"And
the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of
us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his
hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
live for ever - therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence
he was taken. So he drove out the man" (Genesis
3:22-24).
"And
about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew
27:46).
"And
there shall be no curse any more: and the throne of God
and of the Lamb shall be therein: and his servants shall
serve him; and they shall see his face" (Revelation
22:3-4).
THE FACE OF GOD
So, with
the book of Genesis and the book of the Revelation, we
have the whole bound of human history. And as we read
through the Scriptures this whole story of man's
creation, calling and destiny, we seem to see that one
matter governs the whole long record of human life, and
this one matter is that of THE FACE OF GOD. The
expulsion from the garden was expulsion from the face of
the Lord. From that time the face of God was never again
seen by man, except in tokens - such as His mercy, His
goodness - and even then only on certain conditions; but
His face in reality man did not and could not see.
And
throughout this Book, we find that man's greatest
blessing, highest good and deepest longing always related
to the face of God. How often from the heart of man the
cry is heard - "Lift thou up the light of thy
countenance" (Ps. 4:6); "Make thy face to shine
on thy servant" (Ps. 31:16); 'to walk in the light
of his countenance' (Ps. 89:15). The deepest longing in
the heart of man is ever for what that means, and his
highest good is always seen to be connected with the face
of God; while, on the other hand, man's deepest misery
and desolation is always when God's face is turned away -
when he senses that that countenance is not toward him.
To be spiritually alive and sensitive, and to feel that
there is a cloud over the face of the Lord, is the most
miserable experience of which we are capable, the
greatest desolation of heart.
THE ISSUE CENTRED IN THE CROSS OF
CHRIST
Now,
that great, shall I say, eternal issue of the face of God
was brought to a focus in the Cross of Christ. It is, I
think it can be said quite safely, the very heart of the
Calvary story. At the beginning God drove the man out.
The end of the Bible is "they shall see his
face". But midway, not in the Bible as a book, but
in this human history, the Cross gathers up that great
matter of the face of God. On one side, that face is
turned away - the man is in desolation. On the other
side, that face is turned toward - there is a new hope,
new joy, new prospect, all things are new: because once
more the light of His countenance is, in the full sense,
lifted upon believers. Genesis and Revelation meet at
Calvary.
THE WILDERNESS OF THE TURNED-AWAY
FACE OF GOD
A
wilderness is always a type of desolation and death
through the curse. The wilderness came when the Garden
was lost. It was the very fruit of the curse. In other
words, it was THE outcome of God's face being
turned away, and from that time we find the wilderness
again and again coming up in the picture of human life.
Israel in the wilderness spoke of the curse, desolation
and death. In that wilderness, if Heaven had not
intervened, they certainly would have perished - and they
knew it, too. There was nothing there to assure of life.
It was only because there was a Testimony in their midst
that they could possibly live in the wilderness; and when
their hearts were rightly adjusted to that Testimony,
they lived above the wilderness. In the midst of death
they were in life: in the midst of desolation they were
in plenty: in the midst of the curse they were in
blessing. And that Testimony was the Testimony of Jesus.
When,
later, they went into the far captivity and knew the
desolation again for seventy years, and at last the
seventy years' accomplishment came into view, the prophet
cried with his gospel of hope - "Comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is
accomplished" (Isa. 40:1). The issue of that is that
"the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the
rose" (Isa. 35:1). "In the wilderness shall
waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa.
35:6).
THE LORD JESUS IN THE WILDERNESS
But you
know quite well that, set there for the real fulfilment -
not for the symbolic or partial fulfilment, but for the
real fulfilment - Isaiah 53 has its place. "He was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed." The Lord Jesus
went for forty days into the wilderness - the place of
desolation, the place of death, the place of the curse;
that wilderness being the place of Satan's power, because
he made it. Every wilderness belongs to the Devil. It is
in the wilderness that you will always meet the Devil. In
that place of Satan's power, that One would not have
survived, had He not been a Heavenly Man with no
relationship whatever to the wilderness; had He not just
before gone to Jordan, and in figure died, and,
rising, overcome death.
But it
says that He was led "of the Spirit" into the
wilderness (Matt. 4:1). When He rose from the waters,
when in figure He was risen from the dead triumphant, the
Spirit came upon Him. By that Spirit He went into the
wilderness, and there, in virtue of a victory already
secured, He overcame.
The
wilderness is always a symbol of the desolation of death
because of the curse. Look back to Israel's life in the
wilderness. You remember one of the most poignant of all
the figures of the tabernacle ritual - that of the
scapegoat. You never read that little account, I am sure,
without feeling deeply and desperately sorry for that
goat, with all the curse transferred by identifying hands
to its head, and then led by a priest to the outer bounds
of the camp and beyond, away, till the last sign of human
life is out of sight, and then, driven from that last
man, alone in the wilderness to die, forsaken of God,
desolate, bearing sin.
Well,
that is the Cross. That is the meaning, but only a shadow
of the meaning, of the words we read in Matthew 27 -
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
'Why hast Thou turned Thy face away from Me? Why am I in
this awful desolation, beside which every other kind of
desolation is nothing - the desolation of losing God?
Why?' Well, thank God, there is probably no one reading
these lines who could not answer that question. But it is
not my object at this moment to try to answer it. I am
just pointing to two sides of this great matter - the
lost face of God and the regained face of God.
So the
heavens were closed against that man; so that face was
lost as for eternity; so the deep and awful desolation
settled down upon his soul; and for ever that orphan
soul, that desolated soul, is crying, 'Where can I find
Him? Where can I find HIM?' "Oh that I knew where
I might find him... Behold, I go forward, but he is not
there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: on the
left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he
hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot
see him" (Job 23:3, 8-9). And yet there has
never been one who has known that desolation, and that
sense of forsakenness, in any measure commensurate with
what the Lord Jesus knew, in the hour, in the moment, of
that cry. That desolation has broken many a soul. Ah, but
never in the way in which it broke His heart.
He had
sensed what was coming. There have been many arguments
about His cup and His exceeding sorrowfulness and His cry
- "If it be possible, let this cup pass away from
me" (Matt. 26:39). I think the only answer is here:
that He sensed what was coming. It was certainly not His
physical death and sufferings. He was going, of
necessity, to be forsaken of the Father with whom,
through those thirty-three years, He had had unbroken
fellowship. Favours were shown to Him in His birth; He
grew in that favour as a lad; He came out into public
life, and the open heavens declared "This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt.
3:17). In the secret of His own heart He was in the
favour of the Father. He dwelt in the bosom of the Father
every day. And now that was to be withdrawn; He was to
know the loss of that. Surely there is nothing to
approach it!
We are
speaking of facts, and if we were to speak of any
experience of our own, it would be almost approaching
sacrilege. And yet some of you may have known what it is
to have a very blessed time with the Lord - when the Lord
has seemed so real, and everything was betokening the
Lord's nearness and the Lord's favour - and then it has
gone, completely gone: all the tokens seem to have been
withdrawn and the Lord seems to have gone out of your
world entirely. You will say that there is nothing more
miserable than an experience like that. But how small
compared with this! How infinitely terrible that He, who
had from eternity been in the bosom of the Father, should
lose that - not as an act in a play, not as something
staged, but as a reality, a terrible soul reality. He was
taking the place of all who had lost the face of God, in
order to get it back again for them - for you, for me.
THE LORD JESUS AND THE OPEN HEAVEN
OF GOD'S FACE
And you
can look at the other side, the open heaven, the face of
God. He had it in His birth - all heaven was open. He had
it in His childhood. How manifest it was we do not know,
but we do know that at the age of twelve He could speak
of God as "My Father" (Luke 2:49). This was
surely expressive of a lad's life with God in very
intimate and affectionate terms. At His baptism, the
heavens were opened to Him and a voice was heard saying,
"Thou art my beloved Son". To Nathanael He
said, "Thou shalt see greater things... Ye shall see
the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man" (John 1:50-51). His
transfiguration again saw those same heavens opened, that
same voice attesting Him as the beloved Son. And after
the desolation of the Cross, at His 'receiving up in
glory' (1 Tim. 3:16) - I like that better than the word
'ascension'; His 'receiving up', that was how they liked
to put it then - the heavens were opened for the great
reception. There is no question here; no having to stand
at the gates and meet the Apostle Peter to get a
passport! No, He was "received up in glory";
the heavens opened. And at Pentecost the heavens were
opened, and "he hath poured forth this" (Acts
1:33); and through the heavens which He Himself had
opened by His merit, by His Cross, He attested for all
who would believe, that God's face was back again in
their direction. How could you better express those days
of Pentecost and following than in the words that the
light of God's countenance was upon them? What joyous
days they were, what precious days! - and it was simply
because they were in the light of God's countenance.
But
there is a still more intimate witness. "Did ye
receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" (Acts
29:2). The Holy Spirit is given, not only to the Church
as a whole, but to every member of that Church to dwell
within. And what is the Holy Spirit dwelling in the
believer? It is only, in other words, that the Lord is
for us and with us again, His face is in our direction.
The old invocation which has become a benediction was -
"The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be
gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon
thee, and give thee peace" (Num. 6:25-26). Is that
not just it, that when we come into the good of the work
of the Cross and of Pentecost, that is, the coming of the
Holy Spirit, that is the light of His countenance, and it
is peace? When His face is not toward us there is no
peace. The indwelling Spirit is just another way of
saying that the face of the Lord is toward them that fear
Him, and the great glorious consummation of that is in
the words in Revelation: "His servants shall serve
him, and they shall see his face" (Rev. 22:3,4) - as
though that were the crowning blessing of all, the
inclusive blessing of all, in the last chapter of the
Bible. "They shall see his face": this is the
one thing that has been the great issue through
all the ages - the face of God in its towardness being
man's greatest blessing, in its loss man's greatest
desolation. You are not surprised therefore to read in
the same utterance - "there shall be no curse any
more". "No more curse... they shall see his
face."
IN CHRIST AN OPEN HEAVEN FOR US
Well,
all that is, I know, very simple, but we shall not do
ourselves any harm by contemplating what He won for us in
that wilderness, how great a thing it was that resulted
from that cry. The answer given to that cry - "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" - is our
supreme and all-inclusive blessing: it is that we may
never know any more forsaking of God. Oh, put your feet
down upon that. It is not as simple as it sounds. No more
forsaking of God! Have you, a believer, a believer
perhaps for many years, in full devotion to the Lord -
have you never been tempted to believe that God had
forsaken you, God had left you, had given you up, washed
His hands of you, parted company with you, withdrawn? If
you have never had that temptation, I am not going to say
that you ought to, but I will say that I do not think you
will get through your course in a really spiritual life
without having it, and more than once. As in Adam's case,
so with every son of Adam and every child of God, with
every member of this human race, the Devil's greatest
work is to get between us and God. Once he has done that,
if he can establish himself there between us and God, it
is an end of all things, it is hopeless. But in the case
of a believer he cannot now do that in actuality. He can
only do it in effect, by the attitude that a believer
takes toward this great thing that happened on the Cross,
by the answer that the believer will give in his or her
own heart to Christ's question, "Why hast thou
forsaken me?" If you really will give the answer,
'In order that I might never be forsaken' - if you give
that answer and stay there, you have entered into the
value of what the Lord Jesus accomplished in destroying
the works of the Devil, especially his supreme work of
getting between you and God.
Calvary
is always an open door, an open way, to God's face. You
know that it was ever by Jordan that the place of God's
face was reached - always by Jordan. Of the promised land
the Lord said, "The eyes of the Lord thy God are
always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto
the end of the year" (Deut. 11:12); His face would
be toward it, and so it was described as the land of
unspeakable blessing. Israel never arrived there except
by the Jordan. When they came back from the
captivity to the land again, where God's face was, they
had to go across the Jordan again or through the Jordan.
When the Lord Jesus went to the Jordan, He passed that
way in order to come to the place where the heavens were
opened, where the face of God was seen; always by Jordan
to the place of God's face - in other words, always by
the Cross. It is by the Cross that we come into the light
of His countenance.
THE VICTORY OF FAITH
But the
point here is that faith is the victory (1 John 5:4). It
is faith in one thing. If you pin your faith to this one
thing, all other things will come into line, all the
other problems will be overcome: if you really will pin
your faith to this - that the Lord Jesus, in that
terrible moment, lost the face of God in order to secure
it for us forever, so that we might never be out of the
light of that countenance. He has brought that face back
to us - and what blessing there is in that! I am not
saying that we may never experience some shadow over His
face because of our folly, because of our grieving Him.
We have to admit sometimes that there is a shadow between
us and the Lord. Ah, but never need it be total eclipse,
and never His forsaking. He is behind that shadow, and a
thousand times we who have known such shadows, because of
either our unbelief or some other grieving Him, when we
have adjusted, cleared that matter up, got right with the
Lord, we have found Him there just where He was. He is
behind the shadows; His word abides - "I will in no
wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake
thee" (Heb. 13:5).
THE FALL A FALL INTO THE HANDS OF
SATAN
Surely
Israel has a many-sided testimony, and this is one side.
God has written the story of His willingness to be toward
man. That story is written very fully in the life of
Israel. If ever a people might have been fully and
finally forsaken, Israel might have been. I think there
is nothing that proves the fall more than Israel - proves
the fall not in a general but in a specific way. We say
of Adam that the fall took place, Adam fell. How did he
fall? Where did he fall? Into what did he fall? He fell
into the hands of Satan, to be used as Satan's instrument
against God, and his fall developed in Israel. They fell
into Satan's hands. "Ye are of your father the
devil" (John 8:44), said the Lord Jesus. They fell
into Satan's hands to be his instruments against God to
crucify His very Son. There is nothing deeper than to be
the instrument of Satan to kill God, to put God out of
His place. That is why the record of Israel's spirit and
attitude is given us so fully in the Gospels, leading up
to Israel's crucifying of Christ. Their attitude is all
brought out by Christ, and He focuses upon this - that
what they did to Him they did to God. And so in the Cross
of the Lord Jesus we see a people, a nation, held by
Satan, having sold themselves into the hands of Satan to
crucify God and put Him out of His place. That is not too
strong, to speak of Satan's instrument against God. That
is the fall - into the hands of Satan. That opens up the
Word of God in many ways, from many angles. It is a
terrible thing.
When the
Lord Jesus came, there was one who, looking upon that
infant, said, prophetically, "to grant unto us that
we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies..."
(Luke 1:74) - and that went far beyond any earthly
enemies. Have you really felt the force of what I have
just been saying? Have there not been times when, through
duress and suffering and oppression, through spiritual
trial to the depths, Satan has got so near to your soul
or has been so bound up with your soul that it has seemed
he would turn you against God, make you bitter toward the
Lord, make you the enemy of God, bring up such feelings
in you? These things are real. That is what he is trying
to do all the time - to get man back into his power, to
get the believer into his power, to use him against God.
There is no instrument more useful to Satan against God
than a Christian. You expect unbelievers, men of the
world, to be against God; but see a Christian revolting
against the Lord, and that gives Satan just what he is
after - one who is supposed to know the Lord, in
rebellion against Him. What a battle there is over that!
- but what a triumph our Lord has secured to get us right
out of that realm, to destroy all the impingement of
Satan's insinuations and suggestions. If you do ever know
the cloud, the temptation, remember Calvary: remember
that the Lord Jesus has established forever the ground
upon which God will never forsake you, never leave you,
never withdraw His face from you. Believe that. That is
the faith which overcomes and it is a mighty overcoming,
going right back to the beginning.
DELIVERANCE BY THE CROSS OF CHRIST
"Why
hast thou forsaken me?" I am so glad that the story
of the Cross does not end there. The cry, the awful cry,
is "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?", but the last words from the Cross are not
such. "Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit" (Luke 23:46). He is back on the ground of
perfect fellowship with the Father and absolute trust.
The victory is gained, the work is done, the enemy is
defeated, the ground is secured. Whatever Satan says, as
he does in our deep hours of spiritual experience, about
the Lord having given us up, departed from us - all that
sort of thing; whatever he says, it is not true. It may
be that you do not feel the full weight of that; but if
ever you come, as perhaps some of you have come, to a
time, such as many of the most faithful and devoted and
greatly-used servants of God have known, when the dark
forces spread themselves over, gather around in their
hordes, and seek to come between you and your Lord and
then begin their whisperings - 'The Lord has given you
up, handed you over', or something to that effect - when
you come to that place, then I trust you will know that
this word is no light word, no unimportant word: for the
last depths of Calvary were fathomed in the moment when
our Lord cried that bitter cry and gained the answer and
came out victorious and into rest. "Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit." That was not for
Himself, that was for us - for you, for me. I feel that
that is the Good Friday morning message: the depth of
Calvary and the eternal value of His having secured for
us the face of God. Never, never is it necessary for
anyone to know that desolation of God-forsakenness while
they put their trust, their faith, upon His taking up
this age-long issue as Man for man - the issue of
"the light of thy countenance".
So let
us rejoice that we have an open heaven secured for us by
our blessed Lord. We have but stated the truth, the fact,
of this thing. There is much more bound up with it, which
the Lord may show us as we go on, as to what kind of man
it is who enjoys that opened heaven, but that is with the
Lord. Let us thank Him for the fact that we may have the
heaven opened to us. He has done it. But to a Nathanael
He will say, "Ye shall see the heaven opened".
God grant that we may all be in that blessed position.