"Then I went
down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought his
work on the wheels. And when the vessel that he made of
the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it
again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to
make it" (Jeremiah 18:3,4).
We have reached the
point in our meditations which is represented by that
little clause "another vessel". When the clay
of Israel refused to accept the Pattern of God as
represented in Jesus Christ, it was broken on the wheel.
And that is how Israel is today. It refused to accept
God's Pattern and therefore, being marred, it was broken
on the wheel, and God turned to make another vessel, of
which He could say: 'In him I am well-pleased'... "a
vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it".
The vessel, then, that
God is now making is according to Christ, and this time
He is going to succeed. The end of the Bible shows us the
vessel perfected and glorified.
Before we go further
with this Pattern, there is a general word to be said. It
is important for us to realize that God always had only
one vessel in mind. He never did intend to have two
vessels, one spoiled and the other good. The whole of the
Old Testament contains the mystery of Christ. He is
hidden everywhere in it and, in reality, God was working
through all those centuries on the principle of Christ.
The fact that the Old Testament closes in failure only
means that the earthly representation failed. The
heavenly intention never did fail, so that if God has to
set aside one earthly expression, He is going on with His
eternal thought. God's intention concerning His Son did
not begin when Jesus came into this world. Christ had
been in the mind of His Father from all eternity and was
appointed to be the Pattern before ever this world was
created.
You must remember that
the only Bible the first Christians had was the Old
Testament, and Christ said that everything in that Bible
concerned Himself. He said: "The Scriptures...
these are they which bear witness of me" (John
5:39). He took up all the writings of Moses and the
prophets and "interpreted to them in all the
scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke
24:27), and Peter says that it was "the Spirit of
Christ which was in them (the prophets)" (1
Peter 1:10). So that if you had lived in the early days
of the Church the only Bible you would have had would
have been the Old Testament. But it would have been your
Bible. If we ask for a Bible today we get the Old and the
New Testaments together, but if Christians in the early
days asked for a Bible, they were given just the Old
Testament. Jesus used the Old Testament for Christians,
and so did the Apostles, whose business was simply to
show that the one Person in the Old Testament was Jesus
Christ. All the outstanding features in it point in some
way to Christ. It is God's book. He wrote it, and in His
Mind there is only one object, and that is His Son.
So, in the outstanding
persons of the Old Testament you have to see some feature
of Christ. Was it Abraham? Well, we have been seeing how
Abraham leads us to Christ. Was it Moses, or David, or
the prophets? It was Christ about whom they were all
speaking and whom they were representing in some way.
Let us take one simple
illustration. Before the New Testament was written,
during those wonderful movements in the early days,
Philip was in Samaria, where God was doing a great work.
The Spirit told Philip that he was to leave Samaria and
go down to the desert. We might just say, by the way,
that it seems a strange thing for the Lord to lead
someone away from what was a very evident piece of His
work to a desert. If Philip had not been a man utterly
committed to the Holy Spirit, he would have had an
argument with the Lord. He would have said: 'Lord, You
sent me here to Samaria and You have proved that that was
right. There is a great work of the Holy Spirit going on
here, and now You tell me to go to a desert. How on earth
can there be a revival in a desert?' The Lord does
strange things, but the end of the story shows that He
was right. Perhaps you would choose to stay in Samaria,
where things are happening, and you might not like the
idea of going down to a desert, but it might be that the
Lord has something in that desert which is bigger than
Samaria: Not only a town, but a whole new nation was
touched in that desert. Well, that is just by the way.
You know what happened
when Philip went down to that desert. He was looking
round and wondering why he was there when he saw
something coming from a distance. When it got nearer to
him he saw that it was a chariot with some men in it. The
Spirit said to Philip: "Go near, and join thyself
to this chariot" (Acts 8:29). Again Philip was
obedient to the Spirit, and as he got near to the chariot
he heard the chief man in it reading. He looked at the
man and saw that he was a dark-skinned Ethiopian, but as
he listened, he said: 'I know what it is that that man is
reading. He is reading out of my Bible.' So he said to
the man: "Understandest thou what thou
readest?" The man was reading from Isaiah 53,
and he said: "How can I, except someone shall
guide me? And he besought Philip to come up and sit with
him... And Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from
this Scripture, preached unto him Jesus" (Acts
8:31,35). I think this settles all arguments as to
whether Isaiah 53 related to Jesus!
This is an example of
how the Old Testament, as their Bible, was used to preach
Jesus. There is something here which always amuses me.
Philip preached Jesus out of Isaiah 53, and the very next
thing the Ethiopian said was: "Behold, here is
water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" (Acts
8:36). Please turn to Isaiah 53 and tell me where it
mentions baptism! You will read it a hundred times and,
on the face of it, you will never discover the word
'baptism'. There is only one conclusion that we can draw.
That chapter is about the death, the burial and the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and Philip must have said
to this Ethiopian: 'To be united with Christ means being
united with Him in His death, His burial and His
resurrection.' The man believed and said "Here is
water..." I always think the next phrase is
significant: "And they both went down into the
water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized
him" (Acts 8:38). Well, I leave that with you,
but the fact is that that Ethiopian was baptized on
Isaiah 53. That is just one instance of what we are
saying. Whether it is the great persons in the Old
Testament, or whether it is the central nation in it -
Israel - or whether it is particular places, like
Jerusalem and the Jordan, or whether it is special
objects like the tabernacle and the temple, the fact is
that in some way they all point to Jesus Christ.
So we come back to
this: that He, God's Son, is the Pattern for the vessel,
and we have commenced -and only commenced! - to study
that Pattern.
Now just a further word
about the beginning of the showing of the Pattern. The
first thing about this Pattern is the mystery and the
miracle of His birth from heaven. It is such a mystery
that all the great brains of theology cannot accept it. I
suppose the main point of controversy about the Lord
Jesus is His virgin birth, but if you set that aside you
reduce Him to the level of an ordinary man. In His very
origin He would be no different from other men. I say
again: many of the great brains of theology have decided
against that birth. Nevertheless this has been, and still
is, the great point of controversy, and this is an
example of the fact that "the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God... and he
cannot know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14).
The birth of Jesus
Christ is a mystery and a miracle. At Christmas-time we
see all sorts of things set up which are called 'the
Nativity'. There are some animals in a stable, a man and
a woman with a little baby, and we are told: 'That is the
Nativity.' There was never anything more false. Bethlehem
was never the birthplace of the Son of God. He was with
the Father before this world was (John 17:5). Bethlehem
was only the point at which He came out of eternity into
time. His nativity was not in Bethlehem; it was in
heaven. He repudiated His earthly father and mother and
always spoke about "my Father which is in
heaven" (Matthew 18:10).
Do you notice that when
Luke wrote the genealogy of Jesus, he said of Him: "being
the son of Joseph" (Luke 3:23), and then he
protected that by putting into brackets "as was
supposed". This was just what man supposed, but
it was not true. He never was the son of Joseph.
What has this to do
with us? This is the Pattern. The beginning of every
Christian life is on the same principle as that of Jesus
Christ. The Christian is not of time, but of eternity -
thus the Apostle says: "He chose us in him
before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians
1:4). Our coming into relation with the Lord Jesus is
only our coming out of eternity into time, out of heaven
into this world. Where is your true nativity? If you were
asked that by people of the world, you would say: 'I was
born in France.... in Switzerland... in England.' If you
were to say: 'I was born in heaven', the world would look
at you and say: 'You are a funny creature!' At
best they would say: 'What do you mean? I don't
understand.' Jesus said of Himself: "I am come
down from heaven" (John 6:38) ... "I am
not of this world" (John 8:23), and in that
sense He is the Pattern. We do not belong here, and the
consciousness of that ought to be growing stronger all
the time. As we have said, there ought to be a mystery
and a miracle in the life of every child of God.
I am not sure how your
Bibles put this, but I am sorry that in the English Bible
the words of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus are put as they
are, although in the Revised Version there is a
correction in the margin. In the old Version it says: "Except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God" (John 3:3). That is quite good, as far as
it goes, but what Jesus really said was: "Except a
man be born from above". The real beginning
of a Christian's life is from above, and not from
beneath. Of course, dear friends, you and I have to learn
the meaning of this all our life, but we just state the
fact and leave it there for the moment.
The next thing that we
must come to in the Pattern is what we may call 'the
take-over of the Holy Spirit'. That which is born of God
is taken over by the Holy Spirit. I do not want to make
difficulties for anyone, especially for our young people,
but for those who know their Bibles, you will remember
that there is always associated with the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus the idea of sonship. Now it was when the
Lord Jesus came up out of the waters of Jordan that He
was attested the Son of God. Be careful! I am not saying
that it was then that He became the Son of God - He was
the Son of God. But on the resurrection side of the
Jordan heaven attested Him the Son of God, and the
Apostle Paul says: He "was declared to be the Son
of God in power,... by the resurrection from the
dead" (Romans 1:4-AV). There is a spiritual
sense in which that was the new beginning.
Then do you notice what
happens immediately after? The Holy Spirit from heaven
takes over.
Now the Church went
down into the Jordan when Christ was crucified. It
certainly did go down into death. But when Christ was
raised from the dead the Church began to live again, or,
anyway, move toward life. It was like the dry and
scattered bones of Ezekiel's vision beginning to move
together. Something is happening in those forty days
after the resurrection - there is a sound of movement
amongst the dry bones. Then "they were all
together in one place" (Acts 2:1) and the Holy
Spirit came upon them. Although the Church was an eternal
thing, it was born historically on the Day of Pentecost.
The eternal had now come into time, and the mark of the
birth of the Church was that the Holy Spirit took over. I
am very careful when I use that phrase: 'He took over'.
The Holy Spirit took everything out of the hands of men
into His hands. That is why it is said: "A sound
as of a rushing mighty wind" (Acts 2:2 -
AV), and you know that when you get into the grip of a
mighty, rushing wind, things are taken out of your hands
and you just have to go where the wind is going. So Jesus
said to Nicodemus: 'The wind blows where it likes, and
you cannot tell the wind where it is to blow.' Some of us
heard the wind coming down the mountains last night, and
if you had been in the course of that wind it would have
been silly for you to say: 'Now, wind, don't blow this
way. Blow the other way.' You just have to go the way of
the wind and accept that it is the master. "So
is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John
3:8).
What did this mean in
the case of the Lord Jesus as the Pattern? It meant that
all His acts, His words and His ways were governed from
heaven. There was a mystery about it. People could not
understand why He did what He did and why He did things
in the way in which He did them. They certainly could not
understand His words. Apparently He was like other men,
and that was their problem. As they looked at Him they
did not see anything different from the other men around.
He was Himself as a man, but He was also someone
else, and something else.
Now, when we become
mastered by the Holy Spirit we do not lose our
personality. We remain ourselves and we can be
distinguished amongst one another because we are all
ourselves. And yet we are someone else. There is another
who is different from what we are. In a sense, there are
two personalities about us. There is what we are
naturally, but there is someone else - what we are
spiritually. So it was with Jesus: He was two beings, so
to speak. Under the government of the Holy Spirit we are
more than ourselves, and that is how it was with the Lord
Jesus. When people met Him, they met more than Him, and
if we are according to the Pattern that is how it must be
with us. How I would like to spend a lot of time on that!
May I remind you that Abraham was more than Abraham,
Moses was more than Moses and Elijah was more than
Elijah. When you met Abraham, Moses or Elijah you met all
Israel.
You see, "none
of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself" (Romans
14:7). As the Lord's people we represent something very
much more than our individual life: we represent all the
people of God. We are bound up with the whole life of the
Church, and the vessel that God is making is the Church
as a whole. It is the whole Church which constitutes the
one vessel that God is seeking to form, so that our lives
are intended to be a part of a much bigger whole. That
truth, of course, involves us in a great responsibility.
Now, if you look into
your Bible, you will see that that is exactly what it
meant when the Holy Spirit took over. On the one hand,
these people, Apostles and others, were just themselves.
They were not changed into angels or into disembodied
spirits. They were just themselves. Peter is still Peter
- and yet they represent something very much more than
themselves. They have become greater than themselves, and
that is what the Holy Spirit will do for us.
These are just some
features of the Pattern. There are very many more, but I
must leave it with you to go and learn Christ.