Now, seeing that it is set forth as being
so, that we are together, we want to see something more
of the ground of this oneness. I think perhaps we could
be helped most by reminding ourselves of the 23rd chapter
of Leviticus, the chapter which contains the establishing
of the Feasts of the Lord. Now the main feature, the
dominating feature of these feasts is that they represent
the corporate life of the people of God, the corporate
life of the Church. You see they are the gatherings
together of all the Lord's people. These feasts are
called holy convocations. The people are convoked, their
oneness is revealed on these occasions and by these
occasions, so that the primary element is the corporate
life of the people of God as expressed at these times.
That is what is in view. That at these
times people cease to live private lives, cease to live
detached individual lives, even their own domestic lives
or their own social lives within their own circle. All
that which is departmental is abandoned at these times
and the people are found as one. That being the case you
proceed to take account of what it is that makes their
oneness, and you see it is the feasts. Yes, but then it
is the different kinds of feasts all put together making
one whole which is the foundation of the corporate life
and fellowship of the Lord's people.
So you go through the feasts. (I am not
going to deal with them at large or in detail, I simply
mention them and perhaps the outstanding feature of
them). You begin with
The Feast Of The Passover
A great many Divine principles are
gathered up in the Feast of the Passover, but there is
one thing which embraces all the others and becomes that
for which the Passover stands, that which it represents,
that is, A COVENANT IN LIFE BY BLOOD. Everything is
gathered up into that. God makes a covenant. He makes
that covenant by blood; that blood of the covenant is
deliverance from judgment and death, a holding in life
when death is abroad in judgment, the destroyer rendered
inoperative. Well, that is life triumphant in the
presence of death, over the Devil, in the power of shed
and sprinkled blood, and there is a covenant between God
and His own. That is the first step, the first thing
which brings into being the corporate life of God's
people.
Now I want to discriminate. A great many
people of today have tried, and are trying to realize the
oneness of the Church upon the basis of the doctrine of
the virtue and efficacy of the Blood of the Lord Jesus,
the doctrine of the Blood; if you like - the atonement,
the value of the Blood, the whole teaching of the Blood
of the Lord Jesus from whatsoever angle it may be
preached, in whatsoever direction it may be applied; they
are trying to realize the oneness of the Church by
establishing that as an essential doctrine, and if you
accept that as one of the doctrines of the faith, then
you come into the oneness of the Church. But never yet
has doctrine been able to realize oneness. It is not
sufficient that you have fundamentalism, which after all
may only be the gathering together of certain recognized
fundamental doctrines; it is not enough to have that as
the basis of unity. It does not work, you cannot get it
on the basis of doctrine, on the basis of creed, you have
got to have it on the basis of experience, on the basis
of power, of something wrought, something brought about.
We know that there are plenty of people who believe in
all the eternal and infinite virtue and value of the
Blood of the Lord Jesus who know very little
experimentally about the power of His Blood in their
lives as a mighty force working against the power of
death within and without. That is a heavenly thing, but
creed can be quite an earthly thing, perfectly sound and
true, but quite an earthly thing for an earthly society,
not efficacious in the spiritual realm.
It is the spiritual power of the Blood as
registered in the spiritual universe that is the true
value of the Blood, and it is when you come into that
that you come into the true oneness of the Church -
spiritual, not creedal. It is experimental, not
doctrinal. It is life as an active, energetic, mighty
thing. It is not our loyalty to sound doctrine. It is
very important to notice that distinction. The
maintenance of the oneness of the Body of Christ,
beloved, requires something infinitely more than a sound
creed and true doctrine; it needs a power, a terrific
power, a force mightier than any other force in this
universe, and the Blood is that.
It is on the ground of that Blood that the
Church has been brought into being. Christ now lives in
virtue of His own Blood, and He, living in virtue of that
has brought all His members into heavenly fellowship with
Him by the same virtue of His Blood. It is a living,
working, operating thing this Blood, and the Passover is
just that we have come into an experimental, living,
active union with one another in Christ in the power of
His Blood in that covenant. That is the oneness of the
Church, the Body of Christ. Until something of that
operates we have not come into the active operation of
the Church's life as a heavenly Body.
If the Church is going to count, fulfil
her vocation, register her impact upon the principalities
and powers and world rulers of this darkness, hosts of
wickedness, and accomplish her universal mission, her
pre-destined purpose, it can only be on the basis of this
tremendous power that is in the precious Blood of the
Lord Jesus. That being true, the Church has no existence
apart from that Blood, and therefore no vocation apart
from the Blood.
We have said we have got to come into an
appreciation of it, to approximate to what is already
true; but in the mind of God no one is a member of
Christ's Body who does not stand right in all the virtue
of His precious Blood. I do not mean that they
intelligently apprehend all the meaning of that Blood,
that they have come into the full revelation of what that
Blood is, but that their relationship to the Lord Jesus
is brought about in virtue of that Blood, and that in
heaven it is the Blood that has joined them to Him and
one another. It is in the power of that that the Church
is going to be ultimately triumphant. "They overcame
because of the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 12:11).
That is just the beginning, you see. So if
we are going to know, appreciate, enjoy and profit by the
corporate truth of the Body of Christ, we have got to
learn what the power of the Blood is, and that Blood has
got to become a recognized force in our lives against the
things which the Devil seeks to use for breaking up
fellowship. Oh, how much less there might have been of
Satanic success along the line of schism and division if
only the Lord's people had recognized the power and
virtue of the Blood against all such Satanic activity! If
you and I came into a state of strain in our
relationships as the result of some work of the enemy,
beloved, the only thing that will bring us back into
fellowship is the pleading of the power of the Blood
against all that the enemy has done. That itself is full
proof of the fact that the Body is one in virtue of the
Blood initially, continually and finally. The Passover
yields that primary truth, so the coming together of the
Lord's people in the Old Testament, their corporate life,
their fellowship, was in the first place upon a basis of
a covenant in the blood as triumphant over death and the
destroyer, the first phase of their fellowship. The
second of these feasts was
The Feast Of Unleavened Bread
The Feast of Unleavened Bread was to be
continued for seven whole days, representing a perfect
period, a perfect spiritual period - (seven is the number
of spiritual perfection) - that is a perfect spiritual
period throughout which all that is of the flesh is
eliminated and ruled out, for the leaven is the ferment
of the flesh, is the work of the flesh, the potent
element of the flesh which is corrupt, and we know that
it is the leaven which is the basis of corruption. The
flesh is corrupt, the flesh has got to be eliminated,
ruled out throughout the whole period of spiritual life.
We have to come to Romans 6, and see in the Cross of the
Lord Jesus the body of the flesh put out of operation,
where we recognize that this flesh is by God ruled out.
The Lord demands that it shall be set aside, we must
repudiate it, we must accept God's position about this,
that the flesh must not have a place. It does not mean
that we shall never be tempted along the line of the
flesh, nor that we shall never be conscious that the
flesh is there, but it does mean that we have to
repudiate the flesh even though we might be touched by
it; we have to take back that ground and repudiate it and
say, "I repent, I put that back, I recognize that is
corruption and that will corrupt everything, and I put it
down, I put it out. I reckon myself dead to it."
Just as on the eve of the Passover the father of the
Jewish household would light his lamp and go through the
house room by room, searching in every corner, every
cupboard, every out of the way place to find any leaven
if he could, and having swept his house clean of leaven
so far as he knew by the most thorough search, even then
before God he was not satisfied, he would make the
declaration, "I have searched my house, I have
purged it of the leaven which I know, but if there should
yet be some leaven which has eluded my utmost search and
scrutiny, I repudiate it also."
The thoroughness of the repudiation of the
flesh as the corrupting element, that is the feast of
unleavened bread. The Oneness of the Church the Body of
Christ demands that not only our sins should have been
put away, but that we should have been put away in the
flesh. The natural man corrupts things, spoils things,
divides. We know it is the ferment of the flesh that
works against the unity of the Body, brings about
schisms, upsets the positive spiritual functioning of the
Lord's people in spiritual oneness. It is the flesh that
does it all; so that when all the people are going to
express their oneness of life in God it is necessary for
them to repudiate the flesh, to get rid of the leaven.
Any slight uprising of jealousy, or envy, or personal
feeling, or heat of myself, or provocation which is
personal provocation, not on a basis of principle,
righteousness, but personal provocation which casts a
shadow between me and another, I have got to go back on
that at once and with all my heart I have got to say,
"That was wrong and I repent of it and seek to have
that leaven extracted, put aside."
We have all got to do that. We are still
in this natural life susceptible to being upset and
offended, we are still very touchy. Oh, yes, we know it
quite well! Whether we feel we have a right to be upset
or not, that is not the question, the thing is has our
flesh come into the situation? If it has it has put up a
barrier between us and others, and we must go and confess
the fault of which we were guilty. Not all the time
excusing ourselves because we were more wronged than
wrong, nor hiding our own wrong because they were wrong.
We must go back and say, "I ought not to have
reacted as I did to it, I ought to have sought grace to
return good for evil." We do not always do that, not
any of us; but unless we do that, unless we keep short
accounts there is going to rise up a barrier between us.
The Body of Christ in its corporate
oneness is based upon the working fact of Romans 6 and
Colossians 2:11-12, the whole body of the flesh
circumcised, put away. You see again how necessary it is
to have something more than the principle of our
identification with Christ in death; it has got to be,
not the principle, but the active working of the
principle. The principle probably does not do anything
other than put us into a false position, and it will do
so if it is not applied. We can be just as deluded by
truth as we can be by error. Quite a lot of people are
deluded by truth. They have the principle, they have the
doctrine, and for them that is the end of everything;
they do not see that what is necessary is that the
principle should operate and that it should be life. You
see that the corporate life of Israel was based upon this
second thing the putting away of the flesh. The third of
the feasts was
The Feast Of The First-Fruits
Now that embraces many aspects of truth
and leads on to much more than at present we have it in
mind to mention. We just take the primary thing, the
initial thing, the outstanding thing which governs
everything else in these feasts. When you come to the
Feast of the First-fruits, you are simply coming to the
great truth of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as
representative. The first ripe fruits represent all the
other to follow, the first-fruits are taken in
representation of the whole. The priest takes those first
ripe ears of corn to the Lord and thanks the Lord for the
whole harvest. These are the earnest of the harvest, and
we know from "Corinthians" what the Apostle
says about this, that the Lord Jesus is a First-fruits,
so that He is in His own Person representatively the
Church in resurrection. "We are risen together with
Him," says "Ephesians." We have been
buried with Him, that is the old man put away, now we are
risen with Him, and the real oneness of the members of
Christ, the oneness of the Body of Christ is found in its
living testimony to resurrection union with the Lord
Jesus. We know how He established that principle in His
simple and well-known little parable of the grain of
wheat. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit" (John 12:24). You see there is a
multiplication, a hundred-fold. One corn dying issues in
a hundred corns living. It is resurrection corporeity in
Christ through His death.
Oh that we should enter into the working
force of that as the Body of Christ; and you know when we
really do begin to enter experimentally and livingly into
the fact that we were planted together with Him in the
likeness of His resurrection, and the power of His
resurrection is operative in us, what a sense of
fellowship that brings to us, what a difference in our
relationships. If we are knowing the power of
resurrection life at work in us, what fellowship we have.
If we know something mutually of life triumphant over
death, a working thing in us, a mutuality in experience,
that mutuality is going to count, and it already is a
testimony in the heavenlies, it is working against the
forces of death and darkness.
That thing wrought into the Body of Christ
is the testimony to the fact that the power of the Devil
is broken, and a testimony to the fact that Christ has
overcome death and has swallowed up death in victory (1
Cor. 15:54; Hos. 13:14). Unless we know that
experimentally in the spiritual realm we shall not know
it in the physical. The physical always follows the
spiritual in the Divine order. We will never know
resurrection of the body unto eternal life unless we know
already resurrection in the spirit. It is a working force
that constitutes the very basis of the existence of the
Church's activity and function. To enter into the fact of
the oneness of the Body we have got to enter into the
experience of the power of resurrection. The fourth is
The Day Of Atonement
As in all the others, there are many
principles included, but one thing predominates. The Lord
says, "It is a Sabbath of rest unto you, ye shall do
no work." This is a feast of gathering together of
the Lord's people into rest, the Day of Atonement. Now,
leaving all the other elements, let us notice the
significance of the Sabbath rest coming in at this point.
The feasts have been already introduced with the
establishment of the Sabbath; here the Sabbath rest comes
in in a special, peculiar, particular place in connection
with the Day of Atonement, and it says this to us; that
on the basis of our covenant union with God in life
triumphant over death by the Blood shed and sprinkled, on
the basis of our old man having been crucified with
Christ, the body of the flesh put away, on the basis of
our having come into the knowledge of union with Christ
risen, the power of His resurrection, we enter into rest.
We enter into rest; we come to an end of our works and
enter into God's Sabbath, God's rest; we come to the
place where we no longer strive after an end but where we
have reached the end, where struggling to satisfy God
ceases, and God is satisfied. He looks upon His works
perfectly satisfied, we come into God's satisfaction.
In this Day of Atonement, in the atoning
work of the Lord Jesus and the atoning value of His Blood
sprinkled on the mercy seat right in the presence of God,
God has found an answer to all His desires and
requirements and has come to His rest, full satisfaction
in His Son. That Blood is taken into the presence of God
as a testimony to the fact that all is done and finished
and God rests in the full accomplishment of the Lord
Jesus, through His Blood, and there is no more striving.
When we come there, to the apprehension of the perfect
work of the Lord Jesus in His atonement we ought to come
to rest. All fretful care to satisfy God ought to be put
aside and we ought to find Christ meeting all our need
for us before the Father.
What about our progressive sanctification?
Is there nothing to be done of that in us? Yes, but you
will never progressively move into perfection, holiness,
until that basis is fully settled, the Lord Jesus has
presented everything for you for the satisfaction of the
Father. We grow in grace on the basis that already Christ
has accomplished the whole work for us and we have
nothing that we can do to add to His work for our
sanctification.
Luther was sent to Rome with a commission
and he was very anxious to visit the City and that
special place of penance that he might get special
privileges and indulgences and so on by climbing those
stairs on his hands and knees. He thought by imposing
upon himself that terrible suffering he would find the
rest of justification. He started, the thing became
laborious and something said, "The just shall live
by faith," and on he went again; the voice said
again, "The just shall live by faith," and he
tried more steps; the emphasis came back again upon one
word, "The just shall LIVE by faith" (Hab. 2:4;
Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38), and that was what led
to his conversion and his abandonment of the whole Romish
system of justification by works.
"The just shall LIVE by faith."
It is not our faith as something in itself, it is the
Object of our faith, the work of the Lord Jesus. We make
far too much of the measure of our faith, it is the
Object of our faith. It is when we get our faith fastened
upon the Object, Christ and His perfect work for us, that
we enter into rest. We climb no more stone steps on hands
and knees. This is a basic thing to the corporate life of
the Lord's people. The element of unrest, ferment,
dissatisfaction goes out, and we have peace with God, we
have got harmony, for that is only another word for
peace. That is rest. Peace in the Bible is not some sort
of atmosphere, but a right adjustment of all elements to
one another in a perfect harmony.
The last of these feasts is
The Feast Of Tabernacles
And how proper is their order. You see how
their sequence is just right when you come to the Feast
of Tabernacles. You notice that the people during their
time of convocation are called upon to leave their houses
and come out and go and cut down boughs of trees and
build themselves booths and dwell in these booths outside
their houses throughout the whole of the time of the
feasts. It is a corporate action, and if you will just
follow through the Feast of Tabernacles in the Old
Testament into the Book of Nehemiah you will find that it
points backward, and in the case of the remnant where the
Feast of Tabernacles was reinstated there is a distinct
link made between that reinstating and Israel's coming
out of Egypt (Lev. 23:42-43).
It is said that this Feast of Tabernacles
is meant to perpetuate the memory of Israel's coming out
of Egypt, and yet when they came out of Egypt there was
no Feast of Tabernacles established. The Feast of
Tabernacles is the means of perpetuating the memory of
Exodus. They came out of stone houses, directly related
to the earth, they came out into a wilderness where
everything was not earthly, everything was heavenly.
Heavenly symbols - the blue robe of the High Priest and
the bit of the same blue on the border of the garment of
every man, woman and child throughout all their
generations. So heavenliness was the character of these
people, they were not of this earth, but out for God unto
the heavenlies, and the Feast of Tabernacles speaks of
the heavenliness of the people of God.
Beloved, that is an important basic factor
of the Church which is His Body. We were saying that God
in this dispensation is doing nothing whatever publicly
to constitute something on this earth, and yet men are
striving as hard as they can to set up something on this
earth for God.
There at the end of the second century of
this Christian era, perhaps before that, this thing came
in, and there were means and methods adopted to make the
Church something on this earth, to organize it as a world
force, to put it into such form that it would appeal to
men and impress men of this world, so that the world
would take account of it, and say it was a great force,
and something that cannot be ignored. That has developed
and has ever been an absolute violation of the principle
of God for this whole dispensation. What God is doing is
building a heavenly Church, a Body in the heavens, and
the Church of God is not a thing seen, it is a thing
unseen, a secret people, spiritual, by the world unknown
- it knew Him not (John 1:10).
That is basic to our oneness. Immediately
there is a tendency to set up something here on the earth
you will get divisions; it does not matter how spiritual
it is, immediately it touches the earth you will get
divisions. Some of the most beautiful movements of God,
really God's movement from heaven, immediately they get
into the hands of men and become something on the earth,
division comes in and you get more sects.
The only safety is to keep off the earth,
the only safety is to recognize what God is doing. There
will be a testimony here in the world, but there is a
difference between there being a testimony in the world
and there being an organization in the world.
The Lord is out of sympathy with every
movement to set up something here on the earth. He will
do that in a coming age, but not in this. If we do things
by way of setting up something here on the earth, even
for God, it is not long before the Lord leaves us to take
the responsibility for it, the Lord will not take the
responsibility for that. He will take responsibility for
all that is according to His own mind in this age, that
which is absolutely heavenly.