Daniel 4:26; Romans 1:20; Heb. 9:11,23,26.
It was the rule of the Heavens which
Nebuchadnezzar had to come to recognise, the thing to which the Lord brought him
in a very severe and drastic way and He said, "Thy kingdom shall be sure unto
thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule." And it is into
the content of the meaning of that great Divine statement that I feel the Lord
would lead us at this time. I am more conscious than ever that in order that we
may come to a spiritual understanding of this, we need the Holy Spirit to give
us very especial enablement. We are speaking of things that will not be
understood or grasped only by the Holy Spirit's very definite enablement. We are
going right back to those spiritual principles upon which God has hung
everything with reference to Himself - the Heavens ruling.
And the significance of that statement is just
this, that, while you may have presented in the Bible a system of things
pertaining unto God, with many phases and aspects, many details, many forms of
expression, those are not the things. They are only representations of heavenly,
Divine, spiritual laws and principles. The earthly things are made after the
pattern of things in the heavens, and the earthly things and the natural world
for the most part are not the realities. They are only reflections and
representations of reality which is heavenly and spiritual. That is why we
passed on to Hebrews where that is stated. There was a tabernacle, but it was
not the tabernacle. And all that was related to the tabernacle was but a
representation, a system of sensory expressions given to a great, heavenly
system, and it was the embodiment of spiritual laws and spiritual principles.
And the type was destined to pass to make room for the realities.
Here is this fact. There is a heavenly system
which is entirely spiritual, which cannot for one moment be apprehended by the
natural senses, but God has illustrated it by types and figures and various
means, never intending that men should take hold of and perpetuate that which is only a type, but that
they should come
to recognise that, lying behind all that, there is a spiritual system which God
wants them to enter into. We know this in a sense, but we do not recognise it
adequately, and because we do not know this adequately, Christendom is astray. It
has laid hold on representations and made them realities, and so made the
earthly thing an end, and failed to see the spiritual principles lying behind
everything.
If you are only occupied with the thing,
you will find sooner or later that that leads you nowhere. It cannot carry
you through, and it simply becomes an end in itself. But immediately you get the
spiritual principle back of that and are delivered from the mere thing in
itself, then you get right through into what is altogether beyond limit. And God
is governing by those spiritual laws. It is the heavenly system that is ordering
everything. It is what lies behind in the unseen with God that is final,
ultimate.
That being the case, we are able to understand
why everything that relates to what is utterly of God demands spiritual
revelation. It must and can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit, and that means
that there must be a spiritual state on the part of the individual. They must be
spiritual beings in the truest sense of their nature. That is the statement of
Paul with which we are so familiar. He says that the natural man (the soulical
man) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them;
they are foolishness unto him. "But he that is spiritual judgeth [discerneth]
all things."
Everything to the natural man which relates
utterly to God is a mystery and can only be apprehended by spiritual revelation
on the ground of the man himself having become a spiritual being. It is here you
see that mere cleverness is already ruled out. It does not stand here.
Intellectual development and power, as such, is set aside. Scholarship, as
such, has nothing to do with the things of the Spirit. The natural man cannot
come in here, good or bad. Human efficiency cannot come into this realm. The
natural man will count
on the things of nature, and so God must rule him out. The proud cannot enter
into the things of the Spirit. And yet we do very often come before man as if we
knew something. We have here on the earth certain advantages and abilities and
we display them before men. That is just the terrible danger of the present
system which makes something of man and puts man in a certain place and gives
him a position of power over crowds of people.
God beholdest the proud afar off, and when you
want the real essence of spiritual blessing you have to come to the one who has
been broken and shaken and ground to powder and who in himself is absolutely
nothing. And then God begins to pour of Himself through that one and He has got
what He wants. What God wants is spiritual people in this deepest sense, wholly
spiritual, that He might give revelation and show that the heavens do rule.
Again, this represents the great necessity for
everyone who is coming into the things of God essentially. What is the essence
of what is from God? That they should come into it from above. You can come to
things on the horizontal - through a certain amount of college preparation or
other preparation for it, and you can enter into something here on the earth
which is called the "ministry," or you can enter into Bible teaching on the
horizontal. You may know it and you may be able to cite it. You are into all the
doctrines of the Scripture. You come into it this way because you have "taken it
up." You can come into the church that way. You call it "joining the church,"
and when you come in that way, you are not in it at all. You are in a false
position entirely. The only way to come into the things which are especially of
God is that you have come in in the Spirit and by the Spirit, and by way of
revelation.
Then the "ministry" is no longer a matter of
churches and pulpits and congregations, etc. The ministry is not governed by
anything outward. It is that God has given you a revelation and you have a
fire burning in your bones. You have a message from God for the hour in which
you live. The heavens are ruling. You may come into the Word of God by cleverly
mentally apprehending it, but the Holy Spirit has something back of the
Scripture. It is not a wonderful presentation of the Bible to people. When that
is over they say, "That was a clever address"; but is there a mighty change? The dynamic impact
of God upon their
innermost being - what about that? What does it do with reference to their
conformity to the image of God's Son?
You come into a ministry from above, not
horizontally. No servant of God fulfils the full measure of the Divine purpose
except as he comes into it from above. And that represents something in the
nature of a terrific upheaval in one's life when you come in that way. This is
why imitation is so fruitless. The imitation of Christ is cold, there is no
dynamic in it. It is very beautiful and mystical but it does not change the very
sub-strata of your being and conform you to the image of His Son. You cannot put
things into Scriptural mould and have life. Everything that is of God has got to
be wrought out by the Holy Spirit.
There is a great need today that there should
be the rule of the Heavens. But the Holy Spirit has got to do it, and we have
got to come to recognise the fact that what we see in organised Christianity is
not it. The spiritual people of God are more and more feeling separated from
the old system of Christianity and churches and ecclesiastical systems. People
are recognising a deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long,
and there is a cry for spiritual reality. Many sermons are clever and full of
mental ability, but they are starvation to the spirit. There is all the
activity, but it is not spiritual life, and I believe the Lord is going to show
us the nature of the thing that is in the heavens. The thing that man has
brought down on to the earth and taken up and perpetuated is only at best a poor
imitation of things in the heavens, but in a very large realm it is a caricature
of heavenly things.
Man has taken hold of heavenly things and
brought them down to earth and made them earthly things. That is where things
all went wrong at the beginning. At the first, things were of the Spirit. The
people gathered in their homes or anywhere. It was not the place. It was not the
ministry. It was the Lord, and they were circled around Him. But then the day
came when they said, "We must have public buildings," and then the architecture
became a factor, and so things developed, and they became something on the earth
for men to take note of. They wanted man to be attracted, and that was the first
step in one of the greatest perils that has overtaken the church. For prestige, recognition,
the world to
be attracted, there is the result that you get the mixed multitudes in the Church.
If you can attach some big names to it, you can attract the people, and one of
the devil's greatest measures has been popularising the church. The pre-eminent
thing is lost, that the church and Christ is a mystery to the natural man and
that it is no use to expect the natural man to appreciate it. The church is
essentially a spiritual thing according to the mind of God. What really governs
everything is God's conception of things, not ours, and if we are going on
with the Lord there is going to be a whole system of change and we are going
more and more to view things from the heavenly standpoint. You have got to get
into the heavenly system to get heavenly results.
The Meaning of "Heavens"
In speaking of
the "rule of the heavens" the word "heavens" is uppermost in our thought and
we
want to understand something of the symbolic meaning of the heavens in the
Scripture. The first thing represented by the heavens in Scripture is
universality. If you will trace through you will always find they represent
universality - the all-pervading, all-encompassing, all-including universality of
the heavens. They bound everything. Everything that there is is inside the
heavens - no matter what planet you visit the heavens will be outside. It is a
universal principle in the very thought of the heavens. It is there that you
begin to understand the spiritual order.
That universality is bound up with the Lord
Jesus and the Lord Jesus is bound up with it. He is the heavenly One, the
heavenly Man, the heavenly Lord. How constantly was He re-emphasising that fact
on earth - "I came out from heaven" - "you are of the earth, I am from heaven,"
and the use of the word "heaven" or "heavens" by His lips is full of
tremendous significance because He is the representative One of all that
pertains unto God. This principle represents that which pertains unto God as
absolutely universal.
The first chapter of Colossians reveals the
wondrous universality of the Lord Jesus swooping back to the times of eternity,
bringing Him on to the time of creation - "by Him were all things created" and "of Him and through
Him and unto Him are all things" - sweeping the ages in His
Person and leading you on to the timelessness of eternity. The Person of our Lord
Jesus revealed in that one chapter is absolutely universal - all ages, all realms;
and Ephesians sees Him as above all heavens. The universality of the Lord
Jesus Christ is the thought and purpose and intent of God the Father. He, then,
is the inclusive representation of all that is of God, and whenever you come
into what is of God spiritually you immediately come into what is absolutely
universal.
Of course, here is the explanation of the
Cross of our Lord Jesus and the crucifixion of the old man and all that is
related thereto. The explanation is just this, that that cross represents the
bringing to an end, or winding up of what is less than God intended. For things
were pulled down to a lower level than God intended. There came in divisions,
alienation, circumscribing of man and of things, limiting God and His purpose
for man in the world, and the Cross represents the undoing of all that. The
resurrection speaks of emancipation into the limitless - into the universal. In
the Person of our Lord Jesus it meant He was no longer being bound to those few
miles of Syrian soil, time was no longer a factor nor was geography a factor,
distance did not come in. The resurrection represents universality because it
brings you into spiritual realities - delivered from the flesh and brought into
the spirit, delivered from what is of man and brought into what is of God. We
may not be caught up in the body like Philip, but there is a universality about
our new-creation life and about our ministry. We have lost every form of
limitation. Though we may be at this place tonight we are not bound thereby - we
can touch every corner of the earth by prayer. We are now set free and brought
into the kingdom of heaven's emancipation on resurrection ground. Under the
anointing of the Spirit we are brought into the universality of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That is the explanation of the Cross.
Here the whole question of sonship comes
into view. Sonship is always related to the
resurrection. In the case of the Lord Jesus
He was especially designated the Son of God
on the ground of resurrection. This does not
mean He was not the Son of God before.
Sonship comes in on that ground. This is
typified in the Jordan - the Father's voice
attested Him the Son on typical resurrection ground. "Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten Thee" - bound up with the work of the Cross.
What is sonship? It is
absolutely universal. If you take up Colossians 1 you will see that sonship is
timeless. It is related to resurrection, for resurrection is coming out into
the timeless and the coming in of timeless life - life that is the life of the
ages. That is resurrection life and with it comes sonship which is timeless.
You will notice in Ephesians you are taken back before times eternal by way of
the Cross and shown that before this world was, God had us in view. Romans says
the same, and with the revelation of the eternal mind and thought and
purpose of God it seems we were there in His thought before the world was. We
were chosen of Him - "For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son." We have been raised
together with Him, "and you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." In
connection with that the eternity of sonship comes into view - foreknowledge and
predestination. Sonship is not merely eternal, it is universal - not
merely a thing of this earth but in the heavens. We are now partakers of
the
spirit of sonship, "Abba Father."
Notice the universality of the birth of our
Lord - every universal element enters into His birth. You have the heavens
coming in there.
When you come into sonship you come back into the place where
God intended man to be originally at the centre of His universe with everything
gathered around
Him. He was determined in the purpose of God to have dominion over the
works of his hands. That will be the end when that one new man - "the church
which is His body" is perfected - glorified. All things governed through
the church, and everyone who comes into sonship comes into sonship
universally. It is a wonderful thing to be made a son - much more than having
sins forgiven and being saved from hell. There should be an adequate background
to our preaching vocation. Saving from hell is only the first minor step in
the great eternal sweep of God's purposes concerning man. Sonship embraces
eternity - all ages. "Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." Sonship is
timeless and universal because sonship is spiritual.
There is nothing merely local in the heavens
and the things which belong to the heavenly spiritual system. Everything here
according to God has a universal connection according to the thought of God and
we must see the universality of everything that is of God.
Paul is a great example. He was peculiarly
related to the heavens. When on the road to Damascus the heavens opened and he
heard the voice of the Lord. Later he again had heavenly revelation; then
again he was caught up into the third heaven, and how much he has to say about
the heavenlies! He was a wonderful example of emancipation from the
limitations of earth.
Take him nationally. If this were the only
thing it would be a miracle of miracles. Here is that rabid Jew and Judaiser - and
there is no more radical a fundamentalist on earth today. See what he will do
for Jewish tradition and interest. He stands at nothing and flings to the wind
every fine sensibility. He had received authority to cast into prison all who
were of this Way, men or women, there is no fine feeling - he is an utter radical.
Here is a young man whose face has been seen to look up into heavenly glory and
from his lips were heard the words, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of
Man standing at the right hand of God," but Saul of Tarsus crushed down all that
because of his Jewish blood. He was a man like that, but see him afterward an
apostle to the Gentiles. See him withstanding Peter because he went in to eat
and drink with the Gentiles, but when the Jews were come down he withdrew
himself - "I withstood him to the face..." This is the man who will write about
the church. It is a heavenly revelation,
nothing less, that will change a man like this. It was he who later wrote "where
there can be neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female..." where nothing that
is of earth has any place. Yet today there are spiritual people still on that
low level - there has been no loss of earthly distinctions, no vision of one Body.
You and I are not British and other nationalities - we are citizens of heaven
and you are not knowing me after the flesh but after the spirit. If there is
that then there is one spirit-sonship. We find our common ground there. Unity
of the Spirit is oneness of the Spirit - that is universality - the heavens are
ruling. From God's standpoint they do rule.
This is what brought the Corinthians so much
trouble, "every one of you saith, I am of Paul: and I of Apollo: and I of Cephas," limiting a choice of
men whom they preferred. Because they were
circling around men Paul wrote, "I cannot write unto you as unto
spiritual but unto carnal." This is a working in of a mighty principle, and when those things come
in the Lord goes out.
Paul in every other way represented the rule of
the heavens ministerially. He had become the embodiment of the principle of
the heavens so far as nations were concerned. Nations no longer existed for
him as such - that out of all nations should be formed the one Body, so his
ministry was a heavenly one - a ministry from the heavens. It is a tremendous
mark of his transcendency, of what is heavenly, that his universal writings come
out of such circumstances as the prison, chains, Roman Court, and yet the most
common expression of those days was "in the heavenlies." He was ministering
universally while naturally in limitation. He had said, "henceforth know we
no man after the flesh." "Though the more I love the less I be loved." This man has transcended the things which are
of man. The love he had poured out for the Corinthians, and yet in that
letter Paul quotes things that were said about him - about his personal
appearance - by them. Paul was above earthly feelings - the heavens ruled. Get
outside of that which is petty and small and into the universal. We see a real
example of sonship in the man who wrote so much about it. Read Romans 8 and the Epistle to the Galatians and
see how sonship means absolute emancipation and
freedom from all earthly limitations of man - his mind, his thought, his judgments,
his attitudes, his appraisements. He has been set free by the Son, and whom the
Son makes free is free indeed.
The new man is being renewed after the image of
Him who created him. The image is universally embracing. Look at the Lord Jesus.
See the universality of His birth, His baptism, His death. The celebration of
the Lord's death has been made largely a matter of
a ceremonial ordinance. But there is one Body eternally conceived of God
gathered out of all nations and gathered into the universality of eternity. God
meant that the gathering around His table be clothed with what is of heaven and
should be a living testimony. There is all the difference in the world between a
ceremony and having a celebration of a living thing. The heavens do rule. The
Lord wants to recover the spiritual meaning of these things.