Reading: Ex. 26:31-36; Matt.
27:45-51; Luke 3:21-22; Heb. 6:19-20; 9:3,12; 10:20; John 14:6.
That which is to form the
subject of our meditation at this time has very closely to do
with the question of our partaking in a spiritual and living way
of the resources that are now at our disposal in Christ. Christ on
resurrection ground and in resurrection life makes available to
us all these secret resources of His Own life when here on earth.
The triumph of His life - and indeed it was a great triumph - and
the triumph of His Cross are to be accounted for by His access to
secret resources upon which He was continually drawing, and those
secret resources are now made available to us on the ground of
His resurrection, and through living union with Him in a
spiritual way as the risen Lord. Now our part is to inquire what
those resources were, and how they become available to us. We
shall only be occupied with one of these at this time, but it is
the one out of which all the others spring, with which all the
others are bound up.
An Opened
Heaven
Luke 3 tells us that Jesus,
having been baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and it
is with the meaning and value of the opened heaven that we want
to dwell for a little while.
If there is one thing more than
another which the Word of God makes clear it is that heaven is
closed to man in his unregenerate state. You will find that to be
the case wherever you may look in the Word of God. The very
elaborate provision made for man to draw near to God at all is
itself a declaration that access to God cannot be taken for
granted. It is not a thing available without very special
provision. Associated with everything provided for man in the Old
Testament is the warning: Stand back! This is for you only on
very special grounds. There is no advance. There is no approach.
There is no access. I think it hardly needs labouring that the
Word of God hammers out this fact, that to man in his
unregenerate state heaven is closed.
Heaven is not only a place to
which we may go. So many people have but one idea of heaven as
the place to which you go at last if you are good. Well, it may
be. We are all hoping to go there, but it is not in that
particular sense that we are speaking of its being closed. The
question of a closed or opened heaven is a very much greater
matter than that. Heaven is a realm of God. A realm of everything
belonging to and related to God; the realm of God and His things.
It is the realm of fellowship with God, communion with God.
Everything of meaning and value, of necessity and blessing for
man's spiritual good, for man's eternal well-being, is bound up
with heaven.
That is not something future,
that is something for the present. God's thought is not merely
that we might go at last to heaven, not just that, but that now
we should know what life in heavenly union with Himself means,
and what all the resources of heaven mean for our lives here on
this earth, that we should enjoy now every spiritual blessing in
the heavenlies in Christ. That is a great word of the Apostle
Paul. Heaven is something vast for present enjoyment, for present
experience. The Psalmist said of Zion: "All my wellsprings
are in thee." That is what the believer says of heaven, of
Christ in heaven. That is heaven in present possession, and
present enjoyment, and unless that is true now, before we leave
this world, there is not much hope of our going to heaven at
last.
These things of eternal value
for our well-being, these things of God for our blessing, for our
good, are not to be found in the world. Men have searched for
them, and sought them in the world, but they have never been
found there. They are in heaven, and can only come to us through
an opened way to heaven.
But all this - and it is far
more than ever we could detail, even were we to stay to speak of
it for a very extended period - all that heaven means of resource
and of blessing and value for time and for eternity is closed, is
behind a closed door, as regards unregenerate men and women, even
though they may be religious. One of the great snares which will
keep multitudes out of heaven is religion. To be religious does
not necessarily mean to have a heavenly life in union with the
risen Lord.
We must see what this means in
the light of an opened heaven. Clearly this is the significance
of Christ's words to Nicodemus. Nicodemus came to Christ seeking
light about heavenly things. He wanted to apprehend heavenly
things, to have touch with heavenly things, and the Lord Jesus
quite definitely and deliberately said at once to him, in effect:
Nicodemus, that door is closed to you! Closed to Nicodemus, a
ruler in Israel, a very religious man, a representative of God's
chosen people? Yes, to him the Master says clearly, The door is
closed, Nicodemus, there is no way through for you. If you want
to enter into that realm, if you want to know, to understand
those things, if you want to come into those blessings, you must
be born from above. "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."
These two are altogether different. They belong to different
realms. One belongs to earth, and the other belongs to heaven,
and there is no passing from one to the other. You must be born
into the kingdom of heavenly things.
The Veil of
the Tabernacle
We turn to the letter to the
Hebrews, bearing in mind the passages that were brought before
us, all of which made reference to the veil. We know from our
reading in the book of Exodus to what the veil relates. In the
instructions given to Moses for the building of the Tabernacle
there were certain detailed directions for the erection at a
given point of a veil to divide the Tabernacle into two
compartments, of which the one before or outside the veil was to
be called the Holy Place, and the other behind or within the veil
the Most Holy Place. Now, turning to the letter to the Hebrews,
and calling to mind the several passages referring to the veil,
we note that here the Holy Place of the Tabernacle and the Most
Holy Place are represented as earth and heaven respectively. It
says that Christ, when He ascended, went into the Most Holy
Place. He passed from the Holy Place to the Most Holy Place. The
former is represented by His life here. The latter is represented
by His entering into heaven. So that the Holy Place and the Most
Holy Place are here set forth as earth and heaven respectively.
In one, that is, in the Holy Place, there were the types of the
things of God, in the Most Holy Place was God Himself. The veil
hung between, and death overtook anyone who dared to attempt to
pass through that veil into the Most Holy Place where God was,
unless bidden and by special provision. God said concerning that
place that none was to go in lest he died, and but once a year
could the High Priest himself go in, and only then with the most
precise governing rules and provision for his protection. It was
said, even concerning him, that if he did not observe most
strictly, and accurately, and meticulously those provisions,
those governing rules, he would die, High Priest though he were.
Thus the veil declared that heaven was closed. On the one side
were the types of heavenly things, on the other side was God
Himself.
Further, the veil
in these passages is said to be typical of Christ's flesh.
Because Christ has entered into the Most Holy Place, we are
likewise bidden to enter - "through the veil, that is to
say, His flesh." Then, going back to the passage in Matthew,
we see the veil rent asunder in the hour of the Cross. When He
cried again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit, the
veil of the temple, typical of His flesh, was rent in twain from
the top to the bottom.
Let us take a look
back for a moment. Israel was chosen to maintain a representation
of the things of God on the earth, but only a representation,
chosen to be the custodian of a pattern of heavenly things. It
was as though there was entrusted to this people a model, which
was to be exhibited for all to see. It was a model of something
in heaven. And Israel was called to maintain that pattern, that
model of heavenly things intact on the earth. It was but a
reflection of something else and between the two there was a
veil of flesh: that is, there was human limitation, a veil of
human limitation between the pattern, the types, and the reality
of God Himself. The Day of Atonement in the Old Testament was a
suggestion of a fuller thought and intention of God. When one day
in a Year the High Priest on the specified ground went through
the veil into the Most Holy Place, it was an intimation from God
that He had a fuller thought, that His thought was not fully and
finally for exclusion, but for access. Human limitation was, so
to speak, suspended for a moment once a year when the veil was
parted and the High Priest went through, just for a moment, on
certain grounds, and then it was closed again. Then the human
limitation prevailed again, and for a whole long year the reality
was out of reach, and they were bound with symbols, types,
patterns.
When we turn to
Christ we have the explanation of all this. He came in the flesh.
He took upon Him a fleshly form. John's Gospel opens with the
statement: "...the Word was made flesh and tabernacled amongst
us." In so coming in the flesh He accepted voluntarily human
limitation as the Son of Man. There was another side to Him, His
essential nature, which still remained in union with heaven. He
used that extraordinary word which sounds so much like a
contradiction: "The Son of man who is in heaven." He
said that, when talking to His disciples here on the earth. Mark
the present tense, "is in heaven." There was a side of
Him, still in heaven, but now there is this other side, which
manifested in flesh, has accepted human limitation as
representing man. It is tremendously important for us to remember
that as representative Man, as Son of Man, the Lord Jesus allowed
Himself to become subject to our conditions of dependence upon
God, put Himself in the same position as ourselves, where the
resource was not in Himself but in God, and that He was
dependent, as utterly dependent as we are, upon God. Human
limitation is that which is suggested or implied by His having
taken flesh. The veil is His flesh, and that veil for man means
that heaven is closed unless something happens. It is that great
"something" to which we come as the heart of our
message.
All the sin which
had occasioned the limitation of man in his relationship with
God, the exclusion of man from God; all that had kept heaven
closed to man was dealt with and atoned for on the one great
all-inclusive Day of Atonement, the Day of His Cross. On that
great Day of Atonement in His Cross, as High Priest and Sacrifice
together, He dealt with all that and entered into the full
meaning of a closed heaven - for when He cried, "Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani," did not that speak of a closed door, of a
barrier between? Yes, He was forsaken of God in that hour when He
bore our sin. He entered into the full realisation of what it
means to have heaven closed. You and I have never entered into
the knowledge of what that means. God has marvellously
spared us that, while He offers to us the way of an opened
heaven. May we not refuse it. When in His Cross He was thus made
an offering and a sacrifice for sin, then in that hour the veil
of His flesh was rent from the top to the bottom. The human
limitation was riven, torn asunder.
Resurrection
and Life
When Christ is
raised from the dead, all that is gone. He still has flesh and
bones, He still has a body, but the typical meaning of His being
made in the likeness of sinful flesh has all been fulfilled,
carried out, and is now past. On resurrection ground He is
released from every kind of human limitation. See, the
limitations are gone! The time factor no longer counts. He is now
truly in heaven while He is here. The first thing He said on His
rising as He met Mary was: "Touch me not: for I am not yet
ascended unto the Father: But go unto my brethren, and say to
them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God, and
your God" (John 20:17). The meaning of that saying is not
readily apparent, but there is an immediate ascension. There is
no division between heaven and earth now; the veil has gone.
Heaven and earth are one for Him. On resurrection ground the
heavens were opened. Those heavens which were fast closed, those
heavens which were to Him as brass in that moment when He cried
the cry of despair, are now opened.
All that was
typified in His baptism. Right at the commencement He set that
forth in a typical way as the basis of everything. "Jesus
also having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was
opened." In His baptism he had in type gone down into death,
been buried and raised again, and on resurrection ground the
heaven was opened. There is a way through by the Blood of His
atonement. When Christ was raised the veil was removed, and the
heavens were cleft. All the patterns were gone, and the reality
was entered into. While that veil remained man was occupied with
but the patterns of heavenly things.
Does it not strike
you as significant, and very impressive, that when the veil was
rent Israel was set aside. Israel had been called in to maintain
a testimony in types. Christ had come and fulfilled all the
types, and being the centre of all the types, the veil, all that
kept God shut off from man, was now dealt with, and the way was
open. There was no need for types now. So the custodian of the
types departs with the types. This is not the dispensation of the
types: this is the dispensation of the reality, the dispensation
of a heavenly union with a risen Lord, and of all that that
means. Our danger is of bringing back types. The types have gone
and that is the whole message of this letter to the Hebrews.
Christ is everything. The outward order of the Old Testament is
set aside, and now all that obtains is Christ Himself. He is the
Priest; you no longer have priests on earth in the Old Testament
sense. He is the Sacrifice: there is no need for any other
sacrifices. He is the Tabernacle; He is the Temple; He is the
Church.
What is the
Church?
What is the
Church? It is Christ in living union with His own, that
wheresoever two or three are gathered together in His name there
He is in the midst. That is the Church. You do not build special
buildings and call them "the Church." You do not have
special organisations, religious institutions, which you call
"the Church." Believers in living union with the risen
Lord constitute the Church. This is the reality, not the figure.
That is to say, His flesh, human limitation, is done away. Now in
union with Christ risen all human limitations are transcended.
This is one of the wonders of Christ risen as a living reality.
We are brought into a realm of capacities which are more than
human capacities, where, because of Christ in us, we can do what
we never could do naturally. Our relationships are new
relationships; they are with heaven. Our resources are new
resources: they are in heaven. That is why the Apostle wrote to
the Corinthians and said that God hath chosen the weak things,
the foolish things. The things which are despised, and the things
which are not, that He by them might bring to naught the
wise, the mighty, the things which are. Why did God
appoint it so? Because it is not by might, nor by power, but by
His Spirit; and to show that there are powers, energies,
abilities for His own which transcend all the greatest powers and
abilities of this world.
That is the
history of God's people, and that is where so many people go
wrong. Men of the world look upon Christians and for the most
part do not think much of them. They measure them by the
standards of the world, and say: Well, they are rather a poor
lot; their calibre, is not much! But men of the world are unable
to measure spiritual and heavenly forces. They are unable to see
what is happening when a few of these poor, weak, foolish,
despised things get together and pray. They cannot see through
there and observe that when these few weak believers are together
before God, governed by the Holy Spirit, things are being moved
to the bounds of the universe, the whole hierarchy of Satan is
being stirred to its depths, and the powers of heaven are being
brought into operation. That is God's way, and the world never
can measure that. Nor can that be done by human wisdom, strength,
ability at its greatest. God has chosen weak things for that. Why?
Simply because weak things in their dependence are the best
instruments, the best means of giving God a chance of showing
that such works are not of any human sufficiency at all, but all
of Himself.
Please take no
comfort from the fact that God has chosen weak things and foolish
things and say: Well, I am that, and therefore it is all right!
The point is, Are you in God's hand bringing to naught the
mighty, the wise? It is not a case of a resting back on our
weakness, and our foolishness, and our nothingness, and saying:
That applies to me; that is all right; that is all that matters!
That is not all that matters. The thing which matters is that I,
being a weak, foolish nobody, may know resurrection union with
Christ in all His mighty power, and in that union with Him mighty
spiritual things should be done through me. That is the positive
side.
Heaven and earth
are united in Christ risen. Yes, He is in heaven, and yet He
says: "I am with you all the days." Or again, we have
the statement" "I go to the Father," and at the
same time the promise: "I will take up my abode in
you." Stephen, in the hour of his death, saw the heavens
opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, and
yet that Son of Man by His Spirit was in Stephen, for Stephen is
declared to have been a man full of the Holy Ghost. The Holy
Ghost is the Spirit of Christ. So Christ Who is in heaven is also
within, and heaven is also within, and heaven and earth are one
in the risen Christ. Christ was seen in heaven by Saul of Tarsus
on the way to Damascus, and yet He says to Saul: "Why
persecutest thou me?" When Saul was persecuting believers
the Lord Jesus clearly intimated that while He was up there He
was also here, and that when Saul touched believers he touched
Him. Heaven and earth are one in the risen Lord.
Typically this is
represented by Jacob's ladder. Jacob lighted upon a certain
place, and took of the stones of that place and lay down, making
them his pillow. "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up
on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven: and, behold,
the angels of God ascending and descending on it: and, behold,
the Lord stood above it..." Heaven and earth had become
united in that ladder. Carry that right over, and mark the
spiritual interpretation given in the Lord's words to Nathaniel:
"Afterward thou shalt see the heavens opened and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." What
is the meaning of this? It is plainly that Christ is the ladder.
Christ has joined heaven and earth in His risen Person. The
heavens are opened because of the work of His Cross. The
limitation has gone, the barrier has been removed, and in Christ
we are joined again with heaven.
That means that
with an opened heaven the Holy Spirit of anointing is given. In
Him we come to share in Christ's anointing. The heavens were
opened, and the Spirit descended and lighted upon Him. That is
the type. After His death, burial, and resurrection the heavens
were opened to Him, and the Spirit was given to Him without
measure. Then from that time believers were baptized into Christ,
and, being baptized into Christ, they came under the anointing of
Christ. Be careful that you do not strain after a personal
anointing. Remember your anointing is always in Christ, under
Christ as the Head upon Whom the anointing rests. Many perils are
bound up with a seeking for a personal anointing as such.
However, that is just by the way. Baptized into Christ, in union
with the risen Lord, the Spirit of the anointing rests upon us,
because it rests upon Him. We are baptized in one Spirit into one
Body.
Thereafter
everything is from God. Everything is directly of God; no types
now, no intermediaries, but everything directly of God. That
means that the opened heaven gives us immediate access to God,
and that God is not now far off, away from us there in heaven
apart. Heaven and earth are united in Christ, and God is here by
His Spirit in our hearts, with all the resources that He has. We
may know the Lord in a personal and inward way. We may draw upon
the Lord's resources in a personal and inward way. All that the
Lord has is available to us inwardly. That is the meaning of an
opened heaven. All that followed in the life of Christ here on
this earth, of secret resource, was simply indicative of this
meaning of His baptism, that is, of an opened heaven.
We shall see more
of those resources as we go on, but the opened heaven is a
wonderful thing, a tremendous thing. Heaven is no longer closed
when we are united with Christ on the ground of His atoning work,
by which the veil has been removed and we are brought right
through into God's very presence. We avail ourselves of, and give
heed to, the exhortation of the Apostle: "Let us draw near
in full assurance of faith." We have access through His
Blood. This is the new and living way which He has opened for
us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh. Ours now may
be an opened heaven, and all that the opened heaven means.
The Lord teach us
what it means, and bring us into the good of it.