"For they that
dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew
him not, nor the voices of the prophets which are read
every sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him"
(Acts 13:27).
We pointed out at the
beginning of the previous chapter that the above
statement indicates that there is something more to be
heard than the audible reading of the Word of God.
"The voices of the prophets." What were the
prophets saying? - not, what were the actual words used
by the prophets, the sentences and statements, the form
of their pronouncements, but what did it all amount to in
effect? These dwellers and rulers in Jerusalem could
have quoted the prophets without difficulty: they
probably could have recited the contents of all the books
of the prophets. They were well-drilled in the content of
the Old Testament Scriptures, but they never stopped and
asked the simple questions: 'What does it amount to? What
really is the implication? What were these men after?'
And because they never did that, they never got further
than the letter.
VOCATION
MISSED BECAUSE VISION LOST
We are asking those
questions now. What is that which is within and behind
and deeper than the written and spoken utterances of the
prophets? We know that the prophets were dealing with a
situation which by no means represented the Lord's mind
regarding His people. I could make it stronger than that,
and say the situation was very far from the Lord's
thought; but I have present conditions in mind, rather
than any extreme state of things, and so I simply say
that the condition did not then, nor does it now, really
represent the Lord's mind and intention where His people
were and are concerned. The prophets were dealing with
such a situation, and, because it was like that, the real
vocation of the people of God was not being fulfilled.
They were failing in that for which the Lord had really
brought them into being. Whereas they ought to have been
a people of tremendous spiritual strength in the midst of
the nations, with a real impact of God upon the nations,
with a note of great authority which had to be taken
account of - "Thus saith the Lord", declared in
such a way that people really had to heed - whereas it
ought to have been like that, they were failing. There
was weakness and failure. The prophets sought to get down
to the root of that situation, to get behind that
deplorable condition and that tragic failure. To get
there, of course, they had to work their way through a
lot of positive factors in the condition. There were all
the things to which the prophets referred - sins and so
on; but the prophets were solid as one man on one
particular thing, that back of these conditions,
resulting in this main failure, the cause was lost
vision. The people had lost their original vision, the
vision which had at one time been clearly before them.
When God laid His hand
upon them and brought them out of Egypt, they had a
vision. They saw the purpose and intention of God. It
became the exultant note of their song on the farther
side of the Red Sea. I am not going to stay for the
moment with what that purpose was. But they were a people
to whom God had given a vision of His purpose concerning
them, both as to themselves and as to their vocation.
They had lost it, and this was the result; and the
prophets, in dealing with that, lighted solidly upon this
one thing; 'Your vocation in its fullness of realisation
and accomplishment rests upon your vision, and fullness
of vocation requires fullness of vision.' That means that
if your vision becomes less than God's fullness, you will
only go so far, and then you will stop. If you are going
right on and through to all that God meant in
constituting you His vessel, you must have fullness of
vision; God is never satisfied with anything less than
fullness. The very fact that you cannot go any further
than your vision leads you is God's way of saying, 'You
must have fullness of vision if you are coming to
fullness of purpose and realisation.'
Now, that is the very
foundation of the thing with which we are occupied just
now. The prophets were always speaking about this matter.
We previously quoted Hosea 4:6: "My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast
rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou
shalt be no priest to me." That is only saying in
other words, 'My people go to pieces for lack of vision;
you have closed your eyes to My purpose which I presented
to you; I have no further use for you'; and that is a
very strong statement. It links with another passage:
"Israel is swallowed up: now are they among the
nations as a vessel wherein none delighteth" (Hosea
8:8 A.R.V.).
If you want to get the
full force of that, look at a word in Jeremiah's
prophecies. "Is this man Coniah a despised broken
vessel? is he a vessel wherein none delighteth? wherefore
are they cast out, he and his seed, and are cast into the
land which they know not? 0 earth, earth, earth, hear the
word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man
childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days; for
no more shall a man of his seed prosper, sitting upon the
throne of David, and ruling in Judah" (Jer.
22:28-30, A.R.V.). "Israel... among the nations as a
vessel wherein none delighteth." "Coniah... a
vessel where-in none delighteth... Write ye this man
childless." There is no future for a vessel like
that. We might well say of Israel as of Coniah,
"Write this man childless." That is an end. A
continuation, going right through without that arrest,
demands fullness of vision.
VISION,
NOT KNOWLEDGE OF FACTS, QUALIFIES FOR VOCATION
Do give heed to this,
especially my younger brothers and sisters in Christ. The
fulfilment of that into which you are called through the
grace of God - what you may call the service of God, the
work of the Lord; what we will sum up as Divine vocation
- must rest upon a vision which the Lord has given you: a
vision, of course, that is not just something in itself
but is the vision which He has given concerning
His Church. You must have that. Then the measure in which
you will go right on and through to fullness will be the
measure of your vision - the measure in which you have
come personally to possess that Divine vision. There can
be all sorts of things less than that which lead you into
Christian work. You may hear an appeal for workers, an
appeal for missionaries, an appeal to service, based upon
some Scripture - "Go ye into all the world, and
preach the gospel" - and so on. And with the
accompaniments of that appeal you may be moved, stirred
up, feel very solemn; something may happen in the realm
of your emotions, your feelings, your reason, and you may
take that as a Divine call. Now, I am not saying that
no-one has ever served the Lord properly and truly on
that basis: do not misunderstand me: but I do want to say
there can be all that, and in a very intense form, and
yet it can be not your own but someone else's vision
which has been passed over to you, and that will not do.
'But', you say, 'there
is the Scripture - "Go ye into all the world, and
preach the gospel".' Remember, those to whom those
words were addressed had all the facts about Christ - the
incarnation, the virgin birth, His life, His teaching,
His miracles, His Cross, and all the accompanying
heavenly attestations. Some of those very men - John's
disciples - were there when the voice from heaven said,
"This is my beloved Son". Others were on the
mountain when again the voice said, "This is my
beloved Son". They saw the transfiguration, and they
saw Him in resurrection. Is that not enough with which to
go out to the world - all that mass of mighty facts?
Surely they can go and proclaim what they know? But no -
"Tarry ye in Jerusalem".
What was it eventually
that constituted them men who could fulfil and obey that
command to go? 'Well', you say, 'of course it was the
presence of the Holy Spirit.' Perfectly true. But was
there not something else? Why the forty days after His
resurrection? Do you not think that they were getting
through the externals, the events, and seeing something
- seeing what no human eye could see, what could never be
seen by any amount of objective demonstration? If the
Apostle Paul is anything to go by in this matter, he will
tell us perfectly plainly that his whole life and
ministry and commission were based upon one thing:
"It was the good pleasure of God... to reveal his
Son in me, that I might preach him among the
Gentiles". "I make known to you, brethren, as
touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is
not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor
was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of
Jesus Christ". (Galatians 1:15,16; 11,12).
All the other things may
be facts which we possess by reading our New Testament.
We have it all and we may believe it as the substance of
Christianity. That does not constitute us missionaries to
go out and proclaim the facts of Christ - facts though
they be. That is not it. How many have done so! How far
have they gone? They go so far and then stop. We cannot
stay to dwell upon the limitation. Dear friends, there is
terrible limitation in the Church just now, limitation of
the knowledge of the Lord, even on the part of many who
have been the Lord's servants for a long period of years.
There are many Christians, even of years' standing, to
whom it is actually difficult to talk about the things of
the Lord.
THE
VISION - GOD'S FULL PURPOSE IN REDEMPTION
But reverting to Israel:
you do not find anything concerning Israel that suggests
or indicates that they came out of Egypt, and were in the
wilderness and later in the land, to declare as their
gospel that God brought them out of the land of Egypt.
That was not their message. Of course, it is recounted
many times, but that was not their message, not what they
were proclaiming. What was it that was always in their
view? It was what they were brought out for. It was God's
vision in bringing them out. So many of us have settled
down to preach just the 'coming out' side - salvation
from sin, from the world. It goes so far, but the Church
does not get very far with that. It is good, it is right,
of course; it is a part of the whole; but it is only a
part. It is the full vision that is needed to go right
through. Oh, the pathos associated with the lives of many
of the Lord's servants! They come to a standstill, in a
realm of limited life and power and influence, because
their vision is so small. Is that not true?
What am I saying to you?
First of all, if you are going right through, to serve
the Lord in any full way, you must have revealed to your
own heart God's purpose concerning His Son. You will have
to be able to say that God has 'revealed His Son in you',
in this sense, that you see, not merely your own
deliverance from sin, but God's purpose concerning His
Son unto which you are saved - the big thing, the full
thing. You are only a fragment in it. That is the basis
of service, of vocation; and these very Apostles were
held back until there broke upon them the full blaze of
the meaning of Christ risen and ascended - the vision of
the glorified Christ and all that that signified in the
eternal purpose of God. Then they went out, and we find
their message was always, not the gospel of God
concerning personal salvation, but "the gospel of
God... concerning his Son", Jesus Christ. They had
seen, not the historic Jesus, but the glorified Christ of
God; and they had not just seen Him as an objective
vision, but His true significance had broken in upon
them.
What a change it
represented from the old days, when they were always
thinking in terms of the coming Messiah who would set up
a temporal kingdom on this earth, with themselves seated
on His right hand and on His left! They would be notable
people down here on this earth, and would oust the Romans
from their country! That thing on the earth was their
full and only vision - fighting with literal arms,
revolting against literal usurpers of their country.
But oh, what a vast
change when they saw His kingdom! Now, the thing which
had held them in its grip simply went, not to be thought
of any longer. Seeing His kingdom! He had said,
"There are some of them that stand here, who shall
in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man
coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28). What is the
kingdom? It is Christ, far above all rule and authority,
the centre and the goal of all Divine counsels from
eternity. That is language, of course - mere words; but
the import needs to be apprehended. You must have vision
in your own heart before you can be a servant of God who
will get very far, and you have to have growing vision in
order to get right through. Come back to Hosea. "My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea
4:6). What does he say a little later? "Let us know,
let us follow on to know the Lord" (Hosea 6:3). It
is growing, progressive vision that brings us through to
God's full end. It must be like that - not being
contented with two or three facts about Christ and
salvation, but having the eyes of our hearts enlightened
to see Him.
What I am saying, of
course, is a statement of facts. I cannot give you
anything, I cannot bring you into it; but I can, I trust,
influence you a little in the direction of going to the
Lord and saying, 'Now, Lord, if Thou needest me, I am
available, I am at Thy disposal; but Thou must lay the
foundation, and open my eyes, and give me the requisite
vision that will mean that I do not only go out and
preach things about Christ.' Something very much more
than that is needed.
That is the first thing,
and it applies to us all, not only to those who are going
out into what we call 'full-time service'.
ISRAEL'S
VOCATION - TO EXPRESS GOD'S PRESENCE AMONG THE NATIONS
Saying that, I am able
to come to the next thing for the moment. What was the
vision that Israel had lost and to which the prophets
were seeking to bring the people back? The vision was
this - the very vocation for which God had laid His hand
upon Israel, the meaning of their existence as Israel.
What was that?
The movement of God was
like this. Here are nations and peoples spreading all
over the earth. Out from those nations God takes one
solitary individual, Abram, and places him, so to speak,
right at the centre of the nations. That is the spiritual
geography of it. And then God raises from that man a
seed, and constitutes his seed a nation right in the
midst of the nations; distinct from the nations,
perfectly distinct, but in the midst. Then God
constitutes that nation on heavenly principles - a
corporate body constituted on heavenly, Divine, spiritual
principles, with God Himself in the midst - with the
result that all the other nations gather round to look
on.
And what do those
nations take account of? Not of the preaching of this
nation in their midst; you have nothing about their
preaching at all - that is, the proclaiming of doctrines
and truths. But the onlookers become aware that God, the
only true and living God, is there. There is no mistaking
it, they cannot get away from it, they have to recognise
it: God is there, Because this people is so constituted,
God is there, and there is a registration of God all
around, wherever these people come. Ah, even before they
come, something is beginning to happen. Listen to Rahab!
What did she say to the spies? Israel has not arrived
yet, but she says, 'We know all about you. We know what
you signify. We have heard all about it.' Already the
fear of this people is ahead of them. There is something
of spiritual power there which does not have to be
preached in words. The people are there, with God in
their midst - because God has His heavenly thoughts and
principles as the very constitution of their life, He is
there; the rest follows.
Now I have gathered into
that statement the whole of the Bible, Old and New
Testaments. As to the Old Testament, what was Israel's
Divine vocation? Not primarily to say things about God,
but to be as God in the midst of the nations. "God
is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved"
(Psalm 46:5). 'The Lord is here!' How much that counted
for! That was their vocation. You may say that in the Old
Testament it was type; but oh, it was much more than
type, it was very real; it was a fact.
THE
CHURCH'S VOCATION - TO EXPRESS THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
When we come into the
New Testament we find ourselves in the presence of a
double development. God is here present in the Person of
His Son, Jesus Christ. His name is Emmanuel - 'God with
us' - and all who have to do with Him have to do with God
in a very personal and immediate way. He claims that His
very physical body is the temple of God. Then, through
His death, resurrection and ascension, He returns in the
Person of the Holy Spirit and takes up His residence in
the Church, which is His Body. Things then begin to
happen quite spontaneously, out from the world of
spiritual intelligences - not just because of certain
doctrines being preached, but because of that Divine
presence.
There are conscious
intelligences all around, behind men and nations, and the
conflict has started; not because of what God's people
say, but because they are here. Let that be corporate,
and you have God's idea of vocation. This is not the
dispensation of the conversion of the nations. I wonder
even if this is the dispensation of the full
evangelization of the nations. We are hoping the Lord may
come any day. Half of this world has never heard the name
of Jesus yet, after two thousand years. If the Lord is
coming tonight, something has to happen if the world is
to be evangelized before He comes! That is not said to
stay or weaken evangelization. let us get on with it and
do all that is possible; but, remember, the Lord has
given us His meaning for this dispensation. "This
gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole
world for a testimony unto all the nations; and
then shall the end come" (Matthew 24:14).
Look at your New
Testament. It was said, "Their sound went out into
all the earth" (Romans 10:18). It was said that the
whole world was touched. But the world has grown a good
deal since then. What happened at that time? The Lord
planted nuclei, corporate representations of His Church,
first in one nation and then in another, and by their
presence the fight broke out. The one thing that Satan
was bent upon was to eject that which inoculated his
kingdom with the sovereignty of the Lord; to get it out,
break it up, disintegrate it, somehow to nullify it;
turning those concerned one against another, creating
divisions - anything to spoil, to mar, to destroy their
representation of Christ's absolute lordship; to
neutralise that, to get it out, to drive it out, to do
anything to get rid of this thing inside his kingdom.
Satan's kingdom has acted in this way, as if to say:
'While that thing is here, we can never be sure of
ourselves; while that is here our kingdom is divided, it
is not whole: let us get it out, in order to have our
kingdom solid.'
God's object is to get
into the nations a corporate expression of the lordship
of His Son - to have His place there. I am not saying we
are not to preach; yes, we must preach, witness, testify;
but the essential thing is that the Lord must be there.
There are times - and this will be borne out by many
servants of God - when you cannot preach, you cannot do
anything but hold on where you are, being there, standing
there, keeping in close touch with heaven there. You can
do nothing else, and the waves break upon you. It has
happened many times. Before ever there has been any
advance or development there has been a long-drawn-out
period in which the one question has been, 'Shall we be
able to hold on, to stand our ground?' Satan has said,
'Not if I can help it! You will go out if I can do
anything about it!'
The whole question at
issue is the foothold of the heavenly Lord in the
nations. Israel was constituted for that; the Church is
constituted for that. It cannot be done single-handed by
units; it requires the corporate - the two, the three;
the more the better, provided there is the unifying
factor, the oneness, of a single eye. If double motives
and personal interests come in, they will undo it all.
Are you fighting a lonely battle? You need co-operation,
you need corporate help to fight that battle through and
to hold your ground. Mark you, the enemy will drive you
out if he can. Preach if you can; but if you cannot, that
does not mean that you are to quit. Until the Lord says,
'I can do no more here,' you have to hold on. Do we not
know the terrific efforts of the enemy to drive us out?
Many of you have gone far enough to know what that means.
If he could put you out, he would.
But that is the vision -
what the Church is constituted for in relation to the
Lord Jesus: so that, in the light of the coming day, you
are standing as a testimony of the coming day; in the
nations for a testimony, "until he come whose right
it is" to reign, and "the kingdom of the world
is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his
Christ" (Rev. 11:15); a foothold unto that time; an
altar built, which testifies: 'This belongs to the Lord:
the Lord's rights are here: He has purchased this.' But
you will find every kind of contradiction to that in
conditions, and every kind of assault from the enemy to
try to prove that the Lord has not anything there, that
He has no footing and that you had better get out.
Do you see how necessary
it is to have the vision? You cannot do that on
enthusiasm - it will not last; nor on someone else's
vision - it will not support you to the end. You must be
like this man Paul and those who "endured, as seeing
him who is invisible"; not as having seen Him long
ago, but living continually in the light of what you have
seen and are seeing - a light which is ever growing.
VISION
IS THE MEASURE OF VOCATION
Now, if all this is
simple and elementary, it is nevertheless basic. Do you
see that vision of God's full purpose concerning His Son,
revealed in your own heart in its beginnings, but then
growing clearer and fuller, is the basis of vocation? I
do trust that nothing I have said will have the effect of
making you less earnest and devoted in all simple ways of
witnessing, or testifying concerning salvation; but do
remember that, for fullness, you need to see very much
more than that. You will go just as far as your vision
takes you; therefore, we all have need of Paul's prayer
that God "may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of
your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope
of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his
inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe"
(Ephesians 1:17-19).
That is the vision. And
then, as is written in Isaiah 25:7 (A.R.V.): "...
he will destroy (lit. swallow up) in this
mountain the face of the covering that covereth all
peoples, and the veil that is spread over all
nations." What does that mean - "this
mountain"? What mountain? Well, it is Zion. But has
that literal mountain, Mount Zion, that rocky eminence in
Jerusalem, ever been the instrument of taking the
covering veil from off all faces? Of course it has not!
What is Zion? Zion, in spiritual interpretation, is that
people who are living in the good of the Lord's complete
sovereignty. It says in the immediate context, "He
hath swallowed up death for ever" (vs. 8). It is
through His triumph, the triumph of His Cross and
resurrection, that He comes to us. "Ye are come unto
mount Zion" (Hebrews 12:22). Zion is the realm of
His absolute lordship, and a people living in the good of
His lordship. Then the veil is taken away. What the Lord
wants here and there and there are these nuclei, these
little companies of people living in the good of His
victory, living in the good of His having swallowed up
death victoriously; and where they are, people will see;
they will be the instrument for taking the veil from
other people's faces. Where such a company is found,
there you see the Lord. When you come into touch with
those people, you come into touch with reality.
So the final appeal is
that everything must be adjusted and brought into line
with the vision, and the one question for us is this: Are
people seeing the Lord? It is not a matter of whether
they are hearing what we have to talk about - our
preaching, doctrine, interpretation - but: Are they
seeing the Lord, are they feeling the Lord, are they
meeting the Lord? Oh, I do not ask you in your different
locations to gather two or three together to study
certain kinds of Bible teaching; but I do ask you to ask
the Lord to constitute you corporately that which will
have a spiritual impact, that in which the Lord can be
seen, the Lord can be found; of which it can be said,
'The Lord is there!' May that be true of us, wherever we
are.