Can you not conceive the rapture of his soul then?-just as Paul, when he says,- " To God I am beside myself." What would make a man a fool among men is the experience of the one who has got into this solitude.
And the character of this solitude must be kept up, though I am now set amongst men. Hence my new condition is, " I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish; " and my preservation is, "Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." Here we get this wonderful action on the part of the Father, just as a father would put his child's hand into its mother's, as more likely to care for it in details. It is preservation. And this preservation can only be understood by one who has been in this great solitude, who understands what a child of light is.
Man has been found incompetent. A new order of things has been introduced, and the great point to insist upon is that the old is all outside. I will give you an example of it from Isaiah which may make things plainer. Here we get preservation, but it is consequent on the prophet having learned the two great deliverances that God had effected for him: one, deliverance from his enemies, ch. 37.; the other, that " all flesh is grass." Will you accept the fact that all flesh is grass? Will you take the consequences of that? and will you take Christ in glory instead of it? You are an educated man when you can take hold of the glory, and then fall back on the fact that all flesh is grass.
What a place we occupy! And one which is really of no use to us if the heart does not take possession of it, even though it be the true ground. I fear a number of saints attempt or assume to be on that ground, who are not there at all in power, and many a one who has come on to it has afterward to go through the second solitude, just because he has known nothing of it before. Every one must pass-through this great moral earthquake, but out of it they come back to live out here the truth they have learned for the first time. Too many souls are satisfied with having learned the first solitude, and so have never got into the second. A dog that is chained does not know that he is if he has never tried to get away. Just so is it with multitudes of souls. They have never pursued, and so they do not know what it is to attain. I do not believe there is a month or a day, that if you go on; there is not something for you to' surrender. There are shafts forming and weapons ready to strike you on every side. The fact is, you are not energetic enough to reach the prize, and that is the reason' you are not casting every weight aside. People think at first they can get on very well with different things, but when they get into the heat of the action they find there is one thing after another that is in their way, and that must be given up.
I do not wish to pain any one, but I want souls to see that they do not know nearly so much as they think, because, though they may have intelligence as to truth, they have not got that truth in practical power; they have not got divine energy to carry it out in their lives. I cannot conceive anything more blessed than to be really in His hand-to really know what this preservation is. Once we know- it we cannot possibly give it up for a fold. A fold is for a religious man. His hand is for the child of light, to whom the fold would be of no use.
I pass on now to the seventeenth chapter. Here the Lord says: " Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." There are two processes of sanctification: one moral, the other positional. The knowledge of the Father is the first. If I am assaulted I do not call for a policeman, because I have the Father to care for me; that is moral separation. We are left here to be for Christ, and being thus left I am to be separate; separate, because I belong to the generation of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
" Sanctify them through thy truth." I am separated from everything here; I do not look for anything here to be altered for me; I do not look to be made an object of consideration; I do not seek manifestations of divine favor on earth as a proof of the Father's love. See the Lord; He came to the fig-tree when He was hungry, and found no fruit on it; do you think He would have felt any more assured of His Father's love, if He had found fruit? If He do not show care for me down here, it is that He is doing some better thing for me. If a servant is left at any time apparently neglected, it is for some special blessing.
Then He says: " For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." The One who has met me in this inconceivable solitude, that One has gone Himself to heaven. He says: I have left this scene; and I am constrained to leave it too. I have got the Father, and I am not looking round to see what the world can do for me. I think a saint is not really happy who cannot say: If all the kings of the earth were to offer to -do something for me, they can do nothing. I have got a Father above who can give me 'anything and everything; and I am more afraid of getting a little too much of the world than of getting too little. What a blissful possession-what a store the heart gets from Christ, as it goes traveling through this scene! We have got in the present such a wonderful enjoyment of Christ, that we are not a bit regretting that we have left the world behind us.
(J. B. S.)