"Then was
Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted of the devil... Again, the devil taketh him unto
an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the
kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said
unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt
fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him...
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt
thou serve" (Matt. 4:1,8-10).
"Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from
the evil one. For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory, for ever" (Matt. 6:13).
"For not unto angels did he subject the world to
come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified,
saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the
son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a
little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with
glory and honour, And didst set him over the works of thy
hands: Thou didst put all things in subjection under his
feet. For in that he subjected all things unto him, he
left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we see
not yet all things subjected to him. But we behold him
who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even
Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with
glory and honour, that by the grace of God he should
taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom
are all things, and through whom are all things, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of
their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb.
2:5-10).
This passage in the
letter to the Hebrews fits very truly into the other
passages read from Matthew. In chapter 4 of Matthew, we
see the last Adam, the second Man, entering upon the
field of trial at the hands of the Evil One, and being
tempted on the same principle as the first Adam, namely,
that of having things in Himself and for Himself, and of
Himself, instead of having them in relation to God on a
basis of faith and dependence. In this record, the last
Adam, the second Man, triumphed where the first failed;
holding everything into God, and having nothing save as
in God. His declaration "Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" reveals Him
as recognizing and standing for the rights of God.
Now, when we pass on to
chapter 6 of Matthew, the Lord has His own near Him, and
He instructs them in the matter of prayer. At the end of
that which is not a form of prayer to be repeated
continually, but a gathering up of principles of prayer,
He introduces exactly the same factors as are found in
chapter 4. There is the Evil One, there is the testing or
trying at the hands of the Evil One, and there is the
acknowledgment of all things as being in God -
"Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory." As we said in our previous meditation, by
such words and spiritual principles there enunciated, the
Lord Jesus puts His own people, His Church, into the
position of standing against the Evil One, against his
kingdom, his power, his glory and of repudiating all
that, and, on the other hand, holding to the Father, His
kingdom, His power, His glory, and testifying thereto.
The point of our message is that this is what the Church
is called for - to stand in that gap on the one hand, all
the time repudiating certain claims which, with
ostentation and demonstration, are constantly being
asserted by the Evil One, and, on the other hand,
declaring and holding to what is God's rightful position
and what belongs to Him - the kingdom, the power, the
glory. This position, as we have said, is constantly
raising issues in our own lives and they become the one
big cumulative issue of the Church's vocation.
The
Position of a Church Governed by the Holy Spirit
There are two or three
things that should help us as we recognize that. The
first is this - the position in which the Church will be
found when it is governed by the Holy Spirit. There are a
good many ideas as to what such a life or church will be.
Many of them are right, many of them are doubtful, but
this one is perfectly clear.
1.
Standing in the Gap
"Then was Jesus
led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of
the devil."
A life or church which
is governed and directed by the Holy Spirit, will be led
into the breach where the testimony of God's rights,
God's honour, God's glory, is the main issue in view.
That is most certainly a mark of the Holy Spirit's
government. Under the Holy Spirit's direction, such a
position is inevitable. That may comfort us in all our
affliction. Satan would like very often to make of our
affliction, of our suffering, a ground of accusation: to
insinuate that, because of all this having come upon us,
we must be wrong; the Lord must be against us, or at
least have reservations about us - things cannot be as
they ought to be, whereas the truth is just the opposite.
Look at God's own Son in the wilderness and see Him alone
and in need and pressed by the enemy, and doubtless
suffering in soul and weak in body, and know that this is
a situation created by the Holy Ghost for a testimony,
for the glory of God, for the kingdom of God, for the
power of God. So it is a great thing, and a glorious
thing, if we did but recognize it, to be put into the
position where that testimony hangs, as it were, upon us,
in a day of fierce and terrible assaults from the enemy.
Such is a Holy Spirit-led church.
2.
Maintaining the Spirituality of the Kingdom
The next thing, which
runs closely in accord with it, is this: a life or people
governed and directed by the Holy Spirit will come to the
place where the kingdom, the power and the glory are
essentially spiritual. That is a challenge. The Church
has lost its real, powerful, effective testimony because
it has sought a temporal, seen, tangible kingdom, power,
and glory, and Satan has triumphed along that line. As he
sought to triumph with Christ, so he has sought to
triumph with the Church, and, in a great degree, has
triumphed by bringing the Church into the realm where
present kingdom, present power, present glory, is the
thing sought after, reached unto, accepted, whereas the
true kingdom, power and glory is spiritual, not temporal;
is heavenly not earthly; is manifested not amongst men as
Divine demonstrations, but manifested in the spiritual
realm back of men and can only really be appraised,
appreciated, recognized there.
See the example in the
Lord Jesus in the wilderness. These chapters in Matthew
all have to do with the kingdom. The kingdom was with
Him; the power was with Him; the glory was with Him.
"We beheld his glory", said another writer,
"glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full
of grace and truth" (John 1:14), and that is not the
kind of glory that men appreciate as on this earth as we
see today. The glory that they are flaunting before the
eyes of the world has nothing of grace and truth about
it. It is another kind of glory that belongs to the Lord
Jesus, just the opposite of this world's glory; it is
full of grace and truth, and cannot be appreciated as
amongst men of fleshly mind, worldly mentality. The
Church must come into that place where, like its Head in
the wilderness, it is stripped of everything that man
calls a kingdom and power and glory, yet nevertheless
demonstrates a kingdom and power and glory which is
superior, though not capable of being appreciated by the
natural mind. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink.
Satan said, "Command that these stones become
bread". The word is, "The kingdom of God is not
meat and drink" (Rom. 14:17). The power is not that
by which you demonstrate fleshly might over man. It is
that by which the spiritual forces are dethroned and
upset, and so the glory is also spiritual. The kingdom,
the power and the glory were with Him, but it was not in
manifestation, it was hidden. All the issues were with
Him, but in such a realm and in such a way as to give no
gratification to the natural life at all. Satan was out
to get Him to gratify His soul, His natural life, His
humanity as such, and He was refusing to move on that
plane, in that realm, and maintained His heavenly
relationship with His Father, and it was there that the
kingdom came, and the power and the glory were felt.
Now you see the
principles. The Church will come into the same position
and state as the Lord Jesus came into because of the
essentially corporate nature of this thing. That is one
reason why we have read Hebrews 2. There you have the
uniting.
"For it became
him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the
author of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For
both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are
all of one."
That leads you back to
this - What is man, that thou are mindful of him? Or the
son of man, that thou makest mention of him? In relation
to what? - the subjecting of "the world to come,
whereof we speak". We are speaking not unto angels
but to man, but we see not man collectively in that
Divinely appointed and designed position yet. But we see
the Man in Whom all the others will be found, we see Him
there, and so He goes before and they follow on. They
come into the same position as He was led into, to the
same end - the kingdom, the power and the glory, with Him
and in Him.
3.
Attesting the Accomplished Triumph of Christ
There is, however, a
third thing which has to qualify that somewhat. It is
this - that we are not doing what He did. There is a
difference between Matthew 4 and Matthew 6. In Matthew 4
He fought the fight through and, so far as the foundation
of the kingdom, the power, and the glory were concerned,
it was a settled matter when He emerged from the
wilderness. The victory was in His possession. Of course,
the fulness of it was carried forward to the Cross and
all accomplished there; but here as an initial, basic
encounter with the enemy, He emerged in the power of the
Spirit as Victor, and the thing was done. It was a
settled issue, perhaps we should say potentially, for on
the same things there were to be many more battles in His
life; nevertheless, potentially the thing was settled.
When you come to
Chapter 6, where we are brought in, it is not our being
put into the position to fight that battle to a victory,
and we must be very careful lest the enemy should gain a
tremendous advantage by our having a mentality that the
thing is not settled. You have to be careful here,
because the enemy is always trying to get us into a
position where the issue is not a settled one. If he can
get any weakness in this matter, you may take it that he
is going to win that battle. In Chapter 6 the Church is
put into the place to stand not into something that is
now being fought out as an issue, but into something that
is very positive. "Thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory", not - Thine is going to be,
will be, when the battle is over. You see, this is a Book
of spiritual laws. All this is opened fully in the later
parts of the New Testament. So here the Church is put
into a position as on its knees in battle in the presence
of the assailing Evil One, and its position is that of
attestation, declaration, repudiation. In effect it is a
repudiation - 'His is not the kingdom, and the power, and
the glory. Thine is...' and before ever you can win in
the assault of the enemy, you have to be settled upon the
fact that already that issue has been won, and that
position established.
The
Church's Vocation
That forms the ground
of a good deal of valuable consideration. What is the
Church here for? The Church's primary object and purpose
in being here is to minister to the glory of God, That is
the first thing, whatever that means, however that is
made effective, that is the thing above everything else.
The Lord's people are here before and above everything
else to minister to the glory of God. You know how much
there is in that letter which has more to do with the
Church than any other letter in the New Testament - the
letter to the Ephesians - bearing upon this very thing.
You are so familiar with the words.
"...to the end
that we should be unto the praise of his glory"
(1:12).
"...the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an
earnest of our inheritance, unto the redemption of
God's own possession, unto the praise of his
glory" (1:14).
"...unto him be the glory in the church and in
Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and
ever" (3:21).
"...that he might present the church to himself
a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing" (5:27).
"A glorious
church"; "unto the praise of his glory".
Let me repeat. The primary object for which the Lord's
people are here and will be wherever they are through the
eternity to be, unto all ages for ever and ever, is to
minister to the glory of God. That means that we are here
to maintain a testimony to the glory of God.
There are many ways, I
should say countless ways, in which that is effected, in
which glory is brought to the Lord by us, in which we
minister to His glory, and it would be quite impossible
for me to get anywhere in trying to set down how the
glory of God is ministered to by the Church. But it is
the fact that we need to recognize, for it must govern
our minds and our attitude in all considerations. It has
to resolve itself into this. All things in our lives - in
our conduct, in our demeanour, in our manner, in our
speech, in our relationships, in our position, the
position that we take, our attitudes, our home life, our
business life - the thing which has to govern us is, Does
this minister to the glory of God? for that is the thing
for which I am here. If only we could settle this matter
finally, it would make a great deal of difference.
Let us ask ourselves,
beloved, one question, one all-embracing question. For
what am I on the earth? Why am I here? What interests
have I, what are my purposes, and what, above everything
else, is the thing which will have marked my
course through this life? Now, if I said quite simply
that our response to such a question would be, 'Lord, I
am here for You', you would all say Amen to that. 'I am
here on the earth for God.' But what do you mean by that?
It is the practical application of that that matters.
What do you mean by that? 'I am here for God.' You will
probably begin to work in your mind along the line of
various activities in which you would engage yourself,
all kinds of things that you would do for the Lord.
Beloved, in the course of our lives here as we really
come under the government of the Holy Spirit, where there
is real subjection to the Lord, we do arrive at a point
where it becomes quite clear to us that the primary thing
with the Lord is not what we do for Him, not the number
of things or the amount that we do for the Lord. It is
not a matter of things for the Lord at all. It is just
how much the Lord is being glorified in us and by us.
That is the thing that matters, and very often the Lord
thinks that a greater amount of ministry to His glory can
be fulfilled by our being laid aside from doing anything
than by any amount of activity. We discover that.
The question arises at
such a time, 'Oh, why this? Why am I not allowed to do
this? Why am I shut up, cut off? If only I could be
working for the Lord!' The Lord has taken it all away. He
closes us down and in, and then, if we wait long enough
and if we are true of heart and listen for the Lord, it
comes to us by the Spirit that what the Lord is after is
not so many things that we might do for Him, but to get
more glory to Himself in us. And who of us will dare to
say that God has not got as much, if not more, glory
through some who were never able to do very much for the
Lord outwardly, but glorified Him in affliction? It is
true, is it not? We have to recognize that to be here for
the Lord means not what we think will serve the Lord, but
what the Lord decides will be most for His glory; and our
attitude must be always that, if a thing really is for
the glory of God, although we may not be able to see it,
we are content, we accept it. It is very important. The
Church is here for that - to His glory. That must be the
all-governing consideration in everything.
That must
also determine for us the meaning of the Lord's dealings
with us. His dealings with us are sometimes very strange
to us, and, to our flesh, very hard. The way by which He
leads us is a painful way and a sorrowful way to our
flesh, but we have to judge of all the Lord's dealings
with us in the light of the amount of glory that He is
getting in the unseen realm where true spiritual values
can really be appraised. We can settle it, and let us do
so, that His dealings with us are positively in order
that we should be to the praise of His glory, we who
first trusted in God.
Now, that
very attitude, that 'mindedness', that devotion, settles
for ever the question of value to the Lord in us, in His
Body, and I believe, beloved, that that goes to the root
of what we have come to call 'the overcomer'. Look at the
Church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7 and the same church
addressed in the letter to the Ephesians, and listen to
what the Lord has to say to that church. "I know thy
works, and thy toil and patience (I know the things about
you, all the things that are true of you)... but... thou
didst leave thy first love... To him that
overcometh..." so that the overcomer there is
directly and immediately related to first love. What is
first love? We are not going to discuss that very fully,
but first love surely is gathered up into this, that
there is no other person in all the universe who can
compare with the one loved. No one else may see all that
magnificence, all that splendour, all that is so
wonderful to the lover, but he sees that and sees very
little else, and there is not another to compare with
that one. That one is everything, everything that is
good, everything that is right, everything that is
proper, everything that is splendid, and no one dare say
a word against that one. The heart, the life, is wrapped
up with that one entirely. The world, the horizon, is
bounded by that one. That is first love. '"Thou hast
left thy first love". Oh, yes, you are doing things!
Ah, but that essential, central, basic thing is no longer
there. It is no longer the case with you that you have
nothing else in all the universe and in all life as your
object of heart devotion but Myself. "Thou hast left
thy first love".'
That, I
think, is why the words in the Ephesian letter, Chapter
5, are brought in in relation to Christ and the Church -
"...that he might present the church to himself a
glorious church", and what is that? - "not
having spot or wrinkle or any such thing". Of
course, a spot means defilement - 'not having
defilement'. What is it to be without defilement?
"Unspotted from the world" - that is John's way
of putting it. In the Old Testament, when Israel had any
kind of voluntary fellowship with another nation, with a
heathen nation, that was called fornication. That was the
virgin daughter of Israel falling from her chastity. That
is the great cry of the prophets about Israel. They had
committed fornication, they had fallen from their purity.
How? Simply by indulging themselves in relation to the
other nations and the gods of the other nations. In the
New Testament, the whole thing is gathered up in one word
- the world. The world has brought in interests. There is
a reaching out to the world in some matter. The Lord does
not satisfy, fully and finally. The Lord is not
everything. We must have something to make up. We must
look over the hedge and satisfy some whim outside of the
Lord. That is being spotted by the world, and those that
follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth are the ones who
are not defiled. Do you remember that? It is just a
matter of the Lord being everything. That is being
unspotted, without spot, not having spot.
"Or
wrinkle." The Greek word is 'contraction' Of course
it is the same thing, and what is it? A mark of time! It
is the mark of age. Even a little child can have
wrinkles, and we say 'a little old woman'. That is not
the eternal, the ever-fresh life of the Lord. That is
something of time; something that is here, has left its
mark. The Church has come into the realm where it is
touched by the changing, the passing, the transient. It
has come down to earth and become part of that which is
perishing and decaying. "Not having...
wrinkle." A Church whose countenance, whose
complexion, is as fresh as the morning; to present a
Church like that. For such a Church to be presented, a
glorious Church, there must be this living only on the
Lord, out from the Lord, by the Lord's life, the Lord
satisfying us. It is a high level. But I do believe that
the more the Lord becomes our satisfaction and we come to
rest in the Lord, the fewer wrinkles we shall have. We
know in our hearts that as the Lord becomes more to us,
the less we worry and fret and are anxious, the more we
rest ourselves, and that is a good remedy for wrinkles!
The Lord help us to learn that lesson!
Now, the
glorious Church is that which is satisfied with the Lord,
and therefore is not tainted, spotted by contamination
with the world, and is not marked by that which is
perishing and decaying, belonging to time. Well, that is
first love. When first love is gone, the wrinkles come
and other considerations come. You know it is true in
human life. You begin to look elsewhere when first love
is gone. Interests are divided. The overcomer, then, is
one who has no divided interest, has no look elsewhere,
to whom the Lord is everything, full satisfaction to the
heart. "Thou hast left thy first love. Consider from
whence thou art fallen." That goes to the heart of
the overcomer question. It means simply that the church
or the overcomer has come back to the place for which it
was designed, to minister to the glory of God, and we can
never minister to the glory of God unless we are wholly
taken up with Him. That is what made the Lord Jesus the
chief Overcomer.
The
Practical Outworking of Ministering to the Glory of God
In
practical outworking, that ministering to the glory of
God, to His satisfaction, means, as I see it,
two things. It means the maintaining and preserving of a
full revelation of God here for His people. I think of
the Apostle Paul. Here is an overcomer indeed. Here is
one whose devotion to the Lord is without reservation.
Here is one who can say truly, on the ground of what he
really has practised, "I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord" (Phil. 3:8). Here is a representation of the
glorious Church without spot or wrinkle. Here is the
overcomer. But then, what was it that so characterised
the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul? Was it not
that he kept, maintained, a full revelation of the Lord
for the Lord's people? He was never content with half
truth or partial light and revelation. He would never
have said, 'Let us be content with the simplicities and
leave all the other things alone'. It is a wrong way of
putting it, of course, but what is meant by that is a
very mistaken apprehension of God's pleasure. What the
Lord wants is that His people should have a full
revelation of Himself, and we minister to the Lord's
glory and satisfaction when we are standing truly for all
that the Lord wants for His people. That is very
practical, and we will accept nothing less for ourselves
than all that the Lord wants, and we can accept nothing
less for the Lord's people than that. That is one thing
which marks ministering to the glory of God.
The other
thing is a standing for the full life of God's people,
and being deeply and terribly affected by the fact that
so many of them do not really know life in any fulness.
This is true, I am sure, of a great number of you. The
thing that affects you, distresses you, the thing that
constitutes the greatest problem for you and makes you
groan more than anything else is to see people who belong
to the Lord who are only half alive, or in whom there are
very few marks of life at all. Their Christian life,
their Christianity, is very largely one of forms, one of
tradition; that loving, throbbing going on with the Lord
where the mark is life and you can say, they are
alive unto God, is absent, and the absence of it
constitutes the greatest difficulties. You cannot get
anything across to them, you cannot help them. They have
no life basis upon which to build. It becomes a great and
terrible concern, and you know that an enemy hath done
this thing. This is the one who had the hold of death who
is affecting them evilly, and bringing their life into
bondage, and nullifying it as far as possible. To
minister to God's satisfaction is to have that concern
for the life of God's people and to be tremendously
exercised. "I am come that they might have life, and
that they might have it more abundantly", said the
Lord Jesus. Then the Church must be the vessel and
channel of that life, and must take up this question,
this interest of the Lord, that they might have it
abundantly. That will minister to the satisfaction of
God.
Now one
last word. For the Church to minister to the glory of God
and for the Church to be a glorious Church, the Church
must have a deep - I was going to say, a terrible - sense
of what the glory of God is. The glory of God, beloved,
is the holiness of God, the moral excellence and
perfection of God, the truth that God is, the purity that
God is. It is God's nature that is the glory of God, and
to minister to God's glory means that we must have a very
acute sense of God's holiness, so much so that anything
arising which is unholy in our midst immediately becomes
an agony to us, a real distress to us. It is like an evil
germ that has got into the body system, and is working
havoc and bringing about disorder and pain, and when a
germ like that, an evil germ, gets into anything like a
healthy human body, all the organism begins to work to
eject it, to overcome it. That is health. Health is the
power, the vitality, the energy in a body to overcome the
invasion of disease, of disease germs. What is true in
the physical must be true in the spiritual in the Body of
Christ. The mark of our health is that, when an evil
thing comes in amongst us and invades us, we in the
Spirit feel it, react to it, and will not have it, strive
to eject it, and make it a matter of real concern before
the Lord.
The church
at Corinth was in a bad state of spiritual health because
it did not take seriously the evils in its midst until
the Apostle wrote a severe letter, a very severe letter,
about things. They did not spontaneously react to the
things until they got this stirring up and energising and
stimulus from the Apostle. But a healthy church, like a
healthy body, will at once sense there is something
wrong, and recognise that something as being against the
glory of God, and will rise and say, 'This must not be!
This will destroy the very thing for which we exist. Our
vocation goes if this remains, for we are here to
minister to the glory of God, and that means satisfying
Him as to what He is in His essential nature'.
The Lord just speak His
word into our hearts.