We are being
occupied in these messages with the relationship of the Lord to God's great,
heavenly, eternal order. Having looked back to that order in its primal beauty,
glory and nature, we have seen the disruption, upset and dislocation which were
brought in by rebellious powers in heaven, who, by reason of their rebellion,
were cast out. And then, their leader had this one object: to spoil the work of
God and to upset that heavenly order which had been introduced into this earth.
It is the terrible story resultant from a disturbed and upset Divine order,
making that word and its meaning 'heavenly order' a key to the Bible.
But we are
particularly seeing the relationship of the Lord Jesus to that whole business -
why He came into this world, why He lived long enough on this earth to show and
to manifest the laws of that heavenly order in His own Person, and all that was
bound up with His union with the Father - in His teaching, in His works; and
then, why He died as He did - all related to the recovery and establishment of
the heavenly order in this creation. No wonder He was marked from His birth for
destruction. No wonder the prince of this world, having a very ready instrument
to hand in Herod, sought to curtail that life at its very beginning. No wonder
all the way through His public life there ran that malicious hatred. It is
repeatedly stated, "and they sought to destroy Him". He was here to "destroy the
works of the devil". "The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of
the devil", and that meant to destroy the destroyer of God's heavenly order.
Now, we have
covered a lot of ground in that connection. Today we have come to the point
where we are seeking to put our finger upon some of the things which were the
cause of that disruption. They have got to be destroyed, firstly in the
individual believer. Remember that, it is an open window to a very great deal in
our individual Christian life that that which the Son of God was manifested to
do, destroy the works of the devil, begins in the individual believer; that is,
so far as the practical outworking of it is concerned. And then it has to spread
and extend through all relationships: personal relationships, and Church
relationships. The works of the devil have got to be destroyed. And we
are seeking to find out what those works are that have to be destroyed.
I am not going
to take you again to passages that were before us in the previous chapter. I
come straight to the truths themselves without the illustrations and symbolisms.
We saw that the first blow at the heavenly at the beginning; Divine order was
struck with the weapon of a lie. The enemy brought with him a lie about God and
about man and about the laws of God. Well, it is all right so far, but when man
exposed himself or opened himself to that lie (gave an ear to it, attention to
it, permitted it to stand) it entered into the very constitution of the man and
through the man to the race, and through the race into the whole system of
this world. Well, we tried to show the devastating effect of untruth and
therefore the tremendously vital importance in the reconstruction of a heavenly
order of truth. For it is only in the Divine order that the Divine end can be
reached. There is no other way.
Now we come to
the second of these things which on the one side spelt the disruption of this
creation, and on the other side spells the recovery and reconstruction. And that
is: unbelief and faith.
Unbelief and
Faith
There are so
many parts of the Scripture to which we could turn in this connection. May it
suffice for the present to remind you that, when at last the work is done, the
recovery is perfected, and all the damage is repaired and the works of the devil
have been completely cast out and we have that wonderful symbolic representation
of what is heavenly in nature and order, the New Jerusalem coming down from God
out of Heaven, there are some very significant things said there. We have this,
for one, in Revelation 21:8: "But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and
abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and
all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone."
The unbelieving come in the category at last. It was an original work by which
the creation was thrown into such confusion; it is the final work of the
triumphant Lamb that sees unbelief in the lake of fire. As I have said, there
are many Scriptures on this matter of unbelief. There is that very significant
statement regarding that whole generation which came
out of Egypt, with God's thought and will that they should enter upon
that which would be a wonderful, earthly representation of the heavenly order.
It is written over the whole of that generation: "they could not enter in
because of unbelief." It is the great frustrating and limiting thing; it is the
great spoiling thing. It disappoints God and man.
What is the
nature of unbelief? It is nothing less and other than a vicious slandering of
God. "Has God said...?" You can hear mockery and you can hear something
unholy, something that would bring God Himself into question. Well, unbelief is
all that we can say that is against God; it is disparagement of God. "Has God
said...?" There is the note of disparagement there. It is the defaming of
God. It is calumny against God. It is libel against God. It is detraction from
God. It is casting an aspersion upon God. It is all that and much more that is
underneath. Unbelief always calls God into question; always takes something from
God of His character; puts something upon God which does not belong to His
nature. It is a terrible thing. We know quite well when we are saying all these
things that we are hitting ourselves pretty hard. We are not saying this
objectively about other people, or about you; we are taking ourselves very
severely to task, facing the truth about our own hearts.
We know quite
well that unbelief is always weakness, and it always has the effect of
disintegrating the life, just shattering its unity, pulling it to pieces. Thus
it weakens our souls. It weakens our hands in the work of God or in any purpose;
it arrests our progress. Oh how true these things are, and how much more could
be said about this terrible thing called unbelief!
If you were
going to buy a newly built house and, wanting to be very sure, you brought the
builder along and you said to him: "Will the foundation really hold up that
house?" And he said, "I am not sure!" "Will that roof really be weatherproof and
watertight?" "I don't know, I have my doubts." "Will those floors really sustain
the weight that I want to put on them?" "I don't know." "Well, will the whole
thing stay together?" "I cannot tell you!" What would you do? Well, I know what
you would do. You would say, "You can have your house; that is not what I want."
But perhaps you would turn to him, and say, "Have you ever thought of a name for
your house?" Again, he might say, "No I don't know." "Well, I will give you a
name for that house: Doubting Castle!" And we might just put in there a
little parenthesis from our brother, John Bunyan. Do you remember Doubting
Castle? And this might be very appropriate today for some of us, for Christian
and Hopeful had been really enjoying a good time on the banks of the river as
they walked along. But good times have a way of passing, and as they went on,
they came upon a very rugged piece of road, so different and hard-going. But
after a time, they began to complain about the road, and the hardness of the
way. They began to ask questions as to whether this was right, whether this
ought to be, whether the King was really kind in asking them to come along such
a road. And while they were so occupied, they came to a little bypath in the
road which led off from the main road, and it led into Bypath Meadow in which
was Doubting Castle, the residence of Giant Despair. And because they were
trespassing (how clever Bunyan was!) - they were where they ought not to have
been - Giant Despair came out and dragged them in, and flung them into a
dungeon.
Another touch
of genius is that Bunyan says they had very little to say to each other now,
because they both knew they were in the wrong. They had been rejoicing together,
talking about the Lord and the things of the Lord, and having blessed
fellowship. But now that was all brought to a stop in Doubting Castle, under the
shadow of Giant Despair. There they lay, everything suspended. But after a while
Christian recollected; he recollected that he had the key to the Castle in his
bosom. And he said, "What a fool I am thus to lie in a stinking dungeon when I
can be walking at liberty. I have the key!" When he said that, Giant's Despair's
limbs began to tremble and to fail him, and his fits recommenced to take hold of
him, and he was unable to keep them in his dungeon or his castle! Well, that is
unbelief. It is forbidden ground; it is a bypath meadow; it is off the main
road. You and I have visited that more than once; we have been caught. That is
what happened to man. And that - let us be honest - has happened to us more than
once. We have allowed this sinister thing to come in, asked questions about the
goodness of the Lord, about the love of God, wondered whether our hard road is
after all not a contradiction to His goodness and His mercy. Once we get down
that road, we are getting off the track; once we let that thing begin to have a
place, it will not be long before we are in the grip of Giant Despair. Well,
this world is there and many Christians get there.
All that
remains to be said is that faith or belief is a mighty weapon in the Son
of God for destroying the works of the devil. You see His life here. He did not
come into this world with anything whatever to rest upon as a guarantee, or
assurance, of worldly success, or from the natural standpoint that His mission
would be successful. He came in minus everything that this world requires for
success. And so He lived. He had no wealth; He had no worldly influence; He was
brought up in a place which itself represented a handicap for His life, a town
with a bad reputation! "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" And so
He lived right the way through, with everything lacking that this world demands
for success, and very much present that was set against Him and in the very
atmosphere of malice and hatred. It was there, but He lived and won through an
earthly life on one thing only, and that was faith in His Father. And who shall
say, in the light of the record, that that faith was put to it very severely at
times. To the last breath He was assailed. "He was tempted in all points like as
we are" - sin apart - tempted nevertheless. Satan came to Him in the wilderness
on this very thing - 'If God were Your Father, He would not let you hunger!'
That is the 'serpent'. But the fact is that under the severest testings of faith
to the end, He won through. Those two last cries on the Cross: ''My God, why...
why...?" That is the cry of a tested faith isn't it - "Why hast Thou forsaken
Me?" You and I will never have, by the mercy of God, to cry that cry, but you
and I in so much smaller ways have, more than once, said to the Lord, Why...?
But then, I am so glad that there was a change from "My God, My God, why...", to
"Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit." Faith has triumphed; back into the
realm of absolute confidence in His Father; and there He closes His life. But He
was in His own life and Person recovering and re-establishing this law of a
heavenly order; it is brought back by triumphant faith.
It is, in the
first place, the assurance of God. It is the assurance that God is the Saviour,
"...strong cries and tears that he might be saved..." - that He might be
saved "from death, and He was heard in that He feared", meaning, of course,
as that word always does in the Bible, not that He was 'afraid', but that he
'trusted'. He trusted God for His salvation. The assurance for salvation - that
is faith in God. The assurance of purpose in calling. Satan tried to destroy
that in the wilderness, to get Him to experiment with God, and resort to some
other kind of method of fulfilling His vocation, in capturing the dominion of
the kingdoms of the world. 'Do it in your own strength; do it in the popular
way; do it as other men do it. Don't do it by faith; do it by works. Do
it out of yourself.' He tried to raise the question, "If... if..." all the time
as to whether, with all that was against Him and all this threat that was
confronting Him, He could fulfill His mission. He was called to this work. And
faith triumphed in the matter of His calling, His vocation; the purpose of God
in His life. You and I are tested along those same lines. Many a man and woman
who has lived a long life in walking with God has had a supreme test before the
life closed on the question of assurance of salvation. It is a fact.
Last week I
read again the life of Dr. A. B. Simpson. If ever there was a man who walked
with God he did; if ever there was a man to whom the Lord talked, he was such.
If ever a man was used of the Lord, he was - worldwide and with a wonderful
testimony. However, in the closing weeks of his life he was under the dark cloud
of questioning whether he was really saved. His brethren had to gather around
him and fight that battle of prayer for him, and he came out triumphantly before
he went. But Satan, you see, never gives up this thing and tries to spoil
everything by insinuating unbelief and questions about God. It shatters
everything.
This is because
the enemy knows that faith, after all, involves everything, just as unbelief
involves everything. It is not one of those things that you can isolate or
separate. That is why in prescribing the armour against principalities and
powers, the Apostle says: 'And take the big shield of faith'. That is what it
is; it is not in our translation, but the big shield, the overall shield.
You may have all the other pieces of amour, in all the other places where it
fits, but you have got to cover everything with faith. Even your righteousness
has got to be a righteousness by faith, every bit of it. The girdle of truth is
of no avail only by faith. You see, faith involves everything, and that is why
the enemy struck at faith at the beginning and never ceases to strike. And that
conflict will continue to the end.
Now, we have
related this matter to 'building'. This is the second pillar of the seven
pillars of wisdom with which she is building her house. If the first is 'truth'
the second is 'faith'. And there will be no building without faith. There will
be just the opposite, everything will go to pieces if there is unbelief, if
there is doubt. So Paul cries, "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live
by the faith of the Son of God". Now, I am very glad that that is the
literal way of putting it and for what that means, because you and I are so
often found helpless and baffled because we feel we have not got the kind of
faith, that measure of faith that is called for. And perhaps as we speak of it,
what a tremendous thing it is, we feel almost appalled at our little faith. But
it is 'the faith of the Son of God'. He perfected faith in Himself. He won the
battle of faith completely, and in His Cross He met that whole realm of
unbelief, that evil thing, and conquered it in His Cross, as we have seen. These
principalities and powers and hosts of wicked spirits which compassed Him about
like bees, were all concentrating for one final blow of victory - to make Him
doubt His God. But He came through, triumphant over them all. And in that way He
stripped them off and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in His
Cross.
Now, we know
this is one of our platitudes and yet how slow we are to appropriate. We know
that the Holy Spirit came precisely to make good in us, and in the Church, what
Jesus did in His Cross. That is a part of our doctrine. But that is why the Holy
Spirit came, to guide us into all the truth; to take the things of Christ and
show them to us; to make real in us all that was true in Christ. The Holy
Spirit, therefore, has come to implant faith, to nurture faith, to strengthen
faith, to bring the faith of the Son of God alive in us and to increase in us.
Oh, if it is 'my' faith, that is not going to get through! If it is 'your'
faith, it is a poor thing. If it is 'His' faith, it is a mighty faith that has
already conquered. It is His faith! "I have been crucified with Christ. It is
no longer I but Christ; and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live by
the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and gave Himself up for me." Faith is
the gift of God. Faith is the work of God.
Let us ask the
Lord to strengthen the faith of the Son of God in us. And as together we are
built up, so the building will go on, a structure that proves by its testimony
that the works of the devil have been destroyed, and this work in particular.
May it never be that we cannot enter in because of unbelief, but rather be those
who through faith and patience inherit the promise.