In the prophecies of Jeremiah,
chapter 17, and verse 12: "A
glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place
of our sanctuary".
We shall have much to say about those words as we go on. For
the time being, I want to range alongside of them two other
passages. One in the first chapter of Jeremiah's prophecies,
at the end of verse 5: "I have appointed thee a prophet unto
the nations", the other in the first chapter of the book of
the Acts, verse 8: "Ye shall receive power, when the Holy
Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be My witnesses both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the
uttermost part of the earth".
"I have appointed thee a prophet to the nations", "unto the uttermost part of the earth". A
very brief contemplation of the context of those two passages
will reveal that they have many things in common, and amongst
them some things of very great, indeed of the greatest,
importance.
The one inclusive thing which they have in common, as lies
right on the surface, is that here is a ministry,
God-appointed and heaven-governed unto all the nations. That
was Jeremiah's calling, or shall we say, the calling of the
prophet; that was the church's calling and ordination - the
ministry of the church. There are, alongside of that inclusive
fact, or contained in it, these other features. Each of these,
both in the case of the prophet and of the church, was linked
with that past eternal intention of God. The present, in each
case, was seen to be bound up with something that had always
been in God's intention. The complete statement in verse 5 of
chapter 1 of Jeremiah is a tremendously suggestive,
significant statement, that before Jeremiah ever had a being
in this world, the Lord knew him, called him, formed him, and
appointed him. So that his very being
was linked with something before time. That is perfectly true
of the church, as we so well know. The present, in the
prophetic ministry, in the church's vocation, thrown back into
those eternal thoughts of God, that one eternal intention.
In the second place, in each case, God is seen acting again,
because a called vessel had failed Him. How true that was in
the case of the prophetic, or the prophet's ministry! The
vessel which God had called, with which He had taken such
infinite pains, had failed Him in this intention of His. We
know how true that was in the time of the great crisis out of
which the church came, was born: one called vessel and nation
had completely failed. The Lord was reacting - in
the case of Jeremiah and in the case of the church - in the way of
recovering a vessel, or constituting a vessel in relation to
the failure that had been and was.
In the third place, each of these - Jeremiah representatively
as a prophetic ministry, and the church - was an embodiment of
God's sovereign ways of working in relation to His intention.
It is fascinating, it is
tremendously instructive and helpful to study, to observe
God's sovereign ways with Jeremiah as His servant, and how
those ways with him set forth God's principles of service at
all times. It is on this wise that God works,
and if we want to know what true service to God is,
we have to look into the life of Jeremiah and others, and not
only by what they say, but to see God's handling of them,
God's dealing with them, God's relationship to them. And there
we learn the way and the laws of the service of God.
I am making these statements, they have got to be explained
as we go on. This is the foundation.
What was true of the ministry of the prophets, represented so
largely by Jeremiah (whom I consider the greatest of the
prophets) was true and is true of the church. The church is
the embodiment of God's principles of service; its very
history shows how God works, on what lines God
works. It's like that. A
prophet "unto the nations"; a ministry "unto the uttermost
parts of the earth", is constituted on certain, quite clearly
defined laws. And God is the One who
makes those laws, and applies them, and keeps the history of
every chosen vessel to those laws. Here with Jeremiah, as with
the church, we have the spiritual history of a chosen vessel.
And if you were to look into it, you
would see that this is true to type; the history of every
chosen vessel is more or less the repetition of the history of
these vessels of old. The vessel embodies something that is
spiritual history with God. It is not just objective. What I
am trying to say is that the vessel is not just picked up and
used and spoken through, but a history is wrought in
that vessel; its very constitution is a spiritual experience
out of which its ministry comes. That is a very important
thing ever to remember. No vessel chosen of God will be
allowed for long, which is in
His hands, to get outside of the realm of reality, and
often it is terrible reality. God is doing something
before He is saying something, and all the saying
comes out of His doing.
Now the focal point of all this is fellowship with God.
Fellowship with God
That
is a deep, and inexhaustible matter. Fellowship with God. A
very great deal of weakness, confusion and failure is
traceable to one basic defect: it is failure to recognise the
real nature of God's
call to any life, to any instrument. The real nature
of God's call to you, to me, either individually or
collectively, is a call into fellowship with Himself. We have
other ideas about what it is to be a Christian, to "come to
the Lord", however we may put it, but the fundamental thing
about any call of God to any life, to any instrument, His
choice of any vessel, the fundamental factor is this upon
which everything else is based where He is concerned: fellowship with Himself. The Bible contains a great many
things, as you no doubt realise.
But it could be truly said that the whole
Bible is gathered into this one thing: from
the creation of man, right the way through to the end, the one
thing that governs everything in the Bible is God seeking
to have man, His
creation, on the basis of fellowship with Himself. What
a lot is gathered into that; how many aspects there are of
that, but that is the one thing: the Bible is all about that.
And if Christianity is the spiritual sum of the Bible, as
undoubtedly it is, then Christianity rests upon this one thing
- fellowship with God. Fellowship with God.
We are called (and this is a statement of Scripture) into the
fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ. And the Son has made it
unmistakeably clear, indeed He has taken pains to make it clear,
that the relationship between Himself and His Father, which
was a relationship of
perfect fellowship, is the relationship that He
desires to exist between His own, Himself and the Father -
"they in us"; "we in them..."; "as I in
the Father... so they...". That is the sum and the centre of true
Christianity - it is fellowship with God. Perhaps it is
necessary to step back to what was said immediately before
that. A great deal of confusion, and weakness, and failure is
due to our not recognising that that is what it's
all about. Why are we Christians? Why do we
belong to the Lord? What does it all mean? What is it
all about? The answer dear friend, and you can apply it to
every detail and you will find it fits, the answer is fellowship with God. That
is what He is working at, and through that He does all His
work.
So that the closer, the fuller the fellowship, the better and
the greater the service that God calls true service. You can
see, by only a superficial knowledge of the life of the
prophets, who indeed were the great servants of God, that God
did take infinite pains to see that these men were not just
mechanical contrivances to serve some end of His, but they
were men whose lives were brought into the deepest fellowship
with God, and out of that all their service came. That
explains the New Testament. Listen: we should not have ninety
percent of the New Testament if that were not true! Ninety
percent - and one could press it beyond that -
ninety percent of the New Testament bears down upon this one
thing: God seeking fellowship on the part of His church with
Himself, and that of course includes the individual believer.
Well, that is what the Bible is about, and that is what the
New Testament, in particular, is about.
But further, it is a fellowship call in relation to vocation.
It is not, only in a secondary way,
a call to salvation; it is a call to salvation, but that is by
the way, shall we say. But we make
everything of salvation in our interpretation of Christianity.
Salvation of course is essential; nothing can be apart from
it. But God's call, God's call while through salvation
essentially, is not ultimately the call to salvation; it is to
vocation. It is a call according to purpose. And the
vocation, to go back again, is only possible by fellowship. It
is a fellowship vocation - a vocation springing out of
fellowship with God.
Perhaps I must pause to say this: perhaps you, from time to
time, or even now, could argue back on what I have said. Many
there are who are doing a lot of good work for God; indeed
there is a tremendous amount of what is called Christian work
or "service", and it is possible to be carried away with the
service, with the work. But listen: if those concerned are
really in the hands of the Lord, if their lives have really
been surrendered to the Lord and are under the government of
the Holy Spirit, you will find this: that God is very, very,
careful about things in the life of which He does not approve;
and you don't get away with it. If there is something there
that the Lord does not agree with, you come up against it; it
is possible for your whole life to be held up; you have a bad
time. The Lord is working in you to will and to do
for His good pleasure that which is well-pleasing in His
sight. He is working in; you are not some
thing doing a lot of things; you are a sphere in
which God is at work doing things, and being very, very
painstaking, careful and meticulous. And this involves a considerable amount of
exercise, and sometimes pain and suffering in our relationship
with the Lord, because of this one thing:
vocation. Real vocation, real service, springs out of
a fellowship of life and character with God. There is no true
fellowship with God only on the basis of character, is there?
Our characters are all contrary to God -
persistently, habitually - there is no
fellowship with God; it breaks down at once. That's why, if something goes wrong with us,
everything is brought to a standstill until we have got to the
Lord to get it right. That's simple
Christian life and experience.
Now let us take
our steps again: the basis of everything is fellowship with
God. The fellowship with God is a vocation fellowship: it has
a purpose in view, a work to be done, a service to be
fulfilled. Thirdly, that vocation relates to the nations. It
relates to the nations. Everyone
called of God into fellowship with God is called into a
vocation, and that vocation is a nation's vocation. The
horizon of your life, when you are brought into fellowship
with God's Son, can never be small, little, limited, local. It
immediately reaches out; you become aware of the greatness
of the range of everything into which you have come! You become a part of this thing which God
has had in mind from eternity - a world for Himself.
A World for Himself
That is what we are born into in our new birth - it's
the nations. You are a part of the church (and you are
that if you are born of the Spirit, baptised in one Spirit
into one Body) do you see that the first
thing that the Lord Jesus said about the church which was
about to be born was, "...the uttermost parts of the earth".
That's your vocation!
That's your
setting, that's your calling, that's your horizon. The uttermost parts of the earth. Now don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that
every one of you here this afternoon has
got to go to the uttermost parts of the earth, I'm saying that
is your setting; you are to have no less a range of
responsibility than that; no less a sense of committal than
that. It is the nations which are the vocation of the church,
and therefore of every member of it.
If this book of the Acts, from which we've taken the key
verse, sees Christianity precipitated by heaven into this
world, for that's undoubtedly
what it was, Christianity... (I
don't like the term "Christianity", but it
serves our purpose; if
we use the term "the church", people get also wrong ideas) but if this book of the Acts,
let me repeat, sees Christianity precipitated by
heaven into this world,
it takes its rise from verse eight of chapter one: "Ye shall
receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you; and ye shall
be witnesses unto Me, in Jerusalem, all Judaea and Samaria,
and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." Now you see what's presented there, three
things: "Ye..." - a called company. A called company.
That word "called" becomes very specific and very inclusive as
you go on through the New Testament. But there it is: it is a
company called by heaven into being. It is an endowed
company; a company called... an
endowment given to that company - "Ye shall receive
power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you." It is a
company with a vocation - "Ye shall be witnesses
unto Me unto the uttermost parts of the earth"; called,
endowed, commissioned, or entrusted with this worldwide
vocation. And you go on into this book of Acts (so-called),
and you see that heaven, heaven which initiated this, heaven
which precipitated this, heaven which constituted this, takes
infinite pains all the way along to prevent this thing from
settling down and becoming merely localised. This is as big as
heaven, and heaven is going to accept nothing smaller than
itself.
The principle is going to be applied all the way along;
heaven is going to keep the nations in view till the end. So you see the persons who
lead the church - and I use that word, that language,
carefully - the persons who lead the church, the church
fulfilled its vocation because of heaven-given inspirers and
leaders. But notice how heaven had taken pains to undercut in
the persons concerned anything less than its own dimensions.
Very much has been said about Stephen. Do you know why Stephen
was martyred? Do you know why Stephen was
martyred? There is only one explanation, and it is
the explanation: he charged Israel and Israel's leaders with
having failed God in the great vocation unto the nations. They
had drawn in, settled down in an
exclusiveness, and pride, and conceit,
that they were the people and the only people; they had it
all. They called the Gentiles ‘dogs' and the nations... well, what were the nations? They were
the people! And it was because Stephen struck at the very
heart of that localisation and exclusiveness that he was
martyred. Read it again what he said; that was it.
Paul... the only explanation of Paul
is this: that God had cast him in the mould of the universal,
the worldwide, and took those pains, those pains which
resulted in perhaps the greatest miracle of the apostolic
church, that a rabid, bigoted, Pharisee of the Pharisees,
should become the "apostle of the Gentiles", of the nations.
Of the nations! His whole background,
training, everything, like Jeremiah's, was ordered, arranged
by God, even before his birth, and at his birth, and through
his childhood, to constitute him this man who would become
God's vessel then in relation to that worldwide purpose
concerning Jesus Christ. You see the Holy Spirit working with
the persons on that line.
You see Him working with the place, the
places. Jerusalem was tending (that's to say the least of it)
to become the localised centre of everything:
to dominate, govern, hold everything to itself.
And heaven moved in and said, ‘This is
not My idea, it's not My idea!' With
one scattering blow all that had to yield to heaven. They went
everywhere, to fulfil the great design:
unto the uttermost parts of the earth. And you notice how by
the Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, the apostles were so strategic
in this very matter of the centres that they chose, out from
which whole areas, large areas, could be touched.
Heaven was working on that principle all through the
book of the Acts. This is:
Now you see how clear these things are in the case of
Jeremiah. That statement of Jeremiah which we have quoted has
a tremendous amount of history behind it. Jeremiah was a
priest by birth; he was of the line of Abiathar. And you remember
that it was Abiathar who was guilty of complicity with
Adonijah in seeking to take the throne from Solomon, God's
chosen successor to David. The result was that Solomon sent
Abiathar, the high priest, away to his own home in Anathoth;
banished for life and for good, and put right out of the high
priesthood.
Come down the years and arrive at Jeremiah; he is
in his home in Anathoth; he is there, serving in this limited
way in a prescribed priesthood. There he is, in a little
place, some forty odd miles from Jerusalem, carrying on some
kind of priestly work in a little locality;
not even in Jerusalem. And then it says: "The word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah and said..."
And I like to paraphrase it or to put it into my
own words: "Look here, I have got
something bigger than this for you! I have appointed thee a
prophet to the nations! Out of this! This is not My
thought for any servant of Mine - some little
hole-in-a-corner-thing, that is not accepted or recognised." And if you wonder if that is true, we have made a great deal
(and I suppose we still
may
make a great deal of it for our own
comfort) of the word that Jeremiah used when he answered the
Lord: "I am a child, I cannot speak." Well, many of us
have made a lot of that, as
I say, for our own consolation. But when
Jeremiah used that word, I have discovered that he didn't mean what we mean by ‘a child', or the
word does not mean that in the Hebrew. It means, ‘I am one who is not yet
recognised by men'; ‘I haven't yet got
standing or status'; ‘I have not been accepted.' Perhaps that
is more comforting still! But the Lord said, ‘Say not, I am
one without status, or recognition, or acceptance; thou shalt
go to all to whom I send thee!' "I have appointed thee a
prophet to the nations"!
Here is God's idea coming out again, you see; all the nations
are in view with God and He is moving here sovereignly. And we have much to say about His sovereign
movement in this connection, moving sovereignly in relation to
the nations, maybe firstly through His own people; but it is
the nations that are in view with Him.
Now, dear friends, if we, if we
get in line with heaven, if
we really get in line with heaven, (because both
here in
the Old Testament, and there in the New, in the Acts, it is
heaven that is on the move. Heaven has got things in hand; all
this is heaven on the go!) if we get in line with heaven, we
shall come spontaneously into these three things. Lay hold of
this if you forget much else.
We shall come into line with a heavenly calling, a
heavenly calling; in other words, a heavenly vocation. Get
into line with heaven, and we almost automatically come into
line with a heavenly calling, a heavenly vocation.
When we get into line with heaven, we spontaneously get into
line
with a heavenly endowment for the vocation. "Ye
shall receive
power."
And when we get into line with heaven, we get into line with
God's ultimate object: a people
out of the nations, and then the
nations for His possession.
In line with heaven - a call, a call according to
purpose. In line with heaven - an
endowment, that heaven takes
responsibility. Aren't we grateful for that? Aren't we grateful for that! What a
lot of history that explains for the Lord's servants, for the
church, for us. It is just this: that
having come to the place of the most utter abandonment to God,
to Christ, to be here on this earth only for Him, He
has taken responsibility for all that is required. Jeremiah
may have some terrible experiences, some terrible times; it
may look sometimes as though it's the
end, and an awful end, but you know quite well that God saw
him through, took responsibility, and that his ministry was
successful, although it seemed to be a failure. You have just
got to follow haven't you through the Chronicles of Israel. And how did the
Chronicles begin? "That the word of the
Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord
stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, and made a decree..." Jeremiah
comes into his own, God has taken responsibility for seeing
that this heaven-given mandate does not fail. Come into that
when we come into line with heaven, and we can never be in
line with heaven and be on narrow,
confined, exclusive lines. Heaven's view is the nations, or
the ‘uttermost parts of the earth'. Heaven acts sovereignly
for that, as we have said.
Let it be understood, dear friends,
that we don't make Christianity. We
initiate or project nothing; heaven does all this. Heaven does
all this! We shall see, perhaps, as we go on, more of this
heavenly initiative. But what I am trying to emphasise is this: that if we
get into line with heaven, the rest follows. Oh, how necessary
it is not to get out of line with heaven. We can fail
to come into line with heaven; we can turn aside from heaven's
line, but if we come into line with
heaven, everything else follows; it's
spontaneous! It is spontaneous,
it happens. You haven't got to organise, and plan, and scheme, and try to make
something, and have elaborate programmes of Christian activity.
It
happens if you are in line with heaven. Spontaneous... heaven does it. We are but the
channels or vessels; we are not the source, or the originator.
Heaven goes on, heaven is going on. If we step aside, heaven
is going on. If
we rebel, heaven is going on. Heaven's attitude is always that: I am going on. Are you coming or are you
going to be left behind? It is just like that. Our life, our
service, depends entirely upon where we are, not in the first
place upon what we are, but where we are; not
on what we try to do or make, but where we are. Are we in
the place, in the place where heaven can
go on with us and through us? You know quite well that this is
the full revelation that has been given to us in one short
book of the Bible. It is just that. Everything there is so
full, so strong, so rich, so spontaneous
in the letter to the Ephesians: "in the
heavenlies", in the heavenlies... "in
Christ", and it's the vast range of the Divine
purpose and counsel.
Well, for the present we must break off, but here the primary
point is this: Christians, believers, children of God, people
of God, are the result of a Divine act
in relation to a superlative purpose in the heart of God - "Ye
did not choose Me, but I chose you" -
a Divine act. A Divine act. We all have to come there
even at the beginning. We may be told that we can decide for
Christ, and we can choose the Lord, and we may think that we
do it, but we know quite well that nothing really happens
until we come to the place where, if God doesn't
do something, it is all nonsense, it's all empty, all in vain.
Sooner or later, that is where we all have to come; it must
be, from beginning to end, all of God. Our existence and our
service is the result of a Divine act;
and that Divine act relates to this
great vocation in the heart of God which has to do with
nothing less than all the nations. All the nations. As
we shall see in the first place, it is "taking out of the
nations a people", but it does not stop there. In the last
place it is: "The kingdoms of this world have become the
kingdom of our God and His Christ."
It is really necessary to go on from that point, but for the
afternoon that will be enough. I can
only hope that with all this you catch a glimpse of something.
We have so often said that it is no little thing to belong to
the Lord, to be in relation to the Lord. It is no lesser thing
than to be an integral part of this which was conceived in the
heart of God before He made the world. In
relation to that world, concerning His Son, you
and I have, by Divine act, been called
according to that. But we shall find
the greatness of the Lord, the greatness of His resources, not
brought down to the little measure of our personal
horizon, but as we are lifted clear of all that into the full
range of God's purpose concerning His Son, there we shall make
discoveries of how great the Lord is in His resources, His
ability to get us through. And if you want proof of
that, if you want proof of that there is
one very good source and kind of proof with which perhaps some
of you are not a little familiar: that
the more you are in fellowship with God's ultimate, full
purpose, the more intense, and bitter, and relentless will be
the activities of hostile forces. That is perfectly clear, but
it is a compliment! Perhaps we don't
like those kind of compliments, but it is a compliment to
anything when the devil hates it and would
seek to destroy it. So, what counts most for God, or could
count most for God, will be the target of most of the enemy's
activities, and that's a significant
thing.
We need our initial verse, don't we? "A glorious throne, on
high from the beginning... our sanctuary".