Second Meeting
(February 2, 1964 A.M.)
Will you please open your Bible to the New
Testament. Firstly, in the Gospel by John, chapter
seventeen and verse twenty-one. You know that this
chapter contains the prayer of the Lord Jesus just before
going to the Cross. In that prayer we have those words of
verse twenty-one, Jesus says to His Father, "That
they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and
I in Thee, that they also may be in Us" (ASV).
I want you to particularly notice how the
Lord put this matter in the last clause that is so
important, "That they also may be in Us." Now
I want you to turn to the Gospel by Matthew, in chapter
twenty-seven, at verse forty-six. "And about the
ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is to say, 'My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?'" These are
practically the last words of our Lord on the Cross. All
that remained for Him to do was to commit His Spirit to
His Father. Really His last words were, "My God, why
has Thou forsaken Me?" This is the last phase of the
death of Jesus Christ and it marks a very great change in
His spiritual life and experience. Jesus had lived all
His life in the Father. He said to His disciples,
"Believest thou not that I am in the Father?"
His whole life in everything was lived in the Father. We
have many instances of how He refused to move out from
the Father.
In the little town of Cana in Galilee, you
will remember that He performed His first miracle. It is
the miracle of turning the water into wine at the
marriage feast. Some way through the feast all the wine
that had been provided came to an end. Thus wine was the
very important thing in the feast, and there was a
serious situation. The mother of Jesus was sitting beside
Him at the table and she just turned to Him and she said,
"They have no wine!" She, of course, believed
that He could do something about it and she presented
this situation to her Son. In effect, she said, "You
will have to do something about it. This whole marriage
feast is going to break down. Everybody is going to be in
trouble." Now really He must do something about it.
You
notice what the Lord Jesus said. He turned to His mother
and He said, "Woman, what do I have to do with thee?
Mine hour is not yet come." There are two things
there, a seeming necessity is not the grounds on which
Jesus works. Just because it is something that seems to
be needy, He does not do that. He is waiting for
something. He says, "My hour is not yet come. I
cannot do this now. I understand how serious the
situation is, but I cannot do it now. I may have perfect
sympathy for these people, but I just cannot do
anything!"
Why
could He not do anything at the moment? He was abiding in
the Father, He was not living in the circumstances. In
His Spirit He was saying, "Father, do You want this
done? These people are in difficulty; My dear mother says
I ought to do something. But Father, I cannot do anything
unless You tell Me to." He was living in the Father.
And as He waited for the Father, it seems that the Father
says, "Yes, all right, go on." And then He
said, "Fill the waterpots with water." That is
the first illustration of how Jesus lived in the Father.
There
was another time when there was a feast in Jerusalem,
Jesus and His disciples were not in Jerusalem at the
time. His brothers after the flesh were with Him. You
know it is said, that they did not believe on Him. They
said to Him, "You go up to the feast, we are going
up, you see everybody goes up to this feast. It is a
thing that everybody does. If You do not go up to the
feast, people will not understand You, they will
criticize You, You will lose influence with them. If You
want to be popular, You had better do what everybody else
is doing. We are going up to the feast." And now
they said to Jesus, "You go up to the feast."
What did
Jesus do? Did He move in a way that would make Him
popular? Did He do things just because everybody else is
doing them? Did He do it because it is the custom to do
that? No, He turned to His brothers after the flesh and
He said, "You go up to the feast; I go not up to the
feast." And then His brothers went. And after they
had gone, Jesus went to the feast.
Now this
is a very strange way to go on. Did He not want to be in
the company of His brothers? So He told a kind of
untruth? "I do not go up, you go up." Did He
play a trick on them? Why did He say that? He was abiding
in the Father. He was waiting for the Father's word to go
up. He will never do anything because it was the popular
thing. He would never do it because all the religious
people were doing it. He did not do it because it was the
custom to do it. He did not do it because He wanted to
stand well with the people. The one thing that governs
His life was, "Did the Father want Him to do
that?" So after His brothers were gone up, He said,
"Father, do You want Me to go up?" And
evidently the Father said, "Yes, go up." Then
went Jesus up. Not before that. He would never do
anything until the Father said so.
There
was a time when Jesus spoke to His disciples about His
coming death at Jerusalem. Then Peter took Him, and began
to rebuke Him, and said, "This shall never come to
Thee." The Lord Jesus turned to Peter, and said,
"Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a
stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things
of God, but the things of man" (Matt. 16:22,23). If
My Father says, I am to go up to Jerusalem and be
crucified, that is the last word. I will never do
anything to save Myself.
Later
on, near the end, Jesus said to His disciples, "Let
us go into Judea." Now it was in Judea that they
were going to arrest Him and crucify Him. Thomas said,
'No, let us not go to Judea, Lord, in Judea the other day
they were going to stone You, will You go back there?'
Jesus said, 'What My Father says, I must do. I know that
it is going to mean the Cross, but I must abide in My
Father.'
Satan
was always trying to separate Jesus from His Father,
trying to get Him to act without His Father. Those three
temptations in the wilderness were just a determination
to try and get in between Jesus and His Father. All
through His life, Satan was trying to separate Jesus from
His Father. When He was hanging on the Cross, in that
terrible suffering, Satan came along in some evil men and
said, "Come down from the Cross, and we will
believe." Now Jesus could have come down. He had
said a little while before, that "if I were to ask
My Father, He would send Me twelve legions of
angels."
Well,
you will remember what one angel could do. One angel went
out in the Old Testament and killed a whole army of men.
If one angel could do that, what could twelve legions of
angels do. Jesus had only to ask His Father for the
legions of angels, and they would have brought Him down
from the Cross. No, He let the angels stay where they
were. He had said, "The cup which My Father hath
given Me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11). Right
to the end, Satan tried to get in between Him and His
Father, but Jesus knew the very great importance of
abiding in God.
And now,
here at the end the situation has changed. "My God,
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Jesus is out of
God. Jesus is separated from God. There is a great
distance between Him and God. That had never happened
before. Not for one moment in His life had He had such an
experience. God is now far away. There is a great divide
between the Father and the Son. Not only is Jesus
separated from the Father, He is knowing of the terrible
desolation that that means. There is a terrible, terrible
thing bound up in that word, "forsaken,"
forsaken by God. There is nothing more terrible than
that. It is the most awful desolation of soul. Not only
distance and desolation, but darkness.
That
word "why" is a word which means, 'I do not
understand. I am altogether in the dark. This is
something that I cannot understand.' "Why hast Thou
forsaken Me?" Then, further, He was in absolute
weakness. The Apostle Paul says, "He was crucified
through weakness." It was spiritual weakness as well
as physical weakness. When they mocked Him, and said,
"He saved others; Himself He cannot save."
There was a lot of truth in that. "No," He
could not save Himself. He had not the power to save
Himself. He was in complete weakness, without any
strength for saving Himself.
Perhaps
the worst feature of all is the sense of God's anger.
'God is no more pleased with Me. God is angry. All this
says that God is angry. I am suffering the wrath of God.'
Can you imagine what that meant to this One Who had lived
all His life in the Father? Well, why was all this
happening?
You know
that one of the titles of Jesus is the last Adam. We have
got to go right back to the first Adam to explain all of
this. All this that Jesus was experiencing on the Cross
was what the first Adam had brought upon the human race.
It began in heaven; Satan rebelled against God. Before he
rebelled against God, he lived in God. When he rebelled,
he was cast out of God. Not only from the presence of
God, but from his life in God. From that moment, Satan
was outside of God, there came about a great distance
between God and Satan. Satan became the prince of
darkness. He was thrown out into the darkness, and he
went out under the wrath of God.
Now
Satan came to Adam, at that time Adam had his life in
God; he was dwelling in God. He lived in God. He had
everything in God. And then, through Satan's temptation,
Adam did exactly the same thing that Satan had done. He
disobeyed God. He rebelled against God. You notice what
happened, he was separated, thrust out from God. He was
separated from God. He no longer had his life in God. He
went out into desolation. The earth was cursed because of
him. All the bad things and evil things began to grow in
the earth. What had once been a beautiful garden has now
become a wilderness. Adam went out into the darkness.
After
that, Adam did not understand God. He had not the
knowledge of God; and then he was in perfect weakness,
entirely incapable of saving himself. He was under the
wrath of God, and as the father of the human race, he
brought the whole race into that position. Every member
of Adam's race is in that position by nature. There is no
member of the human race who naturally knows what it is
to live in God. Everyone knows that they are far away
from God, and God is far away from them. And everybody
who truly knows that condition, knows that they are in
desolation.
The cry
of the human heart is, 'Oh that I knew where to find God!
I am out here away from God. I am as though I were in the
wilderness. I am in the dark. I do not understand God at
all. All these problems of life, I have no explanations
for them. Why is this and why is that? I am in the dark
about it all. And I have such a feeling that God is
against me.' That is what the human race is because of
Adam's rebellion. Man and the world are out of God.
Now we
come to the real meaning of the Cross. Jesus as the last
Adam takes the place of the first Adam. He takes on
Himself all the conditions that Adam brought on the race.
He goes out from the presence of God. He goes out from
the place of life, out of the place of the Light into the
dark. The place where Adam was and where we are. All that
is gathered into this word, "Why hast
Thou forsaken Me?" The answer is this: in order
to open the way back into God.
Dear
friends, you and I must recognize that we are in that
position by nature. By nature we have no life in God. We
are separated from God. We have no ability to save
ourselves. We have no power to understand Divine things,
and we are children of wrath, but the Lord Jesus took all
that on Himself.
And now
we turn from chapter twenty-seven, to chapter
twenty-eight, of the Gospel by Matthew. Chapter
twenty-eight is the resurrection. Chapter twenty-seven is
a closed chapter; it is a closed history. In resurrection
there is a return into God. Everything in the
resurrection of Jesus, says, He is back in the Father.
That awful story is finished. He is no longer separated
from His Father. He is back in the bosom of the Father.
And if in the Cross, He represented you and me and all
the race, then in resurrection, He represents us all who
are believers in Him. It is a new position, but what I
want to emphasize is this one little word. It is not only
that He has brought us near to God; it is not only that
He has joined us with God in an outer way. The great
thing is He has brought us into God. Our position now is
supposed to be in God. That is why we read that little
fragment from John seventeen, "that they may all
be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,
that they also may be in Us" (ASV).
You see,
our life as the Lord's born again children is supposed to
be a life in God, not just walking alongside of God, but
living in God. God is our sphere of life. All that is of
God is the realm in which we live. I want to get this
over, so be very patient with me, because there is a lot
that is hanging upon this. I suppose there is a baptistry
here somewhere. When you were baptized, you did not come
along and just sit down by the water, perhaps get as near
to the water as you could, or perhaps just put your hand
in the water. You did not say, I have come to the water
of baptism; you got into the water. When you were
baptized, the water was all around you, and over you. A
Christian life is not just coming to live alongside of
God; a Christian is called to live right in God.
Now, the
next thing is that the Holy Spirit is given unto them.
Why was the Holy Spirit given? Why have you got the Holy
Spirit? Why is He in us? Just to teach us what it means
to live in God. That is, to make us understand what is in
God, and what is not in God. If the Holy Spirit is in us,
and if we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and we speak
in a certain way that is not right, the Holy Spirit will
say, "That is not the Lord speaking, that is
you." If we behave ourselves in a certain way that
is not right, the Holy Spirit will say, "That is not
the Father, that is you. That is outside the
Father." So, the Holy Spirit has come to teach us
and make us know what is in God, and what is not in God.
If we
live in ourselves, we shall not live in God. Jesus says,
"Abide in Me, as I abide in the Father." You
abide in Me, by that He means you get everything from Me,
as I get everything from the Father.
Now did
you notice what the great work of the devil is? It is
first of all, to come between God and man. Everything in
our life, which is not of God, is of the devil. The great
work of the devil, first in heaven, then on earth, was to
bring division. Every division, which touches the things
of God, is of the devil. It is not God. No division
amongst the Lord's people is of God, that is the work of
the devil. And it is because those concerned have been
living in some other place than in God. Perhaps, they
have been living in themselves and what they want, and
what they think. Or, they may have been touching the
world, there is nothing like the world to divide the
Lord's people. Or, it may be they have been living in
someone else, you know it is possible for us to live in a
man. Be careful about living in a man. If you do that,
that man is going to let you down. There will be division
sooner or later. Do not make any man, no matter how
wonderful he is, how great a preacher or a teacher he is,
do not make him your life. If you do, you may find
yourself out of the Lord. The result is division. That is
always what the enemy is after. So abide in God, do what
the Lord Jesus always did. 'Father, do you want this?
Father, is this what You desire? Father, is this Your
way? There are strong arguments that I should do this and
that I should do that. At the other side of it, it looks
as though that is the thing I ought to do, but, Father,
that is not good enough. By nature I am a child of
darkness. Father, do you want this, and do you want this
now?' We must get it from the Lord, and like the Lord
Jesus, we may have to wait for the Lord to speak.
Now, He
had gone to the Cross, in order to destroy all that which
has come between God and us. The resurrection of the Lord
Jesus is a great return movement into God. You will have
to read your New Testament in the light of this. Just
take up the Book of Acts, see how it works there. Peter,
you know had some difficulties. He thought it was wrong
to go and have a meal with Gentiles, he called them
unclean things. He had a difficulty about it. He said,
"Not so, Lord, not in that way. I have never done
anything like that before!" Peter was then abiding
in his religious tradition. The Holy Spirit says,
"Look here, Peter, I know you are religious, but do
you want tradition or God?" Peter came to see the
point and to abide in God. He had to do what he never had
done before. That opens up a lot, does it not?
I have
tried to lay the most important law of spiritual life. I
just beseech you, seek to have your life in God, not in
things, not in people, not in places, not in
circumstances, not in arguments, not in human
intelligence, but in God. God's thoughts are different
from ours. "Trust in the Lord with all your
heart; and lean not unto your own understanding" (Proverbs
3:5). We have been brought by resurrection into a return
INTO God.
May
we learn all that this means, and it is going to be a
life-long education. May the Lord help us.