"The Gospel of the glory of the blessed God"
(1 Tim. 1:11).
"The gospel of your
salvation" (Eph. 1:13).
"The
mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:19).
"The
Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah
hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he
hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to
them that are bound; to proclaim the year of Jehovah's
favour" (Isa. 61:1-2).
"And
there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet
Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where
it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor; he hath sent me to proclaim release to the
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord.... And he began to say unto
them, Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your
ears" (Luke 4:17-19,21).
"And
when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled..."
(Acts 2:1, R.V.M.)
The Year of the Grace of the
Lord
"The
year of Jehovah's favour," or "The acceptable
year of the Lord." A better translation is "the
year of the grace of the Lord." That is what comes
in with the gospel, what lies behind it, what makes it to
be the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. The gospel
is founded upon the year of the Lord's favour. "The
Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me... to proclaim the
year of Jehovah's favour." What is that year? It is
taken from the Old Testament, from the book of Leviticus
- "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and
proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the
inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and
ye shall return every man unto his own possession, and ye
shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall
that fiftieth year be unto you" (Lev. 25:10,11). Here
is the year in which liberty is proclaimed, and here we
have in Isaiah 61: "liberty to the captives."
It is the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, and the
fiftieth year becomes the year in which the good news
goes out. "To proclaim liberty"; "the year
of the Lord's favour." "The Spirit of the Lord
God is upon me" to proclaim that.
Then
on the day of Pentecost, the fiftieth day - forty from
the resurrection to the ascension and ten spent waiting
in prayer - the Spirit came upon the Church, and the
gospel, the good news, the proclamation of emancipation,
was started out on its way to the ends of the earth.
"Now when the day of Pentecost was being
fulfilled" - fifty, the year of the Lord's favour.
The Law of the Sabbath
Going
back to Isaiah, we may remind ourselves that those
prophecies, from Chapter 40 onwards, have to do
immediately with Israel's return from the captivity. The
people have been prisoners in captivity; now comes the
proclamation of their liberty, the setting free of those
that are bound, the acceptable year of the Lord for their
return. But what lay behind it? You turn to the
prophecies of Jeremiah, and you find him repeatedly
referring to the reason for the captivity and saying that
the land should have rest for seventy years to fulfil the
Lord's Sabbaths. The people had broken the law of the
Sabbath, not just the weekly Sabbath but the sevens of
weeks and months and years. The land had not had its
rest, the captives, the slaves, had not had their rest,
their liberation. The people had been riding roughshod
over the law of the Sabbath. You know what Isaiah 58 has
to say about this - that they had turned His holy day
into a holiday, doing their own pleasure therein. They
broke the law of the Sabbath. That cannot be done with
impunity because of what it signifies, and so they went
into captivity, for seventy years - ten times seven. Ten
is the number of responsibility; seven is the number of
spiritual completeness. They were held responsible before
God for this whole matter. Jeremiah reminded them of that
again and again and, under the instruction and direction
of the Lord, he declared that they should make good by
seventy years of captivity. Then at the end of the books
of the Chronicles, you have these words - "That
the word of Jehovah by the mouth of Jeremiah might be
accomplished, Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus
king Persia, so that he made a proclamation..." The
acceptable year of the Lord had come and they returned
from captivity.
That
is the history and that is the type, but you cannot say
that obtains when you come to Luke 4 or to Acts 2. You
have got away now from the historical or from the Jewish.
That has served its purpose as a great illustration of
how jealous God is for His testimonies, His ordinances,
His Sabbaths. Israel is a great example of God's jealousy
as well as of His grace.
Now
we come to Christ, Who takes up that very Scripture and
appropriates it, applying it to Himself, and says,
'Whatever was fulfilled in the case of Israel in their
return from captivity when judgment was accomplished,
here today you have a transcendent fulfilment of that in
your very ears, for I am the Anointed One above all
others, and the very purpose of My anointing is to
proclaim, on the basis of judgment fulfilled, liberty to
the captives.' He has just been to Jordan - this is the
fourth chapter of Luke; the judgment in type has been put
upon Him and He has gone down into death under the
overwhelming billows of God's wrath: judgment is
complete. Then He comes forth and declares, "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me... to proclaim liberty...
the year of the Lord's grace"; the gospel of the
glory of the satisfied God, the blessed God.
Now
we can understand the meaning of the day of Pentecost and
of the day in which we are living, for it has turned out
to be not a day of twelve or twenty-four hours but a
dispensation. We often speak of this as the day of grace,
the gospel day. It is a day that broke when the Lord
Jesus rose from the grave and ascended to His Father and
sent forth the Spirit, and that day will close when He
returns finally from heaven. It is a long day, but this
is the day of the Lord's favour in which this gospel of
the glory of the blessed God is to be preached under the
anointing of the Holy Spirit.
But
let us come again to this matter of the Sabbath lying
behind it, for it is just there that the whole point of
the satisfied God is found. When was the first Sabbath? -
when the Lord looked on all that He had made and saw that
it was very good, and He rested from His works.
"God... hallowed it; because that in it he rested
from all his work" (Gen. 2:3). "Ye shall keep
my sabbaths: for it is a sign between me and you
throughout your generations" (Ex. 31:13). He
appointed the Sabbath as an ordinance forever throughout
all their generations, and made a Sabbath of days, and a
Sabbath of weeks in the seventh week, and a Sabbath of
months in the seventh month, and then a Sabbath of years
in the seventh year, and then a Sabbath of multiples of
seven years - forty-nine; the fiftieth, the completion of
seven sevens. They all speak of this - God is satisfied,
and because of that, you can go free. It is as though a
prisoner is interrogated at the bar and an altogether
satisfactory case is made out and answer is given, and
the judge says, 'I am satisfied, you are acquitted.' Why
are you acquitted? This of course, brings us to the
letter to the Romans: you are acquitted because God is
satisfied.
So
the Lord Jesus gathers this all up into Himself and He
becomes the personal Sabbath of the Lord, the beloved One
in Whom God is well-pleased. When He is at God's right
hand, God is satisfied, and the great amnesty is
proclaimed - the gospel of the satisfied God - and we are
given our liberty. You know all that happened in the
Jubilee year. All slaves were liberated, all properties
in bond had to be returned to their owners; freedom from
every kind of tie and bondage was proclaimed, it was a
time of joyful release. Well, there ought to be nothing
more joyful than our gospel, and there ought to be no
more joyful people than those who have such a gospel as
we have. It is the gospel of the glory of a satisfied
God.
Christ God's Sabbath Rest
Let
me stay one moment to touch further upon that matter of
God's satisfaction giving character to the gospel, making
it a glorious gospel. We said in a previous meditation
that the word 'glory' in the Bible is almost invariably
associated with the nature of God. That is quite
understandable if you look at it like this. Usually, when
you meet people off their guard, you can tell pretty much
what kind of people they are. I mean this. If you meet a
person with a guilty conscience, somehow or other that
guilty conscience comes out at you, and though you may
not know why, you have a sense that things are not right.
You meet somebody who has something in the background of
their life which is evil and there is a shadow over the
face; you are conscious of the shadow. The more sensitive
and alive to people you are, the more quickly do you
know, in their presence and without a word, the state of
their inner life. You register something that is inside -
'this person is not transparent, he is shifty, he must
not be trusted.' You do not know why, you do not know
their history, but you know that. By what comes to you
from their presence you know what their life is. The
registration may come in a variety of ways, leaving you
with an impression, and when you get that impression you
know your person.
God's
nature is all righteousness, and therefore when you meet
God, you do not meet any clouds, shadows, darkness,
doubt, question, suspicion, uncertainty. All is crystal
clear. It is a terrible thing to come really into the
presence of God. You do not have to tell Him anything,
you know that He knows; He reads you through and through,
and absolutely truly. When the Lord Jesus was here,
anything dark that came into His presence was immediately
exposed. He did not have to say anything: He came into
the place and the demons cried out, "Let us alone! What
have we to do with thee?" (Luke 4:34). He might have said,
'I have done and said nothing to you; what is the matter
with you?' Ah, He needed not to speak: He knew all men
and knew what was in man (John 2:24-25), and men knew
that He knew. The trouble all the time was that they
could not bear His presence, they had to do something
about it. The only thing to do for their own comfort was
to kill this Man. He brings our sins to remembrance! He
reminds us of our sin! Get into the presence of God, and
it is like that. The glory of God is what comes out from
God - the registration, the impact, the influence, that
comes out from Him. He is all righteousness, and His
glory is just that. God is all righteous, and He makes a
demand upon all men that they too shall be righteous in
order to have fellowship with Him, to stand in His
presence, to abide the eternal burnings. Think of
standing in the presence of such a God without flinching!
That is the gospel of the blessed God - it is possible!
We can kneel here and in perfect simplicity, without any
question or hesitation, speak to that God and say,
Father! We can commune with that God without fear, and
abide in His presence in the glory which would destroy
anyone who was not in Christ. This, I know, is quite
simple and elementary, but it is the gospel of the glory
of the satisfied God. It is not the message of the
terror of a dissatisfied God, it is not the news of the
awfulness of a holy God Whom we must fear and dread, from
Whom we must stand back. No: the gospel is the good news
of the satisfied God - of the year of Jubilee, the year
of acceptance, the year of grace. He has found His
Sabbath rest, His satisfaction, His good pleasure, the
answer to all His desires, the perfection of all His
work, in His Son, the Lord Jesus, and He has put that to
the account of simple faith; and we, accepted in the
Beloved, are proclaimed free and are given a proclamation
of that same freedom to make to all captives. That is
where you begin.
God's Righteousness in the
Church
Now
you notice that this is transferred to the Church. When
you look at the Old Testament you find that so often the
glory is linked with a dwelling place. "Let them
make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them"
(Ex. 25:8); and when the tabernacle was made, the glory
filled it. The temple was the same - a place for a
dwelling. Now pass from the Old Testament to the New. The
statements about the Lord Jesus are well-known. He is the
effulgence of that glory (Heb. 1:3). He is "crowned
with glory" (Heb. 2:9). He is, to use the words of
the psalmist, "the King of glory" (Ps. 24:7);
or in Paul's words to the Corinthians; "the Lord of
glory" (1 Cor. 2:8). "We beheld his glory,
glory as of the only begotten from the Father" (John
1:14). But then He goes to the Father, and the Spirit of
glory (as Peter calls the Holy Spirit) is sent forth and
comes and takes up residence in the Church. The Church
now becomes the dwelling place of the glory, that is -
remembering all the time the meaning of the glory - the
dwelling place of God's satisfaction because the dwelling
place of God's nature. Righteousness is there "the
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ"
(Rom. 3:22) - it is there in the Church, and the Church
is glorified or glorious because God's righteousness is
there by faith, and God is satisfied.
God's Rest in the Church
And
the point is this, that if we are the place of the
dwelling of the glory we ought to be people who know
heart rest. God has come into His rest, He is satisfied,
and the Church ought to be the place in which the rest of
God is found. Now, if these things seem simple, do
remember that the whole testimony which is deposited in
this vessel depends for its effectiveness upon these
factors. You begin with God's satisfaction or God's rest,
and the testimony must be that the people of God are in
the enjoyment of God's rest. So that the enemy's first
activity against the testimony of Jesus, against the
Church, is to bring strain, unrest, into the Lord's
people. All who are weary and heavy-laden ought to find
rest when they come amongst the Lord's people, and we
contradict the very conception of the Church when we lose
our heart rest. It is most important; it is a part of our
gospel, a part of our proclamation. Believe me, if we
were really, in our experience, proclaiming this rest -
that is, if it were not merely heard but seen, recognized
- it would be a tremendously effective thing, for what we
are is a much stronger proclamation than what we say; and
if the Lord can have people here and there on this earth
who are perfectly satisfied with Him and enjoying His
rest, who have found rest unto their souls, He will have
a tremendous witness in the earth, because one thing
which is the mark of Satanic working in this universe is
the seething, restless dissatisfaction, the longing, the
craving, that is never being met. The gospel of the glory
begins here in the place where the glory is; and the
glory is that God is satisfied, God has come to His rest
and we have entered into that rest. It is something that
dwells in the Church. The gospel has to dwell in the
Church. It is the gospel of the glory of the satisfied
God.
The Lord Jesus A Priest-King
Now
that again in turn lies at the heart of the fact that the
house, the dwelling place, the Church, is a priestly
dwelling. You remember that it was said that the robes of
the high priest should be "for glory and for
beauty" (Ex. 28:2). Well, in the eyes of God, of
course, the mere dressing up in gorgeous garments had no
value; the garments can only be typical of something very
much greater. There is nothing you can do in the way of
elaborate and gorgeous pageantry that can impress God -
though it may impress men. And yet God said these
priestly robes should be "for glory and for
beauty." (The word 'beauty' could equally well be
translated 'honour.') John 17 is the high priestly
prayer. The Lord Jesus is going to the altar, the Cross,
and then He is going to pass through the heavens and up
to the throne, and the Apostle is going to say "We
behold Jesus crowned with glory and honour" (Heb.
2:9). Peter used exactly the same words when, looking
back to the Transfiguration Mount, he said, "He
received from God the Father honour and glory" (2
Pet. 1:17). When was that? "And behold, there talked
with him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared
in glory, and spake of his decease (or, exodus) which he
was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke
9:30,31). It is the priest in view. We cannot go back and
talk about the priestly features of the exodus from Egypt
- the blood shed, the blood sprinkled, the testimony
against death. That is all priestly function. The point
is, this is all gathered up in the Lord Jesus as High
Priest.
The
glory and the honour reside upon priestly work. What is
the priestly work? It is again this whole question of
satisfying God in the matter of righteousness, of
destroying the ground of death and judgment as a
spiritual thing.
"He
shall be," says Zechariah, "a priest upon his
throne" (Zech. 6:13). That is a combination of
things that you do not very often find in the Bible, but
it comes out that Jesus unites both king and priest in
His own person. He is King because He is Priest. Because
He has fulfilled all the priestly work of dealing with
sin and unrighteousness and satisfying God. He is
enthroned as Priest upon His throne; He is King.
Now,
you have only got to look at the book of the Acts, and
you find that it is all there. The second psalm is more
than once quoted in that book. What is the connection?
"God... raised up Jesus; as also it is written in
the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten thee" (Acts 13:33) - indicating that in the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus a specific meaning is
given to His Sonship. He is in full Sonship in a special
way by reason of resurrection from the dead. If Jesus had
not been raised from the dead, would God have owned Him
as His Son? I am not ruling out the fact that He was
always the Son of God, but now that He has gone into
death, that Sonship can only be ratified and established
as a living, full thing in heaven, if God raises Him from
the dead. That is the thing the enemy was after all the
time. When He came from Jordan the Voice had said,
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased" (Matt. 3:17), and Satan wants to nullify
that and ensnare Him into death somehow. 'Throw yourself
down from the pinnacle, bring yourself somehow under the
judgment hand of God.' That is what the enemy is after.
Every temptation is to try to get the Lord Jesus out of
the way of that good pleasure of the Father, and to bring
Him into condemnation and death. But He was never
side-tracked; He went into death voluntarily, not enticed
there by Satan. "I lay down my life... no one taketh
it away from me" - no one, either man or devil.
"I have power (authority) to lay it down, and I have
power to take it again. This commandment received I from
my Father" (John 10:17-18). "God... raised up
Jesus: as also it is written in the second psalm. Thou
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee!" That is
in "Acts."
The Way of the Enemy's Defeat
Then
the second psalm again. "I have set my king upon my
holy hill of Zion." Jesus is raised, glorified and
enthroned, set upon God's holy hill of Zion, crowned with
glory and honour, a Priest upon His throne. What is the
outworking of that? Well, the point that I have wanted to
arrive at is this, that when that reality is in the
Church, as it came to be on the day of Pentecost - Christ
risen and enthroned in virtue of God's absolute
satisfaction - then the devil's power is undercut. That
is what comes out in Acts. If you go back upon that you
reinstate the devil in power. I want to press this point
seriously because one of the major end-time activities of
the devil is to seek to bring the Church into a place
where it cannot function, where it is neutralised in its
power, its witness, its influence, because the mighty
reality of God's absolute satisfaction has been weakened:
or - to put that in the more positive way - where
believers are challenged as to their assurance of
salvation. Many of you probably have no questions or
shadows on that matter, but I doubt whether you will get
through to the end of your course without a vicious
assault from the enemy to undermine your assurance. It
may not come directly on the point of assurance of
salvation; it may come in some other way to undermine
your confidence in God, or even to becloud your certainty
of God. That is, at heart, the nature of the battle of
faith. We are not going to get out of the battle of faith
till the end of the journey. Indeed, it will doubtless
become more and more severe and acute. Faith is going to
be tested more and more, and when it does survive and
triumph there will be victory indeed.
And
on what ground is faith tested? It is on the ground of
our very relationship with God and God's attitude toward
us. The concentration of the enemy's forces is upon that
point - to interfere with our link with God.
What
is our link with God? It is this - the Lord Jesus Christ,
as the answer to God and to Satan for us. It will never
be what we are in ourselves. If you are expecting a day
to come when in virtue of what you are in yourself you
can satisfy God, you are destined to an awful
disillusionment and disappointment. The day will never
come when we can satisfy God in ourselves, not even more
or less. The strength of the Church is its faith in the
Lord Jesus. The link with God is the Lord Jesus as God's
satisfaction, and as God's answer to Satan, the Accuser.
How
then can we really dislodge the enemy, undercut his
power, destroy him in effect? That is a very big
question. We are not going to defeat the enemy by big
organisations and movements; he will soon get inside of
those and turn them to his own account. We are not going
to do it along any one of many lines which might easily
be mentioned here. We are going to destroy the enemy in
effect, and establish the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus
in the kingdom of the enemy, only by a full apprehension
of what the Lord Jesus is. Now when I use that word full,
I underscore it several times because I feel that is the
point to which we must come in these meditations. It is
the measure of our inward apprehension of the Lord Jesus
- of what He is - that is going to answer this whole
situation. Therefore for disposing of the whole hierarchy
of Satan and emptying the heavens of those evil
principalities and powers, the Lord needs above all
things, as His instrument and vessel, a people
corresponding to Zion, that is, a people who are the
embodiment of His fuller thought about the Lord Jesus to
a degree that is beyond the average. Some people have
gone further into what the Lord Jesus is, and in them
something very much more of God's knowledge of His Son is
found. It all amounts to this - the measure of Christ. It
is one thing to believe on the Lord Jesus, to be
converted, to be saved. That is a glorious thing as a
beginning, but it alone will not take you right through
all that you have to meet; and if you are really in the
Lord's hands He will see to it that by virtue of need you
are pressed into knowing more and more of His Son. It is
the normal course of a true, Holy Spirit-governed
Christian life that, in order to get through, a constant
increase of Christ, a growing discovery of Christ, is
necessary. In the end, the vanguard of the Church, the
spearhead of the spiritual Israel, by whom the way will
finally be made for the Church into the heavenly dominion
and government with Christ, will be a people who have
been wrought into Christ very deeply and into whom Christ
has been wrought very deeply. They are a necessity to the
Lord.
That
principle is seen through the Scriptures in many ways. It
is one to which the Lord will work - the raising up of a
people who have come to some larger measure of what
Christ is than is common among His people; and those who
have only the lesser measure will need a people like that
to get them through. Why does the Lord take one and
another through such deep and trying experiences? Why is
it that He does not allow some of His children to have an
easy way and to be satisfied and gratified with
elementary things? Why does He keep them on the move,
never let them settle down? Why does He take them through
these unusual and extraordinary spiritual experiences and
cause them such exercise as multitudes of Christians do
not have? Why is it? The need of the others - that is
all. We know quite well that if any have been able really
to help others, it is because they have gone through deep
experience, they have pioneered this way, they have paid
a great price for this freedom. It has been costly - but
worth while if others can be really helped. It is just
the outworking of the Lord's way. So He takes a people by
strange ways, very deep and very high and very much
outside of the realm of the ordinary, in order to fit
them to be a peculiar people of value and usefulness to
His Church.