Keeping
in mind the passages that we have been considering
(Isaiah 6, 2 Chronicles 26, and John 12:37-41), let us
try to summarise what we have been saying so far.
GOD REQUIRES A PEOPLE OF
PURPOSE
We
have noted, firstly, that, in relation to His full
purpose, God is ever found seeking and taking up a people
in whom that purpose has been revealed, and whose life is
constituted according to it. God's saving work, and God's
conforming work, are governed by a purpose, which is
centred in His Son. Nothing that God does is, in His mind
and intention, something in itself, or an end in itself;
all is related to His clear and definite purpose. The
Bible throughout shows us that God is ever in quest of a
people who have seen what that purpose is, and who are
under His hand to be constituted according to that
purpose, to serve Him in it. That is the explanation of
the whole Bible, and that is what lies behind this
passage in the sixth chapter of Isaiah in particular.
I
hesitate to pass on from that, lest its real significance
and value should be missed. I used a phrase earlier which
I think touches this question quite directly and
seriously. I said that, unless Christians are governed by
this consciousness of purpose, in their being saved and
in God's dealings with them, there is lacking a
constituent, and there is a constitutional lack, in their
Christian life. We know that, in the physical realm, if a
person has a constitutional deficiency, he or she is
always open to, a prey to, the many maladies which are
floating about. They lack resistance to the germs that
are in the air. They are caught this way and that way;
they have no defences against these things; and so they
are the people that go down whenever there is something
about. It is a constitutional deficiency.
Now,
if there is a 'constitutional deficiency' like that in
the Christian life - whether it be of an individual or of
a company, or of the Church as a whole - that individual
or Church will be in a state of weakness; it will be
suffering from many maladies, and it will be caught by
all sorts of things that are floating around. How true
that is of many Christians - they seem to be caught by
anything that's going! First they go off on this line,
and then on that, and then they are caught by something
else. You never know what is the next thing that is going
to get them! They lack this central, unifying, defensive
thing - the knowledge and consciousness of THE purpose
of God concerning the Church, concerning His people. God
is ever looking for and seeking a people that He can take
up as an instrument in relation to His ultimate and full
purpose.
ONLY GOD'S PURPOSE CONFERS
SIGNIFICANCE
We
went on to say that it is not the person or the persons -
it is not the instrument, be it individual or collective,
AS SUCH - that are the primary factors.
There is sovereignty in this, and you never know what God
is going to take up. He defeats all our calculations and
judgments as to what He will use. It is not the vessel or
the instrument or the person or the place; it is the
purpose, the purpose of God's sovereign choosing, which
gives significance to anyone or anything. We are not
called because of what WE ARE. We are
'the called according to His purpose.'
Is
it not an impressive thing to see how many of the great
vessels that God used had a strange end to their
ministry?
Take
Moses: God buries him, and no man can find his place of
burial (Deut. 34:6). You can never put up a stone over
the grave of Moses and say anything about HIM - what
a great man he was. God just buried him.
What
of Isaiah? We are entirely dependent upon tradition as to
what happened to Isaiah. It is said by tradition that he
is the one referred to in Hebrews 11:37, as having been
"sawn asunder". But that is mere tradition; the
Bible tells us nothing about it.
Think
of Jeremiah. What a man Jeremiah was! While we have said
what we have about the vessels, nevertheless these men
did a great work, and suffered greatly, and took on a
very great significance, because of their function. But
Jeremiah - what a man! What about his end? Does anybody
know what happened to Jeremiah at the end? No, it is all
guesswork. No one knows. He may have died in Egypt with
the last company that went over there (Jer. 43:6,
44:1-30). But we don't know - he just disappears. How
strange of the Lord to let a man just go out like that!
What
about Paul? A great servant of the Lord - no doubt about
that; but, so far as the Bible is concerned, he is just
left in prison in Rome, and that is the end of the story.
Surely he was worthy of something more than that at the
end!
Do
you see the point? God is not building a memorial to the
name, to the instrument. Jeremiah - wherever he is, or
wherever he has gone, we don't know. But the Bible does
say this: "Now in the first year of Cyrus king of
Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of
Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the
spirit of Cyrus (2 Chron. 37:22; Ezra 1:1). It is the FUNCTION,
it is the PURPOSE, that God has laid hold of.
The man just sinks into the great vocation; it is that
that matters. And if the record leaves Paul in prison,
tradition may say much about his death, but there he is.
Ah! what about the purpose that he has served? God has
looked after that! After all, it is true that with all
these, and so many others, they are only known to us now
because of their service to the purpose of God. In a
certain sense, that is their immortality.
Yes:
significance is not attached to any name, person, or
instrumentality; it is only attached to God's purpose
concerning His Son. And you and I will take on value only
in the measure in which God's Son is truly served, and
comes into His place, by means of us.
GOD MEETS ALL NEEDS FOR HIS
PURPOSE
We
further went on to point out that God is faithful to His
purpose, and - given that there is no deliberate unbelief
or pride - He meets all the needs for the realisation of
His own purpose. That was the real meaning of this vision
that came to Isaiah. We showed in what a devastating
situation Isaiah, as a young man, found himself, at the
time of that vision. There was the tragedy of Uzziah;
there was the state of the people. Read those first
chapters of Isaiah's prophecies, and see what a state
existed. It was enough to put any young man off the
ministry - enough to be utterly disconcerting. It was
sufficient to bring complete despair, hopelessness; to
make him feel, 'Nothing is possible'.
But
then, God is not a God of circumstances, in this way; God
is the God of purpose. And so, because of the purpose
with which this man Isaiah was related, God came in with
the vision, the saving vision, and by it delivered him -
and what a vision it was! God meets the need of His own
purpose - provided, as I have said, that there are not
those things that always stay the hand of God -
deliberate unbelief, or pride. God can do nothing where
there is pride. But, given there is an openness of heart,
a purity of spirit, toward Himself, with all the tragedy,
with all the human weakness, with all our own failure,
God meets the need of the purpose, and works all things
for good in those who are called according thereto.
THE PURPOSE OFTEN INVOLVES
DISILLUSIONMENT
Further,
we pointed out that this ministry, this calling, this
function, concerning the purpose of God, is often fraught
with deep experiences of disillusionment, of
disappointment, and of breakdown, in the realms in which
we had great expectations and upon which we had set our
hopes. So it was with Isaiah over king Uzziah. Isaiah's
whole life had been bound up with Uzziah. God had blessed
him, God had used him; there is no doubt about it, the
Lord had been with king Uzziah; he had done a great work
for God. What a devastating thing it is to our hearts and
to our confidence, when we see something, or someone,
which has been so evidently and wonderfully raised up and
used and blessed of God, just coming to spiritual
tragedy. It makes us feel: 'Then, who can be saved? Who
can go through? Can we hope that we shall do better? Can
we hope that the thing with which our lives are bound up
will have a better end than that?' We feel there is
always the terrible possibility that it will go that way
with us, and with what we have given ourselves to.
There
will be disillusionments, there will be disappointments,
there will be heartbreak. But note - the thing that saved
Isaiah, in a day like that, was that God established a
relationship between him and something that was above it
all: "I saw the Lord, high and lifted up" - the
anchorage in Heaven. We never cease to wonder, do we, at
that end of the Apostle Paul. It constitutes a problem -
but it is a glorious problem. If ever there had been a
man poured out for God, it was Paul; if ever a man was
jealous for God's highest and fullest, he was; if ever a
man suffered in the interests of God's purpose, Paul did.
And now, at the last, the churches throughout Asia, who
owed their spiritual life to him, had turned away from
him; friends around him had left him; he sees his work
apparently falling to pieces. Your amazement is that the
man himself doesn't go to pieces. You think that if ever
a man ought to be in the slough of despond, really cast
down and under things, Paul ought to be. Here he is, a
lonely man, taken out of his lifework, shut up in prison;
converts and friends, and even fellow-labourers, turning
away from him - "Demas hath forsaken me", he
says. If ever a man ought to be down, he ought to be.
But
look - his link is with Heaven! He has seen 'the Lord
high and lifted up', and that has saved him in this
terrible hour. 'These things said Isaiah, because he saw
His glory...' Oh, that we might be so strongly and
clearly and positively related with the One in Heaven,
that all these things which could break our hearts, and
send us right down to the bottom, just do not have that
effect. We may have our dark hours - I have no doubt that
these men had their dark hours; we may have our times of
despondency. But - but - there is something that is more
than that. It is the One who is above - we have seen HIM.
EXPERIENCES RELATED TO THE
PURPOSE
Next,
such an instrument, related to the purpose, is brought
into experiences that definitely bear upon that purpose:
that is, they are constituted ACCORDING TO the
purpose of God. The purpose of God, in relation to His
Son, is that Christ shall ultimately fill all things, and
all things shall be summed up in Him. He is to be the
universal Lord, and what is true of Him,
characteristically, is to become true of the Church: it
is to take its character from Him, in order that, so
doing, it may be the very vessel and instrument of His
government in all the coming ages. If that is so, then a
very great deal has got to be done in us to make it
possible!
For
this is not just an official thing: it is not that God
just takes us up and puts us into an official position,
willy-nilly, as though it didn't matter what sort of
people we were. Oh, no - a lot has got to be done to
bring a people there. And so we find that in such
instruments, as we have them in the Word of God (and they
are only indicative of God's abiding methods and
principles), the thing to which they were called was
wrought into their very being. Isaiah meant this when he
said: "I and the children whom the Lord hath given
me are for signs and for wonders in Israel" (Is.
8:18). He had given his sons certain names, and those
names were descriptive of the very things that God was
doing. To Ezekiel, the Lord said: "Say, I am your
sign" (Ezek. 12:11). 'When you see God's dealings
with me, what God is doing in me, the way God is leading
me, then you will see what God is after.' That is an
essential thing for any instrument of God.
Let
me repeat: You cannot just go and retail Divine truths.
You may give good addresses, clever addresses, even
brilliant addresses, on Bible subjects; you may give very
impressive discourses on the Bible; and people may say
they enjoyed it - even go as far as to say that, for the
moment, they were helped by it. But you must remember
that that is not good enough for the Lord. What the Lord
is seeking to do is to create a CONSTITUTION. I do
not of course mean a system of laws and regulations, such
as when one speaks of the 'Constitution' of a nation. I
mean what we mean by 'our constitution': how we are made,
what we are made of; our make-up; the very substance of
our being. And God is seeking to make a constitution in a
people. Any instrument that He is to use must have that
constitution, and it has got to come right out of what
God has done in us. That explains a very great deal.
EVERY MEMBER AFFECTED
Perhaps
you may be thinking, 'How does all this apply to me? How
does it affect me? This seems to concern some ideal
instrument, perhaps some ideal people, for ministry; or
some visionary conception of a church like that. I'm a
very simple, ordinary individual: surely I, with a great
many more like myself, don't come into that?' Let me say
here, with very great emphasis, that such a vessel, such
an instrument, is not just made up of public speakers,
outstanding personalities, particular ministries and
ministers. If you gather with others for prayer, your
very coming together with others in that way, even if you
do not pray audibly, but are just there in the spirit of
prayer and cooperation, makes you as vital a part of that
purpose as any particular ministry.
Remember:
though there may be men who minister the Word, those whom
we point out as 'ministering servants of the Lord' - we
would call them 'the Lord's servants' - remember, they
will never fulfil their ministry unless you are behind
them in prayer. Paul was very, very sure about that: he
let us know quite definitely that even he (of course HE would not
have said anything like that - 'even I'; but we say,
'even he') could not have fulfilled his great calling,
his elect ministry, unless there had been praying people
behind him all the time. They were fulfilling the
ministry.
That
is only one aspect of the whole matter. In a corporate
thing - I do not mean an organized thing, but an organism
- every part matters; the whole is affected by the least
part. And so you are affecting this matter in some way.
Even if you are not functioning at all, you are affecting
the whole thing. We are called into something that
involves us in responsibility.
NEED FOR ABIDING
Let
us now go a further step in this summary. We are not
actually touching the record and the narrative; we are
drawing out the lessons. When we think of the tragedy of
Uzziah, we must recognise that the way of safety is the
way of abiding deeply in God - abiding under the heavenly
government. What a different story would have been told
about the end of Uzziah, if he had not taken things into
his own hands and sought to become something in himself;
if he had not presumed, or assumed, that God's blessing
and God's using of him gave him the personal right to
take hold of the things of God. But pride found a place
in his heart. Until he became 'strong', he was greatly
blessed; but then he became lifted up in heart, even
through the blessing of the Lord, and the story began to
change: it became tragedy in the place of glory. If only
we would abide in that place of utter dependence, utter
submission, where we are not on the throne, but the Lord
is, the story might end so differently; spiritual power
would remain to the end. How necessary it is for us to
keep in that place of abiding, in that place of deep
meekness and humility.
A CRITICAL EPOCH IN WORLD
HISTORY
Now,
with this summary before us, let us look at this vision:
because it is the vision, itself, that covers all that we
have said, and more.
"In
the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting
upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled
the temple. Above him stood the seraphim: each one had
six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain
he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one
cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah
of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the
foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of
him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke"
(Is. 6:1-4).
The
reference to the time factor is emphatic: "In the
year that king Uzziah died". Yes, it was a very,
very crucial and significant time. If we could grasp
this, we should have a new and wonderful opening up of
heavenly meaning. For the death of Uzziah was not merely
an incident or an event in the history of Israel: it took
place at a period when some of the greatest changes of
all time were taking place in this world. It may well be
that the present time goes beyond it, in this respect;
but that century, eight hundred years before Christ, was
the most critical century of the history of this world,
and especially in the history of the things of God. The
final departure of the glory - the FINAL DEPARTURE of
the glory from Jerusalem - was about to take place.
Jerusalem had been the place of the glory, the place of
His feet, the place of His government. Jerusalem had been
the seat of the Divine and heavenly operations. It was
there that the glory was, in the Temple. And now, the
glory was about to depart for ever from Jerusalem.
Shortly
after Uzziah's death, Rome was founded - the great power
which would eventually be the doom of Jerusalem and the
Jewish nation. When the glory goes, see what begins: Rome
is born. The government departs from Jerusalem. The
throne becomes empty, and has never been occupied again.
The priesthood, corrupted, has been dismissed; it has
never been there since. The glory, the throne, the
priesthood, all go at this time. Everything that was here
of that old system has now come, or is coming, to its
close. What a critical time this was! The temple
forsaken; the glory departed; the throne permanently
vacated; the priesthood corrupted and dismissed. "In
the year that king Uzziah died" - the time factor is
tremendous - "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up, and his train"- and that word is
the word for the High Priest's garment - His high
priestly garment 'fills the temple.'
THE HEAVENLY COUNTERPART
But
it is a heavenly temple; it is a heavenly throne; it is a
heavenly priesthood. We have leapt suddenly out of the
old dispensation into the time in which we live. John
understood all this when he said: 'These things said
Isaiah, because he saw His glory; and he spake of Him.'
We are in the day of the throne on high: "...far
above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion,
and every name..." (Eph. 1:21). We are in the day of the
heavenly priesthood: "He ever liveth to make
intercession" (Heb. 7:25). We are in the day of the
heavenly temple. And none of us would say that the
exchange has meant loss. It is tremendous gain. When
everything here has broken down; everything has proved a
failure and a disappointment and a tragedy; everything
here has gone: then that which abides for ever, a throne,
a priesthood, a house, a temple, comes into view. You
see, this brings us right over to the present time. This
vision is not a vision that belonged to a certain prophet
who lived eight hundred years before Christ; it is not
just a bit of history belonging to an age far back in the
distant past. This is something that is right up to date.
Jesus has fulfilled all this - He IS the
fulfilment of all this - the Throne, the Priesthood, the
spiritual House. Do you see? WE are in this
vision, or ought to be. And it ought to be more
than a vision: we ought to be in the reality of it. This
belongs to us, not to Isaiah; it is ours.
Is
it true? Well, is it true that the earthly ceased? That
the glory departed, the nation was scattered, the throne
was vacated, the priesthood ceased to be of any value? Is
it true? Of course it is true. Is it true that the
glorious heavenly counterpart of that has come in? - that
there is One upon the Throne, far above all? Is it true
that He is exercising a heavenly Priesthood on our
behalf? Is it true that there is a spiritual House?
"His train FILLED the temple." You see
what we are brought to - a tremendous spiritual reality.
It is an immense comfort and encouragement to know that,
when the earthly breaks down, the heavenly never
collapses. When there is everything of disappointment
down here, it goes on.
That
is why Paul survived his disappointments; that is why he
got through those last terrible days or months of his
imprisonment, with everything down here going to pieces -
why he got through triumphantly: because this vision of
Isaiah was a reality to him. The Throne was not empty;
the Priesthood was not set aside; the House was a
reality. Has it sometimes constituted for you a very real
problem: that here is a man, alone, cut off from his
life-work, the churches forsaking him, spiritual decline
setting in, things all going wrong, error and false
prophets creeping into the churches - and Paul gives us
that matchless presentation of the glorious Church, and
its unity and its oneness!? You are inclined to say, Paul
has surely, surely lost his reason; he is in the realm of
pure imagination and wishful thinking!
Oh,
no. This is of very great practical importance to you and
to me. Look at conditions in the Church today on this
earth. Look at it, if you dare! Is it not enough to make
one say, 'What nonsense to talk about this Church, as
presented in the Letter to the Ephesians! It is not being
practical, it is not being real, it is not facing facts!
The facts are these: divisions, and schisms, and
conflicts amongst Christians and Christian bodies, and
all this awful state amongst individual Christians. THESE
are the FACTS; Ephesians is fiction!' Ah,
but it was while facing that situation, and being alive
to it and knowing what was happening and what was coming,
that Paul wrote that letter. He was not mad, not
imagining things. He was not saying: 'This is how things
ought to be. They really are like this, but this is how
they ought to be'. No, he is saying: 'This is it.'
THE PURPOSE SECURED IN HEAVEN
I
don't know what has got to happen to us, but something
must happen to us, to get us to that position where we
refuse to accept things as they are down here, but hold
on to things as they are in the mind, intention and
purpose of God; where we see through to something else.
That is the real force of this vision. Everything is
secured - not down here, but up there. 'High and lifted
up' - it is secured up there. Do you ever have some
doubts about your own getting through, about your own
salvation? Whether spiritually you are going to win
through? Whether you will survive? Have you any questions
or doubts about that? Do you sometimes wonder whether you
will finish up out of things?
Well,
now, you will accept this about your salvation: that it
is secured in Heaven. Your salvation is secured in Christ
in Heaven, and is not therefore subject to conditions
down here. Why not believe that GOD'S WHOLE PURPOSE
is just as secure in Heaven, and not subject
to things down here? It is so easy to sing: 'God is
working His purpose out as year succeeds to year' - oh,
yes, we can sing it; but do we realise that this whole
purpose of God is secured in Heaven? That is what Paul
saw. It CANNOT be defeated, because God cannot
be. It cannot fail, because that Throne cannot be
vacated. It CANNOT break down, because that
Priesthood is an eternal priesthood, and will not cease.
"He EVER liveth" - that is the point;
the emphasis is upon the 'ever' - "He EVER liveth
to make intercession". "He is able to save to
the uttermost" - and that word means, as you know,
'right on to the end'.
If
that is true about our salvation, because it is secured
up there, 'high and lifted up', it is true about the
purpose, His purpose. It is secured - not in Uzziah,
thank God. It is secured in Jesus Christ. It is not
secured in an earthly temple at Jerusalem; it is secured
in a heavenly temple, a spiritual house - 'in the
heavenlies, in Christ Jesus.'
I
hope that you are beginning to see - that the vision is
becoming yours. This is our vision, not Isaiah's vision.
It is carried right over to us: 'He spake of HIM'. And
all this - all the ministry of Isaiah, and of Paul, was
'because they saw His glory'. Oh, that it might be true
in our case - their persistence, their going on, their
surviving, their triumphing, their effectual witness,
their ministry, their service! These were the fruits, the
effects, of seeing His glory. Would that we might be
brought again, in a new way, to see the Exalted Lord -
the EXALTED Lord; that the effects of that might
come upon us as they did upon Isaiah.